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Yoga-Vasistha
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BOOK I. On Detachment (Vairagya Khanda)
This section opens with a description of the mental state of Rama on his return from pilgrimage. King Dasharatha summons Rama into the presence of the sages Vasishta and Vishwamitra. Vasishta asks Rama to explain the reasons for his melancholy state of mind and his indifference towards all worldly affairs. Rama responds by relating the thoughts and reflections that had been troubling his mind and giving him no peace. His words and attitude reveal the awakening of a burning detachment (vairagya). However, Rama has serious doubts about the soundness of his conclusions about life, so he asks his guru for instruction. Vasishta begins his teaching and all the legendary saints and yogis gather in King Dasharatha’s hall to listen to this heavenly dialogue.
Ch 1
Ch 2
Ch 3
Ch 4
Ch 5
Ch 6
Ch 7
Ch 8
Ch 9
Ch 10
Ch 11
Ch 12
Ch 13
Ch 14
Ch 15
Ch 16
Ch 17
Ch 18
Ch 19
Ch 20
Ch 21
Ch 22
Ch 23
Ch 24
Ch 25
Ch 26
Ch 27
Ch 28
Ch 29
Ch 30
Ch 31
Ch 32
Ch 33
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Chapter 1.1 — Introduction: Sutikshna & Agastya; Karunya & Agnivesya; Suruchi & Divine Messenger; King Arishtanemi, Indra & Valmiki. Hail the Eternal.
1. Om, salutation to that Reality from whom all beings proceed, by whom they are manifest, upon whom they depend, and in whom they become extinct.
2. He is the knower, the knowledge and all that is to be known. He is the seer, the act of seeing, and all that is to be seen. He is the actor, the cause and the effect, therefore salutation to He who is all knowledge himself.
3. Salutation to He who is supreme bliss itself, from whom flow the dews of delight both in heaven and earth, and who is the life of all.
4. One Sutikshna, a brahmin whose mind was full of questions, went to the hermitage of Agastya and respectfully asked the sage,
5. “O great sage! You are informed in all the ways and truths of virtue, and know all the scriptures with certainty. I am in a great doubt, and I pray you will kindly remove it.
6. Tell me, in your opinion, whether liberation results from a man’s acts or his knowledge or both?”
7. Agastya replied:— As the birds fly in the air with both wings, so the highest state of emancipation is attained through both knowledge and acts.
8. Neither our acts nor knowledge alone produces liberation, but both together are the means.
9. I will recite to you an example from old traditions, a story of a brahmin named Karunya, who was learned in the Vedas in the days of old.
10. He was the son of Agnivesya and accomplished in the Vedas and all their branches. After finishing his studies with his teacher, he returned to his own home.
11. He remained a skeptic at home, reluctant and impassive to do anything. When his father Agnivesya saw his son so slack in his duties, he upbraided him for his good.
12. Agnivesya said, “My son, why do you not discharge your duties? Why are you not observing the daily rituals and the injunctions of the holy scriptures?
13. Tell me how can you succeed in anything if you remain inactive? How can you attain salvation? Tell me why you are not doing anything.”
14. Karunya replied, “The offering of daily oblations, and performance of morning and evening devotions during life, are inculcated in the Veda and law as the active duties.
15. But it is neither by acts or riches, nor by means of children that one obtains his liberation. It is solely by self-denial that the great souls taste the ambrosia (of emancipation).
16. Tell me my father! Which of these rules am I to observe? Doubtful of this I have become indifferent to acts.”
17. Agnivesya said, “Hear me, my son.” After so saying, Karunya held his silence. His father seeing him quiet, continued speaking.
18. “My son, let me tell you a story. When you have fully considered its meaning, you may do as you like.” Agnivesya speaking:—
19. There was a lady named Suruchi, the best of the apsara nymphs, who was seated on the mountain peak of Himalaya, surrounded by peacocks.
20. Here kinnaras inflamed by love sported with their mates, and the fall of heavenly streams (Ganga and Yamuna) served to cleanse the gravest sins of men.
21. She saw a messenger of Indra making his way through the sky. Then Suruchi, this most fortunate and best of apsaras, addressed the messenger.
22. Suruchi said, “O you messenger of gods, tell me kindly from where you come and what place are you going at present?”
23. The divine messenger replied, “Well have you asked, O pretty browed maid, and I will tell you all as it is. The royal sage, King Arishtanemi, has given his realm to his son,
24. and with religious indifference to the world, has set out to the forest to practice asceticism. He is performing his austerities on the Gandha-madana Mountains.
25. I am now coming from there after discharge of my errand, and returning to Indra’s palace to report the matter.”
26. Suruchi said, “Tell me, my lord, what has taken place there? I am humbly very curious. You should not cause me the pain of anxiety.”
27. The messenger replied:— Hear me, gentle maid. I will describe everything as it has occurred.
28. On hearing that the king was practicing the utmost rigors of asceticism in that forest, Indra, the lord of gods, asked me to take this heavenly car and proceed at once to the spot.
29. “Take this car,” said Indra, “bearing the apsaras equipped with all their musical instruments, and furnished with a band of gandharvas, siddha spiritual masters, yakshas and kinnaras.
30. Convey them,” said Indra, “with all their string instruments, flutes and drums to the woodland mount of Gandha-madana.
31. There, having placed King Arishtanemi in the car, bring him to the enjoyment of heavenly delight in this city of Amaravati, the seat of immortals.”
32. The messenger added:— Receiving this instruction from Indra and taking the car with all its equipment, I proceeded to that mountain.
33. Having arrived at the mountain and advanced to the king’s hermitage, I delivered the orders of the great Indra to him.
34. Hearing my words, O happy lady, King Arishtanemi reluctantly spoke to me saying, “I wish to ask you something, O messenger, which I hope you will answer.
35. Tell me what good and what evil are in heaven, so that I may decide whether I want to settle there.”
36. I answered, saying, “In heaven there is ample reward for merit, conferring perfect bliss (to all); but it is the degree of merit that leads one to higher heavens.
37. By moderate virtue, one is certainly entitled to a middle station. Virtue of an inferior order leads a person to a lower position.
38. But one’s virtue is destroyed by impatience at the excellence of his betters, by haughtiness to his equals, and by joy at the inferiority of others.
39. When one’s virtue is thus destroyed, he must enter the abode of mortals. These and the like are the effects of good and evil in heaven.”
40. Hearing this, O good maiden, King Arishtanemi answered, “O divine messenger, I do not like heaven that has such conditions.
41. Henceforth I will practice the most austere form of asceticism and abandon this my unhallowed human frame in the same way as a snake abandons his time-worn skin.
42. Be pleased, O messenger of the gods, to return with your heavenly car to the presence of the great Indra from where you came. Travel in good fortune.”
43. The celestial messenger resumed:— Thus being bid, I went, O good lady, to the presence of Indra. When I reported the matter, Indra was struck with great wonder.
44. Then the great Indra again spoke to me with a sweet voice saying, “My messenger, go again to that king and take him to the hermitage of Valmiki.
45. Valmiki is well acquainted with every truth. Tell him my errand, which is to instruct the dispassionate king, saying,
46. ‘O great sage! Plead with this king who is humble and dispassionate and dislikes the enjoyments of heaven
47. so that this king, who is aggrieved at the miseries of the world, may gradually come to attain his liberation.’ ”
48. I went and explained my mission to the royal hermit, then took him to sage Valmiki. I delivered great Indra’s charge so that the king may practice for his final liberation.
49. Sage Valmiki welcomed the king with gentle inquiries regarding his welfare.
50. The king replied, “O great sage, you are informed in all the truths of religion. You are the greatest of those who know the knowable. The very sight of you has given me all that I desired, and therein is all my welfare.
51. Great sage, I wish to learn from you how I may escape the miseries that arise from one’s connection with this world. I hope you will reveal this to me without reserve.”
52. Valmiki said, “Hear me O king! I will relate the entire Ramayana to you. By hearing and understanding you will be saved even while in this life.
53. O great and intelligent king, listen as I repeat the sacred conversation that took place between Rama and Vasishta relating the way of liberation, which I well know from my own knowledge.”
54. The king replied, “O best of sages, tell me precisely who and what this Rama was. What was his bondage and how did he become free of it?”
55. Valmiki said, “Vishnu was cursed to take the form of a prince with an assumed ignorance like that of men of little understanding.”
56. The king said, “Tell me who was the author of that curse, and how it could befall Rama, who was the personification of consciousness and joy, and the very image of wisdom.”
57. Valmiki replied:— Sanatkumara, who was devoid of desires, had been residing at the abode of Brahma, to which Vishnu, the lord of the three worlds, was a visitor from Vaikuntha.
58. The lord god Vishnu was welcomed by all the inhabitants of the Brahmaloka as well as by Brahma himself, except by Sanatkumara. The god Vishnu addressed Sanatkumara,
59. “Sanatkumara, it is ignorance that makes you forsake your desires for fear of rebirth, therefore you must be born under the name of Sara-janma to be troubled with desires.”
60. In return, Sanatkumara denounced Vishnu by saying, “Even as all discerning as you are, you shall have to sacrifice your omniscience for some time, and live as an ignorant mortal.”
61. There was another curse pronounced upon Vishnu by the sage Bhrigu who, seeing his wife killed by Vishnu, became incensed with anger and said, “Vishnu you shall have also to be deprived of your wife.”
62. Vishnu was again cursed by Vrinda to be deprived of his wife, on account of his beguiling her (in the form of her husband).
63. Again, when the pregnant wife of Devadatta was killed from fear on seeing the man-lion figure of Vishnu (Narasimha),
64. the leonine Vishnu was denounced by the husband who was sorely afflicted at the loss of his wife.
65. Thus cursed by Bhrigu, Sanatkumara, Devadatta and Vrinda, Vishnu was obliged to be born on this earth in the figure of a human being.
66. I have explained to you the causes of all the curses passed on Vishnu. Now I will tell you other things, and you will have to listen carefully.
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Chapter 1.2 — Reason for Writing the Ramayana
1. Salutation to the Lord, the Universal Soul, shining manifest in heaven, earth and the sky, and both within and without myself.
2. He is entitled to read this work who is convinced that he is bound, who desires his liberation, and who is neither wholly ignorant of nor quite conversant with divine knowledge.
3. The wise man, who has well considered this work as the first step, and then comes to think on the means of liberation, truly shall be exempt from rebirth. Valimiki speaking to King Arishtanemi:—
4. Know, O destroyer of your enemies, that I have written the history of Rama in the Ramayana as a preparatory step to salvation.
5. I gave that history to my attentive pupil, the obedient and intelligent Bharadwaja, as the sea yields its gems to their seeker.
6. The learned Bharadwaja repeated the history of the Ramayana in the presence of Brahma, seated in a certain forest of the Sumeru Mountain.
7. Lord Brahma, the great grandfather of the inhabitants of the three worlds, was so highly pleased with him that he addressed him saying, “O my son! Ask the best boon that you wish for.”
8. Bharadwaja said, “O lord who is master of the past and future times, grant me the boon of telling me how people are liberated from their miseries.”
9. Brahma said, “Go ask your teacher Valmiki to complete the faultless Ramayana that he has undertaken to write.
10. By hearing this work, men will overcome their many errors in the same way as the bridge that was built by Rama, who was filled with all good qualities, allowed men to cross the sea (to Lanka).”
11. Valmiki said:— Saying this, Brahma, the supreme maker of all beings, accompanied Bharadwaja to my hermitage.
12. I eagerly welcomed the god with the argha offerings of water and the like, when the lord of truth spoke to me for the good of all creatures.
13. Brahma said, “Do not, O sage, give up your undertaking until its final completion. No pain ought to be spared to make the history of Rama as faultless as it ought to be.
14. By this work of yours men will pass over this repetitive history of the world (samsara) in the same manner as one crosses the sea in a vessel.”
15. Again, the uncreated Brahma said to me, “I come to tell you this very thing, that you complete the work for the benefit of mankind.”
16. Then, O king, in a moment the god disappeared from my sacred hermitage, just as a wave subsides in water.
17. I was struck with wonder at the god’s disappearance, then composing my mind, I asked Bharadwaja,
18. “Tell me, Bharadwaja, what did Brahma tell me in the hermitage?” Bharadwaja answered,
19. “The god commanded you to complete the Ramayana for the good of men and as a means for them to cross over the gulf of the world.
20. Now sir,” continued Bharadwaja, “explain to me how the great minded Rama and his brother Bharata conducted themselves amidst the troubles of this world.
21. Tell me also how Satrughna, Lakshman and the renowned Sita, and all those who followed Rama, and also the ministers and their highly intelligent sons, conducted themselves on earth.
22. Tell me clearly how they escaped all the miseries of this world so that I may do the same for the rest of mankind.”
23. Being thus respectfully addressed by Bharadwaja, I was led, O great king, to carry out the request of my lord Brahma and narrate the Ramayana to him. I said,
24. “Listen, my son Bharadwaja. I will tell you all that you have asked. By hearing, you will become able to cast away the impurity of errors.
25. You are wise and you have to manage yourself in the manner of the blissful and lotus-eyed Rama, with a mind free from worldly attachments.”
26. “It was by this means that Lakshman, Bharata, the great minded Satrughna, Kausalya, Sita, Sumitra, as well as Dasharata,
27. with Kritastra and the two friends of Rama, and Vasishta and Vamadeva, and the eight ministers of state as well as many others reached the summit of knowledge.
28. The eight ministers of Rama — Dhrishta, Jayanta, Bhasa, Satya, Vijaya, Vibishanah, Sushena and Hanumana, and also Indrajita
29. — are said to have been equally dispassionate in their minds and content with what was their lot. They were great souls, free in their lives.”
30. “Well my son, if you follow the manner in which these men observed sacrificial rites, gave and received their offerings, and how they lived and thought, you are at once freed from the turmoil of life.
31. One fallen in this boundless ocean of the world may enjoy the bliss of liberation by the magnanimity of his soul. He shall not come across grief or destitution, but shall remain ever satisfied by being freed from the fever of anxiety.”
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Chapter 1.3 — Valmiki Explains Desires & Describes Rama’s Pilgrimage to Bharadwaja
1. Bharadwaja said, “O brahmin, first tell me about Rama, then enlighten me by degrees with the knowledge of how to attain liberation in this life so that I may be happy forever.”
2. Valmiki replied:— Know, holy saint, that the things seen in this world are deceiving, even as the blueness of the sky is an optical illusion. Therefore it is better to efface them in oblivion rather than to keep their memory.
3. All visible objects have no actual existence. We have no idea of them except through sensation. Inquire into these apprehensions and you will never find them as real.
4. It is possible to attain this knowledge. It is fully expounded here. If you will listen attentively, you shall get at the truth and not otherwise.
5. The conception of this world is a mistake. Though we actually see it, it never exists. It appears in the same light, O sinless saint, as the different colors in the sky.
6. The conviction that the objects we see do not exist of themselves leads to the removal of their impressions from the mind. Thus perfected, supreme and eternal bliss of self-extinction springs in the mind.
7. Otherwise, there is no peace to be had for men like you, rolling in the depths of studies for thousands of years and unacquainted with true knowledge.
8. Complete abandonment of desires (vasana, mental conditioning) is called the best state of liberation (moksha) and is the only pure step towards happiness.
9. The absence of desires leads to the extinction of mental actions, in the same manner as the absence of cold melts small particles of ice.
10. Our desires uphold our living bodies and bind us tightly to our bodily prison like ropes. These being loosened, the inner soul is liberated.
11. Mental conditioning is of two kinds: pure and impure. The impure ones cause reincarnation, while the pure ones serve to destroy it.
12. An impure desire is like a mist of ignorance, the stubborn feeling that one is the individual ego. The wise say that individual ego is the cause of rebirth.
13. A pure desire is like a parched seed that is incapable of bringing forth the germ of rebirth. It only supports the present body.
14. Pure desires, unattended with rebirth, reside in the bodies of men who are livingliberated. They are like unmoving wheels.
15. Those who have pure desires are not liable for rebirth. They are said to be knowing in all things that ought to be known. These are called the living-liberated and are of superior intelligence.
16. I will explain to you how the high minded Rama attained the state of liberation in life. Listen to this so that old age and death may not come upon you.
17. Hear, O highly intelligent Bharadwaja, the auspicious course and conduct of Rama’s life, whereby you will be able to understand everything at all times.
18. The lotus-eyed Rama, after coming out of his school, remained for many days at home in his diversions without anything to fear.
19. In the course of time he took the reins of the government and his people enjoyed all the bliss that absence of grief and disease could impart.
20. At one time, Rama’s mind, virtuous as he was, became anxious to see the different places of pilgrimage, cities and hermitages.
21. So with this view, Rama approached his father’s feet. He touched the nails of his toes like a swan lays hold of lotus buds.
22. “O my father,” he said, “my mind desires to see the different places of pilgrimage, temples of gods, forests and homes of men.
23. My lord, grant me this petition, as there is no petitioner of yours on earth whom you did ever dishonor.”
24. Thus solicited by Rama, the king consulted with Vasishta, and after much reflection granted him the first request that Rama ever made.
25. On a day of lucky stars, Rama set out on his journey with his two brothers, Lakshman and Satrughna, having his body adorned with auspicious marks, and having received the blessings pronounced on him by the priests.
26. He was also accompanied by a body of learned brahmins, chosen by Vasishta for the occasion, and by a select party of his associate princes.
27. He started from home on his pilgrimage after he received the blessings and embraces of his mothers.
28. As he went out of his city, the citizens welcomed him with the sounds of trumpets, while the bee-like fickle eyes of the city ladies were fixed upon his lotus-like face.
29. The beautiful hands of village women threw handfuls of fried paddy rice over his body, making him appear like the Himalayas covered with snow.
30. He dismissed the brahmins with honor and went on hearing the blessings of the people. He took a good look at the landscape around him, then proceeded towards the forest.
31. After making his holy ablutions and performing his asceticism and meditation (tapas), he continued distributing alms as he started from his palace and gradually passed the limits of Kosala.
32. He traveled and saw many rivers and their banks, visiting the shrines of gods, sacred forests and deserts, hills, seas and their shores far and remote from where men lived.
33. He saw the Mandakini River, bright as the moon, the Kalindi River, clear as the lotus, and also the following rivers: Sarasvati, Satadru, Chandrabhaga, Iravati,
34. Veni, Krishnaveni, Nirvindhya, Saraju, Charmanvati, Vitasta, Vipasa and Bahudaka.
35. He saw also the holy places of Prayaga, Naimisha, Dharmaranya, Gaya, Varanasi, Srigiri, Kedara, and Pushkara.
36. He saw Lake Manasa and the northern Mansaravara lakes, and many fiery lakes and springs, the Bada, the Vindhya range and the sea.
37. He saw the fiery pool of Jwalamukhi, the great shrine of Jagannatha, the fountain of Indradumna and many other reservoirs, rivers and lakes.
38. He visited the shrine of Kartikeya and the Gandaki River of salagramas, and also the sixty-four shrines sacred to Vishnu and Shiva.
39. He saw various wonders, the coasts of the four seas, the Vindhya range, the groves of Hara, and the boundary hills and level lands.
40. He visited the places of the great raja rishis and the Brahma rishis. He went wherever there was any auspicious sanctuary of the gods and brahmins.
41. The party, honoring Rama, travelled far and wide in company with his two brothers and traversed all the four quarters on the surface of the earth.
42. Honored by the gods, kinnaras and men, and having seen all the places on earth, Rama, the descendant of Raghu, returned home like Shiva returning to his own world (shivaloka).
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Chapter 1.4 — Rama’s Return from Pilgrimage Valmiki speaking:—
1. Covered with flowers thrown by people by the handful, Rama entered the palace, just like when the beautiful Jayanta, the son of Indra, enters his celestial abode.
2. On his arrival, Rama first bowed reverently before his father, then before Vasishta, before his brothers, his friends, the brahmins, and the elderly members of the family.
3. Repeatedly embraced as he was by friends, his father, mothers and brahmins, the son of Raghu bowed his head down to them with joy.
4. The assembled people, after their familiar conversation with Rama in the palace, strolled about on all sides highly delighted with his speech that resembled the music of a flute.
5. Thus eight days passed in festive mirth after Rama’s return, and the elated multitude gave shouts of joy.
6. Thereafter, Raghava continued to dwell happily at home, describing to his friends the different customs and manners of the countries he had visited on all sides.
7. He rose early in the morning and performed his morning worship according to law. Then he visited his father, seated like Indra in his council.
8. He next passed a fourth part of the day in company with Vasishta and other sages, and was greatly edified by their conversations which were full of instruction.
9. For sport, he also used to go to the forests full of boars and buffaloes surrounded by a large number of troops as ordered by his father.
10. Then, after returning home and performing his bath and other rites with his friends, he took his meal with them and passed the night in company with his beloved companions.
11. In these and similar activities he passed his days with his brothers at his father’s house, after returning from pilgrimage.
12. O sinless Bharadwaja, with his conduct becoming a prince, Rama passed his days giving delight to the good men that surrounded him, like the moon that gladdens mankind with his soothing ambrosial beams.
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Chapter 1.5 — Rama’s Self-Dejection & Its Cause
1. Valmiki said:— Afterwards Rama attained the fifteenth year of his age, and Satrughna and Lakshman, who followed Rama in age, also attained the same age.
2. Bharata continued to dwell with joy at the house of his maternal grandfather, and King Dasharata ruled the whole earth as usual.
3. The most wise King Dasharata consulted his ministers day after day about the marriage of his sons.
4. But as Rama remained at home after his return from pilgrimage, he began to decay day by day like a clear lake in autumn.
5. His blooming face, with its out-stretched eyes, assumed a paleness by degrees like that of the withering petals of the white lotus beset by a swarm of bees.
6. He sat silent and motionless, his legs folded in full lotus position (padmasana), absorbed in thought with his palm placed under his cheek and neck.
7. Being emaciated in person and growing thoughtful, sad and distracted in his mind, he remained speechless like a mute figure in a painting.
8. His family had to repeatedly ask him to perform his daily rites and when he did, he discharged them with a sad face.
9. Seeing the accomplished Rama, the mine of merits, in such a plight, all his brothers likewise were reduced to the same condition with him.
10. The king of the earth, seeing all his three sons dejected and lean, became anxious, as did all his queens.
11. Dasharata asked Rama repeatedly in a gentle voice what his anxiety was and what was the cause of his thoughtfulness, but Rama returned no answer.
12. Then being taken up in his father’s lap, the lotus-eyed Rama replied that he had no anxiety whatever and held his silence.
13. Afterwards King Dasharata asked Vasishta, the best of speakers and well informed in all matters, as to why Rama was so sorrowful.
14. Sage Vasishta thought over the matter and said, “There is, O king, a cause for Rama’s sadness, but you need not be anxious about it.
15. Wise men never entertain the fluctuations of anger or grief, or a lengthened delight from frivolous causes, just as the great elements of the world do not change their states unless it were for the sake of some new production.”
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Chapter 1.6 — Vishwamitra Arrives at the Royal Court Valmiki speaking:—
1. The king was thrown into sorrow and suspense at these words of Vasishta, the prince of sages, but kept his silence for sometime and waited.
2. Meanwhile, the queens of the palace kept close watch on Rama’s movements with anxious carefulness.
3. At this very time, the famous and great sage Vishwamitra came to visit the king of men at Ayodhya.
4. The intelligent and wise sage had his sacrificial rites disturbed by rakshasa demons who were deceitfully powerful and giddy with their strength.
5. The sage came to visit the king in order to obtain protection for his sacrifice, because he was unable to complete it in peace by himself.
6. The illustrious Vishwamitra, the gem of austere worship, had come to the city of Ayodhya for the destruction of the rakshasas.
7. Desirous of seeing the king, Vishwamitra told the guards at the gate to report to the king that Kausika [i.e. Vishwamitra], son of Gadhi, had arrived.
8. On hearing these words, the guards were struck with fear in their minds and ran as they were bid to the palace of the king.
9. Coming to the royal abode, the door-keepers informed the chief-warder that Vishwamitra, the royal sage, had arrived.
10. The staffbearer immediately presented himself before the king who was seated among his princes and chiefs in the court house. The staff-bearer reported,
11. “Please, your majesty. Waiting at the door is a mighty person of majestic appearance, bright as the morning sun, with pendant locks of hair like sunbeams.
12. The brilliance of his body has brightened the place from the topmost flag down to the ground, and made the horses, men and armory shine with a golden color.”
13. As soon as the warder appeared before the king, and with hurried words announced the arrival of the sage Vishwamitra,
14. the best of kings, surrounded by all the ministers and chiefs, rose at once from his throne of gold.
15. Attended by Vasishta and Vamadeva and his staff of princes and chiefs by whom he was held in honor and regard, the king immediately walked
16. to where the great sage was waiting, and saw Vishwamitra, the chief of sages, standing at the gate.
17. Vishwamitra’s priestly prowess joined with his military valor made him appear as if the sun had descended on earth for some reason.
18. He was hoary with old age, rough skinned by the practice of austerities, and covered down to his shoulders by bright red braids of hair that resembled evening clouds over the mountain of his brow.
19. He was mild looking and engaging in appearance, but at the same time as brilliant as the orb of the sun. He was neither assuming nor repulsive, but possessed of an ineffable gravity and majesty in his person.
20. He was attractive yet formidable in appearance, clear yet vast in mind, deep and full in knowledge, and shining with inner light.
21. His lifetime had no limit, his mind had no bounds, and age had not impaired his understanding. He held an ascetic’s pot in one hand, his only faithful companion in life.
22. The compassion of his mind, added to the sweet complacency of his speech and looks, pleased people as if they were actually served nectar drops or sprinkled with ambrosial dew.
23. His body decorated by the sacred thread and his prominent white eyebrows made him appear as a wonder to the eyes of his beholders.
24. On seeing the sage, the lord of earth lowly bowed from a distance, bowing so low that the gems hanging from his crown decorated the ground.
25. In his turn, the sage immediately greeted the lord of the earth with sweet and kind words, like the sun greeting the lord of the gods.
26. Afterwards the assembled brahmins of the court, headed by Vasishta, honored him with their welcomes.
27. The king said, “O holy sage, we are as highly favored by your unexpected appearance and your glorious sight as a bed of lotuses at the sight of the luminous sun.
28. O sage, I feel unending happiness at your appearance which knows no bounds.
29. This day we must be placed at the front rank of the fortunate, as we have become the object of your arrival.”
30. With these and similar conversations that went on among the princes and sages, they proceeded to the court-hall where they took their respective seats.
31. The king, awed by seeing the best of sages (Vishwamitra) with his cheerful face and so very prosperous in his asceticism, felt some hesitation to offer the honorary gift reward himself.
32. But the sage accepted the arghya water offered him by the king, and hailed the king as the king walked around the sage, according to the rules of scripture.
33. Thus honored by the king, he with a cheerful countenance asked the lord of men about the good health of himself and family, and the fullness of his finances.
34. Then coming in contact with Vasishta, the great sage saluted him with a smile, as he deserved, and asked him about his health and of those in his hermitage.
35. After their interview and exchanges of due courtesies had lasted for a while to the satisfaction of all in the royal assembly,
36. they both took their respective seats. Everyone in the court respectfully greeted the sage of exalted prowess.
37. After Vishwamitra was seated, they made various offerings of padya [water to wash the feet], arghya and cattle to him.
38. Having honored Vishwamitra in due form, the lord of men addressed him in submissive terms with the gladdest mind, his palms pressed open against each other.
39. He said, “Sage, your coming here makes me as grateful as one who obtains nectar, as rainfall after a drought, and as the blind gains sight.
40. Again it is as delightful to me as a childless man who gets a son by his beloved wife, or as gaining possession of a treasure in a dream.
41. Your arrival is no less pleasing to me than meeting with the object of one’s wishes, the arrival of a friend, and the recovery of something that was given for lost.
42. It gives me joy like that derived from the sight of a deceased friend suddenly returning by the way of the sky. It is thus, O holy brahmin, that I welcome your visit to me.
43. Who is there who would not be glad to live in heaven? O sage, I feel so happy at your arrival, and this I tell you truly.”
44. “What is your best pleasure? What I may do for you, O scholar who is the best of the virtuous, and the most properly deserving of my services?
45. Formerly, you had been famed under the title of royal sage, but since, made glorious by dint of your asceticism, you have been promoted to the rank of a Brahma rishi. Therefore, you are truly the object of my worship.”
46. “I am so glad at your sight that my inner soul is soothed, just like bathing in the Ganges River cheers the mind.
47. Free as you are from fears and desires, from wrath and passions and from the feelings of pleasure, pain and disease, it is very wonderful, O holy brahmin, that you should have need of me for anything.
48. I consider myself as situated at a holy sanctuary, and absolved from all my sins, or as merged in the lunar sphere, O best of the learned in the truths of the Vedas.”
49. “I understand your appearance as that of Brahma himself before me, and I confess myself, O sage, to be purified and favored by your arrival.
50. Indeed, I am so gratified at your arrival that I deem myself fortunate in this birth, and that I have not lived in vain but led a truly good life.
51. Since I saw you here and made my respectful obeisance to you, my heart cannot contain itself but overflows with joy like the sea at the sight of the moon.
52. Whatever may be the purpose of your visit, O greatest of sages, know it as already granted, for your commands are always to be obeyed by me.”
53. “You need not hesitate to communicate your request to me, O descendant of Kausika. If you ask, there is nothing I will keep from you.
54. You need not doubt my performance. I solemnly state that I will execute your request to the last item, as I take you to be the light of a superior divinity.”
55. Upon hearing these sweet words from the king, pleasing to the ears and delivered with humility worthy of one knowing himself, the far famed and meritorious chief of the sages felt highly gratified in himself.
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Chapter 1.7 — Vishwamitra Asks for Rama’s Help Valmiki speaking:—
1. After the illustrious Vishwamitra had heard the unusually lengthy speech from the lion among kings, his hairs stood erect with joy. He said,
2. “This speech is worthy of you, O best of kings on earth, and one descended from a royal race, and guided by sage Vasishta himself.
3. Consider well, O king, the deed which I have in mind, and support the cause of virtue.”
4. “I am employed, O chief of men, in religious acts for attainment of my consummation, but the horrible rakshasa demons have become my great obstructions.
5. Whenever I offer sacrifices to the gods at any place, instantly these nocturnal demons appear to destroy my sacrificial rites.
6. On very many occasions when I commence my ceremonies, the rakshasa chiefs fling heaps of flesh and blood on the sacrificial ground.
7. Being thus obstructed in my sacrificial duties, I now come to you with a broken spirit, having labored in vain to complete the rites.”
8. “The vows of the rite prevent me from giving vent to my anger by curses.
9. Such being the sacrificial law, I expect by your favor to gain its great object in peace.
10. Being thus oppressed I have recourse to your protection, and you should protect me. Otherwise it is an insult for petitioners to be disappointed by the best of men as yourself.”
11. “You have a son, the beautiful Rama, powerful as a fierce tiger and strong as the great Indra himself. He is able to destroy the rakshasas.
12. May you now deliver that Rama, your eldest son, to me, having his youthful locks of hair like the black plumage of a crow, but possessing the true valor of a hero.
13. Protected under my sacred authority and by his prowess, he will be able to sever the heads of the malicious rakshasas.
14. I will do him an infinity of good services, whereby in the end he will become adored by the inhabitants of all three worlds.
15. The night-wandering rakshasas cannot abide in the field before Rama, but must fly like stags in the wilderness before a furious lion.
16. No man other than Rama can make bold to fight with the rakshasas, just as no animal other than a furious lion can stand to fight wild elephants.”
17. “Elated with their strength, these vicious beings have become like poisoned shafts in fighting. Being delegates of the demons Khara and Dushana, they are as furious as death itself.
18. They cannot, O tiger among kings, be able to sustain the arrows of Rama, but must settle like flying dust under the ceaseless showers of his arrows.”
19. “Let not paternal affection prevail over you, O king, as there is nothing in this world which the high-minded will refuse to part with.
20. I know it for certain, and so you also should know, that the rakshasas must be destroyed by him. Wise men like ourselves will never undertake an uncertainty.
21. I well know the great soul of the lotus-eyed Rama, and so does the illustrious Vasishta, and all others who are far-seeing.
22. Should the senses of greatness, duty and renown have a seat in your soul, you should deliver my desired object to me, your son.”
23. “It will take ten nights to perform the rites of my sacrifice, during which Rama shall have to stay with me and kill the rakshasas who are obnoxious to my rites and the enemies of the sacrifice.
24. O King Dasharata, let the ministers headed by Vasishta join and give their assent, and deliver your Rama to me.
25. “O descendant of Raghu, you know that auspicious times must not be allowed to slip away, so you must not allow my time to slip. So may I have Rama? Be blessed and do not give way to sorrow.
26. Even the smallest service, if done in good time, appears to be much, and the best service is of no avail if done out of season.”
27. Vishwamitra, the illustrious and holy chief of the sages, paused after saying these words filled with virtuous and useful intention.
28. Hearing these words of the great sage, the magnanimous king held his silence for some time, with a view to prepare a fitting answer; because no man of sense is ever satisfied with talking unreasonably either before others or to himself.
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Chapter 1.8 — Dasharata’s Reply to Vishwamitra
1. Valmiki added:— On hearing Vishwamitra’s words, Dasharata, the tiger among kings, remained speechless for a moment, and then implored him from the lowliness of his spirit.
2. “Rama, my lotus-eyed boy, is only fifteen years of age. I do not see he is a match for the rakshasas.”
3. “Here is a full akshauhini legion of my soldiers, of whom, O my lord, I am the sole commander. Surrounded by them I will offer battle to the rakshasa cannibals.
4. Here are my brave generals who are well disciplined in warfare. I will be their leader in the height of war with my bow in hand.
5. Accompanied with these, I can offer fight to the enemies of the gods, and to the great Indra himself, in the same manner as the lion withstands wild elephants.”
6. “Rama is only a boy with no knowledge of the strength of our forces. His experience has scarcely stretched beyond the inner apartments to the battlefield.
7. He is not well trained in arms, nor is he skilled in warfare. He does not know to fight an enemy arrayed in the order of battle.
8. He only knows how to walk about in the gardens of this city amidst trees and pleasant groves.
9. He only knows how to play with his brother princes in the flowery parks set apart for his play within the precincts of the palace.”
10. “Recently, O brahmin, by a sad reverse of my fortune, he has become as lean and pale as the withering lotus under the dews.
11. He has no taste for his food, nor can he walk from one room to another, but remains ever silent and slow brooding over his inner grief and melancholy.
12. O chief of sages, in my great anxiety about him, I, together with my family and dependants, have been deprived of the gist of our bodies and become like the empty clouds of autumn.
13. How can my boy, so young as he is and in such an unnatural state of mind, be fit to fight at all, much less with those marauders who rove about at night?”
14. “O high-minded sage, it is one’s affection for his son that affords him far greater pleasure than his possession of a kingdom, or his connection with beautiful women, or even his relish for the juice of nectar.
15. It is from paternal affection that good people perform the hardest duties and austerities of religion, and anything which is painful in the three worlds.
16. Men are even prepared under certain circumstances to sacrifice their own lives, riches and wives, but they can never sacrifice their children. This is the nature of all living beings.”
17. “The rakshasas are very cruel in their actions and fight deceitful warfare. The idea that Rama should fight them is very painful to me.
18. I have a desire to live. I cannot dare to live for a moment separated from Rama. Therefore, you should not take him away.”
19. “O descendant of Kausika, I have passed nine thousand rains in my lifetime before these four children were born to me after much austerity.
20. The lotus-eyed Rama is the eldest of these without whom the three others can hardly bear to live.
21. You are going to deliver this Rama against the rakshasas, but when I am deprived of that son, know me certainly for dead.
22. Of my four sons he is the one in whom rests my greatest love. Therefore do not take away Rama, my eldest and most virtuous son, from me.”
23. “If your intention, O sage, is to destroy the force of night wanderers, take me there accompanied by the elephants, horse, chariots and foot soldiers of my army.
24. Describe to me clearly what these rakshasas are, how strong they are, whose sons they be and what are their sizes and figures.
25. Tell me the way in which the rakshasas are to be destroyed by Rama or by my children or by me. Tell me when they are known to be treacherous in warfare.
26. O great sage, tell me all this so that I can calculate the possibility of making a stand in the open field against the fiercely disposed rakshasas, when they are certainly so very powerful.”
27. “The rakshasa named Ravana is heard to be very powerful. He is brother of Kubera himself, and he is the son of the sage Visravas.
28. If it is he, the evil-minded Ravana, who stands in the way of your rites, we are unable to contend with that pest.
29. Power and prosperity in all their flourish come within the reach of the living at times, but they disappear at others.
30. These days we are no match for such foes as Ravana and some others. Such is the decree of destiny.”
31. “Therefore, O you who are acquainted with law, do this favor for my son. Unlucky as I am, it is you who are the arbiter of my fate.
32. The gods, asuras, gandharvas, yakshas, huge beasts, birds and serpents are unable to fight with Ravana. What are we human beings in arms to him?
33. That rakshasa has the prowess of the most powerful. We cannot afford to fight with him, or even with his children.
34. This is a peculiar age in which good people are made powerless. Moreover, I am disabled by old age and lack that spirit, even though I am from the race of the Raghus.”
35. “O brahmin, tell me if it is Lavan the son of Madhu (the notorious asura) who disturbs the sacrificial rites. In that case also, I will not part with my son.
36. If it be the two sons of Sunda and Upasunda who disturb your sacrifice, terrible as they are like the sons of the sun, in that case also I will not give my son to you.”
37. “But after all, O brahmin, should you snatch him from me, then I am also dead and gone with him. I do not see any other chance of a lasting success of your devotion.”
38. Saying these gentle words, the descendant of Raghu was drowned in the sea of suspense with regard to the demand of the sage. Being unable to arrive at a conclusion, the great king was carried away by the current of his thoughts as one by the high waves of the sea.
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Chapter 1.9 — Vishwamitra’s Anger & Vasishta’s Advice
1. Valmiki said:— On hearing this speech of the king with his piteous look and eyes full of tears, Vishwamitra the son of Kausika became highly incensed and replied.
2. “You are about to break your promise after pledging yourself to its performance, and thus you wish to behave like a deer after having been a lion.
3. This is unbecoming of the race of Raghu. It is acting contrary to this great family. Hot rays must not proceed from the cool beamed moon.
4. If you are so weak, O king, let me return as I came. Live happily with your friends, you promise-breaking descendant of Kakustha.”
5. As the high spirited Vishwamitra moved with anger, the earth trembled under him and the gods were filled with fear.
6. Vasishta, the meek and wise, observant of his vows, knowing that anger influenced the great sage and friend of the world, spoke.
7. “O king born of the race of the Ikshvakus, a form of virtue itself, and called Dasharata the fortunate, you are adorned with all the good qualities known in the three worlds.
8. You are famous for your meekness and strict adherence to your vows. You are renowned in all three worlds for your virtues and fame. You can not break your promise.
9. Preserve your virtue and think not to break your promise. Comply with the request of the sage who is honored in all the three worlds.
10. Having said you will do it, if you retract your promise, you lose the object of your yet unfulfilled desires. Therefore let Rama depart from you.”
11. “Descended from the race of Ikshvaku, and being Dasharata yourself, if you fail to perform your promise, who else on earth will ever keep his word?
12. It is the standard of conduct of great men like you, that makes even low people afraid to transgress the bounds of their duties. How then do you wish to violate it yourself?”
13. “Guarded by this lion-like man (Vishwamitra), like ambrosia by fire, no rakshasa will have power to prevail over Rama, whether he be equipped and armed or not.
14. Behold Vishwamitra is the personification of virtue, the mightiest of the mighty, and superior to all in the world in his intelligence and devotion to asceticism.
15. He is skilled in all warlike arms that are known in the three worlds. No other man knows them so well nor shall ever be able to master them like him.
16. Among the gods, sages, asuras, rakshasas, naagas, yakshas and gandharvas, there is none equal to him.”
17. “In days gone past when this son of Kaushika used to rule over his realm, he was furnished with all the arms by Krisaswa, and which no enemy can baffle.
18. These arms were the progeny of Krisaswa, and were equally radiant and powerful as the progeny of the Prajapati, and followed him (in his train).
19. Now Daksha had two beautiful daughters, Jaya and Supraja (alias Vijaya), who had a hundred offspring (as personifications of the implements), that are invincible in war.
20. Of these, the favored Jaya gave birth to fifty sons who are implacable agents of the destruction of asura forces.
21. In like manner, Supraja gave birth to fifty sons of very superior qualities, very powerful and terrible in their appearance, and indomitably aggressive.
22. Thus Vishwamitra is strengthened and grown powerful. He is acknowledged in the three worlds as a sage, you therefore must not think otherwise than to deliver Rama to him.”
23. “This mighty and virtuous man and prince of sages being near, anyone in his presence, even one at the point of death, is sure to attain his immortality. Therefore, be not disheartened like an unconscious man.”
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Chapter 1.10 — The Melancholy of Rama
1. Valmiki related:— After Vasishta finished speaking, King Dasharata was glad to send for Rama and his brother Lakshman, saying,
2. “Chamberlain, go and quickly bring here the truly mighty and long armed Rama with Lakshman, for the praiseworthy purpose of removing the impediments of religious acts.”
3. Thus sent by the king, the chamberlain went to the inner apartment. After some moments, he returned and informed the king,
4. “O sire! Rama, whose arms have crushed all his foes, remains rapt in thoughts in his room like a bee closed in a lotus at night.
5. He said that he is coming in a moment, but he is so lost in his lonely meditation that he likes nobody to be near him.”
6. Thus advised by the chamberlain, the king called one of Rama’s attendants, and having given him every assurance, asked him to relate the particulars.
7. On being asked by the king how Rama had come to that state, the attendant replied in a sorrowful mood,
8. “Sir, we have also become as lean as sticks in our bodies, in sorrow for the fading away of your son Rama in his body.
9. The lotus-eyed Rama appears dejected ever since he has come back from his pilgrimage in company with the brahmins.
10. When asked to perform his daily rites, he sometimes discharges them with a sad face, and at other times, he wholly dispenses with them.
11. He is adverse, O lord, to bathing, to worshipping the gods, to the distribution of alms, and to his meals also. Even when we troubled him to eat, he does not take his food with a good relish.”
12. “He no longer allows the playful harem girls to rock him in swinging cradles by, nor does he play under the showering fountains like in rainwater.
13. No ornaments beset with the bud-shaped rubies, no bracelets or necklace, O king, can please him now. In the same manner, those who expect their fall from heaven would be pleased by nothing in it.”
14. “He is sorrowful even while sitting in the tree gardens of vines, entertained by flowery breezes, and amidst the looks of maidens playing around him.
15. O king, he looks at whatever is good and sweet, elegant and pleasing to the soul with sorrowful eyes, like one whose eyes are already satisfied with viewing them heaped up in piles.
16. He would speak ill of the girls who would dance merrily before him, and exclaim out, ‘Why should these ladies of the harem flutter about in this way causing grief in me?’
17. His doings are like those of a madman who takes no delight at his food or rest, his vehicles or seats, his baths and other pleasures, however excellent they may be.”
18. “As regards prosperity or adversity, his rooms or any other desirable thing, he says they are all unreal, and then he holds his silence.
19. He cannot be excited by pleasantry or tempted to taste pleasures. He attends to no business, but remains in silence.
20. No woman with her loosened locks and tresses and the tempting glances of her eyes can please him, any more than a playful fawn can please the trees in the forest.
21. Like a man sold to savages, he takes delight in lonely places, in remotest areas, in the banks of rivers and wild deserts.”
22. “O king, his aversion to clothing, conveyance, food and presents indicates that he is following the line of life led by wandering ascetics.
23. He lives alone in a lonely place and neither laughs nor sings nor cries aloud from a sense of his indifference to them.
24. Seated in the lotus posture with folded legs, he stays with a distracted mind, reclining his cheek on his left palm.
25. He assumes no pride to himself and does not wish for the dignity of sovereignty. He is neither elated with joy nor depressed by grief or pain.
26. We do not know where he goes, what he does, what he desires, what he meditates upon, or from where or when he comes and what he follows.”
27. “He is getting lean every day, growing pale day by day. Like a tree at the end of autumn, he is becoming discolored day after day.
28. O king, his brothers Satrughna and Lakshman follow all his habits and resemble his very shadow.
29. Repeatedly asked about his unsound mind by his servants, brother-princes and mothers, Rama says he has none, and then resumes his silence and detachment.”
30. “He lectures his companions and friends saying, ‘Do not set your mind to sensual enjoyments which are only pleasing for the time being.’
31. He has no affection for the richly adorned women of the harem, but rather looks upon them as the cause of destruction presented before him.
32. He often sings in plaintive notes how his life is being spent in vain cares, estranged from those of the easily attainable state of heavenly bliss.
33. Should some courtier speak of his being an emperor one day, he smiles at him as upon a raving madman, and then remains silent as one distracted in his mind.
34. He does not pay heed to what is said to him, nor does he look at anything presented before him. He hates to look upon even the most charming of things.
35. ‘As it is imaginary and unreal to suppose the existence of an ethereal lake or a lotus growing in it, so it is false to believe the reality of the mind and its conceptions.’ Saying so Rama marvels at nothing.”
36. “Even when sitting among beautiful maids, the darts of Kama Deva, the god of love, fail to pierce his impenetrable heart, like showers of rain cannot pierce a rock.
37. Rama makes his motto, ‘No sensible man should ever wish for riches which are but the seats of dangers,’ and he gives all that he has to beggars.
38. He sings some verses to this effect, that ‘It is an error to call one thing prosperity and the other adversity when they are both only imaginations of the mind.’
39. He repeats some words to the effect that, ‘Though it is the general cry, ‘O I am gone, I am helpless grown,’ yet it is a wonder, that nobody should take himself to utter detachment.’”
40. “That Rama, the destroyer of enemies, the great oak grown in the garden of Raghu, should get into such a state of mind is what causes grief in us.
41. We do not know, O great armed and lotus-eyed king, what to do with him in this state of his mind. We hope only in you.”
42. “He laughs to scorn the counsels of the princes and brahmins before him, and spurns them as if they were fools.
43. He remains inactive with the conviction that the world which appears to our view is a vanity, and the idea of self is also a vanity.
44. He has no respect for foes or friends, for himself or his kingdom, mother or riches, nor does he pay any regard to prosperity or adversity.
45. He is altogether quiet, without any desire or effort and devoid of a mainstay. He is neither captivated by anything nor freed from worldly thoughts. These are the reasons which afflict us most.”
46. “He says, ‘What have we to do with riches, with our mothers, with this kingdom and all our activities?’ Under these impressions, he is about to give up his life.
47. As the swallow grows restless when hurricanes obstruct the rains, so has Rama become impatient under the restraint of his father and mother, his friends and kingdom, his enjoyments and even his own life.”
48. “In compassion on your son, incline to root out this annoyance which like a harmful vine has been spreading its shoots.
49. For under such a disposition of his mind, and in spite of his possession of all affluence, he looks upon the enjoyments of the world as his poison.
50. Where is that powerful person on this earth who can restore him to proper conduct?
51. Who is there who will remove the errors that have caused grief in Rama’s mind, like the sun removes the darkness of the world?”
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Chapter 1.11 — Consolation of Rama
1. Vishwamitra said, “If such is the case, you who are intelligent may go at once and persuade that progeny of Raghu to come here, as one deer does others.
2. This stupor of Rama is not caused by any accident or affection. I believe it is the development of that superior intellect which rises from the right reasoning of dispassionate men.
3. Let Rama come here for a while and in a moment we shall dispel his delusion, as wind drives away clouds from mountain tops.”
4. “After his mental dullness is removed by my reasoning, he will be able to rest in that happy state of mind to which we have arrived.
5. He shall not only attain pure truth and a clear understanding of uninterrupted tranquility, but he will also secure a plumpness and beauty of figure and complexion, as one derives from a potion of ambrosia.
6. He will then fully discharge the proper course of his duties with all his heart and without exception, which will redound to his honor.
7. He will become strong with a knowledge of both worlds, exempt from the states of pleasure and pain. Then he will look upon gold and stones with an indifferent eye.”
8. After the chief of the sages had spoken in this manner, the king resumed the firmness of his mind and sent messengers after messengers to bring Rama to him.
9. By this time Rama was preparing to rise from his seat in the palace to come over to his father, in the manner that the sun rises from the mountain in the east.
10. Surrounded by a few of his servants, he came with his two brothers to the hallowed hall of his father, resembling the heaven of the king of gods.
11. From a distance he saw his kingly sire seated amidst the assemblage of princes, like Indra surrounded by the gods.
12. He was accompanied on either side by the sages Vasishta and Vishwamitra, and respectfully attended by his staff of ministers, all well versed in the interpretation of all scriptures.
13. He was fanned by charming maidens waving fine flappers in their hands, equaling in beauty the goddesses presiding over the quarters of heaven.
14. Vasishta, Vishwamitra and the other sages, with Dasharata and his chiefs, saw Rama coming at a distance as beautiful as Skanda (Subramanyan) himself.
15. His qualities of mildness and gravity made him resemble the Himalayas, and he was esteemed by all for the depth and clearness of his understanding.
16. He was handsome and well proportioned, auspicious in his look, but humble and magnanimous in his mind. With loveliness and mildness of his person, he was possessed of all manly prowess.
17. He was just developed to youth, yet he was as majestic as an elderly man. He was neither sad nor merry, but seemed to be fully satisfied with himself, as if he had obtained all the objects of his desires.
18. He was a good judge of the world, and possessed of all holy virtues. The purity of his mind attracted all the virtues that met in him.
19. The receptacle of his mind was filled by magnanimity and honorable virtues, and the candor of his conduct showed him in the light of perfection.
20. Endowed with these various virtues and decorated by his necklace and fine apparel, Rama the support of Raghu’s race, approached with a smiling face.
21. He bowed his head to his father with the sparkling jewels trembling in his locks, giving his head the graceful appearance of Mount Sumeru shaken by an earthquake.
22. The lotus-eyed Rama came up to salute the feet of his father, when the lord of the sages, Vishwamitra, was speaking with him.
23. First of all Rama saluted his father, then the two honorable sages. Next he saluted the brahmins, then his relations, and lastly his elders and well wishing friends.
24. Then he received and returned the salutations of the chiefs and princes as they bowed to him with graceful motions of their heads and respectful addresses.
25. Rama, of god-like beauty and equanimity of mind, approached the sacred presence of his father with the blessings of the two sages.
26. During the act of his saluting the feet of his father, the lord of the earth repeatedly kissed his head and face, and embraced him with fondness.
27. At the same time, Rama, the destroyer of his enemies, embraced his brothers Lakshman and Satrughna with an affection as intense as a swan embracing lotus flowers.
28. “My son, be seated upon my lap,” said the king to Rama who, however, took his seat on a fine piece of cloth spread on the floor by his servants.
29. The king then said, “O my son and receptacle of blessings, you have attained the age of discretion, so do not put yourself to that state of selfmortification as the dull-headed do from their crazy understandings.
30. Know that one attains merit by following the course of his elders, guides and brahmins, and not by his persistence in error.
31. So long as we do not allow the seeds of error to have access to us, so long will the train of our misfortunes lie at a distance.”
32. Vasishta said, “O strong armed prince, you are truly heroic to have conquered your worldly appetites, which are as difficult to eradicate as they are fierce in their action.
33. Why do you allow yourself, like the unlearned, to be drowned in this rolling sea of errors causing such dull inactivity in you?”
34. Vishwamitra said, “Why are your eyes so unsteady with doubts like trembling clusters of blue lotuses? You ought to do away with this unsteadiness and tell us what is the sadness in your mind.
35. What are these thoughts? What are their names and natures, their number and causes, that infest your mind like mice undermine a fabric?
36. I am disposed to think that you are not the person to be troubled with those evils and distempers to which the base and vile alone are subject.
37. Tell me the craving of your heart, O sinless Rama! They will be requited in a manner that will prevent them from reoccurring to you.”
38. Rama, the standard of Raghu’s race, having listened to the reasonable and graceful speech of the good-intentioned sage, shook off his sorrow, like a peacock at the roaring of a cloud, in the hope of gaining his object.
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Chapter 1.12 — Rama’s Reply
1. Valmiki related:— Being thus asked by the chief of the sages with soothing words, Rama answered in a soft and graceful speech replete with good sense.
2. “O venerable sage, untutored though I am, I will tell you in truth all the particulars as you asked. For who would disobey the bidding of the wise?” Rama speaking:—
3. Since I was born in this my father’s palace, I have remained here, grown up, and received my education.
4. Then, O leader of sages, desiring to learn good customs, I set out to travel to holy places all over this sea-surrounded earth.
5. By this time, a series of reflections arose in my mind that shook my confidence in worldly objects.
6. I employed my mind to discriminate the nature of things, which gradually led me to discard all thoughts of sensual enjoyments.
7. What are worldly pleasures good for, and why do men multiply on earth? Men are born to die, and they die to be born again.
8. There is no stability in the tendencies of beings whether movable or immovable. They all tend to vice, decay and danger, and all our possessions become the grounds of our poverty.
9. All objects of sense are detached from each other like iron rods from one another. It is only imagination which attaches them to our minds.
10. It is the mind that pictures the existence of the world as a reality, but if we know the deceptiveness of the mind, we are safe from such deception.
11. If the world is an unreality, it is a pity that ignorant men should be allured by it, like deer tempted by a distant mirage of water.
12. We are sold by none, yet we are enslaved to the world. Knowing this well, we are spell-bound with riches, as if by the magic wand of Sambara.
13. What are the enjoyments in this essence but misery? Yet we are foolishly caught in its thoughts, like bees caught in honey.
14. Ah! After long, I perceive that we have insensibly fallen into errors, like senseless stags falling into caverns in the wilderness.
15. Of what use is royalty and these enjoyments to me? What am I and where do all these things come from? They are only vanities. Let them continue as such without any good or loss to anybody.
16. Reasoning in this manner, O holy brahmin, I came to be disgusted with the world, like a traveler in a desert.
17. Now tell me, O venerable sir, is this world is advancing to its dissolution, or continued reproduction, or is it in endless progression?
18. If there is any progress here, is it the appearance and disappearance by turns of old age and decease, and of prosperity and adversity?
19. See how the variety of our trifling enjoyments hastens our decay. They are like hurricanes shattering trees in the mountains.
20. Men continue in vain to breathe their vital breath like hollow bamboo wind-pipes having no sense.
21. The thought that consumes me like wildfire in the hollow of a withered tree is, “How is misery to be alleviated?”
22. The weight of worldly miseries sits heavy on my heart like a rock and obstructs the breathing of my lungs. I have a mind to weep, but I am prevented from shedding tears for fear of my people.
23. My tearless weeping and speechless mouth give no indication to anybody of my inner sorrow. My consciousness is silent witness to my solitude.
24. I wait to think on the positive and negative states, as a ruined man bewails to reflect on his former state of affluence.
25. I take prosperity to be a seducing cheat, for it deludes the mind, impairs good qualities, and spreads the net of our miseries.
26. To me, like one fallen into great difficulties, no riches, offspring, consorts or home affords any delight, but they seem to be misery.
27. Like a wild elephant in chains, I find no rest in my mind reflecting on the various evils of the world, and thinking on the causes of our frailties.
28. There are wicked passions prying at all times, under the dark mist of the night of our ignorance. There are hundreds of objects which, like so many cunning rogues, are about all men in broad daylight, lurking on all sides to rob us of our reason. What mighty champions can we delegate to fight with these other than our own knowledge of truth?
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Chapter 1.13 — Denunciation of Wealth
1. Rama said:— O sage, here wealth is reckoned a blessing, yet she is the cause of our troubles and errors.
2. She bears away like a river in the rainy season. All high-spirited simpletons are overpowered by her current.
3. Her daughters are anxieties fostered by many a bad deed, like the waves of a stream raised by winds.
4. She can never stand steady on her legs anywhere, but like a wretched woman who has burnt her feet, she limps from one place to another.
5. Wealth like a lamp both burns and blackens its owner, until it is extinguished by its own flame.
6. She is unapproachable like princes and fools, and likewise as favorable as they to her adherents, without scanning their merits or faults.
7. She begets only evils in them by their various acts, as good milk when given to serpents serves to increase the strength of their poison.
8. Men are gentle and kind hearted to friends and strangers, until their hearts are hardened by their riches, which like blasts of wind serve to stiffen frost.
9. As brilliant gems are soiled by dust, so are the learned, the brave, the grateful, the mild and the gentle corrupted by riches.
10. Riches do not lead to happiness but redound to sorrow and destruction, as the plant aconite when nourished hides fatal poison in itself.
11. A rich man without blemish, a brave man devoid of vanity, and a master lacking partiality are the three rarities on earth.
12. The rich are as inaccessible as the dark cave of a huge serpent, and as unapproachable as the deep wilderness of Vindhya Mountain inhabited by fierce elephants.
13. Riches, like the shadow of night, overcast the good qualities of men, and like moonlight, bring to bloom the buds of their misery. Like a hurricane, they blow away the brightness of a fair prospect. Riches resemble a sea with huge surges.
14. They bring a cloud of fear and error upon us, increase the poison of despondence and regret, and are like dreadful snakes in the field of our choice.
15. Fortune is a frost to those who are bound to asceticism, and is like the night to the owls of libertinism. She is an eclipse to the moonlight of reason, and like moonbeams to the bloom of the lilies of folly.
16. She is as transitory as the rainbow, and as pleasant to see by the play of her colors. She is as fickle as lightening which vanishes as quickly as it appears. Hence none but the ignorant have reliance on her.
17. She is as unsteady as a well born maiden following a base born man to the woods. She is like a mirage that tempts runaways to fall to it as the doe.
18. Unsteady as a wave, she is never steady in any place, like the flickering flame of a lamp. So her leaning is known to nobody.
19. She, like the lioness, is ever quick to fight, and like the leader of elephants, she is favorable to her partisans. She is as sharp as the blade of a sword, and she is the patroness of sharp-witted sharpsters.
20. I see no joy in uncivil prosperity, which is full of treachery and replete with every kind of danger and trouble.
21. It is pity that prosperity is like a shameless wench who will again lay hold of a man who has abandoned her for her rival poverty.
22. What is she, with all her loveliness and attraction of human hearts, but a momentary thing obtained by all manner of evil means, and resembling at best a flower shrub growing out of a cave inhabited by a snake, and beset by reptiles all about its stem?
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Chapter 1.14 — Denunciation of Human Life Rama speaking:—
1. Human life is as frail as a drop of water trembling on the tip of a leaflet. Life breaking loose from its bodily imprisonment out of its proper season is as irrepressible as a raving madman.
2. The lives of those whose minds are infected by the poison of worldly affairs, and who are incapable of judging for themselves, are only causes for their torment.
3. Those knowing the knowable, and resting in the all-pervading spirit, and acquiescing alike to their wants and gains, enjoy lives of perfect tranquility.
4. We who have a certain belief that we are only limited beings can have no enjoyment in our transient lives, which are only flashes of lightning in the cloudy sky of the world.
5. It is as impossible to confine the winds or tear the sky to pieces or wreathe waves into a garland as it is to place any reliance upon our lives.
6. Fast as the fleeting clouds in autumn, and short as the light of lamp without oil, our lives appear to pass away as impermanent as rolling waves in the sea.
7. Rather attempt to lay hold of the moon’s shadow on the waves, or the fleeting lightening in the sky, or the ideal lotus blossoms in the ether, than ever place any reliance upon this unsteady life.
8. Men of restless minds, desiring to prolong their useless and toilsome lives, resemble the barren she-mule conceived by a horse.
9. This world (samsara) is as a whirlpool in the ocean of creation, and every individual body is as impermanent as foam, froth or a bubble, which can give me no relish in this life.
10. True living is gain which is worth gaining, which has no cause of sorrow or remorse, and which is a state of transcendental tranquility.
11. There is a vegetable life in plants, and an animal life in beasts and birds. Man leads a thinking life, but true life is above thoughts.
12. All those living beings who being born here once do not return are said to have lived well in this earth. The rest are no better than old asses.
13. Knowledge is a burden to the unthinking, and wisdom is burdensome to the passionate. Intellect is a heavy load to the restless, and the body is a ponderous burden to one ignorant of his soul.
14. A good person possessed of life, mind, intellect and self-consciousness and its occupations, is of no benefit to the unwise, but seem to weigh down on the unwise as if he were a porter.
15. The discontented mind is the great arena of all evils, and the nesting place of diseases which alight upon it like birds of the air. Such a life is the abode of toil and misery.
16. As a house is slowly dilapidated by the mice continually burrowing under it, so is the body of the living gradually corroded by the teeth of time boring within it.
17. Deadly diseases breed within the body, feed upon our vital breath, like poisonous snakes born in caves of the woods consume the meadow air.
18. As the withered tree is perforated by small worms residing in them, so our bodies are continually wasted by many inborn diseases and harmful secretions.
19. Death is constantly staring and growling at our face, as a cat looks and purrs at a mouse in order to devour it.
20. Old age wastes us as soon as a glutton digests his food, and it reduces one to weakness as an old harlot left with no charm other than her make-up and perfumes.
21. Youth forsakes us as soon as a good man who, after a few days learns of his wicked friend’s faults, abandons him in disgust.
22. Death, the lover of destruction and friend of old age and ruin, likes the sensual man, as a lecher likes a beauty.
23. Thus there is nothing so worthless in the world as this life, which is devoid of every good quality and ever subject to death, unless it is attended by the permanent joy of liberation.
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Chapter 1.15 — Denunciation of Ego
1. Rama continued:— Egoism springs from false conceit fostered by vanity. I am much afraid of this enemy, baneful egotism.
2. All men in this diversified world, even the very poorest of them, fall into the dungeon of evils and misdeeds under the influence of ego.
3. All accidents, anxieties, troubles and wicked exertions proceed from ego and self-confidence. Hence I deem ego to be like a disease.
4. Being subject to that everlasting arch-enemy, the cynic ego, I have refrained from food and drink. What other enjoyment is there for me to partake?
5. This world resembles a long continuous night in which our ego, like a hunter, spreads the snare of affections.
6. All our great and intolerable miseries, growing as rank as thorny acacia plants, are only the results of our ego.
7. It overcasts the equanimity of mind like an eclipse shadows the moon. It destroys our virtues like frost destroys lotus flowers. It dispels the peace of men as autumn drives away the clouds. Therefore, I must get rid of this egoistic feeling.
8. I am not Rama the prince. I have no desire, nor should I wish for wealth, but I wish to have the peace of my mind and remain like the self-satisfied old sage Jina.
9. All that I have eaten, done or offered in sacrifice under the influence of ego have gone for nothing. The absence of ego is the real good.
10. So long, O brahmin, as there is ego, he is subject to sorrow at his difficulties. If he is devoid of it, he becomes happy. Hence it is better to be without it.
11. I am free from anxiety, O sage, ever since I have come to know the impermanence of all enjoyments, gave up my sense of egoism, and attained tranquility of my mind.
12. As long, O brahmin, as the cloud of egoism covers our minds, our desires expand themselves like kurchi plant buds in rain.
13. But when the cloud of egoism is dispersed, the lightning of greed vanishes away, just like when a lamp is extinguished, its light immediately disappears.
14. The mind vaunts with ego, like a furious elephant in the Vindhyan Hills when it hears thunder in the clouds.
15. Ego is like a lion, living in the vast forest of all human bodies, who ranges about at large throughout the whole extent of this earth.
16. The self-conceited are decorated with a string of pearls about their necks, of which greed forms the thread and repeated births are the pearls.
17. Our hostile enemy ego, like a magician, has spread about us the enchantments of our wives, friends and children, whose spells it is hard to break.
18. As soon as the impression of the word ego is effaced from the mind, all our anxieties and troubles are wiped out of it.
19. The cloud of ego being dispelled from the sky of our minds, the mist of error which it spreads to destroy our peace will also disperse.
20. I have given up my ego, yet my mind remains stupefied with sorrow from my ignorance. Tell me, O brahmin, what do you think is right for me under these circumstances?
21. I have given up this egoism with much trouble, and I would like to not depend upon this source of all evil and worry any more. It retains its seat in the breast only to annoy me, without benefiting me by any good quality of its own. Direct me now, you men of great understandings!
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Chapter 1.16 — The Inability to Control the Mind Rama speaking:—
1. Our minds are infested with evil passions and faults, and fluctuate in their observance of duty and service to superiors, like the plumes of a peacock fluttering in a breeze.
2. Minds eagerly and restlessly rove about at random from one place to another, like a poor village dog running far and wide in search of food.
3. It seldom finds anything anywhere, and happening even to get a good store somewhere, it is as little content with it as a wicker vessel filled with water.
4. The vacant mind, O sage, is ever entrapped in its evil desires. It is never at rest with itself, but roams at large like a stray deer separated from its herd.
5. The human mind, as light as the minutest particle, is like an unsteady wave. Therefore it can have no rest in spite of its nature.
6. Disturbed by its thoughts, the mind is tossed in all directions, like the waters of the milk-white ocean when churned by Mandara Mountain.
7. I can not curb my mind, resembling the vast ocean in its course, subject to huge surges of passions, with whirlpools of error, and beset by the whales of delusion.
8. O brahmin, our minds run afar after sensual enjoyments, like deer running towards tender blades of grass, unmindful of falling into hidden traps.
9. The mind can never get rid of its wavering state owing to its nature of habitual fickleness, resembling the restlessness of the sea.
10. The mind with its natural fickleness and restless thoughts finds no repose at any place, like a lion in his cage.
11. The mind seated in the car of delusion absorbs the sweet, peaceful and undisturbed rest of the body, like a swan sucking up pure milk from amidst the water.
12. O chief of sages, I grieve much to find the faculties of the mind lying asleep upon a bed of imaginary delights, from which they are hard to awaken.
13. O brahmin, like a bird in a net, I am caught by the knots of my ego, and held fast by the thread of my greed.
14. Like dried hay on fire, the flame of my anxieties burns in my mind under the spreading fumes of my impatience.
15. Like a clod of cold meat, I am devoured by the cruelty and greed of my heart, like a carcass swallowed by a hungry dog and its greedy mate.
16. I am carried away, O sage, by the current of my heart, like a tree on the bank carried away by waters and waves beating upon it.
17. I am led afar by my mind, like straw carried off by a hurricane, either to flutter in the air or fall upon the ground.
18. My earthly mindedness has put a stop to my desire of crossing over the ocean of the world, as an embankment stops the course of a stream.
19. The baseness of my heart lifts me up and lets me down like a log of wood tied to a rope and dragged in and out of a well.
20. As a child is seized when his imagination thinks he sees a demon, so I find myself in the grasp of my wicked mind, representing falsities as true.
21. It is hard to repress the mind, which is hotter than fire, more inaccessible than a hill, and stronger than a thunderbolt.
22. The mind is attracted to its objects like a bird to its prey. It has not even a moment’s respite, like a boy and his play.
23. My mind resembles the sea both in its dullness and its restlessness, and in its extent and fullness with whirlpools and dragons that keep me from advancing.
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24. It is more difficult to subdue the mind than to drink the ocean or upset Sumeru Mountain. It is harder than the hardest thing.
25. The mind is the cause of all exertions, and the source of all that senses the three worlds. Its weakness weakens all worldliness, and requires to be cured with care.
26. Our pains and pleasures arise by the hundreds from the mind, like woods growing in groups upon a hill, but no sooner is the scythe of reason applied to them, than they fall off one by one.
27. I am ready to subdue my mind, my greatest enemy in this world, for the purpose of mastering all the virtues, which the learned say depend upon it. My lack of desires has made me adverse to wealth and the gross pleasures it yields, which are like the tints of clouds tainting the moon.
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Chapter 1.17 — Rama on Greed Rama speaking:—
1. I see our vices like a flock of owls flying in the region of our minds, under the darkness of our affections, and in the longsome night of our greed.
2. I am parched by my anxieties like wet clay under the sun, infusing an inner heat by extracting its soft moisture.
3. My mind is like a vast and lonesome wilderness, covered under the mist of errors, and infested by the terrible fiend of desire that is continually floundering about it.
4. My wailings and tears serve only to expand and mature my anxiety, as the dews of night open and ripen the blossoms of beans and give them a bright golden color.
5. Greed by raising expectations in men, serves only to whirl them about, like a vortex of the sea swallows marine animals.
6. The stream of worldly greed flows like a rapid current within the rock of my body, with precipitate force and loud resounding waves.
7. Our minds are driven by foul greed from one place to another, as dusty dry hay is carried away by winds, and as moisture loving chataka cuckoos are impelled by thirst to fly about.
8. It is greed that destroys all the good qualities and grace that we have learned in good faith, just like a mischievous mouse gnaws the strings of a musical instrument.
9. We turn on the wheel of our cares, like withered leaves upon water, like dry grass blown by wind, and like autumn clouds in the sky.
10. Being over powered by greed, we are unable to reach the goal of perfection, like a bird entangled in a snare is kept from flight.
11. I am so greatly burnt by the flame of greed that I doubt whether this inflammation may be relieved even by administration of nectar.
12. Like a heated mare, greed takes me far and farther still from my place, and brings me back to it again and again. Thus it hurries me up and down and to and fro in all directions forever.
13. The rope of greed pulls us up and cast us down again like a bucket into a well.
14. Man’s greed leads him about like a bullock of burden. His avarice bends his heart as fast as the rope does the beast, and it is hard for him to break.
15. As the hunter spreads his net to catch birds, so does our affection for friends, wives and children stretch snares to entrap us every day.
16. Greed like a dark night terrifies even the wise, blindfolds the keen-sighted, and depresses the spirit of the happiest of men.
17. Our appetite is as heinous as a serpent, soft to feel, but full of deadly poison, and bites us as soon as it is felt.
18. It is also like a black sorceress who deludes men by her magic, then pierces him in his heart to expose him to danger afterwards.
19. This body of ours, shattered by our greed, is like a worn out lute, fastened by arteries resembling strings, but emitting no pleasing sound.
20. Our greed is like the long fibered, dark and juicy poisonous vine called kaduka that grows in mountain caves and maddens men by its flavor.
21. Greed is as vain, empty, fruitless, aspiring, unpleasant and perilous as a dry twig of a tree that bears no fruit or flower, but is hurtful with its prickly point.
22. Venality is like a mean old woman, who from the incontinence of her heart, courts the company of every man without gaining the object of her desire.
23. Greed is an old actress who plays her various parts in the vast theatre of world in order to please the different tastes of her audience.
24. Parsimony is like a poisonous plant growing in the wide wilderness of the world, bearing old age and infirmity as its flowers, and producing our troubles as its fruits.
25. Our churlishness resembles an aged actress who attempts a manly feat she has not the strength to perform, yet keeps up the dance without pleasing anybody.
26. Our fleeting thoughts are as fickle as peacocks soaring over inaccessible heights under the clouds (of ignorance), but ceasing to fly in the daylight (of reason).
27. Greed is like a river during the rains, rising for a time with its rolling waves, and afterwards lying low in its empty bed.
28. Greed is as inconstant as a female bird that changes her mates at times, and quits the tree that no longer bears fruit.
29. The greedy are as unsteady as a springing monkey that never rests at any place but moves to places impassable by others, and craves for fruit even when satisfied.
30. The acts of greed are as inconstant as those of chance, both of which are ever on the alert, but never attended with their sequence.
31. Our venality is like a black bee sitting on the lotus of our hearts where it buzzes above, below and all about.
32. Of all worldly evils, greed is the source of the longest sorrow. She exposes even the most secluded man to peril.
33. Greed, like a group of clouds, is filled with a thick mist of error obstructing the light of heaven and causing a dull insensitivity.
34. Penury, which seems to gird the breasts of worldly people with chains of gems and jewels, binds them like beasts with halters about their necks.
35. Covetousness stretches itself long and wide and presents to us a variety of colors like a rainbow. It is equally unsubstantial and without any property as the iris, resting in vapor and vacuum and being only a shadow itself.
36. It burns away our good qualities as fire does dry hay. It numbs our good sense as frost freezes the lotus. It grows our evils as autumn does the grass. It increases our ignorance as winter prolongs the night.
37. Greediness is as an actress on the stage of the world. She is like a bird flying out of the nest of our houses, like a deer running about in the desert of our hearts, and like a lute making us sing and dance at its tune.
38. Our desires like great waves toss us about in the ocean of our earthly cares. They bind us fast to delusion like chains bind an elephant. Like the banyan tree, they produce the roots of our regeneration, and like moonbeams they put our budding sorrows to bloom.
39. Greed is a jewel-encrusted box filled with misery, decrepitude, death, disorder and disasters like a mad drunken dance.
40. Our wishes are sometimes as pure as light and at other times as foul as darkness; now they are as clear as the milky way, and again as obscure as thickest mists.
41. All our bodily troubles are avoided by abstaining from greed, just as we are freed from fear of night demons at the dispersion of darkness.
42. As long as men remain in dumbness and mental delirium, they are subject to the poisonous colic of greed.
43. Men may get rid of their misery by freeing themselves from anxieties. The abandonment of cares is said to be the best remedy for greed.
44. As fish in a pond fondly grasp bait in expectation of a morsel, so the avaricious lay hold on anything, be it wood or stone or even a bit of straw.
45. Greed like an acute pain excites even the gravest of men to motion, just like the sunshine raises lotus blossoms above water.
46. It is comparable to bamboo in its length, hollowness, hard knots, and thorny prickles, and yet it is entertained with hopes that it might yield manna and pearls.
47. It is a wonder that high-minded men have been able to cut off this almost un-severable knot of greed by the glittering sword of reason,
48. because neither the edge of a sword, nor the fire of lightening, nor the sparks of a red-hot iron are sharp enough to sever the keen greed seated in our hearts.
49. It is like the flame of a lamp which is bright but blackening and acutely burning at its end. Fed by the oily wicks, it is vivid but never handled by anybody.
50. Penury has the power of demeaning, in a moment, the best of men to the baseness of straw in spite of their wisdom, heroism and gravity in other respects.
51. Greed is like the great valley of the Vindhya Hills, beset with deserts and impenetrable forests, terrible and full of traps laid by the hunters, filled with dust and mist.
52. One single greed has everything in the world for its object, and though seated in the breast, it is imperceptible to all. It is like the undulating Milky Ocean in this fluctuating world, sweeping all things yet regaling mankind with its odorous waves.
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Chapter 1.18 — Denunciation of the Body Rama speaking:—
1. This body of ours that struts about on earth is only a mass of humid entrails and tendons, tending to decay and disease, and to our torment alone.
2. It is neither quiescent nor wholly sentient, neither ignorant nor quite intelligent. Its inherent soul is a wonder, and reason makes it graceful or otherwise.
3. The skeptic is doubtful of its inertness and exercise of intellect, and unreasonable and ignorant people are ever subject to error and illusion.
4. The body is as easily gratified with a little as it is exhausted in an instant. Hence there is nothing so pitiable, abject and worthless as our bodies.
5. The face is as frail as a fading flower. Now it shoots forth its teeth like filaments, and now it dresses itself with blooming and blushing smiles as blossoms.
6. The body is like a tree. Its arms resemble the branches, the shoulder-blades like stems, the teeth are rows of birds, the eye-holes like its hollows, and the head is like a big fruit.
7. The ears are like two woodpeckers. The fingers of both hands and feet are like so many leaves of the branches. The diseases are like parasitic plants, and the acts of the body are like axes felling this tree, which is the seat of the two birds: the soul and intelligence.
8. This shady tree of the body is only the temporary resort of a passing soul, whether it be related or unrelated to anybody, or whether reliable or not.
9. What man is there, O venerable fathers, who would stoop to reflect that each body is repeatedly assumed only to serve as a boat to pass over the sea of the world?
10. Who can rely on his body with any confidence, a body like a forest full of holes abounding in hairs that resemble trees?
11. The body composed of flesh, nerves and bones resembles a drum without any musical sound, yet I sit watching it like a cat.
12. Our bodies are like trees growing in the forest of the world, bearing the flowers of anxiety and perforated by the worms of sorrow and misery, ridden by the apish mind.
13. The body with its smiling face appears like a good plant bearing both good and bad fruit, but it has become home for the snake of greed and the crows of anger.
14. Our arms are like the branches of trees, and our open palms like beautiful clusters of flowers. The other limbs are like twigs and leaves continually shaken by the breath of life.
15. The two legs are the erect stems and the organs are the seats of the birds of sense. Its youthful bloom is a shade for the passing traveler of love.
16. The hanging hairs of the head resemble long grass growing on the tree, and egoism, like a vulture, cracks the ear with its hideous shrieks.
17. Our various desires are like the hanging roots and fibers of a fig tree that seem to support the trunk of its body, but is worn out by labor to become unpleasant.
18. The body is the big home of its owner’s ego, and therefore it is of no interest to me whether it lasts or falls.
19. This body, linked with its limbs like beasts of burden to labor, the home of its mistress greed painted over by her passions, affords me no delight whatever.
20. This abode of the body, built with its framework of backbone and ribs and composed of cellular vessels tied together by ropes of the entrails, is no way desirable to me.
21. This mansion of the body, tied with strings of tendons, built with the clay of blood and moisture, and plastered white with old age is no way suited to my liking.
22. The mind is the architect and master of this bodily dwelling, and our activities are its supports and servants. It is filled with errors and delusions which I do not like.
23. I do not like this dwelling of the body with its bed of pleasure on one side, and its childlike cries of pain on the other, and where our evil desires work like its shouting handmaids.
24. I cannot like this body. It is like a pot of filth, full of the foulness of worldly affairs, and moldering under the rust of our ignorance.
25. It is a hovel standing on the two props of our heels, supported by the two posts of our legs.
26. It is no lovely house where the external organs are playing their parts, while its mistress understanding sits inside with her brood of anxieties.
27. It is a hut thatched over with the hairs on the head, decorated with the turrets of the ears, and adorned with jewels on the crest, which I do not like.
28. This house of the body is walled about by all its members, and beset by hairs growing on it like ears of grain. It has an empty space of the belly within which I do not like.
29. This body with its nails as those of spiders, and its entrails growling within like barking dogs, and the internal winds emitting fearful sounds, is never delightsome to me.
30. What is this body but a passage for the ceaseless inhaling and breathing out of the vital air? Its eyes are like two windows continually opened and closed by the eyelids. I do not like a mansion such as this.
31. This mansion of the body, with its formidable door of the mouth and ever-moving bolt of the tongue and bars of the teeth, is not pleasant to me.
32. This house of the body, having the whitewash of ointments on the outer skin and the machinery of the limbs in continuous motion, its restless mind burrowing its base like a mischievous mouse, is not liked by me.
33. Sweet smiles, like shining lamps, serve to lighten this house of the body for a moment, but it is soon darkened by a cloud of melancholy, wherefore I cannot be pleased with it.
34. This body, the abode of diseases and subject to wrinkles and decay and all kinds of pain, is a mansion with which I am not pleased.
35. I do not like this wilderness of the body, infested by the bears of the senses. It is empty and hollow within, with dark groves of entrails inside.
36. I am unable, O chief of sages, to drag my domicile of the body, just as a weak elephant is incapable of pulling another that is stuck in a muddy pit.
37. Of what good is affluence or royalty, this body and all its efforts to a person when the hand of time must destroy them all in a few days?
38. Tell me, O sage, what is charming in this body that is only a composition of flesh and blood both within and without and frail in its nature?
39. The body does not follow the soul upon death. Tell me sage, what regard should the learned have for such an ungrateful thing as this?
40. It is as unsteady as the ears of an enraged elephant, and as fickle as drops of water that trickle on their tips. I should like therefore to abandon it before it comes to abandon me.
41. It is as tremulous as the leaves of a tree shaken by a breeze, and oppressed by diseases and fluctuations of pleasure and pain. I have no relish in its pungency and bitterness.
42. With all its food and drink for evermore, it is as tender as a leaflet and it is reduced to leanness in spite of all our cares, and runs fast towards its dissolution.
43. It is repeatedly subjected to pleasure and pain, and to the succession of affluence and destitution, without being ashamed of itself as the shameless vulgar herd.
44. Why nourish this body any longer when, after its enjoyment of prosperity and exercise of authority for a length of time, it acquires no excellence nor durability?
45. The bodies of the rich and the poor are alike subject to decay and death at their appointed times.
46. The body lies like a tortoise in the cave of greed amidst the ocean of the world. It remains there in the mud in a mute and torpid state without any effort for its liberation.
47. Our bodies float like heaps of wood on the waves of the world, finally serving as fuel for a funeral fire — except a few which pass for human bodies in the sight of the wise.
48. The wise have little to do with this tree of the body, which is beset by evils like harmful orchids about it, and produces the fruit of perdition.
49. The body, like a frog, lies merged in the mire of mortality where it perishes no sooner it is known to have lived and gone.
50. Our bodies are as empty and fleeting as gusts of wind passing over dusty ground. Nobody knows from where they come or where they go.
51. We know not the travels of our bodies, as we do not know those of the winds, light and our thoughts. They all come and go, but from where and to where, we know nothing.
52. Fie and shame to them who are so giddy with the intoxication of their error that they rely on any state or durability of their bodies.
53. They are the best of men, O sage, whose minds are at rest with the thought that their ego does not exist in their bodies, and that in the end the bodies are not theirs.
54. Those mistaken men who have a high sense of honor and fear dishonor, but who take pleasure in the excess of their gains, are truly killers of both of their bodies and souls.
55. We are deceived by the delusion of ego, which like a female evil spirit lies hidden within the cavity of the body with all her sorcery.
56. Unaided, our reason is kept in bondage by the malicious fiend of false knowledge, like a slave within the prison of our bodies.
57. It is certain that whatever we see here is unreal, and yet it is a wonder that the mass of men are led to deception by the vile body, which has injured the cause of the soul.
58. Our bodies are as fleeting as the drops of a waterfall. They fall off in a few days like the withered leaves of trees.
59. They are as quickly dissolved as bubbles in the ocean. Therefore it is in vain for it to hurl about in the whirlpool of business.
60. I have not a moment’s reliance in this body, which is ever hastening to decay, and I regard its changeful delusions as a state of dreaming.
61. Let those who have any faith in the stability of lightning, autumn clouds and ice castles place their reliance in this body.
62. In its instability and ability to perish, the body has outdone all other things that are doomed to destruction. It is moreover subject to very many evils. Therefore I value it as nothing, like straw, and thereby I have obtained my rest.
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Chapter 1.19 — Blemishes of Boyhood Rama speaking:—
1. One receiving his birth in the unstable ocean of this world, disturbed by the waves of the turmoil of business, has to pass his boyhood in sufferings only.
2. The attendants of infancy are a lack of strength and sense, diseases, dangers, muteness and sensual desires, joined with longings and helplessness.
3. Childhood is chained to fretting, crying, fits of anger, craving and every kind of incapacity, like an elephant chained to a post.
4. The vexations that tease the infant breast are far greater than those which trouble us in youth and old age, or disturb one in disease, danger or at the approach of death.
5. The acts of a boy are like those of young animals, always restless and snubbed by everybody. Hence boyhood is more intolerable than death itself.
6. How can boyhood be pleasing to anybody, when it is a semblance of gross ignorance, full of whims and hobbies, and ever subject to improper behavior?
7. Silly boyhood is in constant dread of dangers arising at every step from fire, water and air which rarely cause problems in other states of life.
8. Children are liable to very many errors in their plays and wicked frolics, and in all their wishes and attempts beyond their capacities. Therefore, boyhood is the most dangerous stage of life.
9. Children are engaged in false pursuits and wicked sports, and are subject to all other foolish childishness. Hence boyhood is fit for the rod and not for rest.
10. All faults, misconduct, transgressions and heartaches lie hidden in boyhood like owls in hollow caves.
11. Shame on those ignorant and foolish people who are falsely led to imagine boyhood as the most pleasant period of life.
12. How can boyhood appear pleasing to anyone when the mind swings like a cradle towards every object of desire, however wrong it is deemed to be in both worlds?
13. The minds of all living beings are ever restless, but those of young people are ten times more at unrest.
14. The mind is naturally unsteady, and so is boyhood. Say what can save us from that state of life when both these vagrant things combine to our destruction?
15. The glances of women, the flashes of lightning, the flame of fire, and the ever-rolling waves have all imitated the fickleness of boyhood.
16. Minority seems to be a twin brother to the mind. They are similar in their unsteadiness and frailty of all their purposes.
17. All kinds of miseries, misdeeds and improper behavior await on boyhood, as all sorts of men hang upon the rich.
18. Children are always fond of new things, and when they fail to get them, they fall to a fainting fit, as if from the effect of poison.
19. A boy like a dog, is as easily tamed as he is irritated at a little, and he is as glad to lie in the dust and play with dirt.
20. A foolish fretful boy with his body daubed in mire, tears in his eyes, appears like a heap of dry clay soiled by a shower of rain.
21. Children are subject to fear and voracious appetites. They are helpless but fond of everything they have seen or heard, and equally fickle in their bodies and mind. Hence boyhood is a source of only troubles.
22. The foolish and helpless child becomes sad and sour when he fails to get the object of his fancy and thwarted from the thing desired.
23. Children have much difficulty to get at the things they want, and which they can ask only by indistinct words. Hence no one suffers so much as children.
24. A boy is as much irritated by the eagerness of his whimsical desires as a patch of ground in the desert is parched by the summer heat.
25. On entering school, a boy is subjected to corrections, which are as painful to him as goading and chains to an elephant.
26. Boyhood, ever fond of toys and trifles, is continually afflicted by a great many whims and hobbies, and a variety of false fancies.
27. How can it be said that senseless childhood is a happy state of life when the child is led by its ignorance to swallow everything in the world, and to wish to lay hold on the moon in the sky?
28. Say great sage, what difference is there between a child and a tree? Both have sensitivity, but neither is able to defend themselves from heat and cold.
29. Children are like birds, subject to fear and hunger, and ready to fly about when impelled by them.
30. Boyhood is the home of fear from all sides; such as from the tutor, father, mother, elder brother and elderly children, and from everybody besides.
31. Hence the hopeless state of childhood, full of faults and errors, and addicted to sports and thoughtlessness, cannot be satisfactory to anybody.
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Chapter 1.20 — Denunciation of Youth
1. Rama continued:-- The boy, having passed his state of blemishes, gladly steps into youth with hopes of gaining his objects that tend only to his ruin.
2. At this time the unconscious youth feels the wanton inclinations of his loose mind and goes on falling from one tribulation to another.
3. He is overcome like one subdued by the power of delusive Kama Deva (Goddess Desire) lying hidden in the cavity of the heart.
4. His ungoverned mind gives rise to loose thoughts like those of voluptuous women, and these serve to beguile him like magic black collyrium eye-liner in the hands of children.
5. Vices of the most heinous kind overcome persons of such minds in their youth and lead them to their ruin.
6. The paths of youth lead through a maze of errors to the gate of hell. Those who have been left uncorrupt by their youth are not to be corrupted by anything else.
7. Whoever has passed the dreadfully enchanted coast of youth, filled with various flavors and wonders, is said to be truly wise.
8. I take no delight in our unwelcome youth, which appears to us in the form of a momentary flash of lightning, soon followed by the loud roaring of the clouds (of manhood).
9. Youth, like rich wine, is sweet and delicious, but becomes bitter, insipid and harmful in a short time. Hence it is not delectable to me.
10. Youth appearing as a reality, is found to be a false, transient thing, as deceptive as a fairy dream by night. Hence I like it not.
11. It is the most charming of all things to men, but its charm is soon lost and fled. Therefore the magic lantern show of youth is not pleasing to me.
12. Youth is like an arrow shot: pleasant to see, but painful to feel. Hence I do not like youth that produces heat in the blood.
13. Youth is like a harlot: charming at first sight, but soon turns heartless. Hence it is not to my liking.
14. As the efforts of a dying man are all for his torment, so the exertions of the young are portentous of his destruction.
15. Puberty advances like a dark night spreading the shadow of destruction. It darkens the heart and mind by its hideous appearance, and intimidates even the god Shiva himself.
16. Errors growing in youth, upsetting good sense and giving no value to approved good manners, cause copious mistakes in life.
17. The raging fire in the hearts of the young, caused by separation from their mates, burns them down like trees in a wildfire.
18. As a clear, sacred and wide stream becomes muddy during rains, so does the mind of man, however clear, pure and expanded it may be, gets polluted in his youth.
19. It is possible for one to cross a river made terrible by its waves, but no way possible for him to get over the boisterous expanse of his youthful desires.
20. O how one’s youth is worn out with the thoughts of his mistress, her swollen breasts, her beautiful face and her sweet caresses!
21. The wise regard a young man afflicted with the pain of soft desire as no better than a fragment of straw.
22. Youth is the stake of haughty self-esteem, as the rack is for the immolation of the elephant giddy with its frontal pearl.
23. Youth is a lamentable forest where the mind, as the root of all, gives growth to jungles of (love sick) groans, sighs and tears of sorrow. The vices of this time are like venomous snakes of the forest.
24. Know that a person’s youthful bloom resembles a blooming lotus of the lake. One is as full of affections, bad desires and evil intents as the other is filled with bees, filaments, petals and leaves.
25. The new bloom of youth is the playground of anxiety and disease, which like two birds with their (black and white) plumage of vice and virtue, frequent the fountain of the young man’s heart.
26. Early youth resembles a deep sea disturbed by the waves of numberless amusements, transgressing all bounds, and regardless of death and disease.
27. Youth is like a furious gust of wind over-loaded with the dust of pride and vanity which sweeps away every trace of good qualities.
28. The rude dust of the passions of youth disfigures their faces, and the hurricane of their sensualities cover their good qualities.
29. Youthful vigor awakens a series of faults and destroys a group of good qualities by increasing the vice of pleasures.
30. Youthful bloom confines the fickle mind to some beautiful person, like bright moonbeams serve to trap the flitting bee in the dust of a closing lotus.
31. Youth, like a delightful cluster of flowers growing in the garden of the human body, attracts the mind to it like a bee and makes it giddy (with its sweets).
32. The human mind anxious to derive pleasure from the youthfulness of the body, falls into the cave of sensuality, like a deer running after the mirage of desert heat falls down into a pit.
33. I take no delight in moon-like youth which guilds the dark body with its beams and resembles the stern mane of the lion-like mind. It is a surge in the ocean of our lives.
34. There is no reliance upon youth that fades away as soon as summer flowers in this desert of the body.
35. Like a bird, youth soon flies away from our bodily cage. It is like the philosopher’s stone that quickly disappears from the hands of the unfortunate.
36. As youth advances to its highest pitch, so the feverish passions wax stronger for our destruction only.
37. As long as the night (delusion) of youth lasts, the fiends of our passion rage in the desert of the body.
38. Pity me, O sage, in this state of youth which is so full of agitation as to have deprived me of the sight of reason. O pity me as you would for your dying son.
39. A foolish man who ignorantly rejoices at his transient youth is considered to be like a human beast.
40. A foolish fellow who is fond of his youth, flushed with pride and filled with errors, soon comes to repent.
41. Those who have safely passed over the perils of youth are great minded men honored on earth.
42. With ease one can cross over a wide ocean that is the horrible home of huge whales, but it is hard to pass over our youth that is so full of vices and waves (of our passions).
43. It is very rare to have a happy youth filled with humility and spent in the company of respectable men. Such youth is distinguished by feelings of sympathy and is joined with good qualities and virtues.
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Chapter 1.21 — Denunciation of Women (or for PC purposes, Denunciation of the Opposite Sex)
1. Rama added:— What beauty is there in the body of a woman composed of nerves, bones and joints? She is a mere statue of flesh and a frame of moving machinery with her ribs and limbs.
2. Separated from its flesh, skin, blood and water, can you find anything beautiful in the female form that is worth beholding? Then why dote upon it?
3. This fairy frame consisting of hair and blood cannot engage the attention of a high-minded man to its blemishes.
4. The bodies of females, so covered with clothing and repeatedly smeared with paints and perfumes, are (in the end) devoured by carnivorous (beasts and worms).
5. The breasts of women, decorated with strings of pearl, appear as charming as the pinnacles of Mount Sumeru washed by the waters of the Ganges falling upon them.
6. Look at these very same breasts in the end, having become a lump of food to be devoured by dogs in cemeteries and on the naked ground.
7. There is no difference between a woman and a young elephant that lives in the jungle. Both are made of blood, flesh and bones. Then why hunt after her?
8. A woman is charming only for a short time. I look upon her merely as a cause of delusion.
9. There is no difference between wine and a woman. Both tend equally to produce high-flown mirth and jollity, creating revelry and lust.
10. Overindulgent men are like chained elephants among mankind. They will never come to sense however goaded by the hooks of reason.
11. Women are the flames of vice. Their black-dyed eye and hair are their smoke and soot. Though pleasing to the sight, they are as intangible as fire. They burn a man like fire consumes straw.
12. Though they appear soft and juicy to sight, they burn from afar and are as dry as bones. They serve as fuel for the fires of hell, and they are dangerous with their charm.
13. The woman resembles a moonlit night, veiled over by her loosened locks, and looking through her starry eyes. She shows her moon-like face amidst her flowery smiles.
14. Her soft dalliance destroys all manly energy, and her caresses overpower the good sense of men, like the shade of night does the sleeping (world).
15. A woman is as lovely as a vine in its flowering time. Her palms are the leaves and her eyes are the black bees. Her breasts are like the uplifted tops of the plant.
16. A lovely maiden is like a poisonous vine, fair as the filament of a flower but, by causing inebriation and unconsciousness, destructive of life.
17. Like the snake-catcher entices the snake by his breath and brings it out of its hole, so does a woman allure a man by her meddlesome civilities and gets him under her control.
18. Sexual desire, like a huntsman, has spread his nets in the form of women for the purpose of ensnaring deluded men like silly birds.
19. The mind of man, though as fierce as that of a furious elephant, is tied fast by the chain of love to the fulcrum of women, just as an elephant is fastened to the post where he remains dull and dumb forever.
20. Human life is like a pool in which the mind moves about in mud and mire. Here it is caught by the bait of woman, and dragged along by the thread of its impure desires.
21. The beautiful eyed maiden is a bondage to man, as the stable is to the horse, the fastening post to the elephant, and as spells are to the snakes.
22. This wonderful world, with all its delights and enjoyments, began with woman and depends on women for its continuance.
23. A woman is a casket full of all gems of vice. She is the cause of our chain to everlasting misery, and she is of no use to me.
24. What shall I do with her breast, her eyes, her loins, her eyebrows, the substance of which is only flesh and which therefore is altogether unsubstantial?
25. Here and there, O brahmin, her flesh and blood and bones undergo a change for the worse in course of a few days.
26. Sage, you can see those dearly beloved mistresses, so much fondled by foolish men, lying at last in the cemetery, their body parts all mangled and falling off.
27. O brahmin, those dear love objects, the faces of maidens so fondly decorated by their lovers with paints and pastes, are at last to be burned on the piles.
28. Their braided hairs hang like fly-whisks on the cemetery trees, and after a few days, their whitened bones are strewn about like shining stars.
29. Behold their blood sucked in by the dust of the earth, voracious beasts and worms feeding upon their flesh, jackals tearing their skin, and their vital air dispersed in the vacuum.
30. This is the state to which the members of the female body must shortly come to pass. You say all existence is delusion. Therefore tell me, why do you allow yourselves to fall into error?
31. A woman is nothing but a form composed of the five elements, so why should intelligent men be fondly attached to her?
32. Men’s longing for women is like the suta vine which stretches its sprigs to a great length, but bears plenty of bitter and sour fruit.
33. A man blinded by greed (for his mate) is like a deer that has strayed from its herd, not knowing which way to go, lost in the maze of illusion.
34. A young man under the control of a young woman is as lamentable as an elephant in pursuit of his mate that has fallen into a pit of Vindhya Mountain.
35. He who has a wife has an appetite for enjoyment on earth, but one without her has no object of desire. Abandonment of the wife amounts to abandonment of the world, and forsaking the world is the path to true happiness.
36. I am not content, O brahmin! with these unmanageable enjoyments which are as flickering as the wings of bees, and are as soon at an end as they are born. From my fear of repeated births, decay and death, I long only for the state of supreme bliss.
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Chapter 1.22 — Denunciation of Old Age Rama speaking:—
1. Boyhood has scarcely lost its boyishness when it is overtaken by youth, which is soon followed by a ruthless old age that devours the other two.
2. Old age withers the body like frost freezing a lake of lilies. It drives away the beauty of the body like a storm does autumn clouds. It pulls down the body like a current carries away a tree from the bank.
3. An old man with his limbs slackened and worn out by age, his body weakened by infirmity, is treated by women as a useless beast.
4. Old age drives away a man’s good sense, just like a step mother drives away a good wife.
5. A man in tottering old age is ridiculed as a imbecile by his own sons and servants, and even by his wife, friends and relations.
6. When their appearance grows uncouth and their bodies become helpless and devoid of all manly qualities and powers, then insatiable greed alights on the heads of the aged like a greedy vulture.
7. Appetite, the constant companion of my youth, is thriving along with my age, accompanied with her evils of indigence, and heart-burning cares and restlessness.
8. Ah me! What must I do to remove my present and future pains? This fear increases with old age and finds no remedy.
9. What am I that I am brought to this extremity of senselessness? What can I do in this state? I must remain dumb and silent. Given these reflections, there is an increased sense of helplessness in old age.
10. How and when and what shall I eat, and what is sweet to taste? These are the thoughts that trouble the mind when old age comes.
11. There is an insatiable desire for enjoyments, but the powers to enjoy them are lacking. It is lack of strength which afflicts the heart in old age.
12. Hoary old age sits and shrieks like a heron on the top of the tree of this body which is infested within by the serpents of sickness.
13. As the grave owl, the bird of night, appears unexpectedly to our sight as the evening shades cover the landscape, so the solemn appearance of death overtakes us in the eve of our life.
14. As darkness prevails over the world in the evening, so death overtakes the body at the eve of the life.
15. Death overtakes a man in his hoary old age, just like a monkey alights on a tree covered with pearly flowers.
16. Even a deserted city, a leafless tree and parched up land may present a fair aspect, but never does the body look well that is pulled down by hoary age.
17. Old age with its hooping cough lays hold of a man, just as a vulture seizes its prey with loud shrieks in order to devour it.
18. As a girl eagerly lays hold of a lotus flower whenever she sees one, then plucks it from its stalk and tears it to pieces, so does old age overtake a person’s body and breaks it down at last.
19. As the chill blast of winter shakes a tree and covers its leaves with dust, so does old age seize the body with a tremor and fill all its limbs with the rust of diseases.
20. The body overtaken by old age becomes as pale and battered as a lotus flower beaten by frost becomes withered and shattered.
21. As moonbeams contribute to the growth of kumuda flowers on the top of mountains, so does old age produce grey hairs resembling casia flowers on the heads of men (with inward phlegm and gout).
22. Death, the lord of all beings, views the grey head of a man as a ripe pumpkin seasoned with the salt of old age, and devours it with zest.
23. As the Ganges upsets a neighboring tree by its rapid course, so old age destroys the body as the current of our life runs fast to decay.
24. Old age preys on the flesh of the human body and takes as much delight in devouring its youthful bloom as a cat does feeding on a mouse.
25. Decrepitude raises its ominous hoarse sound of hiccough in the body, like a jackal sending forth her hideous cry in the forest.
26. Old age is an inner flame that consumes the living body like a wet log of wood, which thereupon emits its hissing sounds of hiccough and hard breathing, and sends up the gloomy fumes of sorrow and sighs.
27. The body like a flowering vine, bends down under the pressure of age, turns to grey like the fading leaves of a plant, and becomes as lean and thin as a plant after its flowering time is over.
28. Like an infuriated elephant that can uproot a white plantain tree in a moment, so does old age destroy the body that becomes as white as camphor all over.
29. Senility, O sage, is as the standard bearer of the king of death, flapping his fly-whisks of grey hairs before him and bringing an army of diseases and troubles in his train.
30. The monster of old age will even overcome those who were never defeated in wars by their enemies, and those who hide themselves in the inaccessible caverns of mountains.
31. As infants cannot play in a room that has become cold with snow, so the senses can have no play in a body stricken with age.
32. Old age, like a juggling girl, struts on three legs at the sound of coughing and whiffing, beating like a kettledrum on both sides.
33. The tuft of grey hairs on the head of an aged body represents a fly-whisk fastened to the top of a handle of white sandalwood that serves to welcome the despot of death.
34. As hoary age makes his advance like moonlight over the body, he calls forth hidden death to come out of it, as moonlight makes water lilies unfold their buds.
35. Again as the whitewash of old age whitens the outer body, so debility, diseases and dangers become its inmates in the inner apartment.
36. The extinction of being is preceded by old age. Therefore I as a man of little understanding can have no reliance in old age (though extolled by some.)
37. What then is the good of this miserable life, which lives subject to old age? Senility is irresistible in this world, and it defies all efforts to avoid or overcome it.
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Chapter 1.23 — The Vicissitudes of Time Rama speaking:—
1. By their much idle talk, ever doubting skepticism and schisms, men of little understandings are found to fall into grave errors in this pit of the world.
2. Good people can have no more confidence in the network of their ribs than little children like fruit reflected in a mirror.
3. Time is a rat that gnaws off the threads of all thoughts that men may entertain about the contemptible pleasures of this world.
4. There is nothing in this world which the all-devouring time will spare. He devours all things like an undersea fire consumes the overflowing sea.
5. Time is the sovereign lord of all, and equally terrible to all things. He is ever ready to devour all visible beings.
6. Time as master of all, spares not even the greatest of us for a moment. He swallows the universe within himself, whence he is known as the Universal Soul.
7. Time pervades all things, but has no perceptible feature of his own, except that he is imperfectly known by the names of years, ages and millennia (kalpas).
8. All that was fair and good and as great as Mount Meru has gone down into the womb of eternity, like snakes gorged by the greedy garuda.
9. There was no one ever so unkind, hard-hearted, cruel, harsh or miserly, whom time has not devoured.
10. Time is ever greedy even though he devours mountains. This great gourmand is not satisfied with gorging himself with everything in all the worlds.
11. Time, like an actor, plays many parts on the stage of the world. He abstracts and kills, produces and devours and at last destroys everything.
12. Time is constantly picking up the seeds of all four kinds of living beings from this unreal world, like a parrot picks up ripened fruit from under the cracked shell of a pomegranate and nibbles at its seeds.
13. Time uproots all proud living beings in this world, like a wild elephant uses its tusks to pull up the trees of the forest.
14. This creation of God is like a forest, having Brahma for its foundation and its trees full of the great fruits of gods. Time commands this creation throughout its length and breadth.
15. Time glides along constantly as a creeping plant, its parts composed of years and ages and the dark nights like black bees chasing after them.
16. Time, O sage, is the subtlest of all things. It is divided though indivisible. It is consumed though incombustible. It is perceived though imperceptible in its nature.
17. Time, like the mind, is strong enough to create and demolish anything in a trice, and its province is equally extensive.
18. Time is a whirlpool to men; and man being accompanied with desire, his insatiable and uncontrollable mistress, and delighting in illicit enjoyments, time makes him do and undo the same thing over and over again.
19. Time is prompted by his rapacity to appropriate everything for himself, from the meanest straw, dust, leaves and worms, to the greatest Indra and Mount Meru itself.
20. Time is the source of all malice and greed, and the spring of all misfortunes, and cause of the intolerable fluctuations of our states.
21. As children play with balls in a playground, so does time play with his two balls of the sun and moon in his arena of the sky.
22. Upon the end of a kalpa age, time will dance about with the bones of the dead hanging like a long chain from his neck to the feet.
23. At the end of a kalpa age, the gale of desolation rising from the body of this world destroyer causes the fragments of Mount Meru to fly about in the air like the rinds of the bhoja-petera tree.
24. Time then assumes his terrific form of fire to dissolve the world in empty space, and the gods Brahma and Indra and all others cease to exist.
25. As the sea shows himself in a continued series of waves rising and falling one after another, so it is time that creates and dissolves the world, and appears to rise and fall with the rotation of days and nights.
26. At end of the world, time plucks the gods and demigods from their great tree of existence like ripe fruit.
27. Time resembles a large sacred fig tree (ficus religiosa) studded with all the worlds as its fruit, resonant with the noise of living beings like the hissing of gnats.
28. Time accompanied by action as his mate, entertains himself in the garden of the world, blossoming with the moonbeams of the Divine Spirit.
29. As the high and huge rock supports its body upon the earth, so does time rest itself in endless and interminable eternity.
30. Time assumes to himself various colors of black, white and red (at night, day and midday) which serve for his vestures.
31. As the earth supports the great hills that are fixed upon it, so time supports all the innumerable ponderous worlds that constitute the universe.
32. Hundreds of great kalpa ages may pass away, yet there is nothing that can move eternity to pity or concern, or stop or expedite his course. It neither sets nor rises.
33. Time is never proud to think that it is he who, without the least sense of pain or labor, brings this world into play and makes it exist.
34. Time is like a reservoir in which the nights are mud, the days lotuses, and the clouds bees.
35. As a covetous man, with worn out broomstick in hand, sweeps over a mountain to gather particles of gold strewn over it, so does time with his sweeping course of days and nights collect all living beings in the world in one mass of the dead.
36. As a miserly man trims and lights a lamp with his own fingers in order to look for his stores in each corner of his rooms, so does time light the lamps of the sun and moon to look for living beings in every nook and corner of the world.
37. As one ripens raw fruit in the sun and fire in order to devour them, so does time ripen men by their sun and fire worship, to bring them under his jaws at last.
38. The world is a dilapidated cottage and men of parts are rare gems in it. Time hides them in the casket of his belly, as a miser keeps his treasure in a coffer.
39. Good men are like a garland of gems, which time puts on his head for a time with fondness, and then tears and tramples it down.
40. Strings of days, nights and stars, resembling beads and bracelets of white and black lotuses, are continually turning around the arm of time.
41. Time looks upon the world like the carcass of a ram, with its mountains, seas, sky and earth as its four horns, and the stars as its drops of blood which it drinks day by day.
42. Time destroys youth as the moon shuts the petals of the lotus. It destroys life like a lion kills the elephant. There is nothing so insignificant that time does not steal.
43. After sporting for a kalpa period in the act of killing and crushing of all living beings, time comes to lose its own existence and becomes extinct in the eternity of the Spirit of spirits.
44. After a short rest and respite, time reappears as the creator, preserver, and destroyer of all who remembers all. He shows the shapes of all things whether good or bad, keeping his own nature beyond the knowledge of all. Thus does time expand and preserve and finally dissolve all things by way of sport.
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Chapter 1.24 — The Ravages of Time
1. Rama continued:— Time is a self-willed sportsman, like a prince, who is inaccessible to dangers and whose powers are unlimited.
2. This world is like a forest and a sporting ground of time where the poor deluded worldlings are caught in his snare like bodies of wounded stags.
3. The ocean of universal deluge is merely a pleasure-pond for time, and its undersea fires bursting there are merely lotus flowers.
4. Time makes his breakfast of this vapid and stale earth, flavored with the milk and curd of the seas of those names.
5. His wife Chandi with her train of Matris (the Furies) ranges all about this wide world like a ferocious tigress.
6. The earth with her waters is like a bowl of wine in the hand of time, dressed and flavored with all sorts of lilies and lotuses.
7. In the hand of time, the lion with his huge body and startling mane, his loud roaring and tremendous groans, seems like a caged bird of sport.
8. Mahakala (Transcendent Time), like a playful young cuckoo, appears in the figure of the blue autumn sky, warbling as sweet as the notes of a lute of gourd (in the music of the spheres).
9. The restless bow of death is found flinging its sorrowful arrows with ceaseless thunder claps on all sides.
10. This world is like a forest in which sorrows range about like playful apes, and time like a sportive prince in this forest, is now wandering, now walking, now playing and now killing his game.
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Chapter 1.25 — The Play of Death
1. Time stands the foremost of all deceitful players in this world. He acts the double parts of creation and destruction, and of action and fate.
2. The existence of time is known to us only through action and motion, which bind all beings (in the succession of thoughts and acts).
3. Fate is that which frustrates the acts of all created beings, like the heat of the sun serves to dissolve a snow pack.
4. This wide world is the stage on which the giddy mob dances about (in their appointed times).
5. Time has a third name of a terrifying nature known as Kritantah (Fate), who in the form of a Kapalika (one holding human skulls in his hand), dances about in the world.
6. This dancing and loving Kritantah (Fate), is accompanied by his consort called Destiny to whom he is greatly attached.
7. Time (as Shiva) wears on his bosom of the world, the triple white and holy thread composed of the serpent named Ananta (Infinite) and the Ganges River, and on his forehead the digit of the moon ( i.e., the zodiacal belt; the milky way, and the lunar astrological divisions, phases).
8. The sun and the moon are the golden armlets of time, who holds the mundane world in his palm like the paltry plaything of a flower bouquet.
9. The sky with its stars appears like a garment with colored spots. The clouds called Pushkara and Avarta are like the skirts of that garment, washed by time in the waters of the universal deluge.
10. Before him his beloved Destiny with all her arts forever dances to beguile the living who are fond of worldly enjoyments.
11. People hurry up and down to witness the dance of Destiny, whose unrestrained motion keeps them at work, and causes their repeated births and deaths.
12. People of all worlds are studded like ornaments about her person, and the sky stretching from the heaven of gods to the infernal regions serves for the veil on her head.
13. Her feet are planted in the infernal regions, and the hell-pits ring at her feet like trinkets, tied by the string of evil deeds and sins.
14. The god Chitragupta has painted her from head to foot with ornamental marks prepared by her attendants, and perfumed with the essence of those deeds.
15. She dances and reels at the nod of her husband at the end of the kalpas, and makes the mountains crack and crash at her foot-falls.
16. Behind her dance the peacocks of the god Kumara (Subramanyan) and Kala, the god of death, staring with his three wide open eyes, utters his hideous cries (of destruction).
17. Death dances about in the form of the five-headed Hara (the “Destroyer”, Shiva), with the loosened braids of hair upon him, while Destiny in the form of Gauri (Shiva’s consort), her locks adorned with mandara flowers, keeps her pace with him.
18. In her war-dance, this Destiny bears a large gourd representing her big belly, and her body is adorned with hundreds of hollow human skulls jingling like the alms-pots of Kapali mendicants.
19. She has filled the sky with the emaciated skeleton of her body and her terrible, destructive figure.
20. The various shapes of skulls of the dead adorn her body like a beautiful garland of lotuses. They sway to and fro during her dance at the end of a kalpa age.
21. The horrible roaring of the giddy clouds Pushkara and Avarta at the end of the kalpa serves to represent the beating of her damaru drum, and puts to flight the heavenly choir of Tumburu.
22. As death dances along, the moon appears like his earring, and the moonbeams and stars appear like his crest made of peacocks’ feathers.
23. The snow-capped Himalayas appear like a crown of bones in the upper loop of his right ear, and Mount Meru as a golden ring in his left.
24. Under their lobes are suspended the moon and the sun, like pendant earrings glittering over his cheeks. The mountain ranges called the Lokaloka are fastened like chains around his waist.
25. Lightning bolts are the bracelets and armlets of Destiny, which move to and fro as she dances along. The clouds are her dressing gown that fly about her in the air.
26. Death is furnished with many weapons, like clubs, axes, missiles, spears, shovels, mallets and sharp swords, all of which are sure weapons of destruction.
27. Mundane enjoyments are no other than long ropes dropped down by the hand of death that keep all mankind fast bound to the world. He wears the great thread of infinity (ananta) as his wreath of flowers.
28. Death wears the seven oceans as bracelet-belts bracelets resplendent with the living sea-animals and the bright gems contained in their depths.
29. The great vortices of customs, the successions of joy and grief, the excess of pride and the darkness of passions, form the streaks of hair on his body.
30. After the end of the world, he ceases to dance, and creates anew all things from the lowest animal that lives in the earth, to the highest Brahma and Shiva.
31. By turns, Destiny as an actress acts her parts of creation and destruction, diversified by scenes of old age, sorrow and misery.
32. Time repeatedly creates the worlds and their woods, with the different abodes and localities teeming with population. He forms the moveable and immovable substances, establishes customs and again dissolves them, as children make their dolls of clay and break them soon afterwards.
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Chapter 1.26 — The Acts of Destiny
1. Rama said:— Such being the all destructive conduct of time and others, what confidence, O great sage, can men like me have in them?
2. We all remain here, as slaves sold to Fate and Destiny, and we are deceived by their allurements as beasts of the forest.
3. This Fate whose conduct is so very inhuman is ever eager to devour all beings. He is constantly throwing men into the sea of troubles.
4. He is moved by his malicious attempts to inflame minds with excessive desires, as the fire raises its flames to burn down a house.
5. Destiny, the faithful and obedient wife of Fate, is naturally fickle on account of her being a female. She is always bent on mischief and disturbing patience.
6. As the heinous serpent feeds upon the air, so does cruel Death ever swallow the living. He ripens the body with old age to create his zest, and then devours all animals warm with life.
7. Death is called a relentless tyrant, having no pity even for the sick and weak, nor any regard for anyone in any state of life.
8. Every one in this world is fond of affluence and pleasures, not knowing that these are only calculated to lead him to his ruin.
9. Life is very unsteady. Death is very cruel. Youth is very frail and fickle, and boyhood is full of dullness and unconsciousness.
10. Man is defiled by his worldliness, his friends are ties to the world, his enjoyments are the greatest of his diseases in life, and his greed and ambition are his ever alluring the mirage.
11. Our very senses are our enemies, before which even truth appears as falsehood. The mind is the enemy of the mind and self is the enemy of self.
12. Self-esteem is stained, intelligence is blamed for its deception, our actions are attended with bad results, and our pleasures tend only to effeminacy.
13. All our desires are directed to enjoyments. Our love of truth is lost, our women are the symbols of vice, and all that was once so sweet has become tasteless and vapid.
14. Things that are not real are believed as real. They have become the cause of our pride by hardening us in untruth and keeping us from the light of truth.
15. My mind is at a loss to think what to do. It regrets its increased appetite for pleasure, and for its lack of self-denial.
16. My sight is dimmed by the dust of sensuality. The darkness of self-esteem prevails over me. I am never able to reach purity of mind, and truth is far away from me.
17. Life has become uncertain and death is always advancing near. My patience is disturbed, and there is an increased appetite for whatever is false.
18. The mind is soiled by dullness, and the body is filled with overindulgence in eating and is ready to fall. Old age exults over the body, and sins are conspicuous at every step.
19. Youth flies fast away despite all our care to preserve it. The company of the good is at a distance. The light of truth shines from nowhere, and I can have recourse to nothing in this world.
20. The mind is stupefied within itself, and its contentment has fled. There is no rise of enlightened sentiments in it, and meanness makes the mind’s advance to enlightened sentiments only more distant.
21. Patience is converted into impatience. Man is subject to the states of birth and death. Good company is rare, but bad company is always within everyone’s reach.
22. All individual existences are liable to appear and disappear. All desires are chains to the world, and all worldly beings are constantly seen to be led away to where, necessarily, no one can tell.
23. What reliance can there be on human life when the points of the compass become indistinct and indiscernible, when countries and places change their positions and names, and when even mountains are liable to be dilapidated?
24. What reliance can there be on man when the heavens are swallowed in infinity, when this world is absorbed in nothingness, and the very earth loses her stability?
25. What reliance can there be on men like ourselves when the very seas are liable to be dried up, when the stars are doomed to fade away and disappear, and when the most perfect of beings are liable to dissolution?
26. What reliance can there be on men like us when even the demigods are liable to destruction, when the polar star is known to change its place, and when the immortal gods are doomed to mortality?
27. What reliance can there be on men like us when Indra is doomed to be defeated by demons, when even Death is hindered from his aim, and when air currents cease to move?
28. What reliance can there be on men like us when the very moon is to vanish with the sky, when the very sun is to be split into pieces, and when fire itself is to become frigid and cold?
29. What reliance can there be on men like us when the very gods Hari and Brahma are to be absorbed into the Great One, and when Shiva himself is to be no more?
30. What reliance can there be on men like us when the duration of time comes to be counted, when Destiny is destined to her final destiny, and when all emptiness loses itself in infinity?
31. That which is inaudible, unspeakable, invisible, and unknowable in his real form, displays to us these wonderful worlds by some fallacy.
32. No one conscious of himself can disown his subjection to that Being that dwells in the hearts of every one.
33. This sun, the lord of worlds, is compelled to run over hills, rocks and fields, like an inert piece of stone, hurled down from a mountain and carried away by a current stream.
34. This globe of earth, the seat of all the suras and asuras and surrounded by a luminous sphere like a walnut is covered by its hard shell, exists under the His command.
35. The gods in the heavens, the men on earth, and the serpents in the nether world are brought into existence and led to decay by His will only.
36. Kama Deva, who is arbitrarily powerful and has forcibly overpowered the entire living world, derives his unconquerable might from the Lord of worlds.
37. As the heated elephant regales the air with his spirituous flowing, so does the spring perfume the air with his profusion of flowers, unsettling the minds of men.
38. So are the loose glances of loving maidens directed to inflict deep wounds in the heart of man, which his best efforts are unable to heal.
39. One whose best endeavor is always to do good to others, and who feels for others’ sorrows, is really intelligent and happy under the influence of his cool judgment.
40. Who can count the number of beings resembling the waves of the ocean, and on whom death has been darting the undersea fire of destruction?
41. All mankind is deluded to entrap themselves in the snare of greed and be afflicted with all evils in life, as the deer entangled in the thickets of a jungle.
42. The duration of human life in this world is being decreased in each generation in proportion to the increase of wicked acts. The desire of pleasure is as vain as the expectation of reaping fruit from a vine growing in the sky. Yet I know not why men of reason would not understand this truth.
43. “This is a day of festivity, a season of joy and a time of procession. Here are our friends. Here are the pleasures and here are a variety of our entertainments.” Thus do men of vacant minds amuse themselves with weaving the web of their desires, until they become extinct.
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Chapter 1.27 — The Vanity of the World
1. Rama said:— O sage! This seemingly pleasing but actually unpleasant world has nothing in it that produces anything that can afford tranquility to the soul.
2. After playful boyhood is over, the mind wastes itself in the society of women like a deer fallen into a pit, then the body bends down under old age, and man has only to grieve.
3. As the body is stricken with the frost of old age, its beauty flies away like the bloom of a fading lotus flower, and then the fountain of man’s worldliness dries up.
4. As the body declines, death rejoices. The body grows lean with grey hairs upon the head, just as a vine fades away with flowers upon it.
5. All living creatures are carried away by the stream of greed that flows for ever in this world, eroding its bank and upsetting the tree of contentment growing on it.
6. The human body is like a vessel covered with skin floating on the ocean of the world, tossed about by sensual pleasures, swamped by water pressured by its whale-like passions.
7. The world is a wilderness abounding in vines of greed and trees of sensuality, with hundreds of desires as their branches. Our minds are like monkeys that pass their time wandering about this forest without finding fruit.
8. Those who do not yield to grief during troubles, who are not elated with prosperity or smitten at heart by women, are rare in this world.
9. Those who fight boldly in battlefields and withstand warelephants are not so very brave, in my opinion, as those who withstand the surges of the mind amidst the streams of carnal appetites.
10. I see no deeds in the world that endure to the final liberation of men. Actions proceeding from a fool’s desire for results serve only for their restlessness on earth.
11. Men who have filled the corners of the world with their fame and valor, who have filled their houses with true riches acquired by honest means and an unwavering patience, are rare in the world.
12. Good and bad fortune always overtake a man, even if he hides in the cracks of a rock or in the walls of mountains, and even if he were enclosed within an iron closet.
13. Our sons and riches are mere objects of delight to us. To expect them to be of any good to us in the end is as false as to expect any benefit from distilling poison.
14. Old people, in the decline of life, their bodies in pitiful decay, are greatly tormented by thoughts of their bad deeds.
15. Men, having passed their early days in the gratification of their desires and other worldly pursuits at the expense of the acts of virtue and piety, are much troubled with anxieties at the end. Their minds are seized with trembling like the breeze shakes the plumage of a peacock. How then can a man attain tranquility at anytime?
16. To the worldly minded, all wealth — whether forthcoming or unattainable, whether gotten by labor or given by fortune — is as deceitful as the flooding of a river, swelling only to subside.
17. The constant thoughts of men are that such and such desirable acts are to be done to please their sons and wives, until they are worn out with age and become crazy in their minds.
18. Like leaves on trees that grow to fall, and falling make room for others to shoot forth, men devoid of reason die away daily to be born again.
19. Men having travelled here and there and far and near, at the end of the day return to their homes. But none can have rest by day or night except the virtuous few who live by honest dealings.
20. After quelling his enemies and getting enough riches in his clutches, a rich man just sits down to enjoy his gains, and death comes upon him to interrupt his joy.
21. The infatuated mob sees the vile trash of worldly gains earned and accumulated by the basest means to be transitory, but they do not perceive their approaching dissolution.
22. Loving their own lives, and making faces at others’ deaths, men are like a herd of sheep bound to the stake, staring at the slaughter of their fellows, yet still feeding themselves to fall as death’s fattened victims.
23. Multitudes of people on earth forever appear and disappear like the waves of a sea. Who can tell from where they come or where they return?
24. Women are as delicate as poisonous vines with their red petal lips and garments, their eyes as busy as fluttering bees. They are killers of mankind and stealers of their ravished hearts.
25. Men are like passengers in a procession who wander from side to side to join at the place of their meeting. Such is the delusive union of our wives and friends.
26. As the burning and extinguishing of the lamp depend on the wick and its moistening oil, so does our course in this transitory world depend on our acts and affections. Nobody knows the true cause of this mysterious existence.
27. The revolution of the world is like a potter’s wheel and the floating bubbles of rainwater. They appear lasting only to the ignorant observer.
28. The blooming beauty and graces of youth are destined to be snatched away at the approach of old age. The youthful hopes of men fly away like the blooms of lotus buds in winter.
29. The tree ordained to be useful to mankind by the loads of flowers and fruit that it produces, in the end is also fated to be hewn down by a cruel axe. How then can good men expect to avoid the cruel hand of death?
30. Society with relatives is as dangerous as a poisonous plant. It is pleasant for its domestic affections, which in reality are only delusions of the soul.
31. What is there in the world without fault in it? What is there that does not afflict or grieve us? What is born that is not subject to death? What acts are free from deceit?
32. Those living for one kalpa aeon are reckoned short-lived as compared with those living for many kalpa aeons, and they again are short-lived compared to Brahma. Hence all the parts of time are finite and the ideas of length or shortness are all false.
33. Things called mountains are made of rocks, those called trees are made of wood, and those made of flesh are called animals, and man is the best of them. But they are all made of matter and doomed to death and decay.
34. Many things appear to be endowed with intelligence, and the heavenly bodies seem to be full of water. But physicists have found out by analysis that everything is made up of minute matter.
35. No wonder that all this should appear miraculous to the mind because even men’s dreams appear so very fascinating to them.
36. Even in old age, those corrupted by their greed will not accept sermons on their eternal concerns. They think they are as false as a flower or a vine growing in the sky.
37. People’s minds are deluded to want the state of their superiors, but as they try to lay hold of the fruits of a green vine that is out of their reach, they fall still lower, like beasts from the top of a hill.
38. Young men who spend their wealth on personal gratifications are as useless as plants growing in the bowels of a deep and inaccessible cavern, spreading their leaves, branches, flowers, fruit and shade to the use of nobody.
39. Men are found to resemble black antelopes in their wanderings. Some of them wander about the sweet, soft and beautiful sceneries of the country. Others roam in sterile tracts and boundless forests.
40. The diverse daily acts of nature are all inherently pernicious. For a time they appear pleasant and ravishing to the heart, but they are attended with pain in the end, and they fill the mind of the wise with dismay.
41. Man is addicted to greed and is prone to a variety of wicked shifts and plots. Now a good man cannot be found even in a dream. There is no act which is free from difficulty. I know not how to pass this state of human life.
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Chapter 1.28 — Mutability of the World
1. Rama said:— Whatever we see in the world, living or inert, are all as impermanent as things seen in a dream.
2. The hollow desert that appears as the dried bed of a sea today will be found tomorrow to be a running flood from the accumulation of rainwater.
3. What today is a mountain reaching the sky covered with extensive forests is in course of time leveled to the ground, and afterwards is dug into a pit.
4. The body that today is clothed with garments of silk, decorated with garlands and fragrance, tomorrow is to be cast away naked into a ditch.
5. What is seen to be a city today, busy with the bustle of various occupations, passes in the course of a few days into the condition of an uninhabited wilderness.
6. The man who is very powerful today and presides over principalities, in a few days is reduced to a heap of ashes.
7. The very forest that is so formidable today, appearing as blue as the blue skies, with the passage of time turns into a city with its banners hoisted in the air.
8. In time a formidable jungle of thick forests becomes a tableland like Mount Meru.
9. Water becomes land and land becomes water. Thus the world with all its contents composed of wood, grass and water becomes something else in course of time.
10. Our boyhood and youth, bodies and possessions are all only transient things. They change from one state to another like the ever fluctuating waves of the ocean.
11. Our lives in this world are as unsteady as the flame of a lamp placed by the draft of an open window. The splendor of all objects in the three worlds is as flickering as the flash of lightning.
12. As a granary stored with heaps of grains is exhausted by its continued waste, so is the stock of life spent away by its repeated respirations.
13. The minds of man are as fluctuating as a flag waving in the air. They are filled with the dust of sin, indicating their wavering between the paths of heaven and hell.
14. The existence of this delusive world is like an actress on the stage, shuffling her vests as she trudges along in her dancing.
15. Its scenes are as changing and fascinating as those of a magic city. Its dealings are as bewitching and momentary as the glances of a juggling girl.
16. The stage of the world presents us with a scene of continued dancing, and the deceptive glances of her eyes resemble the fleeting flashes of lightning.
17. The days of great men, their glories and deeds, are retained only in our memories and in a short time, such must be with us also.
18. Many things are decaying and renewing day by day. In this everchanging world there is no end to this accursed course of events.
19. Men degenerate into lower animals, and those again rise to humanity. Gods become no-gods. There is nothing that remains the same.
20. The sun’s rays reveal everything in light and it watches over the rotations of days and nights. Like time, it is a witness to the dissolution of all things.
21. The gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and all material productions are reduced to nothing, like an undersea fire that exists under the waters of the deep.
22. Heaven, earth, the air, the sky, the mountains, the rivers, and all the quarters of the globe are subject to destruction like dry fuel by the all-destroying fire of the last day.
23. Riches and relatives, friends, servants and wealth are of no pleasure to him who is in constant dread of death.
24. All these are delightful to a sensible man only so long as the monster of death does not appear before the eye of his mind.
25. We have prosperity at one moment, succeeded by adversity at another. We have health at one time, followed by sickness soon after.
26. What intelligent being is there who is not misled by these delusions of the world which show things other than what they are and serve to bewilder the mind?
27. The world is as varying as the face of the skies. One moment it is as black as dark clay, and the next it is bright with the golden colors of fair light.
28. It is now overcast by blue clouds resembling the blue lotuses of a lake. It roars loudly for a time and then suddenly is dumb and silent.
29. Now it is studded with stars, then glowing with the glory of the sun, then graced by the pleasant moonbeams, and finally no light at all.
30. Who is there so sedate and firm that he is not terrified at these sudden appearances and disappearances, at the momentary durations and final dissolution of worldly things?
31. What is the nature of this world in which we are overtaken by adversity at one moment and elated by prosperity at another, where one is born at one time and dies at another?
32. One that was something else before is born as a man in this life, then is changed to another state in course of a few days. Thus there is no being that remains steadily in the same state.
33. A pot is made of clay, and cloth is made of cotton, and they are still the same dull materials of which they are composed. Thus there is nothing new in this world that was not seen or known before. There is nothing that does not change its form.
34. The acts of creation and destruction, of diffusion, production and preservation follow one another like the revolutions of day and night appear to man.
35. Sometimes it happens that a weak man slays a hero, or one individual kills hundreds. So also a commoner becomes a noble man. Thus everything is changeful in this varying world.
36. These bodies of men are always changing their states and are like bodies of waters rising and falling in waves whipped by the motion of winds.
37. Boyhood lasts only a few days, then it is succeeded by youth which is as quickly followed by old age. If there is no identity for the same person, how can one rely on the uniformity of external objects?
38. The mind that gets delighted one moment, becomes dejected in the next, then assumes its equanimity at another is indeed as changeful as an actor.
39. The creator, who in his work of creation is ever turning one thing into another, is like a child who makes and breaks his doll without concern.
40. The actions of producing and harvesting, of feeding and destroying, come by turns to mankind like the rotation of day and night.
41. Neither adversity nor prosperity is of long duration with worldly people. They are ever subject to appearance and disappearance by turns.
42. Time is a skilful player and plays many parts with ease. But he is chiefly skilled in tragedy and he often plays his tragic part in the affairs of men.
43. All beings, according to their past good and bad deeds, are produced like fruit in the great forest of the universe. Time like a gust of wind blasts them day by day before their maturity.
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Chapter 1.29 — Unreliability of Worldly Things Rama speaking:—
1. Thus my heart is consumed by the wildfire of those great worldly evils, and there rises in me no desire of enjoying them, as there rises no mirage from a lake.
2. My existence on earth gets bitter day by day, and though I have got some experience in it, yet its associations have made me as sour as the neem plant by its immersion in water.
3. I see wickedness on the increase and righteousness on the decline in the mind of man, which like the sour karanja (crab fruit) becomes more sour every day.
4. Every day I see honor being eaten up by men arguing with each other, using harsh words as they crack nuts with their teeth.
5. Equally prejudicial to our welfare is too much eagerness for royalty and worldly enjoyments. We loose our future prospects by the former, and our present happiness by the latter.
6. I take no delight in my gardens nor have any pleasure in women. I feel no joy at the prospect of riches, but I enjoy solace in my own heart and mind.
7. Frail are the pleasures of the world, and greed is altogether intolerable. The bustle of business has broken down my heart, and I know not where to find tranquility.
8. Neither do I praise death or love my life. I remain as I do, devoid of all anxiety and care.
9. What do I have to do with a kingdom and all its enjoyments? Of what avail are riches to me, and what is the end of all our exertions? All these are only the requirements of self-love from which I am entirely free.
10. The chain of births is a bond that binds all men by its strong knots of the senses. The best of men are those striving to break loose from this bondage for their liberation.
11. These haughty maidens whom the god of love employs to ravage the hearts of men resemble a group of elephants trampling a lotus bed under their feet.
12. Curing the mind with pure reason is neglected in youth. Afterwards with age, the mind is hard to heal and admits of no cure.
13. The worldliness of man is his true poison, while real poison is no poison to him. It is the poison of worldliness that destroys his future life, while real poison is only locally injurious to him.
14. Neither pleasure nor pain, nor friends nor relatives, not even life and death can bind a mind that has received the light of truth.
15. O brahmin, the best of the learned, teach me the art of the mysteries of past and future. Teach me so that I may soon become like one devoid of grief and fear and worldly troubles so that I may have the light of truth beaming upon me.
16. The forest of ignorance is laid over with the snare of desire. It is full of the thorns of misery, and it is the dreadful seat of destruction and the danger of repeated births.
17. I would suffer myself to be put under the jaws of Death, with his rows of saw-like teeth, but I cannot bear the deadly pains of worldly cares and anxieties.
18. It is a gloomy error in this world to think, “I have this and have not the other.” It serves to toss our minds about, like a gust of wind disperses dust.
19. It is the thread of greed that links together all living beings like a garland of pearls. The mind serves to twirl this chain, but pure consciousness sits quietly observing its rotation.
20. I who am devoid of desires would like to break this ornamental chain of worldliness that hangs about me like a deadly serpent, like a lion tears apart a net.
21. O most learned sage, scatter the mist that has clouded the forest of my heart. By the light of true knowledge, scatter the darkness that has overcast my mind.
22. There are no anxieties, O sage, which cannot be put to an end by the company of good minded men. The darkness of night is dispelled by moonbeams.
23. Life is as fickle as a drop of water in a mass of clouds blown by the winds. Our enjoyments are as unsteady as lightning flashing in the clouds. The pleasures of youth are as slippery as water. With these reflections in my mind, I have subdued them all under the province of peace and tranquility.
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Chapter 1.30 — Self-Disparagement Rama speaking:—
1. Seeing the world swallowed up in the abyss of hundreds of rising dangers and difficulties, my mind is immersed in a mire of anxieties.
2. My mind wanders everywhere and I am struck with fear at everything. My limbs shake with fear like the leaves of a withered tree.
3. My mind is bewildered by impatience for its lack of true contentment, just as a young woman alone in a desert is afraid without her strong handed husband.
4. The thoughts of my mind are entangled in my desire for worldly enjoyments, like stags caught in a pit covered with grass.
5. The senses of an unreasonable man are always running astray to the wrong and never turning to the right way. The eyes of a blind man lead him to fall into a pit.
6. Human thoughts are linked to the animal soul like consorts to their lords. They can neither sit idly nor ramble at liberty, but must remain as wives under the control of their husbands.
7. My patience is almost worn out, like that of a vine under winter frost. It is decayed and neither lives nor perishes at once.
8. Our minds are partly settled on worldly things and partly fixed on their Giver. This divided state of the mind is called its half-waking condition.
9. My mind is in a state of suspense, being unable to ascertain the real nature of my soul. I am like one in the dark who sees a tree stump in the distance and is deceived to think it a human figure.
10. Our minds are naturally fickle and wandering all about the earth. They cannot forsake their restlessness, as the vital airs cannot exist without being in motion.
11. Tell me, O sage, what state of life is dignified above others, is not associated with troubles, is unqualified by the conditions of humanity, is apart from errors, and in which grief is unknown?
12. How have Janaka and other good men, conspicuous for their ceremonious acts and distinguished for their good conduct, acquired their excellence?
13. O source of my honor, how can a man be cleansed who has smeared the dirt of worldliness all over his body?
14. Tell me what is the knowledge by which the serpents of worldliness can be freed from their worldly crookedness and become straight in their conduct?
15. Tell me how the foulness of my heart, soiled by errors and tainted with evils, like a lake disturbed by elephants and polluted with dirt, can regain its clarity?
16. How is it possible for someone engaged in worldly affairs to be untainted with its blemishes and remain as pure and intact as a drop of water on a lotus leaf?
17. How can one attain excellence by dealing with others as with himself, and regarding others’ property to be like straw, and remaining aloof from love?
18. Who is that great man that has crossed the great ocean of the world, whose exemplary conduct exempts one from misery?
19. What is the best of things that ought to be pursued, and what fruit is worth obtaining? Which is the best course of life in this inconsistent world?
20. Tell me how I can have knowledge of past and future events of the world, and the nature of the unsteady works of its Creator.
21. Do so, that my mind which is like the moon in the sky of my heart may be cleared of its impurities.
22. Tell me what is most delectable to the mind, and what is the most abominable, and how this fickle and inconstant mind may become fixed like a rock.
23. Tell me what is that holy charm that can remove this choleric pain of worldliness attended with numberless troubles?
24. Tell me how can I entertain the blossoms of the tree of heavenly happiness within my heart that sheds the coolness of full moonbeams.
25. O you good men who are present here and learned in divine knowledge, teach me so that I may obtain the fullness of my heart and may not come to grief and sorrow anymore.
26. My mind is devoid of that tranquility which results chiefly from holy happiness. My mind is perplexed with endless doubts that disturb my peace like dogs molest smaller animals in the desert.
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Chapter 1.31 — Rama’s Questions
1. Rama said:— I have no trust in the durability of life which is as transient as a drop of water on the edge of a shaking leaf on a lofty tree, and as short as the cusp of the moon on Shiva’s forehead.
2. I have no faith in the durability of life which is transient as the swelling in the pouch of a frog as it croaks in the meadow. Nor do I have any trust in the company of friends which is as dangerous as the treacherous traps of hunters.
3. What can we do under the misty cloud of errors that raise our tempestuous desires flashing forth in lightning bolts of ambition and bursting out in the thunder claps of selfishness?
4. How shall we save ourselves from the temptations of our desires that dance around us like peacocks? How shall we save ourselves from the bustle of the world that breaks in on us as thickly as the blossoms of the kurchi plant?
5. How can we fly from the clutches of cruel Fate who, like a cat in the twinkling of an eye, suddenly springs upon his prey and kills the living as if they were poor mice?
6. To what expedient, what course, what reflections, and what refuge must we have recourse in order to avoid the unknown tracks of future lives?
7. There is nothing so trifling in this earth below or in the heavens above which you gifted men cannot raise to consequence.
8. How can one relish this accursed, troublesome and vapid world unless he is infatuated by ignorance?
9. It is the fusion of desires that produces the milky beverage of contentment and fills the earth with delights like spring adorns it with flowers.
10. Tell me, O sage, how the mist of our desires, which darkens the moon of our intellects, is to be dispelled from our minds to make it shine forth in its full brightness.
11. How are we to deal with this wilderness of the world, knowing well that it is destructive both of our present and future interests?
12. Who is there who moves about in this ocean of the earth and who is not buffeted by the waves of his passions and diseases, and by the currents of his enjoyments and prosperity?
13. Tell me, O best of sages, how one who has fallen into the furnace of this earth may escape unburned like mercury.
14. How can one be rid of the world when it is impossible for him to avoid dealing with it, in the same manner as it is impossible for aquatic animals to live without their native element?
15. Even our good deeds are not without affection and hatred, pleasure and pain, just like no flame is unaccompanied by its power of burning.
16. Without right reasoning, it is impossible to restrain the mind from thinking on worldly matters, so therefore deign to communicate to me the dictates of sound reason for my guidance.
17. Give me the best instruction for warding off miseries, either by confronting or renouncing the affairs of life.
18. Tell me about that man of enlightened understanding who attained the highest state of holiness and tranquility of his mind, and the deeds and manner by which he achieved the same.
19. Tell me, good sage, how the ancient saints fled out of the reach of misery so that I may learn the same to suppress my false conceptions.
20. Or, if there be no such knowledge in existence or, if there is, whether it is to be kept secret from to me.
21. Should I fail to attain that highest state of tranquility, then I must remain inactive and avoid my sense of egoism altogether.
22. I will refrain from eating and drinking even water, and from clothing myself. I will cease from all my actions of bathing and making my offerings, as also from my diet and the like.
23. I will attend to no duty, nor care about prosperity or calamity. I will be free from all desires except that of the abandonment of this body.
24. I must remain aloof from all fears, sympathies, selfish feelings and emulation, and continue to sit quietly as a figure in painting.
25. I will gradually do away with the inspiration and respiration of my breath and outward sensations until I part with this trifle, the seat all of troubles, this the so called body.
26. I do not belong to this body, nor does it belong to me, nor is anything else mine. I shall be null and void like a lamp without oil and abandon everything to do with this body.
27. Valmiki said:— Then Rama, who was as lovely as the moon and whose mind was well filled with reasoning, became silent before the assemblage of eminent men, like a peacock, in awe, ceases his screaming before gathering clouds.
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Chapter 1.32 — Praise for Rama’s Speech
1. Valmiki said:— When Prince Rama concluded his speech, calculated to remove all ignorance from the mind,
2. all men in the assembly had their eyes beaming with wonder. The hairs on their bodies stood erect and pierced through their garments as if wishing to hear the speech.
3. For a moment, after their stoic detachment and in their eagerness, the assembly seemed to have lost their worldly desires and be rolling in a sea of nectar.
4. The audience remained motionless, like figures in a painting, enraptured with internal delight having heard the sweet words of fortunate Rama.
5. There were Vasishta and Vishwamitra with other sages, and prime minister Jayanta and other royal counselors then seated in that assembly.
6. There were also King Dasharata and his subordinate kings, citizens and foreign delegates, chieftains and princes, together with brahmins and men learned in the Vedas and divine knowledge.
7. These accompanied by their friends and allies, with birds in their cages and royal antelopes and steeds about the palace, had listened to Rama with fixed and mute attention.
8. Likewise Queen Kausalya and other ladies adorned with their best jewels were seated at the windows, all mute and motionless.
9. Besides these, the birds on the trees and vines of the princely pleasure garden were listening to Rama without fluttering their wings or making any motion or sound.
10. Also present were masters and aerial beings, tribes of celestial musicians (gandharvas and kinnaras), together with Narada, Vyasa and Pulapa, the lords of the sages.
11. There were also some of the gods and chiefs of gods, demigods (vidyadharas) and the divine cobras (naagas) who heard Rama’s speech full of meaning and clarity.
12. Rama, his eyes beautiful as lotuses, his face lovely as the moon, the star in the sky of Raghu’s family, held his silence.
13. From heaven, divine beings showered flowers upon him with loud cheers and blessings.
14. People in the assembly were delighted with the sweet scent and beauty of these flowers from paradise filled with humming bees.
15. When blown into the air by the breeze of heaven, these flowers appeared like clusters of stars, which after their fall, brightened the ground with their beauty like the beaming smiles of heavenly maids.
16. They appeared like raindrops falling from clouds, ablaze with the light of silent lightning, and scattering like balls of fresh butter.
17. They also resembled particles of snowballs, like the beads of a necklace made of pearls, like beams of moonlight, like small waves in a sea of milk, or like drops of ice-cream.
18. Flowers were carried by the loose and sweet winds of heaven, some lotuses with long filaments attended by clusters of bees humming and flying about them.
19. Among them were heaps of ketaki, kairava, kunda and blue lotus flowers falling and shining brightly.
20. These flowers covered the court hall, the roofs of houses and their courtyards. Men and women in the city raised their heads to behold them falling.
21. The sky remained quite unclouded as flowers fell constantly from above. A sight like this, never before seen, struck people with wonder.
22. The shower of flowers fell for quarter of an hour, but the masters from whose hands they fell were unseen all the while.
23. When the falling of flowers ceased, after the assembly was covered with them, they heard the following words from the divine beings in the sky,
24. “We have been travelling everywhere in bodies as spiritual masters (siddhas) from the beginning of creation, but nowhere have we ever heard any speech as sweet as this.
25. Even the gods such as ourselves have never heard such a magnanimous speech of detachment as Rama, the moon of Raghu’s race, has just now spoken.
26. We account ourselves truly blessed to have heard today this highly charming and wonderful speech from the mouth of Rama himself.
27. Indeed we are awakened and edified by attending diligently to Rama’s truly excellent speech on the ambrosial bliss of asceticism, and leading to the highest joy of men.”
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Chapter 1.33 — Association of Celestial & Earthly Beings
1. The spiritual masters (siddhas) said, “It behooves us to hear the decision of the great sages in reply to the holy sermon delivered by the chief of Raghu’s race.
2. Come forward, you great chiefs of the sages, you Narada, Vyasa, Pulaha and all you other great sages, and be ready.
3. Let us descend to the full open court of Dasharata, which is as bright as gold and free from stain, like bees alighting on an immaculate, golden lotus.
4. Valmiki said:— So saying, the whole company of divine sages left their celestial abode for that court.
5. There Narada, the chief of sages, sat foremost playing on his lute. In the midst was Vyasa with his dark blue complexion resembling a rainy cloud.
6. Moreover, the court was adorned with the presences of the chief sages Bhrigu, Angiras, Pulastya and others, with Chyavana, Uddalaka, Usira, Saraloman and many more with them.
7. Their deer skin garments hung loosely as they embraced one another. Their rudraksha beads moved in one hand, and their water pots shook in the other.
8. Their bodies shed a luster in the royal assembly-hall resembling the yellow starlight, like the beams of so many suns blazing upon one another.
9. They appeared like a shower of moonbeams or like a halo about the full moon, or like a circle about the orb of the sun out of its season.
10. They looked like a circlet of gems of varied colors, or like a necklace of pearls of great luster.
11. At the place where he sat, Vyasa appeared to be like dark cloud amidst the stars. Narada on his seat seemed like the white orb of the moon among stars.
12. Here Pulastya shone like Indra among the gods, and there Angira blazed like the sun amidst heavenly bodies.
13. On seeing the body of masters descending from the sky to the earth, the entire court of King Dasharata rose up to greet them.
14. There was a mixed assemblage of the celestial and earthly sages, whose commingled glory spread a luster to the ten sides of the court.
15. Some of them held bamboo sticks in their hands and others had lotuses in theirs. Some had put sacred grass in their crests, while others had inserted some gems in the braids of their hair.
16. Some had matted and tawny brown hairs on their heads, and others wore garlands of flowers on theirs. Some had strings of beads for their bracelets and others wore wristlets made of jasmine flowers.
17. Some were clothed in tatters, and others wore garments made of bark, while yet others wore clothes of silk. Some were girt with girdles of grass and skin about their waists, and others wore waistbands with pendant strings of pearl.
18. Vasishta and Vishwamitra honored the celestials one by one with respectful offerings, water and courteous address.
19. The great body of the celestials also honored Vasishta and Vishwamitra in their turn, with water and offerings worthy of them, and with polite speeches.
20. The king also honored the gods and the body of the spiritual masters, who in return greeted the monarch with inquiries about his welfare.
21. Then the heavenly and earthly saints exchanged greetings with one another with cordial welcomes and gestures, and were all seated afterwards on seats made of kusa grass.
22. They next honored Rama, who lay bowing before them, with gentle words and congratulations accompanied with offerings of flowers.
23. Seated in that assembly were the sages Vishwamitra, Vasishta, Vama Deva and the ministers of state.
24. Also there were Narada, the son of Brahma, Vyasa, the greatest of sages, Marichi, Durvasa and Angira.
25. Kratu, Pulastya, Pulaha, Saraloma, the great sage Vatsayana, Bharadwaja, and Valmiki the great bard and sage, were all there,
26. as were Uddalaka, Richika, Sarjati as well as Chyavana.
27. These and many others versed in the various branches of the Vedas, knowing all things worth knowing, were the leading members of that assembly.
28. Then Narada and others joined with Vishwamitra and Vasishta in addressing Rama, who was sitting silent with his face turned downwards. They said,
29. “We admire the prince’s blessed and graceful speech dignified with the spirit of detachment that breathes through the whole of it.
30. It is full of thought. It is perspicuous, elegant, clear, dignified, sweet and worthy of noble minded men by its lucid style and lack of faults.
31. Who is not struck with admiration at Rama’s speech? It expresses his thoughts well, correct in its diction, plain, sweet and agreeable to all.”
32. “It is rare to find one man among a hundred who is so eloquent, combining dignity and force with clarity and sweetness such that they command the admiration of all.
33. Who has such a clear head as our prince, a head that is as penetrating as the best pointed arrow, and as fruitful and beautiful as a creeping vine plant?
34. He is truly a man whose intellectual light, like that of Rama, burns like the flame of a lamp within himself and enlightens all about him.”
35. “Man’s blood, flesh and bones serve as machines to supply him with sensations of external objects, but there is no intelligence in them.
36. Life and death, old age and troubles, repeatedly overtake every man, but they are beasts who are so infatuated that they never to think of these.
37. There is scarcely any man to be seen who has an understanding as clear as Rama, who can use the past to judge the future.
38. Rama is the most excellent, admirable, useful and well shaped person among men, like the mango tree among the many useful plants.
39. It is only today that we see a man of Rama’s age having acquired so much experience of the world and who is so extraordinarily mature in understanding.”
40. “In every place there are many trees found growing that are beautiful to see, easy to climb, and abundant in flowers and leaves, but there is no tree of paradise growing on earth.
41. In every forest trees grow with good flowers and leaves, but the extraordinary and fair clove tree is not always to be found.
42. Rama has displayed the wonder of his knowledge, like the moon displays her cooling beams, and good trees their clusters of blossoms, and like flowers diffuse their fragrance all about.
43. It is very difficult to get the essence of true knowledge in this accursed world constructed by the uncontrollable and dominant predestination (of our past acts).”
44. “Only those are reckoned the best of men and leaders of the good who try their best to gain the essence of truth, and whose minds are fixed on glory as their best treasure.
45. We do not see anyone in all this world equal to Rama in discrimination and magnanimity, nor shall there be one like him in future. This is our firm conviction.”
46. “If this speech of Rama which has filled every one here with admiration fails to get a reply to the satisfaction of Rama’s mind, it is certain that all of us here must pass for senseless sages.”
BOOK II. The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation (Mumukshu Khanda)
This section deals with the preparations required of the person who seeks God and the moral and mental qualities necessary to qualify for the spiritual path. Vasishta states that peace of mind (shanti), contentment (santosha), keeping the company of realized sages (satsanga), and inquiry into the nature of the soul (vichara) are the four sentinels that guard the gates to moksha, or liberation. The belief that one is confined by fate is severely condemned and the person who seeks spiritual development is urged to rely on personal efforts for progress on the spiritual path. The person should not shun action but should learn to be indifferent to its fruits. One should not be affected by the pleasures and pains that are the inevitable accompaniment of action. The person is advised to keep the company of saints and to study the scriptures (shastras), particularly those dealing with self knowledge (atma vidya).
Ch 1
Ch 2
Ch 3
Ch 4
Ch 5
Ch 6
Ch 7
Ch 8
Ch 9
Ch 10
Ch 11
Ch 12
Ch 13
Ch 14
Ch 15
Ch 16
Ch 17
Ch 18
Ch 19
Ch 20
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Chapter 2.1 — The Liberation of Shukadeva: His Need for Confirmation
1. After Rama delivered his speech before the assembly, sage Vishwamitra, who sat before Rama, tenderly said,
2. “Rama, you are the best of the most intelligent, and you have nothing more to learn that you have not already come to know by your own observation.
3. You have an understanding clear like a mirror, and your questions serve to polish and reflect your understanding to others.
4. You have a mind like that of Shuka, the son of the great Vyasa, who knowing the knowable by intuition, was yet in need of some teaching to confirm his belief.”
5. Rama said, “How was it that Shuka, son of the great Vyasa, did not at first rest assured of his knowledge of the knowable, but then came to be settled in his belief?”
6. Vishwamitra answered, “Hear me relate to you, Rama, the story of Shukadeva, whose case was exactly like yours. The narration of this story prevents future births.” Vishwamitra speaking:—
7. There is the great Vyasa sitting on his seat of gold by your father’s side, swarthy in his complexion like a coal-black hill, but blazing in brilliance like the burning sun.
8. His son named Shuka was a boy of great learning and wisdom, of a moon-like countenance, with a stature sedate as a sacrificial altar.
9. Like you, he reflected in his mind on the vanity of worldly affairs and became equally indifferent to all its concerns.
10. It was then that this great minded youth was led by his own discriminative understanding to a long inquiry after what was true, which he found at last by his own investigation.
11. Having obtained the highest truth, he was still unsettled in his mind, and could not trust his own knowledge.
12. His mind grew indifferent to its perceptions of the transitory enjoyments of the world, and, like chataka cuckoos, thirsted only after the dew drops of heavenly bliss.
13. Once upon a time the clear sighted Shuka finding his father, sage Krishna Dwaipayana Vyasa, sitting quietly alone, he reverently asked him,
14. “Tell me, O sage, where does this commotion of the world arise, and how can it subside? What is its cause, how far does it extend, and where is its end?”
15. Sage Vyasa, who knew the nature of the soul, being asked this by his son, explained to him clearly all that was to be said.
16. Shuka thought that he already knew all this by his good understanding and therefore did not think much of his father’s instructions.
17. Vyasa, understanding the thoughts of his son, replied that he himself knew no better than his son about the true nature of these things,
18. but there was a king in this land named Janaka who well knew the knowledge of the knowable, and from whom Shuka could learn everything.
19. Being thus directed by his father, Shuka went to the city of Videha at the foot of Mount Sumeru, which city was under the rule of Janaka.
20. The door keeper informed the high minded Janaka of his coming, telling him that Shuka the son of Vyasa was waiting at the gate.
21. Janaka who understood that Shuka had come to learn from him, gave no heed to the news but held his silence for seven days afterwards.
22. The king then ordered Shuka to be brought to the outer compound, where he had to remain irritated in spirit for seven more days.
23. Shuka was then commanded to enter the inner apartment, where he continued a week more without seeing the king.
24. Here Janaka entertained the moon-faced Shuka with an abundance of food, perfumes and lusty maidens.
25. But neither those vexations nor these entertainments could affect the tenor of Shuka’s mind, which remained firm as a rock against the blasts of wind.
26. He remained there like the full moon, tranquil in his desires, silent and contented in his mind.
27. King Janaka, having come to know the disposition of Shuka’s mind, had him brought to his presence, where seeing the complacency of his soul, he rose up and bowed down to him.
28. Janaka said, “You have accomplished to the full all your duties in this world, and you have obtained the object of your heart’s desire to its utmost extent. What do you now desire for which you are welcome from me?”
29. Shuka said, “Tell me, my guide, what is the source of all this bustle (of worldly life), and tell me also how it may soon subside.”
30. Vishwamitra said:— Being thus asked by Shuka, Janaka told him the same things that he had learned from the great soul that is his father.
31. Shuka then said, “All this I have come to know long before by my own intuition, and then from the speech of my father in answer to my question.
32. You sage, who are the most eloquent of all, have spoken to the same effect, and the same is found to be the true meaning of the scriptures.
33. That the world is a creation of will and loses itself with the absence of our desires, and that it is an accursed and unsubstantial world after all, are the conclusions arrived at by all sages.”
34. “Now tell me truly, O long armed prince, so that you may set my mind may be set at rest from its wandering all about the world. What do you think this world to be?”
35. Janaka replied, “There is nothing more certain, O sage, than what you know by yourself and have heard from your father.
36. There is but one undivided intelligent spirit known as the Universal Soul and nothing else. It becomes confined by its desires (mental conditioning) and becomes freed by its lack of them.”
37. “You have truly come to the knowledge of the knowable, whereby your great soul has desisted from attachment to objects of enjoyment and vision.
38. You must be a hero to have overcome your desires for the lengthening chain of attractive enjoyments while still in your early youth. What more do you want to hear?”
39. “Even your father, with all his learning in every science and his devotion to austerities, has not arrived to the state of perfection like you.
40. I am a student of Vyasa and you are his son, but by your abandonment of the taste for the enjoyments of life, you are greater than both of us.
41. You have obtained whatever is obtainable by the comprehension of your mind. You take no interest in the outer and visible world, so you are liberated from it and have nothing to doubt.”
42. Being thus advised by the magnanimous Janaka, Shuka remained silent with his mind fixed in the purely supreme object.
43. Being devoid of sorrow and fear, and released from all efforts, exertions and doubts, he went to a peaceful summit of Mount Meru to obtain his final absorption.
44. There he passed ten thousand years in a state of unalterable meditation, until at last he broke his mortal coil, and was extinguished in the Supreme Soul like a lamp without oil.
45. Thus purified from the stain of rebirth by abstention from earthly desires, the great soul Shuka sank into the holy state of the Supreme Spirit (nirvikalpa samadhi), just like a drop of water mixes with the waters or merges into the depth of the ocean.
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Chapter 2.2 — Vishwamitra’s Speech
1. Vishwamitra said:— Rama, now it is appropriate that you have your mind properly purified from its doubts, as it was done with Shuka, the son of Vyasa.
2. You see, O great sages, how perfectly the knowable is known to Rama, whose good understanding has learnt to feel a distaste for worldly enjoyments as if they were diseases to him.
3. You well know that the fixed principle in the mind of one knowing the knowable is to have an aversion to all the enjoyments of life.
4. The desire of results chains a man to the earth. Knowledge of the frailties here serves to dispel his darkness.
5. Rama knows that curtailing desires is what the wise call liberty, and the attachment of our desires to earthly objects is our confinement here.
6. Spiritual knowledge is easily obtainable by most men, but a distaste for (pleasurable) objects is hard to be had.
7. He who fully comprehends a thing is said to know it, and who so knows what is knowable is called a learned man. No earthly enjoyment can be delectable to such high minded men.
8. The mind that has no zest for earthly pleasures, except the glory of disinterested deeds, is said to be liberated even in the present life.
9. As no vegetable grows in a sterile soil, no disinclination to worldliness grows until one comes to know the knowable reality.
10. Hence know that this supporter of Raghu’s race has truly known the knowable, which has made him disgusted with his princely enjoyments.
11. I tell you great sages that whatever Rama has come to know by his intuition requires confirmation by Vasishta for the tranquility of his mind.
12. For his repose, Rama requires only a reliance upon the Unity, just as the beauty of autumn depends upon clear skies.
13. Let the venerable Vasishta reason with the high minded Rama and restore the peace of his mind,
14. for he is the master and family teacher for the whole race of the Raghus. Besides, he is all knowing and all seeing with a clear insight of the three times.
15. Then addressing himself to Vasishta, Vishwamitra said:— Sage, you well remember the instruction given us of old for pacifying our mutual enmity and promoting the welfare of the high minded sages,
16. when our lord the lotus-born Brahma, seated on the tableland of Nishadha Mountain and shaded by sarala trees, delivered his wise lectures to us and the sages.
17. Through that knowledge of liberation, our worldly desires are dispelled like the darkness of night by sunbeams.
18. Now please, O brahmin, communicate that rational knowledge of the knowable to your student Rama, whereby he may gain the peace of his mind.
19. It will not be difficult for you to teach the spotless Rama, whose mirror-like mind is quite clear to take the reflection.
20. The wisdom of the holy, their learning of the scriptures, and the scholarship of the learned are only praiseworthy when they are communicated to a good student and those who are disgusted with the world.
21. But instruction given to one who is neither student nor disgusted with the world becomes as polluted as milk stored in a hide vessel.
22. Again, the instruction given by one devoid of passions and affections, fear and anger, pride and sin, serves to infuse tranquility into the mind.
23. At these words of Vishwamitra, the son of Gadhi, the assembled sages Vyasa, Narada and others honored his speech with exclamations of “bravo”, “well said”, and the like.
24. Then the venerable Vasishta, brilliant like Brahma his father and sitting by the side of the king, spoke in reply.
25. “O sage, I will perform what you have commanded me to do without fail, for who, though mighty, can refuse to perform the requests of the good and wise?
26. I will destroy the mental darkness of Prince Rama and others by the light of knowledge, just like we dispel the gloom of night by the light of a lamp.
27. I well remember the instructions for dispelling the errors of the world that we were given of yore by the lotus-born Brahma on Nishadha Mountain.”
28. Having said so, the high-minded Vasishta made up his mind, as one girds up his loins, to deliver his lecture to Rama in order to dispel his ignorance and show him the state of supreme joy.
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Chapter 2.3 — Repeated Creations of the World; Repeated Incarnations of the Same Personality
1. Vasishta said, “Rama, I will now expound to you the knowledge that was imparted of old by the lotus-born (Brahma) for the peace of mankind after he created the world.”
2. Rama said, “Sage, I know that you will expound to me the subject of liberation in full length, but first remove my false ideas about the frailty of this world.
3. How was it that the great sage Vyasa, the father and guide of Shuka, with all his omniscience, did not attain disembodied emancipation when his son did?”
4. Vasishta said, “There is no counting the atoms that proceed from the spirit and form the three worlds both before and after the birth of the glorious sun.
5. There is nobody who can even count the millions of orbs that form the three worlds.
6. Nor can anyone calculate what numbers of creation will rise from the ocean of divine existence like endless waves.”
7. Rama said, “It is needless to talk of worlds gone by or yet to come. Speak of the present.”
8. Vasishta said:— This world consists of brute, human and heavenly beings whose lives, when they are said to perish in any part of it, really exist in the same part.
9. The mind is described as ever-fluctuating. In itself, it gives rise to everything in the three worlds. It resides in a void in the form of the heart, and the Uncreated also resides in the empty space of the soul (giving the mind the power to realize the latent ideas of the soul).
10. The millions of beings who are dead, those who are dying and will die hereafter, are all to be reborn here according to the different desires in their minds.
11. The external world appears as a reality, but in truth it is only a creation of our desires. It is an ideal castle in the air, and a magic view spread before us.
12. It is as false as an earthquake in a fit of delirium, like a hobgoblin shown to terrify children, like a string of pearls in the clear sky, and like trees on a bank appear moving to a passenger in a boat.
13. It is an illusion like the phantom of a city in a dream, and as untrue as the imagination of a flower growing in the air. It is at the point of death and afterwards that the unreality of the world best appears.
14. But this knowledge (of the unreality of the world) becomes darkened upon being reborn on earth, when the shadow of this world again falls on the mirror of his sentient soul.
15. Thus there is a struggle for repeated births and deaths here, and a fancy for the next world after death.
16. After he shuffles off his body, he assumes another and then another form, and thus the world is as unstable as a stool made of plantain leaves and its coatings.
17. The dead have no sensation of the earth and other bodies made of the elements, or of the course of the world, but they fall again to these errors upon being reborn here.
18. There is an interminable ignorance resembling an immense river enveloping the face of creation, and breaking into streamlets of ignorance that are impossible to cross.
19. Divinity like a sea shoots forth in various waves of creation that rise constantly and plentifully one after the other.
20. All beings here are only the waves of this sea. Some are alike to one another in their minds and natures, while others are half alike, and some quite different from the rest.
21. I reckon that sage Vyasa there, on account of his vast knowledge and good looking appearance, is one of thirty-two of these waves.
22. There were twelve possessed of a lesser understanding. They were the patriarchs of men and endued with equal energy. Ten were men of subdued spirits, and the rest were adepts in their family duties.
23. There will be born again other Vyasas and Valmikis, and likewise some other Bhrigus and Angiras, as well as other Pulastyas and others in different forms.
24. All other men, asuras and gods with all their hosts are repeatedly born and destroyed either in their former or different shapes.
25. Like this there are seventy-two treta cycles in a kalpa age of Brahma, some of which have passed by and others to follow. Thus will there be other people like those who have gone by and, as I understand, another Rama and Vasishta like ourselves.
26. There have been ten successive incarnations of this Vyasa who has done such wonderful deeds and is famed for his vast knowledge.
27. Myself and Valmiki have been contemporaries many a time, born in different ages and very many times.
28. We have been together many times, and there were others also like myself, and so was I also born in many forms (in many ages).
29. This Vyasa will be born again eight times hereafter, and he will again write his Mahabharata and the Purana histories.
30. He will finally attain liberation from the body after he has divided the Vedas, described the acts of Bharata’s race (in the Mahabharata), and established the knowledge of Brahman (in the Vedanta).
31. This Vyasa who is devoid of fear and sorrow, and who has become tranquil and emancipate in himself after subduing his mind and discarding the worldly desires, is said to be liberated even in his present lifetime.
32. Those liberated in life may sometimes associate with relatives and estates, his acts and duties, his knowledge and wisdom, and all his exertions, like those of any other men, or he may forsake them all at once.
33. These beings are either reborn a hundred times in some age or never at all (as in the case of divine incarnations), depending on the inscrutable will (maya, or illusion) of God.
34. Souls undergo such changes by repetition, like a bushel of grain that is collected only to be repeatedly sown, then reaped again and again.
35. As the sea heaves its constant surges of different shapes, so all beings are born constantly in various forms in the vast ocean of time.
36. The wise man who is liberated in his lifetime lives with his internal belief (of God) in a state of tranquility, without any doubt in his mind, and quite content with the ambrosia of equanimity.
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Chapter 2.4 — Results Come from Effort, Not Fate or Chance; Acts of the Present Life Are Stronger than Those of Previous Lives
1. Vasishta said:— I know, gentle Rama, that liberation of the soul is the same whether in its embodied or disembodied state, just like seawater and its waves are the same liquid substance.
2. Liberation, whether of embodied or disembodied spirits, consists in their detachment from the objects of sense. Hence the soul unattached to sensual gratification is liberated, having no idea of objects of the senses.
3. We see before us the living liberated sage (Vyasa) as an embodied person, yet we have no doubt of the detachment of his inner soul from this body.
4. The difference between embodied and disembodied souls, when they are equally enlightened and liberated, is like that of the seawater in its calm and billowy states.
5. There is no more difference between liberation in the body and without the body than there is between the air in motion and at rest.
6. Liberation, whether with or without the body, produces unselfishness. We have lost our selfishness ever since we have come to the knowledge of an undivided unity.
7. Therefore attend to the true doctrine that I am going to deliver to you, which will be a jewel to your ears as it will dispel the darkness of ignorance.
8. Know, O son of Raghu, that everything in this world is obtainable by our efforts being properly employed.
9. This knowledge — that there is no other way to gain results except but by our efforts — rises like the moon in the human mind and sheds its cooling and delightful influence to the heart.
10. It will become evident that we see the results of our efforts, and that nothing comes from what the dull and mistaken call chance or fate.
11. An effort, when directed according to the counsel and conduct of the good in the exercise of the action of the body and mind, is attended with success. Otherwise it is as vain as the freak of a madman.
12. Thus he who hopes to acquire riches and perseveres in its acquisition surely succeeds in gaining them, or else he stops short midway.
13. It was by means of their efforts that some particular persons have obtained the paramount dominion of Indra over the three worlds.
14. It is by effort that one attains the rank of the lotus-born (Brahma), and some by effort even gain the inner joy of the state of Brahma.
15. It is by virtue of effort that somebody becomes the best among men, even as he who bears the flag of the eagle (Vishnu among the gods).
16. It was by the exertion of one’s efforts that some succeeded to obtain the form of Shiva accompanied by his female power and adorned by the crescent moon as his crest.
17. Know our actions to be of two kinds, namely those of former and present lives. Know that the acts of the present life generally supersede those of the past.
18. Know also that energy joined with constant practice and supported by wisdom and some stimulating force is able to break down Mount Meru and the demerits of acts in men’s former lives.
19. The exertions of a man proceeding from his good efforts and countenanced by the law lead to his success, or else they either go for nothing or turn to his disadvantage.
20. A man laid up in a state of disability is unable to twist his figure to hold a little water in the hollow of his palm to drink. Meanwhile there is another who (by his well-directed efforts) gets possession of seas, islands, mountains and cities for himself, supports all his dependents and relations, and does not think this earth too great for him.
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Chapter 2.5 — The Necessity of Effort
1. Vasishta said:— Will or inclination, even according to the rules of law and scriptures, is the prime instrument of all action, just as the reflection of light gives various colors to things.
2. If someone uses unlawful acts to attain something that he desires, it becomes as fruitless as the efforts of a madman.
3. Good or evil results depend upon how you try, but according to fatalists, fate and effort are the joint causes of acts.
4. The truth is, human exertions are either lawful or unlawful. The former lead to success and the latter to dangerous consequences.
5. Fortune and effort contend with each other like two rams of unequal strength where the mightier overcomes the other.
6. Therefore man should apply himself diligently and employ his skill and effort in such a way that his today may overcome his tomorrow.
7. When two unequal forces contend with one another like two rams, the stronger force, whether of this or that man, overcomes the other.
8. When one incurs a failure or danger even by his lawful efforts, he should know it to be the result of his misapplied efforts.
9. By utmost exertion in the right way, like gnashing his teeth, one can overcome his misfortune and that bad luck that sometimes baffle his efforts.
10. When one finds himself led astray by the demerit of his acts of a former state of existence, he must attempt to subdue them by the greater energy of his present state.
11. One should endeavor to exercise his efforts so much that he may beat down the evils resulting from his bad fortune (or predestination).
12. The evils of bad fortune are undoubtedly removed by the meritorious acts of the present life, just like the bad consequence of an act of yesterday is averted by its remedy of today.
13. Having trampled over an unfavorable fortune by one’s reliance upon his continuous effort, he must attempt to secure to himself every good for his well-being in his present life.
14. Know that tranquility is not to be found through the effortlessness of dull ass-like men. It is the lawful energy of men which is said to secure his welfare in both worlds.
15. One should make his way out of the pit of this world by force of his energy and diligence, just like a lion breaks out from his cage.
16. Every day one must contemplate that his body is subject to corruption, his beastly acts must be kept back, and man-like acts put forward.
17. Good efforts are attended by good results just like bad ones are followed by bad consequences. Chance is merely a meaningless word.
18. Do not make your bloom of youth as useless as ashes by sitting idly at home and enjoying the bliss of the harem like a maggot in a wound.
19. He who has no reliance on present objects, but depends upon assumptions from the past, is like a man running in fear from his own hands, supposing them to be snakes.
20. It is a pleasure to men of perverted understanding to think of themselves as guided by their fortunes. Prosperity flies far away from such men who depend on their luck.
21. Therefore let a man diligently apply himself first to his reason, and then investigate the works of subtle, hidden spiritual knowledge.
22. Those who do not set their hearts to act according to the dictates of the scriptures, but use other means to make efforts to gain (their ends), are accursed as madmen because their efforts are in vain.
23. But people do not even try to make an effort. They think that effort would be endless, and no amount of effort could make a gem come out of a stone.
24. Know that like all things, there is a limit to both human fate and effort, just like a pot or a picture has a (finite capacity and length).
25. It is by means of good conduct derived from best precepts and the company of the good that one succeeds to his object. A disposition that breaks loose of these is sure to fall to the contrary, to ruin.
26. Again any man who conducts himself in the right course of action will never fail in his attempts at anytime.
27. Some among the best of men had been reduced to misery by their poverty and helplessness. Yet by exertion of their manhood, they have again risen to the eminence of Indra.
28. By learning the scriptures well from boyhood, by keeping company with the good, by possession of good qualities, and by diligent application, a man is sure to gain his object.
29. It has been seen, known, heard and experienced that acts are rewarded with success. They are dullheaded who think of obtaining it through fate or luck.
30. If there were no folly of idleness in this world, what man would fail either to be rich or learned? It is because of idleness that this earth is filled to its utmost limit of the sea with indigent and beastly men.
31. After passing his childhood and getting rid of its false and idle playfulness, and when he has attained the age of youthful vigor, let a man apply himself diligently to the company of wise men, and to the cultivation of his understanding by a knowledge of the scriptures and their meanings, and by scanning well his own faults and qualities.
32. Valmiki said:— After sage Vasishta had said all this, the day passed away, and after taking leave of the assembly the sages went to bathe. With the rising beams of the sun dispelling the gloom of night, they joined again.
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Chapter 2.6 — Fate Is the Result of Former Efforts
1. Vasishta resumed, saying:— Fate is nothing but the result of our actions in former existences. Therefore it is possible to leave it at a distance and extricate oneself by keeping good company and studying moral scriptures.
2. Whatever one attempts to do, he readily meets with its reward. This is the effect of effort. Fate is nothing but the same thing.
3. Men laboring hard are heard to exclaim, “O how painful it is!” Men suffering under fate cry out, “O hard is fate!”
4. Thus fate, being nothing but a name for our past actions, it is as easily overcome (by present acts) as a boy (is subdued) by an adult youth.
5. As some bad conduct of yesterday is corrected by proper behavior of the present day, so is past fate is removed by present acts.
6. Carnal minded libertines who make no effort but depend upon the favor of fortune are perverted in their nature and marked for misery.
7. Thus, if acts of courage are capable of averting one’s misfortunes, then it must be acknowledged that such courage which destroys the other is the mightier of the two.
8. Just like two fruit growing on the same branch, one empty within and the other full of juice, so does courage render the fruit of fate empty.
9. Seeing the decay of the best things in the world, we must own the predominant power of the cause of this decay.
10. Like two rams, our fate and efforts are fighting one another. Victory is always on the side of the stronger.
11. In the case of a royal elephant taking up a beggar boy to be made a ruler, its cause is to be attributed more to the vote of countrymen and citizens (than to chance).
12. As a man takes his food and grinds it under his teeth, so is one (depending on fate) crushed by the stronger party relying on his efforts.
13. Thus, more active masters employ inferior servants like clods of earth in any work the masters like.
14. Silly and impotent men seeing the strong thrive by their efforts, whether apparent or unseen, are apt to attribute it to their good luck.
15. The strong efforts of men truly constitute the fortune that governs them, and these two are viewed alike by the wise.
16. In the case of the a beggar boy who is installed into the position of ruling and protecting the people of a kingdom, it is the unanimous concurrence of the law and ministers and of the elephant and of citizens (that is to be taken as the chief cause).
17. Should it be only the royal elephant who elects the beggar boy, then in that case it would be attributed to the boy’s good fortune only.
18. Present acts destroy those of the past life, and those of the past life can destroy the effect of present acts, but the exertions of a man are undoubtedly successful.
19. Of these two powers, that of the present is manifestly superior to the past. Hence it is as possible for the present to overcome the past just like it is for an adult to overcome a boy.
20. As a hail shower lays waste the cultivation of a whole year, so also does predominant fate sometimes overpower the attempts of this life.
21. However it does not behoove us to be sorry at the loss of our long earned treasure, for what does it serve to have sorrow for something that is beyond our control?
22. If I have sorrow for what I am powerless to prevent, then I may as well weep all the days of my life because death will not spare me.
23. All our acts are subject to their proper time and place, and to the modes of their operation and combination according to the course of nature. That is why the more diligent are the most successful.
24. Therefore, in order to cross the ocean of this world, we ought to rely upon our efforts and the clarity of our understanding from the help of scriptures and association with the wise.
25. Actions of the past and present lives are the two fruit trees growing in the garden of humanity. Whichever is cultivated the best thrives and bears most fruit.
26. He who is unable to overcome his false fate by his best efforts is no better than an ignorant beast that has no power over its pain or pleasure.
27. He who thinks of going to heaven or hell by the will of the Maker is also a slave to destiny and is no better than a beast.
28. The man of a noble mind who is employed in acts of goodness, breaks off from the errors of the world like a lion from its cage.
29. Those who vainly imagine themselves to be led about by some supernatural power, and so slight their necessary duties, are to be shunned at a distance as the mean and base.
30. There are thousands of acts that are attended with gain or loss to their doers, but it is the duty of man to do what is right whether they be pleasant or painful.
31. He who does not transgress the bounds of law and does not forsake his duties is attended by every blessing abundant as the pearls in the sea.
32. The wise describe courage as devoted diligence in acts leading to one’s object. Being guided by the scriptures leads to his success.
33. An act accompanied by exertion accomplishes one’s object, and the company of the wise and the study of good books serve to raise a man by brightening his understanding.
34. The wise know infinite happiness or a tranquil spirit is the supreme good, and those good works are fit for study which lead to that state.
35. The acts of our former lives constitute what we call our fate (daivam) or destiny and they return to us from the region of the gods for our good in both worlds.
36. We blame a fate that is the creation of the fancy of the ignorant, who by their adoration of such passivity meet their own destruction.
37. One benefits himself always by his activity in both worlds, as the good acts of today gives a grace to those of yesterday.
38. Therefore, whoever applies himself with diligence to his acts, reaps their fruit like that of an amalaki in his palm, which though it is within his grasp, yet it could not be obtained without the cost of some labor.
39. Only the ignorant depart from the beaten path and fall into the error of fatalism. Therefore give up that false faith in an unreal fate, which is a mere creation of the imagination and devoid of any cause or effect. Apply your manly exertions.
40. The fruit of following the scriptures and observing good customs and local usages is long known (to be wholesome), exciting the heart and the exertion of the limbs to action. This is what is called “manly activity.”
41. All wise men, after discussion of the subject of fate and acts, have applied themselves to action by utter rejection of fatality and have accomplished their ends by attendance on the good and the wise.
42. Knowing the efficacy of activity, every one should work on personal effort and attain to his highest perfection by attending to good scriptures and the wise counsels of learned men.
43. Knowing that the bondage of our births is full of pain, let people listen to the wise and strive to exercise their efforts to obtain the true and sweet blessing of tranquility.
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Chapter 2.7 — On the Necessity of Activity Vasishta speaking:—
1. Having obtained a body free from disease and a mind free from trouble, one should try to know the knowable to prevent further births.
2. Whoever wants to avert his destiny through action obtains the acme of his wishes both in this world as well as the next.
3. But whoever is averse to diligence and relies on his luck is an enemy to his own soul and sacrifices all his virtues, riches and hopes.
4. The exercise of our faculties of sense and mind as well as of the members of the body are the different modes of our exertions that lead us to success.
5. Our perceptions are the cause of our mental activity, and this triggers the body to action whereby we obtain the fruits of our desire.
6. Whatever rule exists in the scriptures (shastras), it is addressed to our acts and never points us to fate. Even children are well aware of this.
7. It was by the exercise of their efforts that Brihaspati became the lord of gods, and Shukra obtained the position of the teacher of the demons.
8. There have been many weak, poor and miserable men who have by means of their manly exertions become equal to Indra himself.
9. So also there have been many great men on earth who, after enjoyment of a great many extraordinary things and luxuries here, have become guests in hell for lack of exercising their manly virtues.
10. In this manner all beings have evaded the effects of their various states of want and opulence by means of their own efforts.
11. There are threefold benefits derived from the study of books, from the lectures of a teacher, and from one’s own industry, all of which attend our efforts and not destiny.
12. This is the long and short of all the scriptures (shastras), that diligence preserves our minds from all evils by employing them to whatever is good and right.
13. To apply with diligence to whatever is excellent, not low or mean and not liable to loss or decay, is the lesson of parents and teachers to their sons and pupils.
14. I get the immediate fruit of my labor in proportion to my exertion. Therefore I say that I enjoy the fruit of my labor and not of fortune.
15. Activity gives us success and this is what elevates the intelligent. But men of little understanding in their miserable state rely only in luck.
16. We have visible evidence (of the efficacy) of activity every day, in the examples of men travelling in distant countries (for the sake of gain).
17. He who eats becomes satisfied and who does not starves. So he who walks is said to proceed and not one who rests. In like manner, whoever speaks is called a speaker and not the silent man. Thus action makes the man.
18. Wise men escape from great difficulties by means of their efforts, but not so the mistaken fatalist by his fruitless inertia.
19. Whoever acts in any manner gets his reward accordingly, but the inactive man has nothing to expect anywhere.
20. By well directed industry a man reaps the best reward, as he meets with its reverse by his misapplied labor. Think upon this, O Rama, and do as you like.
21. The reward of industry, which a man meets with sooner or later at anytime or place, is said by the wise to be his fortune.
22. No one can see his fortune, nor has anybody ever seen it, nor is there such a thing to be found in any world. It is only the merit of our acts here which they place in another world.
23. A man is born on earth to grow up and decay in his time, and no destiny is seen in the same way in his childhood, youth or old age.
24. Application to diligence and action for the attainment of an object are known by the term “effort” by the wise, whereby all things are accomplished.
25. Going from one place to another, holding a thing in the hand, and the movement of limbs are all the acts of effort and not destiny.
26. There is another kind of propensity which is towards acts productive of evil. This sort of action is likened to the attempt of a madman which yields no good.
27. Men of acute understandings raise themselves to elevation by their association with the virtuous, study of good works, and active employment in duties tending to their own good.
28. The boundless joy arising from equanimity is said to constitute one’s supreme good. This blessing also results from a man’s diligent application to the scriptures.
29. Understanding leads to the knowledge of the scriptures, and the scriptures tend towards our right understanding of things. Just so does the lotus serve to beautify a lake, and the lake lends its grace to the lotus.
30. It is also by virtue of one’s deep study and good company in youth that a man later attains his desirable objects.
31. It was by means of his actions that Vishnu conquered the demons and established the order of the world. It was by this that he created the worlds, none of which could be the work of fate.
32. Now, O lord of Raghu’s race, employ your efforts to the exertion of your manly activities in such a way that you may live unafraid of being bitten by the snake-like people in this tree of the world (crush the malice of your enemies).
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Chapter 2.8 — Invalidation of Destiny
1. Vasishta continued saying that:— What does “destiny” mean? It has no form, no act, no motion or might. It is only a false notion rooted in the (minds) of the ignorant.
2. “Destiny” is a word that has come into fashion from the idea of karma, the idea of future retribution for one’s past actions and the like.
3. From this, ignorant are led to believe that there is such a thing as destiny, something incapable of explanation, which has led them to a fallacy much like mistaking a rope for a snake.
4. Yesterday’s misdeed is rectified by the following day’s good action. Therefore let this day supersede the past and employ yourself today to action.
5. The perverted understanding that believes in destiny is grounded on false conception. One may as well enter fire with the conviction that it will not burn unless it is so destined.
6. If destiny is the sole cause of everything, then why should a man take actions of bathing and making his offerings, sitting and walking, all of which may be done by his destiny?
7. What then is the need to advise another to do something if destiny is the director of all? Let them all be silent and say nothing to nobody.
8. There is none to be seen on earth who is motionless except the bodies of the dead. If it is action that produces anything, then it is useless to believe in destiny.
9. Nor is there any co-operative power of invisible destiny that is perceptible in the actions of men. Destiny is only a meaningless word.
10. Instruments and hands are two things joined together. Each has its separate action, but if the hand is lacking, nothing can be done by destiny.
11. Whether in the mind and intellect of a (learned) pundit or (illiterate) cowherd, there is no such idea of destiny. Hence it is a mere non-entity.
12. If destiny does not mean agent, it must mean something else. If it is the same thing as agent, why give it a different name (i.e., “destiny”)? If it can be proved to be an imaginary term, why not imagine your effort to be the agent?
13. Immaterial destiny, like a void, has no connection with the material body. If it had form or figure it would be visible. Therefore destiny is nonexistent.
14. If destiny were the mainspring of the movements of all beings in the three worlds, then let all creatures rest at ease (with assurance) that destiny will perform their parts.
15. The belief that we are guided by destiny and do as we are led to do is a deception and an excuse. In fact, there is no such thing as destiny.
16. It is a fool who fancies a destiny to himself and relies upon it to his own disadvantage. The intelligent raise themselves to better states by means of their effort.
17. Say, who is there in this world among the mighty and brave or the intelligent and learned who looks or waits upon destiny?
18. Destiny may be said good if it had the power of saving a man from being beheaded whom fortune-tellers had pronounced by their calculation to be long lived.
19. Again, O Raghava, if a fortune-teller predicts that a man will become learned and he does without being taught, then we can believe fortune is true.
20. Mark, O Rama, how the sage Vishwamitra has cast away his destiny and attained the state of Brahma rishi by his own efforts.
21. Look at us and others who have become sages. It was by our industry that we became wanderers in the ethereal regions.
22. Remember, O Rama, how the chiefs of the Danava race discarded their destinies altogether and used their prowess to establish their empires on earth.
23. Look again how the chiefs of the gods have wrested the extensive earth from those demons by their valorous deeds of slaying and harassing them (in battle).
24. See Rama, how people use their own industry to make wicker vessels so handsome that they hold water, all without the aid of any destiny.
25. In all our works of giving and receiving, walking, resting and the like, we see no causation by destiny in their completion, just as we see medicines causing healing.
26. Therefore, O Rama, give up this destiny of your mistaken fancy, which in reality is devoid of its cause or effect and is a false and ideal nothing. Give yourself to your best efforts.
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Chapter 2.9 — Investigation of Acts (Thoughts Are Action; Mind Is Soul)
1. Rama asked, “Will you sage, who is versed in all knowledge, kindly explain the true sense of destiny (daivam) in popular use.”
2. Vasishta replied:— It is a man’s activity and nothing else, O Raghava, that is the cause of all his actions and the recipient of their consequences. Destiny has nothing to do with it.
3. Destiny is a mere imaginary thing that neither exists nor acts nor feels (their effects). It is neither seen nor regarded.
4. Destiny refers to the good or bad results that proceed from action.
5. People label the wished for and unwished for consequences resulting from the good and bad deeds of human activity as destiny.
6. The majority of mankind calls human activity, which is the only cause of some unavoidable future consequence, to be destiny.
7. Truly, O Raghava, destiny, though empty as a void, appears to be real to somebody who thinks it to be an active agent, while others know it to be inactive.
8. Again, destiny is a mere saying uttered by men upon the result of some good or bad effect of their actual efforts, that “it is this which has produced the other.”
9. It is my belief and I know it for certain that destiny is no more than a word uttered by people upon their attainment of the object of their exertions.
10. Destiny is a word of consolation uttered by men to signify the good or evil they encounter and which they call to be the effect of the other.
11. Rama asked, “Sage, how is it that you, who is all wise, now contradict your own assertion that destiny is the result of the stock of our former acts?”
12. Vasishta answered saying:— Well said, O Rama. You know everything. But hear me tell you the whole of it, whereby you will have a firm belief in the nonexistence of destiny.
13. In the end, even all the various desires that men may have entertained in their minds come to be accounted as his deeds.
14. All animals also act according to their desires, doing nothing for which they have no inclination in their natures.
15. As a villager goes to his village and a townsman goes to town, so it is the nature of desire to lead men to their particular acts.
16. The keen and firm resolution with which an act was done in a former state of life, that truly is termed destiny in successive births.
17. Thus the acts of all active beings conform to their natures, and the actions of men are in accordance with their desires. Desire is nothing other than the mind itself, and the mind is the same as the human soul.
18. The mind is the soul and cause of all acts which they call the doings of destiny. Certainly, without the mind there is no destiny.
19. This mind is truly the living soul that acts as it desires and accordingly enjoys the fruit. The same is destiny.
20. Rama, know that the mind, the heart, desire, action and destiny are synonymous terms applied by the virtuous to the unascertainable soul.
21. Now whatever the so-named soul undertakes to do continually and with a firm resolution, it obtains the fruit thereof accordingly.
22. O support of Raghu’s race, it is by means of the activity or effort of the soul, and by no other means, that the soul obtains everything. May it lead you to your good only.
23. Rama said, “Being caught in the net of my pre-existent desire, I remain a captive to them and do as they lead me to. Say then, O sage, what else I can do?”
24. Vasishta replied:— So then, O Rama, you can reach your lasting good if you exert your efforts for it. There is no other way.
25. Desires are of two kinds: some lead to good and others to evil. Hence the desires of one’s prior state must have been of one kind or the other.
26. If pure desires guide you now, gradually you will be led by means of your good acts to attain the state of your lasting welfare.
27. But if wrong inclinations tend to lead you to difficulties, of necessity you must try your best to overcome such propensities.
28. Rama, you are wise, perfectly intelligent, and composed of more than just a dull body. Now if you need another’s guidance to waken your intellect, then when is your own intelligence?
29. If you would have someone else enlighten your understanding, then who was the other who illuminated him, and who is the other to illuminate that person also? Therefore, because no one is wholly devoid of understanding, let him improve it himself.
30. The currents of our desires flow between two channels of good and evil. It requires the exertion of our actions to turn them to the right course.
31. You who is the mightiest of the mighty must exert the force of your activity to turn your mind away from a direction to the profitless and towards a profitable course.
32. By directing the mind from the wrong to the right way, it will take the right course; and the opposite is true also. But because the human mind is like a child, it must not be forced.
33. The training of a child is like that of the mind. It is done slowly by gentleness and indulgence, and not by force or hurry.
34. You have already mastered all your good and bad desires by your constant practice. From now on, you have to direct your tendencies to good only.
35. O victorious Rama, when by your pristine habits you have an aptitude to do good, know that it is the result of your good nature.
36. O sinless Rama, at present your desires are lying dormant in your mind. They require some practice to be employed only to the doing of good.
37. If you will not exert yourself now to improve your dormant desires by constant practice, you can never expect to be happy.
38. When doubtful, incline towards what is good, and as you thrive on this you shall have no evil to fear.
39. Whatever one practices, with time he will become perfect, just like studying from childhood makes the learned free from error.
40. When you have good will inside, you must accomplish your purpose by means of your activity and your subjection of the organs of your body.
41. So long as your mind is imperfect and unacquainted with the state of divine truth, you must attend to your teacher, books and reasoning and act according to their directions.
42. Having first finished your acts and known the truth, you must abandon even your meritorious deeds, and all your desires with them.
43. Having known by your good understanding that the virtuous course led by honorable men is truly good, give particular attention to know the nature of God, then forsake even that and remain as silent as an ancient sage (muni).
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Chapter 2.10 — Brahma Propounds the Knowledge of Liberation to Vasishta
1. Vasishta resumed:— This thing called destiny is as true as the reality of God. It is the cause of causes and effect of effects.
2. Now attend to my words, depend on your efforts, and intently apply your ever confident mind to the attainment of your chief good.
3. Use your effort to control your misleading senses from pursuing their objects.
4. I will now set out a system for you that contains the essence of the best means for liberation, and which will confer the fruits of your exertions and lead you to your welfare in both worlds.
5. Let those who have great minds forsake their worldly desires in order to avoid future births and attend to these lectures with calm contentment.
6. Weigh well the meanings of previous discussions and those to come, repress your mind from its worldly cares, and compose yourself in calmness in order to inquire after truth.
7. Hear me relate to you, Rama, the way to emancipation which will remove your feelings of pain and pleasure, and which will become the surest means to lead you to supreme happiness.
8. On hearing this lecture on liberation in the company of all those reasonable men, you will know that highest state which is free from pain, and of which there is no end.
9. This was spoken of old in a former kalpa age by Brahma abiding in the Supreme Spirit. It is the remover of all anxiety and giver of all comfort to the soul.
10. Rama asked, “Say, O brahmin who is my guide, what cause moved Brahma himself to reveal this knowledge of old, and how did you obtain it?”
11. Vasishta replied:— The Supreme Soul of infinite manifestations exists by itself. It passes through and supports the whole in the form of void and understanding and as light to all living beings.
12. From Him who remains the same (unaltered being) in his rest and motion, the great Vishnu was born, like a moving wave on the quiet waters of the sea.
13. Then Brahma was produced from the lotus of his heart, having Mount Meru for its seed, the points of the compass for its petals, and the stars for its pistils.
14. He, being beset by gods and sages acquainted with the Vedas and their meanings, created all the worlds and all minds with their various thoughts.
15. Then he created groups of men in the Bharata division (India) and in a corner of Jambudwipa (Asia) and subjected them to all manner of diseases and afflictions.
16. They are also troubled by the possession and desire of many things and their subjection to dangers and diseases. Here all species of created beings are subject to a variety of tribulations and afflictions.
17. The lord and creator of worlds, seeing the misery of these people, felt compassion for them like a father for his children.
18. Then, for a moment he pondered within himself, with intensity of thought and for the good of all creatures, how to end the misery of these beings who were subjected to death and despair.
19. With this thought the lord god Brahma himself established the rules of austerity, piety, charity, veracity and pilgrimage.
20. Having established these, the lord and creator again thought within himself: how to make an end of the many miseries of the men he had created.
21. He thought upon selfextinction as the supreme bliss, obtainable only through knowledge of God, and whereby man might be exempted from repeated births and deaths.
22. It was divine knowledge, he thought, that was the only means by which men could crossing the ocean of this world. Austerity, charity and pilgrimage were no means to it.
23. With this he said, “I will immediately make a new and sure bridge for the salvation of men and for their liberation from pain.”
24. Having thought so, Lord Brahma sitting on the lotus meditated in his mind and produced me from himself.
25. Being thus produced, I immediately stood in the presence of my ancestor, like a wave rising from the sea leans towards it.
26. Holding a pitcher in one hand and prayer beads made of seeds in the other, I bowed down to the god who held a water-pot in one hand and prayer beads in the other. He addressed me like this.
27. “Come my son,” he said, then holding me with his hand, he made me sit on the northern petal of his lotus of truth that shone as brightly as the moon amid silvery clouds.
28. Wearing the skin of an antelope and with the voice of a gander addressing a stork, my father Brahma spoke to me who was similarly dressed.
29. He said “For a moment I will overpower your fickle-mindedness under a mist of unconsciousness, like a dark cloud obscures the moon.”
30. It was under this curse that I lost my reason and forgot everything, even the clear idea I had of God.
31. I became as helpless as one out of his wits, and came to be afflicted with distress and sorrow like an indigent person.
32. “Ah, how sorrowful is this world,” said I. “How did evil come to dwell in it?” With these thoughts I remained in silence.
33. Then he my father spoke to me saying, “Ah my son, why are you so afflicted? Ask me for a remedy for your affliction and you shall become happy.”
34. Then, seated as I was on the gold-colored leaflet of the lotus, I asked the lord creator of all peoples about the medicine for worldly sorrows.
35. “How, my lord,” I asked, “did this world come to be so full of misery, and how can people be rid of it? This is what I ask of you.”
36. I then learnt the most holy wisdom that my father Brahma gave me. Following his advice, I became quite composed.
37. Then, seeing me knowing the knowable and restored to my own natural state, the creator of the world and revealer of all causes said,
38. “My son, I had turned you to insanity by an illusion in order to make you inquire into the essence of true knowledge for the welfare of mankind.
39. Now you are released from the curse of illusion and you have arrived to your highest state of understanding. You have become as one soul (with the Supreme) and as pure as gold.
40. Now shut your heart against the world and proceed to the surface of the earth, to the land of Bharata, for the good of mankind.
41. There employ yourself to ceremonial duties to the best of your knowledge and advise others on how to properly conduct rituals.
42. But those who are disgusted (with the world) in their hearts, and are rational with their elevated understandings, are to be counseled with the esoteric knowledge that confers true joy.”
43. Being thus appointed by him who was born in the lotus, I continue to abide here throughout the succession of beings.
44. I have no duty to perform here but live my life free from all cares. I always do my acts with a mind as tranquil as if it were in a state of sleep. I do my works with the body, but I do nothing here with my soul (which is fixed in God).
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Chapter 2.11 — On the Qualifications of Student and Teacher; the Four Guards at the Door of Liberation
1. Vasishta continued:— I have fully related to you about the descent of knowledge on earth, the reason for my birth, and the intention of lotus-born Brahma.
2. Now Rama, as you are eager to learn transcendental knowledge, and as you are so anxious for it in your mind, it must be the effect of your pristine merit.
3. Rama said, “Sage, how was it that the supreme lord felt a desire to send down knowledge on earth after his creation (and not with it)?”
4. Vasishta replied:— Brahma in his own nature is the same as the Supreme Brahman. He is born in Him like a wave is born of the waters of the deep.
5. This great lord saw the imperfection of his creation and saw its whole course in times past, present and future.
6. He saw the decay of ceremonial rites after the end of the age of truth (the golden age) and other ages and considering the error in which men were to fall, he felt pity for them.
7. Then the lord thought of giving me true knowledge and sent me to earth to dispel the ignorance of mankind.
8. Like me, he has sent other great sages here, like Sanat Kumara, Narada and many others also.
9. He has sent them all to redeem mankind from the chains of its ignorance through a series of good acts and through their progress in divine knowledge.
10. At the end of the past golden age, these great sages saw the gradual decay on earth of the holy rituals.
11. They created rulers at various places on earth in order to regulate the course of duties and observe proper limits.
12. They made many works on traditional law and sacrificial rules to be observed on earth, and appropriate provision for the accomplishment of religious and temporal duties (in the smritis) .
13. But with time, all these duties became slack in their conduct, and men have no thought other than seeking their daily maintenance.
14. Every day disputes arise among landowners on account of their estates and properties, and people are subjected to various penalties in large numbers.
15. Under such conditions, it is not possible to govern without states fighting each other, resulting in rulers and subjects inevitably being reduced to wretchedness.
16. In order to remove the impotence (of such princes) and lead them to a comprehensive view of things, we have prescribed many excellent precepts of knowledge to them.
17. This spiritual knowledge was first given to princes, but afterwards it came to be known under the title of royal science (raja vidhya, kingly science).
18. This royal science is of a hidden, esoteric nature. It is also the best kind of spiritual knowledge. Many kings have been set beyond the reach of calamity by knowledge of this science.
19. It is after many such fair-famed princes had gone by that your mighty self was begotten by the present King Dasharata.
20. O slayer of your enemies, I find a very agreeable and holy kind of apathy growing spontaneously in your most clear understanding.
21. There is another kind of cold-heartedness, O Rama, caused in the minds of the virtuous and reasonable men which is called casual detachment.
22. But your unprecedented and astonishing apathy, produced without any cause and only by your reason, is called by the wise to be real detachment.
23. Seeing the harmfulness of worldly things, what man will not grow adverse to them? The greatest displeasure is that which rises in the mind from one’s own judgment.
24. They are reckoned as great and wise men whose detachment springs without cause (of detestation to the world) and whose minds are clear.
25. It is as graceful to see a person whose mind with good discrimination feels a disgust from its own judgment as it is to see a young bridegroom adorned with garlands of flowers.
26. They are esteemed as the best of men who, after judicious consideration of worldly troubles, apply themselves to detachment.
27. It must be by one’s repeated and judicious examination of inner and outer illusions that he should forcibly withdraw himself from them.
28. Who is there at the mournful sight of a funeral event who does not feel an aversion to worldliness? However, it is aversion born of itself that is highly commendable.
29. I see that you are sincerely indifferent and reaching the acme of true greatness. You are worthy of the best knowledge as is the moist earth of receiving seeds.
30. It is by the grace of the lord God and Supreme Spirit that a lucky understanding like yours naturally inclines to reason.
31. It is by performance of ritual duties and observance of prescribed rules that the demerits of former births are expunged.
32. Upon removing former demerits, understanding turns of itself to become aware of spiritual matters, like the simultaneous flight of a crow towards a falling coconut.
33. But those devoted only to ritual acts are like people plunged in an eddy in which they whirl up and down until they come to perceive the state of supreme (joy).
34. Seeing this (illusory) state of the world, a man must shake off the delusion of his worldly-mindedness, just as the elephant breaks loose from his chains.
35. It is too intricate, O Rama, to understand the course of this boundless world. Not even the greatest of embodied beings can know it without true knowledge.
36. Know, O support of Raghu’s race, that men of great understanding have passed over the un-fordable ocean of the world by means of the raft of their knowledge and reason.
37. Now, with attention and steadiness of mind, hear this rational knowledge for your deliverance from the flood of this world.
38. Without the remedy of right reason, the unceasing excitement of the senses and the fears and miseries of the world will continually disturb the mind.
39. There is nothing other than rational knowledge that can enable holy men to endure the afflictions of the opposite extremes of heat and cold and wind and rain.
40. The constant cares and miseries which befall to men at every step sometimes serve to torment the ignorant mind like a flame of fire burns straw.
41. But the troubles of this world cannot afflict a wise man who knows the knowable and discerns all things; just as it is impossible for the flame of fire to burn wood drenched by rain.
42. A man knowing the truth is like a firm oak tree that no whirlwind of disease or distress raised by the hot winds of this desert of the world has the power to upset.
43. An intelligent man who has a mind to know the truth must diligently serve his wise teacher with loving regard.
44. What a well-minded teacher says in response to any question must be carefully preserved in the mind, like a piece of fine muslin receives dye.
45. O best of the eloquent, you must not receive instruction from one unacquainted with truth. Whoever asks such a person anything is the greatest of fools.
46. He is the basest of men who does not carefully attend to the words of the truth-telling teacher who is asked about anything.
47. He is the best inquirer who seeks answers from a person who demonstrates by his actions whether he knows the knowable or not.
48. A person who asks boyish questions without determining the teacher’s qualifications is reckoned a vile inquirer incapable of knowing great things.
49. When asked, a wise man will reply to him who is able to comprehend the former and later propositions, and who is possessed of a good understanding, but he should make no answer to a vile brutish being.
50. The teacher who gives his lecture without examining the capacity of the inquirer to grasp his meaning is pronounced unwise by the learned.
51. O delight of Raghu’s race! Our meeting is very congenial. We are well adapted to each other. You as inquirer are an admirer of virtue and I the speaker am well acquainted.
52. You who understand the meaning of words should well consider everything that I tell you and take them to heart.
53. You are truly great and disgusted with the world, and you know the truth among mankind. Whatever is spoken to you must be impressed in your mind like red dye on muslin.
54. By your attention to what I say and your discrimination of spiritual matters, you can make your understanding receive my instruction like waters reflect sunlight.
55. Receive all that I say and store them diligently in your mind; or else it is useless to ask me anything.
56. The mind, O Rama, is as fickle as an ape in the forest. Correct it carefully and attend to spiritual instruction.
57. Always keep yourself from the injudicious and ignorant and those addicted to the company of wicked people, and honor the virtuous.
58. It is by association with good people that we can gain the wisdom that resembles a tree yielding fruits of enjoyment and liberation.
59. It is said there are four guards who keep watch at the gate of liberation (moksha), namely: peace (equanimity, self-control), judgment (spirit of inquiry), contentment, and company of the good.
60. All these, or three or two of them, are to be attended with care because they shall open the door leading to the abode of liberation.
61. At least one of them is to be sought with diligence, even at the expense of one’s life. Because by securing one of these a man can reconcile and gain all four .
62. The wise man is a receptacle of all scriptures, of all knowledge and austerity, and is a gem on earth, just like the sun is the receptacle of light.
63. The dull understanding of a senseless man becomes as stiff as a block, and like water freezing as hard as stone.
64. Your good nature and good qualities, O Rama, and the counsels of the learned in the scriptures, have made you sit here with a heart blooming like a lotus towards the rising sun.
65. Your ears lifted to hear these wise lectures have enabled you to repress your thoughts; as the music of the lute attracts the mind of the deer.
66. Now secure, O Rama, the treasures of peace and good nature by your practice of detachment of which there is no decay.
67. Your knowledge of the attainment of liberation will be increased by your attending to the scriptures and the society of good men, and also by your practice of austerity and self subjection.
68. You must know that the sure remedy against ignorance is the study of divine knowledge with a clear understanding.
69. Know this world is a poisonous plant and a seat of dangers. It infects the ignorant at all times, unless one will take the pains to dispel his darkness.
70. Greed accompanied by ignorance moves within the heart in a serpentine course, by turns expanding and contracting it like a blacksmith’s bellows.
71. The true light of things dawns only in the minds of the wise, just as the gentle moon appears only in a clear and cloudless sky.
72. He is truly called a man who can judge (the truth) by the major and minor propositions, whose mind is expanded and filled with brilliant ingenuity.
73. Rama, the clear wisdom of your mind makes you shine like the full moon dispelling the darkness of the cloudless sky by her cooling and translucent beams.
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Chapter 2.12 — The Greatness of True Knowledge
1. Vasishta said:— Rama, I honor you as one of a perfect mind. You know what to ask and you understand what is spoken to you. Therefore I will continue speaking to you respectfully.
2. Be still, keep your mind fixed in yourself, and attend to knowledge. Be free of pride and passions and incline yourself to pure truth.
3. You are possessed of all the qualities of an enquirer, and I those of the speaker, in as much as there are gems in the ocean.
4. My son, you have gained the detachment that is closely related to reason, like the humidity of the moonstone correlates to gentle moonbeams.
5. Rama, your long and early practiced pure virtues and good qualities have raised your fame, like the long stretching white fibers of the stalk exalt the spotless lotus.
6. Now hear the words I tell you Rama, for you alone are fit to receive them, as only the moon is able to open the kumuda lotus petals.
7. Whatever business or investigation someone undertakes, it must be brought to a happy conclusion that tends towards his peace and tranquility.
8. If men of good understanding did not have the solace of philosophy, what rational being could dare bear the misery that ignorance brings in this world?
9. All the faculties of the mind are absorbed in contemplation of the Supreme, like solar heat dissolves the rocks of boundary mountains at the end of the world.
10. Rama, the intolerable stomach cramping pain caused by this venomous world is healed only by yoga meditation, just like the poison of a snakebite is removed by garuda incantations.
11. One obtains the capacity for yoga by discussing the scriptures in the company of good people, which alone can provide us with the great charm of spiritual knowledge.
12. It must be recognized that we lessen our sorrows by acting with reason. Therefore reasonable men are never to be disregarded.
13. A reasoning man gets released from his worldly sickness. He quits his frame which is full of diseases just like a snake casts off his time-worn skin. He looks with a placid mind and calm composure upon the magic scenes of the world. Hence a fully wise man is not subject to the misery of the imperfectly wise.
14. The rough and uneven pleasure of the world (samsara) is a disease that stings like a snake. It cuts men like a sword and pierces them like a spear. It binds them tightly like a rope, and burns them like fire. It blindfolds their understanding like the darkness of the night. It makes them as prostrate and dull as a slab of stone. It destroys one’s prudence and lowers his position. It casts men into the pit of error and torments them with greed. Thus there is almost no kind of trouble which does not happen to worldly minded men.
15. Worldliness is as dangerous a disease as cholera which, unless it is healed in time, is sure to trouble its patient with the torments of hell:
16. like eating stones; wounded by swords and spears; pelted by stones; burnt by fire; numbed by frost; dislocated limbs; body smeared with blood like sandalwood paste; bored by worms like worm-eaten trees; body pierced by pikes, broomsticks and the fiery shafts and bolts continually falling in battle; toil and drudgery under the sun; the cold wetness of work in a summer fountain house; dumb and deaf without rest or sleep; and, finally, suffering decapitation.
17. With thousands of such intolerable tortures of worldly life, no one should remain negligent of his release from this state but ought to think that only his reflection on scriptures can produce his real good.
18. Rama, look upon this assembly of great sages, rishis, brahmins and princes who have fortified themselves by the armor of wisdom and are liable to no pain or grief, yet they are engaged in the arduous affairs of this world with minds as placid as yours.
19. Moreover, there are many of the best of men who with their spiritual light and pure understanding reside in this world like the gods Hari (Vishnu), Hara (Shiva) and Brahma above all concerns and fluctuating desires of life.
20. The journey of this world is delightful to one who, after the removal of his errors and dispersion of the cloud of his ignorance, has come to the knowledge of truth.
21. When serenity of the mind and calm repose of the heart are secured, all the senses are subjected to peace and everything is viewed in an equal light, and this knowledge of the truth gives delight to our journey in this world.
22. Know also that this body of ours is the car, these organs are its horses, our breaths are the winds blowing upon it, and the mind is the driver who feels the delight of driving. The minute, subtle soul is the rider who is conscious of wandering about the world. Knowledge of this truth makes our earthly journey a pleasant one.
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Chapter 2.13 — On Equanimity (Peace & Tranquility of Mind), the Characteristics of a Saint Vasishta speaking:—
1. Intelligent men who have seen the spirit fix their sight upon it and wander about in the world as persons of great and elevated souls.
2. They do not grieve, nor do they wish or ask for anything of good or evil (in this world). They do their works with detachment.
3. Those who rely on themselves remain quiet, unaffected by good or evil and acting their parts with a calm serenity. They take no concern for what is harmful or delectable to them.
4. They are alike indifferent to coming or not coming, going or not going, doing or not doing, and speaking or not speaking.
5. After having come to know their God (as the author of all good), whatever acts or sights may appear pleasant or disgusting to others cease to affect them in any way.
6. The mind having rid its desires feels a sweet composure associated with bliss that is like moonlight descending from the heavenly orb all about.
7. By being unmindful of worldly affairs and regardless of all its excitements, the soul is filled with a joy resembling the ambrosial waters in the moon.
8. He who ceases to act his magical parts (in this playground of the earth) and desists from following his inclinations and childish pranks, shines forth in his spiritual light.
9. Such are the powers gained from spiritual knowledge, and by no other means whatever.
10. Therefore should a man should employ his reasoning powers during life to try to seek and know and adore the Supreme Soul.
11. It is the agreement of one’s belief with the teachings of the scriptures and his instructor, joined with his constant meditation, that can give him a full view of the Supreme Spirit.
12. The fool slighting the scriptures and their instructions and disregarding the counsels of great men is exposed to difficulties and dangers from which he can have no release.
13. There is no disease or poison, no trouble or affliction so painful to one in this earth as the ignorance one breeds in himself.
14. Those whose intellects are purified a little will find this work to be of greater effect to dispel their ignorance than any other scripture.
15. Everyone who is a friend to good sayings and good sense should diligently attend to this scripture with its beautiful examples, pleasing lessons and lack of inconsistencies.
16. Lack of dignity, inextricable difficulties, and baseness and degeneracy are all the offspring of ignorance, just like thorns are the offshoots of the prickly ketaki plant.
17. It is far better, O Rama, to rove about a begging with a pot in hand to the homes of vile chandalas than to lead a life deadened by ignorance.
18. Rather dwell in dark dismal cells, within dry dreary wells, in the hollows of trees, or remain like solitary blind worms than labor under the miseries of ignorance.
19. A man receiving the light leading to his liberation will never fall into the darkness of error or gloom of death.
20. As long as the clear light of reason does not shine upon the mind like the sun, so long will the chilly frost of poverty continue to contract the lotus of humanity.
21. To liberate oneself from the miseries of the world, one must know the true nature of the soul, both from his teacher and the evidence of the scriptures, and also from friends like ourselves.
22. Try, O Rama, to imitate those who are liberated in their lifetime, who are free to roam about like the gods Hari, Hara and others, and like the holy sages among brahmins.
23. Here (on earth) our miseries are as endless as atoms, and our happiness is as small as a drop of water on a piece of straw. Therefore do not fix your sight upon that little happiness which is beset by misery.
24. Let an intelligent man diligently apply himself to attain that state of endless happiness which is free from pain and constitutes his highest completion.
25. They are reckoned the best of men and deserving of completion whose minds are free from the fever (of worldly cares) and attached to the transcendental state.
26. Those base minded mortals who are satisfied with their enjoyments, eating and drinking, and the pleasures of their worldly possessions, are reckoned as stark blind frogs.
27. Those attached to the company of imposters and wicked men, or addicted to the practice of evil deeds, who are enemies in the guise of friendship, or those given up to gluttony,
28. all such foolish men of mistaken and stupid minds fall into the hardest of hardships, to the misery of miseries, to the horror of horrors, and to the hell of hells.
29. Happiness and misery destroy and succeed each other by turns. They are as fleeting as flashes of lightning. Hence it is impossible to be happy forever.
30. Those great souls who are indifferent and well judging like yourself are known as the most honorable of men, worthy of both temporal enjoyments and spiritual emancipation.
31. By reliance upon right reasoning joined with a habit of remaining dispassionate, men are able to overcome the dark and dangerous torrents of this world.
32. No man of reason who well knows how the illusions of the world derange understanding should allow himself to sleep amid these illusions.
33. Whoever remains neglectful in his worldliness is like a man negligently sleeping on a grassy bed when his house is on fire.
34. A state reached without return, attained so there is no more cause for sorrow, undoubtedly is attainable only by divine knowledge, and that is a certain truth.
35. Even if such a future state did not exist, there would be no harm to believe in it. But if such a state exists, belief in it will save you from the ocean of this world (samsara).
36. Whenever a man is inclined to think on the means of his salvation, he is sure to soon be entitled to his liberation.
37. The undecaying, unerring and fearless state of tranquility is nowhere to be had in the three worlds without union (with the Supreme).
38. Having gained that best of gains, no one is liable to the pain from which no wealth, friend or relation can save.
39. Neither the actions of one’s hands and feet in his offerings and pilgrimage to distant lands, nor the bodily pains of asceticism, nor his refuge in a holy place can serve his salvation.
40. It is only by means of one’s best exertions and the fixing of his mind to one object, and also by the subjection of his desires, that one may arrive at the ultimate state (of bliss).
41. So it is that by means of discrimination, reasoning and ultimate ascertainment of truth, a man may avoid the snares of misery and attain his best state.
42. One sitting at ease and meditating within himself attains the blissful state free from sorrow and future birth.
43. All holy men are known to be beyond the bounds of frail pleasures. They reckon their best serenity to be their ultimate bliss.
44. They have given up all thoughts of humanity and heaven, which are as devoid of true joy as a mirage is void of water.
45. Therefore should one think of subduing his mind and resort to peace and contentment as the means. These joined with an unbounded composure produce true happiness.
46. It is not to be had by sitting, or going up and down, or by wandering, or by prostrating (before the altar). It is not to be acquired by rakshasa demons, deities or ignorant men.
47. That ultimate joy is born of and obtainable from peace of mind. It is fruit from the blossom of peace of the high tree of reason.
48. Those engaged in worldliness without mixing in it are like the all-illumining sun and are known as the best of men.
49. The mind at peace and rest, clear and free from errors, and without any attempt or desire neither forsakes nor wishes for the world.
50. Hear me tell you about the orders of the guards (equanimity, inquiry, contentment, and good company) at the gate of salvation. If you know these orders, you are allowed to enter.
51. Thirsting after pleasure is a state of protracted disease, and this world is full of mirage. Only equanimity can cool this dryness like the moistening beams of the moon.
52. It is peacefulness that leads to all good and is reckoned the best state of being. Quiet is joy. It is peace and prevents error.
53. The man who lives content with his quiet and a calm clarity of his soul, with a mind filled with detachment, makes friends of his enemies.
54. Those whose minds are adorned with the moonlight of peacefulness feel within a flux of beams of purity rising in them like the whitish waves of the Milky Ocean.
55. Those holy men who have the lotus-like flower of peacefulness growing in the lotus-shaped receptacle of their hearts are said to have a secondary heart like the two hearts of the god Hari (holding Brahma in one of them).
56. They whose untainted faces shine like the moon with the luster of peacefulness are to be honored as the luminaries of their families. Others, seeing the charming beauty of their appearance, honor them as ravishers of the senses.
57. Whatever is beautiful in the three worlds, and whatever may be imperial prosperity and grandeur, nothing in them can afford a happiness equal to that of peacefulness.
58. Whatever the misery, anxiety or intolerable difficulty, they are all lost in a tranquil mind, like darkness in the sun.
59. The mind of no living being is so delighted with moonbeams as that of the peaceful man from his heart-felt joy.
60. The virtuous man who is calm and quiet and friendly to all living beings feels the benign influence of highest truths appearing of themselves in his mind.
61. Just like all children, whether good or bad, have a strict faith in their mother, so all beings here rely upon a man of an even disposition.
62. A refreshing drink of ambrosia or the kind embrace of prosperity cannot give such gratification to the soul as one’s inner satisfaction of the mind.
63. Whether afflicted by disease or disaster, or dragged by the rope of greed, bear yourself up, O Rama, by the composure of your mind.
64. Whatever you do and eat with the calm coolness of your mind, all that is far sweeter to the soul than anything sweet to taste.
65. The mind that is overpowered by the ambrosial flavor of peacefulness and desists from activity may have the body lacerated, but it will heal shortly.
66. No imp, demon or enemy, and no tiger or snake ever annoys a peaceful man.
67. He who has his mind and body well guarded by the invulnerable armor of meekness can never be pierced by the shafts of adversity. He remains like the thunder-stone that is impenetrable by arrows.
68. The king seated in his palace is not so graceful to see as a quiet peaceful man who is graced by his calm and clarity of understanding.
69. There is nothing in life so delightful to see as the satisfaction one feels at the sight of a contented and peaceful man.
70. Only he who lives a holy life with his gentle and peaceful conduct is said to be truly living in this world.
71. A sober minded, meek and honest man pleases everyone by all that he does. It is as if he captivates all beings to himself.
72. He is called the meek who neither feels pleasure nor pain at the sight, touch, sound or taste of anything good or bad.
73. He who is indifferent to all objects and neither leaves nor longs for anything, but keeps his senses and appetites under control, is called a saint.
74. Whoever knows all things, both internally and externally, with a clear understanding, and who attends and looks to his own concerns, is truly said to be a saint.
75. He whose mind remains as calm as moonbeams at the approach of either feast or violence, and even at the moment of death, is said to be a saint.
76. Who, though present, neither rejoices nor murmurs at anything but remains as if he were absent from it, and conducts himself as quietly as if he were fast asleep, such a person is called a saint.
77. He whose complaisant look casts a graceful nectar-like radiance on all around him is said to be a saint.
78. Who feels a cool calmness within himself and is not disturbed or immersed in any state of life, and who though a layman is not worldly minded, such a man is termed a saint.
79. He who does not take the difficulties of life to his mind, however long or great they may be, or who does not think his body to be himself, is known to be a saint.
80. The man of the world who has a mind clear as the sky and is not tainted (by worldliness) is said to be a saint.
81. The quiet man with tranquility of mind shines forth among sages and ascetics, among priests and princes, and among the mighty and learned.
82. Great and meritorious men whose minds are attached to peacefulness feel a rest arising in their souls like cooling moonbeams.
83. Peacefulness is the greatest of all the many virtues and the best decoration of courage. It shines resplendent among all dangers and difficulties.
84. O Rama, seek your perfection in the way in which high-minded men have sought and attained their perfect states, by holding fast onto peacefulness as an imperishable virtue, preserved by the respectable, and never to be lost or stolen.
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Chapter 2.14 — On Rational Inquiry, the Necessity of Inquiry & Clear Reasoning Vasishta speaking:—
1. It must be the duty of one whose understanding is cleared and purified by a knowledge of the scriptures to argue constantly with a guide who knows how to reason correctly.
2. Understanding, when sharpened by reasoning, comes to see transcendence. The only best medicine for the chronic disease of worldliness is reasoning (the second gate-keeper).
3. The world is like a forest of troubles, sprouting endless desires which, being once felled under the saw of reason, will germinate no more.
4. O wise Rama, our understandings are shrouded under unconsciousness at the loss of our friends, at times of danger, and even of quiet. Only reason is our companion.
5. There is no expedient for the learned and wise except reason. It is by means of reason that the minds of good people can avoid evil and secure their good.
6. All our strength and understanding, our valor and renown, and the ends of our actions, result from our reasoning with the intelligent.
7. Reason is the lamp to show us right and wrong and the instrument with which we accomplish our desires. By reliance on right reason, one easily crosses over the wide ocean of the world.
8. Pure reasoning, like a strong lion, tears asunder the elephants of great error which ravage the lotus beds of the mind.
9. If ignorant men have at anytime attained a better state in life, it was all owing to the light of the lamp of their reasoning.
10. Know, O Raghava, that dominion and fair prosperity, together with our enjoyments and eternal salvation, are all only fruits of the celestial, wish-fulfilling kalpa tree of reasoning.
11. The minds of great men, expanded by reasoning, are never liable to be immersed under the currents of calamity (but float above them) like gourds upon water.
12. Those who conduct themselves with their intellects shining forth with reason become the recipients of its most liberal gifts.
13. Lack of reason is like the thorny and sour karanja plant sprouting forth with blossoms of sorrow, growing in the lakes of ignorant minds in order to shut out their hopes and prospects.
14. O Raghava, shake off the lethargy caused by your neglect of reasoning. This torpor darkens your vision as if by the black, eye-liner collyrium powder and maddens your mind as if by the drunkenness of wine.
15. The man of right judgment is not liable to fall into the long and dangerous maze of error, but remains as a blaze of light amidst the gloom (of ignorance).
16. The reasoning faculties shine like a bed of lotuses in the limpid lake of the mind. Whoever has such a reasoning mind exalts his head as high as the Himalayan heights.
17. A man having a dull mind and incapable of reasoning with the sharpness of a flash of lightening is like a child who sees false apparitions about him.
18. Rama, you must shun and keep base, unreasonable men at a distance. They grow as plump as a sugar cane to cause sorrow. They resemble the spring season that grows fresh weeds of evil.
19. Whatever misdeeds, misconducts and mishaps present themselves to man, they all result from his lack of the light of reason, and they lay hold of him like ghosts appearing in the dark.
20. O support of Raghu’s race, shun the unreasonable man at a distance. He is like a solitary wild tree that comes to no good use.
21. A mind filled with reason and devoid of the impatience that attends worldly desires feels the light of transcendent quietism shining in the soul with the full luster of the moon.
22. When the light of reason shines in any person, it imparts the coolness and good grace of moonbeams to all things around him.
23. The reasoning power of man accompanied with the flag of divine knowledge and the silvery fan of good understanding shines like moonlight in the darkness of night.
24. Men with the good grace of their reason throw a sun-like radiance on all sides about them and dispel the gloom of worldliness.
25. Reasoning serves to destroy the false apparitions of errors which present themselves to the minds of children like ghosts in the night sky.
26. All things in the world appear charming, but they are only unrealities. They are like clods of earth that are broken by the hammering stone of reason.
27. Men torment themselves with the false imaginations of their own minds. Only reason can drive away this deeply rooted apparition from the mind.
28. Know that the fruit of the high tree of reason is the even, unobstructed, interminable and independent happiness called perfect detachment (kaivalya) .
29. Through reason and its evident influence on the deprivation of (physical) gratifications, there rises an unshaken and exalted disinterestedness in the mind, like the cooling beams of the moon.
30. When a saint has reached his perfection by means of the elixir of judgment seated in his mind, he neither desires for more nor leaves (what he has).
31. A mind relying on that state of equanimity and perceiving the clear light has neither its fall nor elevation, but enjoys its inward expansion like that of vacuum forever.
32. One unconcerned with the world neither gives nor receives anything, nor feels himself elated or depressed at any event, but views everything as an indifferent spectator.
33. He is neither numbingly cold nor does he dwell on anything internally or externally. He is not inactive or merged in activity.
34. He slights the loss of anything and lives content with what he has. He is neither depressed nor elevated, but remains as full as the sea.
35. It is in this manner that the high-aspiring, great souls who are yogis conduct themselves in this world, with their fullness (of joy) and living as liberated in this life.
36. These saintly sages, having lived as long as they like, abandon it at last, and gain their perfect detachment and eternal unity (kaivalya).
37. A wise man should intently consider within who he is, who he belongs to, what is his family, by whom he is surrounded, and think on the remedy (of his worldliness).
38. It is a king, O Rama, who well knows the difficult and doubtful state of the business, and his success or failure depends solely on his right judgment and on nothing else.
39. It is the sayings and information established by the Vedas and the Vedanta that form the grounds of our evidence, and these are to be ascertained by our reason as by the help of a lamp in the gloom of night.
40. The bright eyesight of reason, even when it has to view things at a distance, is neither blinded by darkness nor dimmed by the full blaze of daylight.
41. He who is blind to reason is like one born blind. A demented man is an object of universal pity, but a man with a reasoning soul is said to be possessed of divine eyesight and becomes victorious in all things.
42. The miraculous power of reason is acknowledged to be a divine attribute and an instrument to highest joy. Therefore it is not to be lost sight of, even for a moment.
43. A man graced by reason is loved even by the great, just as the delicious and ripe mango fruit is delicious to all.
44. Men with their minds illuminated by the light of reason are like travelers acquainted with their way. They are not liable to pitfalls of constant danger and misery.
45. Neither a sick man nor one beset by a hundred evils wails as bitterly as an ignorant man whose soul is deprived of reason.
46. Rather leap like a frog in mud, or creep like a worm in the dirt, or lie like a snake in a dark hole or crawl on the ground than walk like a man devoid of reason.
47. Therefore get rid of unreasonableness which is the home of all your dangers, is condemned by the wise, and is the end of all your disasters.
48. Great men must always be in full possession of their reasoning, because those unsupported by their reason are liable to fall into the pits of darkness.
49. Let everyone keep his soul under the control of his own reason and by this means deliver the deer of his mind from falling into the mirage of this world.
50. It is the province of reasoning to consider logically that it is in one’s own self that the evil known as worldliness had its rise.
51. The thick mist of error is only for the continued misery of man, and it prevails on the stony minds of those who are demented by the loss of reason.
52. Even the wise who hold fast to the truth and forsake all untruth in this world are unable to discern their true nature without the aid of reason.
53. It is by means of reason that one comes to the knowledge of truth, and by means of truth that he gets peace of mind, and it is tranquility of mind that dispels the misery of men.
54. Now Rama, take delight in such acts as may be productive of utility to the world, and whereby you may arrive to perfection. Weigh all things with the clear eye of reason, which will make you blessed forever.
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Chapter 2.15 — On Contentment
1. Vasishta continued:— Contentment (the third gate-keeper) is the chief good. Contentment is called (true) enjoyment, and the contented man, O destroyer of enemies, gets the best repose.
2. Those who are happy with their prosperity of contentment and possess the calm repose of their souls are like holy saints. They think a kingdom no better than a bit of rotten straw.
3. Whoever retains a contented mind amidst all the affairs of the world is never disturbed or dejected in adverse circumstances, O Rama.
4. The saints who are satisfied with the ambrosial drink of contentment consider the greatest wealth and enjoyments to be only poison.
5. Even the waves of liquid nectar fail to afford that pleasure which the sweetest taste of contentment, the healer of all evils, gives to its owner.
6. Abandonment of unfruitful desires, and calmness in those desires that are obtained, feeling no pain and having no sense of pleasure, constitute what is called contentment here below.
7. Until the mind can enjoy contentment rising of itself spontaneously in the soul, troubles will continue to grow like briars and brambles in a bog.
8. The mind cooled by calm contentment and purified by the light of philosophy is always in its full bloom like a lotus under sunbeams.
9. An ungoverned mind, subject to desires and devoid of contentment, does not receive the light of knowledge, like a soiled mirror takes no reflection of the face.
10. A man whose mind is always bright with the sunshine of contentment does not shrivel like a lotus in the dark night of ignorance.
11. A man devoid of diseases and anxieties, whose mind is content though he be thoroughly poor, enjoys the happiness of a supreme ruler.
12. He is called contented who does not long after what he does not possess, who enjoys what he has in its right manner, and who is always graceful in his manners.
13. There is a beauty that shines in the face of one whose mind has the satisfaction of contentment. His face has a fullness of magnanimity and a purity of thoughts like that of the Milky Ocean.
14. Let a man rely on his manly efforts and entertain self control within himself to abandon his craving for things.
15. He whose mind is full with the ambrosia of contentment and a calm and cool understanding acquires a perpetual composure within himself, like cooling moonbeams.
16. All great fortunes wait upon him whose mind is strengthened by contentment, as if they were servants attending a king.
17. One remaining content and composed in himself quells all his anxieties and cares, like the rains settle the dust of the earth.
18. Rama, a man shines by the contentment of his mind and the purity of his conduct, like the cooling and spotless moon when she is full.
19. No one receives so much delight from his accumulation of wealth as he derives from the sight of the beautiful placid countenance (of a contented person).
20. Know, O delight of Raghu’s race, that the gods and the sages honor most those best of men who are decorated with grace of equanimity.
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Chapter 2.16 — On the Company of the Virtuous and Good Conduct
1. Vasishta resumed saying:— Know, O highly intelligent Rama, that the company of the virtuous (the fourth gate-keeper) is everywhere of the greatest benefit to men for their crossing over the ocean of the world (samsara).
2. It is the tree of virtuous company (satsanga) that produces the fresh blossom of discrimination which, being cherished by men with great souls, yields its fruit of prosperity.
3. The society of the learned makes solitude appear as company, and the evil of death as good as a festivity, and converts a difficulty to ease.
4. The society of the virtuous wards off all disasters which, like the frost, invade the lotus beds of our hearts. The society of the virtuous baffles the icy breath of ignorance.
5. Know that the society of the virtuous is the best way to improve understanding, destroy the tree of ignorance, and remove all our mental diseases.
6. The society of the virtuous produces the light of reason, which is as charmingly fair as a cluster of flowers after being washed by rainwater.
7. The influence of virtuous company teaches us the best way of living, which is never impaired or obstructed by anything and is ever full in itself.
8. Let no man ever keep himself from the association of the virtuous, even though he is involved in utmost distress and cast in irremediable circumstances.
9. The society of the virtuous lends a light to the right path. It destroys a man’s internal darkness by the rays of the sun of knowledge.
10. Whoever has bathed in the cold, clear stream of good company does not need the merit derived from acts of charity, pilgrimage, austerity or sacrifice.
11. Of what use is austerity or pilgrimage to one who has the society of virtuous men and whose life is free from passions, sins, doubts and knots (of scruples in the heart)?
12. Blessed are the peaceful in their minds who people regard with as much devotion as poor men dote fondly upon gems and jewels.
13. An intelligent mind with its gracefulness derived from good company always shines like the goddess of riches in the company of fairy nymphs.
14. Therefore that blessed man who never abstains from the company of the holy is renowned as having attained the crown of clear understanding.
15. Hence all uncompromising believers, holy men and those who are revered by people are to be served by all means for crossing over the ocean of the world.
16. The company of the saints is like rainwater that extinguishes the flames of hell. Surely those who neglect the company of the saints serve as dry fuel to hell-fire.
17. The medicine of holy association serves to allay entirely all the afflictions consequent to poverty and death and all tribulations of worldly affairs.
18. Contentment, society of the virtuous, the practice of reasoning, and remaining undisturbed comprise the means for mankind to cross over the ocean of the world.
19. Contentment is reckoned to be the best gain, good company the right course, reasoning the true knowledge, and remaining undisturbed the highest bliss.
20. These are the four surest means to break off the shackles of the world, and whoever is practiced in these has surely passed over the false waters of terrestrial sea.
21. Learn, O best of the intelligent, that the practice of any one of these pure virtues leads to a habit of all four.
22. Every one of these separately is a leader to the others. Therefore apply yourself diligently to one of these for your success in getting them all.
23. Association with the good, contentment, right reasoning, and good judgment, joined with peace and tranquility, serve as cargo-ships in the ocean of the world.
24. All prosperity attends on him who is possessed of reason, contentment, peacefulness and the habit of keeping good company, like the fruit of the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree.
25. The man possessed of reasoning, contentment, tranquility and a proclivity to keep good company is attended by every grace, as all the digits unite in the full moon.
26. The happy mind filled with contentment, quietness, reasoning power, and a tendency towards good company meets with prosperity and success, much like kings guided by good ministers.
27. Therefore, O delight of Raghu’s race, bravely govern your mind and always diligently practice some one of these virtues.
28. Exert your best courage to subdue your elephantine mind. Know that until you have mastered one of these cardinal virtues, you can make no progress.
29. It must be, O Rama, that you must set your heart to work by the exertion of your courage and the gnashing of your teeth in order to succeed in meritorious deeds.
30. For whether you be a god, yaksha nature spirit, man, or tree, you cannot, O long-armed Rama, have a better course until you master one of these qualities.
31. As soon as one of these virtues is strengthened and made fruitful in you, it will serve to weaken the force of the faults of your uncontrollable mind.
32. The cultivation of virtues leads to their full growth and the suppression of vice, but the fostering of vice will lead to the increase of vices and the suppression of good qualities.
33. The mind is a wilderness of errors in which the stream of our desires flows with full force between its two banks of good and evil where we hold our stand.
34. It bears away and throws a man on the bank which he strives to reach by his own efforts. Therefore O Rama, do as you like to reach either shore.
35. Now with all the exertion of your manly force, try by degrees to turn the course of your desires towards the happy shore in the forest of your mind. Know, O high-minded Rama, that one’s own disposition is like a rapid current that must not be permitted to bear him away (to the perilous coast).
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Chapter 2.17 — On the Contents of the Yoga Vasishta
1. Thus, O progeny of Raghu, a reasoning soul is worthy of attending to the words of wisdom, just as a prince (is inclined to listen) to a discourse on polity.
2. A clear and high-minded man who has renounced the company of stupid folks is capable of fair reasoning, just like the clear sky has the capacity of receiving moonlight.
3. You who are replete with the entire grace of such quality should now attend to the words that I say to remove the errors of your mind.
4. Only he whose tree of merit is bending down with its load of fruit will be interested to hear these words for the sake of his salvation.
5. It is only the noble minded, and not the base, who are receptacles of grand and holy sermons conferring the knowledge of their future state.
6. This collection of thirty-two thousand couplets (slokas, verses of two lines each) is judged to contain the essence of the means to liberation and to confer the final annihilation (of our being).
7. As a lamp presents its light to every waking man, so does this work effect the ultimate enlightenment of every person whether he would like it or not.
8. One’s knowledge of this work, whether by his own perusal or hearing about it from others’ repetition, tends to the immediate obliteration of his errors and to the increase of his delight, as if done by the holy river of heaven (Ganges).
9. As the fallacy of mistaking a rope for a snake is removed by examining it, so the fallacy of the reality of the world is removed by reading and studying this work, which gives peace to one who is vexed and tired of the world.
10. It contains six books all filled with sentences full of reason, each distinct from the other in its import. It has many couplets containing chosen examples on all subjects.
11. The first book (Vairagya Prakaranam, Chapter on Detachment) treats of detachment and causes the growth of apathy (in the mind) like a tree growing in desert soil.
12. It contains one thousand five hundred stanzas which, being well considered in the mind, must impart a purity like the luster of a gem after it is polished.
13. The next book (Mumukshu Vyavahara Prakaranam, Chapter Concerning the Qualities of the Aspirant for Liberation) dwells on the conduct of one longing after his liberation, and contains a thousand couplets arranged in judicious order.
14. It describes the nature of men desiring their liberation. Then follows the third book (Utpatti Prakaranam, Chapter on Creation) on the creation of the world, filled with stories and examples.
15. It has seven thousand couplets teaching sound philosophy about the spectator and spectacle of the world in the forms of “I” and “you”, designated the ego and nonego.
16. It contains a description of how the world was produced from its state of non-existence. A diligent attention to this chapter will convey a full knowledge of this world to the mind of the listener.
17. This ego and non-ego, and this vast expanse with all the worlds, space and mountains, are to be seen as having no form or foundation as there are no such things.
18. There are no elements such as the earth and others. They exist only as the fabrications of our minds. They are like phantoms appearing in a dream, or like castles in the air.
19-20 They resemble hills moving on the shore to one passing in a boat, or like hobgoblins appearing to an unsound mind. Such is the appearance of the world which has no seed, source or origin of its own.
21. It is like the impression of a tale in the mind, or the sight of a chain of pearls in the sky, or taking a bracelet for its gold, or a wave for the water.
22. Creation is just like the blue of the sky, always apparent to sight, charming to behold, yet never real, there being no color in it.
23. Thus whatever unreal wonders appear to us in our dreams or in the sky, they are only like a fire in a picture that only seems to be burning and has no fire in it.
24. The word jagat (all that moves, the universe) is appropriately applied to the transitory world, which passes like the sea with its heaving waves, appearing as a dancing chain of lotus flowers.
25. It is (as false) as imagining a body of water from the sound of geese, and as useless as a withered forest in autumn when leaves and fruit fall off and the trees yield neither shade nor luscious nutriment.
26. It is full of delirious cravings like men at the point of death, and is as dark as caverns in the mountains. Hence the efforts of men are only acts of their frenzy.
27. It is better to dwell in the clear sky of the autumn harvest of philosophy, after the frost of ignorance has subsided, than to view this world which is no more than an image on a post or a picture on a wall.
28. Know all conscious and unconscious things are made of dust. Next follows the fourth book on Existence (Sthiti Prakaranam).
29. It contains three thousand couplets full of explanations and stories showing the existence of the world to be a form of the essence of the spectator ego.
30. It describes how the spectator (ego) manifests as the spectacle (non-ego), and how the ten-sided sphere of the garden of the world manifests both as subjective and objective (at the same time).
31. It has thus arrived at its development which is said to be everlasting. Next follows the fifth book on peacefulness (Upashanti Prakaranam) consisting of five thousand couplets.
32. The fifth is styled the book on holiness, containing a series of excellent lectures and demonstrating the false conception of the world, as “I”, “you” and “he” (as distinct existences).
33. The suppression of this error forms the subject of this book. Hearing this chapter on peacefulness serves to put an end to our reincarnations in this world.
34. After suppression of the train of errors, there still remain slight vestiges of it, to a hundredth part, just as a picture of soldiers gives us some faint idea of soldiers.
35. Aiming at the object of another person is as vain as looking at the beauty of an imaginary city, or sitting in expectation of an unattainable object. It is like noisily fighting for something in sleep.
36. It is as vain as a man whose desires are not subdued, bursting into a roaring like that of the loud and tremendous thunder-claps. It is like building a city on the model of effaced impressions from a dream.
37. It is as vain as an imaginary city, with gardens, flowers and fruit growing in it. It is like a sterile woman bragging of the valorous deeds of her unborn and imaginary sons.
38. It is like a painter about to draw the chart of an imaginary city on the ground who has forgotten to sketch a plan beforehand.
39. It is as vain as expecting evergreen foliage and fruit in all seasons, and the breeze of an arbor that has not grown or a future ornamental garden, pleasant with the sweets of spring.
40. Then follows the sixth book entitled annihilation (Nirvana Prakaranam), which is as clear as the waters of a river after its waves have subsided.
41. It contains the remaining number of couplets (i.e., the remaining 14,500 couplets of the 32,000 total that is the entire work). Knowledge of these verses is pregnant with great meaning. Their understanding leads to the chief good of utter extinction and pacification of desires.
42. The intellect that is separated from all its objects presents the manifestation of the soul, full of intelligence and free from all impurity. It is enveloped in the sheath of infinite void and is wholly pure and devoid of worldly errors.
43. Having finished its journey through the world and performed its duties here, the soul assumes a calmness like that of the unbreakably hard column of the sky reflecting the images of the tumultuous world (without changing itself).
44. It rejoices exceedingly at being delivered from the innumerable snares of the world, and it becomes as light as air by being freed from its desire of looking after endless objects.
45. The soul that takes no notice of any cause or effect or doing, or what is to be avoided or accepted, is said to be disembodied though encumbered with a body, and to become unworldly in its worldly state.
46. An intelligent soul is compared to a solid rock, compact and without any gap in it. It is the sun of intelligence which enlightens all people and dispels the darkness of ignorance.
47. An ordinary soul, though so very luminous, has become grossly darkened by being confined to the vile fooleries of the world and wasted by the malady of its cravings.
48. When freed from the imaginary monster of its egoism, a soul becomes incorporeal, even in its embodied state, and beholds the whole world as if it were placed on the point of one of a multitude of hairs, or like a bee sitting on a flower upon Sumeru Mountain.
49. An intelligent and empty soul contains and beholds in its sphere a thousand glories of the world, shining in each atom, as it was in a mirror.
50. It is not even possible for thousands of Vishnus, Shivas and Brahmas to equal the great minded sage in the extent of his comprehensive soul because the liberated have their chief good stretched to a far greater limit than any.
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Chapter 2.18 — The Effect of the Yoga Vasishta; Its Similes & Examples
1. Vasishta said:— The previous parts of this work, as already related, give rise to understanding like seeds sown in a good field never fail to produce a good harvest.
2. Even human compositions are acceptable when they instruct good sense because men are always required to abide by reason. Otherwise, the Vedas should be renounced as unreliable.
3. Words that conform to reason are to be received even if spoken by children. Otherwise they are to be rejected as straw even if they are pronounced by the lotus-born Brahma himself.
4. Whoever drinks from a well because it was dug by his ancestors, but who rejects the holy water of the Ganges even when placed before him, is an incorrigible simpleton.
5. As early dawn is invariably accompanied by light, so is good judgment an inevitable attendant on the perusal of this work.
6. Whether these lessons are heard from the mouth of the learned or well studied by oneself, they gradually will make their impressions upon the mind by constant reflection on their sense.
7. They will first furnish a variety of Sanskrit expressions, and then spread before him a series of holy and judicious maxims, like so many ornamental vines that decorate a hall.
8. They will produce a cleverness joined with such qualifications and greatness as to engage the good grace of gods and kings.
9. They are called intelligent who know the cause and effect of things. They are likened to a torchbearer who is clear sighted in the darkness of the night.
10. All false and covetous thoughts become weaker by degrees, just as the sky is cleared of mist at the approach of autumn.
11. Your thoughts require only the guidance of reason, as every action needs be duly performed to make it successful.
12. The intellect becomes as clear as a great lake in autumn and it gets its calmness like that of the sea after its churning by Mandara Mountain.
13. Like the flame of a chandelier cleansed of its soot and dispelling the shroud of darkness, refined intellect distinguishes things and shines forth in full brightness.
14. The evils of penury and poverty cannot overpower those whose strong sight can discern the evils of their opposites (wealth and riches), just like no dart can pierce the mortal parts of a soldier clad in full armor.
15. No worldly fears can daunt the heart of a wise man, however near they may approach him, just as no arrow can pierce a huge solid stone.
16. Such doubts as “whether it is destiny or our own merit that is the cause of our births and actions” are removed, just as darkness is dispelled by daylight.
17. There is a calm tranquility attending the wise at all times and in all conditions. So also does the light of reason, like solar rays, follow the dark night of error.
18. A man of right judgment has a soul as deep as the ocean and as firm as a mountain, and a cool serenity always shines within him like that of moonlight.
19. He who arrives slowly at what is called “living-liberation,” who remains calm amid the endless turmoil, and who is quite aloof from common talk
20. has a mind that is calm and cool at everything. It is pure and full of heavenly light, shining serenely like moonlit night in autumn.
21. When the sun of reason illuminates the cloudless region of the mind, no ominous comet of evil can make its appearance.
22. All desires are at rest with the elevated. They are pure with the steady and indifferent to the inert, like a body of light clouds in autumn.
23. The slanders of envious ill-wishers are put out of mind (by the wise), just like the frolics of night demons disappear at the approach of day.
24. A mind fixed on the firm basis of virtue and placed under the burden of patience is not to be shaken by accidents but remains like a plant in a painting.
25. A knowing man does not fall into the pitfalls that lie all about in the affairs of this world. Who that knows the way will walk into a ditch?
26. The minds of the wise are as delighted in acting in accordance with the instructions of good books and the examples of the virtuous as chaste women are fond of keeping themselves within their inner apartments.
27. The detached philosopher views each of the innumerable millions of atoms that compose this universe in the light of it being a world.
28. The man whose mind is purified by a knowledge of the precepts of liberation neither regrets nor rejoices at the loss or gain of the objects of enjoyment.
29. Men of unfettered minds look upon the appearance and disappearance of every atomic world as the fluctuating wave of the sea.
30. They neither grieve at unwished-for occurrences nor pine for their wished-for chances. Knowing well all accidents are the consequences of their actions, they remain as unconscious as trees.
31. These holy men appear just like ordinary people. Their minds remain unconquered and they live upon what they get, whether they receive any manner of welcome or unwelcome.
32. They having understood the whole of this scripture, and having read and considered it well, hold their silence like a curse or blessing (which is never uttered by saints).
33. This scripture is easy to be understood and it is ornamented with figures of speech. It is a poem full of flavors and embellished with beautiful similes.
34. One who has a slight knowledge of words and their meanings may be self taught in it, but he who does not understand the meanings well should learn from a pundit.
35. After hearing, thinking and understanding this work, one has no more need to practice austerities or meditation or repeating mantras or performing other rites. A man requires nothing else in this world for the attainment of his liberation.
36. By deep study of this work and its repeated perusal, a man attains an uncommon scholarship and the purification of his soul.
37. The ego and the non-ego, that is, the viewer and the viewed, are both only imaginary monsters of the imagination. Only their annihilation leads to the vision of the soul.
38. The error of the reality of ego and the perceptible world will vanish away like visions in a dream, for who that knows the falsehood of dreams will fall into the error (of taking them for truth)?
39. As an imaginary palace gives no joy or grief to anyone, the false conception of the world is the same.
40. Just like nobody is afraid of a painting of a serpent, to one who knows, the sight of a living serpent neither terrifies nor pleases.
41. Our knowledge of a picture removes our fear of a painted serpent. Our conviction of the unreality of the world must disperse our mistake of a snake’s existence.
42. Even the plucking of a flower or tearing of its leaflet requires a little effort, but no exertion whatever is required to gain the blessed state.
43. Plucking or pulling off a flower involves an action of the body, but with yoga there is no physical action. You only have to fix your mind.
44. It can be practiced with ease by anyone sitting in his easy seat and fed with his usual food who is not addicted to gross pleasures or breaching the rules of good conduct.
45. You can derive happiness from your own observations at any place and time, as you can from your association with the good whenever it is available. This is an optional rule.
46. These are the means of gaining a knowledge of the highest wisdom, conferring peace in this world, and saving us from the pain of being reborn in the womb.
47. Those who are afraid of this course and are addicted to the vicious pleasures of the world are to be reckoned as too base, no better than feces and worms in their mother’s bowels.
48. Attend now, Rama, to what I am going to say in another way with regard to advancing in knowledge and improving one’s understanding.
49. Hear now a new method in which this scripture is learned, and its true sense interpreted to people by means of its exposition.
50. A simile or example serves to explain the unapparent meaning of a passage by illustration with something that is well known and which may be useful to help understanding.
51. It is hard to understand a meaning without an example, just as it is useless to have a lamp-stand at home without setting a lamp on it at night.
52. The similes and examples I have used to make you understand are all derived from some cause or other, but they lead to knowledge of the uncaused Brahma.
53. Whenever comparisons and compared objects are used to express cause and effect, they apply to all cases except Brahma (who is without a cause).
54. The examples that explain the nature of Brahma are to be taken in their partial sense.
55. The examples given to explain divine nature are to be understood as referring to a world seen in a dream.
56. In such cases, no material example can apply to the incorporeal Brahma, and no optional and ambiguous expression can give a definite idea of him.
57. Those who find fault with examples of an imperfect or contradictory nature cannot blame our comparison of the appearance of the world to a vision in dream.
58. Earlier and later developments of this non-entity (the world) are considered to exist in the present moment. Waking and dreaming states are known from our boyhood.
59. The comparison of the existence of the world with the dreaming state is exact in all instances because our desires, thoughts, pleasures and displeasures, and all other acts are the same in both states.
60. This work and all others composed by other authors on the means of salvation have pursued the same plan in their explanation of the knowable.
61. The resemblance of the world to a dream is found also in the scriptures and the Vedanta. It is not to be explained in a word, but requires a continued course of lectures.
62. Such writings also cite comparisons of the world to the images in a dream or an imaginary paradise of the mind in preference to other similes.
63. Whenever a causality is shown by a simile of something which is no cause, there the simile is applied in some particular and not all its general attributes.
64. The partial similarity of this comparison with some property of the compared object is unhesitatingly acknowledged by the learned in all their illustrations.
65. When the light of the senses is compared with a lamp, the reference is to brightness only and not its stand, holder, oil or wick.
66. The compared object is to be understood in its capacity of admitting a partial comparison, as in the instance of sense and light. The simile consists in the brightness of both.
67. When the knowledge of a knowable thing is derived from some particular property of the comparison, it is the subject of a suitable simile in order to understand the sense of some great saying.
68. We must not overshadow our intellect by bad logic, or set at nothing our common sense by an unholy skepticism.
69. We have by our reasoning well weighed the verbosity of our opinionative adversaries and never set aside the holy sayings of the Vedas, even when they are at variance with the opinions of our families.
70. O Rama, we have stored in our minds the truths resulting from the unanimous voice of all the scriptures, whereby it will be evident that we have attained the object of our belief, apart from the fabricated systems of heretical scriptures.
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Chapter 2.19 — Interpretation of Comparisons in the Yoga Vasishta
1. It is the similarity of some particular property that constitutes a simile. A complete similarity between the comparison and the compared object destroys their difference.
2. From the knowledge of parables follows an awareness of the one soul that is discussed in the scriptures (Vedanta). The peace that attends reflection on the holy word is called extinction (nirvana).
3. Therefore it is useless to talk of either complete or partial agreement between example and the exemplar. It is enough for the purpose of the comparison to comprehend the meaning of the holy word in some way or other.
4. Know your peace to be the chief good and be diligent to secure it. When you have food to eat, it is useless to talk about how you came by it.
5. A cause is compared with something that has no cause at all, and a comparison is given to express its partial agreement in some respect with the compared object.
6. We must not be so absorbed in the pleasures of the world as to be devoid of all sense, like some blind frogs that generate and grow fat amidst rocks.
7. Be attentive to these parables and learn your best state from them. For their internal peace, all reasonable men should abide by the lessons of religious works, by the teachings of the scriptures, by the rules of humanity, prudence and spiritual knowledge, and by the continued practice of acts of religious merit.
9. Let the wise continue their inquiries until they obtain their internal peace and until they arrive at the fourth stage (turiya) of joy known by its name of indestructible tranquility.
10. Whoever has attained this fourth state of tranquil joy, whether he is alive or not, or a house-holder or an ascetic, has really passed beyond the limits of the ocean of the world.
11. Such a man remains steady at his place like the calm sea undisturbed by Mandara Mountain, whether he has performed his duties according to the scriptures and codes of ethics or not.
12. When there is a partial agreement of the comparison with the nature of the compared object, it is to be considered maturely for the well understanding of the point in question and not to be made a matter of controversy.
13. From every form of argument you are to understand the intelligible. The confused disputant is blind both to right and false reasoning.
14. The notion of self (soul or God) is self-evident within the consciousness of the mind. Anyone who prattles meaninglessly about this truth is said to be defective in his understanding.
15. It is partly by pride and partly by their doubts that the ignorant are led to argue about their perceptions, and thereby they obscure the region of their inner understanding, just like clouds obscure the clear sky.
16. The evidence of perception forms the fountain-head of all sorts of proofs, just like the sea is the mainspring of all its waters. It is this alone which is used in this place, as you shall learn below.
17. The wise say that substance of all sensations is super-conscious apprehension, and it is truly their right concept which is meant by their perception.
18. Thus the notion, knowledge and certainty of things as derived from words are called the triple perception of the living soul.
19. This soul is consciousness. The ego with its cognition of the objects as manifested to us is called a category (i.e., dualist; viz. samvid, samvitti and padartha)
20. Consciousness manifests in the form of the passing world by the multiplicity of acts and the shifts of its volition and choices, just like water exhibits itself in the shapes of waves and bubbles.
21. It was not caused before, then it developed itself as the cause of everything in its act of creation at the beginning of creation, and it became perceptible by itself.
22. Causation is a product of the discrimination of the living soul, previously in a state of nonexistence, until it became manifest as existent in the form of the material world.
23. Reason says that the same being that destroys the body also produced it of itself and manifests itself in its transcendental magnitude (of intelligence).
24. When a man, through the exercise of his reason, comes to know the soul, he finds before him the presence of the indescribable being.
25. The mind being free from desire, the organs of sense are relieved from their action and the soul becomes devoid of the results of its past actions.
26. The mind being set at ease and freed from its desires, the organs of action are restrained from their acts, like an engine stopped in its motion.
27. Sensuousness is reckoned as the cause that puts the machinery of the mind to work, just as a rope tied to a log and fastened about the neck of a ram propels him to fight.
28. The sight of external objects and the purposes of the internal mind set all men at play, just like the inner force of air puts wind in motion.
29. All spiritual knowledge is holy wherever it is found in anyone. It adds a luster to the body and mind like that of the expanded region of the sky.
30. He sees the appearances of all visible objects and maintains his own position among them. He views the spirit in the same light in which it presents itself in any place.
31. Wherever the Universal Soul appears itself in any light, it remains there and then in the same form in which it exhibits itself to us.
32. The Universal Soul being alike in all, the looker and the object seen are both the same being. The looker and the looked being one, their appearance as otherwise is all unreal.
33. Hence the world is without a cause. All existence is evidently Brahma himself, the perceptible cause of all. Hence perception is the basis of evidence, and inference and others as analogy and verbal testimony are only parts of it.
34. Now let the worshippers of fate who apply the term “destiny” to all their efforts cast off their false faith and let the brave exert their courage to attain their highest state.
35. Continue, O Rama, to consider the true and lucid doctrines of successive teachers until you can arrive at a clear conception of the infinitely Supreme Being in your own mind.
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Chapter 2.20 — On Wisdom & Good Conduct
1. It is reasoning in the company of the respectable that leads most efficiently to the improvement of the understanding, and then to the making of a great man who has all the characteristics of greatness.
2. Whatever man excels in any quality, that distinguishes him. Therefore learn and improve your understanding from him.
3. True greatness consists in quietness and other virtues. Without a knowledge of this it is impossible, O Rama, to be successful in anything.
4. Learning produces quiet and other qualities and increases the virtues of good people. All this is praised because of their good effects on the mind, just like the rain is praised for growing new sprouts.
5. The qualities of quietude and other virtues serve to increase the best knowledge, just like a sacrifice with rice serves to produce blissful rains for the harvest.
6. As learning produces the qualities of quiet and the like, so do these qualities give rise to learning. Thus they serve to grow each other, just as lake and lotuses contribute to their mutual benefit.
7. Learning is produced by right conduct as good conduct results from learning. Thus wisdom and morality are natural helps to one another.
8. An intelligent man who is possessed of quietude, meekness and good conduct, should practice wisdom and follow the ways of good people.
9. Unless one practices wisdom and good conduct in an equal degree, he will never be successful in either of them.
10. Both of these should be joined together like the song united with percussion, or like the farmer and his wife sowing seeds and driving away the birds.
11. It is by practice of wisdom and right conduct that good people are enabled to acquire both in an equal degree.
12. I have already expounded to you, O Rama, the rule of good conduct. Now I will explain to you fully the way of gaining learning.
13. Learning leads to fame, long life and the acquisition of the object of your exertion. Therefore the intelligent should learn the good sciences from those who have studied and mastered them.
14. By hearing (these lectures) with a clear understanding, you will surely attain the state of perfection, just like dirty water is purified by infusion of kata fruit.
15. A sage who has known the knowable has his mind drawn imperceptibly to the state of bliss. Once known and felt, the impression of that highest state of unbounded joy is hard to loose at anytime.
BOOK III. On Creation (Utpatti Khanda)
This section deals with the origin and nature of the universe. According to Vasishta, this universe with its innumerable objects, its concepts of time and space, and its varied laws is only a creation of ones own mind. Just as the mind creates a world in the dream state, so it also creates an imaginary world in the waking state. The only difference between the dream and the waking states is that dreams are short and the waking state is relatively longer. Time and space are only ideas of the mind. Through the minds perception many thousands of years may pass as a moment, or a moment in time in the waking state may be experienced as years in the dream state. The same is true of the concept of space. All these facts are illustrated by a number of interesting and revealing stories.
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Chapter 3.1 — The Appearance of Creation Is from the Mind of Brahma
1. It is through both words and lights (i.e., the words of the scripture and the lights of nature and reason) that the knower of the great god perceives the spirit of Brahma appearing within himself, like in a dream. He also knows him as such who understands him according to the holy text, “What this is, that is the self.”
2. This passage shows, in short, the visible world at its creation residing in the empty bosom of Brahma. What this creation is, from where it arises, and how it becomes extinct in the end are now to be known in detail.
3. O intelligent Rama, now hear me expound to you all things according to my best knowledge and agreeably to their nature and substance in the order of creation.
4. One conscious of himself as a spiritual and intelligent being views the passing world as a dream. This dream simile of the passing world applies equally to our knowledge of ego and non-ego.
5. After the book describing the conduct of the seekers of liberation (mumukshu-vyavahara) follows the book of evolution (utpatti, creation), which I am now going to propound to you.
6. Bondage consists in our belief in the reality of the visible world. So our release depends on the negation of phenomena that are apparent to the senses. Now hear me tell you how to get rid of the visible.
7. Whoever is born in this world continues to progress until at last he obtains his final liberation (his ultimate perfection) or rises to heaven or falls into hell.
8. Therefore I shall expound for your understanding everything relating to the production and continuance of things, and their prior states as they were.
9. Now hear me, Rama, give you a brief abstract of this book. Later I will expand upon it so that you may know more of how creation is produced.
10. Know that all that appears either as living or inert in this world are like appearances in a dream in the state of sound sleep (susupti) which becomes extinct at the end of an epoch (kalpa).
11. Then there remains a nameless and undeveloped something in a state of deep, dark and dank abyss, without any light or thick-spread (nebulae) over it.
12. The wise give this great self-existence the titles of Reality (rita), Self (atma), Supreme (param), Immense (brahma), Truth (satyam) and so forth as common expressions to refer to the Great Spirit (mahatman).
13. Then this same spirit shows itself in another form called the individual soul (jivatma), and comes afterwards to be understood in the limited sense of life.
14. This inert living principle (jiva) becomes, just like the word suggests, the moving spirit, which afterwards with its power of thinking becomes the mind, and finally the embodied soul.
15. Thus the mind is produced and changed from the quiescent nature of the Great Supreme Spirit to a state of restlessness, like that of a surge heaving itself in the ocean.
16. The mind soon evolves itself as a self-willing power that exercises its desires at all times and through which this extensive magic scene of the world is displayed for our view. This scene is figured as virajmurti, or the manifestation of desires from the will of Divine Mind. In the Indian genealogy of gods, it is represented as the offspring of Brahma.
17. As the word ‘golden bracelet’ signifies nothing other than a bracelet made of gold, so the meaning of the word ‘world’ is not different from its source, the Divine Will.
18. Again as the word ‘gold’ bears the idea of the substance of which the bracelet is made, so the word ‘Brahma’ conveys the meaning of the immensity which contains the world. But the word ‘world’ contains no idea of Brahma, and neither does ‘bracelet’ convey the idea of gold. The substance contains the form just as a stone does the statue, but the form does not contain the substance.
19. The unreality of the world appears as a reality, just as the heat of the sun presents an unreal mirage in the moving sands of the desert as real waves of the sea.
20. It is this fantasy which the learned in all things describe as ignorance (avidya), nature (sansriti), bondage (bandha), illusion (maya), error (moha), and darkness (tamas).
21. Now hear me relate to you, O moon-faced Rama, about the nature of this bondage, whereby you will be able to know the mode and manner of our liberation from it.
22. The intimate relation between spectator and spectacle is called his bondage because the spectator’s mind is tightly bound to the object of his sight. Therefore, the absence of visible objects from the mirror of the mind is the only way to his liberation.
23. Knowledge of the world, which is thinking that individual existence is different from others, is said to be a false view of the soul. There can be no liberation as long as one labors under this blunder of the knowledge of separation.
24. To say that the soul is not this and not that is an endless false dispute over words. Discrimination between alternatives only serves to increase the ardor for objects.
25. Truth is not to be obtained by philosophers chopping logic or by pilgrimage or ceremonial acts, any more than believing in the reality of the material world.
26. It is hard to avoid the sight of the phenomenal world and to repress one’s ardor for it. But it is certain that phenomena can not lead us to Reality, and that the Real cannot mislead us to unreality.
27. Wherever the invisible, inconceivable and intelligent spirit exists, there the beholder views the visible beauty of God shining even in the midst of atoms.
28. The phenomenal world has its rise from Him, yet ignorant people who depart from Him to the adoration of others resemble fools who forsake rice to feed upon gruel.
29. Although this visible world is apparent to sight, yet O Rama, it is only a shadow of that Being who resides alike in the smallest atom and in the mirror of the mind, who receives the image of the largest as well as the minutest things.
30. The spirit is reflected in everything like a figure in the mirror, and it shines equally in rocks and seas and in the land and water as it does in the mirror of the mind.
31. The visible world is the scene of constant sorrows, births, decay and death. By turns the states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep present the gross, subtle and impermanent forms of things for our delusion.
32. Here I sit in a meditative mood, having wiped the impressions of phenomena from my mind, but my meditation is disturbed by the recurrence of my memories of phenomena. This is the cause of the endless reincarnations of the soul.
33. It is hard to maintain meditation beyond form (nirvikalpa samadhi) when the sight of the visible world is present before our physical and mental vision. Even the fourth stage of turiya — samadhi without sense in the state of deep sleep — is soon succeeded by self-consciousness and external awareness.
34. On rising from this state of deep meditation, one finds himself as if roused from sound sleep and he again sees the world full of all its sorrows and imperfections opening wide before him.
35. Then, O Rama, what is the good of this transient bliss which one attains by temporary meditation, when he again becomes subject to his sense of the sufferings of the world, like a vale of tears?
36. But if one can attain a state of unalterable separation of his thoughts from all worldly objects, as he has in his state of deep sleep, then he is said to have reached the highest level of holiness on earth.
37. Nobody has ever gained anything from reality with its scenes of unreal vanities because whenever his thoughts come in contact with any outward thing, he finds ‘reality’ inseparable from imperfect existence.
38. Should anybody forcibly withdraw his attention from phenomena and, for a while, fix his sight on a stone, afterwards he is sure to be carried away again by phenomena pressing upon his sight.
39. It is well known to all that a yogi’s practice of unflinching meditation, even if it has the firmness of a rock, cannot last owing to his worldly propensities.
40. Even steady meditation that has attained the fixedness of a rock cannot advance one step towards the attainment of that tranquility which has no limit.
41. Thus the sight of phenomena being altogether unavoidable, it is a foolish to think that phenomena can be suppressed by practicing prayers and austerities and similar acts of tapas.
42. The idea of the phenomena is as inherent in the mind of the spectator of the visible world as the seeds of the lotus flower are contained in its inner cells.
43. The ideal of the phenomenal world lies hidden in the minds of the spectators of the outer world, just like flavor and moisture are in fruit, oil is in sesame seeds, and sweet scent is innate in flowers.
44. Just like the fragrance of camphor and the smells of other substances are inherent in their nature, so the reflection of the visible world resides in the bosom of the intellect.
45. As your dreams and desires rise and subside of themselves under the functioning of your intellect, so the idea of a thing always reoccurs to your mind from your original idea of that thing which has been impressed onto your mind, the seat of all that is visible.
46. The mental appearance of the visible world deludes its beholder in the same way a fantasy appearance of a ghost or hobgoblin misleads a child.
47. The notion of the visible world gradually expands itself, like a seed that germinates in time, sprouts and spreads itself afterwards in the form of a plant.
48. As seeds and other minute life forms contained within the bosoms of fruit and the embryos of animals expand themselves to become wonderfully beautiful forms, so does the seed of this world lying hidden in the Divine Mind unfold itself into the wonderful forms of visible phenomena in nature.
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Chapter 3.2 — Description of the First Cause: Yama Explains Air-born Brahma to Death; Will without Form or Action
1. Vasishta resumed:— Rama, now listen as I relate the story of Akasaja, the air-born brahmin, which will be precious to your ears and will enable you to better to understand the drift of this book of creation.
2. There lived a brahmin named Akasaja who always sat reclined in his meditation and was ever inclined to do good to all creatures.
3. Finding him long-lived, Death thought to himself, “Only I am imperishable, and I devour all things one by one.
4. How is it that I cannot stuff myself with this airborn? I find my teeth as blunt on him as the edge of a sword on solid rock.”
5. So thinking, he proceeded to the home of the brahmin intent upon making an end of him. For who is not so dull in nature that he is not alert in his practice?
6. But as Death was about to enter Akasaja’s house, he was opposed by a fire as powerful as that in the final destruction of the last day of the world’s dissolution.
7. He passed through the flames and entered the house where, seeing the holy man before him, he greedily stretched out his hand to grab him.
8. Even with his hundred hands, Death was unable to grasp the holy man, just as it is impossible for the strongest to withstand a determined man in his habitual course.
9. Death then went to his lord, Yama, the god of the underworld, to answer his question why he could not devour the air-born being.
10. Yama explained, “Death, do not overly trust your own strength that enables you to destroy the living. It is the act of the dying person that is the chief cause of his death and nothing else.
11. Therefore, be diligent and find out about the acts of the person you intend to kill, because it is only with their assistance that you are able seize your prey.”
12. Thereupon Death gladly wandered about in all the places under the horizon. He roved over inhabited lands as he did throughout empty and river lands.
13. He traversed forests and jungles, marshy and rocky grounds, and maritime coasts. He traveled to foreign lands and islands and pried through their wildernesses, cities and towns.
14. He searched through kingdoms and countries, villages and deserts. He surveyed the entire earth to find out some act of the brahmin or any part of it.
15. At last Death, despite all his search and efforts, came to find the acts of air-born brahmin to be as nothing as the offspring of a barren woman, and brahmin’s mind as fixed (in meditation) as if it were a rock.
16. Then Death returned from his reconnoitering explorations to his all-knowing master Yama and sought his advice, as servants do in matters of doubt and difficulty.
17. Death addressed Yama saying, “Tell me my lord, where are the acts of the air-born brahmin to be found?” After much thought, Yama replied as follows.
18. “Know, O Death, that this air-born seer has no act whatever because he is born of empty air. Therefore his doings are all null and void.
19. Whoever is born of air is as pure as air itself and has no combination of cause or actions such as all embodied beings.
20. He has no relationship with acts of his prior existence. He is as nothing as the child of a barren woman, like one unborn, uncreated and un-begotten.
21. Want of causes has made him a pure empty being, and the lack of prior acts has made him as nothing as an ethereal tree.”
22. “Deprived of former acts, his mind is not ruffled like those of others, nor is there any act in his present state whereby he may become a morsel to death.
23. Such is the soul seated in the sheath of void, and remaining forever as the simple form of its own causality, and not guided by any extraneous causation whatever.
24. It has no prior deed, nor does it do anything at present, but continues as something like an intelligence with the form of air.”
25. “Our inference that the soul causes the actions of breathing and motion is a mere supposition because the soul is devoid of every thought or tendency towards action.
26. It sits meditating on itself as inseparable from the Supreme Intelligence, just as images are inseparable from the mind of the painter and sculptor.
27. The self-born Brahma is as intimately connected with the objects of his thought as fluidity is associated with water and the void with the sky.
28. His soul is as immanent in the Supreme as motion is inherent in the wind. It has neither the accumulated acts of past lives nor those of its present state.
29. It is produced without the cooperation of accompanying causes and being free from prior motives, it is not subjected to the sufferings that attend human life.
30. It is found to be nothing other than its own cause, and having no other cause for itself, it is said to be self-produced.”
31. “Say, how can you lay hold of a being who has done no act and is not in the act of doing anything at present? It is only subject to you when it thinks itself mortal.
32. You are easily able to take anyone who believes his soul to be of this earth and thinks himself to be an earthly being.
33. Because this brahmin disowns the material body, he is a formless being. Therefore it is as hard for you to enthrall him as it is to use a rope to tie the air.”
34. Death replied saying, “Tell me my lord, how may the unborn (aja) or the self-born (swayambhu) be produced out of vacuum, and how can an earthly or other elemental body both be and not be?”
35. Yama replied, “This Brahman is neither born nor is nothing at anytime but remains the same forever, like the light of intelligence of which there is no decay.
36. Upon the end of creation, there remains nothing except the tranquil, imperishable and infinite Brahman himself in his spiritual form.
37. This is the nature of the everlasting void, too subtle in its essence and devoid of all attributes, but viewing the present before its mind, the stupendous cosmos in the form of a huge mountain at the beginning of recreation.”
38. “Being of the nature of consciousness it is imperishable, but those who regard spirit to have any material body are liable to perish with it like all embodied beings.
39. Thus in the beginning this Brahman remained in his state of unalterable, empty consciousness in the womb of emptiness.
40. It is purely of the nature of empty understanding, and of the form of a vast expanse of omniscience. It has neither body nor organism, no act or agency, nor desire of any kind in itself.”
41. “That which is simply emptiness and pure light, unlike an embodied being, is never beset by the traps of new desires.
42. It has nothing to know or see without itself. The only conception that we can have of it is that it resembles an extended intelligence.
43. Under these circumstances, how is it susceptible to any earthly or other external form? Therefore, O Death, give up your attempts to lay hold of Brahman.”
44. Hearing these words from Yama, Death thought upon the impracticability of anyone laying hold on empty void and he sorrowfully returned to his own abode.
45. Rama said, “Sage, you said that Brahma is your great father. I think you meant to say that your father is the unborn, self-born Universal Soul and consciousness.” Vasishta speaking:—
46. What I had described to you, Rama, is Brahma, and the previous story about the discussion between Death and Yama also regards Brahma.
47. Again when Death over the course of a manvantara of time had made an end to all living beings, he thought himself strong enough to make an attempt to bear down upon the lotus-born Brahma also.
48. It was then that he was rebuked by Yama, saying, “It is your habit that makes you go on your accustomed course of killing.
49. But the super-ethereal form of Brahma is beyond your reach because it simply has of the nature of the mind, connected only with its thoughts and having no concern with the actual forms of things.”
50. Brahma is wonderfully empty consciousness having the faculty of thought. Thus consciousness, being only emptiness, has neither any cause that created it nor any effect created by it.
51. As the insubstantial principle of will in men manifests itself without being connected with material forms, so the self-born Brahma manifests to all in his own immaterial nature.
52. Like strings of pearl appearing in a clear sky, and like the forms of cities seen in a dream, the selfborn Brahma is manifest of himself without relation to external objects.
53. As there is no beholder or anything beholden of the solitary Supreme Spirit which is consciousness itself, so the mind manifests of itself.
54. It is the mind’s capacity to will that is called Brahma. Will being a spiritual faculty, it has no connection with any material substance.
55. As the mind of the painter is filled with images of various things, so the mind of Brahma is full of figures of all created beings.
56. The self-born Brahma is manifest in his own mind as Brahma is manifested in the empty sphere of his consciousness. He is without beginning, middle or end. He is described as having a male figure when, in reality and like the offspring of a barren woman, he has no body.
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Chapter 3.3 — Subtle & Gross Bodies; Formless Mind (Brahma) Wills the Appearance of Forms
1. Rama said, “It is even so as you have said, that the mind is a pure essence and has no connection with the earth and other material substances. Mind is truly Brahma itself.
2. Now tell me, O holy one, why the memory of his former states does not cause his birth, as it is in the case of mine, yours and of all other beings.”
3. Vasishta replied:— Whoever had a former body, accompanied with the acts of his prior existence, necessarily retains its memories, which are the cause of his being reborn.
4. But when Brahman is known to have no prior act, how is it possible for him to have memory of anything?
5. Therefore he exists without any other cause except the causation of his own mind. It is by his own causality that the Divine Spirit is selfborn, and is himself his own spirit.
6. He is everlasting. His body is born of itself from the self-existent Brahman. This unborn or self-born Brahma has no material body whatever, except his subtle spirit body (ativahika) or astral body (linga deha).
7. Rama said, “The everlasting body is one thing and the mortal body is another. Now tell me sage whether all created beings have a subtle body like that of Brahma?”
8. Vasishta replied:— All created beings produced of a cause have two bodies (subtle and gross). But the unborn being which is without a cause has only one body.
9. The uncreated Brahman is the cause of all created beings, but the uncreated spirit, having no cause for itself, has only one body.
10. The prime lord of creatures has no material body but manifests himself in the empty form of his spiritual body.
11. His body is composed of only mind and he has no connection with the earth or any other material substance. He is the first lord of creatures who stretched creation from his empty body.
12. All creation is only forms of images or ideas in his empty mind. They have no other pattern or originality in their nature. It is a truth well known to everyone that everything is of the same nature with its cause.
13. Brahma is a nonexistent being in the manner of perfect consciousness. He is purely a mind form. He is an intellectual entity, not material.
14. He is the prime cause of all material productions in the physical world, and he is born of himself with his prime mobile force in the form of the mind.
15. It was by the first impulse given by the prime moving power that this expanse of creation came to be spread in the same ratio as the currents of air and water are in proportion to the impetus given to them.
16. This creation shining so bright to our sight derives its light from the luminous mind of the formless Brahma, and it appears real to our conceptions.
17. What we experience in dreams is the best illustration, like the enjoyment of sexual bliss in a dream. In a dream an unreal object of desire presents itself as an actual gain to our fond and false imagination.
18. The empty, immaterial and formless spirit is described as the self-born and corporeal lord of creatures in the form of the first male.
19. He remains imperceptible in his state of pure consciousness, but becomes manifest to all by the evolution of his will. He cannot be discerned in his absolute state (of inaction), but becomes conspicuous to us in the display of his nature (in creation).
20. Brahma is the divine power of will. He is personified as the first male agent of creation, but he is devoid of any physical body. He has only the spiritual form of the mind, and he is the sole cause of the existence of the three worlds.
21. It is Brahma’s will that makes the self-born exert his energies, just as human desires impel all mankind to action, and as the empty mind manifests itself as a mountain of desires.
22. Then it forgets its everlasting and incorporeal nature and assumes to itself a solid material body and shows itself in the shape of a deceptive apparition.
23. But Brahma, who is of an unsullied understanding, is not involved in forgetting himself. That occurs through the transformation of his unknowable nature to the known state of will.
24. Being unborn of material substance, he sees no appearance like others who are exposed by their ignorance to the misleading errors of falsehood that appear before them like a mirage.
25. As Brahma is merely of the form of the mind, and not composed of any material substance, so the world being the product of the eternal mind is of the same nature as its original source.
26. Again, as the uncreated Brahma has no cause for himself, so his creation has no cause other than himself.
27. Therefore there is no difference between product and its producer, and it is certain that the work must be as perfect as its author.
28. There is nothing like cause and effect to be found in this creation because the three worlds are only prototypes of the archetype of the Divine Mind.
29. The world is stretched out in the model of the Divine Mind. It is not formed by any other holy spirit. Creation is as immanent in the mind of God as fluidity is inherent in water.
30. The mind spreads out this extended unreality of the world, like castles in the air, and builds paradise cities.
31. There is no such thing as materiality, which is as false a conception as mistaking a rope for a snake. Hence it is impossible for Brahma and other beings to exist as individual bodies.
32. Even spiritual bodies are nonexistent to enlightened understanding. As for the material body, it has no room in existence.
33. Man (manu), who derives his name from his mind (manas), is a form of the will-soul called Virinchi (the Creator, a name of Brahma). His dominion is the mental or intellectual world (mano-rajyam) where all things appear in the form of realities.
34. The mind is the creative Brahma (virinchitvas) through the exercise of its inherent will (sankalpa, intent, volition) for beginning or creation. It displays itself in the form of the visible universe by development of its own essence.
35. This Creator or creative power is of the form of the mind, just like the mind itself is of the form of the Creator. Neither has any connection with any material substance, which is a mere creation of the imagination.
36. All visible things are contained in the bosom of the mind, just as the lotus blossom resides in the seed of the lotus. Hence there is no difference between the mental and visible appearances of things, nor has anyone anywhere ever doubted this.
37. Whatever you see in a dream, whatever desires you have at heart, and all the ideals of your fancy, together with your ideas, notions and impressions of phenomena, know that it is your mind that is the receptacle for them all.
38. But the mind can choose to hold phenomena as desirable, making them as harmful to their beholder as an apparition is to a child.
39. The ideal of phenomena develops itself as the germ contained in the seed and, in its proper time and place, it becomes a large tree.
40. If there is no rest with what is real, there can be no peace with phenomena that are full of troubles and give no solace to the mind. It is impossible for the feeling of the perception of phenomena to ever be lost to their perceiver, yet only its subsidence is said to constitute liberation.
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Chapter 3.4 — Nightfall; Creation of Objects
1. Valmiki describes:— While Vasishta, the leading sage, was speaking without interruption, the entire assembly was intent upon listening to him with a fixed tone and tenor of their minds.
2. The string of bells that warriors tie to their waists ceased to jingle. Everyone was motionless. Even the parrots in their cages ceased to warble or flutter.
3. The ladies forgot their dalliance and remained quietly attentive to the lecture. Everyone in the royal hall was fixed in attention as if they were paintings and statues.
4. Only an hour remained before the closing of the day and the sunbeams became agreeable to all. The busy bustle of the world was dwindling away with the glimmering light of the setting sun.
5. The beds of full-blown lotuses exhaled their fragrance all around, and soft breezes were playing about, as if to attend the audience.
6. The sun glided away from his daily course and advanced to the top of the solitary mountain where it set, as if he meant to reflect on all that he had heard.
7. The shades of night began to cover the landscape. Frost began to spread over forest lands as if they were cooled by the cooling lectures on philosophy.
8. Now people failed to gather in all directions, as if they had availed themselves of the sage’s instructions to abate the fervor of their exertions.
9. All objects on earth cast their lengthened shadows, as if they were stretching their necks to hear Vasishta preaching.
10. Then the chamberlain humbly advanced to the monarch of the earth and begged to inform him that the time for the rituals of evening washing and service was about to expire.
11. Upon this, sage Vasishta stopped his sweet speech and said, “Let what has been said, mighty king, be all for this day. I will resume my lecture and speak of other things tomorrow.”
12. The sage held his silence, and the king responded, “Be it so as you will,” and rose from his seat.
13. For his own good he honored the godly sage and the other seers and brahmins with due respects and offerings of flowers, water, worthy honorary gift rewards, fees, gifts and homage.
14. Then rose the entire assembly with the king and the sages. The gems and jewels that decked princes and people shed their luster on the faces of all.
15. There was a commingled tinkling of bracelets and armlets as the throng mingled in their exit, mixed with the flashes of the necklaces and brocades that decorated their bodies.
16. The jewels attached to the tufts and crests of hair on the tops of their heads emitted a jingling sound resembling the humming of bees amidst their flowery braids.
17. The face of the sky, shining on all sides with a purple color reflected by the golden ornaments on their persons, seemed as if it was pleased with the wise sayings and sense of the sage.
18. Celestial visitors vanished into the air and earthly guests retired to their homes on earth where they performed their evening rituals.
19. In the meantime, black night made her appearance on earth and, like a bashful young maiden, withdrew to the closet separate from the rest of mankind.
20. The lord of the day passed to shine on other lands, for truly it is the avowed duty of every good person to give the benefit of equal light to all.
21. The shade of evening veiled all sides and uplifted the canopy of the starry sphere on high which, like the spring atmosphere, was emblazoned with star-like kinsuka flowers.
22. The birds of air took to their rest in the hollows of mango trees or on the tops of kadamba trees, like honest people of fair dealing find their rest in the purity of their minds and the contriteness of their inner hearts.
23. The skirts of the clouds tinged with red by the slanting beams of the setting sun, and with a shade of yellow color upon them, decorated the western hills with vests of yellow garb while the sky crowned their heads with gemming wreaths of starry groups.
24. The goddess of evening, having departed after receiving her homage (evening prayers), was followed by her train of dark night shades appearing as black-bodied fiends, vetalas.
25. A gentle and cooling breeze was blowing softened by the dew drops of night and opening the petals of kumuda lotus flowers, bearing their fragrance all around.
26. A thick gloom covered the face of nature and the stars were hidden under the mists of night. All the quarters of the skies, with their overhanging loose and hairy mists, seemed like the faces of widows shrouded by the dark disheveled hair of mourning.
27. Now appeared the moist orb of the moon in her ambrosial form in the Milky Ocean of the sky to moisten the mundane heat with her milk-white beams.
28. On her rising, the thick mists of darkness fled from the eastern hemisphere and became invisible in the air, just like the darkness of ignorance is put to flight from the minds of monarchs when they attend to wise sayings.
29. Then the sages and seers, the rulers and priests of the people, took their rest in their respective beds, as the words of Vasishta, full of meaning, rested in the recesses of their hearts.
30. As the thick darkness of night, resembling the dark complexion of death, receded from the arena of the skies, the dewy dawn of day with her slow moving pace followed close on its footsteps.
31. Twinkling stars disappeared from the sky, just like flowers on trees are blown away by wind and strewn on the ground like the fallen stars of heaven.
32. The sun became visible to the eyes. His rays roused them from sleep, just as the new-rising faculty of reason becomes conspicuous in the minds of enlightened great souls.
33. Fragments of clouds shining with sunlight spread a yellow covering over the eastern hills which were still decorated with strings of stars, pendant on the crests of their lofty heads.
34. After the performance of their morning services, all the terrestrial and celestial congress assembled again at the royal hall, in the order and manner of the day before.
35. The full assembly took their seats and sat without moving, like a lake covered with lotus remains calm after a storm.
36. Then Rama addressed Vasishta, the most eloquent of sages, with honey-like words about the subject under investigation.
37. He said, “Tell me plainly, O venerable sir, about the form of the mind, which developed itself in all things of the universe as they were its offshoots.”
38. Vasishta replied:— Rama, the mind has no form that anyone can see. Other than its name, it has nothing substantial, only the formless and irremovable void.
39. The mind as an entity (sat) is not situated in any part of the outer body, nor is it within any cavity of the heart or brain. But know it, O Rama, to be situated everywhere as the all encompassing void.
40. This world is produced from it, and it is like the waters of the mirage. It manifests itself in the forms of its fleeting thoughts, which are as false as the appearance of secondary moons in mists.
41. The thinking principle is generally believed to be something between the positive and negative, or real and unreal. You must know it as such and no other.
42. That which represents of all objects is called the mind. There is nothing else to which the term mind is applicable.
43. Know that will (volition) is the same as the mind, and that the mind is no different from the will, just as fluidity is the same with water, and as there is no difference between air and its motion in wind.
44. For wherever there is any will, there also is that attribute of the mind. Nobody has ever taken will and mind to be different things.
45. The representation of any object, whether real or unreal, is mind, and that is to be known as Brahma the great father of all.
46. The incorporeal soul in the body is called the mind and it has in itself the knowledge of all senses and everlasting ideas of the physical world. (I.e., the sentient and thinking soul is the same as the mind.)
47. The learned have given different names like ignorance, intellect, mind, bondage, sin and darkness to the visible appearance of creation.
48. The mind has no form other than a receptacle and reflector of ideas about the visible world which, I repeat, is no new creation, but a reflection of the mind.
49. The visible world is situated in an atom of the great mind, just like the germ of the lotus plant is contained within its seed.
50. The visible world is as innate in the all-knowing mind as light is inherent in sunbeams, and velocity and fluidity are innate in winds and liquids.
51. But the visionary ideas of phenomena are as false and fleeting in the minds of their observers as the form of a jewel in gold, or water in a mirage, and they are as wrong as the foundation of a castle in the air, or seeing a city in a dream.
52. Because phenomena appear to be real to their observer, O Rama, I will cleanse them from your mind like dirt from a mirror.
53. Just like the disappearance of an appearance makes the observer no longer an observer, know that this is what happens when the mind is in a state of separation (detachment) from whatever is real or unreal in the world.
54. Having arrived at this state, all the passions of the soul and the desires of the mind will be at rest, like torrents of rivers at the calm that follows the stillness of the wind.
55. It is impossible that things having the forms of space, earth and air will appear the same in the clear light of reason as they do to our ordinary sight.
56. Thus when the observer comes to know the unreality of the phenomena of the three worlds, as well as of his own entity, then his pure soul attains knowledge of the solitude of divine existence (kaivalya).
57. Such a mind reflects the image of God in itself as in a mirror, while all others are like blocks of stone, incapable of receiving any reflection at all.
58. After suppression of the sense of “I” and “you” and the error of the reality of the outer world, the observer becomes withdrawn and remains in his sitting posture without seeing external things.
59. Rama replied, “If I cannot suppress my perception of entity, or an entity is unable to become a nonentity, or if I am unable to see phenomena as non-existent,
60. then tell me, O holy one, how can I to uproot this disease of our eagerness for phenomena from the mind, a disease which bewilders understanding and afflicts us with a series of troubles?”
61. Vasishta replied:— Now hear my advice, Rama, for the suppression of this illusion of phenomena, whereby it will surely die away and become utterly extinct.
62. Know Rama, that nothing that is can ever be destroyed or become extinct. Though you remove it, yet it will leave its seed or trace in the mind.
63. This seed is the memory of such things which reopens the ideas of the phenomena in the mind, expanding themselves in the fallacious notions of the forms of big worlds and skies, mountains and oceans.
64. These fallacious notions, called faults and defects of understanding, are obstacles in the way to liberation, but they do not affect the sages who are liberated.
65. Again, if the world and all other phenomena have real existence, they cannot confer liberation on anyone because phenomena, whether they are situated within or without us, are themselves perishable.
66. Learn therefore this solemn truth, which will be fully explained to you in the subsequent parts of this work,
67. that all things appearing in the forms of emptiness, elementary forms, the world, and “I” and “you” are non-entities. They have no meaning.
68. Whatever is seen as apparent is nothing other than the un-decaying and imperishable essence of the supreme Brahma himself.
69. The abundance of creation is an expansion of his fullness, and the quiet of the universe rests in his quietude. It is his quality of sky that is the substance of emptiness, and it is his immensity that underlies the immense cosmos.
70. Nothing visible is real, and there is neither spectator nor spectacle here. There is nothing like emptiness or solidity in nature. All this is only a piece of extended Intelligence.
71. Rama replied, “The proverbs about the son of a barren woman grinding stones, the horns of a rabbit, the dancing of a hill with its arms extended,
72. oil flowing from sand, marble dolls reading books, clouds in a painting roaring, and other similar adages apply to your words (on the reality of an unreal essence of God).
73. I see this world to be full of disease, death, trouble, mountains, emptiness and other things. How is it, sage, that you tell me that they do not exist?
74. So that I may be certain of this truth, tell me sage, why you describe this world as unsubstantial, unproduced and nonexistent?”
75. Vasishta replied:— Know Rama, that I do not speak contradictions. Hear me explain how unreality appears as real, like the proverb of the son of a barren woman.
76. All this was unproduced before and did not exist in the beginning of creation. It comes to appearance from the mind like a city in a dream.
77. The mind also was not produced in the beginning of creation and was an unreality itself. Therefore hear me tell you how we come to a notion of it.
78. This unreal mind by itself spreads the false and changing scenes of the visible world, just as in a dream we see ever changing unrealities as true.
79. Then the mind exerts its will in the fabrication of the body and spreads the magic scene of the phenomenal world far and wide.
80. The mind, by the potential of its fluctuations, has many actions of its own, such as expansion, jumping, motion, craving, wandering, diving and seizing, and many other voluntary efforts.
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Chapter 3.5 — On the Original Cause (Mula-Karana)
1. Rama said, “O chief of the sages, what is the cause that leads to our misconception of the mind? How it is produced, and what is the source of its illusion?
2. Tell me sage, in brief, about the first production (of the mind), and then, O best of the eloquent, you may say what else there is to be said on the subject.”
3. Vasishta replied:— Incident to the universal dissolution, when all things are reduced to nothing, this infinity of visible objects remains in a state of calm and quiet before their creation.
4. There is only great God in existence, who is uncreated and without decay, who is the creator of all at all times, who is all in all and Supreme Soul of all, and who resembles the sun that never sets.
5. He whom language fails to describe, and who is known only to the liberated, who is termed the soul only by fiction and not by his real nature (which is unknowable).
6. He is the Cosmic Man (purusha) of the Samkhya philosophers, the Brahman of Vedanta followers, the Intelligence of Gnostics, wholly pure and apart from all.
7. He is known as Vacuum by vacuists, and the One who gives the sun its light. He is truth itself, the power of speech and thought and vision, and all action and passion forever.
8. He is who, though ever existent everywhere, appears as nonexistent to the world, and though situated in all bodies, seems to be far from them. He is the Enlightener of our understanding, like the light of the sun to the world.
9. It is He from whom the gods Vishnu and others are produced, like solar rays from the sun, and from whom infinite worlds have come into existence like bubbles of the sea.
10. It is He to whom these multitudes of visible creations return, like the waters of the earth to the sea, and who enlightens all souls and bodies like a lamp.
11. He is present alike in heaven, in earth, and in the nether worlds, who abides equally in all bodies whether of the mineral, vegetable or animal. He resides alike in each particle of dust as in the high and huge mountain ranges, and He rides as swiftly on the wings of winds as He sleeps in the depths of the earth.
12. He appoints the eight internal and external organs of sense and action to their several functions, and He has made dull and dumb creatures as inert as stones and mute as if they sitting in meditation.
13. He has filled the skies with emptiness and the rocks with solidity. He has dissolved waters to fluidity and has concentrated all light and heat in the sun.
14. He has spread these wonderful scenes of the world like clouds sprinkle charming showers of rain, both as endless and constant as they are charming and sweet to sight.
15. It is He who causes the appearance and disappearance of worlds in the sphere of His infinity, like waves in the ocean, and in whom these phenomena rise and set like the running sands of the desert.
16. His spirit is the indestructible soul that resides as the germ of decay and destruction inside animals. It is so minute as to lie hidden within the body, and so huge as to fill all existence.
17. His nature (prakriti) spreads Herself like a magic vine throughout the space of emptiness and produces the fair fruit in the form of the cosmic egg (brahmanda), while the outward organs of bodies, resembling the branches of this plant, keep dancing about the stem (the intelligent soul), shaken by the breeze of life which is ever fleeting.
18. It is He who shines as the gem of intelligence in the heart of the human body, and it is He from whom the luminous orbs constituting the universe continually derive their luster.
19. It is that colossus of intelligence which like a cloud sheds ambrosial draughts of delight to soothe our souls and showers forth innumerable beings everywhere like raindrops. It bursts into constant flashes showing the prospects of repeated creations which are as momentary as flashes of lightening.
20. It is His wonderful light that displays the worlds to our wondering sight, and it is from His being that both real and unreal derive their reality and unreality.
21. The unconscious and ungodly soul turns to the attractions of others against its own purpose, while the tranquil soul rests in itself.
22. It is He who transcends all existences, and by whom all existent beings are bound, in their proper times and places, to their destined actions, as they are also bound to their free actions, motions and efforts of all kinds.
23. It is He who from His personality of pure consciousness (cit, cosmic consciousness), became of the form of emptiness, then by means of His empty mind and empty thoughts filled it with substances, wherein His soul was to reside, and whereon His spirit had to preside.
24. Having thus made the infinite hosts of worlds in the immense sphere of the universe, He is yet neither the agent of any action nor the author of any act in it, but remains ever the same as the sole One alone, in His unchangeable and unimpaired state of self-consciousness, and without any fluctuation, evolution or adhesion of Himself, as He is quite unconcerned with the world.
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Chapter 3.6 — Honest Effort Required to Attain Self Knowledge
1. Vasishta said:— It is by the knowledge of this transcendent Supreme Spirit and God of gods that one may become an adept, and not by the rigor of religious austerities and practices.
2. Here nothing else is needed than the culture and practice of divine knowledge, and thereby the truth being known, one views the errors of the world like a satisfied traveler looks at a mirage in a clear light.
3. God is not far from or too near us. He is not obtainable by what He is not (such as adoration of images and ritual acts). He is the image of light and joy and is perceivable in ourselves.
4. Here austerities and charities, religious vows and observances are of no good whatever. It is only the calm peacefulness of one’s own nature that is of value fort a person to serve God.
5. The best means to attain divine knowledge are fondness for the society of the righteous and devotion to the study of good books. Ritual services and practices serve only to strengthen the trap of our inborn delusions, which only true knowledge can sever.
6. As soon as one knows one’s own inner light to be God, one gets rid of his miseries and becomes liberated in his living state.
7. Rama said, “Having known the Self in himself, one is no more exposed to the evils of life or even of death itself.
8. But say, how is this great God of gods to be attained from such great distance (as we are placed from Him), and what rigorous austerities and amount of pains are necessary for it?”
9. Vasishta replied:— He is to be known through your courageous efforts (in knowledge and faith) and by the aid of clear understanding and right reasoning, and never by the practice of austerities or ablutions, or by acts attended with bodily pain of any kind.
10. For know, O Rama, that all your austerities and charities, your painstaking and mortification, are of no efficacy unless you wholly renounce your passions and enmity, your anger, pride and selfishness, and your envy and jealousy.
11. For whoever with a heart full of vile passions is liberal with money he has earned by defrauding others, the merit of such liberality accrues to the rightful owner of the property and not to its professed donor.
12. Whoever observes any vow or rite with a mind moved by passions, he passes for a hypocrite and reaps no benefit of his acts.
13. Therefore, for putting down the diseases and disturbances of the world, try your manly exertions in securing the best remedies of good precepts and good company.
14. No other course of action, except to exert one’s courage, is conducive to allaying all the miseries and troubles of this life.
15. Now learn what this courage is so that you may attain wisdom and annihilate the maladies of passions, affections and animosity in your nature.
16. True courage consists in remaining in an honest calling that conforms with the law and good customs of your country, and in a contented mind that shrinks from savoring the enjoyments of life.
17. It consists in the exertion of one’s energies to the utmost of his power, without bearing any murmur or grief in his soul, and in one’s devotion to the society of the good and perusal of good works and scriptures.
18. He is truly brave who is quite content with what he gets, and spurns at what is unlawful for him to take; who is attached to good company and eager to study faultless works.
19. They who are of great mind, and who have known their own natures and those of all others by their right reasoning, are honored by the gods Brahma, Vishnu, Indra and Shiva.
20. One should diligently turn towards he who is called righteous by a majority of good people as the best and most upright of men.
21. The best scriptures are considered to be those which deal primarily with spiritual knowledge. One who constantly meditates on them is surely liberated.
22. It is by means of right discrimination derived from keeping good company and studying holy works that our understanding is cleared of its ignorance, just like dirty water is purified by kata seeds, and as the minds of men are purified by the by philosophy of yoga.
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Chapter 3.7 — God Is Pure Consciousness; the Phenomenal World Is Non-Existent
1. Rama said, “Tell me, O holy one, about this God that you have spoken of, whose knowledge, you said, leads to our liberation. Where is He situated and how can I know Him?”
2. Vasishta replied:— This God of whom I spoke is not at any distance from us. He is situated within these our bodies, and He is known to us as the form of pure Consciousness.
3. He is All in all, but all this world is not the omnipresent Himself. He is One alone, but is not all that is visible.
4. It is this Consciousness that is in Shiva who wears the crescent moon on his head. It is the same in Vishnu who rides on his garuda eagle, and in Brahma who is born of the lotus. The sun also is a particle of this Intelligence.
5. Rama replied, “So it is, and even children say that if the whole world is mere Consciousness, then why call it by another name? What is the use of teaching anyone about it (when everyone is full of Intelligence)?”
6. Vasishta replied:— If you believe pure Consciousness is the same as the intelligent world, then you know nothing about how to get rid of this world.
7. The world is truly intelligent, O Rama, but the animal soul is called a brutish (pashu, animal) observer of things because it looks only after sensual gratifications, which gives rise to only fears of disease, decay and death.
8. The animal soul (jiva), though an incorporeal substance, is an ignorant thing and subject to pain and sorrow. The mind (manas) also, though capable of intelligence, has become the root of all evils.
9. Intellectual liberation from thoughts of the world is one state; unintelligent gazing at it is another. He who knows the better of these two states of the soul has no cause of sorrow.
10. He who has seen the all surpassing Supreme Being, has all of his heart strings cut asunder and all the questions of his mind driven away. The effects of his acts are washed away.
11. The longing after phenomena does not cease unless the perception of phenomena is effaced from the mind.
12. How then is this perception to be effaced? How is it possible to have a longing after the unintelligible Intelligence without suppressing our longing for phenomena? It is only possible by avoiding the external perceptions of the mind.
13. Rama said, “Sage, tell me about that empty animal soul, and how the knowledge of such soul does not enable one to get rid of his reincarnation.
14. Tell me also, who is that man who by company with the good and study of good works has crossed the ocean of the world and beholds the Supreme Soul in himself?”
15. Vasishta replied:— Whatever animal souls, having been cast into the wilderness of this life, long after this intelligent soul, they are truly wise and know Him (in themselves).
16. Whoever believes the animal soul to be the life of the world and thinks Consciousness requires pain, he can never know Him anywhere.
17. If the Supreme Soul is known to us, O Rama, the succession of our sorrows is ended, like the fatal cholera after extraction of its poison.
18. Rama said, “Tell me, O holy one, about the true form of the Supreme Soul, by light of which the mind may escape from all its errors.”
19. Vasishta replied:— The Supreme Soul is seen in ourselves and within our bodies in the same way as we are conscious that our minds are still be within us after its flight to distant countries.
20. Our notion of the Supreme Spirit is often lost in the depth of our minds in the same way as the existence of the outer world becomes extinct in our consciousness during yoga meditation.
21. We lose our sense of seeing and the seen in the knowledge of Him who is a non-empty vacuum or a substantive emptiness.
22. He whose substance appears as a vacuum and in whom exists the empty fullness of the universe, and who appears as emptiness itself, in spite of the multitude of His creation existing in Him, is truly the form of the Supreme Soul.
23. The form of the Supreme Soul (that you want to know) is He who though full of intelligence, appears to stand before us like an unconscious huge rock, and who, though quite subtle in his nature, seems to be some gross body to our conception.
24. That which encompasses the inside and outside of everything, and assumes the name and nature of everything to itself, is truly the form of the Supreme.
25. As light is connected with sunshine, and emptiness with the sky, and as omnipresence is present with everything and everywhere, such is the form of the Supreme Spirit (that you want to know).
26. Rama asked, “But how are we to understand that He who bears the name and nature of absolute and infinite reality should yet be compressed within anything visible in the world? Such is quite impossible to believe.”
27. Vasishta replied:— The false conception of the creation of the world resembles the false impression of colors in the clear sky. It is wrong, O Rama, to take something as real which does not exist in nature.
28. It is the knowledge of Brahman that constitutes His form, or else there is no act of His whereby He may be known to us. He is entirely devoid of any visible form, and therefore there is no better way for anyone other than to know Him as truth.
29. After all trace of phenomena is gone, there remains a preeminent object of conception, which is inborn and manifest of itself.
30. This concept of the Supereminent, having no visible appearance, often has no reflection, and at other times it is reflected in the mirror of the mind.
31. Nobody has ever conceived this transcendent Truth in himself, who has not at the same time been convinced of the impossibility of the existence of the visible world.
32. Rama replied, “Tell me, O sage, how the existence of so many extensive worlds composing the visible universe can be thought of as unreal or comprised in the minutiae of the Divine Mind, like Mount Meru in a sesame seed?”
33. Vasishta replied:— If you stay in the company of holy men a few days, and if you study sacred scriptures with a steady mind with me,
34. then I will purge this false view of phenomena from your understanding, like a delusive mirage from one’s sight. This absence of the view will extinguish your sense of being the viewer, and restore you to your intelligence alone.
35. When the viewer is united with the view, and the view with the viewer, then duality becomes unity; duality blends into an inseparable unity.
36. Without union of the two there is no success of either. When viewer and the view have disappeared, only one unity remains.
37. I will cleanse the impurity of all your sense of “I” and “you,” the world and all other things from the mirror of your mind, by bringing you to your consciousness of self and the total negation of everything else.
38. From nothing never comes a something and from something never proceeds a nothing, so there is no difficulty whatever in removing what does not exist in nature.
39. In the beginning this world which appears so very vast and extensive was not in being. It resided in the pure spirit of Brahma. It has evolved from the mind of Brahma.
40. The thing called the world was never produced, it is not in being, and it does not actually appear. It is like gold in the form of a bracelet. It is not difficult to alter and reduce to its gross metallic state.
41. I will explain it fully by other examples whereby this truth may appear of itself and impress itself irresistibly in your mind.
42. How can something be said to exist that was never brought into existence? How can there be water in the mirage, or the ring of an eclipse in the moon?
43. As a barren woman has no son and a mirage has no water, and as the sky has no plant growing in it, so there is no such thing as what we falsely call the world.
44. Whatever you see, O Rama, is the indestructible Brahma himself. I have shown you this many times with good reasoning and not just with mere words.
45. It is unreasonable, O intelligent Rama, to disregard something a learned man tells you with good reasoning. The dull-headed fellow who neglects to listen to the words of reason and wisdom is deemed as a fool and is subject to all sorts of difficulties.
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Chapter 3.8 — Nature of Good Scriptures; Yoga Vasishta as the Treasury of All
1. Rama asked, “How can it be reasonably shown and established that there is nothing to be known and seen in this world, although we have obvious notions of it supported by sense and right reasoning?”
2. Vasishta answered:— This endemic of fallacious knowledge (of the reality of the world) has been prevalent for a long time. It is only by true knowledge that this wrong application of the word “world” can be removed from the mind.
3. I will tell you a story, Rama, for your success in this knowledge. If you pay attention to it, you will become both intelligent and liberated.
4. But if the impatience of a brutish creature makes you get up and leave after hearing only half of this story, then you shall reap no benefit from it.
5. Whoever seeks some object and strives after it, he of course succeeds in getting it; but if he becomes tired of it he fails.
6. Rama, if you keep to the company of the good and to the study of good scriptures, then surely you will arrive at your state of perfection in course of a few days or mouths, according to the degree of your diligence.
7. Rama said, “O you, who are best acquainted with the scriptures, tell me which is the best scripture for the attainment of spiritual knowledge, such that its familiarity may release us from the sorrows of this life?”
8. Vasishta replied:— Know, O high minded Rama, that this work is the best of all others on spiritual knowledge. It is the auspicious (Yoga Vasishta) Great Ramayana, the scripture of scriptures.
9. This Ramayana is the best of histories, and it serves to enlighten understanding. It is known to contain the essence of all histories.
10. But by hearing these doctrines one easily finds his liberation coming of itself to him. This is why it is regarded as the most holy writing.
11. All the existing scenes of the world will vanish upon their mature consideration, just like thoughts in a dream are dispersed after waking and realizing one had been dreaming.
12. Whatever there is in this work can also be found in others, but what is not found here cannot be found elsewhere. Therefore the learned call this the treasury of philosophy.
13. Whoever attends to these lectures every day shall have his excellent understanding undoubtedly stored day by day with transcendent knowledge of divinity.
14. He who finds this scripture to be disagreeable to his polluted taste, may prefer to browse some other scripture that is more wordy and eloquent.
15. One feels himself liberated in this life by listening to these lectures, just as one finds himself healed of a disease by the potion of some effective medicine.
16. The attentive hearer of these lessons perceives their efficacy in himself in the same way as one feels the effects of curses or blessings that always have their full effects in time.
17. All worldly miseries are at an end with he who considers well these spiritual lectures within himself. A similar effect is hard to be produce through charity or austerities, or through performing rituals ordained in the ancient Vedic texts, or through the many hundreds of practices that scriptures describe.
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Chapter 3.9 — Description of Living & Bodiless Liberation; God as the Supreme Cause of All (Parama Karana)
1. Vasishta continued:— They are truly delighted and gratified who with all their hearts and minds are always devoted to holy conversation among themselves.
2. Those devoted to the acquisition of knowledge and investigation of spiritual science enjoy the same bliss of liberation in their living state as it is said to attend disembodied souls.
3. Rama said, “Tell me, O holy one, the difference between liberation with and without a body, that I may try to learn with an understanding enlightened by the light of scriptures.”
4. Vasishta said:— Whoever remains as he is and continues intact as emptiness amidst society is called the liberated while in the body (jivan mukta).
5. Who remains employed only in his exercise of intellect and seems to be sleeping in his waking state, though he is conducting his worldly affairs, is called liberated while in the body.
6. One whose countenance is neither flushed nor dejected in pleasure or pain, and who remains content with what he gets, is called liberated while living.
7. One whose waking is like the state of sound sleep, who is not awake to the accidents of the waking state, and whose waking state does not sense the desires incident to it, is called liberated in his life.
8. Who, though moved by feelings of affection, enmity, fear and the like, is at rest, as clear and undisturbed as emptiness within himself, is called liberated while he is alive.
9. Who has not an air of pride in him, and is not conceited when he does or refrains to do anything, is called self-liberated in his lifetime.
10. Who with one glance or the wink of his eye has a full view of the whole of creation and the final destruction of the world, like the Supreme Self, is said to be liberated in his lifetime.
11. Whoever is neither feared nor is afraid, and who is free from the emotions of joy, anger and fear, such a person is liberated in life.
12. Who is quiet and quietly disposes his business of this world, and who though he stands as an individual in the sight of men but attaches no individuality to himself, and who though a sentient being is unconscious to all impressions, such a person is the living liberated soul.
13. Who being full of all possessions, and having everything present before him, remains cold and apathetic to them as if they were useless to him, such a man is liberated in his life.
14. Now leaving the subject of liberated while in the body, I will describe what they call liberation without body (videhamukta) which enters the soul like a breath of wind after it has fled from the mortal body.
15. The disembodied free spirit neither rises nor sets, nor is it subject to wane. It is neither manifest nor hidden. It is not at a distance, nor is it in me, you or in any other person.
16. It shines forth in the form of the sun and preserves the world like Vishnu. It creates the world in the shape of the lotus-born Brahma, and destroys all as Rudra or Shiva.
17. It takes the form of the sky supported on the shoulders of air that supports all living beings, gods, sages and demigods in the three worlds. It takes the form of boundary mountains that separate earth from sky.
18. It becomes the earth and supports these numerous types of beings. It takes the forms of trees, plants and grass, and yields fruits and grains for nourishment.
19. It takes the forms of fire and water and burns and melts in them by itself. It sheds ambrosia in the form of the moon, and causes death in the shape of poison.
20. It becomes light with which it fills the sky, and it spreads darkness in the form of dullness (tamas). It becomes vacuum to leave empty space for all, while in the form of hills it obstructs their free passage on earth.
21. In the form of the fleet mind it moves the self-moving animals, and in the form of dull matter it fixes that which is incapable of motion. It girds the earth by its form of the ocean, just like a bracelet encircles the arm.
22. The bodiless spirit takes upon it the great body of the sun and illuminates all the worlds with their minute particles while it remains quiet in itself.
23. Whatever is shining in this universe or ever was or is to be so, in any of the three — past, present and future times — know them all, O Rama, as forms of the Divine Spirit.
24. Rama said, “Tell me, O holy one, why this view of liberation appears so very difficult to me. It makes me believe that liberation is altogether incomprehensible and unattainable by anybody.”
25. Vasishta replied:— This liberation is called nirvana and it is also called Brahman. Attend now to the means of its attainment.
26. All such visible objects known as “I”, “you”, “this” and the like, because they are unproduced from the eternal being (sat) of God, it is impossible to have any conception of them in our minds.
27. Rama said, “I think, O best of them who know the knowable, that the bodiless souls of the liberated, when they pass through the bounds of the three worlds, have to be born again according to the course of nature.”
28. Vasishta replied:— Those who retain a memory of the three worlds have to move about in them, but those who have lost the idea of their existence are absorbed in infinity.
29. For how can one derive knowledge of the unity of God from his belief in duality, the separate existence of the world? Therefore the figurative sense of the cosmos as God (Vishwa) can not give the spiritual and infinite idea of Brahma.
30. He is no other but himself, of the nature of pure intellect, and of the form of the clear and tranquil emptiness. Brahma is said to be the world in order to signify his manifestation of its unreality as a reality to us.
31. I have well considered a golden bracelet and found nothing as a bracelet in it except its gold.
32. I observed the billows and found nothing in them but water. Where there was no water I saw no wave to rise.
33. I see no vibration anywhere except in wind, which is the only force in motion moving all things in the world.
34. As emptiness abides in air and water appears in the burning deserts, and as there is light spread over all creation, so the spirit of Brahma manifests in the three worlds in the forms of the very worlds themselves.
35. Rama said, “Tell me, O sage, what makes this world, with its nature of absolute non-existence, exhibit such distinct appearances in its phenomena?
36. Tell me also, if the viewer and the view both become extinct, how can their nirvana or absorption in the deity remain without their personalities?
37. Again, as it is impossible to conceive the existence of phenomena, say how is it possible to conceive the existence of the invisible Brahma in his own nature?
38. By what mode of reasoning can this truth be known and ascertained and, this being accomplished, there remains nothing else to be inquired into?”
39. Vasishta replied:— This false knowledge or predisposition towards the reality of the world has been long prevalent, like a chronic disease, and must be removed only by the specific mantra of reasoning.
40. However, it can not be expelled quickly or in a minute. That requires some time, like the ascent and descent of an even sided precipice.
41. Therefore listen to what I say in order to dispel your fallacy of the world through arguments, logical inferences, and habitual meditation.
42. Rama, listen to a tale that I am to tell for your attainment of this knowledge. By hearing it you will become intelligent, wise and liberated.
43. I will now talk about the subject of the production of the world in order to show you that all that is produced serves to bind our souls to the earth, and so that you may live quite free from such bondage.
44. I will tell you about creation and how the false conception of the world is as unsubstantial as emptiness itself.
45. This world appears to contain moving and unmoving beings and abounds in various races of gods, spirits, kinnaras (body of man and head of horse),
46. storm gods and other demigods. All these become invisible and lose themselves in nothing at the ultimate dissolution of the world.
47. Then there remains a moist and hollow deep without light and spread with a thick mist, everything undefined and undeveloped, except something that which is Real and lasts forever.
48. There was no air or form of anything, no sight or anything to be seen. There were no multitudes of created and material beings that appear to be endless and everlasting to view.
49. There was a nameless Self, the fullest of the full in its form. It was neither entity nor non-entity, neither reality nor unreality.
50. It was mere Intellect without its exercise of intellect, Infinite without decay, auspicious and full of bliss. It was without beginning, middle or end, eternal and imperishable.
51. In Him this world is manifest like a pearly goose in a painting. He is and yet is not this creation. He is the soul of both what is real and unreal.
52. He is without ears, tongue, nose, eyes or touch, yet He hears, tastes, smells, sees and feels everything in all places and at all times.
53. He is also that (intellectual) light whereby we discern the form of that real and unreal Being in his perspective of creation, as the One without beginning or end, and as presenting an image without color or shade.
54. He is that empty Soul who views the worlds as clearly as the yogi with his half closed eyes who fixes his sight between his eyebrows and beholds Him in the form of indescribable light.
55. He is the cause of all, He whose cause is as nothing as the horns of a rabbit, and whose works, like so many waves of the sea, are all these worlds.
56. His light is ever shining everywhere, and He has his seat in the human heart. It is from the candle light of His Consciousness that all the worlds derive their light.
57. It is He without whose light the sun would dwindle into darkness, and whose existence alone gives the world its appearance of a mirage.
58. It is His pulsation that vibrates throughout the universe and it is His inertia that stops the course of the whole. It is on that pivot that the world has its revolution, just like a whirling firebrand describes a circle.
59. His nature is pure and unchangeable. The works of creation and destruction are mere acts of His will in the persons of Brahma and Hara.
60. It is His inertia and force that gives rest and motion to all things, like the ubiquitous course of the winds. But this is only a common belief that He moves. In reality His nature is free from any and all change.
61. He is always awake in His ever sleeping state, and therefore cannot be said to be waking or sleeping anywhere at anytime. He is both awake and asleep everywhere and at all times.
62. His quiescence is attended with bliss and tranquility, and His agitation puts the world in motion and in its course of action, yet He is said to remain unaltered in both states which unite in Him.
63. He is inherent in all things as fragrance is innate in the flower, and He is indestructible like the fragrance remains after the flower is destroyed. He pervades all things, yet is as intangible as the whiteness of linen.
64. He, though speechless, is the author of all speech and sound. Though He appears to be as unthinking as a stone, He is full of thought. He, though fully satisfied with His bliss, enjoys all things, although He requires nothing for Himself.
65. He, though without body, moves all the members of the body and is described (in the Vedas) as having a thousand arms and eyes. He, having no support for Himself, is yet the support of all, and pervades the whole without being seated anywhere.
66. He, having no organs or organic power, is the Organ of organs and performs the functions of innumerable organs. Having no mind that senses, He exhibits endless designs of His Divine Mind in the infinity of creation.
67. It is because of our lack of knowledge of Him that we are in constant dread of this delusive world, just as we are afraid of snakes. It is at His sight that all our fears and desires fly far away from us.
68. It is in the presence of the clear light of that God of truth that all the wishes of our minds have a better play, just like actors dance best when they have light.
69. It is by Him that a hundred types of visible objects arise every moment to our view, like the ceaseless series of waves, billows and surges rising on the surface of the waters.
70. It is He who exhibits Himself other than what He is, in hundreds of different shapes to our mistaken minds, just like gold is made to appear in the various forms of bracelets, armlets and a hundred other sorts of trinkets.
71. He who manifests Himself as the soul abiding in me, you and in every other person, yet is not me, you, he or it, is the Supreme Soul or Self that is the same with and apart from all.
72. It is He and the same being, whether you view Him in one or more objects, as it is the same water that heaves itself in this or the other wave. Thus all visible phenomena have their rise from Him.
73. He from whom time has its counting and that which can be seen has its appearance, by whom the mind exercises its thinking powers, and by whose light the world is enlightened, is the Supreme.
74. Whatever forms, figures and their actions, whatsoever flavors and odors, and what sounds, touch, feelings and perceptions there are or that you can sense, know them all and their cause also to be the Supreme.
75. You will be able to know your own soul, O good Rama, if you can see with the vision that lies between the looker and the object looked upon.
76. Know it as uncreated and indestructible, without beginning or end. It is the eternal and everlasting Brahma and bliss itself. It is immaculate and infallible, highly adorable and without fault in its nature. It is beyond all description and a mere void in its form. It is the cause of causes and a notion of something that is unknowable. It is understanding and the inner faculty of the intellect or the mind.
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Chapter 3.10 — The Emptiness upon Universal Dissolution Is Not Empty; Description of God
1. Rama said, “That which remains after the universal dissolution is commonly designated by the term ‘formless void.’
2. Then how can you say that there was no void, light or darkness?
3. How could it be without the intellect and the living principle? How could the entities of the mind and understanding be lacking in it?
4. How could there be nothing and not all things? You have used other similar paradoxical expressions that have created much confusion in me.”
5. Vasishta said:— You have raised a difficult additional question, Rama, but I shall have no difficulty to solve it, just like the sun is at no pains to dispel the darkness of night.
6. At the end of a great kalpa age when there remains that entity of God, it cannot be said to be a void, as I will now explain to you. Attend Rama and hear.
7. Like images carved in bas-relief upon a pillar, this world was made in relief upon that Entity. It cannot be said to have been a void.
8. Again, when there was the appearance of abundance under the name of the world, and be it real or unreal, it could not have been a void and empty.
9. As a pillar with carved or painted figures cannot be said to be devoid of them, so Brahma exhibiting the worlds contained in him can not become a void.
10. But the world contained in Brahma becomes both something and nothing, just like billows in calm waters may either exist or not exist.
11. Again it happens that the hand of time marks certain figures in some places on some unconscious trees, and these marks are mistaken by people for images. So it comes to pass that certain figures of impermanent matter occur in the eternal mind which men mistake for the real world.
12. This comparison of the carved pillar, the tree and the world, is a partial and not complete simile. The similarity refers only to the impression of the transient world on the substance of the permanent Brahma.
13. But this appearance of the world is not caused by another. It rises, lasts and sets spontaneously and of itself in the same essence of Brahma. It is the nature of the Divine Soul and the mind to raise and set such images in them, like the creations of our imagination.
14. The meaning of the word void (shunya) instead of no void (ashunya) or existence is a fiction. It is as false as emptiness is a none-existence in nature. Something must come out of something, and never from a void nothing. How can nothing be reduced to nothing in the end?
15. In answer to your second question, it has been said “and there was no darkness.” Because the divine light of Brahma (which existed before creation) is not like the light of a material luminary (which is followed by darkness). The everlasting light cannot be hidden by darkness, like sunshine or moonlight or the blazing of fire or the twinkling of stars or our eyes.
16. What we call darkness is the absence of light from the great celestial suns. God having no material property in his immaterial essence, there could be no such light or darkness with Him before creation.
17. The light of the empty Brahma is an internal perception of the soul and is only felt and perceived within one’s self, and never externally by anybody. This spiritual light is never clouded by any mist or darkness of temporal objects.
18. The indestructible Brahma is beyond and free from external and visible light and darkness. He is above the region of emptiness that is contained, as it were, within his bosom, and contains the universe sheathed within His hollow womb.
19. As there is no difference between the outside and inside of a fruit, so there is no shade of difference between Brahma and the universe.
20. As a wave is contained in and composed of water, and a clay pot of the earth, so the world being contained in Brahma, it can not be said to be null and void but is full of the spirit of God.
21. The comparison of earth and water does not agree physically with the spiritual essence of God, whose empty spirit contains and comprises the whole (vishwa, universe) within itself, as those elements have their component parts and productions.
22. Now, as the sphere of the intellect is far clearer and brighter than the spheres of air and empty space, so the sense and idea of the word “world” in the Divine Mind is clearer in a far greater degree than this visible world appears to us.
23. (In answer to the third question with regard to the lack of intellect), it is said that like the pungency of pepper is perceived by one who tastes it and not by him who has never tasted it, so the minutiae of the Intellect are known in the intellectual sphere by a cultivated intelligence, and not by one who is without it.
24. Thus the Intellect appears as no intellect to one who is devoid of Intelligence in himself. So this world is seen in the spirit of God or otherwise according to whether one has cultivated or neglected his spiritual knowledge.
25. The world can be seen either in its outward form as other than Brahma or in a spiritual light as the same with Brahma. The yogi views it in its fourth (turiya) state of utter extinction (susupta, deep sleep) in his unconscious soul.
26. Therefore the yogi, though leading a secular life, remains in deep sleep in his soul, and tranquil (shanta) in his mind. He lives like Brahma unknown to and unnoticed by others, and though knowing all and full of thoughts in himself, he is like a treasury of Knowledge, unknown to the rest of mankind.
27. (In answer to the question how corporeal beings could proceed from incorporeal Brahma,) as waves of various shapes rise and fall in the still and shapeless breast of the sea, so innumerable worlds of various forms float about in the unaltered and formless emptiness of Brahma’s bosom.
28. From the fullness of the Divine Soul (Brahmatma) proceeds the fullness of the individual soul (jivatma) that also is formless (nirakriti). This aspect of Brahma is said to be owing to the purpose of manifesting himself (as living in all living beings).
29. So the totality of worlds proceed from the fullness of Brahma, yet the same totality remains as Brahma himself.
30. Considering the world in our minds as synonymous with Brahma, we find their identity like one finds by taste that pepper and its pungency are the same thing.
31. Such being the state of the unreality of the mind and what it can perceive, their reflections upon each other are as untrue as the shadow of a shadow.
32. Know Brahma is smaller than the smallest atom and the minutest of minutest particles. He is purer than air and more tranquil than the subtle ether that is enclosed in him.
33. Unbounded by space or time, his form is the most extensive of all. He is without beginning or end, an indescribable light without brightness.
34. He is of the form of cosmic consciousness (chit) and eternal life, without the conditions and accidents of life. The Divine Mind has its will eternal and it is devoid of the desires of finite minds.
35. Without consciousness there is no life or understanding, no exercise of intellect, no organic action or sensation, and no mental desire or feeling whatever.
36. Hence the Being that is full of these powers, and who is without decline or decay, is seen by us to be seated in His state of tranquil emptiness, and is more subtle than the rarefied vacuum of the ethereal regions.
37. Rama said, “Tell me again and more precisely about the form of this transcendental Being who is of the nature of infinite intelligence so that I may have more light in my understanding.”
38. Vasishta said:— I have told you repeatedly that there is one supreme Brahma, the cause of causes, who remains alone by Himself when the universe is finally dissolved or absorbed in Him. Listen to me describe Him fully to you.
39. That which the yogi sees within himself in his samadhi meditation, after forgetting his personality and repressing the faculties and functions of his mind, is truly the form of the unspeakable Being.
40. The yogi absorbed in meditation without awareness of the visible world or any sense of the viewer or the viewed, and who sees the light shining in himself, is the form of that Being.
41. He who has forgotten the nature of the individual soul (jiva) and his tendencies towards phenomena remains in the pure light and tranquil state of his consciousness and is the form of the Supreme Spirit.
42. He who does not feel wind or the touch of anything upon his body, but lives as a mass of intelligence in this life, is truly the form of the Supreme.
43. Again, that state of the mind which a man of sense enjoys in his long and deep sleep, undisturbed by dreams or gnats, is truly the form of the Supreme.
44. That which abides in the hearts of emptiness, air and stone, and is the intellect of all inanimate beings, is the form of the Supreme.
45. Again, whatever irrational and unconscious beings live by nature without soul or mind, the tranquil state of their existence is the nature of the Supreme Lord.
46. That which is seated in the midst of the intellectual light of the soul, and what is situated in the midst of the ethereal light of the sun, and that which is in the midst of light that we can see is truly the form of the Supreme.
47. The soul that is the witness to our knowledge of solar and visual lights and darkness, and is without beginning or end, is the form of the Supreme.
48. He who manifests this world to us and keeps Himself hidden from view, be He the same or distinct from the world, is the form of the Supreme.
49. He, though full of activity, is as sedate as a rock and who though not emptiness appears to be empty, such is the form of the Supreme.
50. He who is the source and end of our triple consciousness of the knower, known and knowledge, is most difficult of attainment.
51. He who shines forth with the luster of the triple conditions of the knowable, knower and their knowledge, and shows them to us as a large unconscious mirror, is truly the form of the Supreme who is not the cause but the source of the triple category.
52. The mind liberated from bodily activities and its dreaming, remaining concentrated in the consciousness abiding alike in all living as well as inert bodies, is said to remain in the end of our being.
53. The intelligent mind that is as fixed as an immovable body and is freed from the exercise of its faculties can be compared to the Divine Mind.
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Chapter 3.11 — There Can Be No Creation or Dissolution of Something that Never Existed
1. Rama said, “Tell me, O holy one, where does this world go after its dissolution when it does not retain its present form or its magnificent appearance?”
2. Vasishta answered:— Tell me, Rama, what is the form of the barren woman’s son? Where does he come from and where does he go? Tell me also, where does a castle in the sky come from and where does it go?
3. Rama replied, “There never was, nor is there, nor will there ever be a son of a barren woman, or a castle in the sky. Why do you ask me about the form and figure of something that is nothing?”
4. Vasishta said:— As there never was a barren woman’s son or a city in the air, so there never existed any scene such as that of the world.
5. That which has no existence could not have come from anywhere, nor can it have its dissolution afterwards. So what can I tell you about its origin or demise?
6. Rama replied, “The son of a barren woman and a city in the sky are mere fictions, but the visible world is not so and it has both beginning and end.”
7. Vasishta replied:— It is hard to have a comparison where the subject and object of the comparison agree in all respects. The world and its objects allow no comparison other than with themselves.
8. The appearance of the world is compared with that of a bracelet because the one is as false as the other. Neither is real.
9. And because there is nothing in the sky except negative emptiness, so the existence of the world in Brahma is only a negative idea.
10. As the black eye-liner collyrium is nothing other than blackness, and as there is no difference between frost and its coldness, so the world is not other than the great Brahma himself.
11. As the property of coldness cannot be denied of the moon and frost, so one cannot describe creation as not being of God. (Literally, creation is not a negative property of Brahma, but essential to His nature.)
12. As there is no water in a sea of the mirage, or light in the new moon, so this world, as it is (in its gross state) does not abide in the pure spirit of God.
13. That which did not exist owing to the lack of any cause has no present existence and cannot be destroyed.
14. How is it possible for a dull material object to have any cause other than a material one? In the same way it is not the light (but some solid substance) that is the cause of a shadow.
15. But as none of these works has come into existence without some cause, that cause, whatever it is, is displayed in what it produced.
16. Whatever appears as ignorance or illusion has some appearance of intelligence or truth, just like the illusion of the world seen in a dream displays the effect of consciousness within us.
17. Just like the illusion of the world in a dream is not without our inner consciousness of it, in the same way Brahma was not unconscious of the expansion of the world at the beginning of creation.
18. All that we see about us is situated in the Divine Soul. There is no other world that rises and sets (except what is imprinted in our minds).
19. As fluidity is another name for water and fluctuation the same with wind, and as sunshine is nothing other than light, so the world is nothing but Brahma (displayed in nature).
20. As the appearance of a city resides in the inner consciousness of a person who is conscious of his dreaming, in the same manner this world is displayed in the Supreme Soul.
21. Rama said, “If it is so, then tell me, O holy one, from where do we get our belief of its materiality? How is it that this unreal and visionary impression presents its baneful visible aspect to us?
22. If the view is in existence, there must be its viewer also, and when there is the viewer there is the view likewise. As long as either of these is in existence, there is our bondage. Our liberation chiefly depends on the disappearance of both (which can hardly take place).
23. It is entirely impossible to be liberated as long as our notion of the view is not lost in our minds. Unless the view is vanished both from the vision of the eyes and mind, no one can even form an idea in his mind of liberation.”
24. “Again the representation of the view at first and its obliteration afterwards are not enough for our liberation because the memory of the view is sufficient to bind the soul.
25. Moreover, when the picture of the view is impressed on the soul and reflected in the mirror of the mind, there is no need for its recollection (for what is deeply rooted in the soul comes out of itself).
26. The intellect, which at first was without the notion of phenomena, would be entitled to liberation, but once it has seen, it has taken on the impression of what it has seen.”
27. “Now sage, please use your reasoning to remove my hopelessness of liberation which, I imagine, is unattainable by any.”
28. Vasishta said:— Hear me, Rama, explain to you at length how the unreal world with all its contents appears to us as real.
29. For unless it is explained to you by my reasoning, stories and examples, this doubt will not subside in your breast like mud settles in a lake.
30. Then Rama, you will be able to conduct yourself on earth as one assured that the creation and existence of the world are false concepts.
31. You will then remain like a rock against the impressions of wealth and poverty and of gain and loss, and whether your relation with anything is fleeting or lasting.
32. Know that there is that only one spirit which is self-existent. All else is mere fiction. I will now tell you how the three worlds were produced and formed.
33. It was from Him that all these beings have come to existence, while He of himself is all and everything in it. He likewise appears to us and disappears also, both as forms and their appearances, and as the mind and its faculties, and as figures and their shapes, and as modes and motions of all things.
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Chapter 3.12 — Detailed Description of Original Creation, Elements in Their Subtle Forms
1. Vasishta said:— From the state of perfect stillness and tranquility of the supremely holy Spirit, the universe rose to being in the manner that you must hear with your best understanding and attention.
2. As sound sleep displays itself in visionary dreams, so Brahma manifests Himself in the works of creation, of which He is the soul and receptacle.
3. The world, which of its nature is continually progressive in its course, is identical with the essence of that Being, whose form is selfsame with the indescribable glory of His eternally brilliant Intellect (chintamani, the wish-fulfilling jewel).
4. This Intellect (chit, cosmic consciousness), before assuming to itself consciousness or the knowledge of self, gets of itself and in itself an exercise of intellection (a thought). (This is the first stage in perception by the soul).
5. Then this thinking Intellect (chetya-chit) gets the notions (bodha, knowledge or truth) of some faint images (uhita-rupas) which are purer and lighter than air, and which receive their names and forms only later. (The innate ideas are born before the embryonic mind or soul).
6. Afterwards this transcendent essence (Intellect, Consciousness) becomes an intelligent principle (sacheta) eager for intelligence (chetana). It is now worthy of its name as Intellect or chit on account of its having attained what is called intelligence.
7. Lastly it takes the form of gross consciousness (ghana-samvedana) and receives the name of the individual soul (jiva as the living cosmic soul or Hiranyagarbha). It now loses its divine nature by reflecting on itself.
8. Then this living principle is involved in thoughts relating only to the world, but its nature depends on the divine essence (as the fallacy of the snake depends on the substance of the rope).
9. Afterwards an empty space rises into being called kham (vacuum) which is the seed or source of the property of sound and which later becomes expressive of meaning.
10. Next in order, the elements of egoism and duration are produced in the individual soul. These two terms are the roots of the existence of future worlds.
11. This ideal knowledge in Divine Spirit of the unreal forms of the network of world was made to appear as a reality by omnipotent power.
12. Thus the ideal self-consciousness became the seed (or root) of the tree of desires that ego fluctuates in the form of air.
13. The intellect in the form of airy ego thinks on the element of sounds (shabda tanmatram, the element of sound in its subtle form) and it becomes by degrees denser than the rarified air and produces the element of mind.
14. Sound is the seed (or root) of words that later became diverse in the forms of names or nouns and significant terms. Words evolved and became as numerous as shoots on trees, and as varied as inflected speech, sentences, and the collections of Vedas and other scriptures.
15. It is from this Supreme Spirit that all these worlds derived their beauty and the multitude of words (which sprang from the sounds), full of meaning, became widespread.
16. Consciousness expressed as this family of its offspring is described as the living individual soul (jiva) which afterwards became the source of all forms of beings known under a variety of expressions.
17. From this individual soul sprang the fourteen kinds of living beings that fill the cells in the bowels of all worlds.
18. It was then that Consciousness, by a motion and inflation of itself and as instantaneously as a thought, became the subtle-form element (tanmatra) of touch and feeling (the air), which was yet without name or action. This breath caused air, which expanded itself and filled all bodies that are objects of touch and feeling.
19. The air, which is the seed (root) of the tree of tangibles, then developed itself into branches composed of the various kinds of winds that cause breath and motion in all beings.
20. Then, at its pleasure and from its idea of light, Consciousness produced the elemental essence of luster, which later received its different names (sunlight, moonlight, starlight, firelight, lightening).
21. Then the sun, fire, lightning and others that are the seeds (or roots) of the tree of light, caused the various colors that filled the world.
22. Consciousness reflected on the lack of fluidity and produced the liquid body of waters whose taste constitutes the element (tanmatra) of flavor in its subtle form.
23. The desire of the soul for different flavors (rasa, bliss) is the seed of the tree of taste, and it is by the relish of a variety of tastes that the world is to go on in its course.
24. Then the self-willed Brahma, wishing to produce the visible earth, caused the property of smell to appertain to it from his own subtle element of it.
25. He made his elemental solidity the seed or source of the tree of forms, as he made his own element of roundness underlie the spherical world.
26. These elements are all evolved from Consciousness and remain within Consciousness, just like bubbles of water rise and subside in itself.
27. In this manner, all beings remain in their combined states until their final dissolution into simple and separate forms.
28. All things, which are only forms and formations of pure Intellect, remain within the sphere of Divine Intelligence, as the subtle form of a big banyan tree resides in the forms of pollen and seed.
29. These sprouted forth in time and burst out into a hundred branches. Having been concealed in an atom, they became as big as if they were to last forever.
30. Such is the growth and multiplication of things within Consciousness until development is stopped by its contraction, then weakened in their bodies by its desertion, until they droop down in the end.
31. In this way the elements in their subtle forms (tanmatras) are produced in Consciousness out of its own volition and are manifested to sight in the form of formless minutiae.
32. These five-fold elements are only the seeds of all things in the world. They are seeds of the primary momentum that was given to them (in the beginning). To our way of thinking, they are the seeds of elementary bodies, but in their real nature, they are the uncreated ideal shapes of Consciousness replenishing the world.
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Chapter 3.13 — On the Production of the Self-Born
1. Vasishta said:— Rama, when the Supreme Brahman remains in his resplendent and tranquil state (before creation), there is no essence of ethereal light or heat or even darkness produced in the intellectual spirit. (But they lie hidden there as if buried in oblivion).
2. The Being (sat) that is God begins with the attribute of intellectuality (chetya). It is from the exercise of intellect (chetana, intuitive consciousness) of his intellectual part (chetyansa) that the name of mind (chitta, the memory aspect of mind) is attributed to Him. The faculties (shakti, power) of his intellect (chit, universal consciousness) are called its intelligence (chetana, life, spirit, visible, conscious).
3. Cosmic Consciousness (chit) or Intellect, from its intelligence (chetana), then has the attribute of the individual, the individual soul (jiva) and connection with the intelligible objects in nature. Then when it is subject to intelligible objects, having a subtle, elemental form of the sense of individual self (aham matra), it can be named maya or illusion.
4. Then from the excess of its egoism (ahanta) that is full with the purposes of its mind and of the elements of sound and other sense objects, it has the attribute of understanding (buddhi, individual intelligence, the intuitive, faculty of direct intelligence controlling the sense organs, the organ of mind responsible for discrimination and judgment).
5. This (living, deluded and self reflecting) ego is puffed up with thoughts of all things and looks upon the great tree of the visible world (as the great garden for its pleasure and gain).
6. Living souls, like so many impermanent objects seen in a dream, are made to rise and fall one after the other in this great forest of the world surrounded by skies and space.
7. But the world is as continuous as a grove of karajna plants that grow from unsown seeds, and its elements of water, fire, earth and air have no regard for anybody (living or dead).
8. The Consciousness that is the soul of the universe creates the earth and all other things, like one remembers his dreams.
9. Wherever there is the germ of the world, it develops itself in that place. The live elements are the five-fold seed of the world, but the un-decaying Consciousness is the seed of the five-fold elements (pancha bhoota, i.e., earth, water, fire, air and space).
10. As the seed so is its fruit. Therefore know the world is a form and full of God. Know the spacious sky is the reservoir of the five elements in the beginning of creation.
11. The soul, like the body, is composed of the powers of Consciousness and does not exist of itself, but being inflated by Consciousness, it extends its bulk.
12. But the empty form of Consciousness, seated in the spiritual body of the soul, cannot be composed of solid reality. This is not possible. Therefore nothing can come from an impossibility.
13. Again, that which is changeable in its form cannot have its sameness at all times. Therefore, if the substance of the five elements is attributed to Brahma, from an idea within the essence of His spirit, there can be no immaterial and unchanging Brahma. (I.e., Brahma would also have to be material and subject to change.)
14. Therefore know these five elements are the developed Brahma himself as he evolved them in the beginning, and he is their producer for the creation of the world.
15. He being the prime cause of their production, there is nothing that exists without him and the world is no product of itself.
16. The unreal appears as real just like a city is seen in a dream, and like a castle built in the air by our hopes. In the same way we place the individual soul in ourselves, which has its foundation in the empty spirit of God.
17. Thus the brilliant spirit, situated in the Divine Intellect, being no earthly or any other material substance, is called the individual soul and remains in emptiness like a luminous body rising in the sky.
18. Hear now how this empty individual soul, after its detachment as a spark from the totality of vital spirits, comes to be embodied in the human body within the empty sphere of Divine Consciousness.
19. At first the soul thinks it is like a minute particle of light, then it considers itself to be growing in the sphere of its consciousness.
20. The unreal appearing real in the end proves to be unreal, just like an imaginary moon becomes nothing. So the soul continues to see itself subjectively and objectively both as the viewer and the view.
21. Thus the single self becomes double, just as one sees his own death in a dream. Thus it waxes into bigness and thinks its vital spark is a star. (This is the form of the linga deha within the body, the sentient soul, the subtle or astral body.)
22. As the soul continues to think of itself as a microcosm of the universe (vishwarupa), it falsely thinks itself to be within such reality, a thought expressed by “soham” (so am I).
23. By thinking of himself this way, a man comes to believe it to be true, just like one believes himself to be a traveler in his dream. So by thinking the soul as a star (light body), he views it so within himself.
24. By continually thinking about his soul this way, he loses his external sensations and views this star in his head.
25. He sees the soul within himself as though it exists without him, just like a mirror reflects the distant hill in itself. He sees the soul confined within him like a body stuck in a well, and like a sound is confined in the hollow of a cave.
26. Consciousness of our dreams and desires is an attribute of the individual soul whose real form is that of a star keeping watch within us.
27. Now this empty life composed of the essences of the mind — understanding and knowledge — resides in the hollow sheath of the star.
28. It appears to me to take flight to the sky in order to see what is passing there. Then it enters the body by two holes which later are named the external organs (of sight).
29. The organs by which the embodied individual soul is to see are called the eyes. That by which it feels is called the skin. Those whereby it hears are ears.
30. The organ of smell is the nose, and that which conducts flavor to the spirit, the sense of taste, is the tongue.
31. Then there is breathing air — the breath of life — which moves the energies of the organs of action. It is this air which is the cause of vision and the mover of the internal organs of mind and thought.
32. Vital breath supports the body and the all supporting soul in the emptiness of the body, and fills and kindles it like air kindles a spark of fire.
33. The word jiva or the individual soul has a figurative meaning: “something real in the unreal body.” Hence Brahma is said to be the life and soul of the unreal world.
34. The gross embodied soul is in the form of emptiness, like the mind, yet it imagines itself to reside in an egg-shaped space inside the body, as Brahma is supposed to be seated in the cosmic egg.
35. Some view the spirit of God as floating on the surface of the waters (in the form of Narayana). Others view it in the person of the Lord of creatures (Pashupati, Shiva). There are others who look at the spirit of God as infused throughout the creation in the figure of Viraj (the primordial man). These are called the subtle and gross bodies of the soul (sukshma and sthula sharira ).
36. The soul or spirit is the spacious womb of production. It is the means of executing its own purposes and of knowing the proper time and place. It is the article and the manner of action.
37. The mind is the inventor of words, expressive of ideas (in the soul), and subjects itself to the arbitrary sounds of its own invention. Hence, in this world of errors, God is falsely said to be embodied in the words (shabda Brahma, the Brahma of speech, of Mimansa philosophy).
38. The unproduced and self-born Brahma that has risen of himself (and represents the mind) is as unreal as a man dreaming he is flying in the sky.
39. This all supporting and embodied soul is the creator Lord of Creatures who is said to have formed this illusory frame of the world.
40. But in reality, nothing was formed or born, nor is there any substance to be found in the world. It is still the same empty form of Brahma whose essence is known to extend as the infinite space itself.
41. Things that appear to be real are as unreal as an imaginary city. They present a variety of forms and colors to the fancy, but have not been built or painted by anybody.
42. Nothing that is unmade or unthought of can be real, and the gods Brahma and others, being freed from their business at the universal dissolution of existence, could neither resume their functions to make or have materials with which to make.
43. The self-born Brahma, having neither memory of the past nor any material with which to work, would not be able either to form an ideal or to make anything material. Therefore, Brahma producing anything and any formation of the universe are both impossible.
44. The earth and all other existence are the eternal ideas of the Divine Mind. They appear to us to be objects in a dream that is our waking state.
45. The Divine Spirit is known only as an emptiness, therefore the world must also be emptiness because like produces like. So all waters are liquid, though they are made to pass under different names.
46. This creation is everywhere the same in the Supreme Spirit. It is only an evolution of the same and the Creator is always and everywhere unchanging in His nature.
47. The empty universe, under the name of the cosmic egg, shines as clearly as the Divine Spirit. It is calm in its appearance and becomes disturbed by causes born in itself.
48. It is supported by the unsupported Supporter of all who is one and without a second, but devoid of unity in creation. All this is born in His consciousness and therefore there is nothing new that is produced.
49. He who is of the form of unlimited space without any emptiness in it, who is transparent yet teeming with abundance, and who is the whole world without any worldliness in him, truly underlies everything.
50. He who is neither the container nor the contained, nor the appearance of the world, who is neither the world nor its creator, and about whom there can be no dispute or disputant, is truly the unknown God.
51. He who is neither the passing world nor any of its passing things, who is quite at rest yet situated in all things (whether moving or quiescent), is the only Brahma that shines of himself in himself.
52. The idea of the fluidity of water allows our minds to form an image of a whirlpool. In the same way, the sight of the world produces the false notion of its reality in the mind.
53. All unrealities become extinct at the end, as we see the death of our frail bodies in dreams. The essential part of our soul remains unscathed because of its own nature of indestructibility in the form of everlasting consciousness in the atmosphere of our intellects.
54. Brahma, the prime Lord of creatures, is ever manifest by himself in the form of emptiness in the Supreme Spirit. He being of a spiritual form, like the mind, has no material body formed of earth or any other material. Therefore He is both real and unborn.
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Chapter 3.14 — No Individual Souls, only One Brahma; Each Is Brahma; Brahma Creates the Rules and Delegates
1. Vasishta added:— In this manner the visible world, I, you, and all other things are nothing. Being unmade and unborn, they are nonexistent. It is only the Supreme Spirit that exists of itself.
2. The primeval empty soul first is awakened of itself by its own energy from its quietness, then begins to have a motion in itself like the troubled waters of the deep.
3. Then it begins to reflect in itself, like in a dream or imagination, without changing its empty form, like a rock with an inner faculty of thought.
4. The body of the great god Viraj (“Untainted”) is also devoid of any material form, whether earthly or any other elemental shape. It is purely a spiritual, intellectual and ethereal form, as transparent as the ether itself.
5. It is without decay, steady like a rock, and as airy as a city seen in a dream. It is inert as the line of a regiment painted in a picture.
6. All other souls are like pictures of dolls and puppets painted, and not engraved, on the body of Viraj like on a huge pillar. He, standing as an uncarved column in the empty sphere of Brahma, represents all souls (and not bodies) as they are mere pictures on it.
7. The prime lord of creatures is said to be self-born. He is known as the uncreated (Brahma) for want of his prior acts to cause his birth.
8. The primeval patriarchs (progenitors) who obtain their ultimate liberation at the final dissolution of the world have no antecedent cause to be reborn as unliberated mortals.
9. Brahma, who is the reflector of all souls, is himself invisible in the inward mirror of other souls. He is neither the view nor the viewer, and neither the creation nor the creator himself.
10. Therefore, although Brahma has nothing that can be described, and has nothing that may be affirmed or denied about Him, yet He is the soul of everything that can be described. He is the source of these chains of living beings, just as light is the cause of a line of lighted lamps in illuminations.
11. The will of the gods (Brahma and Viraj), proceeding from the volition of Brahma, is of the same spiritual nature as the other; just as one dream rising in another is equally as insubstantial as the first.
12. Hence all individual souls evolved from the breathing of the Supreme Spirit are of the same nature as their origin because there is nothing else that could cause or contribute towards cause.
13. Lack of a secondary agency produces the equality of effects and their cause. Hence the uniformity of created things proves wholly false any conception of their creation by a secondary cause.
14. Brahma himself is the prime soul of Viraj and is identical with him, and Viraj is the soul of creation and identical with it. He is the empty vitality of all, and it is from Him that the unreal earth and other things have their rise. (Viraj is the spirit of God diffused in nature.)
15. Rama said, “Tell me whether the individual soul is a limited thing or an unlimited mass of life? Or does the unbounded spirit of God exist in the shape of a mountainous heap of individual souls?
16. Are these individual souls like showers of rain falling from above, or like the drizzling drops of waves in the vast ocean of creation, or like the sparks of fire struck out of a red-hot iron? From where do they flow, and by whom are they emitted?
17. Sage, tell me the truth concerning the profusion of individual souls. Though I have a partial knowledge of it, I require your more complete and clear explanation.”
18. Vasishta replied:— There is only one individual soul of the universe so you can not call it a multitude. Therefore your question is quite out of place, like a question about the horns of rabbits.
19. There are no detached individual souls, O Rama, nor are they to be found in multitudes anywhere, nor was there a mountainous heap of souls known to have existed at anytime.
20. “Jiva”, the individual soul, is only a fictitious word with many more fictions heaped upon it, all of which, as you must know for certain, does not apply to the soul.
21. There is only one pure and immaculate Brahma who is mere Consciousness (chinmatram) and all pervasive. He assumes to himself all attributes by His almighty power. (Here Brahma is represented not only as omniscient and omnipotent, but also as saguna, with attributes, by his assumption of all attributes.)
22. Many regard the individual soul as evolving itself from Consciousness into the many visible and invisible forms (murta-mutam), just like a plant is seen to develop itself into its fruits and flowers.
23. They add the attributes of the living principle — understanding, action, motion, mind and unity and duality — to the soul as if these appertain to its nature.
24. But all this is caused by ignorance, while right understanding assigns them to Brahma. The ignorant are bewildered by these different views of the soul, and they will not be awakened to sense.
25. These different believers are lost in their various views like light is lost under darkness. They will never come to the knowledge of truth.
26. Know that Brahma himself is the individual soul without any divisibility or distinction. He is without beginning or end. He is omnipotent and is of the form of the great Consciousness which forms his essence.
27. His lack of minuteness (his fullness) in all places precludes the ability to give him any distinctive name. Whatever attributes are given to him are all to be understood to mean Brahma himself.
28. Rama asked, “How is it, O holy one, that the totality of the individual souls in the world is guided by the will of one Universal Soul that governs the whole and to which all others are subject?”
29. Vasishta replied:— Brahma, the great individual soul and omnipotent power, remained from eternity with his will to create without partition or alteration of himself.
30. Whatever is wished by that great soul comes to take place immediately. The wish it first formed in its unity became a positive duality at last. Then its wish “to be many” became separate existences afterwards.
31. All these dualities of His self-divided powers (the different individual souls) had their several routines of action allotted to them, such as “this is for that,” meaning “this being is for that duty, and such action is for such end.”
32. Thus though there can be no act without effort (by the general rule as in the case of mortals), yet the predominant will of Brahma is always prevailing without effort to action.
33. Though living beings effect their purposes by exertion of their energies, yet they can effect nothing without acting according to the law appointed by the predominant power.
34. If the law of the predominant power is effective to attain an end, then the exertions of the subordinate powers (the individual souls) to that end must also be successful.
35. Thus Brahma alone is the great individual soul that exists forever and without end, and these millions of living beings in the world are nothing other than agents of the divine energies.
36. It is with a consciousness of the intellectual soul (the inner knowledge of God within themselves) that all individual souls are born in this world. But losing that consciousness (their knowledge of God) afterwards, they became alienated from him.
37. Hence men of inferior souls should pursue the course of conduct led by superior souls in order to regain their spiritual life (atmajivatwam), just like copper becomes transformed into gold (by chemical process).
38. Thus the whole body of living beings that had been as nonexistent as air before comes into existence and rises resplendent with wonderful intellect.
39. Whoever perceives this wonderful intellect in his mind, then gets a body and the consciousness of his egoism, is said to be an embodied individual soul.
40. The mind gratified with intellectual delights becomes as expanded as the intellect itself and thinks those pleasures constitute the sum total of worldly enjoyments.
41. Consciousness is said to remain unchanged in all its succeeding stages, and although it never changes from that state, yet it awakes (develops) by a power intrinsic in itself.
42. The uninterrupted activity of Consciousness indulges itself in the amusement of manifesting phenomena in the form of the world.
43. The extent of the intellectual faculty is wider and more rarefied than the surrounding air, yet it perceives its distinct egoism by itself and of its own nature.
44. Its knowledge of self springs of itself in itself like water in a fountain. It perceives itself (its ego) to be only an atom amidst endless worlds.
45. It also perceives in itself the beautiful and wonderful world which is amazing to understanding and which thereafter is named the universe.
46. Now Rama, our egoism, being only a conception of the intellect, is a mere fiction (kalpana). The elementary principles being only creatures of egoism, they are also fictions of the intellect.
47. Again the individual soul being only a result of our acts and desires, you have to renounce these causes in order to get rid of your knowledge of “I” and “you” and then, after discarding the fictions of the real and unreal, you attain to the knowledge of the true One.
48. As the sky looks as clear as before after the shadows of clouds are dispersed from it, so the soul, after its overshadowing fictions have been removed, looks as bright as it existed at first in Consciousness.
49. The universe is a vacuum and the world is a name for the field of our exertions. This emptiness is the abode of the gods (Vishwa and Viraj, both of whom are formless). The wonderful frame of plastic nature is only a form of the formless consciousness and nothing else.
50. One’s nature never leaves him at anytime. How then can a form or figure be given to the formless Divinity?
51. Divine Intellect is exempt from all the names and forms given to unintelligent worldly things, it pervading and enlivening all that shines in the world. (Intellect or consciousness is the power of understanding.)
52. The mind, understanding and egoism, with the five elements, hills, skies and all other things that compose and support the world, are made of essences proceeding from consciousness. (The intellect gathering information contains all things.)
53. Know that the world is the mind (chitta) of the consciousness (chit) of God because mind does not exist without the world. If the world did not exist, that would prove that the mind and consciousness, which consist of the world, do not exist. (Therefore, the intelligent world is identical to the mind and intellect of God.)
54. The intellect, like the pepper seed, possesses an exquisite property within itself. Like the flavor of pepper, the intellect has the element of the individual soul, which is the element of animated nature.
55. As the mind exerts its power and assumes its sense of egoism, it derives the principle of the individual soul from the Intellect, which with its breath of life and action is afterwards called a living being. (The mind is what thinks, moves and acts.)
56. Consciousness (chit), exhibiting itself as the mind (chitta), bears the name of the purpose it has to accomplish which, being temporary and changeable, is different from Consciousness and a non-existence.
57. The distinction of actor and act does not consist in Consciousness, it being eternal. Neither is Consciousness the author or the work itself. But the individual soul, which is active and productive of acts, is called purusha — the embodied soul residing in the body. It is action which makes a man purusha, from which is derived his manhood (paurusha).
58. Life with the action of the mind constitutes the mind of man. The mind taking a sensitive form employs the organs of sense to their different functions.
59. He, the Consciousness whose radiant light is the cause of infinite blessings to the world, is both its author and the workmanship from all eternity. There is none beside Him.
60. Hence the ego or individual soul in its essence is indivisible, uninflammable, and incapable of being soiled or dried. It is everlasting and infinite, and as immovable as a mountain.
61. There are many that dispute this point, as they in their error dispute other matters and mislead others into the same errors. But we are set free from all mistake.
62. The dualist (who makes a distinction between eternal and created souls), relying on phenomena, is deceived by their varying appearances. But the believer in the formless unity relies on the everlasting blessed Spirit.
63. Fondness for intellectual culture is attended with the spring blossoms of intellect that are as white as the clear sky and as numberless as the parts of time.
64. Consciousness exhibits itself in the form of the boundless and wonderful universal egg, and it breathes out the breath of its own spirit in the same egg.
65. Then it shows itself in the wonderful form of the primordial waters, not as they rise from springs or fall into reservoirs, but like those substances that constitute the bodies of the best of beings.
66. It next shines forth with its own intellectual light, which shines as bright as the humid beams of the full moon.
67. Then as Consciousness rises in full light with its internal knowledge, phenomena disappear from sight. In the same way, Consciousness is transformed to dullness by dwelling upon gross objects, when it is said to be lying dormant. In this state of Consciousness, it is lowered and confined to the earth.
68. The world is in motion by the force of Consciousness in whose great emptiness it is settled. The world is lighted by the light of that Consciousness, and is therefore said to both exist and not exist by itself.
69. Like the emptiness of that Intellect, the world is said now to exist and now to be nonexistent. Like the light of that Intellect, the world now appears and now disappears from view.
70. Like the fleeting wind breathed by that Intellect, the world is now in existence and now nonexistent. Like the cloudy and unclouded sphere of that Intellect, the world is now in being and now not in being.
71. Like the broad daylight of that Intellect, the world is now in existence, and like the disappearance of that light, it now becomes nothing. It is formed of the active (rajas) quality of the Intellect, like black collyrium eyeliner made from particles of oil.
72. It is Intellectual fire that gives warmth to the world. It is the alabaster of the Intellect that causes its whiteness. The rock of Intellect gives it hardness, and its water causes its fluidity.
73. The sweetness of the world is derived from the sugar of the Intellect, and its juiciness from the milk in the Divine Mind. Its coldness is from the ice, and its heat from the fire contained in the same.
74. The world is oily by the mustard seeds contained in Consciousness and billowy in the sea of the Divine Mind. It is sweet by the honey and golden by the gold contained in the same.
75. The world is a fruit of the tree of Consciousness and its fragrance is derived from the flowers growing in the tree of the mind. It is the existence of Consciousness that gives the world its being, and it is the mold of the Eternal Mind that gives its form.
76. The difference is that this world is changing while the clear atmosphere of Consciousness has no change in it. The unreal world becomes real when it is seen as full of the Divine Spirit.
77. The unchanging sameness of the Divine Spirit makes the existence and nonexistence of the world the same. The words ‘part’ and ‘whole’ are wholly meaningless because both are full with the Divine Spirit.
78. Shame on those who deride ideas as false talk because the world — with its hills, and seas, earth and rivers — is all untrue without the idea of God’s presence in it.
79. Consciousness being an unity cannot be mistaken for a part of anything. Though it may become as solid as a stone, yet it shines brightly in the sphere of its emptiness.
80. It has a clear empty space in its inside, like a transparent crystal, that reflects the images of all objects, though it is as clear as the sky.
81. As the lines on the leaves of trees are neither parts of the leaves nor distinct from them, so the world situated in Consciousness is not part of it or separate from it.
82. No detached soul is a varied growth, but retains in its nature the nature of consciousness, and Brahma is the primary cause of causes.
83. The mind is of its own nature a causal principle, by reason of its idea of the Intellect, but its existence is hard to prove when it is insensible and unconscious of the Intellect.
84. Whatever is in the root comes out in the tree, just as we see seeds shoot forth in plants of its own species.
85. All the worlds are as empty as emptiness, yet they appear otherwise because they are situated in the Great Consciousness. All this is the seat of the Supreme, and you must know it by your exercise of intellect. Valmiki speaking:—
86. As the sage spoke these words, the day declined to its evening twilight. The assembly broke with mutual salutations, to perform their evening rituals, and, after dispersion of the nocturnal gloom, met again at the court hall with the rising sunbeams.
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Chapter 3.15 — Story of Leela and Saraswati (Padma’s Body on the Shrine)
1. Vasishta said:— The world is a void and as null as the pearls in the sky (seen by optical delusion). It is as unreal as the soul in the emptiness of consciousness.
2. All its objects appear like un-engraved images on the column of the mind that is without any engraving or engraver.
3. As the motion of waters in the sea causes waves to rise of themselves, so phenomena as they appear to us are like waves in the calm spirit of the Supreme.
4. Like sunbeams seen underwater, and like water appearing in the sands of the desert (mirage), so it is fancy that paints the world as true to us. The world’s bulk is like that of an atom appearing like a hill.
5. The fancied world is no more than a facsimile of the mind of its maker, just as sunbeams underwater are only reflections of the light above, a false idea.
6. The ideal world is only a castle in the air, and this earth is as unreal as a dream and as false as the objects of our desire.
7. In the light of philosophy, the earth that appears solid is no better than the water in the mirage of a sandy desert. It is never in existence.
8. In this supposed substantial form of the world, the illusive forms of phenomena resemble only castles in the sky and rivers in a mirage.
9. If the visible scenes of the world were to be weighed on scales, they would be found to be as light as air and as hollow as a vacuum.
10. The ignorant taken away by the sound of words in disregard of their meanings, when they come to their senses, will find that there is no difference between the world and Brahma.
11. The dull world is the issue of Consciousness, like sky is of sunbeams. The light of Consciousness is like the light of the rarified rays of the sun that, like water from huge clouds, causes seeds to shoot into plants.
12. As a city in a dream is finer than one seen in the waking state, so this world that can be seen is as subtle as an imaginary one.
13. Therefore know the dream world to be the inverse of the conscious soul, and the substantive world to be the reverse of the insubstantial vacuum. The words fullness and vacuum are both as empty as airy breath because these opposites are only different views of the same Consciousness.
14. Therefore know that this visible world is no production at all. It is as nameless as it is undeveloped, and as nonexistent as its seeming existence.
15. The universe is the sphere of the spirit of God in infinite space. It has no foundation elsewhere except in that Spirit of which it is only a particle filling a space equal to a bit of infinity.
16. It is as transparent as the sky and without any solidity at all. It is as empty as empty air and like a city pictured in imagination.
17. Attend now to the story of the Temple which is pleasant to hear and which will impress this truth deeply in your mind.
18. Rama said, “Tell me at once, O holy one, the long and short of the story of the temple, which will help my understanding of these things.”
19. Vasishta said:— In the past, on the surface of the earth, there lived a king named Padma (Lotus) because he was like the blooming and fragrant lotus of his race. Padma was equally blessed with wisdom, prosperity and good children.
20. He observed the bounds of his duties, just as the sea preserves the boundaries of countries. He destroyed the mist of his adversaries, like the sun dispels the darkness of night. He was like the moon to his lotus-like queen, and like burning fire to the hay of evils and crimes.
21. He was the asylum of the learned, like Mount Meru is the residence of the gods. He was the moon of fair fame risen from the ocean of the earth. He was like a lake to the geese of good qualities, and like the sun to the lotuses of purity.
22. In warfare, he was like a blast to the vines of his antagonists. He was like a lion to the elephants (desires) of his mind. He was the favorite of all learning, a patron of the learned, and a mine of all admirable qualities.
23. He stood fixed like Mount Mandara after it had churned the ocean of the demons. He was like spring season to the blossoms of joy, and like the god of the floral bow to the flowers of blooming prosperity.
24. He was the gentle breeze to the shimmering of playful vines, and like the god Vishnu in his valor and energy. He shone like the moon on the florets of good manners, and like wildfire to the brambles of licentiousness.
25. His consort was the happy Queen Leela (Play), playful as her name implied and filled with every grace, as if Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, had appeared in person upon earth.
26. She was gentle with her submission to her lord, and was sweet in her speech without art. She was always happy and slow in her movements, and ever smiling as the moon.
27. Her lovely lotus-white face was decorated with painted spots, and her fair form, fresh as a new blown bud, appeared like a moving bed of lotuses.
28. She was buxom as a playful plant and bright as a branch of kunda jasmine flowers, full of glee and good humor. With her palms red like coral and her fingers white as lilies, she was in her person a collection of spring beauties.
29. Her pure form was sacred to touch and conferred joy to the heart, like the holy stream of the Ganges exhilarates a flock of swans floating upon it.
30. Leela was like a second Rati born to serve her lord. Padma was Kama in person on earth to give joy to all souls.
31. She was sorry at his sorrow and delighted to see him delightful. She was thoughtful to see him pensive. Thus she was an exact picture of her lord, except that she was afraid to find him angry.
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Chapter 3.16 — The Lives of Queen Leela & King Padma; Leela Performs Tapas to Saraswati; Padma’s Death
1. This husband with a single wife enjoyed the pleasure of an undivided and sincere love in the company of his only consort, just as with a heavenly nymph (apsara) on earth.
2. The seats of their youthful play were gardens and groves, tree gardens of shrubs, and forests of tamara trees. They also played in pleasant tree gardens of vines and delightful alcoves of flowers.
3. They delighted themselves in the inner apartments on beds decked with fragrant flowers, and on walks strewn with fresh blossoms. In spring they amused themselves in the swinging cradles of their pleasure gardens, and in summer heat they rowed in their boats.
4. Their favorite summer resorts were hills overgrown with sandalwood and the shade of forests, the groves of nipa and kadamba trees, and canopies of paribhadra and devadaru cedars.
5. They sat beside beds of kunda and mandara plants, fragrant with the smell of full-blown flowers, and they strayed about the spring-green woods resounding with the melody of nightingales’ notes.
6. They enjoyed the glossy beds of grassy tufts, the mossy seats of woods and lawns, and water-falls flooding the level lands with showers of rain.
7. They often visited mountain ledges overlaid with gems, minerals and richest stones, as wells as the shrines of gods and saints, holy hermitages and other places of pilgrimage.
8. They frequently haunted lakes of full-blown lotuses and lilies, smiling kumudas of various colors, and woodlands darkened by green foliage and overhung with flowers and fruit.
9. They passed their time in the amorous dalliances of god-like youths. Their personal beauty was graced by their generous pastimes of their mutual fondness and affection.
10. They amused each other with clever remarks and witticisms and solution of riddles, with story telling and playing tricks of hold-fists, and with various games of chess and dice.
11. They diverted themselves by reading dramas and stories, and by interpreting stanzas difficult even for the learned. And sometimes they roamed about cities, towns and villages.
12. They decorated their bodies with wreaths of flowers and ornaments of various kinds. They feasted on a variety of flavors, and moved about with playful negligence.
13. They chewed betel leaves mixed with moistened mace, camphor and saffron. They hid the love marks on their bodies under the wreaths of flowers and coral that adorned them.
14. They frolicked playing hide and seek, tossing wreaths and garlands, and swinging one another in cradles decorated with flowers.
15. They went on trips in pleasure-boats, and on yokes of elephants and tame camels. They played in their pleasure-ponds by splashing water on one another.
16. They had their manly and feminine dances: the sprightly tandava and the merry lasya. They sang songs with masculine and feminine voices, the kala and giti. They had enjoyed harmonious and pleasing music, playing stringed and percussion instruments.
17. In their flowery conveyances they passed through gardens and pathways, by rivers and on highways, and into the inner apartments of their royal palaces.
18. The loving and beloved Queen Leela, being thus brought up in pleasure and indulgence, at one time thought within herself with a wistful heart,
19. “How will my lord and ruler of earth, who is in the bloom of youth and prosperity and who is dearer to me than my life, be free from old age and death?
20. And how will I enjoy his company on beds of flowers in the palace, possessed of my youth and free-will, for long, long hundreds of years?
21. Therefore I will endeavor with all my vigilance, prayers, austerities and efforts to know how this moon-faced prince may become free from death and decline.
22. I will ask the most knowing, the most austere, and the very learned brahmins how men may evade death.”
23. She accordingly invited the brahmins and honored them with presents, and humbly asked them to tell her how men might become immortal on earth.
24. The brahmins replied, “Great queen, holy men may obtain success in everything by their austerities, prayers and observance of religious rites, but nobody can ever attain to immortality here below.”
25. Hearing this from the mouths of the brahmins, she thought again in her own mind, and with fear for the death of her loving lord.
26. “Should it happen that I come to die before my lord, then I shall be released from all pain of separation from him, and be quite at rest in myself.
27. But if my husband should happen to die before me, even after a thousand years of our lives, I shall so manage it that his soul may not depart from the confines of this house.
28. The spirit of my lord will rove about the holy vault in this inner apartment and I shall feel the satisfaction of his presence at all times.”
29. “For this purpose, I will start this very day to worship Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom, and offer my prayers to her, and observe fasts and other rites to my heart’s content.”
30. Having so determined, she began to observe the strict rituals of the scriptures without her lord’s knowledge.
31. She kept her fasts and broke them at the end of every third night. She entertained the gods, brahmins, priests and holy people with feasts and due honors.
32. She performed her daily ablutions, she distributed alms, and she practiced austerities and meditation. In all of these she was painstakingly observant of the rules of pious devotion.
33. She also attended to her unaware husband at the stated times. To the utmost, she took care of him and performed her duties as required by law and custom.
34. Thus observant of her vows, with resolute and persevering pains-taking and unfailing austerity, the young queen passed a hundred of her three-night ceremonies.
35. Saraswati, the fair goddess of speech, was pleased at the completion of Leela’s hundredth threenight ritual in the goddess’ honor, performed with all outward and spiritual courtesy. The goddess spoke to her saying,
36. “I am pleased, my child, with your continued devotion to me, and your constant devotion to your husband. Now ask the boon that you would have of me.”
37. Queen Leela replied, “Be victorious, O moon-bright goddess, to end all the pains of our birth and death, and the troubles, afflictions and evils of this world. Like the sun, put to flight the darkness of our affections and afflictions in this life.
38. Save me, O goddess and parent of the world. Have pity on this wretched devotee and grant her these two boons that she begs of you.”
39. “The one is that after my husband is dead, his soul may not go beyond the precincts of this shrine in the inner apartment.
40. The second is that whenever I call you, you shall hear my prayer, appear before me, and give me your sight and blessing.”
41. Hearing this, the goddess Saraswati said, “Be it so,” and immediately disappeared in the air, just like a wave subsides in the sea from where it had come into view.
42. The queen being blessed by the presence and good grace of the goddess, was as delighted as a doe at hearing sweet music.
43. The wheel of time rolled on its two semicircles of fortnights, the spikes of months, the arcs of the seasons, the loops of days and nights, and the orbits of years. The axle, composed of fleeting moments, gave constant momentum to the wheel.
44. The perceptions of King Padma entered into his subtle body and in a short time, he looked as dry as a withered leaf without its juicy gloss.
45. The dead body of the warlike king was laid over a tomb inside the palace. Queen Leela began to fade away at its sight, like a lotus flower without the waters of its birth.
46. Her lips grew pale from the hot and poisoned breath of her sorrow. She was in the agony of death, like a doe mortally wounded by an arrow.
47. At the death of her lord, her eyes were covered in darkness like a house becomes dark when its light is extinguished.
48. In her sad melancholy, she became leaner every moment. She became like a dried channel covered with dirt instead of water.
49. She moved one moment and was then mute as a statue. She was about to die of grief, like the ruddy goose at the separation of her mate.
50. Then the ethereal goddess Saraswati took pity on the excess of her grief, and showed as much compassion for Leela’s relief as the first shower of rain does to dying fishes in a drying pond.
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Chapter 3.17 — Leela Sees Padma and His Court in the Spirit World, Checks Her Own Court to Make Sure It Still Exists
1. Saraswati said, “My child, move the dead body of your husband over to that shrine, strew those flowers over it, and you shall have your husband again.
2. Never will this body rot or fade as long as the flowers are fresh over it. Know that your husband will shortly return to life again.
3. His individual soul, pure as air, will never leave this cemetery of your inner apartment.”
4. The black-eyed queen, her eyebrows resembling a cluster of black-bees, heard the goddess’ consolatory speech and was cheered in spirit, like a lotus-bed upon return of the rains.
5. She placed the corpse of her husband on the shrine, hid it under flowers, and remained in expectation of its rising, like a poor man fosters hope of finding a treasure.
6. It was at midnight of the very day, when all the members of the family had fallen fast asleep, that Leela went to the shrine in the inner apartment.
7. There, in the recess of her understanding, she meditated on the Goddess of Knowledge and called her in earnest from the sorrow of her heart, when she heard the divine voice addressing her,
8. “Why do you call me, child? Why are you so sorrowful in your face? The world is full of errors, glaring as false water in a mirage.”
9. Leela answered, “Tell me goddess, where does my husband reside at present? What has he been doing? Take me to his presence, as I am unable to bear the load of my life without him.”
10. Saraswati replied, “His spirit is now wandering in the sky, of which there are three kinds: the physical, the firmament or region of worlds that can be sensed; the other is mental, the region of the mind, the seat of will and creation; and the third is the spiritual region of Consciousness which contains the two others [bhutakasha, element-space; chittakasha, mind-space; and chidakasha, consciousness-space].
11. Your husband’s soul is now in the sheath of the region of Consciousness. Things can be found in consciousness-space which do not exist here.”
12. “As in passing from one place to another you are conscious of standing in between, so you will instantly arrive at the intermediate region of the mental world (lying between the physical and spiritual worlds).
13. If, after forsaking all your mental desires, you abide in the spiritual world you will certainly come to the knowledge of that spiritual Being who comprehends all in Himself.
14. It is only by your knowledge of the non-existence of the world that you can come to know the positive existence of that Being, as you will now be able to do by my grace, and by no other means whatever.”
15. Vasishta said:— So saying, the goddess repaired to her heavenly seat and Leela sat gladly in her mood of steadfast meditation.
16. Within a moment, she left the prison house of her body. Her soul broke out of its inner bound of the mind to fly freely in the air, like a bird freed from its cage.
17. She ascended to the airy region of Consciousness and saw her husband sitting there amidst a group of princes and rulers of the earth.
18. He (as King Viduratha) was sitting on a throne, hailed with the loud shouts of “Long live the king!” and “Be he victorious!” His officers were prompt in the discharge of their different duties.
19. The royal palace and hall were decorated with rows of flags, and there was an assembly of innumerable sages, saints, brahmins and rishis at the eastern entrance of the hall.
20. At the southern porch stood a throng of princes and chiefs of men without number, and standing at the western doorway, a bevy of young ladies.
21. The northern gateway was blocked by lines of horses, carriages and elephants. A guard advanced and informed the king of a war in the Deccan.
22. He said that the Karnatic chief had attacked the eastern frontier, and that the chieftain of Surat had subjugated the barbarous tribes on the north, and that the ruler of Malwa had besieged the city of Tonkan on the west.
23. Then there was the reception of the ambassador from Lanka, coming from the coast of the southern sea.
24. Next appeared the spiritual masters (siddhas) coming from the Mahendra mountains bordering the eastern main, having traversed the many rivers of their river districts. Next appeared the ambassador of the Guhyaka or yaksha tribes that inhabited the shores of the northern sea.
25. Likewise there were envoys visiting from the shores of the western ocean and relating the state of affairs of that territory to the king. The assembly of innumerable chieftains from all quarters filled the entire courtyard with luster.
26. The sounds of brahmins chanting on sacrificial altars were drowned under the sound of tambourines, shouted announcements, and the loud praises of speakers, all re-echoed by the uproar of elephants.
27. The vault of heaven resounded to the sounds of vocal and instrumental music, and the dust raised by the procession of elephants and chariots, and the trotting of horses’ hoofs, hid the face of the sky like a cloud.
28. The fragrance of flowers, camphor and heaps of frankincense perfumed the air, and the royal hall was filled with presents sent from different provinces.
29. His fair fame shone forth like a burning hill of white camphor raising a column of splendor reaching to the sky and casting sunlight into shade.
30. There were district rulers busily employed in their grave and momentous duties, and great architects who conducted the building of many cities.
31. Then the ardent Leela entered the royal assembly hall of the ruler of men. She was unseen by any, just as one void mixes with another void, and as air is lost in the air.
32. She wandered about without anyone there seeing her, just like a fair figure formed by false imagination of our fond desires is not to be perceived by anyone outside ourselves.
33. In this manner she continued to walk about the palace unperceived by all, just like a castle in the air built in one’s mind is not perceived by another.
34. She saw them all assembled in the royal court in their former forms, and saw all the cities of the princes concentrated in that single city of her lord.
35. She viewed the same places, the same dealings, the same concourse of children, the same sorts of men and women, and the same ministers as before.
36. She saw the same rulers of earth and the very same pundits as before; the identical courtiers and the same servants as ever.
37. There was the same assembly of learned men and friends as before, and the like throng of citizens pursuing their former course of business.
38. She suddenly saw the flames of wildfire spreading on all sides, even in broad midday light, and the sun and moon appearing both at once in the sky, and the clouds roaring with a tremendous noise, with the whistling of the winds.
39. She saw trees, hills, rivers and cities flourishing with population, and the many towns and villages and forests all about.
40. She saw her royal consort as a boy of ten years of age after shaking off his former frame of old age, sitting amidst the hall with all his former retinue, and all the inhabitants of his village.
41. Leela, having seen all these, began to reflect within herself whether the inhabitants of this place were living beings or the ghosts of their former individual souls.
42. Then having recovered her (ordinary) sense at the removal of her trance, she entered her inner apartment at midnight and found the residents fast bound in sleep.
43. She woke her sleeping companions one by one and said she was anxious to visit the royal hall.
44. She wanted to sit beside the throne of her lord and to clear her doubt by seeing the courtiers all alive.
45. The royal servants rose up at her call and obedient to her command they said, “Be it so” and attended to their respective duties.
46. A group of staff-bearers ran to all sides to call the courtiers from the city, and sweepers came and swept the ground as clean as if the sun had shed his rays upon it.
47. A better set of servants cleaned the courtyard as clean as autumn days clear the sky of its rainy clouds.
48. Rows of lights were placed about the courtyard, which looked as beautiful as clusters of stars in the clear sky.
49. Throngs of people filled the courtyard, like the ancient earth had been covered by the floods of the great deluge.
50. Dignified ministers and chiefs attended first and took their respective seats, appearing as if they were a set of newly created rulers of the various peoples of the world, or the regents of the quarters of the sky.
51. The cooling and fragrant odor of thickly pasted camphor filled the palace, and the sweetscented breezes profusely breathed the fragrance of the lotus flowers, which they bore from all sides.
52. The chamberlains stood all around in their white garbs, appearing like an assembly of silvery clouds hanging over the burning hills under the equator.
53. The morning breeze had strewn heaps of flowers over the ground, bright as the beaming dawn dispelling the gloom of night, and bleached as clusters of stars fallen upon the ground.
54. The retinue of the chiefs of the land crowded the palace which seemed like a lake full of full-blown lotuses with fair swimming swans rambling about.
55. There Leela took her seat on a golden seat by the side of the throne. She appeared as beautiful as Rati seated in the joyous heart of Kama.
56. She saw all the princes seated in their order as before, and the elders of the people and the nobles of men and all her friends and relatives seated in their proper places.
57. She was highly delighted to see them all in their former states. Her face shone brightly like the moon to find them all alive again.
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Chapter 3.18 — Leela Wonders which World Is Real; Saraswati Explains
1. Leela said, “I have much consolation in you, and now will I console my sorrowing heart.” So saying, she made a sign for the assembly to break and rose from her royal seat.
2. She entered the inner apartment and sat by the side of the dead body of her lord, hidden under the heap of flowers, and began to reflect within herself.
3. She thought, “O the wonderful magic that presents these people of my palace situated in the same manner outside myself as I saw them seated within me in my meditation.
4. O how great is the extent of this delusion that contains the same high hills and the same spacious forests of palm and hintala trees situated both outside and within me.
5. Like a mirror shows the reflection of hills within itself as they are without it, so the reflector of the intellect presents the whole creation inwardly as it has outside of itself.
6. I must now invoke the goddess of wisdom to determine which of these is illusion and which the sober and certain reality.”
7. So thinking, she worshipped and invoked the goddess, and immediately saw Saraswati in the form of a virgin.
8. She made the goddess sit on an elevated seat and, having seated herself low upon the ground before her, asked that divine power to tell her the truth.
9. Leela said, “Be gracious, O goddess, and clear this doubt of your suppliant, for it is your wisdom that first framed this beautiful system of the universe and knows the truth.
10. Tell me, O great goddess, about what I am now going to relate you, for it is by your favor alone that I may be successful to know it.”
11. “I saw the pattern of this world in the intellect, which is more transparent than the ethereal sphere and so extensive that it contains millions and millions of miles in its small space.
12. No definite words can express what is known as the calm, cool and indescribable light. This is called unintelligible intelligence and is without any cover or support (niravarana nirbhitti).
13. It exhibits the reflections of space and the course of time, and those of the sky and its light, and the course of events concentrating in itself.
14. Thus the images of the worlds are to be seen both within and outside the intellect, and it is hard to distinguish the real and unreal ones between them.”
15. The goddess asked, “Tell me fair maiden, what is the nature of the real world, and what you mean by its unreality?”
16. Leela replied, “I know the real is where I find myself sitting here and looking upon you as seated in this place.
17. What I mean by unreal is the state in which I saw my husband in the ethereal region some time ago, because emptiness has no limit of time or place in it.”
18. The goddess replied, “Real creation cannot produce an unreal figure. A similar cause cannot produce a dissimilar effect.”
19. Leela replied, “But O goddess, we often see dissimilar effects produced from similar causes. The earth and an earthen pot are similar in substance, yet one melts in water and the other holds water.”
20. The goddess said, “Yes, when an act is done by the aid of auxiliary means, there the effect is found to be somewhat different from the primary cause.” (Thus the earthen pot being produced by the auxiliary appliances of fire, the potter’s wheel and the like, differs in its quality from the original clay.)
21. “Say, O beautiful maiden, what were the causes of your husband being born in this earth? The same led to his birth in the other world also.
22. When the soul has fled from here, how can the material earth follow him and what auxiliary causes can there be in connection with this cause?
23. Whenever there is a contributing cause in addition to the apparent cause, everyone usually attributes the result to some unknown prior cause or motive.”
24. Leela said, “I think, O goddess, that the expansion of my husband’s memory caused of his regenerations, because it is certain that memory is the cause of the reproduction of objects before us.”
25. The goddess replied that memory is an aerial substance and its productions are as unsubstantial as itself.
26. Leela said, “Yes I find memory to be an airy thing, and its reproduction of my husband and all other things within me are only empty shadows in the mind.”
27. The goddess replied, “Therefore your husband and all those other things that appeared to your sight in your reverie truly were such reproductions, my daughter. And so is the appearance of all things I see in this world.”
28. Leela said, “Tell me goddess, in order to remove my conception of the reality of the world, how the false appearance of my formless lord was produced before me by the unreal world.”
29. The goddess replied, “As this illusionary world appeared a reality to you before you had memories of it, so you must know that all this is unreal from what I am going to relate to you.” Saraswati speaking:—
30. In some part of the sphere of Consciousness there is the great fabric of the world, with the glassy vault of the firmament for its roof on all sides.
31. Mount Meru (the polar axle or mountain) is its pillar, surrounded by the regents of the ten sides, like statues carved upon it. The fourteen regions are like so many apartments of it, and the hollow vault containing the three worlds is lighted by the lamp of the luminous sun.
32. Its corners are inhabited by living creatures resembling ants. They are surrounded by mountains appearing as anthills in the sight of Brahma, the prime lord of creatures and the primeval patriarch of many races of men.
33. All animal beings are like worms confined in cocoons of their own making. The blue skies above and below are like the soot of this house, beset by bodies of departed spirits resembling groups of gnats buzzing in the air.
34. The fleeting clouds are the smoke of this house or like spider webs in its corners, and the hollow air is full of aerial spirits, like holes of bamboos filled with flies.
35. There are also the playful spirits of gods and demigods hovering over human houses like swarms of busy, buzzing bees about vessels of honey.
36. Here and there, amidst the cavity of heaven, earth and the infernal regions, lay tracts of land well watered by rivers, lakes and the sea on all sides.
37. In a corner of this land was a secluded piece of ground sheltered by hills and crags about it.
38. In this secluded spot sheltered by hills, rivers and forests, there lived a holy brahmin man with his wife and children, free from disease and care of gain and fear of a ruler. He passed his days in his fireworship and hospitality with the produce of his cattle and lands.
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Chapter 3.19 — Story of a Former Vasishta & Arundhati Vasishta relating the story of Leela, Saraswati speaking to Leela:—
1. In his age and attire, in his learning and wealth, and in all his actions and pursuits, this holy man was equal to his namesake, except in his profession. (The one being a secular man, and the other the priest of the royal family).
2. His name was Vasishta. His wife was Arundhati, fair as the moon and like the star of the same name visible from earth.
3. She resembled her namesake, the priestess of the solar race, in her virtues and parts and in all things, except in her soul and body.
4. She passed her time in true love and affection in the company of her husband, and she was his all in the world, with her sweet smiling face resembling a kumuda flower.
5. Once this holy man had been sitting under the shady sarala trees, on the tableland of his native hill, when he saw the ruler of the land passing below with his gaudy train.
6. He was accompanied by all the members of the royal family and his troops and soldiers. They were going to a hunt with a clamor that resounded in the hills and forests.
7. The white flapper fans shed a stream of moonlight, the lifted banners appeared like a moving forest, and the white umbrellas made a canopy of the sky.
8. The air was filled with dust raised by the horses’ hoofs, and the lines of elephants with their high pavilion saddles seemed like moving towers that protect them from the heat of the sun and the hot winds.
9. The loud uproar of the party, resembling the roaring of a whirlpool, made wild animals run on all sides. Shining gems and jewels were flashing all about on the bodies in the party.
10. The holy man saw this procession and thought to himself, “O how charming is royalty, filled with such splendor and prosperity!
11. Ah, how shall I become the monarch of all the ten sides, and have such a retinue of horse, elephants and foot soldiers, with a similar train of flags, flappers and blazing umbrellas?
12. When will the breeze gently blow the fragrance of kunda flowers and the powdered dust of lotuses to my bed-chamber to lull me and my consorts to sleep?
13. When shall I adorn the faces of my chamber maids with camphor and sandal paste, and enlighten the faces of the four quarters with my fair fame, like the moonbeams decorate the night?”
14. With these thoughts, the holy man determined that for the rest of his life, he would apply himself vigilantly to the rigid austerities of his religion.
15. At last, he was overtaken by infirmities which shattered his body, like the sleets of snowfall batter the blooming lotuses in the lake.
16. Seeing his approaching death, his faithful wife was fading away with fear, like a vine withers at the departure of spring for fear of the summer heat.
17. Arundhati then began to worship me, as you yourself have, in order to obtain the boon of immortality which is hard to be had.
18. She prayed, “Ordain, O goddess, that the spirit of my lord may not depart from this tomb after his death.” I granted her request.
19. After some time Vasishta the holy man died and his empty spirit remained in the emptiness of that home.
20. By virtue of the excessive desire and merit of acts in his former state of existence, this aerial spirit of the holy man assumed the shape of a mighty man on earth.
21. He became the victorious monarch of the three realms. By his might he subjugated the surface of the earth. By his valor he conquered the high mountains (of the gods). By his kind protection, the nether lands were under his sway.
22. He was like a raging fire to the forest of his enemies, and like the steadfast Mount Meru amidst the rushing winds of business on all sides. He was like the sun expanding the lotus-like hearts of the virtuous. To the eyes of women he was like the god Kama.
23. He was the model of all learning, and the all giving wish-fulfilling tree to his suitors. He was the footstool of great scholars. He was like the full moon shedding ambrosial beams of enlightened rule all around.
24. But after the holy brahmin had died, and his dead body had disappeared into the forms of elementary particles in air, and his airy spirit had rested in the aerial intellectual soul within the empty space of his house,
25. his holy brahmin widow, Arundhati, was pining away in her sorrow, and her heart was rent in twain like a dried pea pod.
26. She became a dead body like her husband. Her spirit, by shuffling off its mortal coil, resumed its subtle and immortal form in which it met the departed ghost of her husband.
27. She advanced to her lord as rapidly as a river runs to meet the sea below its level. She was as cheerful to join him as a cluster of flowers inhale the spring air.
28. The houses, lands and all the immovable properties and movable riches of this holy brahmin Vasishta still exist in that rocky village, and it has been only eight days since the souls of this loving pair were reunited in the hollow vault of their house.
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Chapter 3.20 — Saraswati Explains Leela’s Former Life as Arundhati
1. Saraswati said to Leela, “That brahmin whom I described before, the one who become a monarch on earth, is the same as your husband. His wife Arundhati is no other than yourself, the best of women.
2. You two are the same pair now reigning over this realm, resembling a pair of doves in your nuptial love, and the gods Shiva and Parvati in your might.”
3. “I have related your past lives to you so that you may know the individual soul to be only air, and that knowledge of its reality is an error.
4. False knowledge casts its reflection on consciousness and causes its error also. (Errors in the senses breed errors in the mind.) This makes you doubtful of the truth and untruth of the two states (of the material and intellectual worlds).
5. Therefore the question, ‘Which is true and which is untrue?’ has no better answer than that all creations are equally false and unsubstantial.”
6. Vasishta said:— Hearing these words of the goddess, Leela was confused in her mind, and with her eyes staring with wonder, she addressed her softly.
7. Leela said, “How is it, O goddess, that your words are so incoherent with truth. You make us the same as the brahmin couple who are in their own house. We are sitting here in our palace.
8. How is it possible that the small space of the room in which my husband’s body is lying could contain those spacious lands and hills and the ten sides of the sky?
9. It is as impossible as confining an elephant in a mustard seed, or a gnat fighting with a body of lions in a nutshell.
10. It is as incredible as to believe a lotus seed contains a hill, or to be devoured by a little bee, or that peacocks are dancing hearing the roaring of clouds in a dream.
11. O great goddess of gods, it is equally improbably to say that this earth, with all its mountains and other things, is contained within the small space of a sleeping room.
12. Therefore, O goddess, please explain this mystery clearly to me, because it is by your favor only that the learned are cleared of their questions.”
13. The goddess Saraswati said:— Hear me, fair maiden! I did not tell you a lie. Transgression of the law is a thing unknown to us. (The law is nanritam vadeta — never tell an untruth.)
14. It is I who established the law when others are about to break it. If I should slight the law, who else is there who would observe it?
15. The individual soul of the village brahmin saw within itself and in his own house the image of this great kingdom, just as his departed spirit now sees the same in its empty void. (Therefore both these states are equally ideal.)
16. After death you lost the memories of your former lives, just like one loses memories of waking events when in the dream state.
17. All are like the appearance of the three worlds in dream, or their formation in the imagination, or like the description of warfare in an epic poem, or like water in the mirage of a sandy desert.
18. The hills and houses seen in the empty space of the brahmin’s house were nothing but the capacity of his own mind to form the images of its fancy and receive the external impressions like a reflecting mirror.
19. All these, though unreal, appear as real substances on account of the reality of consciousness which is seated in the cavity of the innermost sheath of the body and reflects the images.
20. But these images derived from the memories of unreal objects of the world are as unreal as those objects which cast their reflections upon consciousness. Waves rising in the river of a mirage are as unreal as the mirage itself.
21. Know that this chair sitting in this room of your house, as well as myself and yourself and everything else about us, are only the reflections of our consciousness, without which nothing would be perceptible.
22. Our dreams and fallacies, our desires and fancies, and also our notions and ideas serve as the best evidence to understand this truth (that nothing is true beside the subjective mind, which creates and forms, produces and presents all objects to our view).
23. The spirit of the brahmin resided in the emptiness of his house (the body), with the seas, forests and the earth within itself, like a bee lives in the lotus.
24. Thus the habitable earth with everything it contains is situated in a small cell in one corner of consciousness, like a spot of flimsy cloud in the sky.
25. The house of the holy brahmin was situated in the same locality of consciousness which contains all the worlds in one of its atomic particles.
26. Every atom of the intelligent soul contains unnumbered worlds within worlds, enough to remove your doubt of the brahmin being able to see an entire kingdom within the space of his intellect.
27. Leela asked, “How can we be the brahmin couple when they died only eight days before and we have been reigning here for so many years?”
28. The goddess replied:— In reality, there is neither any limit of space or time, nor any distance of place or length of time. Hear me now tell you the reason why.
29. As the universe is the reflection of the Divine Mind, so are infinity and eternity but representations of Himself.
30. Listen to what I tell you about how we form the idea of time and its subdivisions, whether a moment or an age. It is the same way that we make distinctions among the individuals that are me, you and this or that person.
31. As soon as one feels the lack of senses after his death, he forgets his former nature and thinks himself to be another being.
32. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, he assumes an empty form in the womb of emptiness and in that container he thinks within himself,
33. “This is my body with its hands and feet.” Thinking about body, he finds it presented before him.
34. Then he thinks in himself, “I am the son of this father and am so many years old. These are my dear friends and this is my pleasant home.
35. I was born and became a boy, and then grew up to this age. There are all my friends and in the same course of their lives.”
36. Thus the compact density of the sphere of his soul presents him with many other images that appear to arise in it as in some part of the world.
37. But they neither rise nor remain in the soul itself, which is as transparent as empty air. They appear to consciousness like a vision seen in a dream.
38. A person dreaming remains in one place but sees all manners of things in different places. Everything in the other world appears equally real, just like in his dream.
39. Again, whatever is seen in the other world, the same occurs to men in their present states also. The unreality of the world of dreaming and the reality of this physical world are alike.
40. Just like there is no difference among the waves of the same seawater, so the produced visible creation is the same as the unproduced intellectual world, both of which are equally indestructible.
41. But in reality, the appearance is nothing but a reflection of consciousness which, apart from the intelligible spirit, is merely an empty void.
42. Although presided over by the intelligible spirit, creation itself is a mere void, its only substance being the intelligible soul, like water is to waves.
43. Waves though formed of water are themselves as unreal as the horns of hares. Their appearance as natural objects is altogether false (because they are the effects of the auxiliary cause of the winds that have raised them).
44. Therefore, there being no visible object in reality, how can the observer have any idea of materiality which loses its delusion at the moment of his death?
45. After the visible outer world has disappeared from sight, the soul, in its inner world of the mind, reflects on its memories of creation according to the proper time and place of everything.
46. It remembers its birth, its parents, its age and its residence, with its learning and all other pursuits in their exact manner and order.
47. It thinks of its friends and servants, and of the success and failure of its attempts. The uncreated and incorporeal soul, in its intellectual form, reflects on the events of its created and corporeal state.
48. However, it does not remain in this state for long. Soon after death it enters a new body to which the properties of the mind and senses are added afterwards in their proper times.
49. It then becomes a baby, finds a new father and mother, and begins to grow. Thus whether one may perceive it or not, it is all the product of his former memories.
50. Then upon waking from this state of trance, like a fruit from the cell of a flower, it comes to find that a single moment appeared to it as the period of an age.
51. It was in this way that in times past, King Harish Chandra thought one night to be twelve years. One day seems like a year to those who are separated from their beloved objects.
52. Again, it is all false, whether the birth or death of someone in his dream, or being born and recognizing a father in infancy, or a hungry man imagining he is dining on dainty food.
53. So who would believe a satisfied man after eating who says he is starving, or one who declares that he is an eyewitness of something he had not seen, or an empty space full of people, or that someone found lost treasure in his dream?
54. But this visible world rests in the invisible spirit of God, like the property of pungency resides in the particles of the pepper seed, and like the painted pictures on a column. But where are the open and clear sighted eyes to perceive this?
55. The vision of Leela, called samadhi in yoga and clairvoyance of spiritualism, was the abstract meditation of her lord in her memory that presented her with a full view of everything imprinted on it. Memory is taken for the whole consciousness (chit), which is identified with God in whose essence the images of all things are said to be eternally present.
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Chapter 3.21 — Saraswati Explains the Practice of Meditation, Astral Travel Saraswati continues speaking to Leela:—
1. Soon after death occasions the lack of physical senses, the sight of the world appears to the soul as if he were seeing it with open eyes when he was living.
2. Before him is presented the circle of the sky and its sides with the cycle of its seasons and times. He is shown the deeds of his pious and mundane acts, as if they were to continue to eternity.
3. Objects never before seen or thought of also offer themselves to his view, like the sight of his own death in a dream, as if they were the prints in his memory.
4. But the infinity of objects appearing in the empty sphere of the non-physical intellect is mere illusion, and the baseless city of the world, like a castle in the sky, is only the creation of imagination.
5. Memory of the past world makes it known to us. Therefore, the length of a kalpa age and the shortness of a moment are only false impressions proceeding from the speed and slowness of our thoughts.
6. Therefore knowledge based upon previous memories or otherwise is of two kinds, and things known without their cause are attributed to Divine Intelligence.
7. We are also conscious of thoughts that we have not thought of before in our minds, such as we often have in our dreams. Another may remind us of our deceased parents, so we think of them.
8. Sometimes genius supersedes the province of memory, as in the first creation or discovery of a thing, which afterwards is continued by its memory.
9. According to some, those visible worlds are said to have remained in their ideal state in the Divine Mind. According to others, there were no pre-existent notions of these in the mind of God.
10. According to some others, the world manifested itself not from memory but by the power and will of God. Still others maintain it to be the production of a sudden, fortuitous combination of intelligence and atomic principles (kakataliya sanyoga).
11. Completely forgetting the world is called liberation. That cannot be had if consciousness is attached to what is desirable or is averse to the undesirable.
12. It is difficult to effect an entire negation of both one’s subjective and objective knowledge of his self and the existence of the outer world. Yet nobody can be freed without the obliteration of both.
13. As the fallacy of taking a rope for a snake is not removed until the meaning of the word snake is known to be inapplicable to the rope, so no one can have rest and peace of mind unless he is convinced of the illusory nature of the world.
14. Even with that, a person who is at peace with himself cannot be wholly at rest without divine knowledge because, even though he has rid himself of the devil of worldliness, the ghost of his inner ignorance may overtake him.
15. The world is certainly a monster in itself without the knowledge of its Author, but the difficulty of knowing the First Cause has rendered it an impassable wilderness.
16. Leela said, “If memories are the cause of one’s reincarnation, then, O goddess, tell me what were the causes of the birth of the brahmin couple, without the vestiges of their past memories?
17. The goddess replied:— Know that Brahma the first progenitor of mankind, who was absolute in himself, did not retain any vestige of his past memories in him.
18. The first born, who had nothing to remember of a prior birth, was born in the lotus with his own intelligence (chaitanya) and not because of his memory.
19. The Lord of Creatures being thus born by chance of his own genius or creative power, and without any assignable cause or design on his part, reflected within himself, “Now I am become another and the source of creation.”
20. Whatever is born of itself is like a nothing that was never produced at all, but remains as the absolute intellect itself in the clouds (chinnabhas).
21. The Supreme Being is the sole cause of both types of memories (those caused by vestiges of prior impressions, and those produced by prior desires). Both conditions of cause and effect are combined in Him in the sphere of his consciousness.
22. Therefore our tranquility can only come from knowing that cause and effect are the same and that the auxiliary cause is in Him.
23. Cause and effect are mere empty words of no significance because it is the recognition of the Universal Consciousness that constitutes true wisdom.
24. Nothing seen in the physical world or known in the mental or spiritual worlds is ever produced. Everything exists within the consciousness of one’s own soul.
25. Leela said, “What a wonderful sight you have shown me, O goddess. It is as auspicious as morning light and as brilliant as lightning.
26. Now goddess, please satisfy my curiosity until I become thoroughly familiar with this knowledge through my intense application and study.
27. Kindly take me to that that mountainous place where the brahmin couple, Vasishta and Arundhati, lived and show me their house.”
28. The goddess replied:— If you want to see that sight, you have to be immaculate. You must give up your personality and your ego-sense and attain awareness of the unintelligible Consciousness within the soul.
29. Then you will find yourself in an empty atmosphere situated in the sky that resembles the prospects of earthly men and the apartments of the firmament (i.e., nothing).
30. In this state we shall be able to see them (the field of another’s imagination) with all their possessions and without any obstruction. Otherwise this body is a great barrier in the way of spiritual vision.
31. Leela said, “Tell me kindly, O goddess, the reason why do we not see the other world with these eyes, or go there with these our bodies.”
32. The goddess replied:— The reason is that you take the true future as false, and you believe the untrue present as true. These worlds that are formless appear to your eyes as having forms, just like you see the form of a ring when its substance is gold.
33. Gold, though fashioned into a circle, has no curve in it. The spirit of God appearing in the form of the world is not the world itself.
34. The world is an emptiness full with the spirit of God. Whatever is visible is like dust appearing to fly over the sea.
35. The ultimate substance of the world is all a false illusion. The true reality is the subjective Brahma alone. Our guides in Vedanta philosophy and the conviction of our consciousness are evidence of this truth.
36. The believer in Brahma sees Brahma alone and no other anywhere. He looks to Brahma through Brahma himself, as the creator and preserver of all, and whose nature includes all other attributes in itself.
37. Brahma is known not only as the author of His work of the creation of worlds, but as existent of himself without any causation or auxiliary causation.
38. The practice of meditation trains you to disregard all duality and variety and to rely only on one unity. Until you are trained through your practice of meditation, you are barred from viewing Brahma in his true light.
39. By constant practice of meditation, we become settled in this belief of unity, and we rest in the Supreme Spirit.
40. Then we find our bodies to be an aerial substance that mixes with the air, and at last, with these our mortal frames, we are able to come to the sight of Brahma.
41. Being endowed with pure, enlightened and spiritual frames (astral or subtle bodies), like those of Brahma and the gods, the holy saints are placed in some part of the divine essence.
42. Without the practice of meditation, you cannot approach God with your mortal frame. A soul sullied by physical sensation can never see the image of God.
43. It is impossible for one to arrive at another’s castle in the sky, when he is unable to see the castle in the sky that he himself imagined.
44. Therefore, give up your gross body and assume your light intellectual frame. Immerse yourself in the practice of yoga so that you may see God face to face.
45. It is possible to labor and build castles in the air. In the same way, it is possible through the practice of yoga, and in no other way, to behold God, either with this body or without it.
46. Ever since the creation of this world (by the will of Brahma), there have been false conceptions of its existence. It has been attributed to an eternal fate, niyati (by fatalists), and to an illusory power, maya shakti (of Maya vadis).
47. Leela asked, “O goddess, you said that we both shall go to the abode of the brahmin couple, but I ask you, how is that possible?
48. I am able to go there with the pure essence of my sentient soul. But tell me, how will you who are pure intellect (chetas) go to that place?”
49. The goddess replied:— I tell you lady, Divine Will is an aerial tree and its fruits are as unsubstantial as air, having no figure or form or substance to them.
50. Whatever is formed by the will of God from the pure essence of His intelligent nature is only a likeness of Himself and bears little difference from its original.
51. My body is the same and I need not lay it aside. I find that place with my body like a breeze finds odors.
52. As water mixes with water, fire with fire, and air with air, so does this spiritual body easily join with any material form that it likes.
53. But a physical body cannot mix with an non-physical substance, nor can a solid rock become the same as the idea of a hill.
54. Your body has its mental and spiritual parts. It has become physical because of its habitual tendency towards the physical.
55. Your physical body becomes spiritual ( ativahika) by leaning towards spirituality, as in your sleep, your protracted meditation, and your unconsciousness to fancies and reveries.
56. Your spiritual nature will return to your body when your earthly desires are lessened and curbed within the mind.
57. Leela said, “Say goddess, what happens to the spiritual body after it has attained its compactness by constant practice of yoga? Does it becomes indestructible or does it perish like all other finite bodies?”
58. The goddess replied:— Anything that exists is perishable and, of course, liable to death. But how can something die that is nothing and is imperishable in its nature?
59. Again, once we realize the mistake of thinking a rope to be a snake, the snake disappears of itself and no one mistakes the rope anymore.
60. Thus, as the true knowledge of the rope removes the false conception of the snake in it, so the recognition of the spiritual body dispels the misconception of its materiality.
61. All imagery is at an end when there is no image at all, just like the art of carving statues must cease if there is no more stone.
62. We clearly see our bodies as full of the spirit of God. Your gross understanding keeps you from seeing this.
63. In the beginning, when consciousness (chit) is engrossed with the imagination of the mind, it loses sight of the One.
64. Leela asked, “But how can imagination trace out anything in that unity in which the divisions of time and space and all things are lost in an undistinguishable mass?”
65. The goddess replied:— Like the bracelet in gold, waves in water, the show of truth in dreams, and the appearance of castles in the sky
66. all vanish upon an accurate perception, so the imaginary attributes of the unpredictable God are all nothing whatever.
67. Just like there is no dust in the sky, no attribute or partial property can be ascribed to God whose nature is indivisible and unimaginable, who is an unborn unity, tranquil and all-pervading.
68. Whatever shines about us is the pure light of that Being who scatters His luster all around like a transcendental gem.
69. Leela said, “If it is so at all times, then tell me, O goddess, how did we happen to fall into the error of attributing duality and diversity to His nature?”
70. The goddess replied:— It was your ignorance that for so long has led you to error. The natural bane of mankind is the absence of reasoning, and it requires remedying by your attending to reason.
71. When reason takes the place of ignorance, in a moment it introduces the light of knowledge in the soul instead of its former darkness.
72. As reason advances, your ignorance and your bondage to prejudice are put to flight. Then you have an unobstructed liberation and pure understanding in this world.
73. As long as you remained without reasoning on this subject, you were either sleeping or wandering in error.
74. Now your reason and liberation are awakened and the seeds for the suppression of your desires are sown in your heart.
75. At first, the nature of this physical world was neither apparent to you nor you to it. How long will you reside in it and what other desires have you here?
76. Withdraw your mind from its thoughts of the viewer, the visible, and the vision of this world. Settle your mind on the idea of the entire negation of all existence. Fix your meditation solely upon the Supreme Being and sit in a state of unalterable unconsciousness.
77. When the seed of renunciation has taken root and germinated in your heart, the sprouts of your likes and dislikes will be destroyed of themselves.
78. Then the impression of the world will be utterly effaced from the mind and an unshaken anesthesia will overtake you all at once.
79. Remaining entranced in your abstract meditation, in process of time you will have a soul as luminous as a star in the clear sky of heaven, free from the links of all causes and their effects for evermore.
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Chapter 3.22 — Practice of Wisdom (Vijnana-Bhyasa)
1. The goddess continued:— Objects seen in a dream prove to be false on being awaken. Similarly, belief in the reality of the body becomes unfounded upon dissolution of our desires.
2. As a thing dreamt of disappears upon waking, so does the waking body disappear in sleep, when desires lie dormant in the soul.
3. As our physical bodies awake after dreaming and desiring, so our spiritual bodies awake after we cease to think of our physical states.
4. In deep sleep we are devoid of desires. Similarly, in the state of renunciation, even though we are awake in our physical bodies, we have the tranquility of liberation.
5. The desire of men liberated while living (jivan mukta) is not properly any desire at all. It is a pure desire relating to universal wellbeing and happiness.
6. The sleep in which the will and wish are dormant is called deep sleep, but the dormancy of desires in the waking state is known as unconsciousness to delusion (moha) or unconsciousness (murchha).
7. Again the deep sleep that is wholly devoid of desire is called the turiya or the fourth stage of yoga. In the waking state it is called samadhi or union with Supreme.
8. The embodied man whose life is freed from all desires in this world is called the liberated while living (jivan mukta), a state unknown to those who are not liberated.
9. When the mind becomes a pure essence (as in samadhi) and its desires are weakened, it becomes spiritualized (ativahika) and it glows and flows, like snow melts to water by application of heat.
10. The spiritualized mind, being awakened, mixes with the holy spirits of departed souls in the other world.
11. When your sense of individual ego is moderated by your practice of meditation, then the perception of invisible will rise of itself clearly before your mind.
12. When spiritual knowledge gains a firm footing in your mind, you will perceive more other worlds than you expect.
13. Therefore, O blameless lady, try your utmost to deaden your desires. When you have gained sufficient strength in that practice, know yourself to be liberated in this life.
14. When the moon of your intellectual knowledge shines fully with its cooling beams, you shall have to leave your physical body here in order to see the other worlds.
15. Your fleshy body has no tangible connection with one that is without flesh, nor can the intellectual body (lingadeha, astral body) perform any action of the physical system.
16. I have told you all this according to my best knowledge and the state of things as they are. Even children know that what I say is as effective as the curse or blessing of a god.
17. The habitual reliance of men upon their gross bodies and their fond attachment to them bind their souls down to the earth. The weakening of earthly desires serves to clothe them with spiritual bodies.
18. Nobody believes that he has a spiritual body, even at his death bed, but everyone thinks a dying man is dead with his body forever.
19. This body however, neither dies nor is it alive at anytime. Both life and death, in all respects, are mere appearances of aerial dreams and desires.
20. The life and death of beings here below are as false as the appearances and disappearance of people in imagination, or dolls in play or puppet shows.
21. Leela said, “O goddess, the pure knowledge that you have given me has fallen on my ears acts like a healing balm to the pain caused by phenomena.
22. Now tell me the name and nature of the practice for spiritualization. How it is to be perfected and what is the end of such perfection?”
23. The goddess replied:— Whatever a man attempts to do here at anytime, he can hardly ever complete it without painful practice to the utmost of his power.
24. The wise say that practice consists in the association of one thing with another, in understanding it thoroughly, and in devoting oneself solely to his object.
25. Great souls become successful in this world who are disgusted with the world and are moderate in their enjoyments and desires. They do not think about seeking what they lack.
26. Those great minds are said to be best trained who are graced with liberal views, are delighted with the relish of unconcern with the world, and are enraptured with streams of heavenly joy.
27. Again, they are called the best practiced in divine knowledge who, by the light of reasoning and scripture, are employed preaching the absolute non-existence of any distinction between the knower and what is known in this world.
28. What some call practical knowledge is knowing that nothing was produced in the beginning and nothing that is visible, such as this world or one’s self, is true at anytime.
29. The effect of practicing meditation is a strong tendency of the soul towards the spirit of God, which results from an understanding of the non-existence of the visible world and the subsidence of passions.
30. But mere knowledge of the nonexistence of the world, without subduing passions, is known as knowledge without practice, and is of no value to its possessor.
31. Consciousness of the non-existence of the visible world is the true knowledge of the knowable. The practice of meditation makes this knowledge a habit in the mind and leads one to his final extinction (nirvana) .
32. The practice of meditation prepares the mind and awakens the intelligence which lay dormant in the dark night of this world. Consciousness then sheds its cooling showers of reason, like dew drops in the frosty night of autumn. Valmiki speaking:—
33. As the sage was lecturing in this manner, the day departed for its evening service and led the assembled train to their evening prayers. After the rising beams of the sun dispelled the darkness of night, they met again with mutual greetings.
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Chapter 3.23 — Saraswati & Leela Meditate & Begin Astral Travel
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. They sat beside the corpse decorated with fresh flowers and garments. Their faces shone like the fair full moon and brightened the place.
4. They stood motionless on the spot, as if they were sculptures engraved on marble columns, or pictures drawn upon the wall.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. They continued in fixed attention without any external sensation, like some lonely vines shriveled for lack of moisture (in samadhi meditation).
8. They were fully impressed with the disbelief of their own existence, and that of all other things in the world. They were completely absorbed in the thought of an absolute privation of everything at large.
9. They lost memory of the phantom of the phenomenal world, which is as unreal as the horn of a hare.
10. What had no existence in the beginning is still non-existent at present, and what appears existent is as non-existent as water in a mirage.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. Then the two ladies, their playful open eyes and by their nature of intellectual knowledge, ascended to the higher region of the sky.
15. They flew higher and higher by force of their intellect and arrived at a region stretching millions of miles in length.
16. 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.
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Chapter 3.24 — Description of the Astral Journey
1. Vasishta continued:— Thus ascending higher and higher, and by degrees reaching the highest station, they continued viewing the heavens with their hands clasped together.
2. 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.
3. They dived into the vast ocean of emptiness, all delightful and pleasant. It gave them a delight far greater in its purity than what is derived from the company of the virtuous.
4. They wandered about all sides of heaven under the beams of the full moon shining above them. They lingered under the clear vault of clouds covering the mountain tops of Meru, as if under the dome of a huge white washed building.
5. 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.
6. Tired and perspiring profusely, they bathed in the lakes of showering clouds filled with the blushing lotuses of lurid lightning flashing within them.
7. They freely strolled at random on all sides, and alighted on the tops of high mountains like fluttering bees, appearing like filaments of the lotus-like earth below.
8. 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.
9. Then failing in their strength, they paused in many places with slow and slackened steps. They saw emptiness full of great and wonderful works.
10. They saw what they had never seen before, the tremendous depth of the void that was not filled up by the myriads of worlds which kept revolving in it.
11. 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.
12. Huge mountainous bodies like Mount Meru moved about in empty space and emitted a reddish glare on all sides, like a flame of fire from within their bowels.
13. There were beautiful tablelands, like those of the Himalayas, with their pearly peaks of snow. There were mountains of gold spreading a golden color over the land.
14. In one place they saw mountains of emerald tinting the landscape with a lush green like a field of fresh grass. In other places they saw some dark cloud dimming the sight of the spectator and hiding the spectacle in dark blackness.
15. They saw also tracts of blue sapphire with vines of parijata flowers blooming like banners in the blue skies.
16. 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.
17. All the great bodies in the universe (the planetary system) were in continual motion. Spirits of the gods and demigods moved about unseen by one another.
18. Groups of spiritual beings, the kushmandas, rakshasas and pisachas, were seated in aerial circles at the borders. Winds and gales blew with full force in their ethereal course.
19. In some places they heard clouds roaring loudly, like the rumbling wheels of heavenly cars, and the noise of rapid stars resembled the blowing of pneumatic engines.
20. Half burnt masters, having flown too close to the sun, were flying from their burning cars under the solar rays. Solar embers were flung afar by the breath of the nostrils of their horses.
21. In some places they saw the rulers of men and lines of female nature spirits (apsaras) hurrying up and down the air. In others, they saw goddesses wandering amidst the smoky and fiery clouds in the firmament.
22. Here they saw some sparks of light falling like the jewels of celestial nymphs in their hurried flight to their respective spheres. There they saw the light spirits of lesser masters dwindling into darkness.
23. Flakes of mists were falling off from the clouds, as if by friction from the bodies of turbulent spirits rushing up and down the skies, and shrouded mountain sides like sheets of cloth.
24. Groups of cloud fragments were flying about in the air in the shapes of crows, owls and vultures. They saw some monsters also, such as dakinis heaving their heads in the forms of huge surges in the cloudy ocean of the sky.
25. There were bodies of yoginis too, their faces resembling those of dogs, ravens, asses and camels, who were traversing the wide expanse of the heavens to no purpose.
26. There were masters and nature spirits sporting in pairs in the dark, smoky and ash colored clouds that spread the four quarters of the skies.
27. They saw the path of the planets (the zodiac) resounding loudly with the heavenly music of the spheres. They also saw the path of the lunar mansions that constantly marked the course of the two fortnights.
28. They saw the sons of gods moving about in the air and they viewed with wonder the celestial Ganges (the milky way) studded with stars and rolling with the speed of winds.
29. They saw gods wielding their thunderbolts, discuses, tridents, swords and missiles. They heard Narada and Tumburu singing in their aerial abodes on high.
30. They saw the region of the clouds, where there were huge bodies of clouds mute as paintings and pouring forth floods of rain as in the great deluge.
31. In one place they saw a dark cloud, as high as the mountain-king Himalaya, slowly moving in the air, and at others, clouds of a golden color like the setting sun.
32. In one place there were flimsy sheets of clouds, as are said to hover on the peaks of Rishya range; and at another a cloud like the calm blue bed of the sea.
33. Tufts of grass were seen in some places, as if blown up by winds and floating in the stream of air. In other places, swarms of butterflies with glossy coats and wings were seen.
34. In some place, there was a cloud of dust raised by wind appearing like a lake on the top of a mountain.
35. The matris were seen in one place, dancing naked in giddy circles, and in another, great yoginis sat as if forever giddy with intoxication.
36. In one place there were circles of holy men sitting in their calm meditation, and in others, pious saints who had cast away their worldly cares.
37. There was a conclave of celestial singers composed of heavenly nymphs, kinnaras and gandharvas in one place, and some quiet towns and cities situated at others.
38. There were the cities of Brahma and Rudra full with their people, and the city of illusion (maya) with its increasing population.
39. 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.
40. 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.
41. There were hoary clouds of winter in some places, and those of rain in others; somewhere they appeared as tracts of land and at another as a sheet of water.
42. Bodies of gods and demigods wandered from one side to the other; some from east to west, and others from north to south.
43. There were mountains heaving their heads thousands of miles high, and there were valleys and caves covered in eternal darkness.
44. In one place there was a vast inextinguishable fire, like that of the blazing sun, and in another, a thick frost covering the moonlight.
45. Somewhere there was a great city flourishing with groves and trees, and at another big temples of gods leveled to the ground by the might of demons.
46. In some place there was a streak of light from a falling meteor in the sky; in another the blaze of a comet with its thousand fiery tails in the air.
47. In one place there was a lucky planet, rising in view with its full orb; in another there spread the gloom of night, and full sunshine in another.
48. Here the clouds were roaring, and there they were dumb and mute. Here were the high blasts driving the clouds in air, and there the gentle breeze dropping clusters of flowers on the ground.
49. Sometimes the sky was clear and fair without a cloud in it, as transparent as the soul of a wise man delighted with the knowledge of truth.
50. The empty region of the celestial gods was so full with the dewy beams of the silvery moon that it appeared like a shower of rain and raised the loud croaking of the frogs below.
51. Flocks of peacocks and goldfinches fluttering about in one place, and vehicles of the goddesses and celestial girls (vidyadharis) thronged in another.
52. 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.
53. Dwarfish clouds were moving like the stout buffaloes of Yama, and others in the form of horses were grazing on the grassy meadows of clouds.
54. Cities of the gods and demons appeared with their towers on high. Distinct towns and hills were seen separated by distances as if detached from one another by driving winds.
55. In some place, gigantic bhairavas were dancing with their mountainous bodies; and at another, great garudas were flying like winged mountains in the air.
56. Huge mountains were tossed about by the blowing of winds; and the castles of the nature spirits (gandharvas) were rising and falling with the celestial nymphs in them.
57. There were some clouds rising on high, and some appearing like rolling mountains in the sky that were crushing forests below. In one place the sky appeared like a clear lake abounding in lotuses.
58. Moonbeams shone brightly in one spot, and sweet cooling breezes blew softly in another. Hot sultry winds were blowing in some place, singeing the forest on mountainous clouds.
59. There was a dead silence in one spot caused by perfect calmness of the breeze; while another spot presented a scene of a hundred peaks rising on a mountain-like cloud.
60. In one place raining clouds roared loudly in their fury; and in another a furious battle was waging in the clouds between the gods and demons.
61. In some place geese were seen gabbling in the lotus lake of the sky, inviting the ganders by their loud cackling cries.
62. Forms of fishes, crocodiles and alligators were seen flying in the air as if they had been transformed into aerial beings by the holy waters of the Ganges of their birth.
63. Somewhere, as the sun went down the horizon, they saw the dark shadow of the earth eclipse the moon; then they saw the shadow of the moon eclipse the sun.
64. They saw a magical flower garden, exhaling its fragrance in the air and strewing the floor of heaven with a profusion of flowers, scattered by showers of morning dews.
65. They saw all beings contained in the three worlds flying in the air, like a swarm of gnats in the hollow of a fig tree. Then the two excellent ladies stopped their astral journey, intent upon revisiting the earth.
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Chapter 3.25 — Description of Astral Travel over the Earth Vasishta speaking:—
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Its long stalks, white as bright daylight, are composed of fibers serving for food, and of tubes conducting the drink to living beings.
5. It is wet with moisture, sucked by the sun, resembling a swan swimming about in the air. In the darkness of night and absence of the sun, it folds itself in sleep.
6. 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.
7. Mount Meru and other mountains are its large seeds. There are great hives of human population where the fair daughters of the giant race embraced with the sons of gods and created the race of men.
8. It has the extensive continent of Jambudvipa (Asia) situated in one petal, it veins forming its divisions and the tubular filaments its rivers.
9. The seven elevated mountains, forming the boundary lines of this continent, are its seeds, and in its middle, the great Mount Sumeru reaches the sky.
10. Its lakes are like dewdrops on a lotus leaf, and its forests are like the flower’s pollen. The people inhabiting the land all around are like a swarm of bees.
11. Its extent is a thousand leagues (yojanas) square, and it is surrounded on all sides by the dark sea like a belt of black bees.
12. It contains nine divisions (varshas) ruled by nine brother kings, resembling the regents of its eight petal sides, with the Bharata varsha (India) in the midst.
13. It stretches a million miles with more land than water. Its habitable parts are as thick as frozen ice in winter.
14. The continent is surrounded by the briny ocean twice as large, like a bracelet encircles the wrist.
15. Beyond it lies the circular form of Saka continent, twice the size of Jambudvipa and also encircled by a sea.
16. This is called the Milky Ocean because of the sweetness of its water, and it is double the size of the former salt sea.
17. Beyond that and double its size is Kusadwipa continent, full of population. It is also circular and surrounded by another sea,
18. the belt of the sea of curds, delectable to the gods and double the size of the continent it encircles.
19. After that lies the circle of Krauncha continent, also twice the size of the former one and surrounded by a sea like a canal surrounds a city.
20. This sea is called the sea of butter and is twice as large as the continent it surrounds. Beyond it lies Salmali continent surrounded by the foul sea of wine.
21. The fair belt of this sea resembles a wreath of white flowers, like the girdle of the Sesha serpent forming the necklace hanging on the breast of Vishnu.
22. Thereafter stretches Plaxa continent, double the size of the former and surrounded by the belt of the sea of sugar that appears like the snowy plains of Himalaya.
23. After that lies the belt of Pushkara continent, twice as large as the preceding one and encircled by a sea of sweet water double its circumference.
24. There, at the distance of ten degrees, they saw the belt of the south polar circle with its hideous cave below, the descent to the infernal regions.
25. The way to the infernal cave is full of danger and fear and ten times in length from the circle of the continents.
26. This cave is surrounded on all sides by a dreadful emptiness, and below it is half covered by a thick gloom, as if a blue lotus were attached to it.
27. There stood Lokaloka Sumeru or South Polar mountain, which is bright with sunshine on one side and covered by darkness on the other, studded with various gems on its peaks, and decked with flowers growing upon it.
28. It reflected the glory of the three worlds situated on its peak, like a cap of hairs.
29. At a great distance from it is a great forest that is not trodden by the feet of any living being. Then proceeding upward, they saw the great northern ocean encompassing the pole on all sides.
30. Further on they saw the flaming light of the aurora borealis which threatened to melt the snowy mountain to water.
31. Proceeding onward they met with the fierce north winds, blowing with all their fury and force.
32. They threatened to uproot the mountains as if they were dust or grass. They traversed the empty vacuum with their noiseless motion.
33. Far away they saw the empty space of vacuum stretching wide all about them.
34. It spreads unlimited and encompasses the worlds like a golden bracelet encircles the wrist.
35. 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.
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Chapter 3.26 — Return to the Holy Brahmin’s House; Description of Gloom; Vasishta Explains Astral Appearance
1. 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.
2. There the holy ladies, unseen by anyone, saw the tomb of the brahmin.
3. The maid servants were dejected with sorrow, and the faces of the women were soiled with tears, faded like lotuses with their withered leaves.
4. All joy had fled from the house, leaving it like the dry bed of the dead sea after its waters were sucked. It was like a garden parched in summer, or a tree struck by lightening.
5. It was as joyless as a dried lotus torn by a blast or withering under frost; and as faint as the light of a lamp without its wick or oil; and as dim as the eyeball without its light.
6. The house without its master was as sad as the face of a dying person, or like a forest with its falling and withered leaves, or like dry and dusty ground for lack of rain.
7-8 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.
9. Then the people of the house saw the two ladies as Lakshmi and Gauri, brightening the house with the light of their being.
10. 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.
11. They appeared to rise like a pair of moons with their cooling and pleasant beams infusing a freshness to the family, like moonlight does to medicinal plants in forests and villages.
12. The soft glances of their eyes under the long, loose and pendant curls of hair were like a shower of white malati flowers from the dark cloudy spots of their black lined eyes.
13. Their bodies were as bright as melted gold and as vibrant as a flowing stream. Their brilliance cast a golden color on the spot where they stood, as it did over the forest all around.
14. The natural beauty of Lakshmi’s body and the trembling glare of Leela’s body spread as it were, a sea of radiance about them in which their bodies seemed to move like undulating waves.
15. Their relaxed arms resembling loose vines, their palms like red leaflets shook like the fresh kalpa vines in the forest.
16. They touched the ground with their feet that resembled the fresh and tender petals of a flower, or like lotuses growing upon the ground.
17. Their appearance seemed to sprinkle ambrosial dews all around and made the dry withered and brown branches of tamara trees sprout new tender leaflets.
18. 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.
19. The flower offerings that fell on their feet resembled showers of dewdrops falling on lotus leaves in a lake of lotuses.
20. Jyeshtha Sarma said, “Hail, you goddesses who have come here to dispel our sorrow. It is inborn in the nature of good people to deliver others from their distress.”
21. The goddesses addressed him gently, “Tell us the cause of your sorrow which has made you all so sad.”
22. Then, one by one, Jyeshtha Sarma and others described their sorrows owing to the death of the brahmin couple.
23. 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.
24. 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.”
25. “The birds sitting on the top of the house have been continually pouring their pious and mournful sounds over the bodies of the deceased.
26. Mountains on all sides have been lamenting their loss with the hoarse noise of winds howling in their caverns, shedding showers of tears in the courses of the streams issuing from their sides.
27. Clouds have poured their tears in floods of rainwater, then fled from the skies. The heavenly quarters have been sending their sighs in sultry winds all around.”
28. “The poor village people are wailing in piteous notes, their bodies disheveled from rolling upon the ground. They are trying to yield up their lives with continued fasting.
29. The trees are shedding their tears every day in drops of melting snow exuding from the cells of their leaves and flowers, resembling the sockets of their eyes.
30. The streets are deserted for lack of passers-by and have become dusty without being watered. They have become as empty as the hearts of men forsaken by their joys of life.
31. Among the sad notes of cuckoos and the humming of bees, fading plants are wailing and withering from the sultry sighs of their inner grief.
32. Snows are melting from the heat of their grief, their waters falling in cataracts that break into to a hundred channels as they fall upon stony basins.”
33. “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.
34. 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.
35. The vines that twined so gaily round the spring trees are dwindling and dying away with their closing and fading flowers.
36. The rivulets, with their loose and low rippling murmur and the light wavelike motion of their liquid bodies on the ground, are running hurriedly in their sorrow to cast themselves into the sea.
37. Despite the disturbance of the gnats flying constantly upon them, ponds are as still in their sorrow as men sitting in meditation.
38. Truly this day, the presence of our parents is adorning that part of the heaven where heavenly singers, the kinnaras, gandharvas and vidyadharas, welcome them with their music.”
39. “Therefore, O Devis! reduce our excessive grief, because the visit of the great never goes for nothing.”
40. 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.
41. 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.
42. 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.
43. Rama said, “Remove my doubt, sage. Why didn’t Leela appear in her own form of Arundhati before her eldest son, Jyeshta Sarma?”
44. 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.
45. 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.
46. 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.
47. Belief that matter is an empty nothing leads to the knowledge of the spirit. A glass door appears as open space to someone of an irritable temperament. In the same way matter appears as nothing to the wise.
48. 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.
49. 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.
50. 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.
51. Those who are panic-struck and deranged in their minds, the half-waking and passengers in vessels, see many appearances like such ghosts and forests and betray what they see (in dreams) by the movements of their bodies.
52. 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.
53. 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.
54. Thus he who sees only Brahma filling the sphere of his consciousness has no room for a son or friend or wife.
55. He who views the whole as filled with the spirit of Brahma, with nothing produced in it, has no room for affection or hatred for anybody in it.
56. 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.
57. 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.
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Chapter 3.27 — Leela Remembers Her Past Lives Vasishta speaking:—
1. Then the two ladies disappeared from that place, leaving the brahmin family in their house in the mountainous village.
2. The family exclaimed “We are highly favored by the woodland goddesses.” Then forgetting their grief, they returned to their domestic employments.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Their conversation in their immaterial forms was of the same intellectual kind as we are conscious of in our dreams and imaginations.
6. 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?”
7. 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.”
8. 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.
9. 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.”
10. “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.
11. Later you become pure desire and wished that your son might see you, whereby he was able to see you.
12. If you should return now to your husband and do the same, you will undoubtedly be successful in your desire.”
13. 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.
14. In my mind I see that spot of the earth, that city and his palace where I sat as his queen.
15. Within myself I see my lord reigning in that place, and I can even see how he died afterwards.
16. 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.”
17. “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.
18. 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.”
19. 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.
20. 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.”
21. “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.
22. 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.
23. The management of his very many disordered state affairs has stultified him into a clumsy lout, and he is now fast asleep amidst the turmoil of business.
24. 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.”
25. “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?”
26. “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.
27. 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.
28. All these bodies are as empty as air, though they contain the great mountains Meru and Mandara in themselves.”
29. “All bodies are formed by a combination of atoms constantly proceeding from the Great Intellect, like particles of sunbeams over the universe.
30. The great and stupendous fabric of the world is no more than a quantity of paddy rice weighed in a balance.
31. 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.
32. 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.
33. 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.”
34. 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.
35. I, having descended from Brahma, have undergone a hundred and eight births and, after passing various states, I find myself still in existence.”
36. “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.
37. Being debased by my lack of moral restraint, I was born in this mortal world and became the mate of the king of the eaglefeathered tribe.
38. Having lived in the woods, then I was turned to a woodman’s mate, wearing a garment of leaves on my loins.
39. 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.
40. This small tree in a holy hermitage was held sacred by a group of saintly sages.” “Then, after the woods were burnt down by a wildfire, I was regenerated into the form of an hermit’s child.
41. Here I was taught the formulas for removing the curse of womanhood, and I became a male in the person of the handsome prince of the land of Surashtra (Surat) where I reigned for a hundred years.
42. “Then, on account of my misconduct in the government, I was denounced to become a weasel covered with leprosy, living in the lowlands of Tali.”
43. “I remember, O goddess, how I became a bullock in Surat and how for full eight years I was goaded by thoughtless cowherd children in their merry sport.
44. I have in mind that when I was transformed into a bird, with what difficulty I broke the net that was laid by bird-catchers for my destruction. It was in the same manner as we release ourselves from the snares of sinful desires.
45. I remember with pleasure when as a bee I landed lightly on the leaflets of blossoms, sipped the honey of the blooming buds, dined on the pistils, and slept in the cups of lotus flowers.
46. In the form of an antelope I wandered about in pleasant woodlands and lawns with my exalted and branching horns and beautiful eyes, until I was killed by a hunter’s arrow.
47. I have been in the form of a fish, and I was lifted up by the waves of the sea above the surface of the water. I saw how a tortoise was killed by the blow of a club on the neck.”
48. “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.
49. I also became a stork, delighting in lakes with my mate, filling the air with our sweet cries.
50. 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.”
51. “Next I was a fairy apsara with a form as bright as melted gold and features as beautiful as those of the lotus and lily in which the celestials used to take delight like bees and butterflies.
52. I remember being on earth, having decked myself in gold, pearls, rubies and other gems, and playing with my youthful consorts in pleasure gardens and groves, and on hills and mountains.”
53. “I also remember living long as a tortoise on the borders of a river, and to have been carried away by the waves, sometimes under a tree of vines over-hung with clusters of beautiful flowers, sometimes washed by waves into some wild cave.
54. I see how I acted the part of a goose covered by feathers, swimming on the high heaving waves on the surface of a lake.
55. Then, seeing a poor gnat hanging on the moving leaf of a cotton tree (salmali) branch, I became its associate and as contemptible a thing as itself.
56. I became an aquatic crane also, skimming playfully over waters gushing from hills, slightly kissing the crests of waves rising over the rapid torrent.”
57. “I remember also how I slighted the loves of amorous youths and spurned the lesser demigod (vidyadhara) children on the Gandha Madana and Mandara hills.
58. I remember likewise the pangs of a lovelorn lass as I lay pining in my bed strewn with the fragrance of camphor, and how I was decaying like the disc of the waning moon.”
59. “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.”
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Chapter 3.28 — Leela’s Vision in Meditation; Description of the Mountain Hamlet
1. 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?”
2. 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.
3. In their minds they saw the hilly tract where the brahmin Vasishta lived and had his desire for royalty.
4. They saw his deserted house and in their minds they saw the surface of the earth stretching to the seas.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. It was in the house situated in that hilly village that she saw the world placed within the space of her mind.
8. 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.
9. All that she saw was mere vision and void. There was no world, no earth, no house, and no distance.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. The sphere of consciousness is uncreated. It is ever calm everywhere. Deluded minds suppose the world to exist.
13. 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.
14. As a house and city are manifested to us in our dream, so this unreal world is presented as a reality to our understanding.
15. 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.
16. Discoursing in this manner between themselves, the two charming ladies, walked out of the house with their graceful steps.
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. The clouds were variegated by many colored clusters of flowers sweeping over them, and cranes and storks sat screeching on the cloud-capped tops of guluncha trees.
20. There were robust reeds lining the banks of rivers with their wide stretching stems and roots. Strong winds tossed the tender vines growing out of the rocky caves.
21. Clouds from the vault of heaven hung over the tops of trees covered with flowers and shed their pearly drops of rainwater profusely upon them, forming streams below.
22. The banks of the streamlets were continually lapped by waves raised by winds playing upon the shaking trees. Branches spread a cooling shade all around.
23. Standing on that spot, the ladies saw the hilly hamlet in the grass, like a fragment of heaven had fallen on the ground.
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. 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.
27. Cascades falling in torrents in the cavities of rocks, scattering their pearly particles afar like the churning of the Milky Ocean by Mandara Mountain.
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. The birds that approached fearlessly to drink the water dropping from the hill now fled for fear because the water seemed like sleet, or the shells and shots of archers.
31. Birds, parched by thirst and wishing to drink the water dashed by the waves of the rivulet, hovered upon it like stars in the sky.
32. There were rows of crows sitting on the tops of tall palm trees from whose sight children were hiding the remains of their sweetmeat.
33. They saw country lads with garlands of flowers on their heads and garments roaming in the cooling shades of the date, jam and neem trees.
34. They saw a lean and hungry beggar woman passing by slowly, clad in cloth of flax with garlands of blossoms over her ears.
35. They saw lazy rustics lying in their lonely retreats, talking away from the noisy brooks where they could hardly hear one another.
36. They saw naked beggar children crowding in a compound, curd smeared on their faces and hands, cow dung on their bodies, and holding flowery branches of plants in their hands.
37. On the green river banks, waves shook bushes as if they were a swing, leaving their marks on the sandy shore as the waters receded to their bed.
38. There was a house full of flies attracted by sweet milk and curds, but children were crying for lack of food.
39. Herdswomen were fretting at seeing their bracelets daubed by the cow dung they were spreading to dry. Men were smiling at seeing the eagerness of women tying the loosened knots of their hair.
40. Crows from the hilltops were alighting to pick up the offerings of the holy sages, and the paths around their houses were strewn with sacred kuru and kurunta leaves.
41. Every morning flowering plants growing in the caves of the hills and around the house covered the ground heel-deep with heaps of flowers.
42. 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.
43. 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.
44. Rooms stored honey collected by driving bees from their hives. Gardens were full of flowering asokas. Rooms were painted with red dye.
45. Winds moistened by rain showers had brought the garden of trees to bloom, and yellow kadamba buds hung like a canopy over the beds of green grass below.
46. The ketaka tree grove was blooming white from having its weeds removed, and the watercourse glided along with its soft murmuring tune.
47. Winds whistled in the windows of caves and clouds rested on mountain tops. Ponds were brimful of water covered with lotuses like so many moons.
48. 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.
49. Trees constantly dropped their ripened fruit, dried flowers and leaves of various sorts, like showers of snow on whitened ground.
50. Some clouds were seen to hang continually over the household compound, like aristocratic girls who never forsake their parents’ home. Other clouds hovered over the roof of the house flashing lightening to supply the light.
51. 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.
52. Soft breezes moved slowly as they passed along the lawn loaded with fragrance exhaled by sleepy flowers and gently shaking the leaves of trees.
53. There the ladies listened to prattling and playful parrots and partridges, and here they heard the melodious notes of the kokila nightingale calling back to the jarring crows on the branches.
54. Palm and tamara trees were loaded with fruit, and the forest trees were entwined with vines that waved their leafy palms around them.
55. There were tender ivy vines clasping the branches on one side, and the fragrance of efflorescent kandala and silindhra plants exhaled on the other. Tapering palm and tamara trees rose as high as spires, and a cooling breeze was blowing amidst the flower plants in the gardens.
56. There were cattle hastening to drink water in troughs, and garden trees hung with loads of green unripe fruit and beautiful flowers. Running streams were hidden under rows of trees by their banks. Stalks of plants were studded with flowers.
57. Gardens were perfumed with the nectar fragrance of kunda flowers, and lakes were redolent with the odor of lotuses hiding humble bees giddy with liquor in their honey cells. The air was reddened with rose-colored pollen flying from crimson lotuses, as if mocking the redness of Indra’s palace in the sky.
58. The scene was enchanted with the gurgling noise of small rivers running precipitately down from the hills, kundu flowers as white as clouds hanging over them, the beauty of the flower gardens around the house, and the musical warbling of songbirds singing joyfully in the air.
59. Boys were sporting on beds of flowers, and playful maidens were decked with flowery wreaths hanging down to their feet. Everywhere the ground was adorned with sprouting and prickly shrubs and blades of grass. There was a beauty displayed in the clasping of vines about the clumps of reeds.
60. New shooting buds and blossoms covered the trees and fragments of clouds shrouded the houses below. The ground was decorated by wreaths of icicles, and the flashes of lightning in the clouds over the houses terrified the women within.
61. There was a sweet fragrance of blue lotuses, and the hoarse lowing of the cattle hurrying to their green grazing ground. Confident deer and does were lying tamely in the yard, and peacocks danced merrily before waterfalls as if they were showers of rainwater.
62. Fragrant breezes were blowing giddily with the flavors of the fragrances they bore. Medicinal plants were lending their lights like lamps at night. Bird nests resounded with ceaseless warbling, and the noise of waterfalls deafened the ears of men on the bank.
63. 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.
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Chapter 3.29 — Description of Leela’s Life as Arundhati; Description of Astral Travel in Space Vasishta speaking:—
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. She remembered the whole course of her past life and derived pleasure relating the events of her former life and death.
4. 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.
5. 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).
6. 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.
7. I was devoted to the service of the gods, brahmins and good people, and rubbed my body with cow milk and ghee.” “I cleaned the frying pans and boiling kettles of the house.
8. I boiled food daily with a single bracelet of glass and one of conch-shell on my wrists. I served my father, mother, brother, daughters and sonsin- law with their daily meals.
9. Working all day and night, my body was emaciated like that of a domestic servant. ‘Haste and hasten’ were the words I used to repeat to myself.”
10. “Being so busy, I was silly and ignorant. Although I was the wife of a brahmin, I never wondered, not even in a dream, about what I was and what was this world.
11. Fully engaged in the collection of fuel, cow-dung, and sacrificial wood and vegetables, I became emaciated in my body, which was wrapped in a worn out blanket.”
12. “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.
13. 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) .
14. I had to correct my servants with gentle rebukes and tell them to keep within their bounds like the waves in the rivers.”
15. “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.”
16. 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.
17. “This was my flowery tree garden, decorated by these torn patala plants, and this was my garden alcove of flowering asokas.
18. This is the bank of the pond where the calves were loosely tied to the trees. This is my pet calf Karnika, which in my absence has refrained from eating the leaves.
19. This is my watering woman, now so weak and dirty in her appearance, her eyes daubed in tears from weeping these eight days in my absence.”
20. “This, O goddess, is the place where I used to eat and sit, and where I slept and walked. These are the places where I gave and received the things from my attendants.
21. This is my eldest son, Jyeshtha Sarma, weeping in the house. That is my milk cow, now grazing on the grassy plain in the forest.”
22. “I see this portico and these windows, once as dear to me as my own self, smeared with the dry powder of the spring Holi festival.
23. I see these pulpy gourds, planted with my own hands and dear to me as myself, now spreading themselves over the oven area.
24. I see my relatives wearing rudraksha beads, who before had been the bonds of my life, carrying fuel for fire, eyes tearing from the smoke.
25. I see that stony shore pelting its pebbles against force of the waves that baffle the beach, now covered by bushes.
26. The green meadows were full of leafy plants, dew drops on their tips. The plains were whitened from hailstones falling on them in showers.
27. The midday was covered by sunbeams, like a white mist of frost. The tree groves resounded with humming of bees fluttering about clustering flowers.”
28. “The blooming palasa, glowing like reddish coral, covered trees and land with heaps of crimson flowers.
29. Fruit was flowing in the village stream, carried from shore to shore, and rustic lads loudly jumbled together, eager to lay hold on them.
30. The cool shady beach of the stream was strewn with pebbles, washed and carried away by the current and covered by leaves falling from the trees.”
31. “There I see the altar of my house, so beautifully decorated with flowering vines, clusters of fruits and flowers hanging over its windows.
32. 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.
33. I remember how he had fostered the fond wish of obtaining royal dignity, and how ardently he looked forward to its attainment.
34. I see, O goddess, his royal dignity of eight days, which had seemed to be so long in duration.”
35. “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.
36. 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.
37. 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.”
38. “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.”
39. 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.
40. 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.
41. They passed above the regions of the clouds and winds, then beyond the spheres of the orbits of the sun and moon.
42. They passed beyond the path of the north star and the limits of the circuits of the sadhya deities, spiritual masters, and other celestial beings.
43. From there they ascended to the higher heavens of Brahma and the Tushita divinities, then upward to the sphere of Golaka (the zodiac), and from there to the world of Shiva and to the sphere of the departed souls of the dead.
44. 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.
45. Having passed the ethereal sphere, they saw nothing there except the sun, moon and the stars shining below them.
46. There was only a deep darkness to be seen, filling the whole void of space and appearing like the basin of the waters of universal deluge, and as compact as the impenetrable cavity of a rock.
47. Leela said, “Tell me, O goddess! What happened to the light of the sun and other stars? Where did this darkness, dense like a fist, come from?”
48. The goddess replied, “You have arrived at a place so remote from the spheres of heaven that the light of the stars can never reach it.
49. Just like one at the bottom of a deep dark pit is unable to see the light of a firefly flitting over it, so sunlight is invisible to one behind the great belt of heaven.”
50. Leela said, “Such a great distance we have come! The great luminary of the sun appears as small as an atom below.
51. Tell me mother, what sort of a place lies beyond this region, and how can we get there after traversing this gloomy expanse?”
52. Saraswati said, “Behind this is the great pole of the universe that is scattered with innumerable nebular stars like particles of dust.”
53. Vasishta said:— As they were talking in this manner, they glided imperceptibly to that pole, like a bee saunters over a solitary hut on the height of a mountain.
54. They were at no pains to come down from that precipice, as there is no pain to effect what must certainly come to pass, even though it appears difficult at first.
55. They saw the system of the universe laid naked to their sight, just as a bold navigator beholds a world exposed to his view beyond the wide expanse of waters.
56. They saw the watery expanse to be ten times greater than the earth and enveloping like the crust of a walnut.
57. Then there is a latent heat that is ten times as great as the water, and the surrounding air is as much greater than the water, and then the all encompassing space of which there is no end.
58. There is no beginning, middle or end to that infinite space. It produces nothing, like a barren woman of her offspring.
59. It is only an extended expanse, infinite, calm and without beginning, middle or end, situated in the Supreme Spirit.
60. 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 .
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Chapter 3.30 — Vasishta Describes the Universe, the Cosmic Egg (Brahmanda) Vasishta speaking:—
1. Within a moment they passed beyond the regions of the earth, air, fire, water and space and the tracks of the ten planetary spheres.
2. They reached boundless space from where the universe appears like an egg.
3. Under its vault they saw millions of luminous particles floating in the air,
4. like innumerable bubbles floating on the waters of the unlimited ocean of the sphere of Consciousness.
5. Some particles were going downward, and others rising upward; some turning round, and others appeared to their understanding to remain fixed and immovable.
6. These different motions were only apparent as they saw them from different sides.
7. Here there were no ups or downs, no upside or below, and no going forward or backward. Here there are no directions as men know.
8. 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.
9. 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?”
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. It is also covered by cities, towns and mountains and their inhabitants and productions, like a walnut by its shell.
15. Like elephants appearing as pigmies in the Vindhyan Mountains, these worlds appear as particles in the vast expanse of space.
16. Everything anywhere is produced from and exists in space. It is always all in all things, which are contained like particles in it.
17. 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.
18. Some of these are hollow within, and others are as dark as the darkness in the end of a kalpa age. They are all moving about in the ocean of emptiness like the waves of the sea.
19. Some are forever whirling about with a jarring noise that is neither heard or known to anybody. It is like the motion of men addicted by their nature to earthly pursuits.
20. Some worlds are growing in form, as if they were newly created. In their development, they are like sprouts from seeds newly sown in the ground.
21. Some are melting away like icicles in heat, or like the mountains that melt at the dissolution of the world from burning sun and heavenly fire.
22. Others have been continually falling downward without reaching any ground, until at last they dwindle and melt into Divine Intellect.
23. Others are fixed in the air like miniscule animals in water that are moved to and fro by currents but without any sign of motion or sensation in them.
24. Again, nothing is stable in nature. Everything is as changing as people alter and add to the acts and customs enjoined in the Vedas and scriptures.
25. There are other Brahmas and other patriarchs, and many Vishnus and many Indras, one after the other. We have different kings of men, and sometimes no ruler of them.
26. Some in this multiform creation are like men or lords of others, and some are creeping and crooked living beings on earth. Some kinds are as plenty as the waters of the ocean, and others have become extinct.
27. Some are as hard as solid stones, and others are as soft as poor insects and worms. Some are of godly figures, such as the giants, while others are of puny human forms.
28. Some are quite blind and are suited to darkness. Others are suited to light. Some to both.
29. Some are born as gnats sucking the juice figs. Others are empty within and fly about and feed upon the air.
30. 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.
31. This world is the sphere for these living beings, but the great emptiness that spreads beyond is so extensive that the gods Vishnu and others are unable to measure it even if they were to traverse it for the whole of their lives.
32. Every one of these ethereal globes is encircled by a belt resembling a golden bracelet, and each has an attractive power like the earth to attract other objects.
33. 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.
34. There are many other large worlds, unseen by others, rolling through the immense space of vacuum, like giddy yaksha demons revel in the dark and dismal deserts and forests.
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Chapter 3.31 — Leela & Saraswati Arrive on Earth; Fate of Good & Bad Fallen in War
1. Vasishta said:— After having seen the worlds in their aerial journey, the ladies arrived on earth and quickly entered King Padma’s inner apartment.
2. There they saw the king’s dead body lying in state under heaps of flowers, Leela’s spiritual body sitting beside the corpse.
3. 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.
4. Leela, seeing the house of her late husband and wishing to enter it, came to his tomb in her assumed body.
5. 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.
6. Then with the goddess she went again to the bright and spacious temple of the world and quickly entered.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. There they passed through regions of cloudy hills and skies, and reached the surface of the earth, consisting of tracts of land and basins of water.
10. They came to the continent of Jambu (Asia) situated amid the nine-fold petals of the other continents, and from there proceeded to the territories of Leela’s husband in the land of Bharata (India).
11. 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.
12. They saw the air crowded by people of the three worlds who had assembled to see the conflict.
13. They remained undaunted, and saw the air crowded by aerial beings in groups like clouds.
14. There were the spiritual masters (siddhas), charana and sura demigods, celestial gandharvas, supernatural vidyadharas, and other celestials and apsara nature spirits in large bodies.
15. There were also bhuta and pisacha demons, and rakshasa demon cannibals; while female vidyadhara were flinging handfuls of flowers on the combatants like showers of rain.
16. The evil-spirit vetalas, yakshas and kushmands were looking at the battle with pleasure, taking the shelter of hills to avoid flying arrows and weapons.
17. The imps were flying from the air to keep out of the path of flying weapons. The spectators were excited by sound of the combatants’ war cries.
18. Leela, who was standing by with a fan in her hand, was frightened at the imminent, dreadful conflict. She smiled in scorn at the boasting on each side.
19. Virtuous people unable to endure the horrid sight took to praying with the chief priests to avert the calamity.
20. Indra’s messengers were ready with their decorated elephants to bear the souls of mighty heroes to grace the seats of heaven.
21. The demigod charanas and gandharvas sang praises of the advancing heroes. Those heavenly apsara nymphs who liked heroism were glancing at the best combatants.
22. Voluptuous women wished to embrace the arms of the brave. The fair fame of the heroes had turned the hot sunshine to cool moonlight.
23. 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?”
24. 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.
25. Whoever otherwise kills men in war for an unjust cause and dies is called an insurgent and goes to hell.
26. Whoever fights for unlawful property and dies in battle becomes subject to everlasting hellfire.
27. Whoever wages a war justified by law and custom, that warrior is called both loyal and heroic in deed.
28. Whoever dies in war with a willing mind to protect cattle, brahmins and friends, and whoever protects his guest and refugee with all diligence, after his death he truly becomes an ornament in heaven.
29. 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.
30. They who die fighting on the side of riotous subjects, or in the cause of rebellious princes or chiefs, are doomed to fire.
31. They who die fighting unjustly against their kings, law-givers and rulers are subjected to the torments of hell.
32. A war that is just serves to establish order, but the unsteady who are mindless of the future destroy all order.
33. ‘The hero dying goes to heaven’ is the common saying. Scriptures call the lawful warrior a hero, and not otherwise.
34. They who suffer wounds while protecting the righteous and good are said to be heroes. Otherwise, they are insurgents.
35. 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.
36. 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.
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Chapter 3.32 — Onset of the War
1. Vasishta said:— Leela, standing in air with the goddess of wisdom, saw the apsara nymphs dancing with eagerness for the war between combatants below.
2. She saw the armies assemble in her own territory once governed by her lord. She saw the field of the air no less formidable because of the assembled ghosts.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Then darts and javelins, spears and lances, and many other missiles began to fall on both sides, like showers of raindrops, hailstones and meteorites from the skies.
6. Showers of shafts fell with a force that would pierce the wings of garuda. As they hit the warriors, they covered the glare of the sun off their armor.
7. Combatants stood face to face with their arms lifted, steadily staring at each other as if they were pictures in a painting.
8. Armies arranged in long regiments, standing in lines opposite each other, repeatedly shouted and answered each another.
9. The battle array of both armies, and the drums on each side, were stopped by their leaders warnings against striking the first blow.
10. The space that separated the hostile forces was the breadth of two bows, like a bridge from one another. It looked like a gap caused by winds in the middle of the ocean at the universal deluge.
11. Leaders were drowned in thoughts of fear of bloodshed and massacre. Cowardly soldiers groaned in their hearts with the hoarse noise of croaking frogs.
12. There were many brave ones eager to yield their precious lives in a trice. Archers stood with bowstrings drawn to the ear, ready to let their pointed arrows loose at the foe.
13. Others stood dreadfully fixed to strike their arms upon the enemy. Many with frowning looks stared sternly at their adversaries.
14. Armor was clashing, the faces of killers were burning with rage, and the faces of cowards turned towards sheltered retreats, ready for flight.
15. All stood in doubt of their lives until the end of the war, and the bodies of old men, like big elephants, were covered with goose bumps.
16. 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.
17. Musical instruments, drum and conch-shell were all silent, and a thick cloud of dust covered the face of the earth and sky.
18. The retreaters were flying from their stronger assailants, who kept running after them like sharks after shoals of fish in the sea.
19. The glittering fringes of flags put the ethereal stars to blush, and the lifted goads in the hands of the elephant-drivers made a forest of tapering trees in the sky.
20. Arrows flew in the air like flocks of the winged tribe, and the loud beating of drums and blowing of pipes resounded in the air.
21. 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.
22. Somewhere a great howling arose from the vanguard of a body of troops thrown into disorder by a cohort in the form of eagles. In another place, many were seen shouting and attacking each another.
23. Warriors of many legions raised a tremendous noise, and the hands of combatants raised a host of large clubs.
24. The glare of dark steel shaded sunbeams like a cloud. Darts hissing in the air resembled the rustling of breeze amidst the dry leaves of trees.
25. 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.
26. Big elephants fell in the field like coal-black rocks hurled down by gusts of wind.
27. It seemed like infernal spirits had been let loose from their caves of hell to rage in the battlefield with their horrid and dismal figures.
28. The dark cloud of swords hid daylight and warriors raised their black spears, seemingly bent upon converting the earth into an ocean of bloodshed.
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Chapter 3.33 — The Battle: the Armies Engage [The whole of this chapter abounds in onomatopoeian alliterations, and is more a play upon words than display of sense. However, it is interesting for these jingling words and for the names of the weapons in use among the ancients. — V. L. Mitra]
1. Rama said, “Sage, describe this warfare to me, as I love stories of this kind.”
2. Vasishta said:— The ladies, in order to have a better view of the battle below, ascended in their imaginary aerial cars to a more retired spot in the higher regions of the sky.
3. At this time, the two armies clashed and mingled, fighting each other with shouts, like waves dashing against one another in a raging sea.
4. Viduratha, the lord of the realm (formerly Padma, the husband of Leela), impatient seeing a bold warrior from the other army attack one of his soldiers, used his huge mallet to strike him on the breast.
5. Then the battle raged with the impetuosity of rolling waves in a stormy ocean. Arms on both sides flamed with living fire and flashes of fiery lightning.
6. Now the edges of waving swords glittered in the sky. Cracking and clashing noises filled the air with a hideous crackling.
7. Then flew winged arrows overshadowing sunbeams and emitting a booming noise that hushed the rattling clamor of summer clouds.
8. Armor clashed against armor with a clanking noise, shooting sparks of glistening fire. Arms, hacking and slashing against arms, filled the air with their fragments flying like birds in the air.
9. The shaking arms and legs of the two armies appeared like a forest moving on the land. The twang of their bows and the rumbling of discs, crackling like the rattling drive of wheels in heaven, drove away the birds of the air.
10. The hissing of their loosened strings resembled the bee-like buzzing heard in samadhi.
11. Iron shafts pierced the heads of the soldiers like sleets of hailstones, and the crashing of armor broke arms of the mail-clad warriors.
12. Weapons struck brazen armor with a howling noise and clanking sound. Strokes flying like drifts of rainwater dented the face of the air on all sides.
13. Steel striking steel made hands ring with a jingling sound, and the continued rapping on arms and clapping of hands raised chat-chat and pat-pat sounds.
14. The whizzing noise as swords were unsheathed was like the hissing of sparks from fire. The sounds of arrows and darts flying in all directions were like the rustling of falling leaves in autumn.
15. The field was filled with blood spouting from throats separated from bodies, mangled limbs and heads, and broken swords.
16. The flame of fire flaring from armor emblazoned the hairs of the warriors. The sound of weapons as swordsmen fought and fell raised a giddy and loud jingling.
17. Tall elephants, pierced by spears, poured out torrents of red-hot blood; while their kin gored bodies with shrill cries.
18. Others, crushed by the ponderous maces of their antagonists, creaked grievously under the blows while heads of slain soldiers swam in rivers of blood over the plain.
19. Here hungry vultures were pouncing from above, and there the sky was covered by a cloud of dust. Weaponless soldiers fought with their hands, pulling each other down by the hair.
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Chapter 3.34 — The Battle as Seen by Onlookers Vasishta speaking:—
1. The generals and ministers of the warring sides, and the aerial spectators of the battles, were talking among themselves this way.
2. See, here the ground has become a lake of blood, with heads of slaughtered hosts floating like lotuses upon it. And there the air has become like the starry heaven, glittering with broken weapons flying like birds in the sky.
3. Behold the air is red with the particles of bright red blood borne above by the winds. It is midday, but the sky presents evening clouds with the glow of the setting sun.
4. What are these, says one, that are flying like straws in the sky? They are, says the other, no straws but the flight of arrows that have filled the air.
5. Another cries that as long as the dust of the earth is wet with the blood of the brave, heroes are entitled to glory and have their home in heaven for myriads of years.
6. A scripture says to fear not these dark swords whose blades are worn by the brave like petals of blue lotuses about their breasts, and the brave are favorites in the eyes of the goddess of fortune.
7. The heavenly apsara nymphs that saw the fighting and felt a desire to embrace the brave. The god of the flowery bow (Kama, the God of Love) was busy loosening their waist bands.
8. They beckoned their welcome by waving their reddened palms, by shaking red leaves on trees, by the round glances of their eyes, in the blooming blossoms of plants, and by the perfume of their breath in the honey fragrance of flowers.
9. The guardian spirits of the pleasure gardens of paradise sang sweet notes with the woodland choir and danced in the wagging tails of peacocks.
10. As a brave warrior broke the enemy line with his hardy axe, his beloved was breaking his hard heart and spirit with the soft glances of her eyes.
11. It is by my lance, says the lancer, that I have severed the head of my enemy with rings in his ears, like the head of the ascending node of Rahu approaching the disc of the sun.
12. Look, there is a champion hurling blocks of stones attached to the end of a chain reaching his feet! There is another, whirling his wonderful log of wood held in his uplifted arm.
13. There comes that warrior in the form of Yama, the God of the underworld, appearing from the region of the dead spirits and spreading a horrid devastation all around. Come let us go back the way we came.
14. Look at these ravenous birds greedily plunging their long necks into the flesh of bodies just separated from their heads, and glutting themselves with the gushing blood. See there the headless trunk of the slain moving to and fro in the field of battle.
15. The eloquent among the spectators were talking to one another about the frailty of human life and the uncertainty of the time of their meeting in the next world.
16. O, the stern cannibal of death, says one, that devours entire bodies of armies in one swoop, now weltering in blood, and levels the leveling hosts to the ground.
17. The showers of arrows falling on the elephants resemble the showers of raindrops on mountain tops. The darts sticking to their front bones are like bolts of lightening piercing the cliff tops.
18. While a headless body was groveling on the ground for lack of its head, its head was flying on high like a bird of air, proclaiming its immortality in heaven.
19. The army harassed by stones slung at their heads cried to entrap the enemy in the snares set at their feet.
20. Wives that had become apsaras (heavenly nymphs) after death, were now eager to claim their husbands, restored to their youth by virtue of falling in the field of battle.
21. The glaring light of the line of lances that had reached the skies seemed like a flight of stairs or golden vistas for the ascent of the brave to the gates of heaven.
22. The wife of the slain soldier, now a heavenly goddess, taking possession of her husband’s fair gold-like breast, was looking about in search of another.
23. Generals, arms waving, wailed loudly over their fallen armies in the field. They appeared like cliffs of rocks resounding to the clamorous surges of the sea below.
24. They shouted at warriors to fight their best. They cried out to remove the wounded to the rear and not trample the bodies of their own soldiers, now lying low on the ground.
25. Look! There apsaras are eagerly tying their loosened hair and advancing with sobbing bosoms to receive the departed warriors joining their company in their celestial forms.
26. Ah, receive our guests from afar, says one, on the banks of the rivers of paradise, decorated with golden lotus blossoms, and entertain them with fresh water and cooling breeze.
27. Look! There are groups of weapons broken into pieces like bones by their impact, huddled in the air with a jingling sound and shining like stars in the sky.
28. See the stream of deceased souls flowing in arrow-like currents and rolling in whirlpools of flying discs, rapidly gliding with the pebbles and stones flung in the air from the slings.
29. The sky has become like a lake of lotuses with lotus-form heads of warriors flung aloft in the air, while flying weapons are floating like their stalks with the broken swords all around like their thorns.
30. Flying fragments of flags form the skins of the plants, and the darts sticking to them appear like big black bees fluttering about the flowers moving with the breeze.
31. Arrows sticking to the dead bodies of elephants are like ants on mountain tops, and like timid girls clinging to men’s bosoms.
32. Winds unfurling the curling locks of supernatural vidyadhara females indicate their approaching nuptials, like in an augury the unfolding plumage of fowls predict success.
33. Lifted umbrellas shine like so many moons on high, and the moon itself, shining above in the form of fair fame, spreads her light like a white canopy over the earth.
34. The brave warrior, soon after his death, assumes a celestial form framed by his own merit, just like a man in his sleep attains the state he imagined to himself in his waking.
35. Flying spears, lances, clubs and discs are hurtling in the air like shoals of restless fish and sharks moving about constantly in the troubled waters of the sea.
36. Milk-white rags of umbrellas, tattered and shattered by arrow shafts, fly like cranes in the crowded air, appearing like the disc of the moon broken into a thousand pieces.
37. Fans flying in the air with a hoarse gurgling seem like waves of the sea lifted in the air, undulating with a babbling noise in the ocean of the sky.
38. Those scraps of fans and umbrellas, ripped by slashing weapons, appear like the laurels of glory flung aloft and flying in the regions of air.
39. Look, O friends, how these flying arrows and showering spears are approaching us with the hits of their spoil, like bodies of locusts bearing away their green booty in the air.
40. Listen to the clanking sound of steel striking by the uplifted arm of an armored soldier, resounding like the loud alarm of the king of death.
41. Hear the tremendous blows of weapons, like the fury of an all destroying tornado, throwing down mountain-like elephants, their great ivory tusks lying on the ground like waterfalls.
42. Look, there the chariot drivers are stopped in their course struggling to make their way through puddles of blood in which wheels and horses are stuck together like in a bog of quagmire.
43. The jingling of arms and armor and the jangling of swords and steel resound like a lute playing for the dancing of the dire and dreaded dame of death.
44. See the skirts of the sky are reddened by the red particles borne by the winds from streams of blood flowing out of the wounds in the bodies of men, horses and elephants lying dead in the field.
45. Look at the array of arrows in the air in the shape of a wreath of blossoms, falling like lightning from dark black clouds of weapons hanging on high.
46. See the surface of the earth filled with blood-red weapons appearing like faggots of fire strewn over the ground in a universal conflagration.
47. A multitude of weapons mingle together clashing and breaking one another into pieces, falling down in showers like the innumerable rays of the sun.
48. The fighting of one man among the motionless many is like the play of a magician acting his parts for a bewitched audience. See, there indifferent spectators are viewing the battle as a dream (by their prajna or inner vision of the mind).
49. The field of battle, where all other sounds are hushed under the clashing of arms, resembles the stage of the martial god Bhairava chanting his pitiless war song in jarring cacophony.
50. The battlefield is turned into a sea of blood filled with the sands of pounded weapons and rolling with the waves of broken discuses.
51. The sky is filled with martial music loudly sounding on all sides. Echoes off the hills seem to challenge one another in their aerial flight and fighting.
52. Alas, for shame, says one, that these arrows flung with such force from bowstrings, flying with such loud hissing, glittering like red hot lightning, are foiled in their aim of piercing impenetrable armor and glance off hitting stony hills.
53. Hear me friend. You are tired of the sight. It is time for us to leave this place before our bodies are pierced by these sharp arrows flashing like fire, and before the day runs its course into the evening.
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Chapter 3.35 — The Battle: Description of the Battlefield [First the battle ground is compared with the sky, then with the sea, next with a forest, and last with the final doomsday. — V.L. Mitra.]
1. Vasishta said:— Then waves of cavalry mounting to the sky made the battlefield appear like a raging sea.
2. Moving umbrellas floated as its foam and froth, and feathered silvery arrows glided like finny pearly fish, while cavalry charges and flights heaved and dashed like surges of the sea.
3. Rushing of weapons resembled the running of its currents, and circles of soldiers were its whirlpools. The elephants were like its islets and their motions resembled the rocks moving in it.
4. Whirling discs were its eddies, and long hair flying on heads its floating weeds. Sparkling sands were its shining waters, and the flash of swords its glassy spray.
5. Gigantic warriors were its whales and alligators, and the resounding caves like its gurgling whirlpools.
6. Flying arrows were its swimming fishes, and floating flags resembled its uprising waves and bores.
7. Shining weapons formed the waters of this ocean and their whirlpools also, while the long lines of forces appeared like the huge and horrible bodies of its whales.
8. Soldiers clad in black iron armor were like the dark blue waters of the deep, and headless bodies groveling in dust were like the whirling currents of the sea, with scattered weapons like sea weeds.
9. Showers of arrows hid the skies with a mist, and the confused rattling of the battlefield was like the roaring of clouds.
10. Flying and falling heads of slain soldiers resembled large drops of rain, and their bodies were like pieces of wood whirling in the eddies of the discs.
11. The bold archer, bending his strong bow in the form of a curve and leaping above the ground, resembled the spouting sea rising from under the ground with heaving waves.
12. The unnumbered umbrellas and flags that were moving up and down the field were like the foaming and frothing of the sea, rolling in waves of blood and carrying away the beams and timbers of broken chariots in its current.
13. The army’s march resembled the flow of seawater, and the blood spouting from the wounds of elephants were like its bubbles, while the moving horses and elephants represented the sea animals in their motion.
14. The battlefield had become like a wonderful field of the air in which the furious war, like a tremendous earthquake, shook hills like moving clouds in the sky.
15. Here the waves were undulating like flights of birds in the air, and groups of elephants falling aground like rocks, and the cowardly ranks murmured like herds of frightened deer.
16. The field has become a forest of arrows. Wounded soldiers are standing fixed on the ground like trees, arrows flying like locusts, and horses moving like antelopes.
17. Here a loud drum sounded like the humming of bees in the hollows of trees. The army appears like a mist with a bold warrior sprawling like a lion in it.
18. Dust was rising in clouds and forces falling like rocks. Huge, broken chariots looked like hills, and flaming swords shined on all sides.
19. The rise and fall of soldiers’ feet flitted like falling flowers on the ground, and flags and umbrellas rose above it like clouds. All was covered with streams of blood, and high-sounding elephants fell like thundering showers of rain.
20. The war was like the last doom of death ready to devour the world, destroying flags, banners, umbrellas and chariots in a confused chaos.
21. Shining weapons fell like fragments of the bight sun, burning all things like a burning pain inflames the soul and mind.
22. The stretched bows were like rainbows, and falling arrows like showers of rain. Flying sabers resembled forked lightning, and their falling fragments like sparkling hailstones.
23. The dire massacre made a sea of blood with hurling stones as its shoals and rocks. Flying arms resembled stars falling from heaven.
24. The sky was like a sea full of whirlpools of discs hurled through the air. There were burning fires performing funerals of the slain.
25. Missiles were like bolts of thunder that struck rock-like elephants dead in the field to block the passage of men.
26. Earth and sky were hidden by a thick cloud of showering arrows, and the army below was a sea of tempestuous warfare and bloodshed.
27. Destructive weapons were flying on all sides, like huge dragons of the sea carried aloft by gusts of wind from the stormy main.
28. The flying arms of bolts, swords, discs, pikes and lances were blazing and breaking one another in the air with such hideous noise that it seemed to be a second deluge, when the last tornado blew up everything on high, scattering them in all directions, crushing and smashing them with a tremendous peal.
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Chapter 3.36 — The Battle: Duels between Equals; Catalogue of Forces Vasishta speaking:—
1. Heaps of arrows rising in spires above the ground drove the cowards and the wounded far away from the battlefield.
2. Hills of dead bodies of men, horses and elephants, heaving in promiscuous heaps and appearing like clouds fallen upon earth, invited the demon yakshas, rakshasas and carnivorous pisachas to come and play in the wide ocean of blood.
3. Now there commenced a contest between men of equal rank and virtue among those of good character, valor and strength on both sides. All took part in the combat, even holy householders.
4. They fought duels like one cloud clashing with another, and like the confluence of two streams discharging their fury against each other.
5. As a rib is joined to another, and one side with the other, so met horse against the horse and elephant against elephant in mutual conflict.
6. As one forest clasps and clings to another, and as one hill is linked with another in a range, so the duelists struggled with each other like one wave dashing against the other.
7. Footmen fought with footmen like reeds crush reeds and bamboo strikes each another in swirling winds.
8. Chariots fell upon chariots and broke each another to pieces. Citizens beat rustics, like the gods smote the demons of old.
9. The sky which had been clouded by flights of arrows was now emblazoned by the archer’s banner resembling a rainbow of various colors.
10. At last the warriors who were overpowered in their conflict fled from the field, as people do from a fire.
11. Now armor-bearers with discuses met in contest with those who shielded against discs, archers opposed archers, and swordsmen challenged the other side’s sword fighters. So hookers and crookers challenged their co-rivals with crowbars in hand.
12. Maces were opposed to maces, and lancers were set against the lance bearers in fighting. Spearmen braved spearmen, and the throwers of missiles were crossed with missiles in hand.
13. Mallets fought against mallets, and clubs were opposed by clubmen in the conflict. Combatants with pikes encountered pike men face to face, and iron rods were crossed in strife against pointed tridents.
14. Fighters with missile weapons counteracted the missiles of their enemies, and those fighting with battleaxes resisted the poleaxes and pickaxes of their foes.
15. Trappers with their traps and snares attacked the darters of nooses and lassos. Those who threw javelins withstood the javelins of the throwers on the other side. Daggers opposed daggers and cudgels fought cudgels.
16. Combatants with iron gloves opposed boxers with iron fisticuffs, and those with iron cranes in hand pursued fighters with crooked goads. Warriors with ploughshares attacked ploughmen, and those with tridents fell upon the opposing trident holders.
17. Champions with chained armor set upon soldiers attired in mail. They poured on the field like flights of locusts or like the waves in the troubled sea.
18. The air also appeared like a sea, with flying discs whirling like whirlpools and the flight of reeds whistling like gusts of wind. Various flying weapons seemed like sharks and dolphins moving about it.
19. The sky of the heavens became the great deep of the sea, impassable by celestials owing to the waves of weapons moving like sea monsters in the air.
20. Thus the armies of the two belligerent rulers, each composed of eight divisions as described below, furiously engaged one another.
21. Now hear me relate to you, the forces on the side of Padma, now named King Viduratha, and the allied powers that came to his side from the Central and Eastern districts.
22. There came the hardy warriors of Kosala and Benares; those of Magadha and Utkala, situated in the east; and the Mekhalas (of Vindhya range), the Karkars (of Karnatic), and the Madras in the south.
23. The chiefs of Hema and Rudras and the Tamils from the south; the Pragjyotishas, and the horse faced Osmuks and Ambashtha cannibals.
24. Then there joined the Varna-koshthas and Viswotras, and the eaters of raw food and flesh and the fish eaters; and those with faces like tigers, the Kiratas, with the Sauviras and one legged people.
25. Next came the mountaineers of Malyavana, Sibira and Anjanagiri; and others having the ensigns of bulls and lotuses, and the people of the sun rising mountain in the east.
26. Those that joined from the south east, are the following, namely: the Vindhyaris, the Chedis, the Vatsas, the Dasarnas (near the confluence of the ten streams); and the Angas, Bangas and Upabangas (of Upper and Lower Bengal).
27. They that met from the south were, Kalingas and Pundras, the Jatharas, Vidarbhas and the hill people; the Sabaras, the outcaste tribals, the Karnas and the Tripura people.
28. Those named Kantakas from their thorny district, the unenlightened Komalas; the Canarese, the Andhras, the Cholas and the people on the borders of the Charmanvati river.
29. The Kakos or baldheaded and bearded people, and those of the Hemakuta Hills; the frizzled and long necked people, and the inhabitants of Kishkindha and cocoa forests.
30. The princes that joined with Leela’s husband from the south, were as follows: the Vindhyans, the Kusumians (of Patna), the Mahendras and the Darduras.
31. The Malays and the solar race, and the Prince of the thirty-three united states and the rich and united cities of Avanti and Sambavati.
32. And those of Dasapura of Katha, Chakra, Reshika Cutch and others, and the foresters of Upagiri and Bhadragiri Hills.
33. The prince of Nagore and the chiefs of Dandaka Forest, and the joint states of the people; the Sahas, Saivas, and the hill people of the Rishyamuka and Karkota and the Vimbila foresters.
34. Then came the inhabitants from the banks of Pampa, the Kerakas and Karkaviras; with the Kherikas, Asikas and the people of Dhrumapattana.
35. Next came the Kasikas and Khallukas, the Yadas and Tamraparnikas; the Gonardas, the Kanakas and the people of Dinapattam.
36. The Tamils, Kadambharas, Sahakaras and Deer Hunters, the Vaitundas, Tumbavanalas, and those attired in deer and elephant skins.
37. Then came the lotus-like Sibis and Konkans and the inhabitants of Chitrakuta mountains; with the people of Karnata, the Mantas, Batakas and those of Cattak.
38. The Andhras and Kola hill people, the Avantis and Chedis; with the Chandas and Devanakas and Krauncha-vahas.
39. At last came the people from the three peaks of Chitrakuta mountains, called the Silakhara, Nanda mardana and Malaya, which were the seats of the guardian Bakshasas of Lanka.
40. Then those of the southwest where there is the great realm of Surat, with the kingdoms of the Sind, Sauvira, Abhira, and Dravidas (in Deccan).
41. Also those of the districts of Kikata, Siddha Khanda, and Kaliruha, and Mount Hemagiri or golden hills and the Raivataka range.
42. Then the warriors of Jaya Kachchha, and Mewar; as also the Yavanas, the Bahlikas, the Marganas (nomads), and the grey colored Tumbas (on the north).
43. Then there came Lahsa races and many hill peoples, inhabiting the borders of the sea, forming the limit of the dominion of Leela’s husband on the north.
44. Now know the names of the countries belonging to the enemy in the west, and of those composed of the following mountain ranges, namely,
45. Mount Maniman and the Kurarpana Hills, with the hillocks of Vanorka, Meghabhava, and Chakravana Mountain.
46. There is the country of the five peoples limiting the territory of the Kasa brahmins, and after that the Bharaksha, the Paraka and Santika countries.
47. Thence stretch the countries of the Saivyas, Amarakas, the Paschatyas and Guhutwas; and then the Haihaya country, and those of the Suhyas, Gayas and Tajikas and Hunas.
48. Then along the side of some other countries, there is the range of Karka Hills, inhabited by barbarous people, devoid of caste, customs and limits of moral duties.
49. Thence stretches a country hundreds of leagues in length, to the boundary mountain of Mahendra, abounding in rich stones and gems.
50. After that stands the Aswa Range with hundreds of hills about it; and extending to the dread ocean on the north of the Pariyatra Range.
51. On the north western side, there are countries beyond the boundary mountains (of Asia), where Venupati was the king of the land.
52. Then there are the countries of the Phalgunakas and Mandavayas and many other peoples; and those of Purukundas and Paras as bright as the orb of the sun.
53. Then the races of Vanmilas and Nalinas and the Dirghas; who are so called, from their tall statures and long arms and hairs. Then there are the Rangas, Stanikas with protuberant breasts, and the Guruhas and Chaluhas.
54. After that is the kingdom of women, where they feed upon bullocks and heifers. Now about the Himalayas and its hills in the north (of India):
55. these are the Krauncha and Madhuman hills; and the Kailasa, Vasuman and the Sumeru peaks; at the foot of which are the people, known under many names.
56. Beside these there met the warlike tribes of India consisting of the Madrawars, Malavas and Sura-senas. The Rajputs of the race of Arjuna, the Trigartas and the one legged people and Khudras.
57. There were the Abalas, Prakhalas, and Sakas. The Khemadhurtas, the Dasadhanas, the Gavasanas and Club Fighters.
58. The Dhanadas and Sarakas and Batadhanas also, with the islanders and Gandharas and Avanti warriors of Malwa.
59. The warlike Taxilas, the Bilavas, Godhanas and the renowned warriors of Pushkara.
60. Then there were the Tikshas and Kalavaras, and the inhabitants of the cities of Kahaka and Surabhuti likewise.
61. There were the people of the Ratikadarsa and Antaradarsa also; and the Pingalas, the Pandyas, Yamanas and Yatudhanas demons too.
62. There were also the races of men, known as Hematalas and Osmuks, together with the hilly tribes, inhabiting the Himalaya, Vasuman, Krauncha and Kailasa Mountains.
63. Hear me now relate to you the peoples that came from the north east quarter, which extends a hundred and eighty leagues in its circumference.
64. There came also the Kalutas and Brahmaputras, the Kunidas and Khudinas, with the warlike Malavas and the champions of the Randhra and forest states.
65. Then there were the Kedavas and Sinhaputras of dwarfish statures; the Sabas, the Kaccæs, the Pahlavis, the Kamiras and the Daradas.
66. There were also the people of Abhisa, the Jarvakas, the Pulolas and Kuves; the Kiratas and Yamupatas, together with the poor and rich people of desert lands and tracts of gold.
67. Thus Leela in one vision saw the homes of the gods and the forest lands and the earth in all their beauty. She saw all the seats of opulence and the buildings with which they were adorned. She saw the summit of Kailash and the delightful groves at its foot, and the level lands traversed by the aerial cars of vidyadhara and other celestial beings.
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Chapter 3.37 — The Battle: Catalogue of Forces Continued [It is not easy to say whether this lengthy description of the battle is Vasishta’s or Valmiki’s own making. Both of them were well acquainted with military tactics. Vasishta was the general of King Sudasa against the Persians. Valmiki was the epic poet of Rama’s wars with Ravana in the celebrated Ramayana. These descriptions are left out in the translations of this work as entirely useless in yoga philosophy without regard that they formed the preliminary step to Rama’s military education, which he was soon after called to complete under the guidance of Vishwamitra in his hermitage. — V. L. Mitra]
1. Vasishta said:— Thus the ravaging war was making a rapid end of men, horse, elephants and all. The brave coming foremost in the combat fell in equal numbers on both sides.
2. These and many others were reduced to dust and ashes. The bravery of the brave served only to send them like poor moths to the fire and flame of destruction.
3. Know now the names of the central districts, not yet mentioned by me, that sent their warriors to the field, in favor of the consort prince of Leela.
4. These were the inland forces of Sursena, the Gudas, and the Asganas; the Madhymikas and they that dwell in the tropics.
5. The Salukas and Kodmals, and Pippalayanas; the Mandavyas, Pandyans, Sugrivas and Gurjars.
6. The Pariyatras, Kurashtras, Yamunas and Udumvaras; the Raj-waras, the Ujjainas, the Kalkotas and the Mathuras (of Muttra).
7. The Panchalas, the Northern and Southern Dharmakshetras; the Kurukshetriyas, Panchalakas and Saraswatas.
8. The line of war chariots from Avanti, being opposed by the arms of the warriors of the Kunta and Panchanada districts, fell in fighting by the sides of the hills.
9. Those arrayed in silk clothes, being defeated by the enemy, fell upon the ground and were trodden down by elephants.
10. The brave of Daspura, being hacked in their breasts and shoulders by enemy weapons, were pursued by the Banabhuma warriors and driven to a distant pool.
11. The Santikas, being ripped in their bellies, lay dead and motionless in naked field, wrapped in their mangled entrails that were torn and devoured by the voracious pisachas at night.
12. Veteran and outspoken warriors of Bhadrasiri, well skilled in the battlefield, drove the Amargas into a ditch like tortoises to their pits.
13. The Haihayas were driving the Dandakas, who fled like fleet stags flying with the swiftness of winds, gushing blood drawn by pointed, piercing enemy arrows.
14. The Daradas, gored by the tusks of enemy elephants, were carried away like broken tree branches in the floods of their blood.
15. The Chinas, bodies mangled by darts and arrows, cast themselves in the water, their bodies a burden they could no longer bear.
16. The demons, pierced in their necks by Karnatic lancers, fled in all directions like faggots of fire, or like the flying meteors of heaven.
17. The Sakas and Dasakas fought each other by pulling the other’s hair, as if whales and elephants were struggling mutually with their respective elements.
18. Fleeing cowards were trapped in snares cast by the Dasarna warriors, like dolphins hiding under reeds are dragged out by nets on a blood-red shore.
19. The Tongas’ swords and pikes destroyed the Gurjara force by the hundreds, and like razors shaved the heads of hundreds of Gurjara women.
20. The luster of the warriors’ weapons illuminated the land like flashes of lighting, and clouds of arrows rained like showers in the forest.
21. A flight of the crowbars obscured the sun and frightened the Abhira warriors with the dread of an eclipse. They were as surprised as if ambushed by a gang of plunderers after their cattle.
22. Handsome gold collared, tawny colored Tamras soldiers were dragged by the Gauda warriors, as captors snatch their fair captives by the hair.
23. Like cranes by vultures, Tongons were beset by Kanasas with their blazing weapons, destroying elephants and breaking discuses.
24. The rumbling noise raised by Gauda warriors whirling their cudgels frightened the Gandharas so much that they were driven from the field like a herd of beasts, or like the fearful Dravidas.
25. A host of Saka warriors, dressed in black like the mist of night, poured like a blue torrent from the blue sky before their white-robed foes, the Persians.
26. The crowded array of arms lifted in the clear and bright sky appeared like a thick forest under a milk white ocean of frost that shrouds the mountainous region of Mandara.
27. From below, the flights of arrows appeared like cloud fragments in the air, and when viewed from above by the celestials, appeared like waves of the sea.
28. The air was a forest thickly beset by trees of spears and lances, with arrows flying like birds and bees, and innumerable umbrellas, with their gold and silver mountings, appearing as so many moons and stars in the sky.
29. Kekayas made loud shouts, like the war hoops of drunken soldiers. Kankas covered the field like a flight of cranes, and the sky was filled with dust over their heads.
30. The Kirata army made a murmuring sound like the effeminate voices of women, causing the lusty Angas to rush upon them with a furious roar.
31. Khasias, bodies covered with kusa grass, appeared like birds with feathers, and raised clouds of dust by flapping their feathered arms.
32. The whirling warriors of Narmada’s coasts came rushing unarmed into the field and began to mock, deride, flout and move about in their merry mood.
33. Low statured Salwas came with bells jingling on their waist bands, flinging their arrows in the air, and throwing showers of their darts.
34. The soldiers of Sibi were pierced by spears hurled by the Kuntas. They fell as dead bodies in the field, but their spirits fled to heaven in the form of vidyadharas.
35. A mighty, light footed army took possession of the field and in its quick march, laid the Pandunagaras groveling on the ground.
36. Big Punjabis and furious warriors from Benares crushed the bodies of stalwart warriors with their lances and cudgels, like elephants crush mighty trees under their feet and tusks.
37. Burmese and Vatsenis were cut down by the discs of the Nepalese. Saws cut down Sahyas like withered trees.
38. Heads of white Kaka, were lopped off with sharp axes. Their neighboring prince of the Bhadras was burnt down by the fiery arrows.
39. Matangajas fell under the hands of Kashthayodhas like old, unchained elephants fall into a miry pit. Others who came to fight fell like dry fuel in a blazing fire.
40. Mitragartas fell into the hands of Trigartas and were scattered about the field like straws, and having their heads struck off as they fled, they entered the infernal regions of death.
41. The weak Vanila force, falling into the hands of a Magadha army that resembled a sea gently shaken by the breeze, went down in the sands like thin, aged elephants.
42. Chedis lost their lines fighting the Tongans and lay withered on the battlefield, like scattered flowers fading under the shining sun.
43. Kosalas were unable to withstand the war cry of the deadly Pauravas, routed by showers of clubs, arrows and darts.
44. Those pierced by pikes and spears looked like coral plants, red with blood all over their bodies, and fled to the sheltering hills like red hot suns to the setting mountains.
45. Flights of arrows and weapons, carried away by strong winds, moved in the air like cloud fragments with a swarm of black bees hovering under them.
46. Flying arrows wandering with the roar of elephants appeared to be showering clouds, their feathers appeared as the woolly breed, their reedy shafts seemed like trees.
47. Wild elephants and people of the plains were all torn to pieces like bits of torn linen.
48. War chariots with broken wheels fell into pits like the broken crags of mountains. The enemy stood upon their tops like a thick mist or cloud.
49. The hosts of stalwart warriors meeting on the battlefield gave it the appearance of a forest of palm and tamara trees, but when weapons chopped off their arms, they made it appear like a mountainous wood with clumps of stunted pine trees.
50. The youthful maidens of paradise were filled with joy and glee to find the groves of their native hill (Meru) full of brave champions (fallen in the field).
51. The forest of the army howled in a tremendous roar until it was burnt down by the all devouring fire of the enemy.
52. Hacked by the Assamese, their weapons snatched by the Bhutas, the Dasarnas threw away their staffs and fled like a herd of cows.
53. The Kasias by their valor were eager to despoil the tinsels from the dead bodies of the chiefs, like summer heat robs the beauty from lotuses in a drying pool.
54. Tushakas were beset by Mesalas with darts, spears and mallets. The sly Katakas were defeated and driven away by the Narakas.
55. Kauntas were surrounded by Prastha warriors and were defeated like good people by the treachery of the wily.
56. The elephant drivers who had struck off the heads of their hosts in a trice, were pursued by harpooners and fled with their severed heads like the lotus flowers plucked by their hands.
57. The Saraswatas fought on both sides with one another until it was evening, and yet no party was the looser or gainer, just like a learned discussion among pundits or lawyers.
58. The puny and short statured Deccans, driven back by the demons of Lanka, redoubled their attack against them, like smoldering fire is rekindled by fresh fuel.
59. Rama, what more shall I say about this war which baffles even Sesha, with his hundred tongues and mouths, to attempt a full description?
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Chapter 3.38 — The Battle: End of the Day, the Battlefield after Cessation of Fighting
1. Vasishta continued:— Now as the war waged fiercely, with mingled shouts on both sides, the sun shrouded his polished armor under the mist of darkness and was about to set.
2. The waters of limpid streams glided over the showers of stones flung by the forces that fell on the fading clusters of lotuses growing in them.
3. The clashing of shafts and darts glittered like flashes of fire in the sky, and waves of arrows were seen, now approaching close and then receding at a distance.
4. Below, severed heads floated in whirlpools of blood like loose lotuses, while above, the sea of heaven was filled with flying weapons moving like marine animals.
5. The rustling of the breeze and the whistling of clouds of weapons frightened the aerial masters and woodland apes with fear of an approaching rain.
6. The day declined after it had run its course of eight watches and assumed the graceful countenance of a hero returning in glory after he has fought his battle.
7. The army, like the day, declined in splendor, being battered in its cavalry and shattered in its force of elephants.
8. Army commanders, in concert with the ministers of war, sent envoys to the hostile parties for a truce to the fighting.
9. Both parties, seeing how much they lost in the engagement, agreed to a truce and the soldiers gave their assent with one voice.
10. They hoisted their soaring banners of truce on the tops of the highest chariots, and a mounted crier on each side proclaimed the truce to the armies below.
11. They unfurled white flags on all sides, which like so many moons in the gloom of night, proclaimed peace on earth by cessation from fighting.
12. Then the drums delivered their loud peals, resounded by the roaring of clouds above and all about.
13. The flights of arrows and weapons that had been raging like fire in the sky now began to fall in torrents on the ground below, like the currents of Lake Manasarovar.
14. Hands and arms of warriors rested like their feet, like the shaking of trees and the surges of the sea end after an earthquake.
15. The two armies went their own ways from the field of battle, like inlets of the sea run into the land in different directions.
16. The armies being at rest, there was an end of all agitation in the field, like ocean waves are lulled to rest with the calm after being churned by Mandara Mountain.
17. In an instant the battlefield became as dreadful as the dismal womb of death, and as deep and dark as the hollow pit of the sea after Agastya sucked up its waters.
18. It was covered with the dead bodies of men and beasts and flowed with the floods of purpling blood. It resounded with the sounds of insects, like a heath with the humming of beetles.
19. Gory bodies gushed with blood and gurgled like sea waves. The cries of the wounded wanting to live pierced the ears and throbbed the heart strings of the living.
20. The dead and wounded rolling around side by side in streams of blood made the living think the dead were still alive like themselves.
21. Big elephants lying dead in piles on the field appeared like cloud fragments, and the heaps of broken chariots looked like a forest blown over by a storm.
22. Streams of blood flowed with the dead bodies of horses and elephants, and heaps of arrows, spears, mattocks and mallets flowed together with broken swords and missiles.
23. Horses were lying in their halters and harnesses. Dead soldiers were wrapped in their mail and armor. Flags, fans, turbans and helmets lay scattered in the field.
24. The winds rustled by the openings of quivers like the hissing of snakes or the whistling of the breeze in the holes of bamboo trees. Flesh eating pisacha demons were rolling on beds of dead bodies as if they were beddings of straws.
25. The gold chains from the helmets and head ornaments of fallen soldiers glittered with rainbow colors, and greedy dogs and jackals tore at the entrails of the dead like long ropes or strings.
26. The wounded were gnashing their teeth in the field of blood, like the croaking of frogs in a miry pool of blood.
27. Those dressed in party-colored coats with a hundred spots now had their arms and thighs gushing in a hundred streams of blood.
28. Friends wailed bitterly over the bodies of their dead and wounded lying amidst heaps of arrows and weapons, broken cars and scattered trappings of horses and elephants that covered the land.
29. Headless trunks of demons danced about with uplifted arms touching the sky. The stink of carrion, fat and blood filled nostrils with nausea.
30. Elephants and horses of noble breed lay dead or gasping with their mouths gaping upwards, streams of blood dashing against their rock-like bodies beat as loudly as drums.
31. Blood gushing out of wounded horses and elephants ran like that of a wounded whale into a hundred streams. Blood spouting from the mouths of dying soldiers flowed into a hundred channels.
32. Those pierced with arrows in their eyes and mouths uttered an inaudible voice with their last gasp of death. Those pierced in their bellies had their bowels gushing out with a horrible stench. The ground was reddened with thickened blood issuing out of the wounds.
33. Half-dead elephants grasped headless trunks with their trunks, while the loose horses and elephants that had lost their riders were trampling over dead bodies at random.
34. The weeping, crying and tottering wives of fallen soldiers fell upon their dead bodies weltering in blood, embracing them closely by their necks, then made an end of themselves with the same weapons.
35. Groups of soldiers were sent with guides to fetch dead bodies from the field. The hands of their living companions were busily employed dragging the dead.
36. The field had become a wide river running with waves of blood breaking into a hundred whirling streams and carrying severed heads like lotuses, and the torn braids of hair floating like bushes.
37. Men were busy taking weapons from the bodies of the wounded who lamented loudly on account of their dying in a foreign land and losing their arms, armor, horses and elephants.
38. Dying souls remembered their sons and parents, their dear ones and their adored deities. They called out their names and sighed and sobbed with heart-rending sounds.
39. The brave who died cursed their fates, and those who fell fighting elephants blamed the unkind gods they had adored in vain.
40. Cowards fearing to be killed resorted to base flight, but the dauntless brave stepped forward into the whirlpools of blood.
41. Some, suffering under the agony of arrows stuck in their mortal parts, thought upon the sins of their past lives that had brought such pain upon them. Blood sucking vetala ghosts advanced with their horrid mouths to drink blood from headless torsos.
42. Below, the floating flags, umbrellas and fans looked like white lotuses in a lake of blood, while from above, the evening stretched her train of stars like red lotuses in an ethereal sea.
43. The battlefield looked like an eighth sea of blood. The war chariots were its rocks and their wheels its whirlpools. The flags were its foam and froth, and the white fans its bubbles.
44. The field of blood with scattered chariots plunged in mud and mire and covered with broken pieces of woods looked like a tract of land devastated by a hurricane.
45. It was as desolate as a country burned by a fire, or like the dry bed of the sea sucked up by the sage Agastya. It was like a district devastated by a sweeping flood.
46. The battlefield was filled with heaps of weapons as high as the bodies of big elephants lying dead about the ground.
47. The lances carried down by streams of blood were as big as the palm trees growing on the summits of mountains.
48. Weapons sticking in elephant bodies seemed like shining flowers growing on green trees. Their entrails, torn and carried away by vultures, spread a fretted network in the sky.
49. Lances stuck in the ground by streams of blood made a woody forest on the banks of a red river, and the flags floating on the surface were like a bush of lotuses in the liquid blood.
50. Friends pulled dead bodies from the bloody pool in which they drowned, and men marked the bodies of big elephants by the jutting weapons sticking in them.
51. Trunks of trees that had their branches lopped off by the weapons looked like the headless bodies of slain soldiers, and the floating carcasses of elephants seemed like so many boats swimming in a sea of blood.
52. White garments swept down by the current looked like froth on the pool of blood. They were picked up by servants sent to search them out.
53. The demonic bodies of headless soldiers were rising and falling in the field, hurling large wheels and discs upon the flying army on all sides.
54. Dying warriors were frothing forth floods of blood from their throats, and stones stained with blood were inviting greedy vultures to devour them.
55. Then there were groups of sutala, vetala and uttala demons and ghosts dancing about the field with their war dances, whirling the broken bits of war-chariots upon the flying soldiers on all sides.
56. The stir and last gasp of the dying were fearful to behold, and the faces of the dying and the dead covered in dust and blood were pitiful to the beholder.
57. Devouring dogs and ravenous ravens had pity as they saw the last gasp of the dying. Carrion feeders were howling and fighting over carcasses until many of them became dead bodies from fighting each other.
58. Now I have described the sea of blood that flowed fast with the gore of unnumbered hosts of horses, elephants and camels, and of warriors and their leaders, and the multitudes of cars and war chariots. But it became a pleasure garden to the god of death, delighting in his bed of bloodshed and grove of weapons strewn all around.
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Chapter 3.39 — The Battlefield Infested by Nocturnal Fiends Vasishta speaking:—
1. Now the blood-red sun set down in the west like a hero red with blood. The sun hid his luster, which was dimmed by the brightness of the weapons of war in the western main.
2. The sky which had reflected the blood-red flush of the field of blood was now dimmed by the setting of the glorious sun and darkened by the veil of evening.
3. Thick darkness spread over the face of heaven and earth like the waters of the great deluge, and there appeared a body of vetala ghosts, dancing in a ring and clapping their hands.
4. The face of day, smeared with the blackness of nightfall, was painted by the light of evening with stars like pearly spots painted on the cheeks of an elephant.
5. The busy buzz of creation became silent in the dead darkness of night, like the humming of bees over the surface of the waters, the hearts of men were closed in sleep as in death, like the petals of the lotus at night.
6. Birds lay in their nests with folded wings and crests, like dead bodies were lying in the field covered with their wounds and weapons.
7. Then fair moonbeams shone above and white lotuses were blown below. The hearts of men were gladdened and the victors felt joyous in themselves.
8. The ruddy evening assumed the shape of the blood-red sea of battle, and the fluttering bees now hid themselves like the faces of fallen soldiers.
9. There was an ethereal lake above dotted on high with stars like white lotuses, and here was the earthly lake below, beset by lotuses resembling the stars of heaven.
10. Bodies thought to be lost in darkness were now recovered in moonlight like gems hidden under water are found scattered about.
11. The battlefield was filled with vetala ghosts howling with their hideous cries, while bodies of vultures, crows and owls tore at carcasses and sported with skeletons.
12. Funeral pyres blazed as brightly as the starry frame on high, and the fires consumed dead bodies with their bones and clothing.
13. The fire burnt bodies and bones to ashes, after which it extinguished itself as if sated with plenty. The female fiends now began to sport in the water.
14. There arose a mingled cry of dogs, crows, and yaksha demons and vetalas clapping their hands. Bodies of ghosts, thick as woods and forests, were moving about.
15. Dakinis were eager to steal away the flesh and fat from the piles of bodies gathered for funeral, and pisachas delighted in sucking the blood, flesh and bones of the dead.
16. The demons were now looking and now lurking about the funeral piles, and the rakshasa demons that rushed in carried away carcasses on their shoulders.
17. There came also bodies of ferocious kumbhandas and big damaras uttering their barbarous cries and hovering in the shapes of clouds over the fumes of fat and flesh.
18. Bodies of vetalas stood in the streams of blood like earthly beings and snatched the skeletons with hideous cries.
19. Vetala younglings slept in the bellies and chests of the elephants, and rakshasas were drinking their fill in the bloody field.
20. Giddy vetalas fought one another with the lighted faggots from the pyres, and the winds blew the stench of the putrid carcasses on all sides.
21. Female fiends (rupikas) filled the baskets of their bellies with carrion with a rat-a-tat noise. Yaksha cannibals were snatching half-burnt carcasses from the funeral pyres as their roasted meat and dainty food.
22. Aerial imps (khagas) attacked the dead bodies of the big Bangas and black Kalingas, and flouted about with their open mouths, emitting the blaze of falling meteors.
23. Vetala ghosts fell down in the dark and discolored blood-pits, lying hidden in the midst of heaps of dead bodies, while pisacha ogres and the leaders of yogini sprites laughed at them for their false step.
24. Entrails being pulled vibrated like the strings of musical instruments. The ghosts of men that had become fiends from their fiendish desires fell to fighting one another.
25. Valiant soldiers were frightened at the sight of female fiends (rupikas), and funeral rites were disturbed by the vetala and rakshasa demons.
26. The demons of the night (nisacharas) were frightened at the fall of carcasses from the shoulders of elves (rupikas) who were carrying them aloft in the air where they were waylaid by a throng of ghostly demons (bhuta-sankata) .
27. Many dying bodies were lifted with difficulty by demons who, when they found the bodies unfit for their food, let them fall down dead on the ground.
28. Pieces of blood-red flesh that fell from the fiery jaws of jackals looked like clusters of asoka flowers strewn all around the funeral ground.
29. Vetala urchins were busy putting scattered heads over the headless bodies of Kabandhas, and bodies of yaksha, raksha, and pisacha ogres flashed like firebrands in the sky.
30. At last a thick cloud of darkness covered the face of the sky, and the hills, valleys, gardens and groves became hidden under an impenetrable gloom. Infernal spirits were loosened from their dismal abodes and ravaged at large over the battlefield like a hurricane under the vault of heaven.
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Chapter 3.40 — Subtle Body & Astral Travel; Intellectual Body; Details on the Process of Death, Conception & Birth
1. 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.
2. Under the canopy of thick darkness, naked and fleeting ghosts in their nightly abode reveled on their provisions of carrion that was likely to be taken by the clutches of one’s hand.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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?”
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. 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.
11. 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.
12. A man sitting in the shade has no notion of feeling heat or warmth, so one man has no idea of another man’s knowledge or thoughts.
13. As is one’s knowledge, so is his thought. Such is the mode of his life. It is only by means of ardent practice (of meditation and learning) that the mind is turned to the right course.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. It is by Divine Will that consciousness rises and sets by turns. At first it was produced in its natural, simple and intellectual form and then, being invested with a material body, they together make the unity of the person out of the duality of material and immaterial essences.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. This intellectual, consciousness body of beings is of the nature of an uninterrupted understanding, ever calm and serene in its aspect. It is possessed of its intellectual form from before the creation of the visible world, and being all comprehensive as emptiness itself, it understands the natures of all beings.
27. It is as unreal as water in a mirage, but by its intelligence, it manifests itself as a reality to the understanding. Without this exercise of the intellect, the intellectual man is as nothing as the son of a barren woman, and as blank as the figure of a body seen in a dream.
28. Rama asked, “What is that mind to which you attribute so many powers? What is that which you say to be nothing? Why is it no reality and something distinct from all that we see?”
29. Vasishta replied:— All individual minds are provided with these faculties, except those whose minds are engrossed with the error of the outer world.
30. All worlds are either of a longer or shorter duration, and they appear and disappear at times. Some of these vanish in a moment and others endure to the end of a kalpa age. But it is not so with the mind, whose progress I will now relate to you.
31. There is an unconsciousness which overtakes every man before his death. This is the darkness of his dissolution (maha-pralaya-yamini) .
32. After the shocks of delirium and death are over, the spiritual part of every man is regenerated anew in a different form, as if it was roused from a state of trance, reverie or swoon.
33. Just like the spirit of God, for its re-creation after the dissolution of the world, assumes his triune form with the persons of Brahma and Virat (the Universal Form), so every person after his death receives the triplicate form of his spiritual, intellectual and corporeal being.
34. Rama said, “As we believe ourselves to be reproduced after death by reason of our memories, so must we understand the re-creation of all bodies in the world by the same cause. Hence there is nothing uncaused in it.”
35. Vasishta replied:— The gods Hari (Vishnu), Hara (Shiva) and others, having obtained their disembodied liberation (videha-mukti) at the universal dissolution, could not retain their memory to cause their regeneration.
36. But human beings, having both spiritual and intellectual bodies entire at their death, do not lose their memory of the past, nor can they have final liberation like Brahma unless they obtain their disembodied state, which is possible to all in this life or hereafter only by the edification of their souls through yoga meditation.
37. Birth and death of all other beings like yourself are caused by their memory and because they lack disembodied liberation and eternal salvation.
38. The individual soul, after its pangs of death are over, retains its consciousness within itself, but remains in its state of unconsciousness by virtue of its own nature.
39. The universal emptiness is called nature (prakriti). It is the reflection of the invisible Divine Consciousness (chit prativimbam) and it is the parent of all that is dull or moving (jada-jada) which are produced by their reminiscence or its absence (sansmriti and asmriti); the former causing the regeneration of living beings, and the latter its cessation as in inert matter.
40. As the living principle or animal life begins to have its understanding (bodha), it is called an intelligent being (mahat) which is possessed of its consciousness (ahankara). It has added to it the organs of perception and conception, all from their elements (tanmatras) residing in the empty ether.
41. Next this minutely intelligent substance is joined with the five internal senses that form its body and which is otherwise called its spiritual or ethereal body (ativahika or lingadeha; the astral or subtle body).
42. This spiritual being, by its long association with the external senses, comes to believe it has ordinary senses, so it finds itself invested with a material body (adhibhautika deha) as beautiful as that of a lotus.
43. Then seated in the embryo, it rests in a certain position for sometime, and then inflates itself like the air until it is fully expanded.
44. Then it thinks itself to be fully developed in the womb, like a man dreams of a fairy form in his sleep and believes this illusion as a reality.
45. Then he views the outer world where he is born to die, just like one visits a land where he is destined to meet his death, and there he remains to relish its enjoyments, as prepared for him.
46. But the spiritual man soon perceives everything as pure emptiness, and that his own body and this world are only illusions and vain nothings.
47. He perceives the gods, human dwellings, the hills, and the heavens resplendent with sun and stars to be nothing more than homes of disease, debility, decay and ultimate death and destruction.
48. He sees nothing but a sad change in the natures of things, and that all that is living or inert, great or small, together with the seas, hills, rivers and peoples of this earth, and the days and nights, are all subject to decay sooner or later.
49. The knowledge that I am born here of this father and that this is my mother, these are my treasures and such are my hopes and expectations, is as false as empty air.
50. That these are my merits and these my demerits, and these the desires that I had at heart, that I was a boy and am now young, are the airy thoughts of the hollow mind.
51. This world resembles a forest where every being is like a detached tree. The dark clouds are its leaves and the stars its full blown flowers.
52. Walking men are its restless deer and the aerial gods and demons its birds of the air. Broad daylight is the flying dust of its flowers and the dark night the deep hiding place of its grove.
53. The seas are like its streams and fountains and the eight boundary mountains are its artificial hills. The mind is its great water reservoir containing the weeds and shrubs of human thoughts in abundance.
54. Wherever a man dies, he is instantly changed to this state, and he views the same things everywhere. Thus everyone rises and falls constantly, like the leaves of trees in this forest of the world.
55. Millions of Brahmas, Rudras, Indras, Maruts, Vishnus and suns, together with unnumbered mountains, seas, continents and islands have appeared and disappeared in the eternal course of the world.
56. No one can count the numbers of beings that have passed away, are passing, and shall have to pass hereafter, or those who are in existence and have to become extinct in the unfathomable eternity of Brahman.
57. Therefore it is impossible to comprehend the stupendous fabric of the universe in any way except in the mind, which is as spacious as infinite space itself, and is as variable as the course of events in the world.
58. The mind is the empty sphere of consciousness, and the infinite sphere of consciousness is the seat of the Supreme.
59. Now, know the whirlpools and waves of the sea are of the same element as the sea in which they rise and fall even though, in their impermanence, they are not of the same durable nature as seawater. So the phenomenon is the same as its conception, though none is a reality.
60. The ethereal sphere of heaven is only a reflection of the intellectual sphere of the Divine Mind, and the bright orbs of the sky are like gems in the bosom of Brahman. Its vault is the cave of the mind of the Eternal One.
61. The world according to the sense in which I take it, as the seat of God, is highly interesting, but not so in your sense of it being a sober reality. So the meaning of the words “I” and “you” according to me refers to the intellectual spirit, and according to you to the individual soul and body.
62. Hence Leela and Saraswati, being in their empty astral bodies, were led by the pure desire of their souls to every place without any obstruction or interruption.
63. The spirit of consciousness has the power to present itself wherever it likes, on earth or in the sky, and before objects known or unknown and wished to be known by it. It was by this power that they could enter into the tent of the prince.
64. Consciousness has its way to all places and things, and over which it exercises its powers of observation, reflection and reasoning to their full extent. This is known as the spiritual and unconfined body (ativahika, the subtle body, astral body, mind body) whose course cannot be obstructed by any restriction whatever.
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Chapter 3.41 — Leela & Saraswati enter King Viduratha’s Tent; He Remembers His Past Lives; Everything Is within the Temple of the Mountain Brahmin; Discrimination of Error
1. 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.
2. A pure and cooling fragrance spread about it, as if blown by the breeze from mandara flowers, and lulled the prince to sleep. Everyone was lying in their camps.
3. It made the place as pleasant as the celestial pleasure garden of Nandana and healed all the pains and cares of the people there. It seemed like a spring garden filled with the fragrance of the fresh blown lotuses in the morning.
4. 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.
5. He saw the forms of two apsaras sitting on two stools, appearing like two moons risen on two peaks of Mount Meru.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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,
9. “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.”
10. Saying so he poured handfuls of flowers on their feet, as trees on the banks of a lake drop down their flowers on the lotuses growing in it.
11. Then the goddess, desiring to reveal the ancestry of the king, inspired his minister, who was lying nearby, to relate it to Leela.
12. Upon waking, the minister saw the nymphs manifested before him, and advancing humbly before them, threw handfuls of flowers upon their feet.
13. 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,
14. “It is by your favor, O gracious goddesses, that I am empowered to relate of my king’s ancestry to your kind graces.”
15. “There was a sovereign born of the imperial line of Ikshvaku named Mukundaratha, who had subjugated the earth under his arms.
16. He had a moon-faced son by name of Bhadraratha, whose son Viswaratha was father to the renowned prince Brihadratha.
17. His son Sindhuratha was the father of Sailaratha, and his son Kamaratha was father of Maharatha.
18. His son Vishnuratha was father of Nabhoratha, who gave birth to this my lord of handsome appearance.”
19. “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.
20. 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.
21. He has been ruling the realm with justice since that time, and your appearance here tonight indicates the blossoming of his good fortune.”
22. “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.
23. He is highly blessed today by your favor.” After saying these words, the minister remained silent with the lord of the earth.
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. 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.
27. By his intelligence, he remembered his former kingdom, of which he had been the sole lord, and recollected all his past play with Leela.
28. 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.
29. 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?
30. Here I have passed a lifetime full of seventy years and remember having done many works and having seen my grandson.
31. 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.”
32. 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.
33. This royal pavilion, where you think yourself living, is situated in the empty space within the house of the brahmin in that hilly district.
34. 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.
35. 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.
36. This abode of yours is situated in that same place and within the clear firmament of your mind.
37. 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.
38. 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;
39. 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;
40. and that you are ruling on earth with these ministers and officers of yours, observing sacrificial rites and justly ruling your subjects.
41. You think that you have passed seventy years of your life and that you are now beset by very formidable enemies,
42. 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.
43. 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;
44. 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;
45. 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.
46. 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.
47. 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.
48. The constant current of the mind flows like a river and leads a man, like a weed, from one whirlpool to another.
49. 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.
50. 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.
51. Our lives and deaths are mere phantoms of imagination, just like we imagine houses and towers in aerial castles and icebergs.
52. 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.
53. 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.
54. 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.
55. You seem to see all things about you, but you are seeing nothing real in them. Your all-seeing soul sees everything in itself.
56. 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.
57. 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.
58. 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.
59. 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.
60. The sphere of this vaulted shrine is as clear as emptiness itself, which has no earth or house in it.
61. It is without any forest, hill, sea or river, and yet all beings are found to rove about in this empty and homeless abode.
62. 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 dependants here?
63. 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.
64. Tell me goddess, what things are spiritually true and false? How are we to distinguish the one from the other?”
65. 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.
66. 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.
67. 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.
68. 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:—
69. 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.
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Chapter 3.42 — Philosophy of Dreaming (Swapnam); Creation Is a Dream; Viduratha Asks a Boon to Be Reunited with His (Second) Queen Leela Vasishta speaking:—
1. The man who is devoid of understanding, ignorant and unacquainted with the all-pervading principle, thinks the unreal world as real, dense and concrete.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. There is only one all-pervading, quiet, and spiritually substantial reality. It is of the form of unintelligible consciousness and an immense outspreading emptiness.
10. It is omnipotent, and all in all by itself. It is of the form manifesting itself everywhere.
11. Hence the citizens that you see in this visionary city are only transient forms of men presented in your dream by that Omnipotent Being.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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?”
15. 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.
16. 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.
17. 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.
18. 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?
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 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?”
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. 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.
27. 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,
28. “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.”
29. Vasishta said:— The intelligent king, being gently addressed by the goddess of wisdom, asked her in a humble tone.
30. 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.
31. I will quit this body to go to another world, as one passes from one chain of dreams into another.
32. 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.
33. 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.”
34. 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.”
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Chapter 3.43 — The City Burning
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. We shall fly there like the wind before you, and you will follow us accompanied by the minister and his virgin daughter like one returning to his native country.
4. Your way there will be as slow or swift as those of horses, elephants, asses, or camels, but our course is quite different from any of these.” Vasishta speaking:—
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. There they have set fire to our fortress-like city and fires are burning on all sides like a wildfire. It is burning and engulfing houses with a hideous noise.
9. The smoke, rising like heaving hills, have covered the skies like a flood of clouds, and the flames of the fire leaping high resemble a garuda bird flying in the sky.”
10. 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:
11. 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;
12. gorgeous elephants bursting into the city with a clattering sound; and the high loud shouts of citizens, whose houses have burnt to the ground;
13. the falling and flying of burnt embers with a crackling noise; and the burning of raging fire with a hoarse sound.
14. 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.
15. It was as like the conflagration or fiery ocean of the last day. The city was covered by clouds of the enemy army, with their flashing weapons waving on all sides.
16. The flames rose as high as the sky, and the all dissolving fire of destruction melted buildings as big as hills.
17. Bodies of thick clouds roared on high and threatened the people, like the clamor of stout robber gangs gathered for plunder and booty.
18. The heavens were hidden under clouds of smoke rolling like the shades of Pushkara and Avarta coulds at the end of the world, and the flames of fire flashed like the golden peaks of Meru.
19. Burning cinders and sparks of fire glittered in the sky like meteors and stars, and the blazing houses and towers glared like burning mountains.
20. Groups of soldiers were attacked by the spreading flames that trapped half-burnt citizens (with their bitter cries) between clouds of fire and their fear of the enemy outside.
21. Sleets of arrow-like sparks flew in the air on all sides, and showers of burning missiles fell everywhere, burning and piercing people in large numbers.
22. The greatest and most expert champions fought but were crushed under the feet of elephants. Streets were heaped with treasures wrested from looters in their retreat.
23. Men and women wailed at the falling of fire-brands upon them, and the splitting of splinters and the slitting of timbers emitted a crack-crack noise all around.
24. Big blocks of burning wood were blown up, blazing in the air like burning suns, and heaps of embers filled the face of the earth with living fire.
25. The air echoed with the cracking of combustible wood and the bursting of burning bamboo, the cries of parched animals and the howling of soldiers.
26. The flaming fire was quenched after consuming the royal city to ashes, and the devouring flames ceased after they had reduced everything to cinders.
27. The sudden outbreak of fire was like burglars breaking in to a house and upon its sleeping inhabitants. It made prey of everything that fell in its way.
28. At this moment King Viduratha heard a voice from his soldiers who saw wives fleeing from the scorching flames.
29. “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.
30. 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.
31. O! the mighty power of fire that has burned the hair of our fair maidens like blades of grass or straw.
32. Curling smoke is ascending on high, like a whirling and long meandering river in the air, and black and white fumes of fire resemble the dark stream of Yamuna in one place, and the milky path of the ethereal Ganga in another.
33. Streams of smoke bearing the sparks on high dazzle the sight of heavenly charioteers with their bubbling sparks.
34. Our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, relations and suckling babes are all burnt alive in the black and blue flames. Here are we burning with grief for them in these houses that have been spared by the devouring fire.
35. See, there the howling fire is fast advancing to those houses, and here the cinders are falling as thick as the frost of Mount Meru.
36. Behold the dire darts and missiles dropping down like driving rain, breaking windows like bodies of gnats in the shade of evening.”
37. “Flashing spears and fire flaring above the watery ocean of the sky resemble an undersea fire ascending to heaven.
38. Smoke is rising in clouds, and flames are tapering in the form of towers, and all that was humid and green is sucked and dried up like the hearts of the dispassionate.
39. Trees are broken down by the raging fire, like posts by enraged elephants. They are falling with a cracking noise as if they were screaming at their own fall.
40. Trees in the orchards, now flourishing in their luxury of fruits and flowers, are left bare by the burning fire, like householders bereft of their properties.
41. Children abandoned by their parents in the darkness of the night, fleeing through the streets, are either being pierced by flying arrows or crushed under falling houses.
42. Elephants posted at the front of the army were frightened by the flying embers driven by the winds, and fled with loud screaming at the fall of the burning houses upon them.
43. O, the pain of being put to the sword is no more terrible than being burned by fire, or smashed under the stones of a thundering engine.
44. Streets are filled with domestic animals and cattle of all kinds, let loose from their folds and stalls to raise their commingled cries in the blocked streets like the confused noise of battle.”
45. “Weeping women passed like lotus flowers on land, with their lotus-like faces, feet and palms. Drops of tears fell upon the ground like fluttering bees from their lotus-shaped eyes and wet apparel.
46. The red taints and spots of the hair-clusters upon their foreheads and cheeks burned like Asoka flowers.
47. Alas, for pity that the furious flame of fire, like a ruthless victor who delights in acts of inhumanity, should singe the black lined, bee-like eyelids of our deer-eyed fairies.
48. O, the bond of marriage love that the faithful wife never fails to follow her burning lord, and cremates herself in the same flame with him.”
49. “The elephant, burned on his trunk from breaking the burning post to which he was tied by the leg, ran violently to a lake of lotuses, in which he fell dead.
50. The flames of fire, flashing like flitting lightning amidst clouds of smoke, darted burning coals like bolts of thunder in showers.
51. Lord! The sparks of fire against the dusky clouds appeared like glittering gems in the bosom of the airy ocean, and seem by their twirling to gird the crown of heaven with the girdle of the Pleiades.
52. The sky was reddened by the light of flaming fires and appeared like the courtyard of Death dyed with purple colors in joy for reception of the souls of the dead.”
53. “Alas the day and want of manners that royal dames are forcibly carried away by these armed ruffians.
54. See them dragged from their stately building and in the streets, strewing their paths with wreaths of flowers torn from their necks while their half burnt locks are hanging loosely upon their bare breasts;
55. their loose clothing uncovering their backs and loins, and jewelry dropped from their wrists are strewn on the ground.
56. Their necklaces are torn and their pearls scattered about. Their bodies are bared of their bodices, and their golden colored breasts appear to view.
57. Their shrill cries and groans, rising above the war cry, choke their breath and split their sides. They fall unconscious, eyes dimmed by ceaseless floods of tears.
58. They fell in a body with their arms twisted about each other’s necks, the ends of their cloths tied to each other’s. In this way they are forcibly dragged ruffians, their bodies mangled in blood.
59. ‘Ah! who will save them from this state?’ cried the royal soldiers with piteous looks on the sad plight of the women and shedding big drops of tears like lotuses.”
60. The bright face of the sky turned black at the horrible sight, and it looked with its blue lotus-like eyes of clouds on the fair lotus-like maidens thus scattered on the ground.
61. Thus, like these ladies, the goddess of royal prosperity, decorated as she was with her waving and pendant locks, her flowing garments, flowery garlands and ornamental jewelry, was brought to her end after her enjoyment of the pleasures of royalty and gratification of all her desires.
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Chapter 3.44 — Enlightened Leela Sees Viduratha’s Queen Leela; Habits of the Mind Reproduce the Same Images
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. With her face as bright as the moon and her form as fair as the lily, she appeared like a star of heaven, her teeth shining like sets of stars and her bosom throbbing with fear.
4. Then one of her companions informed the king about the fate of the warfare, which resembled the onset of demons upon the apsara tribe.
5. “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.
6. See the ravishers ravishing the wives of citizens with their uplifted arms, like the swelling waves of the sea in their rapid current carrying away the tree groves from the bank.
7. The guards of the royal harem are all crushed to death by the haughty marauders, as the sturdy trees of the forest are broken down by the furious tornado.
8. Our armies, frightened by the enemy from afar, dare not approach the falling city, as nobody ventures to rescue lotus beds from a flood under the threatening thunders of a rainy night.
9. Hostile forces have poured into the city in terrible numbers and, having set it on fire, are shouting loudly under the clouds of smoke, their weapons brandished on all sides.
10. Handsome ladies are dragged by the hair from their families like screaming cranes caught and carried away by cruel fowlers and fishermen.
11. Now we have brought this luxurious tender creeper to you so that your might may save her from similar fate.”
12. 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.”
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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?”
16. “I see this prime minister with all these soldiers and citizens, these forces and vehicles, all to be the same as mine, and situated in the same place and manner as before.
17. How is it then, O goddess, that they came to be placed in this place? I see them as images placed within and outside the mirror of my mind, and know not whether these are living beings (or my imagination).”
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. It is the constant habit of your mind that presents these things as realities to your sight. You saw your husband in the same state in which you thought he was when he died in that city of yours.
22. It is the same place where he now exists. Even now he is presented with the same objects of his thought as he had at that moment. Anything that appears to be different in this state comes from the turn of his mind of thinking it so before.
23. All that appears real to him is the creation of his fancy and is as unreal as his dream or desire; for everything appears to be the same as it is thought of in the mind.
24. Say therefore, what truth can there be in these envisioned objects which are unsubstantial as dreams and in the end vanish into airy nothing?
25. Then know that everything is no better than nothing and, like a dream, proves to be nothing upon waking. Waking is also a dream and equally nothing at death.
26. Death in lifetime is a non-existence and life in death becomes null and extinct. These extinctions of life and death proceed from the fluctuating nature of our notions of them.
27. So there is neither any entity nor a non-entity either. Both appear to us by turns as fallacies. For what after an kalpa aeon neither was nor will be cannot exist today or in any epoch (yuga), whether gone before or coming afterwards.
28. That which is never non-existent 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.
29. As phantoms appear in the emptiness, are all vacant and void, and as the waves of the sea are nothing but its water so do these created things exist and appear in Brahman only.
30. As the minutiae appearing in the air vanish in the air, and as the dust driven by the winds is lost in the winds, so the false notions of yourself and myself are lost in that Supreme Self in which all things rise and fall like waves of the ocean.
31. What reliance can there be in this dust of creation which is no more than the water of the mirage? When everything is united in that sole Unity, the knowledge of individualities is mere fallacy.
32. We see apparitions in the dark, though the darkness itself is no apparition. Our lives and deaths are the false notions of our error, and the entirety of existence is equally the production of gross error (maya).
33. All this is Himself, for He is the great kalpa or will that produces everything. It is He who exists when all things are extinct in Him. Therefore these appearances are neither real nor unreal of themselves.
34. 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.
35. 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.
36. So does the pure Consciousness perceive the Holy Spirit of God within itself, just like one sees particles of light flying in his closet at sunrise.
37. So these multitudes of worlds move about like particles in the infinite space of the Divine Mind, as the particles of odorous substances oscillate in empty air.
38. In this way this world abides in its incorporeal state in the mind of God, with all its modifications of existence and nonexistence, emanation and absorption, its condensation into dense and diffusion into subtle, and its movement and rest.
39. But you must know all these modes and conditions of being belong only to material and not to the spirit, which is unconditioned and indivisible.
40. There is no change or division of one’s own soul, so there is no partition or variation of the Supreme Spirit. It is according to ideas in our minds that we see things in their different aspects before us.
41. Yet the word “world” ( vishva) is not a meaningless term. It means the all as contained in Brahman. Therefore it is both real and unreal at the same time, like the fallacy of a snake in a rope.
42. It is the false notion (of the snake) that makes the true (rope) appear like the untrue snake to us, which we are apt to take for the true snake itself. So in the same way we make the mistake of taking Divine Consciousness, which is the prime cause of all, to be an individual soul.
43. It is this notion (of the individual soul) that makes us think of ourselves as living beings which, whether it be false or true, is like the appearance of the world in empty air.
44. Thus these little animals delight themselves with their own misconceived idea of being living beings, while there are others who think themselves so by their preconceived notions as such.
45. There are some who have no preconceived notions, and others who retain the same as or a somewhat different notion of themselves than before. Somewhere inborn notions predominate, and sometimes they are entirely lost.
46. Our preconceived notions of ourselves represent unrealities as realities to our minds, and present the thoughts of our former family and birth and the same occupations and professions before us.
47. Such are the representations of your former ministers and citizens, imprinted as realities in your soul, together with the exact time and place and manner of their functions, as before.
48. Because the consciousness of all things is present in the omniscient spirit of God, so the idea of royalty is inherent in the soul of the king.
49. This notion of his goes before him like his shadow in the air, with the same stature and features and the same acts and movements as he had before.
50. 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.
51. 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.
52. 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.
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Chapter 3.45 — The Second Leela Gets a Boon the First Didn’t: How We Seek Is How We Obtain
1. 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:—
2. 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.
3. The second Leela said, “Goddess! the genius of intelligence is ever adored by me and she gives me her visits in my nightly dreams.
4. I find you here exactly of her likeness. Therefore give me your blessing, O goddess with the beautiful face.”
5. 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.
6. 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.”
7. 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.”
8. The goddess replied, “Be it so my child who has worshipped me with flowers, incense and offerings with all diligence and without fail.”
9. 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.
10. The first Leela said, “Those who desire truth and they whose desires lean towards godliness have all their wishes fulfilled without delay and fail.
11. 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.”
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. A living being has a certain development of mental powers and state when he desires an object. He attains that object according to the same development of mental powers and state.
15. You had attained the powers of your understanding by your devotion to my service. You have always desired from me that you be liberated from flesh.
16. Accordingly, I have awakened your understanding in that way, whereby you have been able to arrive at your present state of purity.
17. It was because of your constant desire for liberation that you have gained the same state by enlargement (of the powers) of your consciousness.
18. Whoever exerts his bodily powers according to the dictates of his understanding is sure to succeed in gaining his object sooner or later.
19. Without cultivation of the intellect, performance of austerities and adoration of gods are as vain as to expect fruit to fall from the sky.
20. Without cultivation of the intellect and exertion of manly powers, there is no way to success. Therefore if you do, you may choose for yourself.
21. Truly the state of one’s mind leads his internal soul to that state upon which it thinks, and to that prosperity which it attempts to obtain.
22. Now distinguish between what is desirable or disagreeable for you, and choose that which is holy and perfect, and you will certainly arrive at it.
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Chapter 3.46 — Viduratha Counter-Attacks
1. Rama said, “Tell me what Viduratha did after he got angry an left the ladies and the goddess having said what he did, and went out from the camp.”
2. Vasishta said:— Viduratha, accompanied by a large group of his companions, left his camp like the bright moon beset by a host of stars.
3. He was in armor and girt by laces and girdles. Dressed in his military clothing, he went forth amidst the loud war cry of sorrow to the vanquished, like God Indra going to battle.
4. He gave orders to the soldiers and was informed of the battle array. Having given directions to his captains, he mounted his chariot.
5. It was adorned with equipment resembling the pinnacles of mountains and beset by five flags fringed with strings of pearls and gems, resembling a celestial car.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. Impatient of the wind’s swiftness, they spurred them with their back heels and left them behind, and sped the forepart of their bodies as if to devour the air, impeding their course.
9. The car was drawn by eight war horses with their manes hanging down their necks like fans, and white spots or circlets resembling the discs of moon on their foreheads, and filling the eight sides around with their hoarse neighing.
10. At this time there rose a loud noise of the elephants, resounding like drums from the hollows of the distant hills.
11. Angry soldiers raised a loud clamor, and the tinkling of their belted trinkets, and clashing of their weapons, rang afar in the open air.
12. The crackling of bows, and the wheezing of arrows, joined with the jangle of armor clashing against one another, raised a confused hubbub all around.
13. Seen and heard on all sides were the sparks of blazing fires, champions challenging each other, painful shrieks of the wounded, and the piteous cry of captives.
14. The mingled sounds thickened in the air and filled its cavity and sides like with solid stones, as if one could clutch the noise in the hands.
15. Clouds of dust flew so fast and thick into the air that they seemed to be the earth’s crust rising upward to block the path of the sun in the sky.
16. The great city was hidden in the dark womb of the spreading dust, just like an ignorant state of man is covered in darkness by the rising passion of youth.
17. Burning lights became as dim as the fading stars of heaven by day light, and the darkness of night became as thick as the devils of darkness gather their strength at night.
18. The two Leelas saw the great battle from the tent with the minister’s virgin daughter. By favor of the goddess, they had their eyes enlightened with farsightedness.
19. Now there was an end to the flashing and clashing of the hostile arms in the city, just like the flash and crash of undersea fires are put to an end by the all-submerging floods of the universal deluge.
20. 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.
21. Now the twanging of the bow strings emitted a clattering sound, and the enemy forces advanced in battle array like bodies of clouds with rainbows amidst them.
22. Many kinds of missiles flew like falcons in the air. Black steel waved with a dark glare owing to the massacres they made.
23. Clashing swords striking against each another flashed with living flames of fire, and showers of arrows whistled like hissing rainfalls in the air.
24. Two edged saws pierced the bodies of the warriors, and the flinging weapons hurtled in the air, clashing and crashing each other.
25. 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.
26. Headless trunks moved about like players in a horrid, solemn ritual of the god of death (Yama). Furies fled about at the violence of war, like raving girls at drunken revelries.
27. Elephants fighting with their tusks sent a clattering noise into the air. Stones flung from the slings flew like a flowing stream in the sky.
28. Bodies of men were falling dead on the ground like the dried leaves of forests blown away by wind. Streams of blood were running in the field of battle, as if the heights of war were pouring down the floods of death below.
29. The dust of the earth was set down by the floods of blood, and the darkness was dispelled by the blaze of weapons. All clamor ceased in intense fighting, and the fear for life was lost under the stern resolution of death.
30. 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.
31. 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.
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Chapter 3.47 — Saraswati Explains Why Sindhu Will Win; the Encounter of Sindhu & Viduratha
1. Vasishta said:— As the war was waging furiously between the two armies, the two Leelas addressed the goddess of knowledge and said,
2. “Tell us, O goddess, what unknown cause keeps our husband from gaining victory in this war, in spite of your good grace to him and his repelling enemy elephants in the fighting.”
3. Saraswati replied:— Know daughters that I was asked by Viduratha’s enemy to give him victory in battle, which your husband never craved of me.
4. He lives and enjoys his life as it was desired by him, while his antagonist gains the conquest according to his aim and object.
5. Knowledge is contained in the consciousness of every living being, and rewards every one according to the desire to which it is directed.
6. My nature, like that of all things, is as unchangeable as the heat of fire. So the nature of Viduratha’s knowledge of truth and his desire for liberation lead him to the like result.
7. The intelligent Leela will also be liberated with him, but not the unintelligent one who by her nature is still unprepared for that highest state of bliss.
8. Viduratha’s enemy, the King of Sindhu, has long worshipped me for his victory in war. Therefore the bodies of Viduratha and his wife must fall into his hands.
9. O girl, you will also have liberation like hers in course of time. But before that, this enemy of yours, the King of Sindhu, will reign victorious in this earth.
10. Vasishta said:— As the goddess was speaking in this manner, the sun appeared on his rising hill to behold the wonderful sight of the forces fighting.
11. The thick mists of night disappeared like the enemy Sindhu hosts and left Viduratha’s forces to glitter like stars at the approach of night.
12. The hills and dales and the land and water gradually appeared to sight, and the world seemed to reappear to view from amidst the dark ocean of the deluge.
13. The bright rays of the rising sun radiated on all sides like streams of liquid gold and made the hills appear as they did the bodies of warriors besmeared with blood.
14. The sky seemed like an immense field of battle, stretched over by the radiant rays of the sun that made the warriors’ shining arms shake in a snake-like manner.
15. The helmets on their heads raised their lotus-like tops, and the rings about their ears blazed with their jeweled glare.
16. The pointed weapons were as fixed as the snouts of unicorns, and the flying darts fled about like butterflies in the air. The bloody field presented a picture of a ruddy dawn and dusk, and the dead bodies on the ground represented the figures of motionless saints in their yoga.
17. Necklaces hung on their necks like snakes, and armor covered their bodies like the skins of serpents. Flags were flying like crests of vines on high, and the legs of warriors stood like pillars in the field.
18. Their long arms were like tree branches, and the arrows formed a bush of reeds. The flash of weapons spread like a green meadow all around, while their blades blazed with the luster of the long-leaved ketaka flowers.
19. The long lines of weapons formed like rows of bamboo and bramble bushes. Their mutual clashing emitted sparks of fire like clusters of the red asoka flowers.
20. Bands of spiritual masters (siddhas) were flying with their leaders away in the air to avoid the weapons that were blazing with the radiance of the rising sun, forming as it were, a city of gold on high.
21. The sky re-echoed to the clashing of darts and discuses, of swords and spears, and of mallets and clubs in the field, and the ground overflowed with streams of blood bearing away the bodies of the slain.
22. The land was strewn with crowbars, lances and spears, and with tridents and stones on all sides. Headless bodies were falling hideously, pierced by poles and pikes and other instruments of death.
23. Above, the ghosts and demons of death were making horrible noise, and below, the shining chariots of Sindhu and Viduratha moved with a loud rumbling.
24. They looked like the two luminaries of the sun and moon in heaven, and they were equipped with various weapons of discs and rods, of crowbars and spears, and other missiles besides.
25. Each was surrounded by thousands of soldiers who shouted loudly as their king turned towards them.
26. Crushed under heavy discs, many fell dead and wounded with loud cries. Big elephants were floating lightly on the currents of blood.
27. Hairs on the heads of dead bodies floated like weeds in the stream of blood, and the floating discuses glided like the discs of the moon, reflected in the purple streamlet.
28. The air of the battlefield was filled the confused noise of the jingling of jeweled ornaments, the tinkling bells of war carriages, and the flapping of flags in the wind.
29. Numbers of valiant as well as dastardly soldiers followed their respective kings, some bleeding under the spears of Kuntas and others pierced by the arrows of archers.
30. Then the two kings turned their chariots in circling rings amidst phalanxes armed with all sorts of destructive weapons.
31. Each confronted the other with his arms, and having met one another face to face, commenced showering forth his arrows with the pattering sound of hailstones.
32. They both threatened one another with the roaring of loud surges and clouds. In their rage, the two lions among men fired their arrows at each another.
33. They flung their missiles in the air in the form of stones and malls, and some faced like swords, and others headed as mallets.
34. Some were sharp edged discs, and some curved as battle axes. Some were pointed like pikes and spears, and others had forms like bars and rods. Some were shaped like tridents, and others as bulky as blocks of stones.
35. These missiles were falling as fully and as fast as rocks hurled down from high by gusts of blustering hurricanes. The meeting of the two warring powers was as the confluence of the Indus and the sea, with tremendous roaring, collision and clashing.
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Chapter 3.48 — Supernatural Weapons
1. Vasishta said:— King Viduratha, finding the high shouldered king of Sindhu before him, was enraged like the raging sun, in his midday fury.
2. The twanging of his bow resounded in the air on all sides, and growled as loudly as the howling of winds in the caverns of mountains.
3. He drew his arrows from his dark quiver and shot them like the rays of the sun rising from the womb of night.
4. Each arrow flung from the bowstring flew like thousands in the air, and fell like millions on the ground.
5. The King of Sindhu was equally expert in his archery, as both of these archers owed their skill with bows to the favor of Vishnu.
6. Some of these darts were called bolts which blocked the aerial passages, like door bolts do their doors, the fell down on the ground with the loud roar of thunderbolts.
7. Others decorated with gold flew hissing as if blown by the winds, and after shining like stars in the sky, fell like blazing meteors on the ground.
8. Showers of shafts poured forth constantly from the hands of Viduratha, like the ceaseless torrents of rivers, or billows of the sea, or the endless radiation of solar rays.
9. Shells and bullets were flying about like sparks of fire struck out of the balls of red-hot iron, and falling like flowers of forests blown away by gusts of wind.
10. They fell like showers of rainwater, and like the rush of water-falls, and as plentifully as the sparks of fire that flew from Viduratha’s burning city.
11. The jarring sound of their bowstrings hushed the clamor of the two armies, like a calm quiets the roaring of the raging sea.
12. The course of arrows, was as the stream of Ganges (the milky path) in heaven, running towards the King of Sindhu, as the river runs to meet the sea (Sindhu).
13. The shower of arrows flying from the golden bow of the king was like a flood of rain falling under the variegated rainbow in the sky.
14. Then from the window, the Leela who was the native of that city saw the darts of her husband rushing like the currents of the Ganges against the Sindhu forces resembling a sea.
15. She understood the flight of those darts to promise victory to her lord, and then spoke gladly to Saraswati, with her lotus-like mouth.
16. “Be victorious O goddess, and behold victory waiting on the side of my lord whose darts are piercing the rocks and breaking them to pieces.”
17. As she was uttering these words full of affection, the goddesses eyed her sideways and smiled at her womanish tenderness of heart.
18. The flaming fire of Sindhu swallowed the raging sea of Viduratha’s arrows like an undersea fire consumes water, and like Jahnu drank the stream of Ganges.
19. The Sindhu missile weapons thwarted the thickening arrows of his adversary, and drove them back broken and flying as dust in the empty air.
20. As an extinguished lamp loses its light in the air, so the flashes of the fire arms disappeared in the sky, and nobody knew where they fled.
21. Having thus dispelled the shower of arrows, the Sindhu king sent a thick cloud of his weapons, appearing as hundreds of dead bodies flying in the air.
22. Viduratha repelled them quickly by means of his better bolts, as a hurricane disperses the frightening clouds in the air.
23. Both kings, baffled in their aims by opposing arms let indiscriminately loose against each another, laid hold on more powerful missiles.
24. Sindhu let fly his magic missile that was gift from a gandharva. It kept the army of his enemy all spell-bound except Viduratha himself.
25. Struck with this weapon, the soldiers became as mute as moonstruck, staring in their looks, and appearing as dead bodies or as pictures in a painting.
26. As the soldiers of Viduratha remained spellbound within their files, King Viduratha employed his instruments of a counter-charm to remove the spell.
27. This awakened the senses of his men like morning twilight reveals a bed of lotuses, and the rising sun opens their closed petals to light. The Sindhu king fired his rage at them like the raging.
28. He flung his serpentine weapons upon them, which bound like a band around all their bodies, encircling the battle ground and air like snakes wrapped round crags and rocks.
29. The ground was filled with snakes like a lake with the spreading stalks of lotuses, and the bodies of gigantic warriors were bound by them like hills by huge and horrible hydras.
30. Everything was overpowered by the sharp power of the poison, and the inhabitants of the hills and forests were benumbed by the venomous infection.
31. The smart poison spread a fiery heat all around, and the frozen snows like fire-brands sent forth their burning particles which were blown by the hot winds in the air.
32. The fully armed Viduratha, equally skilled in arms, then had recourse to his garuda (divine eagle) anti-serpent weapons. They fired like mountain eagles to all sides.
33. Their golden wings spread in the sky on all sides, and embroidered the air with purple gold. The flapping of their wings wheezed like a breeze that blew the poisonous vapor far away into the air.
34. It made the snakes breathe out of their nostrils with a hissing, resembling the gurgling of waters in a whirlpool in the sea.
35. The flying garuda weapons devoured the land-creeping serpents with a whistling noise, like that of the waters being sucked up by Agastya.
36. The face of the ground, delivered from its covering of these reptiles, again appeared to view like the surface of the earth reappears to light after its deliverance from the waters of the deluge.
37. Afterwards the army of garudas disappeared from sight like a line of lamps put out by the wind, and like an assembly of clouds vanishes in autumn.
38. They fled like flying mountains fearing the bolts of thundering Indra, and vanished like the impermanent world seen in a dream, or as like a castle in the sky built by fancy.
39. Then King Sindhu shot his shots of dark smoke that darkened the scene like the dark cave under the ground.
40. It hid the face of the earth and sky like flood waters reaching to the sky’s face. It made the army appear like a shoal of fishes, and the stars like gems shining in the deep.
41. The spreading darkness appeared like a sea of ink or dark mud, or like the particles of Anjana Hill blown by the breeze over the face of nature.
42. All beings seemed to be immersed in the sea or darkness, and to lose their energies as in the deep gloom of midnight.
43. Viduratha the best of the most skilful in ballistics, fired his sun-bright shot which like the sun illumined the vault of the sky.
44. It rose high amidst the spreading darkness like the sun with his effulgent beams, and dispelled the shades of darkness, as autumn does the rainy clouds.
45. The sky being cleared of its veil of darkness, manifested itself with its reddish clouds that resembled the ruddy bodices of maidens before the king.
46. Now the landscape appeared in full view, like the understanding of men coming in full play after the extinction of their greed.
47. The enraged Sindhu then laid hold on his dreadful demon rakshasa weapon, which he instantly flung on his enemy with its bedeviled darts.
48. These horrid and destructive darts flew on all sides in the air, and roared like the sea and the gigantic dark clouds of heaven.
49. They were like the flames of bright fire, with their long licking tongues and ash-colored and smoky curls rising like white hairs on the head, and making a chat-chat sound like that of moist fuel burning.
50. They wheeled round in circles in the air with a horrible tang-tang noise, now flaming as fire and now fuming as smoke, and then flying about as sparks of fire.
51. With mouths beset by rows of sprouting teeth like lotus stalks, and faces defaced by dirty and moldy eyes, their hairy bodies were like stagnate pools full of moss and weeds.
52. They flew about and flashed and roared aloud like dark clouds, while the locks of hairs on their heads glared like lightning in the midway sky.
53. At this instant Viduratha, Leela’s husband, sent forth his Narayana weapon that had the power to suppress wicked spirits and demons.
54. The appearance of this magic weapon made the bodies of the rakshasa demons disappear like darkness at sunrise.
55. This entire army of fiends was lost in the air, like the dark clouds of the rainy season vanish into nothing at the approach of autumn.
56. Then Sindhu discharged his fire arms which set fire to the sky, and began to burn down everything like the all destroying conflagration of the last day.
57. They filled all the sides of air with clouds of smoke that seemed to hide the face of heaven under the darkness of hell.
58. They set fire to the woods in the hills which burned like mountains of gold, while the trees appeared to bloom with yellow plumeria flowers all around.
59. All the sides of the sky above, and the hills, woods and groves below, were enveloped in the flames, as if they were covered under the red powder of Holi with which Yama, the God of the underworld, was playing over the plain.
60. The heaven-spreading flame burnt legions into a heap of ashes like an undersea fire consumes entire ships and fleets in the sea.
61. As Sindhu continued to dart his fire arms against his defeated adversary, Viduratha let off his watery arms with reverential regard.
62. Filled with water, these flew forward likes the shades of darkness from their hidden cells. They spread up and down and on all sides like a melted mountain gushing in a hundred cataracts.
63. They stretched like mountainous clouds or like a sea in the air, and fell in showers of watery arrows and stones on the ground.
64. They flew up like large tamara trees, and gathered in groups like the shades of night, appeared as the thick gloom beyond the polar mountains.
65. They gave the sky the appearance of subterraneous caves, emitting a gurgling sound like the loud roaring of elephants.
66. These waters soon drank the spreading furious fire, like the shades of the dark night swallow the surrounding red tints of the evening.
67. Having swallowed the fires above, the waters flooded the ground and filled it with a humidity which served to weaken all bodies, as the power of sleep numbs everybody in death-like torpidity.
68. In this manner both the kings were throwing their enchanted weapons against each other, and found them equally quelling and repelling one another.
69. The heavy armed soldiers of Sindhu and the captains of his regiments were swept away by the flood, together with the war-cars that floated upon it.
70. At this moment, Sindhu thought upon his thermal weapons which possessed the miraculous power of preserving his people from the water. He hurled them in the air.
71. These absorbed the waters like the sun sucks up the moisture of the night, and dried up the land and revived the soldiers, except those that were already dead and gone.
72. Their heat chased the coldness like the rage of the illiterate against the learned, and made the moist ground as dry as when sultry winds strew the forest land with dried leaves.
73. It decorated the face of the ground with a golden color, like when the royal dames adorn themselves with yellow paint.
74. It put the soldiers on the opposite side in a state of feverish fainting, like when the tender leaves of trees are scorched by the warmth of a wild fire in summer heat.
75. Viduratha, in his war-like rage, took up his bow, bent it to a curve, and let fly his cloudy arms on his enemy.
76. They sent forth columns of clouds as thick as the dark shades of night, which flying upward like a forest of dark tamara trees, spread a shelter heavy with water on high.
77. They lowered under the weight of their water, stood still by their massive thickness, and roared aloud in their circles all over the sky.
78. Then blew the winds dropping the dewdrops from the icy store they bore on their wings. Showers of rain fell quickly from the clouds collected on high.
79. Then fiery lightning flashed from the clouds like golden serpents, or rather like side glances from the eyes of heavenly apsara nymphs.
80. The roaring of the clouds rebounded in the mountainous caverns of the sky, and the quarters of heaven echoed with the sound like the hoarse noise of elephants, the roaring of lions, and the growling of tigers and bears.
81. Showers of rain fell in floods with drops as big as mallets and with flashes of lightning that threatened like stern glances from the god of death.
82. Huge mists rose up in the form of vapors of the earth and were carried aloft into the sky by the heated air. They seemed like demons rising from the infernal regions.
83. The mirage of the warfare ceased after a while, like worldly desires subside to rest upon tasting the sweet joys attending on divine knowledge.
84. The ground became full of mud and mire and was impassable everywhere. The forces of Sindhu were flooded by the watery deluge, like the Sindhu River (Indus) or the sea.
85. He then hurled his airy weapon that filled the vault of heaven with winds, and raged in all their fury like the bhairava spirits on the last day of resurrection.
86. The winds blew on all sides of the sky, with darts falling like thunder bolts, and hailstones now piercing and then crushing all bodies as if by the last blast of nature on the dooms-day.
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Chapter 3.49 — More Supernatural Weapons Vasishta speaking:—
1. Then blew the icy winds of winter, blasting the beauty of the forest tree foliage, shaking and breaking the beautiful trees, and covering them with gusts of dust.
2. Then rose a gale whirling the trees like birds flying in the air, dashing and smashing soldiers on the ground, and hurling and breaking buildings to dust.
3. This dreadful squall blew away Viduratha and his force, like a rapid current carries away broken and rotten fragments of wood.
4. Then Viduratha, skilled in ballistics, hurled his huge and heavy arrows that stretched themselves to the sky and withstood the force of wind and rain.
5. Opposed by these rock-like barriers, the airy weapons were at a stand still, just like animal spirits are checked by the firm detachment of the soul.
6. Trees that had been blown up by the winds and were floating in the breezy air, now came down and fell upon dead bodies, like flocks of crows upon putrid carcasses.
7. The shouting from the city, the distant hum of the village, the howling of forests, and the rustling of the trees ceased on all sides like the vain words of men.
8. Sindhu saw burning rocks falling from above like leaves of trees, and flying about like the winged menakas (mind-born from apsaras) or moving rocks of the sea or Sindhu.
9. He then hurled his thundering weapons, falling like flaming thunderbolts from heaven, which burnt the rocks away like flaming fire destroys darkness.
10. These falling bolts broke the stones with their pointed ends, and hewed down hilltops like a hurricane scattering fruit from trees on the ground.
11. Viduratha then darted his Brahma weapon to quell the thunderbolts, which jostling against one another, disappeared in their mutual conflict.
12. Sindhu then cast his demonic weapons as black as darkness, which fled as lines of horrid pisacha demons on all sides.
13. They filled the sky with the darkness of their bodies, and made the daylight turn to the shade of night, as if it were for fear of them.
14. They were as strong in their figures as huge columns of smoke, and as dark in their complexion as the blackest pitch, and tangible to the hand.
15. They were like lean skeletons with erect hair on their heads and bearded faces, with looks as pale as those of beggars, and bodies as black as those of the aerial and nocturnal fiends.
16. They were terrific and like idiots in their looks, and moved about with bones and skulls in their hands. They were as meager as churls, but more cruel than either the sword or thunderbolt.
17. The pisacha demonghosts lurk about woods, bogs and highways and pry into empty and open door houses. They hunt about like ghosts in their dark forms, and fly away as fast as fleeting lightning.
18. With fury they ran and attacked the remaining enemy forces that stood weaponless in the field with their broken and sorrowful hearts.
19. Frightened to death they stood motionless, and dropped down their arms and armor, and stood petrified as if they were demon-struck, with staring eyes, open mouths, and unmoving hands and feet.
20. They let fall both their lower and upper garments, loosened their bowels and slackened their bodies through fear, and kept shaking like trees by the wind
21. The line of the pisachas then advanced to frighten Viduratha out of his wits, but he had the good sense to understand them as the mere magic mumbo-jumbo.
22. He knew the counter charm to force the pisachas from the field, and employed his charmed weapons against the enemy pisacha army.
23. He fired his rupika weapon with anger, which gave comfort to his own army and deluded the enemy pisacha force.
24. These rupikas flew in the air with erect hairs on their heads, their terrific eyes sunk in their sockets. Their waists and breasts moved like trees with bunches of fruit.
25. They had past their youth and become old. Their bodies were bulky and worn out with age. They had deformed backs and hips, and protuberant navels and naves.
26. They had dark dusky bodies and held human skulls in their hands all besmeared with blood. They had bits of half devoured flesh in their mouths, and pouring out fresh blood from their sides.
27. They had a variety of gestures, motions and contortions of their bodies, which were as hard as stone, with wry faces, crooked backs and twisted legs and limbs.
28. Some had their faces like dogs, crows, and owls, with broad mouths and flat cheek-bones and bellies, and held human skulls and entrails in their hands.
29. They laid hold of the pisachas like men catch little children, and joined with them in one body as their consorts.
30. They joined together in dancing and singing with outstretched arms and mouths and eyes, now joining hand in hand and now pursuing one another in their merry sport.
31. They stretched their long tongues from their horrid mouths, and licked away the blood exuding from the wounds of the dead bodies.
32. They plunged in the pool of blood with as much delight as if they had dived into a pond of ghee. They scrabbled in the bloody puddle with outstretched arms and feet, and uplifted ears and nose.
33. They rolled and jostled with one another in the puddle of carrion and blood, and made it swell like the Milky Ocean when churned by Mandara Mountain.
34. As Viduratha employed his magic weapon against the magic of Sindhu, so he had recourse to others from a sense of his inferiority.
35. He fired his vetala weapon, which made dead bodies, whether with or without their heads, rise up in a body in their ghastly shapes.
36. The joint forces of the vetalas, pisachas and rupikas presented a dreadful appearance like that of the Kavandhas, and they seemed as if ready to destroy the earth.
37. The other monarch was not slow to show his magic skill by hurling his demon rakshasa weapon, which threatened to grasp and devour the three worlds.
38. Their gigantic bodies rose as high as mountains, and with their ghostly forms, they seemed like hellish fiends appearing from the infernal regions.
39. The ferocious body of the roaring rakshasas terrified both gods and demigods with their loud martial music and war dance of their headless trunks.
40. The giddy vetalas, yakshas and kushmandas devoured the fat and flesh of dead bodies as their toast, and drank the gory blood as their lurid wine in the course of their war dance.
41. The hopping and jumping of the kushmandas in their war dance in streams of blood, scattered its crimson particles in the air, which assembled in the form of a bridge of red evening clouds over the sparkling sea.
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Chapter 3.50 — The Death of Viduratha
1. Vasishta said:— As the tide of war was rolling violently with a general massacre on both sides, the belligerent monarchs thought on the means of saving their own forces from the impending ruin.
2. The magnanimous King of Sindhu, who was armed with patience, called to his mind the Vaishnava weapon, which was the greatest of arms and as powerful as Shiva himself.
3. He hurled the Vaishnava weapon using his best judgment (mantra). Immediately it emitted a thousand sparks of fire from its flaming blade on all sides.
4. These sparks became large balls as big and bright as to shine like hundreds of suns in the sky, and others flew like the lengthy shafts of cudgels in the air.
5. Some of them filled the wide field of the sky with thunderbolts as thick as the blades of grass, and others spread over the lake of heaven with battle axes like a bed of lotuses.
6. These poured forth showers of pointed arrows spreading like a net in the sky, and fired dark sword blades scattered like tree leaves in the air.
7. At this time, the rival king Viduratha sent forth another Vaishnava weapon for repelling the former, and removing the reliance of his foe in his weakness.
8. It sent forth a stream of weapons counteracting those of the other, and overflowing in currents of arrows and pikes, clubs and axes and missiles of various kinds.
9. These weapons struggled with and jostled against one another. They split the vault of heaven with their clattering, and cracked like loud thunder claps cleaving mountain cliffs.
10. The arrows pierced rods and swords, and the swords hewed down axes and lances to pieces. The malls and mallets drove the missiles, and the pikes broke the spears.
11. The mallets like Mandara rocks, broke and drove away the rushing arrows as waves of the sea, and the resistless swords broke to pieces by striking at the maces.
12. The lances revolved like the halo of the moon, repelling the black sword blades as darkness, and the swift missiles flashed as the destructive fires of Yama.
13. The whirling discs were destroying all other weapons. They stunned the world by their noise, and broke mountains by their strokes.
14. The clashing weapons were breaking one another in numbers, and Viduratha defeated the arms of Sindhu, like a steadfast mountain defies the thunders of Indra.
15. The truncheons were blowing away the curved swords, and the pikes were warding off the stones fired by slings. The crowbars broke down the pointed heads of the pikes.
16. The iron rods of the enemy were broken by tridents of Shiva, and the enemy arms were falling down and crushing one another to pieces.
17. The clattering shots stopped the course of the heavenly stream, and the combustion of powder filled the air with smoke.
18. The clashing of dashing weapons lit the sky like lightning, their clattering cracked the worlds like thunderclaps, and their shock split and broke the mountains like thunderbolts.
19. Thus the warring weapons were breaking one another by their impacts, and protracting the engagement by their mutual overthrow.
20. As Sindhu was standing still in defiance of the prowess of his adversary, Viduratha lifted his own fire-arm, and fired it with a thundering sound.
21. It set Sindhu’s war chariot on fire like a heap of hay on the plain, while the Vaishnava weapons filled the ethereal sphere with their meteoric blaze.
22. The two kings were thus engaged in fierce fighting with each other, the one firing his weapons like drops of raging rain, and the other hurling his arms like currents of a deluging river.
23. The two kings were thus harassing each other like two brave champions in their contest, when the chariot of Sindhu was reduced to ashes by its flame.
24. He then fled to the woods like a lion from its cavern in the mountain, and repelled the fire that pursued him by his aqueous weapons.
25. After losing his car and alighting on the ground, he brandished his sword and cut off the hoofs and heels of the horses of his enemy’s chariot in the twinkling of an eye.
26. He hacked everything that came before him like the lean stalks of lotuses. Then Viduratha also left his chariot with his sword in hand.
27. Both were equally brave and matched to one another in their skill in warfare. They turned about in their rounds, and scraped their swords into saws by striking against the other.
28. With their jagged weapons, they tore the bodies of their enemies like fish crushed under teeth, when Viduratha dropped down his broken sword, and threw his javelin against his enemy.
29. It fell with a rattling noise on the bosom of Sindhu like a flaming meteor falls rumbling in the breast of the sea.
30. But the weapon fell back having hit his breast plate, like a maiden flies back from the embrace of a lover deemed an unfit match for her.
31. Its shock made Sindhu throw out a flood of blood from his lungs, resembling the water spout an elephant let outs from its trunk.
32. Seeing this, the second Leela cried with joy to her sister Leela, “See here the demon Sindhu killed by our lion-like husband.
33. Sindhu is slain by the javelin of our lion-like lord, like the wicked demon by the nails of the lion-god Narasimha, and he is spouting forth his blood like the stream of water, thrown out by the trunk of an elephant from a pool.
34. But alas! This Sindhu is trying to mount on another car, although bleeding so profusely from his mouth and nostrils, as to raise a wheezing sound.”
35. “Look there! Our lord Viduratha is breaking down the golden mountings of his car with the blows of his mallet, like the thundering clouds Pushkara and Avarta break down the gold peaks of Sumeru.
36. See this Sindhu now mounting on another carriage, which is now brought before him, and decorated like the splendid seat of a gandharva.
37. Alas! Our lord is now made the mark of Sindhu’s mallet hurled like a thunder bolt against him. But lo! How he flies off and avoids the deadly blow of Sindhu.
38. Hurrah! How nimbly he has got up upon his own car. But sorrow is to me that Sindhu has overtaken him in his flight.
39. He mounts on his car like a hunter climbs on a tree, and pierces my husband, like a bird-catcher with his pointed arrow does a parrot hidden in its hollow.
40. Behold his car is broken down and its flags flung aside. His horses are hurt and the driver is driven away. His bow is broken and his armor is shattered, and his whole body is full of wounds.
41. His strong breast-plate is broken by slabs of stone and his big head is pierced by pointed arrows. Behold him thrown down on earth, all mangled in blood.”
42. “Look with what difficulty he is restored to his senses, and seated in his seat with his arm cut off and bleeding under Sindhu’s sword.
43. See him weltering in blood gushing out profusely from his body, like a red stream issuing from a hill of rubies. Sorrow is me, and cursed be the sword of Sindhu that has brought this misery on us.
44. It has severed his thighs like they cut a tree with a saw, and has lopped off his legs like the stalks of trees.
45. Ah! It is I who am so struck and wounded and killed by the enemy. I am dead and gone and burnt away with my husband’s body.”
46. Saying so, the second Leela began to shudder with fear at the sorrowful sight of her husband, and fell unconscious on the ground like a vine cut off by an axe.
47. Viduratha though thus mutilated and disabled, was rising to smite the enemy in his rage, when he fell down from his car like an uprooted tree, and was replaced there by his charioteer ready to make his retreat.
48. At this instant, the tribal Sindhu struck a saber on his neck, and pursued the car in which the dying monarch was borne back to his tent.
49. The body of Padma (alias Viduratha) was placed like a lotus in the presence of Saraswati, shining with the splendor of the sun. But the elated Sindhu was kept from entering that place, like a giddy fly from a flame.
50. The enemy returned to his camp and the charioteer entered the apartment and placed the body on its death-bed in the presence of the goddess. The body was all mangled and besmeared with blood seeping from the pores of the severed neck.
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Chapter 3.51 — Sindhu’s Rule
1. Vasishta said:— The loud cry that the king was killed in battle by the rival monarch, struck the people with awe, and filled the realm with dismay.
2. Carts loaded with utensils and household articles were driving through the streets. Women with their loud wailing were running away amidst the impassable paths of the city.
3. Weeping maidens fleeing for fear were ravished on the way by their captors. Inhabitants were in danger of being plundered of their properties by one another.
4. The joyful shouts of soldiers in the enemy camp resounded with the roaring of loose elephants and neighing of horses trampling men to death on their way.
5. The doors of the royal treasury were broken open by brave brigands, the hinges flew off and the ceilings re-echoed to the strokes. The warders were overpowered by numbers, and countless treasures were plundered and carried away.
6. Bandits ripped off the bellies of the royal dames in the palace, and the chandala freebooters hunted about the royal apartments.
7. The hungry rabble robbed provisions from the royal stores, and soldiers were snatching jewels from weeping children trodden down under their feet.
8. Young and beautiful maidens were dragged by their hair from the seraglio, and the rich gems that fell from the hands of the robbers glistened all along the way.
9. Chiefs assembled with ardor with their troops of horses, elephants and war-chariots, and announced the installation of Sindhu by his minister.
10. Chief engineers were employed in decorating the city and its halls, and the balconies were filled by the royal party attending the inauguration.
11. It was then that the coronation of Sindhu’s son took place amidst the loud acclamations of victory. Titles and dignities were conferred upon the noblemen on the victor’s side.
12. The royal party were fleeing for their lives into the villages, where they were pursued by the victorious soldiers. A general pillage spread in every town and village throughout the realm.
13. Gangs of robbers thronged about and blocked the passages for pillage and plunder. A thick mist darkened the light of the day for want of the magnanimous Viduratha.
14. The loud lamentations of the friends of the dead, and the bitter cries of the dying, mixed with the clamor raised by the driving cars, elephants and horses, thickened in the air like a solid body of sound.
15. Loud trumpets proclaimed the victory of Sindhu in every city and announced his sole sovereignty all over the earth.
16. The high-shouldered Sindhu entered the capital like a second Manu for repopulating it after the all-devastating flood of war was over.
17. Then the tribute of the country poured into the city of Sindhu from all sides. These loaded on horses and elephants resembled the rich cargoes borne by ships to the sea.
18. The new king issued forthwith his circulars and royal edicts to all sides, struck coins in his own name, and placed his ministers as commissioners in all provinces.
19. His iron-rod was felt in all districts and cities like the inflexible rod of Yama, and it awed the living with fear of instant death.
20. All insurrections and tumults in the realm soon subsided to rest under his reign, like the flying dust of the earth and the falling leaves of trees fall to the ground upon subsidence of a tempest.
21. The whole country on all sides was pacified to rest, like the perturbed sea of milk after it had been churned by Mandara Mountain.
22. Then there blew the gentle breeze of Malaya, unfurling the locks of the lotus-faced maidens of Sindhu’s realm, and blowing the liquid fragrance of their bodies around, and driving away the unwholesome air of the carnage. [The entire vision of Leela shows the state of human life, with its various incidents and phases to its last termination by death. The discontented brahmin longs for royal dignity, imagines all its enjoyments in the person of Padma, and at last in the character of Viduratha sees all its evils. The lesson is for aspirants to avoid aiming at high worldly honors which end in their destruction. In her silent meditation, Leela by her wisdom sees the whole course and vicissitudes of the world, and the rise and fall of human glory in the aspirations of her husband. — V. L. Mitra]
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Chapter 3.52 — The Second Leela Reflects upon the First Leela’s Own Self-Concept: Life after Death
1. Vasishta said:— In the meanwhile, O Rama, the first Leela saw her husband lying unconscious before her and about to breathe his last. She spoke to Saraswati,
2. “Behold, O mother, my husband is about to shuffle his mortal coil in this perilous war that has laid waste his whole kingdom.”
3. Saraswati replied:— This combat that you saw, fought with such fury and lasting so long in the field, was neither fought in your kingdom nor in any part of this earth.
4. It occurred nowhere except in the vacant space of the shrine containing the dead body of the brahmin where it appeared only as the phantom of a dream.
5. This land that appeared as the kingdom of your living lord Viduratha was situated with all its territories in the inner apartment of Padma.
6. Again it was the tomb of the brahmin Vasishta, situated in the hilly village of Vindya, that showed these varying scenes of the mortal world within itself.
7. As the departed soul views the vision of the past world within its narrow tomb, so is the appearance of all worldly accidents unreal in their nature.
8. These objects that we see here as realities, including these bodies of mine and yours and this of Leela, together with this earth and these waters, are just the same as phantoms rising in the tomb of the deceased brahmin of the hilly region.
9. It is the soul that presents the images of things, and nothing external which is wholly unreal can cast its reflection on the soul. Therefore know your soul to be the true essence which is uncreated and immortal, and the source of all its creations within itself.
10. The soul reflects on its inborn images without changing itself in any way. Therefore it was the nature of the brahmin’s soul that displayed these images in itself within the sphere of his tomb.
11. But the illusion of the world with all its commotion was viewed in the vacant space of the souls of the brahmin and Padma, and not displayed in the empty space of their tombs, where there was no such false reflection of the world.
12. There is no error or illusion anywhere except in the misconception of the observer. Therefore the removal of the fallacy from the mind of the viewer leads him to the perception of the light of truth.
13. Error consists in taking the unreal for the real and in thinking the viewer and the view, or the subjective and objective, is different from each other. It is the removal of the distinction of the subjective and objective that leads us to the knowledge of unity (the one or Aum).
14. Know that the Supreme Soul is free from the acts of production and destruction, and it is His light that displays all things of which He is the source. Learn that the entire outer nature has no existence nor change in itself.
15. The souls of other beings exhibit their own natures in themselves, just like those in the burial tomb of the brahmin displayed the various dispositions to which his mind was accustomed.
16. The soul has no notion of the outer world or any created thing in it. Its consciousness of itself is like an uncreated emptiness. It comprehends its knowledge of the world in itself.
17. The knowledge of the mountain ranges of Meru and others is included within the knowledge in the emptiness of the soul. There is no substance or solidity in them, just like a great city seen in a dream.
18. The soul sees hundreds of mountain ranges and thousands of solid worlds all drawn in the small compass of the mind, like in its state of dreaming.
19. Multitudes of worlds are contained in a grain of the brain of the mind, just like the long leaves of the plantain tree are contained in one of its minute seeds.
20. All three worlds are contained in an atom of consciousness in the same manner as great cities are seen in a dream. Each of all the particles of consciousness within the mind has the representation of a world in it.
21. Now this Leela, your stepmother (i.e., Arundhati, the wife of the hill-brahmin Vasishta), has already gone to the world that contains the tomb of Padma before the spirit of Viduratha could get there.
22. The moment when Leela fell in a swoon in your presence, know her spirit was immediately conveyed to him and placed by his side.
23. Leela asked, “Tell me, O goddess, how was this lady endowed with my form? How did she come to placed as my stepmother beside my deceased husband (Prince Padma)?
24. Tell me in short, in what form do the people in Padma’s house see her, and how are they now talking to her?”
25. The goddess replied:— Leela, hear what I will tell you in brief answer to your question regarding the life and death of this Leela as an image of yourself.
26. It is your husband Padma, in the person of Viduratha, who beholds these illusions of the world spread before him in the same tomb.
27. He fought this battle which you saw in his imagination, and this Leela who resembles you (Viduratha’s wife) was also a delusion. These his men and enemies were only illusions, and his ultimate death was as illusory as a phantom of the imagination, like all other things in this world.
28. It was his self delusion that showed him this Leela as his wife, and it is the same deceit of a dream that deludes you to believe that you are his wife.
29. It is merely a dream that makes both of you Leelas think yourselves as his wives. In the same way he dreams that he is your husband, and I also rely on my own existence.
30. The world with all its beauty is said to be the image of a vision. When we know it to be merely a visionary scene, we must refrain from having any faith in the sights of this magic projection lantern.
31. Thus this Leela, you, and this King Viduratha are only phantoms of your fancy. So am I, unless I believe to exist in the self-existent spirit.
32. The belief of the existence of this king and his people, and of ourselves as united in this place, proceeds from the fullness of that Consciousness which fills everything.
33. So this Queen Leela, also situated in this place with her youthful beauty and smiling so charmingly with her blooming face, is only an image of divine beauty.
34. See how gentle and graceful are her manners and how very sweet is her speech. Her voice is as sweet as the notes of the kokila nightingale, and her motions as slow as those of a lovelorn maiden.
35. Behold her eyelids are like the leaves of the blue lotus and her swollen breasts are rounded like a pair of snowballs. Her form is as bright as liquid gold and her lips are as red as a brace of ripe bimba fruit.
36. This is only a form of you as you desired to be to please your husband. It is the very figure of your own self that you now behold with wonder.
37. After the death of your husband (Padma), his soul caught the same reflection of your image as you did desire to be hereafter, and which you now see in the person of the young Leela before you.
38. Whenever the mind has a notion or sensation or fancy of some material object, the abstract idea of its image is surely imprinted in the intellect.
39. As the mind comes to perceive the unreality of material objects, it begins to entertain the ideas of their abstract entities within itself.
40. It was Padma’s thought of his sure death, his false conception of the transmigration of his soul in the body of Viduratha, and your desired form of a youthful Leela, the idol of his soul, that represented the youthful Leela to Padma.
41. He saw you and you saw him according to your desires. Thus both of you, although possessed of the same unvaried soul that pervades all space, are made to see one another according to your desires.
42. The spirit of Brahma is all pervasive. It manifests itself in various ways in all places. It is seen in different light according to the varying fancies or tendencies of men like ever-changing scenes appearing in visions and dreams.
43. The omnipotent Spirit displays its various powers in all places. These powers exert themselves everywhere according to the strong force and capability it has infused in them.
44. When this pair remained in their state of death-like lack of physical senses, they saw all these phantoms in their inner souls by virtue of their memories and desires.
45. That such and such persons were their fathers and such their mothers before, that they lived in such places, had such properties, and did such acts some time ago are all memories of the soul.
46. That they were joined together in marriage, and the multitudes they saw in their minds, appeared to them as realities for the time in their imagination.
47. This is an example that shows our physical-sense perceptions to be no better than our dreams. It was in this deluded state of Leela’s mind that she worshipped and prayed to me.
48. In order to confer the boon on her that she might not become a widow, and by virtue of my blessing, this girl died before her husband’s death.
49. I am the progeny of Brahma, and the totality of that intelligence in which all beings participate. It is for this reason that she adored me as the guardian divinity of all living beings.
50. In the end her soul left her body through the orifice of her mouth and fled with her mind in the form of her vital breath.
51. Then, after the unconsciousness attendant upon her death was over, she understood in her consciousness that her individual soul was placed in the same empty space as the departed spirit of Padma.
52. In her memory she pictured herself in her youthful form and she saw herself as in a dream, situated in the same tomb. She was like a blooming lotus with her beautiful countenance, and her face was as bright as the orb of the moon. Her eyes were as large as those of an antelope, and she was attended by her graceful speech for the pleasure of her husband.
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Chapter 3.53 — The Second Leela Visits the Temple of Dead King Padma; Representations of Memory Are Not the Creations of Brahma
1. Vasishta said:— The second Leela having obtained the blessing of the goddess, proceeded with her imagined body to meet her royal spouse in heaven beyond the skies.
2. Having assumed her spiritual form which was as light as air, she fled merrily like a bird and was blown aloft by the fond desire of joining her beloved lord.
3. She met a maiden sent by the goddess of wisdom issuing out of the best model of her heart’s desire.
4. The maiden said, “I am the daughter of your friend Saraswati. I welcome you, O beautiful lady, to this place. I have been waiting and expecting you here on your way through the sky.”
5. Leela said, “Lead me, O lotus-eyed maid, to the side of my husband, as the visit of the good and great never goes for nothing.”
6. Vasishta said:— The maiden replied, “Come let us go there.” So saying, she stood before her looking forward on her way.
7. Then both proceeding together onward, they came to the doorway of heaven which was as broad as the open palm of the hand and marked with lines like those read in palmistry.
8. They passed the region of the clouds and stepped over the currents of winds, then passing beyond the orbit of the sun, they reached the stations of the constellations.
9. From there they passed through regions of air and water to the worlds where gods and saints live, then they crossed over the worlds of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva to the great circle of the universe.
10. Their spiritual bodies pierced through its opening like the humidity of ice water passes out of the pores of a tight water-jar.
11. Leela’s body was of the form of her mind, which was of the nature of its own bent and tenor, and conceived these wanderings within itself.
12. Having traversed the worlds of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva and having crossed the limit of the manifest spheres and the environs of atmospheric water and air,
13. they found an empty space as spacious as the scope of the great Consciousness and impassable by the swift garuda even in millions of kalpa ages.
14. There they saw an infinity of shapeless and nameless worlds scattered about like countless fruit in a great forest.
15. They pierced through the circumference of one of these orbs before them and passed inside like a worm creeps inside a fruit that it has nibbled.
16. This brought them back by the same worlds of Brahma, Indra and others to the orb of the globe below the starry skies.
17. Here they saw the same country, the same city and the same tomb as before. After entering the tomb, they sat beside the corpse of Padma covered under a heap of flowers.
18. At this time Leela lost sight of the heavenly maiden (sent to accompany her) who had been her companion all this while, and who had now disappeared like a phantom of her illusion.
19. Then she looked at the face of her husband, lying as a dead body in his bed, and recognized him as such by her right discretion.
20. “This must be my husband,” she thought. “Ah my very husband who fell fighting with Sindhu. Now he has attained this seat of departed heroes where he rests in peace.
21. By the grace of the goddess I have arrived here in person and reckon myself truly blessed to find my husband also as such.”
22. Then she took a beautiful fan in her hand and began to wave it over his body like the moon moves in the sky over the earth.
23. The waking, first Leela asked, “Tell me, O goddess, in what manner did the king and his servants and handmaids speak to this lady, and what did they think her to be?”
24. The goddess replied:— It was by our gift of wisdom to them that this lady, that king and those servants found themselves to share in the one and same intellectual soul in which they all existed.
25. Every soul is a reflection of Divine Consciousness and is destined by his own fixed decree to represent individual souls to one another like refractions of the same, or like shadows in a magic show.
26. Thus the king received his wife as his companion and queen, and his servants as related with himself.
27. He saw the unity of his soul with hers and theirs, and no distinction existing between anyone of them. He was astonished to find that there was nothing distinct in them from what he had in himself.
28. The waking, first Leela said, “Why did not that Leela meet her husband in her own body according to her request and the boon that was granted to her?”
29. The goddess replied:— It is not possible for unenlightened souls (such as that of the young Leela) to approach holy spirits in person. They are visible and accessible only to the deserving. They are unapproachable by gross bodies as sunlight is inaccessible by a shadow.
30. So the established law from the beginning of creation is that intelligent souls can never join with dull beings and gross matter, as truth can never be mixed with falsehood.
31. And so is that as long as a boy is prepossessed of his notion of a ghost, it is vain to try to convince him of the falsehood of demons as mere shadows of his imagination.
32. And as long as the feverish heat of ignorance rages within the soul, it is impossible for the coolness of the moon of intelligence to spread over it.
33. So long also as one believes himself composed of a physical body incapable of travel in the higher atmosphere, it is impossible to make him believe otherwise.
34. By virtue of one’s knowledge and discrimination, and by his own merit and divine blessing, one acquires a saintly form with which he ascends to the higher regions, as you have done with this body of yours.
35. As dry leaves of trees are burnt in no time by burning fire, so this physical body is quickly lost by one’s assumption of his spiritual frame.
36. The effect of a blessing or curse on anyone is nothing else than his obtaining the state he desired or feared to have.
37. As the false appearance of a snake in a rope is attended with no motion or action of the serpent, so the unreal views of Leela’s husband and others were only the motionless images of her own imagination.
38. Whoever views the false apparitions of the dead as present before the vision of his mind, he must know them as reflections of his past and constant memories of them.
39. So our notions of all these worlds are mere products of our memories. They are not any creation of Brahma or from any other cause but the simple productions of our desire.
40. They who are ignorant of the knowable spirit of God have in them only the notions of the outer world as they view the distant orb of the moon within themselves.
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Chapter 3.54 — Divine Laws underlie Creation; Death as Reward; Life Durations
1. The goddess continued:— Therefore, those who know the knowable God and rely upon virtue can go to spiritual worlds — not others.
2. All material bodies are false, the false conceptions of the mind. They can have no place in Truth, just like no shadow can have any room in sunshine. (So gross matter has no room in the subtle spirit.)
3. Young Leela, being ignorant of the knowable (God) and unacquainted with the highest virtue (the practice of yoga meditation), could go no further than the city of her lord which she had in her heart.
4. The waking Leela said, “Let her be where she is, but I will ask you about other things. You see here that my husband is about to die. Tell me, what must I now do?
5. Tell me the law of being and not being of beings, and about that destiny which destines living beings to death.
6. What determines the natures of things and gives existence to the categories of objects? What causes the warmth of fire and sun and gives stability to the earth?
7. Why is coldness confined to frost and the like, and what forms the essence of time and space? What are the causes of the different states of things and their various changes, and the causes of the solidity of some and minuteness of others?
8. What causes trees and men to be taller than grass and brambles, and why do many things dwindle and decay in the course and capability of growth?”
9. The goddess said:— At the universal dissolution of the world, when all things are dissolved in the formless void, only the essence of Brahman remains in the form of infinite sky stretching on all sides beyond the limits of creation.
10. Then it reflects in its consciousness in the form of a spark of fire, as you are conscious of your aerial journey in a dream.
11. Then this atomic spark in the Divine Spirit increased in size, and having no substance of itself, appeared as what is commonly called the ideal world.
12. The spirit of God thought itself as Brahma, the soul of the world, who reigned over it in his form of the mind, as if it was identical with the real world itself.
13. Whatever primary laws he appointed to all things at their first creation, they invariably continue in force with them to the present time.
14. The minds of all turn as willed by the Divine Mind. There is nothing which of itself can go beyond the law assigned to it by the Divine Will.
15. It is improper to say that all formal existences are nothing because they remain in their substance (of the Divine Spirit) after their forms disappear, just like the substance of gold remains the same after its shape and form are altered.
16. The elementary bodies of fire and frost continue in the same state as when their elements were first formed in the Divine Mind in the beginning of creation.
17. Therefore, as long as Divine Consciousness continues to direct his eternal laws and decrees appointed to all, nothing has the power to forsake its own nature.
18. It is impossible for anything to alter its nature from the eternal stamp that Divine Will has set upon all the substantial and ideal forms of creation.
19. As Divine Consciousness knows no opposition, it never turns from the tenor of its own wonted intelligence that directs the destinies of all.
20. But know that in the first place, the world is not a created thing. All that appears to exist is only a display of the notions in our consciousness, like appearances in our dreams.
21. The unreal appears as real, just like the shadow seems to be of substance. Our notions of things are the properties of our nature.
22. The manner in which Consciousness exhibited itself in its different manifestations at the beginning, the same continues in its course to this time and is known as the manifestations of consciousness (samvid-kachana) or the course or system of the universe which constitute the niyati.
23. The sky is the manifestation of the intellectual idea of emptiness in the Divine Mind. The idea of duration in Consciousness appeared in the form of the parts of time.
24. The idea of liquidity evolved itself in the form of water in the Divine Mind. In the same way one dreams of water and seas in his own mind.
25. We are conscious of our dreams in some particular state of our consciousness, and it is the wonderfully cunning nature of consciousness that makes us think the unreal to be real.
26. The ideas of the reality of earth, air, fire and water are all false. Consciousness perceives them within itself as its false dreams and desires and daydreams.
27. Now hear me tell you about death in order to remove your questions with regard to this future state. Death is destined for our good in that it leads us to the enjoyment of the fruits of acts in this life.
28. Our lives are destined in the beginning to extend to one, two, three and four centuries in the different Kali, Dwapara, Treta and Satya ages (yugas) of the world.
29. However by virtue of place and time, of climate and food, and our good or bad actions and habits, human life extends above or descends below these limits.
30. Falling short of one’s duties shortens life, as excelling in them lengthens its duration. Mediocre conduct keeps it within its proper bound.
31. Children die by acts causing infant diseases and untimely deaths. The young and old die of acts that bring on juvenile and senile weakness, sickness and ultimate death.
32. He who goes on doing his duties as prescribed by scriptures becomes prosperous and enjoys the long life allotted by the rule of scriptures.
33. Likewise men meet their last state and future reward according to the nature of their acts in lifetime; or else their old age is subject to regret and remorse and all kinds of bodily and mental maladies and anxieties.
34. Leela said, “Tell me in short, O moon-faced goddess, something more with regard to death. Is it a pleasure or pain to die? What becomes of us after we are dead and gone from here?”
35. The goddess replied:— Dying men are of three kinds, and they have different ends upon their death. There are the ignorant, those practiced in yoga, and those who are reasonable and religious.
36. Those practicing dharana yoga (fixed concentration in meditation) may go wherever they like after leaving their bodies, and so the yogi of reason is at liberty to range everywhere.
37. He who has not practiced dharana yoga, or has not applied himself to reasoning, or entertains certain hopes for the future is called an ignorant sot and meets with the pain and pangs of death.
38. He whose mind is not subdued and is full of desires, temporal cares and anxieties becomes as distressed as a lotus torn from its stalk.
39. The mind that is not guided by the precepts of the scriptures or purified by holiness but is addicted to the society of the wicked is subjected to the burning sensation of fire within itself at the moment of death.
40. At the moment when the last gurgling of the throat chokes the breath, eyesight is dimmed and the countenance fades away, then the rational soul also becomes hazy in its consciousness.
41. A deep darkness spreads over the dimming sight and stars twinkle before it in daylight. The sky appears to be hidden by clouds and presents a gloomy aspect on every side.
42. An acute pain seizes his entire body, and a mirage caused by witchcraft dances before his vision. The earth is turned into air and the dying person seems to be moving in midair.
43. The sphere of heaven revolves before him and the tide of the sea seems to bear him away. He is lifted up in the air, then hurled down as in his state of dizziness or dream.
44. Now he thinks he is falling into a dark pit, and then he is lying in the cave of a hill. He wants to talk out loud about his torments, but his speech fails to utter his thoughts.
45. Now he finds himself as if falling down from the sky, and now as whirled in the air like a bundle of straw blown aloft by a gust of wind. He is now riding swiftly as in a car, and now finds himself melting like snow.
46. He desires to tell his friends about the evils of life and this world, but he is carried away from them as rapidly as if by an air-engine.
47. He whirls about like a turning wheel and he is dragged along like a beast by its halter. He wallows about like in an eddy, or turns around as the machine of some engine.
48. He is borne like straw in the air and is carried about like a cloud in the wind. He rises high like vapor, then falls down like a heavy watery cloud pouring out into the sea.
49. He passes through endless space and revolves in all of its vortices of emptiness to find, as it were, a place free from the ups and downs to which earth and ocean are subject.
50. Thus the rising and falling spirit wanders ceaselessly, and the soul breathing hard and sighing without break sets the whole body in sore pain and agony.
51. By degrees the objects of his senses become as faint to his failing organs as the landscape fades to view with the setting of the sun.
52. At this moment, his memory fails and he loses memories of the past and present, like one is at a loss to know the sides of the compass after the evening twilight has passed away.
53. In his fainting fit, his mind loses its power of thinking. He is lost in a state of ignorance, the loss of all his thoughts and consciousness.
54. In this fainting state, the vital breath ceases to circulate through the body. When its circulation stops completely, a swoon into unconsciousness (murcha) follows.
55. When this state of unconscious paralysis combined with delirium has reached its climax, then by the law of inertia, ordained for living beings from the beginning, the body becomes as stiff as stone.
56. Leela said, “But tell me, O goddess, why do these pains and agonies, this fainting and delirium, and disease and unconsciousness overtake the body, when it is possessed of all of its eight organs intact?”
57. The goddess replied:— It is the law appointed by the Author of life from the first, that such and such pains are to fall as the lot of living beings at such and such times.
58. The primeval sin springs of itself like a plant in the conscious heart of man and subjects him to his doomed miseries which have no other intelligible cause.
59. When disease and its pain overpower the body and prevent lungs and arteries from expanding and contracting to inhale and exhale air, the body loses its equilibrium (samana) and becomes restless.
60. When inhaled air does not come out and exhaled breath does not re-enter the lungs, all pulsation is at a stop. Organic sensations are lost, remaining only in memory.
61. When vital air doe not enter or exit, the pulse sinks and becomes motionless. The body is said to become senseless, and life to be extinct.
62. I also shall die in my destined time, but all my consciousness of former knowledge will be awake at the hour of death.
63. Though I am dead and gone from here in this manner, yet I must mind that the seed of my innate consciousness (the soul) is never destroyed with my life and body.
64. Consciousness is inner knowledge and is imperishable in its nature. Therefore the nature of consciousness is free from birth and death.
65. In some persons this consciousness is as clear as a fresh fountain; in others as foul as tide water. In some it is bright in its form of the pure intellect (chit); but in many in its nature of the sentient or individual soul (chetana), it is polluted with the passions of animal life.
66. As a blade of grass has joints in the middle, so the nature of the sentient or individual soul is combined with the two states of birth and death amidst it.
67. The sentient soul is neither born nor dead at anytime, but witnesses these two states as the passing shadows and apparitions in a dream and vision.
68. The soul is nothing other than consciousness which is never destroyed anywhere by anything. Say, what other thing is this soul called purusha besides consciouness itself?
69. Tell me then, who and what are you calling dead today? Is consciousness subject to disease or death at anytime and in any form? Truly millions of living bodies are dying every day, but consciousness always remains imperishable.
70. Consciousness never dies at the death of any living being because the entire individual soul continues the same upon the death of everybody here.
71. Therefore, the individual soul is nothing more than the principle which is conscious of its various desires, affections and passions. It is not that principle to which men attribute the phases of life and death.
72. So there is none that dies and no one is born at anytime. It is this only living principle that continually revolves in the deep eddy of its desires.
73. Considering the unreality of visible phenomena, there can be no desire for them in anyone. But the inner soul that is led by its egoism and believes them to be true is subject to death at the disappearance of phenomena.
74. The recluse ascetic flying from the fears of the world as foreign to his soul, and having none of its false desires rising in his breast, becomes liberated in his life and assimilated with the true One.
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Chapter 3.55 — Categories of Death Experiences; Origin of Illusion
1. Leela said, “Tell me, goddess, for edification of my knowledge, how does a living come to die and is reborn in another form?”
2. The goddess replied:— As the action of the heart ceases and the lungs blow and breathe no more, the current of vital airs is utterly stopped and the living being loses its consciousness.
3. But the intellectual soul, which has no rise or fall, remains ever the same as it abides in all moving and unmoving bodies, and in air, water, fire and vacuum.
4. When the breathing, pulse and motion of the body stop, it is said to be dead and is then called an inert corpse.
5. The body being a dead carcass and the vital breath having mixed with the air, the soul is freed from the bonds of its desires. It flies to and remains in the mode of the discrete and self-existent soul.
6. The individual soul, called the animal spirit (jiva), has its desires and is other than the atman (soul). It remains in its burial tomb under the same atmosphere as the soul of Padma, which you saw hovering about his tomb.
7. Hence such departed spirits are called ghosts of the dead (pretas). They have their desires and earthly propensities attached to them, just like the fragrance of the flower is concentrated in its pollen and thence diffused through the air.
8. As animal souls are removed to other spheres, after their departure from this visible world, they view the very many scenes and sights that their desires present before them like visions in a dream.
9. The soul continues to remember all its past adventures, even in its next state, and finds itself in a new body soon after the unconsciousness of death is over.
10. What appears an empty vacuum to others seems as a dusky cloud to the departed soul, enveloping the earth, sky, moon and all other orbs within its bosom.
11. Departed spirits are classed in six orders, as you shall now hear from me. These are the great, greater and greatest sinners, and likewise the three degrees of the virtuous.
12. These are again subdivided into three kinds, some belonging to one state and others composed of two or three states in the same individual soul.
13. Some of the most sinful souls lose the memory of their past states for a period of a whole year. They remain quite unconscious within themselves, like blocks of wood or stone.
14. Rising after this time, they are doomed to suffer the endless torments of hell which the hardness of their earthly mindedness has brought upon them.
15. Then they pass into hundreds of births leading from misery to misery, or have a moment’s respite from the pains in their short lived prosperity, amidst their dreaming journey through life.
16. There are others who, after their numbness of death is over, come to suffer the unutterable torments of sluggishness in the state of unmoving trees.
17. And others again who having undergone the torments of hell, according to their inordinate desires in life, are brought to be reborn on earth in a variety of births in different forms.
18. Those of lesser crimes, are made to feel the inertness of stones for sometime, after the unconsciousness attending upon their death.
19. These awakened to consciousness after some time, whether long or short, are made to return on earth to feel the evils of brutish and beastly lives.
20. But the souls of the least sinful, soon after their death, come to assume some perfect human form in order to enjoy the fruits of their desire and reward on earth.
21. These desires appear before the soul as dreams and awaken its reminiscence of the past as present at that moment.
22. Again the best and most virtuous souls, soon after their death, come to find themselves in heavenly abodes by reason of their continued thoughts and speculations of them.
23. Some among them are brought to enjoy the rewards of their actions in other spheres, from which they are sent back to the mortal world, at the homes of the auspicious and best part of mankind.
24. Those of moderate virtues are blown away by the atmospheric air upon the tops of trees and medicinal plants where they rove about as protozoa after the unconsciousness of death is over.
25. Being nourished here by the juice of fruits, they descend in the form of serum and enter into the hearts of men, from where they fall into the uterus in the form of virile semen, which is the cause of the body and life of other living beings.
26. Thus the dead, after they recover from the collapse attending upon their death, make themselves into one of these states of living bodies according to their natural tendency.
27. At first they think themselves extinct, then they come to feel resuscitated upon receiving offerings of the food made to their departed spirits.
28. Then they fancy seeing the messengers of death, with nooses in their hands, come to fetch them to the realm of Yama, and they depart with them.
29. There the righteous are carried in heavenly cars to the Nandana gardens of paradise which they gain by their meritorious acts in life.
30. But the sinful soul meets with icebergs and pitfalls, is tangled with thorns and iron pikes and bushes and brambles in its passage as punishment for its sins.
31. Those of the middling class have a clear and paved passage, with soft grassy pathways shaded by cooling trees, and supplied with spring waters on both sides of them.
32. On its arrival there, the soul reflects within itself that, “Here am I, and yonder is Yama, the lord of the dead. The other is the judge of our actions, Chitragupta, and this is his judgment given on my behalf.”
33. In this manner also, the great world appears to every one as in a dream. And so the nature and manner of all things present themselves before every soul.
34. But all these appearances are as empty as air. The soul alone is the sentient principle, and vast space and time and the modes and motions of things, though they appear as real, are in reality nothing.
35. Here in Yama’s court, the soul is pronounced to reap the reward of its acts, whereby it ascends either to the blissful heaven above or descends to the painful hell below.
36. After having enjoyed the bliss of heaven or suffered the torment of hell, the soul is doomed to wander in this earth again to reap the reward of its acts in repeated reincarnations.
37. The soul springs up like a paddy plant and brings forth the grains of intelligence. Then, being assembled by the senses, it becomes an animal, and lastly an intelligent being.
38. The soul contains in itself the germs of all its senses which lie dormant in it for lack of its bodily organs. It is contained in man’s virile semen which, passing into the uterus, produces the fetus in the womb of the female.
39. The fetus then becomes either well-formed or deformed, according to the good or evil deeds of the person in its past state, and brings forth the infant of a good or ill shaped appearance.
40. It then perceives the moonlike beauty of youthful bloom, and its amorous disposition comes upon itself. Afterwards it feels the effects of hoary old age, defacing its lotus-like face like the sleets of snow shatter and shrivel the lotus leaflets.
41. At last it undergoes the pains of disease and death and feels the same lack of physical senses at of death as before, and finds itself again as in a dream taking on a new form.
42. It again believes itself to be carried to the region of Yama, and subjected to the former kinds of revolution. Thus it continues to conceive its reincarnation in endless births and various forms.
43. Thus forever in its own ethereal sphere, the aerial spirit goes on thinking about all its ceaseless reincarnations until its final liberation from this ever changing state.
44. Leela said, “Tell me kindly, O good goddess, for the enlightenment of my understanding, how did this misconception of its changeableness first come upon the soul in the beginning?”
45. The goddess replied:— The dense appearance of the abstract causes us to assume the discrete spirit in the concrete forms of the earth and sky and rocks and trees.
46. As Divine Consciousness manifests itself as the soul and model of all forms, so we see these manifestations in the transcendental sphere of its pure consciousness.
47. In the beginning, God conceived himself as the lord of creation (Brahma). Then, as it were in a dream, he saw in himself all the forms as they continue to this time.
48. These forms were manifested in the Divine Spirit, at first as his will, and then reflected and exhibited in the phenomenal world in all their present forms.
49. Among these some are called living beings which are able to move their bodies and limbs and live by means of the air they breathe and circulate in their bodies through lungs and arteries.
50. Such also is the creation of plant life. They have their inner sensitivity, although devoid of outward motion, and they receive their sustenance from their roots.
51. The hollow sphere of the Divine Intellect, beaming with intelligence, sends forth its particles of perception which form the consciousness of some beings and sensitivity in others.
52. But man uses his eyes to view the outer and the reflected world, although the eyes do not form his individual soul, nor did they exist at his creation or before his birth.
53. It is according to one’s estimation of himself that he has his proper and peculiar desires, and also the particular form of his body. Such also is the case of the elemental bodies, from their inner conception of their peculiar natures.
54. Thus all moving and unmoving things have their movable and immovable bodies according to their intrinsic disposition or idiosyncrasy as such and such.
55. Hence all self-moving beings have their movable bodies conforming to the conception of their natures as so and so. And in this state of their belief, they continue to this time with their same inborn or congenital bodies.
56. The vegetable world still continues in the same state of fixedness from its sense of immobility. And so rocks and minerals continue in their inert state from the inborn sense of their inertness.
57. There is no distinction whatever between inertness and intelligence, nor any difference between production, continuance and extinction of things. All occurs in one common essence of the Supreme.
58. The varying characteristics existing in plants and minerals make them feel themselves as such and cause their various natures and forms as they have to this time.
59. The inner constitution of all immovable objects makes them remain in their stationary states; likewise for all other substances, according to their different names and natures.
60. Thus the inner constitution or quality of worms and insects makes them conceive themselves according to their different kinds and gives them their particular natures forever.
61. So the people under the north pole know nothing about those in the south other than what they know of themselves.
62. So also all kinds of moving and unmoving beings are prepossessed with their own notions of things and regard all others according to their own peculiar self-concepts.
63. Again, as the inhabitants of caves know nothing of their outsiders, and as frogs in dirty pools are unacquainted with the pure water of streams, so is one sort of being ignorant of the nature of another.
64. But empty consciousness, residing in the form of the all pervasive mind and all sustaining air, knows the natures of all things in all places.
65. The moving principle is the vital air that enters all bodies through their pores and which gives life and motion to all living beings.
66. Truly the mind is situated in all things, whether they are moving or immovable. And so is the air, which causes motion in some and stillness in others.
67. Thus all things in this world of illusion are only the rays of the conscious soul, continuing in the same state as they have from the beginning.
68. I have told you everything about the nature of things in the world and how unrealities come to appear as real unto us.
69. Look, here this King Viduratha is about to breathe his last, and the garlands of flowers heaped on the corpse of your husband Padma are now being hung upon the breast of Viduratha.
70. Leela said, “Tell me goddess, how did Viduratha enter Padma’s tomb? How can we also enter to see what he is doing there?”
71. The goddess said:— Man goes to all places by the way of his desires, even thinking that he goes to a distant future, in the spiritual form of pure consciousness.
72. We shall go the same way, as you like, because the bond of our friendship makes no difference in our choice and desires.
73. Vasishta said:— Princess Leela was relieved of her pain by what Goddess Saraswati had explained. Her intellectual sight was brightened by the blazing sun of spiritual light. She saw the unconscious and unmoving Viduratha breathe out his final breath.
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Chapter 3.56 — State of the Soul after Death; Ancestor Worship & Benefits to the Dead
1. Vasishta continued:— In the meantime the king’s eyeballs became convoluted, and his lips and cheeks and entire face grew pale and dry. There remained only the slender breath of life in him.
2. His body became as lean as a dry leaf, and his face turned as ghastly as the figure of death. His throat gurgled like the hoarsest beetles and his lungs breathed with a bated breath.
3. His sight was darkened upon the unconsciousness of death and his hopes were buried in the pit of despair. The sensations of his external organs were hidden within the cavity of his heart.
4. His figure was as senseless as a picture in painting and all his limbs were as motionless as those of a statue carved from a block of marble.
5. What need is there of a lengthier description when it may be said in short that his life quitted his body, like a bird flies far away from a falling tree?
6. The two ladies, with their divine eyesight, saw his animal spirit in its aerial form flying upwards in the sky and his consciousness disappearing like the odor of a flower blown by the wind.
7. His individual soul being joined with its spiritual body began to fly higher and higher in the air as it was led by its inner desire or expectation of ascending to heaven.
8. The two ladies kept following that conscious soul, like a couple of female bees pursuing a particle of perfume borne afar in the air on the wings of the wind.
9. Then, in a moment after the fainting fit of death was over, the conscious soul was roused from its unconsciousness like some fragrance expanding itself with the breeze.
10. It saw the porters of death carrying away the souls of the dead that had resumed their grosser forms from the food offered by their kinsmen during ancestor-worship rituals.
11. After a long year’s journey on the way, it reached the distant abode of Yama with the hope of reaping the reward of its acts, but found the gate guarded by beasts of prey.
12. Yama, on seeing the departed spirit of everybody brought before him, demanded to know all its foul acts committed during its lifetime.
13. On finding the prince’s spirit spotless, ever inclined to virtuous acts and nourished by the grace of the goddess of wisdom,
14. he ordered it to be released. The spirit re-entered its former dead body that lay buried under the flowers in the tomb.
15. It was then allowed to fly in the ethereal path with the swiftness of a stone shot from a sling. The living Leela and the goddess followed in the air.
16. The individual soul of the king sailing through the sky did not see the forms of the two ladies who followed it, though they saw it all along its course.
17. They passed through many worlds and soon passed beyond the bounds of the extra-mundane systems until they arrived at the solar world from where they descended to this earth.
18. The two self-willed forms of Leela and the goddess followed the individual soul of King Padma and arrived at his royal city where they entered Leela’s apartment.
19. In a trice and of their own free will, they entered the palace of King Padma like air passes in flowers and the sunbeams penetrate water and odors mix with air.
20. Rama asked, “How was it sage, that they entered into the abode adjoining to the tomb, and how could they find the way to it? One had been dead a long time, and all three were bodiless emptiness.”
21. Vasishta replied:— The tomb of the king’s dead body, being impressed on his soul and the object of its desire, led his spirit insensibly to it, as if by its inborn instinct.
22. Who does not know that the endless desires in the human breast, like countless fig seeds, grow up in time to become big trees?
23. Just as the living body bears its seed, the subtle body (linga deha) in the heart that germinates and in the end grows into a tree, so every particle of the intellect bears the material seed in itself.
24. As a man placed in a far distant land sees his own house within himself, so the soul sees the objects of his distant desires ever present before it.
25. The individual soul always longs after the best objects of its desire, even though it may undergo a hundred births and become subject to the errors and delusions of his senses and of this illusory world.
26. Rama replied, “There are many persons who are free from desire to receive funeral cakes. Now tell me, sage, what becomes of those souls who get no cake offering at their ancestor worship (shradh)?”
27. Vasishta replied:— A man having the desire settled in his heart to receive food offerings, and thinking it to be offered to him, is surely benefitted by its offering.
28. Whatever is in the heart and mind, the same notions form the nature of living beings. Whether these are in their corporeal or incorporeal states, they think themselves as such beings and no other.
29. The thought of having received the pinda cake (cake offered at a shradh ancestor worship ritual) makes a man sapinda (ancestors to the sixth degree), though it is not actually offered to him. On the other hand, the thought of not being served with the cake makes a sapinda become a nispinda.
30. It is truly the desire of all living beings to be whatever they have in their hearts, and that is the cause of their becoming so in reality.
31. It is a man’s thought that makes poison taste like nectar, and it is his very thought that makes an untruth seem as truth to him.
32. Know this for certain, that no thought ever rises in anyone without some cause or other. Therefore, the desire or thought that is inherent in the spirit is the sole cause of its regeneration on earth.
33. Nobody has ever seen or heard of any event occurring without its proper cause; except the being of the Supreme Being which is the causeless cause of all beings from their state of not-being into being.
34. Desire is inherent in consciousness, like a dream in the soul. Desire appears in the form of acts, as the Will of God is manifested in his works of creation.
35. Rama said, “How can a spirit that is conscious of its faults foster any desire for its future good? How can it benefit from others’ pious works for its salvation?
36. Tell me also whether the pious acts of others, offered to ancestors, go for nothing. Do the good wishes of others have any effect on the future prospects of an undeserving ghost?”
37. Vasishta said:— A desire naturally arises in its proper time and place and by application of appropriate acts and means. The rising of the desire necessarily overcomes its absence.
38. Pious gifts made for the sake of departed souls accrue to them as their own acts. It gives them a sense of worthiness and fills them with better hopes and desires for their future state.
39. Just like the stronger man gains the better of his adversary, so the later acts of piety drive away the former impiety from the spirit. Therefore the constant practice of pious acts is strictly encouraged in the scriptures.
40. Rama said, “If the desire arises in its proper time and place, then how could it arise in the beginning when there was no time or place?
41. You say that there are accessory causes that give rise to desires, but how could the will arise in the first place without any accessory cause whatever?”
42. Vasishta replied:— It is true, O long-armed Rama, that there was neither time nor place in the beginning when the Spirit of God was without its will.
43. And there being no accessory cause, there was not even the idea of the visible world, nor was it created or brought into existence. It is so even now.
44. The phenomenal world has no existence. All that is visible is the manifestation of Divine Consciousness which is everlasting and imperishable.
45. Later I will explain this to you in a hundred different ways, and it is my main purpose to do so, but now hear now tell you what relates to the matter under consideration.
46. Having arrived in that house, they saw its inside beautifully decorated with garlands of flowers as fresh as those of the spring season.
47. The palace residents were quietly employed in their duties, and the king’s corpse was placed upon a bed of mandara and kunda flowers.
48. Wreaths of the same flowers were strewn over the sheet that covered the body and there were the auspicious pots of water placed bedside.
49. The doors of the room were closed and the windows were shut fast with their latches. Lamps cast a dim light on the white washed walls and the corpse was lying as a man in sleep with the suppressed breathing of his mouth and nostrils.
50. There was the bright full moon shining with her delightful luster, and the beauty of the palace would make Indra’s paradise blush. It was as charming as the center of the lotus of Brahma’s birthplace, and it was as silent as dumbness or a dummy itself, and as beautiful as the fair moon in her fullness.
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Chapter 3.57 — Yogis’ Astral Bodies; Phenomena of Dreaming
1. Vasishta continued:— There they saw the younger Leela of Viduratha who had arrived there after her death and before the death of that king.
2. She was in her former habit and mode with the same body, and the same tone and tenor of her mind. She was also as beautiful in all her features as in her former graceful form and figure when living.
3. She was the same in every part of her body and wore the same clothes as before. She had the same ornaments on her body, with the difference that it was sitting quietly in the same place, and not moving about as before.
4. She kept waving her pretty fan over the king’s corpse, gracing the ground below like the rising moon brightening the skies above.
5. She sat quietly, reclining her moonlike face on the palm of her left hand. Decorated with shining gems, she appeared like a bed of flowers blooming with new blossoms.
6. With glances from her beautiful eyes, she shed showers of flowers on all sides. The brightness of her body shone with the beams of the ethereal moon.
7. She approached her lord of men like Goddess Lakshmi appears before God Vishnu, and with the heaps of flowers around her, she looked like Vasanta Lakshmi (Lakshmi in the aspect of the blissful Goddess of Spring).
8. Her eyes were fixed on her husband’s face as if she was pondering his future well-being. Thoughts of his present sorrowful state spread a melancholy over her face like that of the waning moon.
9. They saw the maiden who was unable to see them. Their trust was in truth, so they saw everything clearly, while her views being otherwise, she could not discern their spiritual forms.
10. Rama said, “You have said, O sage, that the first Leela had returned there in her fancy and spiritual form, by the favor of the goddess of wisdom.
11. Why do you now describe her as having a body? I want to know how it came to her.”
12. Vasishta replied:— Rama, what is this body of Leela? It is no more true than a false imagination of her gross spirit, like that of water in the mirage.
13. It is spirit alone that fills the world, and all bodies are creations of fancy. This spirit is the Intellect of God, and full of joy in itself.
14. The same understanding which Leela had of herself at her end accompanied her to her future state. The same notion of her body followed her there, even though the body itself was reduced to dust, like ice melted in water.
15. Spiritual bodies are also sometimes liable to fall into error and think themselves to be material bodies, just like we mistake a rope for the serpent.
16. The belief in anyone’s materiality, composed of earth and other elements, is as false as believing rabbits have horns on their heads.
17. Whoever thinks he has become a stag in his dream has no need to seek another stag so that he can compare himself with it.
18. An untruth appears as truth at one time and disappears at another, just like the error of a snake in a rope vanishes upon the knowledge of its falsehood.
19. So the knowledge of the reality of all things in the minds of the unenlightened is dispersed in the minds of the enlightened upon conviction of their unreality.
20. But the ignorant who have a belief in the reality of this world of dreams also believe in the reincarnation of the animal soul, like the revolution of the world on its own axis.
21. Rama asked, “If the bodies of yogis are of a spiritual nature, how is it that they are seen walking about in the sight of men?”
22. Vasishta replied:— A yogi may take various forms upon himself without the destruction of his former body, like the human soul in a dream may deem itself transformed into a stag or any other being without undergoing any change in its spiritual essence.
23. A yogi’s spiritual body is invisible to all, although he may make it appear as visible to their sight. It is like particles of frost seen in sunbeams, and like the appearance of a white spot in autumn sky.
24. Nobody can easily discern the features of a yogi’s body, nor are they discernible by other yogis. They are as imperceptible as the features of a bird flying in the air.
25. It is from the error of judgment that men think some yogis are dead and others living, but their spiritual bodies are never subject to death or common sight.
26. The embodied soul is subject to errors from which the souls of yogis are free because their knowledge of truth has cleansed the mistake of a snake in the rope from their souls.
27. What is this body and from where does it come? What is its existence or destruction? What is lasting remains forever and is freed from the ignorance it had before.
28. Rama said, “Does the embodied soul takes a spiritual form or is it something else? Tell me this and remove my doubt.”
29. Vasishta said:— I have told you this repeatedly, my good Rama! How is it that you do not understand it yet? There exists only the spiritual body and the material form is nothing.
30. It requires a habit of constant meditation in order to know your spiritual state and subdue your sense of materiality. As you abstain from your sense of materiality, so you attain the spiritual state.
31. Then there will be an end of your sense of gravity and solidity of objects, like the visions of a dreaming man disappear when he awakens.
32. The body of a yogi becomes as light and subtle as the impermanent appearances in a dream.
33. In his dreaming rambles, a man feels the lightness of his body. Similarly, a yogi finds his solid body is able to fly in all places like air.
34. The expectation of the long life of a master in his material body is realized in the spiritual one, after the corpse has been burnt away.
35. Everyone must assume his spiritual frame afterwards, but the yogi finds it in his lifetime by the enlightenment of his consciousness.
36. As a man upon waking from sleep remembers having an intellectual form in his dream state, so the yogi is conscious of his spiritual body in his own intellect.
37. The notion of the physical body is a mere fallacy, like that of the snake in a rope. Therefore nothing is lost by the loss of this body, nor is anything gained by its production and regeneration.
38. Rama said, “Now tell me sage, what did the palace residents think the second Leela to be? Did they see her as an embodied being or a bodiless apparition appearing before them?”
39. Vasishta answered:— They took the sorrowful queen to be some friend of the king, having come from some place they knew not what or where.
40. They did not like to examine the matter because it is the nature of the ignorant, like that of brutes, to believe what they see without investigation or consideration of its nature.
41. As a stone flung at random flies off from its mark, so brutish and ignorant folks go astray from hitting the true mark of a thing placed before them.
42. We know not what becomes of the objects of our dream, or where they go when we awaken. Such is the case with our material bodies that are as false and fleeting as our delusive dreams.
43. Rama said, “Tell me sage, where does a hill that we dream of hide upon our waking? Kindly remove my doubt like the wind disperses the clouds of autumn.”
44. Vasishta said:— All things that appear in dream or reside in our desires, such as a hill or the like, are absorbed in the consciousness from where they sprang, just like the motion of bodies subsides in the air that gives them vibration.
45. As the motion of the air mixes with the fixed ether, so dreams and desires set in the unchanging soul from where they arose.
46. Our dreams, like our knowledge of all other things, are made known to us by our consciousness, the nature of which is as unknown to us as that of the inner soul.
47. We do not find our dreams or desires to be distinct from our awareness of them. They appertain to it in the same way as fluidity to water and motion to air.
48. Whatever difference may appear to exist between dreams and our awareness of them is the effect of sheer ignorance. This gross ignorance is the characteristic of this world known as the phantom of fancy.
49. It is impossible to conceive of two co-eternal and co-existent causes together, so it is wrong to suppose the dream as a distinct existence or anything other than an act of our consciousness.
50. There is no difference whatever between the dreaming and waking states. In dream we see a false city appearing to view. In waking you behold the unreal world standing as a reality before you.
51. Nothing can be truly existent that appears as true in a dream. This being always true of what is seen in a dream, it is likewise so of external phenomena that we see in our daydreams.
52. As a hill in a dream immediately disappears into airy nothing, so the material world sooner or later disappears into nothing by thinking on its nothingness.
53. Some see a yogi arising in the air; others as a dead body lying on the ground. This is according to one’s belief in his spiritual or material body. Every one sees him in his own way.
54. The view of the phenomenal world as distinct from the Unity is as false as a seeing a delusion or a magic show, or a dream or delirium of the great illusion.
55. Others who are blinded by similar errors, after being awakened from cessation of physical senses at death, entertain the notion of their reproduction as in a dream. But the spiritual body of the yogi shines and soars upward, after passing over the mirage of the false appearances of the world.
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Chapter 3.58 — The Two Leelas See Padma Revived
1. Vasishta continued:— Meantime, the goddess of wisdom stopped the course of Viduratha’s life, like we stop the flight of our minds at will.
2. Leela said, “Tell me, goddess, how much time has lapsed since the corpse of the king was laid in this tomb, and I was absorbed in my deep meditation?”
3. The goddess replied:— A month has passed since these your maid servants have been waiting here watching your body, which they thought lay asleep in the room.
4. Hear, excellent lady, what has become of your body after a fortnight when it became rotten and evaporated in the air.
5. Seeing your lifeless corpse, as cold as frost lying on the ground and turning as dry as a log of wood, or rather as a withered leaf on the floor,
6. the royal ministers thought you had committed suicide and removed your putrid carcass out of the room.
7. What more shall I say than they laid your corpse on a heap of sandalwood and, having set fire to the pile with a sprinkling of ghee, they quickly reduced it to ashes.
8. Then the family raised a loud cry that their queen was dead. They wept bitterly for sometime, after which they performed your funeral ceremonies.
9. Now when they will see you coming here in your same body, they must be astonished and think that you have returned from the next world of the dead.
10. Now my daughter, when you appear before them in this your purer and spiritual form, they must look upon you with astonishment.
11. For you have not your former form at present, but it is changed to a purer one, agreeably to the desire and temperament of your mind.
12. For everyone sees everything outside himself according to his inner feelings as, for example, the sight of shadowy ghosts is frequent to children who have a fear of devils at heart.
13. Now, O beautiful lady! You are an adept in spiritualism and you have a spiritual body on you. You have forgotten and forsaken your former body and all the desires coexisting with it.
14. Those who see spirit do not see material bodies. Their intelligent view is to see material bodies in the light of autumn clouds which are void of substance.
15. Upon attainment of the spiritual state, the material body becomes like an empty cloud, or like a flower without its fragrance.
16. When a man of pure desire is conscious of his attainment of the spiritual state, he loses the memory of his material body, like a youth forgets his embryonic state.
17. It is now the thirty-first day that we have arrived at this place, and I have caused these maid servants to fall into a deep sleep this morning.
18. Now Leela, let us go before the willful Leela and use our will to let her discover the form of the truthful Leela and see how she behaves towards you.
19. Vasishta said:— So saying, they wished themselves to be perceived by the willful Leela, and stood before her in their ethereal forms of goddess and her inspired dame.
20. At this instant, the Leela of Viduratha looked at them with staring eyes and found the room lighted up by the full luster of their bodies.
21. The apartment seemed to be lighted by the bright orb of the moon, and its wall seemed washed with liquid gold. The ground floor shone as if paved with ice, and all was full of splendor.
22. After seeing the brightness of the bed chamber, Leela looked up at the goddess and the other Leela and rising respectfully before them, she fell at their feet.
23. “Be victorious, O ye goddesses!” she said. “You have blessed me with your visit. You who know all, know that I have come here first to prepare your way.”
24. As she was speaking this way, they received her with good grace, and then all three in their youthful bloom sat together on bedding, like luxuriant vines on the snow capped peak of Mount Meru.
25. The goddess said, “Daughter, tell us how you came here before us. How you have been, and what you have seen on your way here?”
26. The younger Leela answered, “As I lay unconscious on that spot, upon the shock of my death, I was enveloped in darkness like the new moon and I felt myself burned away by the flame of the funeral fire.
27. I had no sense or thought of anything good or bad, but remained with my eyes closed under my eyelids.
28. Then immediately after I had recovered from my trance of death, O great goddess, I found myself assuming (by mistake a new body agreeably to my former impression) and moving into the midst of the sky.”
29. “I mounted on the vehicle of winds and was borne like fragrance to this mansion through the ethereal space.
30. I found this house guarded by its warders and lighted with lamps, having a costly bedstead placed in midst of it.
31. I am looking upon this corpse, my husband Viduratha, who has been sleeping here with his body covered under flowers like the spring god in a flower garden.
32. I thought he was taking his rest after the fatigue of the warfare and I did not want to disturb his repose in this place.
33. I have now related to you, my gracious goddesses, all that I have seen and thought of since I have been restored to my new life.”
34. The goddess spoke, “Now I tell you Leela, who has such beautiful eyes and moves like a swan, that I will raise the corpse of the king to life from his bed.”
35. Saying so, she breathed the breath of life like the lotus lets off its fragrance. It fled into the nostrils of the carcass like a creeping plant crawls into a hole.
36. It entered into the heart through the vital sheath, as wind penetrates into the hole of bamboo. The breath of life was filled with desires, like the waves of the sea sparkle with pearls.
37. The infusion of life added color of the face and body of King Padma like rainwater refreshes the fading lotus in a drought.
38. By degrees the members of the body became renovated, like a garden with its returning flowering season, and like the sides of a hill become green with fresh grown bushes and vines.
39. The body of the king shone like the queen of the stars with all her digits of the full moon when she enlightens the whole world with the beams of her radiant face.
40. All his limbs became as tender and dewy as the branches of trees in spring. They regained their bright and golden color like the flowers of the spring season.
41. He opened his eyes which were as clear as the sky, their two pupils rolling like two orbs of light enlightening the world with their charming and auspicious beams.
42. He raised his body, as if Vindhya Mountain was uplifting its head, and cried with a grave and hoarse voice, “Who waits there?”
43. The two Leelas responded saying, “Your commands.” He saw the two Leelas in attendance upon him, humbly bending themselves at his feet.
44. Both were of the same form and features and of like demeanor and deportment towards him. They were alike to one another in their voice and action, as in their joy and gladness at his rising.
45. Then looking at them he asked, “What are you and who is she?” At this the elder Leela responded, “Please hear what I have to say.
46. I am Leela, your former consort. I was joined with you as two in one, as sounds and their senses are combined together.
47. The other Leela is only a reflection of me, cast by my free will for your service.”
48. “The lady sitting here beside the bed is the goddess of wisdom, the blessed Saraswati and mother of the three worlds. Set her on the golden seat before you.
49. It is by virtue of our great merit that she has presented herself to our sight and brought us back from other worlds to your presence in this place.”
50. Hearing this, the lotus-eyed king rose from his seat and with wreaths of flowers and a strap of cloth hung about his neck, he prostrated himself at her feet.
51. He exclaimed, “I hail you, O divine Saraswati who does confer all blessings on mankind. Please confer on me the blessings of understanding and riches with a long life.”
52. As he was saying so, the goddess touched him with her hand and said, “My son, be possessed of your desired blessings and gain your blessed abode in future.
53. Let all evils and evil thoughts be far from you, and all your discomforts be dispersed from this place. Let an everlasting joy descend in your hearts and a great population fill your happy realm. May all prosperity attend on you forever.”
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Chapter 3.59 — Padma & Two Leelas Live Out Their Liberated Lives
1. Vasishta said:— “Be it so,” said Saraswati and disappeared into the air, and people awoke that morning with their king restored to life.
2. Padma embraced the reborn Leela, who embraced him in her turn. They were exceedingly glad in their coming to life again.
3. The palace was filled with loud shouts of joy like those of giddy revelry. Citizens were full of mirth and merry, song and music.
4. Shouts of victory and sounds of cheers and joys resounded in the air. People elated with joy thronged at the royal courtyard to see their king.
5. The spirits of the masters and demigod vidyadharas dropped flowers from above, and the sound of drums, kettles, trumpets and conches resounded on all sides.
6. Outside, elephants roared aloud with uplifted trunks. Crowds of women filled the inner courtyard with loud rejoicing.
7. Men bearing presents for the king fell upon one another at their mutual clashing. Others wearing flowery garlands on their heads and hairs moved gracefully all about.
8. Red turbans of joy on the heads of chiefs and a host of citizens, and the waving of the reddish palms of dancing girls, filled the sky with a bed of red lotuses.
9. The ground also was strewn with rosy flowers, by foot-falls of dancers with their reddish soles. The hanging earrings of ballet girls that flourished with the movement of their heads and shoulders waved in the air like flowers of gold.
10. Silken veils, like autumn clouds, covered the faces of fairy maidens in their dancing. They glittered like so many moons shining in the courtyard.
11. Then people retired to their respective homes with loud applause for the queen’s return with her husband from the other world.
12. King Padma heard of his adventures from the reports of his subjects, and made his purificatory ablution with the waters of the four seas of the earth.
13. Then royal ministers and ministerial brahmins joined together in the act of his installation, like a synod of immortals meeting at the inauguration of Indra.
14. The two Leelas continued in company with the king, describing with delight their respective adventures and the wisdom they had gathered thereby.
15. It was in this way that by grace of the genius of wisdom and their own experience, this King Padma and his two queens obtained prosperity equal to that of the three worlds.
16. The king, filled with the wisdom given to him by the goddess, in company with his consorts, continued to rule over his kingdom for thousands of years.
17. In their state of living liberation they reigned on earth for myriads of years. Then, receiving the perfect knowledge of the holy masters, they became wholly liberated after their deaths.
18. The happy pair having jointly reigned over their delightful realm of ever increasing population, and which was graced by learned men and righteous people, knowing their own rights and duties of doing good to all mankind, became freed from the burden of their state affairs forever.
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Chapter 3.60 — Time & Reality Are Relative
1. Vasishta said:— Prince, I have told you this story in order to remove your error of the phenomenal world. Remember this tale of Leela and renounce your misconception of the gross material world.
2. The substantiality of phenomena is a nothing by itself. No pains are required to invalidate it. It is hard to disprove a reality, but there is no difficulty to efface a falsehood from the mind.
3. True knowledge consists in seeing phenomena as void and knowing the one emptiness to the sole unity and real entity. In the end, one loses himself in this infinite emptiness.
4. When the self-born Brahma created the world from nothing, without the aid of any material or elemental body, it is obvious that there was an eternal void and that all these are only manifestations of the empty soul.
5. The same creative soul spread the seeds of its consciousness into the stream of creation, and these produce the images as they constantly appear to us, unless we take the pains to repress them.
6. The appearance of the world is only a perspective of the environment that is Divine Consciousness. It is contained in the small space of human consciousness within the soul, like in a transparent particle of sand.
7. This being the case, then what is the essence of this false conception, and what are our desires to rely on it, and what can be the meaning of either destiny or necessity?
8. This entire whole that is visible to the eye is only false appearance, like magic. There is no truth or substance in a magic show.
9. Rama said, “What a wonderful explanation of the world that you have given me! It refreshes my soul, like moonbeams revive the blades of grass that have been burnt down by a fire.
10. After so long, I have come to know the truly knowable: such as what and how it is, and the manner how, from where, and when it is to be known.
11. I have my peace and rest in pondering on this wonderful theory, and your elucidation of the doctrines of the Sruti scriptures.”
12. “But tell me this one thing to remove my doubt, as my ears are never satisfied drinking the nectarlike juice of your sweet speech.
13. How much time elapsed during the three births of Leela’s husband? Was it the duration of a day and night in one case, and of a month in another, and the period of a whole year in the case of Viduratha?
14. Or did any one of them live for many years, and whether they were of short or longer durations according to the measure of men, gods or Brahma.”
15. “Please sage, kindly tell me this, because little hearing is not sufficient for me, like a drop of water is not enough to moisten the parched ground of summer heat.”
16. Vasishta said:— Know sinless Rama, that whoever thinks of anything in any manner at any place or time, he comes to feel the same in the same manner, and in the same place and time.
17. Take for instance a destructive poison that becomes like ambrosia to venomous insects that take it for their dainty nourishment. Similarly, an enemy turns to a friend by your friendly behavior to him.
18. The manner in which any being considers itself and all others for a length of time becomes the same they appear by its mode and habit of thinking, as if it were by an act of destiny.19 The manner in which the active intellect represents a thing in the soul is imprinted in its consciousness of its own nature.
20. When our consciousness represents a twinkling of the eye to extend over a kalpa age, we are led to believe a single moment is an age of long duration.
21. When we are conscious of or think a kalpa age to be only a twinkling, the kalpa age is thought to pass as quickly as a moment. A long night in our unconscious sleep appears as a moment upon waking.
22. The night appears to be a long age to the long suffering sick, while it seems like a moment in the nightly revels of the merry. So a moment appears as an age in the dream, and an age passes off as a moment in the state of unconsciousness.
23. The notions of the resurrection of the dead and of one’s reincarnation and being reborn in a new body, of his being a boy, youth or old man, and of his migrations to different places at the distance of hundreds of leagues are all only the phenomena of sleep and retrospective views in a dream.
24. King Harish Chandra is said to have thought a single night to be a dozen years. The prince Lavana passed his long life of a hundred years over the space of a single night.
25. What was a moment to Brahma was the entire age of the life-time of Manu. What is a day to Vishnu constitutes the long period of the lifetime of Brahma.
26. The entire lifetime of Vishnu is only one day of sedate Shiva. One whose mind is motionless in fixed meditation is unconscious of the change of days and nights and of seasons and years.
27. There is no substance and no substantive world in the mind of the meditative yogi to whom the sweet pleasures of the world appear bitter, as they are thought to be the bane of his true joy.
28. The bitter seems to be sweet by being thought to be so. What is unfavorable becomes favorable as that which is friendly comes to be unfriendly by being taken in their opposite senses.
29. Thus Rama, it is by habitual meditation that we gain the abstract knowledge of things. We forget what we learned if we do not repeat and practice.
30. By their habit of thinking, some find everything in a state of positive rest, while the unthinking fall into the errors of the ever-moving world, like a boat passenger thinks the land and objects on the shore are moving around him.
31. The unthinking part of mankind, and those wandering in their error, think the world to be moving about them. But the thinking mind sees the whole as an empty void and full of phantoms, like one sees in his dream.
32. It is false thought that shows white as black and blue. It is mistaken judgment that makes one rejoice or sorrow at the events of life.
33. The unthinking are led to imagine a house where there is none. The ignorant are infatuated with a belief in ghosts, as they are the killers of their lives.
34. It is reminiscence or memory that raises the dream as its consort and that represents things as they are presented to it by the thoughts of the waking state.
35. The dream is as unreal as the empty void abiding in the hollow receptacle of the intellectual soul. It spreads over the mind like the shadow of a cloud and fills it with images like those of a puppet-show under a magic lantern.
36. Know the phenomena of the revolving worlds to be no more in reality than mere effects of the vibrations of the mind in the empty space of the soul, like the motions and gestures of imagined hobgoblins to the sight of children.
37. All this is only a magical illusion without any substance or basis of itself. All these imposing scenes of vision are only the empty and aerial sights of dreams.
38. Just as a waking man beholds the wonderful world before him, so does a sleeping man see the same. Both of them resemble the unconscious pillar that finds images of statues engraved upon it.
39. The Divine Spirit’s great monument is the figure of the created world carved in itself, as if I see a troop of soldiers passing before me in my dream.
40. This waking world sleeps in the soul of Brahma and rises in his mind like the plant world springs from sap lying hidden in the earth that gives it its growth and spring bloom.
41. Likewise, creation lies hidden in and springs from the Supreme Spirit, like the brightness of gold ornaments is contained in and comes out of the material metal.
42. Every atom of creation is settled in the fullness of Divine Spirit, just like all the members of the body are set in the person of their possessor.
43. The visible world has the same relation to the bodiless and undivided spirit of God as one fighting in a dream bears to his enemy (both believe in their reality, while both are unreal in their bodies).
44. Thus the real and unreal, the spirit and the world, all dwindles into emptiness at the great fantasy annihilation of creation, except the consciousness of God which comprises the world in itself.
45. The causality of the One and the unreality of the world cannot both be true (since nothing unreal can come out of the real). Except Brahman, there is no other cause, whether Brahma the Creator or any other. The Divine Consciousness is the only cause and substance of its productions.
46. Rama asked, “But what caused the citizens, counselors and ministers of Viduratha’s royal house to appear in Leela’s vision in the same manner as that of her lord the king?”
47. Vasishta said:— All other thoughts are associated with the principal one in the intellect, in the same manner as high winds accompany a storm.
48. The association of thoughts follows one another in a long and perpetual train and, one after the other, caused the succession of the sights of the ministers, citizens and subjects of the king in Leela’s vision.
49. In this way the thought that the king was born of such and such a family naturally introduced the thoughts of his palace and city and of those that dwelt in them.
50. It is vain to inquire into the cause and manner of consciousness and each combination of its thoughts. This is why it is called the gem of thoughts (chintamani, the wish-fulfilling jewel). It is always accompanied with its radiating thoughts like a brilliant gem with its rays.
51. Padma thought to become a king like Viduratha, properly discharging the duties of his royal family. This constant thought of himself as such cast the mold of the mind and manner of Viduratha upon him.
52. All animate beings of every kind are only models of their own thoughts, like looking-glasses showing their inner reflections to sight.
53. The mind fixed in meditation on God remains unshaken amidst the turmoil of the world and is filled with perfect rest and preserves the composure of the soul until its final liberation from the bondage of the body.
54. But thoughts of fluctuating enjoyments of this world alternately represented in the mirror of the mind are like the shadows of passing scenes upon a looking glass.
55. Therefore it requires a great force of mind to overcome its worldly thoughts and turn them to the channel of truth, just like the greater force of a river’s main current leads its tributaries to the ocean.
56. But when worldly and spiritual thoughts press upon the mind with equal force, the mind is greatly disturbed. Then the greater force leads it onward in one way or the other.
57. Such is the case with all the myriads of beings, whether they are living, dead or to come to life. The same accidents take place in the particles of all human minds.
58. All this is the empty sphere of Consciousness, all quiet and without any basis or substratum. It is neither peopled nor filled by anything except its own native thoughts.
59. All these appear as dreams, even in our unsleeping states, and have no form or figure in the sight of the wise. The perception of their positive existence is only a misconception of their negative nonexistence.
60. There really exists only one omnipotent and all pervasive Spirit which shows itself in diverse forms like flowers, fruits and tree leaves all appearing from the same woody trunk.
61. He who knows the uncreated Brahman to be the measurer, measure and the thing measured to be all one and himself can never forget this certain truth of unity, nor ever fall into the dualism error of cause and effect.
62. There is only one Being (sat) who is holy and without beginning and who, though he appears to have forms of light and darkness, and of space and time, never rises or sets anywhere. He is without beginning, middle or end. He remains like a vast expanse of water exhibiting itself in its waves and currents.
63. The notion of myself, yourself and the objective world are only expressions of our perverted understandings. It is only ignorance within the sheath of the mind, according as it imagines it to be, that shows the One as many.
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Chapter 3.61 — On the Origin of the World
1. Rama said, “Please sage, explain to me how this error of believing in an objective world arises without a cause for such error?”
2. Vasishta said:— Because the knowledge of all things is contained in our consciousness, it is plain that this eternal and uncreated self is the cause and container of them all at all times.
3. That which has an insight or intuitive knowledge of all things, which are expressed by words and their meanings, is Brahma the soul and no other. Nothing that is meant by any significant term has a different form of its own.
4. As the quality of a bracelet is not different from its substance of gold, nor that of a wave from the water, so the expansion of the world is not distinct from the spirit of God.
5. It is Brahma who is manifest in the form of the world, and not the world that appears as God. Similarly, gold displays itself in the form of a bracelet. It is not that the bracelet takes on the nature of gold.
6. As the whole is displayed in all its various parts, so the entire consciousness shows itself in all the various operations of the mind composing the world.
7. It is ignorance of the infinite and eternal spirit of God that exhibits itself as myself, yourself and the world itself in the mind.
8. As the shades of different colors in gems are not different from the gems, so the notions of one’s self and the world are the shades inherent in the same intellect.
9. Like waves appearing on the surface of the still waters of the deep, this so-called and meaningless creation is but a phase in Divine Consciousness.
10. The Spirit of God does not reside in creation. Creation does not exist in the Divine Spirit. There is no such relation of part and whole between God and creation.
11. One should meditate on his own consciousness as the form of Divine Consciousness. In his own consciousness of it, he will feel Divinity stirring within himself, as if stirred by the breath of a breeze.
12. The minute particle of the empty intellect will then appear in its wonderful form of an emptiness within the empty space of his conscious mind.
13. He then finds this empty form stirring in himself like an airy spirit with its property of feeling, like feeling the breath of air.
14. Then God assumes a luminous form as the state of His own substantiality, and this is placed as a spark of fire in the sheath of the intellect.
15. The light then melts into water which is the same substance as itself. This fluid substance contains the property of taste.
16. The same is condensed in the form of a solid substance, which is the same with the Divine Mind. This becomes the earth bearing in its bosom the property of smell.
17. Again God represents Himself to our intellect as one infinite and uniform duration. Measures in seconds and other divisions are only manifestations of the succession of our thoughts.
18. The other ways in which God presents Himself to our intellects are that, He is holy, infinitely glorious, seen within us, and without beginning, middle or end. He has no rising or setting and exists of Himself without a substratum and as the substratum of all.
19. This knowledge of God is bliss itself, and His creation is identical with himself. Ignorance of God leads to knowledge of the objective world, and its extinction is the way to know the eternity of His existence.
20. Brahma is conceived in our souls as He is represented to us by our consciousness, just like in our all comprehensive minds we know all other things according to our ideas of them.
21. Of these, only those things are true which we derive from our well-directed understanding. All those are untrue which the mind paints to us from the impressions of senses and the meanings of words that are incapable of expressing the nature of the indefinable and indescribable God.
22. Know the unreal world which appears as real, and the reality of God which appears as unreality, to be of the manner of air in motion and at rest. The visible world is like moving air that appears true to those who have no knowledge of the invisible God, who is as calm as the still air underlying the ethereal air and its motions.
23. A thing may appear different from another, and yet be the same with it. The light in the fire is the same fire. So the visible world arising from invisible Brahma appears as another reality even though it is same as the reality of God.
24. All things whether being or not being exist in God as their invisible and unknown source and cause. Just like clay in the earth is the cause of the would-be doll, the growing tree of a future carving, and the black powder of an ink not yet made.
25. One thing is exhibited as another in the great desert of the Divine Mind that shows the phenomena of the world like figures in a mirage.
26. The wise soul thinks this world as one with its source, Divine Consciousness. In the same way he considers a tree no way different from its parent seed.
27. As the sweetness of milk, the pungency of pepper, the fluidity of water, and the motion of winds are the inseparable properties of their substances,
28. so this creation is inseparable from the spirit of Brahma. It is a mere form of the one Supreme Soul, beside which there is nothing in reality.
29. This world is the manifestation of the luster of the gem of the Divine Mind. It has no other cause except the essence of Brahma, which is nothing other than its material cause, the Supreme Soul itself.
30. The will, the mind, the individual soul, and its consciousness are all the offspring of Divine exercise of Consciousness. There is nothing that can be produced by exertion of any power without direction of Consciousness.
31. There is nothing that rises or sets anywhere, or appears or disappears at anytime. Everything is unborn at all times and lies quiet in Divine Consciousness which is as solid as a massive rock.
32. It is imagination to explain things as formations of multitudes of combinations of atoms and to suppose every particle to be composed of minute infinitesimals because none of them could combine of themselves except by direction of the eternal mind.
33. All force resides in some living principle, just as the waking, sleeping and dreaming states appertain to the individual soul, and as the undulation of waves exists in the water or the current of the stream that lies hidden in it.
34. When the individual soul feels renunciation towards worldly enjoyments, scriptures say it has reached its highest perfection.
35. As the mind is freed from its choice and dislike of things, so the soul is liberated by avoiding its egoism and personality. Then it no longer is conscious of the pain that attends future birth and reincarnation.
36. Whoever in his understanding comes to know this state of supreme and inexpressible joy, he is sure to overcome all his worldly appetites that bind him fast to this earth.
37. But whoever labors in his mind with affections to this world, he has to wander in it continually like in the whirlpool of a stream, and he destroys the supreme joy of his soul in his continuous turmoil.
38. It was the lotus-born Brahma who was first conscious of his egoism and who, by the will of his mind, spread out this universe.
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Chapter 3.62 — Fate Is What Determines the Result of Action
1. Vasishta continued:— These myriads of worlds and millennia of kalpa ages are no more real in themselves than our false computation of the millionth part of an atom or the twinkling of an eye.
2. It is our error that represents them as true to us, though they are as false as our calculation of those infinitesimals.
3. These creations, whether past or future, follow one another in endless succession like overflowing currents of water with all the waves, eddies and whirlpools in them.
4. The idea of these created worlds is as false as a delusive mirage that presents a stream of water flowing with strings of flowers fallen from the plants on the shore.
5. Perceived creation is as baseless as a city in a dream or a magic show, or like a mountain in fiction or an imaginary castle in the air.
6. Rama said, “Sage, the drift of your reasoning leads to the establishment of the identity of the perceived creation with the creator, and that this unity of both is the belief of the learned and wise.
7. Now tell me, what do you have to say with regard to material bodies as they exist on earth? What causes the body to be subject to the causes unknown to inner spirits?”
8. Vasishta replied:— Divine Consciousness has an active, supernatural energy called the predominant Decree, Fate or Destiny which must come to pass and bear its command over all our actions and desires.
9. She is invested from the beginning with irresistible and multifarious powers. She destines the manner in which everything is to take place and continue forever.
10. She is the essential cause of all essence, and the chief mover of the intellect. She is called the great power of powers and remains as the great viewer of all things.
11. She is called the great agency and the great producer of all events. She is known as the chief mover of occurrences, and she is the soul and source of all accidents. (chit shakti, power of consciousness; Mahasatta, Great Existence; Mahachiti, Great Intelligence; Mahashakti, Great Power; Mahadrishti, Great Vision; Mahakriya, Great Doing; Mahodbhava, Great Becoming, and Mahaspanda, Great Vibration).
12. She whirls worlds like straw and bears her sway over gods and demons. She commands the naaga snakes and the mountain monsters to the end of time.
13. Sometimes she is thought of as an attribute of divine essence, remaining pictured in her ever varying colors in the hollow emptiness of Divine Consciousness.
14. For the understanding of those ignorant in spiritual knowledge, the learned have explained that Brahma the Creator is identical with the Spirit of Brahma, and by destiny they mean his creation.
15. The immovable spirit of Brahma appears to be full of moving creatures. The infinity of divine existence seems to teem with finite creation in the midst of it, like a grove of trees growing under the vault of the hollow sky.
16. The unawake spirit of God reflects various images in itself (as in a dream), like the reflection of a dense forest in the lens of a crystal stone. The creator Brahma, in the hollow sphere of the Divine Mind, understood these reflections as the prototype of the destined creation.
17. Consciousness naturally exhibits a variety of forms in itself, just as the body of an embodied person exhibits its various members. The lotus-born Brahma took these various forms in itself to be the several parts in the great body of the cosmos.
18. This foreknowledge of events imprinted in the Consciousness of God is called Destiny which extends over all things at all times.
19. Destiny comprises the knowledge of the causes that move, support and sustain all things in their proper order, and that such and such a cause must produce such and such effect forever.
20. This destiny is the force or mobile power that moves all men, animals, plants and inanimate creations. It is the beginning or primary source of time and the motion of all beings.
21. It is combined with Divine Power, and this combination of them into one is the cause of the production and existence of the world.
22. It is the union or conformity of human effort with the course of destiny or decree of God that is productive of certain ends which are respectively called their destiny and destined effects.
23. What more do you have to ask me, Rama, with regard to destiny and self-exertion when I tell you that it is destined that all beings take themselves to their proper actions, in the destined or prescribed manner, in order to bring about the desired result?
24. A person who relies on predestination, sitting idly and quietly under the belief that he is being fed by his fixed lot, is said to depend on his destiny alone (a fatalist).
25. By sitting idly and waiting on Providence for the whole of his life, he gains nothing and soon comes to lose his good sense and energy, and finally dies from the famine of his sole reliance upon destiny.
26. It is quite certain that whatever is destined must surely come to pass of its own accord, and that it is impossible to prevent it by the foresight of gods and men.
27. Yet the intelligent ought not cease to exert their activity and only rely on their fates. They must know that it is our effort that brings destiny into action.
28. Destiny is inactive and abortive, without an active power to enforce it to action. It is human activity that produces effect or production in nature by the help of destiny.
29. Depend on destiny and remain both deaf and dumb as a doll. Be inactive and become dull and torpid as a block. Say, what is the good of this vital breath, unless it has its vitality and activity?
30. It is good to sit quietly by restraining even the vital breath in yoga meditation. With such practice one can obtain his liberation. Otherwise, an inactive man is not to be called a yogi but an idler and a beggar.
31. Both activity and inactivity are good for our liberation from pain, but the high minded esteem that to be better which saves them from the greater pain of regeneration.
32. This inactive destiny, meditation, is a type of the latent Brahma, and who so leans towards it by laying aside his busy course is truly installed in the supremely holy state of highest joy.
33. Inert destiny resides everywhere in the manner of Brahma, the latent soul in all bodies, and evolves itself in various shapes by means of activity in all its productions.
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Chapter 3.63 — No Duality; Only the Appearance of Forms of the One Divine Mind
1. Vasishta continued:— The essence of Brahma is all in all and ever remains in every manner in everything in all places. It is omnipotence, omniform and the lord God of all.
2. This essence is the Spirit or Soul whose omnipotence develops itself sometimes in the form of intellectual activity and sometimes in the tranquility of soul. Sometimes it shows itself in the movement of bodies, and at others in the force of the passions and emotions of the soul. Sometimes as something in the form of creation, and at another as nothing in the annihilation of the world.
3. Whenever it realizes itself anywhere in any form or state, it is then viewed in the same manner at the same place and time.
4. The absolute omnipotence manifests itself as it likes and appears to us. All its powers are exhibited in one form or another to our view and understandings.
5. These powers are of many kinds, and are primarily concentrated in the Divine Soul or Spirit. The potentialities are the Active and Passive powers, also the Rational and Irrational and all others.
6. These varieties of powers are the inventions of the learned for their own purpose and understanding. But there is no such distinction in Divine Consciousness.
7. There is no duality in reality. The difference consists in shape and not substance. Thus the waves in the waters of the sea and the bracelets formed of gold are no more than modifications of the same substances.
8. The form of a thing is said to be so and so not because of its reality but because of its appearance. We affirm that a rope is a snake, but we have neither the outward perception nor inner thought of a snake in it. Hence all appearances are delusions of sense.
9. It is the Universal Soul that shows itself in some form or other to our deluded senses and understandings, and also according to our different apprehensions of the same thing.
10. Only the ignorant understand the omniform God to be all forms of things. The learned know the forms to be modifications of the various powers of the Almighty, and not the figures themselves.
11. Whether forms appear real or unreal is to be known to men according to their different apprehensions, which Brahma is pleased to exhibit in any particular form to their minds and senses.
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Chapter 3.64 — Uncaused Brahma Creates Rules of Causation for Forms
1. Vasishta resumed:— The Supreme Deity is the all-pervading spirit and the great God and Lord of all. He is without beginning or end and is identical with the infinite bliss of his translucent self-reflection.
2. It is from this supreme joy and purely intellectual substance that the individual soul and mind have their rise before their production of the Universe.
3. Rama asked, “How could the self-reflection of Brahma, as the infinite spirit and one without a second, conceive in it a finite individual soul other than itself and which was not in being?”
4. Vasishta replied:— The immense and transparent spirit of Brahma remained in a state of non-existence (asat), a state of ineffable bliss as seen by the adept yogi, but of formidable vastness as conceived by the uninitiated novice.
5. This state of supreme bliss, ever tranquil and full with the pure essence of God, is altogether indefinable and incomprehensible, even by the most proficient in divine knowledge.
6. Thence springs a power (an aspect), like the germ of a seed, possessed of consciousness and energy which is called the living and conscious soul and which must last until its final liberation.
7. The vast empty sphere of this being’s clear mirror of the mind reflects images of innumerable worlds set above one another, like statues engraved upon it.
8. Rama, know that the individual soul is an extension of Divine Spirit, like the swelling of the sea and the burning of a candle when its flame is unshaken by the wind.
9. The individual soul is possessed of a finite awareness as distinguished from the clear and calm consciousness of the Divine Spirit. Its vitality is the nature of the living God, but it is only a flash of the empty consciousness of Brahma.
10. Vitality is the essential property of the soul, resembling the inseparable properties of motion in wind, warmth in fire and coldness in ice.
11. When we forget the nature of Divine Consciousness and Spirit, our self-consciousness leaves us with a knowledge of ourselves and this is called the individual soul.
12. It is by means of this positive consciousness that we know our egoism or selfexistence. It strikes us more glaringly than a spark of fire, and enlightens us to the knowledge of ourselves more than any other light.
13. When we look up to heaven we see a blue vault beyond which our eyes have no the power to pierce. In the same way, when we inquire into the nature of soul, we cannot see beyond consciousness of ourselves.
14. Our knowledge of the soul is presented to us in the form of an ego that is known by its thoughts, like the empty sky appearing as a blue sphere because of the clouds.
15. Ego differentiates the soul from our ideas of space and time and stirs within it like the breath of winds by reason of its subjectivity of thoughts.
16. The subject of thoughts is known as ego. It is also called various other names like the intellect, the soul, the mind, illusion (maya) and nature (prakriti).
17. The mind (chetas) which is the subject of thoughts contemplates on the nature of elementary matter, and thus becomes of itself the quintessence of the five elements.
18. The quintessential mind next becomes like a spark of fire and remains like a dim star, a nebula in the emptiness of the yet unborn universe.
19. The mind takes the form of a spark of fire by thinking on its essence, which gradually develops itself like a seed in the form of the cosmic egg by its internal force.
20. The same fiery spark figuratively called the cosmic egg (brahmanda) became like a snowball in water and conceived the great Brahma within its hollow womb.
21. Then as sensuous spirits assume some bodily forms at pleasure, although they dissolve like a magic city in empty air, so this Brahma appeared to view in an embodied form.
22. Some of them appear in the form of immovable, and others in those of moving beings. Some assume the shapes of aerials or whatever their fondness leads them to choose for themselves.
23. Thus in the beginning of creation, the first born living being had a form for himself as he liked. Afterwards he created the world in his form of Brahma or Virinchi (“Creator”).
24. Whatever the selfborn and self-willed soul wishes to produce, the same appears immediately to view as produced of its own accord.
25. Brahma, originating in Divine Consciousness, was by his nature the primary cause of all without any cause of his own. He appointed the acts of men to be the cause of their transition from one state to another in the course of the world.
26. Thoughts naturally rise in the mind to subside in itself, like water foaming, but acts done thereby bind us like passing froth or flying birds are caught by ropes and traps.
27. Thoughts are the seeds of action and action is the soul of life. Past acts produce future consequence, but inaction is attended with no result.
28. The individual soul bears its vitality like a seed bears the germ in its bosom. This sprouts forth in future acts, like the seed in various forms of leaves, fruits and flowers of trees.
29. All other individual souls that appeared in the various forms of their bodies had such forms given to them by Brahma according to their acts and desires in pre-material creations in former kalpa ages.
30. So people’s own personal acts are the causes of their repeated births and deaths in this or other worlds. They ascend higher or sink lower by virtue of good or bad deeds that proceed from their hearts and the nature of their souls.
31. Our actions are the efforts of our minds and they shape our good or bad destinies according to their merit or demerit. All fate and luck in the existing world are the fruits and flowers of past acts, even of those done in prior kalpa ages. This is called their destiny.
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Chapter 3.65 — Nature of the Individual Soul as the Same as Universal Consciousness
1. Vasishta continued:— At first Mind sprang from the supreme Cause of all. This mind is the active soul which resides in the Supreme Soul.
2. The mind hangs in doubt between what is and what is not, and what is right and what is wrong. It forgets the past by its willful negligence like the scent of a fleeting odor.
3. Yet there is no difference between these seeming contraries. The dualities of Brahma and the soul, the mind and illusion (maya), the agent and act, and the world of phenomena and that of ideals, all blend together in the unity of God.
4. There is only one Universal Soul displaying its Consciousness like a vast ocean and extending its consciousness like an endless sea.
5. What is true and real shines forth amidst all that is untrue and unreal. So the subjective essence of the mind exists amidst all its airy and fleeting dreams in sleep. Thus the world is both true and untrue as regards its existence in God and its external phenomena.
6. The false conception, either of the reality or unreality of the outer world, does not spring in the mind which is conscious only of its operations and not of outward phenomena. This conception is like the deception of a magic show and is attendant to all sensuous minds.
7. It is the long habit of thinking the unreal world to be real that makes it appear as such to the unthinking, like a protracted sleep makes its visionary scenes appear as true to the dreaming soul. It is the lack of reflection that causes us to mistake a man in a block of wood.
8. Lack of spiritual light misleads the mind from its rationality and makes it take its false imaginations for true, like children, through their fear and lack of true knowledge, are impressed with a belief of ghosts in shadows.
9. The mind is inclined of its own tendency to assign an individual soul to the Divine Spirit which is devoid of name, form or figure and is beyond comprehension.
10. Knowledge of the living state (personality) leads to that of egoism which is the cause of reasoning. This again introduces sensations and finally the conscious body.
11. This bondage of the soul in body necessitates a heaven and hell for lack of its liberation. Then the acts of the body become the seeds of our endless reincarnations in this world.
12. As there is no difference between the soul, consciousness and life, so there is no duality in the individual soul and consciousness, or in the body and its acts which are inseparable from each other.
13. Acts are the causes of bodies and the body is not the mind. The mind is one with egoism, and the ego is the individual soul. The individual soul is one with Divine Consciousness and this soul is all and the lord God of all.
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Chapter 3.66 — Individual Souls Mistake Subjective for Objective
1. Thus Rama, there is one true essence which appears as many by our mistake. This variety is caused by the production of one from the other, as one lamp is lighted from another.
2. By knowing one’s self as nothing, as it was before it came into being, and by considering the falsity of his notions, no one can have any cause for grief.
3. Man is only a being of his own conception. By getting rid of this concept, he is freed from his idea of the duality of the world, just as one wearing shoes perceives the whole earth he treads upon to be covered with skin.
4. As the plantain tree has no pith except its manifold coats, so there is no materiality to the world other than our false conceptions of it.
5. Our births are followed by childhood, youth, old age and death, one after the other, and then opens the prospect of a heaven or hell to our view, like passing phantoms before the flighty mind.
6. As the clear eye sees bubbles of light in the empty sky, so the thoughtless mind sees the sky full of luminous bodies (which are only phantoms of the brain).
7. As the one moon appears as two to the dim sighted eye, so the intellect, corrupted by influence of the senses, sees a duality in the unity of the Supreme Spirit.
8. As the giddiness of wine presents the pictures of trees before the drunken eye, so does the inebriation of sensation present the phantoms of the world before the excited intellect.
9. Know the revolution of the visible world to resemble the revolving wheel of a potter’s mill which they turn about in play like the rotating ball of a terrestrial globe.
10. When the consciousness thinks of another thing as something other than itself, it falls into the error of dualism. But when it concentrates its thoughts within, it loses the sense of objective duality.
11. There is nothing beside Consciousness except the thoughts on which it dwells. Its sensations are all at rest as it comes to know the non-existence of objects.
12. When the weak intellect is quiet by its union with the Supreme and by suppression of its functions, it is then called quiescent or indifferent (sansanta).
13. It is the weak intellect that thinks of external things, but sound understanding ceases all thoughts. It is a slight intoxication that makes one rave and revel about, while deep drinking is dead to all excitements.
14. When sound and consummate understanding runs in one course towards its main reservoir of the Supreme, it becomes divested of its knowledge of the external things and, in the presence of the one and no other, it also loses its selfconsciousness.
15. Perfected understanding finds the errors to which it is exposed by its sensation of the external things and comes to know that birth and life and all acts and sights of the living state are as false as dreams.
16. The mind, being repressed from its natural flight, can have no thought of anything. It is lost in itself. When the natural heat of fire or motion of the wind become extinct, they are annihilated of themselves.
17. Without the suppression of mental operations, the mind must continue in its misconceptions, like that of mistaking a rope for a snake through ignorance.
18. It is not difficult to repress the action of the mind and rouse our consciousness in order to heal our souls of the malady of their mistaken notion of the world.
19. If you can succeed suppressing the desires of your restless mind at anytime, you are sure to obtain your liberation even instantly and without fail.
20. If you will only turn to the side of your subjective consciousness, you will get rid of the objective world in the same manner as one is freed from his fear of snake in a rope by his examination of the thing.
21. If it is possible to get rid of the restless mind, which is the source of all our desires, then it is possible for anyone to attain the chief end of liberation.
22. When high minded men are seen to give up their lives like straws (in an honorable cause), there is no reason why they should be reluctant to abandon their desires for the sake of their chief good of liberation.
23. Remain unfettered by forsaking the desires of your greedy mind. What is the good of getting sensible objects that we are sure to lose?
24. The liberated are already in sight of the immortality of their souls and of God, like one who has fruit in his hand or sees a mountain visible before him.
25. It is only the Spirit of God that abides in everything in these world appearances which rise to be seen like the waves of the waters of the great deluge. It is His knowledge that is attended with the supreme good of liberation. Ignorance of that Supreme Being binds the mind to the interminable bondage of the world.
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Chapter 3.67 — Lecture on Creation: Still Consciousness & Moving Thoughts
1. Rama said, “Leaving the mind, please tell me more about the nature of the individual soul. What relation does it have to the Supreme Soul? How did the individual soul spring from the Supreme Soul and what is its essence?”
2. Vasishta replied:— Know that Brahma is omnipresent and is the Lord of all at all times. He manifests himself in whatever attribute he assumes to himself of his free will.
3. The attribute which the Universal Soul assumes to itself in the form of perception (chetana) is known by the term “individual soul”, which possesses the power of volition in itself.
4. There are two causal principles combined with the individual soul, namely its predestination resulting from its prior acts and volitions and its later free will. These branch forth severally into the various causes of birth, death and existence of beings.
5. Rama said, “Such being the case, tell me, O greatest of sages, what does this predestination mean? What are these acts and how do they become the causal agents of subsequent events?”
6. Vasishta replied:— Consciousness (chit) has its own nature or properties of vibration and rest, like the movement and stillness of wind in the air. Its agitation is the cause of its action. Otherwise it is calm and quiet as a dead block of stone.
7. Its vibration appears in the fluctuations of the mind and its calmness in the lack of mental activity and exertions, as in the detachment of the stillness of yoga meditation.
8. The vibrations of consciousness, which are the movements of thoughts, lead to its continual rebirths; its quietness settles it in the state of the immovable Brahma. The movement of thought is known to be the cause of the living state and all its actions.
9. This vibrating intellect is the thinking Soul, and it is known as the living agent of actions, the primary seed of the universe.
10. This secondary soul then assumes a luminous form according to the light of its thoughts, and afterwards becomes many and diverse at its will and through the pulsations of the primary consciousness all over the creation.
11. The pulsating intellect or soul, having passed through many transformations, is at last freed from its motion and migration. Some souls pass through a thousand births and forms while others obtain their liberation in a single birth.
12. The human soul, being a pulsating intellect, is of its own nature prone to assume dualism. So it becomes its own cause of its reincarnations and sufferings, as also of its transient bliss or misery in heaven or hell.
13. As the same gold is changed into the forms of bracelets and other things, and as the same gross matter appears in the different forms of wood and stone, so the uniform soul of God appears as multiform according to his various modes and attributes.
14. An error of the human mind makes it view the forms as realities. It is a fallacy that causes one to think his soul, which is free from birth and form, is born, lives and dies, just like a man sees a city rise and fall in his delirium.
15. The moving, varying intellect, ignorant of its unity with the unchangeable reality of God, and also desiring its enjoyment peculiar to its varied state, falsely conceives its unreal ego-identity as reality.
16. As Lavana, the King of Mathura, falsely thought he was an outcaste tribal, so consciousness thinks on its own different states of existence and that of the world.
17. All this world is the phantom of an false imagination, O Rama! It is no more than the swelling of the waters of the deep.
18. Consciousness is always busy exercising the intellect of its own intelligences and the innate principles of its action. It is like the sea seen swelling with its waters moving of themselves in waves.
19. The intellect is like the water in the wide expanse of Brahma. Its movement raises the waving thoughts in the mind, resembling the bubbles of water, and produces the revolutions of individual souls like eddies in the sea of this world.
20. Know your soul, O gentle Rama, to be a phenomenon of the all pervading Brahma who is both the subject and object of his consciousness, and who has placed a particle of himself in you, like the breath of a mighty lion.
21. The intellect with its consciousness constitutes the individual soul, and the soul with the will forms the mind. Its knowing power is understanding and its retentiveness is called its memory. Its subjectivity of selfishness is called egoism, and its error is called illusion (maya).
22. The mind by its imagination stretches out this world which is as false as the phantom of paradise or a city drawn in air.
23. The objective knowledge of the world in the mind is as false as the appearance of chains of pearls in the sky, or like visionary scenes in a dream.
24. The soul, ever pure and self sufficient in its nature, remaining in its own state of tranquility, is not perceived by the misdirected mind dwelling on its delusive dreams.
25. The objective world is called waking (jagata) because it is perceived in the waking state of the soul. The subjective mind is allied to sleep (swapna) because the mind is active during sleeping and dreaming states. Ego is related to deep sleep (susupta) when we are unconscious of ourselves. The fourth state or pure Consciousness (turiya or turya) is the trance or hibernation of the soul.
26. That which is above these four conditions is the state of ultimate bliss: ecstasy. It is by reliance on that supremely pure essence of God that one is exempt from all his causes of grief and sorrow.
27. Everything is displayed in Him and all things are absorbed in Him. This world is neither a reality here nor there. It presents only the false appearance of strings of pearls in the sky.
28. And yet God is said to be the cause and substratum of all these unobstructed phantoms rising to view, just as empty air is said to be the receptacle for rising trees. Thus the non-causing God is said to be the cause of this uncaused world which only exists in our illusive conceptions and presents itself to our delusive sensations of it.
29. As a polished piece of iron reflects a grosser piece, so do our finer or inner sensations take the representations of the gross forms of their particular objects.
30. These sensations are conveyed to the mind, then to the individual soul and intellect in the same manner as the roots supply sap to the stem, then to the branches, and lastly to the fruits of trees.
31. As a seed produces fruit and the fruit contains the seed in itself, so the intellect producing the mind and its thoughts can not get rid of them, but is contained in and is reproduced by them in successive reincarnations.
32. There is some difference between the comparison of the unconscious seed and tree with the conscious intellect and mind, but the thoughts of the creator and creation, like the seed and tree, reproduce one another without end.
33. There is this difference between the unconscious seed and conscious intellect: the former continually reproduces itself, while the latter ceases its process upon attainment of liberation. Yet the ideas of creator and creation reproduce each other without end.
34. Yet our understanding shows it as clearly as sunlight reveals forms and colors of objects: that there is one eternal God of truth who is of the form of intellectual light and who shows the forms of all things that proceed from him.
35. As a hole dug in the ground presents a hollow, so the reasoning of every system of sound philosophy establishes the existence of the transcendental void as the cause of all.
36. As a prismatic crystal represents various colors in its prisms, without being tinged by them, so the transparent essence of Brahma shows the groups of worlds in its hollow bosom without its connection with them.
37. The Universal Soul is the source, and not the substance of all these vast masses of worlds, just as the seed is the embryo and not the matter of the trees and plants and their fruits and flowers that grow from them.
38. Rama said, “O how wonderful is this world which presents its unreality as a reality to us in all its endless forms! Though situated in the Divine Self, it appears to be quite apart from it. O how it makes its minuteness seem so very immense to us!
39. I see how this shadowy scene of the world appearing in the Divine Soul and becoming like an orb by virtue of the ideal particles (tanmatras) of the divine essence in it. I find it like a snow ball or icicle made of frozen frost.”
40. “Now tell me sage, how do the spiritual particles increase in bulk? How was the body of the selfborn Brahma produced from Brahman? Tell me also how these objects in nature come into existence in their material forms?”
41. Vasishta replied:— This form which sprang of itself from its own essence is too incredible and is without parallel. It is altogether inconceivable how something is produced of its own conception.
42. Just imagine, O Rama, how the unexpanded phantom of a vetala ghost swells huge in the sight of fearful children. Then in the same manner imagine the appearance of the living spirit from the entity of Brahma.
43. This living spirit is a development of Brahma, the Universal Soul. It is holy and a commensurable and finite being. Having a personality of its own, it remains as an impersonal unreality in the essence of the self-existent God. Afterwards, being separated from its source, it has a different name given to it.
44. As Brahma, the all extended and infinite soul, wills and becomes the definite individual soul, so the living spirit, by its volition, afterwards becomes the mind.
45. The mind, which is the principle of exercise of intellect, takes a form of its own. Likewise, life assumes an airy form in the midst of emptiness.
46. The wakeful living god, without anything whereby we measure time, is yet conscious of its course by means of his thoughts. He has the notion of a brilliant icicle of the form of the future cosmic egg in his mind.
47. Then the individual soul feels in itself the sense of its consciousness and by thinking “What am I?” is conscious of its egoism.
48. Next this god finds in his understanding knowledge of the word “taste” and gets the notion of it becoming the object of a particular organ of sense, to be hereafter called “the tongue.”
49. The individual soul then finds out in his mind the meaning of the word “light,” which was afterwards to sparkle in the eye, the particular organ of sight.
50. Next the god comes to know in his mind the property of smell and the organ of smelling, and also the substance of earth to which it appertains as its inseparable property.
51. In this manner the individual soul becomes acquainted with the other sensations and the organs to which they appertain as their inseparable properties and objects.
52. The unsubstantial living spirit which derives its being from the essence of the substantial Brahma, comes next to acquire the knowledge of sound, the object of the organ of hearing, and the property of air.
53a It then comes to understand the meaning of the word touch as the medium of feeling, and also to know the tongue as the only organ of taste.
53b It finds the property of color to be the peculiar object of the eye, the organ of sight, and that smell is an object peculiar to the nose, the organ of the sense of smelling.
54. The individual soul is thus the common receptacle of the sensations, and source of the senses, which it develops afterwards in the organs of sense in the body. It perceives the sensation of sensible objects through the perceptive holes that convey their perceptions into the sensorium of the mind.
55. Such, O Rama, is how it was with the first animated being. It remains like this with all living animals. All sensations are represented in the Soul of the world in its spiritual form (ativahika) called the subtle body or astral body (sukshma or lingadeha).
56. The nature of this abstruse essence is as indefinable as that of the spirit. It appears to be in motion when it really is at rest, as in our idea of the soul.
57. As measure and dimensions are foreign to our notion of Brahma, the all conscious Soul, so they are quite foreign to spirit also, which is no more than the motive power of the soul.
58. As the notion of the spiritual is distinct from material and corporeal, so the notion of Brahma is quite apart from everything, except that of his self-consciousness.
59. Rama said, “If consciousness is identical with Brahma, and our consciousness of ourselves as Brahma, make us identical with Brahma Himself, then what is the use of devising a duality of the soul, or of talking of the liberation and final absorption of the one in the other?”
60. Vasishta replied:— Rama, your question is irrelevant at this time when I was going to prove another thing. Nothing can be appropriate out of its proper time and place, as the untimely offering of flowers is not acceptable to the gods.
61. A word full of meaning becomes meaningless out of its proper place, just like the offering of flowers to gods and guests out of their proper time.
62. There is a time to introduce a subject and another to hold silence over it. Everything becomes fruitful in its proper season.
63. But to resume our subject. The individual soul afterwards appears from Him like the human soul appears in dreaming, and the individual soul thought in himself that he was the great father of created beings in time to come.
64. He uttered the syllable Om and was conscious of its meaning in his mind, which soon displayed all forms of beings to his mental vision.
65. All these were unrealities displayed in the empty sphere of the Divine Mind. The shadowy world seemed like a huge mountain floating in the air before him.
66. It was neither born of itself nor was it made by Brahma. It is not destroyed at anytime by any other power. It was Brahma himself, appearing like the phantom of city in the sky.
67. As the living Brahma and other spiritual beings are unreal in their nature, so also the essences of other beings, from the big giant to the little ant, are only mere unrealities in their substance.
68. It is our false understanding that represents these unrealities as real ones to us. Clear understanding will find all things, from the great Brahma down to the minutest insect, to vanish entirely from its sight.
69. The same cause that produces Brahma also produces insects. It is the greater depravity of the mind that causes its rebirth in the contemptible forms of worms.
70. The living being possessed of a rational soul and devoted to the cultivation of the mind attains to the state of man. He then acts righteously for attaining a better state in after life.
71. It is wrong to suppose that one’s elevation is the result of the merit of his acts, and his degradation to the condition of worms to result from his former acts of demerit, because there is the same particle of consciousness in both. This being known will destroy the mistaken difference between the great and small.
72. The notions of the measurer, measure and measurable are not separate from consciousness (or mind). Therefore the controversy between unity and duality is as futile as the horns of a rabbit or a lake of lotuses in the air.
73. It is our misconception of blissful Brahma that produces the wrong notion of solid substances in us. This imagination of our own making binds us like silk-worms are bound in cocoons formed by their own saliva fluid.
74. The knower perceives everything in his mind as revealed by Brahma. The knower meets with everything as allotted by God for his share.
75. It is the immutable law of nature that nothing can be otherwise than what it is ordained to be. There is nothing in nature that can change its nature for a minute in a whole kalpa age.
76. And yet this creation is a false phantom, and so is the growth and dissolution of all created beings, as is also our enjoyment of them.
77. Brahma is pure, all pervading, infinite and absolute. It is only for our misery that we take him for impure matter and unreal substance, and as definite and limited pluralities.
78. It is the spoiled imagination of children that fancies water and its waves to be different things and makes a false distinction between those which really are the same thing.
79. It is His undivided self that expands itself in visible nature, and which appears like a duality, like waves and the sea, and bracelets and gold. Thus He of himself appears as other than himself.
80. We are led to imagine the visible and changing world as having sprung from the invisible and immutable spirit which manifests itself in the form of the mind that produced the ego. Thus we have the visible from the invisible, and the mind and the ego from the same source.
81. Mind joined with ego produces notions of elementary principles or elemental particles that the individual soul, combined with its intellect, derives from the main source of Brahma, and of which it formed the phenomenal world.
82. Thus the mind being realized from Brahma sees before it whatever it imagines. Whatever consciousness thinks upon, whether it is a reality or unreality, the same comes to take place. The reflection truly passes into reality.
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Chapter 3.68 — Story of the Demoness Karkati, Vishuchika (Cholera) & Suchi (Needle); Her Tapas
1. Vasishta said:— Hear me relate to you, Rama, an old story bearing upon this subject and relating to a difficult question that was resolved by a rakshasi (female demon).
2. There lived on the north of Himalaya a heinous rakshasi named Karkati, a crooked crab, who was as dark as ink and as stalwart as a rock, with limbs strong enough to split the sturdy oak.
3. She was also known as Vishuchika or Choleric Pain, by which she was ever afflicted, and which had reduced her frame like that of Vindhya Hill which was pushed down (by the curse of Agastya).
4. Her eyeballs were blazing like fires. Her stature reaching half way to the sky. She was covered by a blue garment, like the shade of night wrapping the atmosphere.
5. A white cloak covered her head like a cloud fragment. The long erect hairs of her head stood like a dark cloud on her crest.
6. Her eyes flashed like lightning, and her sharp hooked nails glistened like sapphires. Her legs were as long as tamara trees, and her loud laughter was like a burst of frost.
7. A string of dried bones decorated her body like a wreath of flowers. Traces of dead bodies adorned every part of her body.
8. She frolicked in the company of vetala ghosts, with human skulls hanging down her ears like earrings. When she stretched out her arms she looked like she was going to pluck the sun from his sphere.
9. Her huge body lacked its necessary food, causing her stomach fire to blaze like an undersea flame that the waters of the deep are unable to quench.
10. Nothing could ever satisfy the insatiable hunger of this big bellied monster, or satisfy her licking tongue that was always stretched out like a flame of fire.
11. She thought to herself, “O, if just once I could to the land of Asia (Jambudwipa), I would devour all its men in one swoop and feast on them continually like an undersea fire upon the waters.
12. As clouds cool burning sands by their rain, so will I allay the burning fire of my hunger there. It is settled as the best plan to support my life at this critical moment.”
13. “All men are well guarded by their mantras, medicines, austerities, devotions and charities from all evils of the world. Therefore it is impossible for anybody to destroy the indestructible devotee.
14. I will perform the most rigorous austerities with an unflinching heart and mind, because it is by intensity of effort that we may gain what is otherwise hard to be had.”
15. Having thought so, she went to an inaccessible mountain for the purpose of destroying all animal beings.
16. She climbed to the top of the mountain, scrambling over it with her hands and feet, and stood on it with her body looking a cloud and her eyeballs flashing like lightning.
17. Having reached the summit, she made her ablution and then sat in her tapas. Her steadfast eyeballs resembled the two orbs of the sun and moon fixed on one object.
18. She passed many a day and month there, and saw the course of many a season and year. She exposed her huge body to the rigor of heat and cold, like the hill itself (on which she sat).
19. She with her huge black body remained unmoved as a thick dark cloud on the mountain top. Her jet black hairs stood up as if to touch the sky.
20. Seeing her body beaten by the blasts and covered with nothing but her ragged skin, and her hairs standing up to their end, tossed to and fro by the raging winds, while the twinkling of her eyelids shed a whitish glare on her dark frame, God Brahma appeared before her.
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Chapter 3.69 — Brahma Declares Karkati’s Tapas Complete, Grants Her Boon to Be a Pin to Cause Pain
1. Vasishta resumed:— After the passing of a thousand years, Brahma appeared to Karkati in order to put an end to the intensity of her austerities and crown her with success and the reward of her tapas.
2. She saluted him internally in her mind and remained fixed in her position thinking about the boon she should beg of him for allaying her keen appetite.
3. She soon recollected a certain request, which she should present to her complying god. It was to transform her soft and flexible form to the shape of an inflexible iron needle with which she could torment all living beings.
4. At Brahma’s bidding, she thought in herself, “I will become as thin as a minute pin in order to enter imperceptibly into the hearts of animals, like the fragrance of flowers enters the nostrils.
5. By this means will I suck blood from the heart of beings to my heart’s satisfaction. In this way my hunger will be satisfied and my appetite gratified to the greatest delight of my soul.”
6. As she was thinking in this manner, the god discovered her sinister motives, contrary to the character of a yogi, and approached her with a voice resembling the roaring of clouds.
7. Brahma said, “Daughter Karkati of the rakshasa race, who sits here like a cloud on the inaccessible top of this mountain, know that I am pleased with your tapas and bid you now to raise yourself and receive the boon that you desire of me.”
8. Karkati answered, “O Lord of the past and future! If you are inclined to grant my request, then please confer on me the boon of transforming my un-iron-like body to the form of an iron needle.”
9. Vasishta said:— The god pronounced “Be it so,” and added, “You will be like a pin (Suchi) and you shall be called choleric pain (Vishuchika) because you give pain to all bodies.
10. You shall be the cruel cause of acute pain to all living beings, particularly to the intemperate and hard-working fools and loose libertines who are destined to be your devoted victims.
11. Moreover shall you molest the dwellers of unhealthy districts, and the practitioners of malpractices by entering their hearts with your infectious breath, and by disturbing their sleep and deranging the liver and other intestinal parts of the body.
12. You shall be of the form of wind (in the bowels) and cause bile and flatulence under the different names of colic diseases, and attack the intemperate both among the wise and unwise.
13. The wise, when attacked by you, will be healed by repeating this magical mantra, which I will here propound for their benefit.”
14. “The mantra runs thus: ‘There lives Karkati, the rakshasi, in the north of the snowy mountain. Her name is Vishuchika, and it is for repelling her power that I repeat this mantra. Om, I bow to hring, hrang and ring, rang (the powers of Vishnu) and invoke the Vaishnavi powers to remove, destroy, root out, drive away this choleric pain far beyond the Himalayas, and afar to the orb of the moon. Om and swaha, be it so.’ ” “Let these lines be tied as an amulet on the left arm.
15. Then rub the painful part with the palm of that hand, and think the colic Karkati to be crushed under the mallet of this amulet and driven back beyond the hills with loud wailing.
16. Let the patient think the medicinal moon is seated in his heart and believe himself to be freed from death and disease, and his faith will save his life and heal his pain.
17. When the attentive adept, who having purified himself with sprinkling water in his mouth, repeats this formula, he succeeds in a short time to remove the colic pain altogether.”
18. Then, after delivering this effective amulet to the spiritual masters (siddhas) attending upon him, the lord of the three worlds disappeared in the air. He went to his splendid seat in heaven where he was received by God Indra who advanced to hail him with his praises.
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Chapter 3.70 — Karkati as Suchi, the Needle of Colic and Cholera
1. Vasishta continued:— Now this Karkati who had been as tall as a mountain-peak, and a rakshasi of the blackest kind, resembling a thick and dark cloud of the rainy season, gradually began to fade away and grow leaner and leaner day by day.
2. Her gigantic cloud-like form was soon reduced to the shape of a tree branch which afterwards became like the figure of a man, and then the measure of only a cubit.
3. It next became the length of a span in its height, and then of a finger’s length in all. Growing by degrees thinner and thinner like grain, it became at last as lean as a needle or a pin.
4. Thus she was reduced to the thinness of a needle, fit only to sew a silken robe. By her own desire that could change a hill to a grain of sand, she had become as lean as the filament of the lotus flower.
5. Thus the non-metallic Karkati was transformed into the form of Suchi, a black and slender iron needle that contained all her limbs and organs of her body and conducted her in the air anywhere she liked.
6. She saw herself as an iron pin, having neither substance nor length nor breadth of her body.
7. Her mind with its power of thought appeared as bright as a golden needle, like a streak of sapphire impregnated by sunshine.
8. Her rolling eyeballs were as dark as the spots of black clouds moved to and fro by the winds. Her sparkling pupils, piercing through their tenuous pores, gazed at the bright glory (of God).
9. She had observed the vow of silence in order to reduce the plumpness of her person, and her face radiated with joy at becoming as lean as the filament of a feather.
10. She saw a light descending on her from the air at a distance, and she was happy to find her inner spirit to be as subtle as air.
11. With her contracted eye brows, she saw the rays of light extending to her from afar, which caused the hairs on her body to stand up like those of babies at bathing.
12. Her grand energy channel called Brahma nadi or sushumna rose up to its cavity in the head called the Brahma randhra in order to greet the holy light, like the filaments of the lotus rise to receive sunlight and heat.
13. Having subdued the organs of her senses and their powers, she remained as one without an organic frame and identified with her individual soul. She resembled the intelligent principle of the Buddhists and logicians (tarkikas) which is unseen by others.
14. Her minuteness seemed to have produced the minutiae of minute philosophers called the Siddhantas. Her silence was like that of the wind confined in a cave. Her slender form of a puny pin resembled the breath of animal life which is imperceptible to the eye.
15. The little that remained of her body was as thin as the last hope of man. It was like the pencil of an extinguished flame of a lamp that has heat without light.
16. But alas! How pitiable was her folly, which a first she could not understand. She was wrong to choose the form of a slender pin for herself in order to gratify her insatiable appetite.
17. Her object was to have her food and not the contemptible form of a pin. Her heart desired one thing, and she found herself in another form that was of no use to her purpose.
18. Her silliness led her to make the unwise choice of a needle shape for herself. So it is with the short witted. They lack the sense of judging beforehand about their future good.
19. An arduous attempt to accomplish a desired object is often attended by a different result. Even success on one hand becomes a failure on another. In the same way a mirror is soiled by the breath while it shows the face to the looker.
20. How be it, having renounced her gigantic form, the rakshasi soon learnt to be content with her needle form, although she viewed her transformation as worse than her dissolution itself.
21. But see the contradictory desires of the infatuated who distaste in a trice what at one time they fondly wished. This fiend was disgusted at her needle form instead of her monstrous figure.
22. As one dish of food is easily replaced by another, suiting the taste of the gourmand, so this fiend did not hesitate to shun her gigantic body, which she took to taste the heart blood of animals in her pin form.
23. Even death is delightful to the giddy headed when they are over fond of something else. The minimum of a meager needle was desirable to the monstrous fiend to gratify her fiendish desire.
24. Now this needle took the rarefied form of air and moved about after all living beings as the colic wind in quest of sucking animal gore.
25. Its body was like fiery heat and its life the vital breath of animals. Its seat was in the sensitive heart, and it was as swift as the particles of solar and lunar beams.
26. It was as destructive as the blade of a deadly sword, and as fleet as vapors flying in air. It penetrated bodies in the minute form of odor.
27. It was ever bent to do evil, like an evil spirit, as she was now known by that name. Her sole object was to kill the lives of others at her pleasure.
28. Her body divided into two halves; one was as fine as a silken thread and the other as soft as a thread of cotton.
29. Suchi ranged all about the ten sides of the world in her two forms and pierced and penetrated into the hearts of living beings with all her excruciating pains.
30. Karkati gave up her former big body, and took the form of the acute and small needle in order to accomplish all these purposes of hers, whether they be great or little.
31. To men of little understanding, a slight business becomes an arduous task. The foolish fiend had recourse to her austerities in order to do the mean work of a needle.
32. Again, however good and great, men can hardly get rid of their natural disposition. The great rakshasi performed her austere tapas in order to become a vile pin for molesting mankind.
33. Now as Suchi was wandering about in the sky, her aerial form which was big with her heinous ambition disappeared in air like vapor, or like a thick cloud in autumn.
34. Then entering in the body of some sensualist or weak or too fat a person, this inward colic flatulence of Suchi assumes the shape of cholera.
35. Sometimes she enters the body of a lean person, but also in those of healthier and wise people, first appearing as a choleric pain, then becoming real cholera at last.
36. She is often delighted to take her seat in the hearts of the ignorant. But afterwards she is driven back by good acts and prayers, and mantras and medicines of the wise.
37. In this manner she continued many years in her rambles. Sometimes her two-part body (pin and cholera) flies in the air, but most often she creeps low on the ground.
38. She lies concealed in the dust of the ground, and under the fisted fingers of hands. She hides herself in sunbeams, in air and in the threads of cloths.
39. She is hidden in the intestines, entrails and genitals. She resides in the bodies of pale and ash colored persons. She lives in the pores, lines and lineaments of the body, and also in dry grass and in the dried beds of rivers.
40. She has her seat among the indigent, and in the naked and uncovered bodies of men, and in those who are subject to hard breathing. She dwells in places infested by flies and of obstructed ventilation, and also in green verdures excepting only mango and wood-apple trees.
41. She lurks in places scattered with bones and joints of animal bodies, and such as are disturbed by violent winds and gusts of air. She lies in dirty places, and in cold and icy grounds, and likewise in polluted cloths and places polluted by them.
42. She sits in holes and hollow places, withered trees, and spots infested by crows, flies and peacocks; also in places of dry, humid and high winds and in benumbed fingers and toes.
43. She is in cloudy regions, in cavernous districts of the form of rotten bodies, in regions of melting and driving snows, and in marshy grounds abounding in anthills and hills of malura trees.
44. She exhibits herself in the mirage of desert sand and in wildernesses abounding with ravenous beasts and snakes. Sometimes she is seen in lands infested by venomous reptiles, disgusting leeches and worms.
45. She frequents stagnant pools soiled by dry leaves and those chewed by pisacha ghosts. She haunts hovels beside road crossings where passengers halt and take shelter from cold.
46. She rambles in all places, everywhere leeches suck the blood of men, and vile people tear them with their nails and hold them in their fists to feed upon them.
47. In this manner she is everywhere in the landscape of cities, until she is tired with her long journey through them.
48. Then she stops in her course like a tired bullock whose body is hot from travelling through towns with loads of cotton and utensils on its back.
49. She lays down to rest in some hidden place, like a needle tired with continued sewing. There she drops down like thread from the hand of the sewer.
50. A hard needle held in the hand of the sewer never hurts his finger, because a servant, however sharp he may be, is never faithless or injurious to his master.
51. An iron needle, grown old in its business of stitching, was at last lost by itself, like the rotten plank of a boat bearing the burdensome ballast of stones in it.
52. It wandered about on all sides of its own accord and was driven to and fro like chaff by the driving winds, according to the course of nature.
53. Someone takes it up and feeds the last end of a thread in its mouth. The malady of cholera is caught by those human parasites who glut themselves with food supplied by the sap of another.
54. The malady of colic, like the needle, is ever fond of feeding with its open mouth on the pith of others. It continually finds the thread-like heartstring of some body put into its hole.
55. Thus the strong bodies of greedy and heinous beings are nourished by the sap of the weak and innocent, just like colic disease preys on the lean bodies of the poor, and the sharp needle is supported by the thin thread of the needy (who cannot afford to buy new suits).
56. Though the heart of Suchi, like the hole of the needle, was to receive the thread-like sap of the patient’s heart, yet her power to pierce it was like that of the sewing needle, which is as potent as the piercing sunbeams to penetrate into the toughest substances.
57. Suddenly and at last, Suchi came to find the fault of her wrong choice for a puny body which was filled with her scanty fare of a bit of thread. She began to repent of her folly.
58. However, she continued with all her might to trudge on in her accustomed course of pricking and piercing the bodies of others. In spite of her great regret, she could not avoid the cruelty of her nature.
59. The sewing man cuts and sews the cloth agreeably to his own liking. But the weaver of destiny weaves the long loom of lengthened desires in all bodies and hides their reason under the garb of her own making.
60. The colic Suchi went on like the sewing needle in her business of piercing the hearts of people by hiding her head, just like it is the practice of robbers to carry on their rogueries by covering their faces.
61. She, like the needle with the sewing thread behind it, raises her head to make and look at the loop-hole that she should penetrate like burglars making and marking holes in the wall for their entry.
62. She entered the bodies of the weak and strong alike, like the needle stitching cloths of all textures, just as it is the custom of the wicked to spare neither the just nor unjust.
63. Colic pain, like the piercing needle, being pressed under the fingers, lets off its griping like the thread of the needle in its act of sewing.
64. The acute and unfeeling colic, being as ignorant of the softness or dryness of the object as the stiff and heartless needle, pierces the hardiest breast without deriving any sweetness from it.
65. The needle is comparable to a rich widow. Both are equally stern and full of remorse. Both are equally veiled and speechless and, with their eye of the needle, are as empty in their joyless hearts.
66. The needle hurts nobody, yet she is dragged by the thread which is no other than the thread of her fate.
67. After her trudging, slipped from the finger of her master, the needle peacefully sleeps in company with her fellows of dirt and dregs. For who is there who, when he is out of work, does not deem himself blessed to be in the company of his equals?
68. The herd of common people is ever fond of mixing with the ignorant rabble because there is nobody who can avoid the company of his equals.
69. The lost needle, when found by a blacksmith and heated in the hearth, flies to heaven by the breath of the bellows, after which it disappears in the air.
70. In this manner the current of vital airs, by force of the acts of its prior states of existence, conducts the breath of life in to the heart, which becomes the living spirit.
71. The vital airs, being diminished in the body, cause the colic pains known by different names such as flatulence, bile and the like.
72. The colic caused by spoiling the vyana vital energy produces many diseases and affects all the members of the body with a watery fluid. When it affects the lung’s breathing, it causes the vaya sula or pulmonary colic and is attended by disfigurement of the body and an insanity or hysteria known as the hysteric colic.
73. Sometimes it comes from the hands of sheep-keepers, or by the smell of sheep’s wool in blankets. At other times it seizes the fingers of children and causes them to tear their bed cloths.
74. When it enters the body through the foot, it continues sucking blood and, with all its voracity, becomes satisfied with very little food.
75. It lies in the glandular vessel of the feces with its mouth placed downward and takes as its prerogative any form it likes to assume.
76. It is the nature of malicious people to show the perversion of their hearts by doing injury to others. It is characteristic of base people to raise a row for their pleasure, and not for any gain or good to themselves.
77. The miserly think much of their gain of even a single penny, so deeply rooted is the avaricious selfishness of human nature.
78. It was only for a particle of blood, or as much as could be picked out by the point of a pin, that the colic Suchi was bent on the destruction of men. So the wise are fools in their own interests.
79. “How great is my master-stroke,” says the needle, “that I have come from stitching the shreds of cloth to piercing the hearts of men. So be it and I am happy at my success.”
80. As the rust of the lazy needle passes off in sewing, without being rubbed with dust, so must it rust unless it is put into the action of piercing patient and passive shreds.
81. The unseen and airy darts of fate are as fatal as the acts of cruel advanced cholera, though both have their respite of their massacres at short intervals.
82. The needle is at rest after its act of sewing is done; but the wicked are not satisfied even after their acts of slaughter are over.
83. It dives in the dirt and rises in the air. It flies with the wind and lies down wherever it falls. It sleeps in the dust and hides itself at home and in the inside, and under the cloths and leaves. It dwells in the hand and ear-holes, in lotuses and heaps of woolen stuffs. It is lost in the holes of houses, in clefts of wood and underneath the ground.
84. Valmiki added:— As the sage was speaking in this manner, the sun went down in the west, and the day departed to its evening service. The assembly broke after mutual salutations, to perform their sacred ablution, and joined again on the next morning, with the rising beams of the sun to the royal palace.
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Chapter 3.71 — Suchi’s Remorse
1. Vasishta continued:— After the carnivorous fiend Karkati had feasted for a long period on the flesh and blood of human kind, she found her insatiable appetite to know no bounds. She was never satisfied with anything.
2. She used to be satisfied with a drop of blood in her form of the needle. Now she became sorry at the loss of the insatiable thirst and appetite of her former state.
3. She thought in herself, “O pity it is that I came to be a vile needle. With so weak and slender a body, I can take nothing for my food.
4. How foolish I have been to forego my former gigantic form and change my dark cloudy figure for something like the dry leaf of a forest tree.
5. O wretch that I am to have foregone my dainty food of flesh flavored with fat.
6. I am doomed to dive in dirt and drop down on the ground to be trodden and trampled under the feet of people, soiled and sullied in filth.
7. O me miserable, helpless and hopeless thing, and without any support or status. From one sorrow I fall to another, and one danger is succeeded by another!
8. I have no mistress or maidservant, no father or mother. I have no son or brother, nor anyone to serve or befriend me.
9. I have nobody, no home, and no refuge or asylum anywhere. I have no fixed dwelling anywhere. Instead I am driven about like falling leaves by driving winds.
10. I am subject to all accidents and exposed to every kind of calamity. I wish for my extinction, but it wishes not to approach me.”
11. “What have I done? In the foolishness of my heart, I have given away my own big body, like a madman gives away a precious jewel for a paltry piece of glass.
12. One calamity is enough to turn the brain out of order, but what will be my case when it is followed by other disasters in endless succession?
13. I am hung up to be suffocated by smoke and dropped down in the streets to be trodden underfoot. I am cast away with dirt and hidden under grass to my great distress.
14. I serve at another’s will, and am guided by my guide. I am stark naked while I sew for others, and I am ever a dependent on another’s guidance.
15. Long do I work and walk for a small worthless gain, and stitching alone is all the work that I have to perform for life. O unlucky that I am, that even my bad luck is so very unlucky.”
16. “With my remorse today, I see the demon of despair rising before me and threatening to make an end of this body of which I have made an offering to him.
17. After my foolishness losing so big and bulky a body, what better fate can await me than to be annihilated into nothing, rather than be a thing which is good for nothing?
18. What man will pick me up, who is as lean as a thread worm, from the heap of ashes under which I lie buried by the wayside?
19. No keen sighted man will take such a wretched and forlorn being into his consideration, just like nobody living on a high hill ever stoops to take notice of the grass growing on the ground below.
20. I cannot expect to raise myself higher while I am lying in a sea of ignorance. What blind man guided by the flash of fireflies can perceive the glorious sunlight?
21. I find myself drowned in a sea of misery and I know not how long I shall have to labor under my difficulties.”
22. “When shall I be restored to the form of the daughter of Anjanagiri Mountain and stand like a pillar over the ruins of the nether and upper worlds?
23. When shall I have my arms reach the clouds and my eyes flashing like lightning, my clothes as white as snow and my hair touching the sky?
24. When will my big belly resemble a huge cloud and my long breasts hang below like pillows shaking with the motion of my body, dancing like the wings of a peacock?
25. When will the ash-white light emitted by my laughter cast shade onto the sun, and my former high stature threaten to devour the terrible god of death?
26. Some time ago my hollow sockets, deep as the holes of mortars, flashed with living fire like the rays of the sun, and my large legs moved in my rambling like two monumental pillars.
27. When shall I have my big belly with its huge pot-belly? When shall I again have my soft black nails that resemble the dark and humid clouds of autumn.
28. When will those tender smiles return to me with which I moved the great rakshasa demons to my favor? When shall I dance in my giddy circles at the music of the tabor in the forests?
29. When will that big belly of mine be filled with pots full of fattened liquor and be fed with heaps of flesh and bones from dead bodies?
30. When shall I get drunk drinking the blood of human gore and become merry and giddy until I fall fast asleep?”
31. “It was I, by my bad choice of austerities, who destroyed my former brilliant body and accepted this petty needle-like form, like one who takes the sulphate of gold instead of the precious metal.
32. Ah! Where is that huge body that filled all sides and shone like the dark hill of Anjanagiri? What is this puny and pin form in the shape of a spider’s leg, thin and lean like a tender blade of grass?
33. The ignorant, thinking it useless, throw a golden jewel on the ground like a piece of glass. So I have cast aside my shining body for a bit of this black needle.”
34. “O great Vindhya Mountains with your hollow and snow covered caves! Why do you not destroy your dull elephants with your native lions? It is I who is as silly as an elephant.
35. O my arms that used to break down mountain peaks, why do you fail to pluck the butter-like moon with your moony nails?
36. O my breast that was as fair as snowy mountain sides, even without my glassy ornaments. Why do you not show your hairs, which were as large as leeches that feed on lion’s flesh?
37. O my eyes that used to dispel the darkness of the darkest night and kindle dry fuel with your glaring fire. Why do you cease to lighten the air with your brightness?
38. O my shoulder blades! Are you broken down and leveled with the earth, or are you crushed and smashed or moldered and worn out by age?
39. O my moon-bright face! Why do you not shine over me with your bright beams that resemble the everlasting light of the orb of the moon? Are you now at an end forever?
40. O my hands! Where is your strength fled today? Do you not see how I am transformed into an ignoble needle that is moved by the touch of the foot of a fly?
41. Alas! The cavity of my navel was as deep as a well and beset by hair resembling rows of beautiful plants about it. My protuberant posteriors were like the bottom of the Vindya hills.
42. Where is that towering stature reaching to the sky, and what is this new earned contemptible form of the needle? Where is that mouth, hollow as the vault of the sky, and what is this hole of the needle? Where is my heap of flesh meat and what is this drop of watery food?” “Ah, how lean have I grown. But who is to be blamed for an act of my own doing?”
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Chapter 3.72 — Suchi Again Performs Tapas
1. Vasishta continued:— Afterwards Suchi became silent and motionless and thought of resuming her austerities for the sake of regaining her long lost body.
2. With this intention she returned to the Himalayas where, abstaining from her desire of human gore, she sat repeating her criticisms and rebukes.
3. In her mind she saw her needle form entering into her heart with her breathing.
4. Meditating on her mental form of the needle, she was blown upwards by her vital breath to the top of the hill and alighted on it like a vulture from high.
5. There she remained alone and apart from all living beings, sitting amidst burning fire with her form of an ash-colored stone.
6. She sat there like a sprout of grass springing in that dry and grassless spot. But soon she faded away into a blade of withered hay in the sandy desert.
7. She remained standing on the toe of one foot, and she continued criticizing and rebuking her own self.
8. In her tiptoe position, she lightly touched the ground and avoiding all sidelong looks. She gazed on the upper sky with her face upraised and her eyes uplifted.
9. The fine point of the black iron needle penetrated the ground and firmly preserved its standing posture. It fed itself upon the air which it inhaled by its uplifted mouth.
10. The scarcity of food in the forest made her look like she was in search of some prey coming from a distance. Her shadow shaking with the wind enticed the unwary to approach towards it.
11. The ray of light issuing like a pencil from the needle hole served as her attendant guard on the hinder part.
12. As men are kindly disposed towards the mean who are favorites to them, so the needle was attached to the thin pencil of light that became its constant attendant.
13. The needle had another constant companion: the devotion in its own shadow; but the blackness of its body made it always remain behind the back.
14. Thus these three — the iron needle, the thin pencil of light passing through its eye, and the needle’s shadow — having firmly adhered themselves to the iron needle, become intimate friends, like all good people mutually assisting one another.
15. On seeing Suchi in this plight, the trees and plants of the mountain forest felt compassion for her. Who is there who bears no sympathy for a pious devotee or her penances and austerities?
16. The needle that was stuck to the ground by its foot and had sprung up like some faculty of the mind was fed with the fragrance of fruits blown and borne by the breeze to its uplifted mouth.
17. Woodland gods and demigods continued to fill its mouth with the dust of buds and full blown flowers of the woods.
18. But Suchi did not swallow the powdered meat dust that God Indra had caused to be thrown into her mouth for the purpose of frustrating the effect of her tapas.
19. Her fixity of purpose did not permit her to swallow the delicious powder because a person, however mean he may be, is sure of success by the firmness of his mind.
20. Vayu, the god of winds with his power of uprooting mountains, was astonished to find the needle adverse to swallowing the food. He ministered to it in the form of the pollen of flowers.
21. The resolute devotee is never shaken from his purpose, though he be plunged into mud or drowned in water or scattered by winds and thrown into burning fire;
22. or when he is shattered by showers of hailstones, or struck by lightning or battered by raindrops and intimidated by thunder claps.
23. The resolute mind is not changed in a thousand years and the feet of the firm, like those of the drowsy and dead drunk, never move from their place.
24. A holy hermit who is devoted to his purpose in time loses the motion of his external organs, but by the exercise of his reason, he obtains the light of true knowledge in his soul.
25. Thus did Suchi gain the light of knowledge and become a seer of the past and future. She became cleansed of the impurity of her sins, and her impurity (visuchi) turned to purity (suchi).
26. She came to know the truly knowable in her own understanding. After the removal of her sins by tapas, she felt true bliss in her soul.
27. She continued in her austere tapas for many thousands of years, to the great astonishment of seven times seven worlds that became frightened at her austerities.
28. The fervor of her tapas set great mountains on fire, and that flame spread to all the worlds like the blaze of an auspicious meteor.
29. This made Indra, the god of heaven, ask Narada about the cause of this intense tapas, saying, “Who is so immersed in tapas that she obtains the fruit of worlds by her austere tapas?” Narada replied,
30. “It is Suchi, who by her continued tapas of thousands of years, has attained her highest state of enlightenment. She is that light which now enflames all the worlds.
31. It is Suchi’s tapas, O lord of gods, that makes naaga serpents sigh and hills tremble. It causes the celestials to fall down and the sea to overflow on earth. It dries up all things and casts a shade over bright orb of the sun itself.”
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Chapter 3.73 — Narada Explains Suchi’s Tapas to Indra Who Sends Maruta to Disturb Her Tapas
1. Vasishta related:— Indra, having learned about Karkati’s austere tapas, was curious to know more about her from Narada.
2. Indra asked, “I know Suchi acquired her fiendish practice of blood sucking by means of her tapas, but who is this apish Karkati that is so greedy to gain flesh and bones?”
3. Narada replied:— It is Karkati, the malevolent fiend, who became the individual soul Suchi, the colic pain of the living, and assumed the shape of an iron needle as its support.
4. Afterwards, having forsaken that prop, it entered the human body, then it flew up to the heart on the vehicle of vital breath, and is seated in the car of the current air in atmosphere.
5. This colic of life Suchi, having entered into the bodies of vicious lives, passes through the canals of their entrails and the pores of their flesh, fat and blood, then nestles in the interior part like a bird.
6. It enters the intestines with the breath of air and settles there in the form of flatulent colic. Afterwards, seated at the end of the nyagrodha artery, it becomes the various forms of colic with fullness of blood and inflammation.
7. It also enters the body through other parts and organs and receives different names according to its situation. Then it feeds upon their flesh and marrow.
8. Fastened to the knots of flower wreaths and stuck to leafy garlands decorating the breasts and cheeks of fond maidens, she sleeps enraptured with them on the bosoms of their loving spouses.
9. She flies to the bodies of birds in woodland retreats free from worldly sorrow and strife. She flutters on the tops of flowers of kalpa trees of Nandana paradise, or rolls on beds of lotuses in the lakes.
10. She flies in the forms of fluttering bees over the high hills of the gods, and she sips honey drops perfumed with the fragrance of mandara flower pollen.
11. In the form of vultures, she devours the entrails of the dead bodies of warriors through the wounds made by sword blades.
12. She flies up and down in the translucent and glassy paths of the sky and pierces into the human body through all pores, arteries, and orifices, just like expansive winds pass on all sides through every creek and corner.
13. Just like the universal vital air runs in the heart of every living being in the form of the pulsation of air, so Suchi oscillates in everybody as if they were her own home.
14. Just like intellectual powers are lodged in every person like blazing lamps, so she resides in her dwelling and blaze as the mistress of everybody.
15. She sparkles like the vital spark in blood particles, and she flows in bodies like liquid. She rolls and trolls in the bowels of living beings like whirlpools whirl about in the bosom of the sea.
16. She rests in the milk-white mass of flesh, just like Vishnu reclines on his bed of the serpent Sesha. She tastes the flavor of blood from all hearts, just like Goddess Kali drinks the liquor of her goblet of wine.
17. She sucks the circulating, red hot blood of hearts, just like the wind absorbs the internal and vivifying juice from the hearts of plants and trees.
18. Now this living Suchi, intending to become a devotee, remains as motionless as an immovable substance and as fixed and steady in her mind.
19. The iron-hearted needle, being now rarefied like invisible air, is traversing to all sides on the swift wings of winds resembling its riding horses.
20. It goes on feeding on the flesh and drinking the blood of all living beings, and carrying on its various acts of giving and receiving, and dancing and singing all along.
21. Though the incorporeal Suchi has become aeriform and invisible as vacuum, yet there is nothing which she is unable to accomplish by the powers of her mind, outstripping the swiftness of the winds.
22. But though she runs mad with her meat and turns giddy with her drink, yet she is curbed by fate from running at random, like an elephant in chains.
23. The living body, like a running stream, moves apace with billows in its course. The painful and destructive diseases under which it labors are like greedy sharks lying hidden underneath.
24. This frail body, like the formless Suchi, being disabled by its inability to gorge on its fleshy food, begins to lament its fate, like old and sickly rich folks for their lack of hunger and appetite.
25. The body with its members moves about like the beasts of the forest (for their prey). It plays its parts like an actress on stage dressed with good clothes and ornaments.
26. The body’s internal and external winds move the it back and forth. Its natural weakness (immobility) is always in need of being moved by the vital airs, just like the immovable fragrance requires to be blown by a breeze.
27. Men in vain rely on mantras and medicines, on austerities and charities, and on the adoration of idols for relief, while their bodies are subject to diseases like the sea to its surges.
28. The unseen force of mobility is soon lost in the solid body, just like the light of the lamp is lost in darkness. So the living Suchi came to be lost in the iron needle in which she had her rest.
29. Everyone aspires to a state according to his natural propensity. The rakshasi’s own inclination led her to choose being a needle.
30. A man tired from travelling far and wide returns at last to take his rest at home. So the big and living Karkati turned into the form of the thin iron Suchi in order to rest. But like ignorant people who prefer the grosser pleasures of the body to the nicer delights of the soul, she still wanted her grosser enjoyments that now are lost to her.
31. With the intention of satisfying her thirst, she travelled to all parts and quarters in her form of the poor needle. But she derived more mental pleasure from the experiences than the satisfaction of her physical appetites.
32. When the container is in existence, it is possible to fill it with its contents and not otherwise. So one having his body can seek and get every pleasurable object to give it delight.
33. Remembering now the past enjoyments of her former body, she became sad in her mind that before she had been so highly pleased and satisfied filling its belly.
34. Then she resolved to undertake austere tapas for the purpose of recovering her former body. With this object in view, she chose for herself the proper situation for her castigations.
35. The individual soul of Suchi thought of entering into the heart of a young vulture flying in the air. Thus by the help of her vital breath, she soared to it and rested herself in the air like that bird.
36. The vulture, filled with the malevolent spirit of the choleric Suchi in itself, began to think of executing the purposes that Suchi had in her mind.
37. Thus the vulture, bearing the unsatisfied Suchi within its body, flew to its intended spot on the mountain. It was driven there like a cloud by the wind and it was in this place that Suchi was to be released from her needle shape.
38. It sat there in its state of asceticism on a spot of the solitary forest, seeming to be freed from all desires of the world.
39. It stood there on one of its legs, supported on the tip of its toe. It looked like the statue of some god that had been consecrated on the top of the mountain by someone in the form of garuda.
40. There standing on one leg, supported on an atom of dust, she remained like the mountain peacock that stands on one leg with its head raised to the sky.
41. The vulture, seeing the living Suchi coming out of his body and standing on the mountain like a statue, fled and disappeared from that place.
42. Suchi came out from the body of the bird like a spirit coming out of it, and the intellect aspiring to higher regions. She came out like particles of fragrance fly upon the wings of winds to be borne into a nose and meet the breath of the nostrils.
43. The vulture fled to his own place after leaving Suchi at that place, like a porter unburdening himself of his load, and on his return found himself relieved of his lecherous diseases.
44. Now the iron Suchi, being seated in her tapas in the form of the living Suchi, appeared as graceful as a good man engaged in the performance of his proper duty.
45. Because a formless spirit is unable to do anything without the support or instrument of form, so the living Suchi supported herself on the tip of her toe in order to perform her tapas.
46. The living Suchi sheathed the iron needle like an evil female pisacha spirit wraps itself around a sinsapa tree, and like the winds enfold particles of odor which they bear away in their bosom.
47. From then, O Indra, she has undertaken her protracted tapas and she has passed many years in the solitary wilderness in her steady position and posture of body.
48. It now behooves you, O Indra who is skilled in stratagems, to devise some plan to delude her from her object, or else her tapas will destroy the people you have so long preserved.
49. Vasishta said:— Indra, having heard these words of Narada, sent Maruta, the god of winds, to search for Suchi in all quarters of the globe.
50. Then God Maruta, in his spiritual form of intelligence, proceeded in quest of her. Having traversed the ethereal regions, he alighted upon the nether world. The winds and all other elemental and physical powers are also believed to be endued with intelligence. They are not mere brute forces. They could never regularly discharge their proper functions without intelligence.
51. He saw everything instantly at a glance of his intelligence which perceived all things at one view, just like the sight of the Supreme Spirit sees through all bodies without exception or hindrance.
52. His sight stretched to Lokaloka Mountain in the polar circle, far beyond the seven seas of the earth, where there is a large tract of land abounding with gems.
53. He viewed the circle of Pushkara continent, surrounded by a sea of sweet water and containing mountains with their dales and valleys.
54. He next saw Gomeda Islands surrounded by the liquid sea of liquor with its marine animals, and its land abounding with cities and towns.
55. He saw also the fertile and peaceful continent of Kraunchadwipa bounded by the sweet Saccharine Sea and beset by a range of mountains.
56. Further on was the Swetadvipa (white island) with its subsidiary isles surrounded by the Milky Ocean and having the temple of Vishnu in the midst of it.
57. After that appeared the sea of butter surrounding Kushadwipa Island and having chains of mountains and cities with buildings in them.
58. Then came the Sakadwipa in view amidst the ocean of curds, containing many countries and many large and populous cities in them.
59. Last appeared the Jambudwipa (Asia) girded by the sea of salt, having Meru and other boundary mountains and many countries in it.
60. Thus the intelligence of air (Marut), having alighted on earth upon the wings of winds, rapidly spread himself to its utmost ends.
61. The god of air then directed his course to Jambudwipa (Asia). Having arrived there, he made his way to the summit of the snowy mountain, the Himalayas where Suchi was performing her tapas.
62. On the highest top of the summit, he saw a great desert as extensive as the expanse of the sky and devoid both of living creatures and the vestiges of animal bodies.
63. It was unproductive of greens or grass owing to its nearness to the sun, and it was covered with dust like that which makes this earth.
64. There, like the lucid waters of a river, spread a wide ocean of mirage to excite the thirst and allure the longings of men by its various colors that resemble the variegated colors of a rainbow.
65. Its wide expanse, reaching almost to infinity, was not measurable even by the regents of the quarters of heaven, and the gusts of wind blowing upon it served to cover it with a canopy of dust.
66. It resembled a wanton woman smeared with red powder like sunbeams and sandalwood paste like the moonbeams, and attentive to the whistling of the breeze.
67. The god of the winds having travelled all over the seven continents and their seas, and being tired with his long journey on the surface of the earth, rested his gigantic body, which fills the infinite space in all directions, on the top of that mountain; like a butterfly resting on the twig of a tree after its wearied flight in the air.
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Chapter 3.74 — Consummation of Suchi’s Tapas Vasishta speaking:—
1. The god of the winds saw Suchi standing erect, like a crest on the summit of the mountain, amidst that vast tract of desert all around.
2. She stood upon one leg fixed in her meditation and roasted by the burning sun over her head. She was dried up to a skeleton by her continued fasting, and her belly was contracted to shrunken skin.
3. Now and then she inhaled the hot air with her open mouth, then breathed it out as her heart could not contain the repeated influx of air.
4. She was withered under the scorching sunbeams, and battered in her frame by the hotter winds of the desert, yet she moved not from her stand-point as she was relieved every night by the cold bath of moonbeams.
5. She was content covering her head under particles of dust and did not like to change her state for a better fortune.
6. She gave up the possession of her forest to other living beings, and lived apart from all in the form of a crest of hair. Her breathings being withdrawn to the cranium, appeared out of it like a tuft of hairs or bushes clapped on her head.
7. The god of air was astonished to see Suchi in this state. He bowed down to her and was struck with terror as he saw her more carefully.
8. He was so overawed by the blaze of her body that he dared not ask her anything, such as, “O saintly Suchi, why do you undertake these austerities”?
9. He only exclaimed, “O holy Suchi, how wonderful is the sight of your tapas!” Impressed with veneration for her holiness, the god made his departure to heaven from where he had come.
10. He passed the region of the clouds and reached the sphere of the still air (sthira vayu). Then leaving the realm of the spiritual masters behind him, he arrived at the ecliptic path of the sun.
11. Then rising higher in his airy car, he arrived at the city of Indra where he was cordially embraced by the lord of gods for the merit of his sight of Suchi.
12. Being asked what he saw, he related all that he had seen to the assembled gods in the court of Indra.
13. Pavana, the wind god, said, “There is a king of mountains in the high Himalayas situated in the midst of Jambudwipa (Asia). It has Lord Shiva, who bears the crescent of the moon on his forehead, for his son-in-law.
14. North of it is a great peak with a plain land above it. That is where the holy Suchi holds her hermitage and performs her rigorous tapas.”
15. “What more shall I relate other than that she has abstained even from air, and has made a mess of her entrails coiled up together?
16. She has contracted the opening of her mouth into a needle hole, and stopped even that with a particle of dust in order to restrain it from receiving even a cold dewdrop for food.
17. The fervor of her tapas has made the snowy mountain forsake its coldness and assume an igneous form which is difficult to approach.
18. Therefore let all of us rise and go to the great father of creatures for redress, or know that the result of her fervent tapas must prove to our disadvantage.”
19. Hearing Pavana’s words, Lord Indra in company with the other gods proceeded to the abode of Brahma and prayed to him for their safety.
20. Brahma answered, “I am going even now to the summit of the snowy Himalaya to give Suchi her desired boon.” Upon this assurance of Brahma, the gods all returned to their celestial abodes.
21. During this time Suchi became perfect in her holiness. She began to glow with the fervor of her tapas on the mountain of the immortals.
22. Suchi very clearly perceived the passage of time by fixing her open eyes on the sun and by counting days by the rays of solar light penetrating the opening of her mouth, the needle hole.
23. Suchi, though flexible as a bit of thread, had attained the firmness of Mount Meru by her erect posture.
24. She saw, by the ray of sunlight that penetrated the eye of the needle, that her shadow was the only witness to her upright tapas.
25. Suchi’s shadow, the only attendant on her tapas, hid herself under her feet for fear of the midday heat. So do people find their best friends forsake their company in times of adversity.
26. The union of the three persons of the iron, the ascetic, and shadowy Suchi, like the meeting of the three rivers (Asi, Varana and Ganga), described a triangle in the form of the sacred city of Benares.
27. This union of the three, like the confluence of three rivers of Triveni (Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati), purifies the sins of men by the three different colors of their waters, namely the blue, black and white.
28. A person becomes acquainted with the unknown cause of all only by reasoning in his own mind and by means of his self-consciousness. Awareness of one’s own mind is the best guide in all things. O Rama, there is no better teacher for men.
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Chapter 3.75 — Suchi Regains Her Former Frame
1. Vasishta continued:— After a thousand years of long and painful tapas by Suchi, Brahma, the great father of creation, appeared to her under his pavilion of the sky and bade her accept the boon she preferred.
2. Suchi was absorbed in her tapas. Her vital principle of life, remaining dormant in her, wanted the external organs of sense to give utterance to her prayer. She remained only to think upon the choice she should make.
3. She thought to herself, “I am now a perfect being and I am delivered from my questions. Therefore, what blessing do I need to ask beyond this state of beatitude, bliss of contentment, and self-resignation which I already possess in my peace and tranquility?
4. I have the knowledge of all that is to be known. I am free from the web of errors. My rationality is developed. What more is necessary for a perfect and rational being?
5. Let me remain seated as I am in my present state. I am in the light of truth and quite removed from the darkness of untruth. What else is there for me to ask or accept?
6. “I have passed a long period in my ignorance. I was carried away like a child by the demon of the evil genius of earthly desires.
7. This desire is now brought under subjection by the power of my reasoning. So of what value are all the objects of my desire to my soul?”
8. The lord of creatures kept looking on Suchi sitting with her mind fixed in her silent meditation and resigned to her destiny. She was quite withdrawn from all external sensations and from the use of her bodily organs.
9. Brahma, with the kindness of his heart, again approached the indifferent woman and said, “Receive your desired blessing and live to enjoy for sometime longer on earth.
10. Then having enjoyed the joys of life, you shall attain the blissful state from which you shall have no more to return here. This is the fixed decree destined for all living beings on earth.
11. By merit of your tapas, O best of womankind, let your desire be crowned with success! Resume your former physical form and remain as a rakshasi in this mountain forest.”
12. “Regain your cloud-like shape of which you are deprived at present, and revive like a sprout from your pin-like root to become like a big tree growing out of its small root and little seed.
13. You shall get an inward supply of serum from your muscle tendon, like a plant gets its sap from the seeded grain. The circulation of that juice will cause growth like that of a germ from the ingrained seed.
14. Your knowledge of truth has no fear of falling into the difficulties of the world. On the contrary, the righteousness of your soul will lead you like a huge, heavy cloud with its pure water high in the heaven, in spite of the blasting gusts of wind.”
15. “By your constant practice of yoga meditation, you have accustomed yourself to a state of death-like samadhi. For your intellectual delight, you have thereby become assimilated into the trance of your meditation.
16. But your meditation must be compatible with your worldly affairs, and the body like the breeze, is nourished best by its constant agitation.
17. Therefore, my daughter, you are acting contrary to nature by avoiding the action that your nature requires.” “There can be no objection to your slaughter of animal life under proper bounds.
18. Therefore act within the bounds of justice and refrain from all acts of injustice in the world. Stick steadfastly to reason if you should like to live liberated in this life.”
19. Saying so far, the god disappeared from below to his heavenly sphere, when Suchi said to him, “Be it so. I have no objection to this.” Then, as she thought in her mind that she had no cause to be dissatisfied with the decree of the lotus-born Brahma, she found herself immediately in possession of her former body.
20. She came to be of the measure of a span at first, then of a cubit, and next a full fathom in length. She was quickly increasing in height. She grew up like a tree until she was in the form of a cloud. She had all the members of the body added to her instantly, in the manner of the growth of the tree of human desire.
21. From the fibrous form of Suchi, the needle which was without form or feature, body, blood, bones, flesh or strength, there grew up all the parts and limbs at once. Just so the fancied garden of our desire suddenly springs up with all its green foliage and fruits and flowers from their hidden state.
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Chapter 3.76 — Refraining from Unlawful Food
1. Vasishta continued:— Suchi the needle now became the demoness Karkati again. Her leanness turned to bulkiness in the manner of a flimsy cloud assuming a gigantic form in the rainy season.
2. Now returning to her native air and element, she felt some joy in herself. But she renounced her fiendish nature by the knowledge she had gained, like a snake throws off its old skin.
3. There seated in her lotus posture, she continued to reflect on her future course. Relying on the purity of her new life and faith, she remained fixed as a mountain peak.
4. After six months of continued meditation, she obtained the knowledge of what she sought, like the roaring of clouds rouses the peacock to the sense of an approaching rain.
5. Being roused to her sense, she felt the pains of her thirst and hunger, because the nature of the body never forsakes its appetites as long as it lasts in the same state.
6. She became sad not knowing what food she should take, because she thought the killing of animal life for food was unlawful and repugnant to her nature.
7. Food forbidden by the respectable and obtained by unjust means must be rejected even at the expense of one’s valuable life.
8. “If my body,” she thought, “should perish for lack of lawful food, I will not transgress the law for that. The guilt lies in sustaining my own life by taking unlawful food.
9. Whatever is not obtained according to the customary rules of society is not worth taking. If I should die without proper food, or live upon improper fare, it amounts to the same thing whether I live or die.
10. I was only the mind before, to which the body is added as a base appendage. It vanishes upon the knowledge of self. Hence its care and neglect are both alike.”
11. Vasishta resumed:— As she was uttering these words in silence to herself, she heard a voice in the air coming from the god of winds who was pleased at the renunciation of her fiendish disposition.
12. “Arise Karkati”, the voice said, “and go to the ignorant and enlighten them with the knowledge you have gained. For it is the nature of the good and great to deliver the ignorant from their error.
13. Whoever does not receive this knowledge of lawful food from you, make him truly the object of your derision, and take him as being a right meat and proper food for you.”
14. On hearing these words she responded, “I am much favored by you, kind god!” So saying, she got up and descended slowly from the height of the craggy mountain.
15. Having passed the heights, she came to the valley at the foot of the mountain. From there she proceeded to the homes of the Kirata people who inhabit the lands at the bottom of the hills.
16. She saw those places abounding in provisions of all sorts, such as humans and their cattle with their fodder and grass. There were vegetable as well as animal foods, with various kinds of roots and plants. There were eatables and drinkables also, with the flesh of deer and fowls, and even of reptiles and insects.
17. The nocturnal fiend then walked her way under the shade of the deep darkness of night. In her form of the dark mountain of Anjanagiri (unperceived by the inhabitants), she went towards the homes at the foot of Himalayas.
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Chapter 3.77 — Karkati Travels to the Land of the Kiratas, Sees a King & His Minister, Debates Food
1. Vasishta resumed:— A deep dark night, black as ink and as thick as tangible pitch, covered the homes of the Kiratas.
2. The sky was moonless and overcast by a veil of dark clouds. The woodlands were hidden by tamara trees and thick masses of black clouds flew about in the air.
3. Thick shrubs and bushes covered the hilly villages, obstructing passage by their impervious darkness. The flitting light of fireflies gave the homesteads an appearance of a bridal night.
4. The thick darkness spread over the compounds of houses shut out the passage of the light of lamps, which made their way through chinks in the houses where they were burning.
5. Karkati saw a band of female pisacha ghosts dancing about her as her companions. She became motionless as a block of wood on seeing giddy vetala ghosts moving about with human skeletons in their hands.
6. She saw antelope sleeping by her and the ground matted over by thick snow fall. The breeze gently shook drizzling drops of dew and frost from the leaves of trees.
7. She heard frogs croaking in the bogs and night ravens cawing from the hollows of trees. The mingled noise of happy men and women came from the inside of the houses.
8. She saw phosphorescent light burning in swamps with the luster of portentous meteors. She found banks and streams thick with thorns and thistles growing by their sides and washed by the waters gliding below them.
9. She looked above and saw groups of stars shining in the firmament. She saw the forest about her, the breeze shaking their fruit and flowers.
10. She heard the alternate and constant cries of owls and crows in the hollows of trees. She listened also to the shouts of robbers in the outskirts and the wailings of villagers at a distance.
11. Foresters were silent in their native woods and citizens were fast asleep in the cities. Winds were howling in the forests and birds were at rest in their woodland nests.
12. Furious lions lay in their dens and deer were lying in their caves. The sky was full of frozen dew and the woodlands were all still and quiet.
13. Lightning flashing from dark inky clouds resembled the reflections of rays from the bosom of a crystal mountain. The clouds were as thick as solid clay and the darkness was as stiff as if it needed a sword to cut it.
14. Blown by the storm, dark clouds fled in the air like the dark Anjana Mountain, then deluged a flood of pitchy rain like a waterfall from the bosom of a mountain.
15. The night was as dark as the pit of a coal-mine, and as jet black as the wing of the black bee. The whole landscape, lulled to sleep, appeared like the world lying submerged under ignorance.
16. In this dreadful dead of night in the area inhabited by Kiratas, she saw a king and his minister wandering together in the forest.
17. The king was named Vikrama and he was as brave and valorous as his name and conduct implied him to be. He came out undaunted from within the city, after the citizens had fallen fast-asleep.
18. Karkati saw them wandering in the forest with the weapons of their valor and fortitude, looking for the vetala ghosts that infested the neighborhood.
19. Seeing them, she was glad to think that at last she had found a proper food. But she wanted to know beforehand whether they were ignorant folks or had any knowledge of their souls, or whether their weariness under the burden of their bodies had exposed them to the dangers of the dark night.
20. “The lives of the unlearned,” she thought to herself, “truly are damned in this world and the next. Therefore it is better to put an end to these rather than leave them to live to their peril in both worlds.
21. Without spiritual knowledge, the life of the ignorant is death. Physical death is preferable because it saves the dying soul from further accumulation of sin.
22. It is the primeval law ordained by our prime father, the lotus-born Brahma, that ignorant souls and those without knowledge of their selves should become the food of the heinous.
23. Therefore there is no harm in my feeding upon these two persons, who have offered themselves for my food. It is silliness to allow an easy prize or a proffered gift slip from the hand.”
24. “But if they prove to be men of good and great souls, then in that case I cannot feel disposed of my own nature to put an end to their valuable lives.
25. Therefore I must test them to see if they possess such intelligence. If so, I will decline to make them my food because I feel averse to molesting the intelligent.
26. For those who expect to have true glory and real happiness throughout their lives on earth must always honor the learned with gifts adequate to their parts and desires.
27. I should rather suffer my body to perish with hunger than destroy the intelligent for its support. The soul derives more satisfaction from the counsels of the wise than bare life without knowledge can possibly afford.
28. The learned are to be supported even at the expense of one’s own life because the society of the wise is a tonic for the soul, though death should deprive us of our bodies.”
29. “If I, a man-eating rakshasi, am so favorably disposed to the preservation of the wise, then what reasonable man is there who must not make a breast-plate of the wise for himself?
30. Of all embodied beings that move about on the surface of the earth, it is only the man of profound understanding who sheds his benign influence like cooling moonbeams all around him.
31. To be despised by the wise is death, and to be honored by the learned is true life. Only the company of the wise makes life bring forth its fruits of heavenly bliss and final beatitude.”
32. “I will now ask a few questions to test them, like copper by a chemical process, and know whether they are men of character or gilded on the surface with wise looks.
33. Upon examination and ascertainment of the qualifications, if they prove to be wiser than the examiner, then one should avail of their instruction. Otherwise there is no harm to make an end of them as they best deserve.”
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Chapter 3.78 — Karkati Confronts the King & His Minister
1. Vasishta continued:— The rakshasi, who was an offshoot of the great garden of the rakshasa demon race, made a loud and tremendous yell like the deep roaring of a cloud.
2. After her deep roar she muttered in a clattering voice like the rattling of a thunder clap following the rumbling of clouds.
3. She said, “Ho, ho? What are you who venture abroad in this dread and dreary desert, dark as the great illusion of maya, which without the light of the sun or moon is as gloomy as the gloom of ignorance? Why are you crawling here like insects bred in stones?
4. What men of great minds are you to have come here like weak minded deviants who have lost their way? You have become an easy prey for me and must meet your fate in my hands in a moment.”
5. The king replied, “O you demon, what are you and where do you stand? If you are an embodied being, show yourself unto us. Who is terrified by your bodiless form buzzing like a bee?
6. It is the business of the brave to immediately pounce like a lion upon his prey. Therefore leave off your bragging and show us your prowess at once.
7. Tell me what you want of us and whether you terrify us by your vain boasting or utter these words from your own fear of us.
8. Now measure your body according to your speech and confront us without delay. Slow gain serves no good save the loss of time.”
9. On hearing the king’s speech, she thought it was well said and immediately showed herself to them, uttering her loud shout with a grinning laughter.
10. The king heard her voice filling the air and resounding in the woods. He saw her huge and hideous person by the light of her open mouth and ivory teeth in the act of her loud laughter.
11. Her body was like a huge cliff hurled down by the thunder bolt of the last doomsday. The flashes of her eyeballs blazed in the sky like a pair of bangles or conch shells.
12. The darkness of her appearance would have cast shade on the deep dark waters at the universal deluge that hid the flame of the undersea fire. Her voice was as hoarse as the growling of clouds on the high heads of hills.
13. Her form was like that of a monumental pillar standing between the heaven and earth. The gnashing of her teeth struck the night-rovers with the fear at being ground to death under them.
14. Her figure, like those of the nocturnal demons, yakshas, rakshasas and pisachas, by its erect hairs, muscular limbs, dingy eyes and coal black color, inspired dread of dire disaster.
15. The air she breathed in the lungs snored like the horrible snorting of horses’ nostrils. The tip of her nose was as big as a mallet, and its sides as flat as a pair of bellows or winnowing fans.
16. She stood with her jet black body like a rock of dark agate. Her body joined with her loud laugh gave her the appearance of the all subduing night of dissolution.
17. Her bulky body, resembling a thick cloudy night, approached them like an autumn cloud moving in the forest of the sky.
18. The huge body appeared like a demon rising from underneath the ground and approaching to devour them like an eclipse engulfs the sun and moon.
19. Her ebony breasts were hanging down like two pendant clouds of somber sapphires, or more like two mortars or water pots, with her necklaces hanging on them.
20. Her two arms were suspended from her bulky body like a couple of stout branches from a sturdy oak, or like two logs of burnt wood from her coal-like body.
21. Seeing her thus, the two valiant men remained as steadfast as those standing on the firm ground of certainty who are never led away by doubts.
22. The minister said, “O great friend! What causes this rage and fury in your great soul? It is only the mean and base who are always violent even in trifling matters.
23. Lay aside this great ado for nothing, which does not become you. The wise pursue their business with coolness to crown it with success.
24. Know the soft and slow breath of our moderation has driven swarms of such flies like yourself, just like a slight breath of wind scatters dry leaves and straws.
25. Setting aside all haughtiness and passion of spirit, the wise man conducts his business with a calm coolness of the mind, assisted by reason and practical wisdom.
26. One must manage his affairs with slowness, whether it prove effectual or not, because overruling destiny disposes of everything, which human effort has no power to prevent.
27. Now let us know your desire and what is your object with us, because no suitor who has come to us has been refused of his prayer, or allowed to return in disappointment.”
28. Hearing these words, the rakshasi pondered in her mind, “O, the serene composure of these lionlike men and the affability of their conduct with others.
29. I do not think them to be men of the ordinary kind, and even more wonderful, their inner soul is expressed in the outward gestures of their faces and eyes and in the tone and tenor of their speech.
30. The words, face and eyes express the inner thoughts of the wise, and these go together like the salt and water of the sea.
31. My intention is already known to them, as is theirs also to me. I cannot destroy them when they are indestructible because of their moral excellence.”
32. “I understand them to be acquainted with spiritual knowledge, without which there cannot be a good understanding. Because knowledge of the indestructibility of the spirit takes away the fear of death, and these men lack that fear.
33. Therefore I shall ask them something about which I have doubts. They who fail to ask the wise what they know not must remain dunces throughout their lives.”
34. Having thought so, she opened her mouth, suppressing her roaring voice and loud laughter for a while, and asked her questions.
35. “Tell me, O you sinless men who are so brave and valiant, who are you and from where have you come? The very sight of you has raised my regard for you, like the good hearted become friends with one another, even at their first sight.”
36. The minister said, “This is the king of the Kiratas and I am his councilor. We have come out tonight in our nightly round to apprehend malicious beings like you.
37. It is the duty of princes to punish the wicked, both by day and night. Those who trespass the bounds of their duty must be made like fuel to the fire of destruction.”
38. The rakshashi said, “King, you have a good minister. A bad one is unbecoming of a king. All good kings have wise counselors, and they make the good king.
39. The wise minister is the king’s guide to justice, and it is he who elevates both king and his people. Justice is the first of the four cardinal virtues (justice, temperance, prudence and frugality), and it is the only virtue of a ruler who is called the incarnation of justice (dharma avatara).”
40. “But kings also must have spiritual knowledge because that is the greatest human knowledge. The king who has this knowledge becomes the best of kings. The minister who knows the soul can give the best counsel to guide other souls.
41. A man who feels for others makes a good ruler. Whoever is unacquainted with this rule is not fit to be either a ruler or his minister.
42. If you know this fundamental principle, it is good and you shall prosper. Otherwise you wrong yourselves and your subjects. In which case, you shall be my prey.”
43. “There is only one way for you two young men to escape from my clutches. You must answer my intricate questions according to your best wits and judgment.
44. Now you king and you his counselor give me the solution to the questions that I ask of you. If you fail to give the proper answers as you have agreed to do, then you must then fall under my hands, like anyone who fails to keep his words.”
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Chapter 3.79 — The Rakshasi Karkati’s Questions
1. Vasishta continued:— After saying so, the fiend began to ask her questions. You should be attentive to them Rama, like the king who told her to go on.
2. The rakshasi resumed:— What is that miniscule atomic particle that is one yet many, and is as vast as the ocean, and which contains innumerable worlds like the bubbles of the sea?
3. What is a void yet no void, which is something yet nothing? What makes me and you, and where do I or you abide and subside?
4. What moves unmoved and unmoving, and stands without stopping? What is intelligent yet is as dull as a stone? What presents its variety in the emptiness of understanding?
5. What has the nature of fire without its burning quality? What is that non-flammable substance that produces fire and its flame?
6. Who is not of the nature of the ever-changing solar, lunar and stellar lights, but is the never changing enlightener of the sun, moon and stars? Who, having no eyes, gives the eye its sight?
7. Who gives eyesight to the eyeless vegetables and the blind mineral creation?
8. Who is the maker of heavens and who is the author of the natures of things? Who is the source of this world of jewels and whose treasure are all the gems contained in it?
9. What is that monad which shines in darkness and is the point that is and is not? What is that iota which is imperceptible to all, and what is that jot that becomes an enormous mountain?
10. To whom is the twinkling of the eye as long as a kalpa millennium and a whole age only a moment? Whose omnipresence is equal to his absence, and whose omniscience is the same as his total ignorance?
11. Who is called spirit but is no air in itself? Who is said to be sound or word but is none of them himself? He is called the All, but is nothing at all of all that exists. He is known as Ego, but no ego is he himself.
12. What is gained by the greatest effort over a great many births which, when gained at last, is hard to retain (owing to the spiritual carelessness of mankind)?
13. Who being in easy circumstances in life has not lost his soul in it? Who, being only an atom in creation, does not reckon the great Mount Meru as a particle?
14. What is no more than an atom and fills a space of many leagues? What atomic particle is measured in many miles?
15. Whose glance and nod makes all beings act their parts as players? What minute particle contains many mountain chains in its bosom?
16. Who is bigger than Mount Meru in his minuteness and who, being smaller than the point of a hair, is higher than the highest rock?
17. Whose light brought out the lamp of light from the bosom of darkness? What minute particle contains the minutiae of ideas without end?
18. What has no flavor and gives savor to all things? Whose presence when withdrawn from all substances reduces them to infinitesimal atoms?
19. Who is it that by his self-permeation connects the particles composing the world and, after their separation and dissolution, what imperceptible power rejoins the detached particles to recreate the new world?
20. Who, being formless, has a thousand hands and eyes, and in whose twinkling of an eye comprehends the period of many cycles together?
21. In what microscopic particle does the world exist as a tree in its seed, and by what power do the unproductive seeds of atoms become productive of worlds?
22. Whose glance causes the production of the world, like from its seed? Who creates the world without any motive or material?
23. Who has no visual organs and enjoys the pleasure of seeing (drishti) and is the viewer (drashta) of himself, which he makes the object of his view?
24. Who has no object of vision before him, sees nothing without him, but looks upon himself as an infinity void of everything visible within it?
25. Who shows the subjective sight of the soul by itself as an objective view and represents the world like the shape of a bracelet in his own metal?
26. Who has nothing existent beside himself, and in whom all things exist, like the waves existing in the waters, and whose will makes them appear as different things?
27. Both time and space are equally infinite and indivisible, like the essence of God in which they exist. Then why do we try to differentiate and separate them like water from its fluidity?
28. What inner cause in us makes the soul believe the unreal world to be real, and why does this fallacy continue at all times?
29. The knowledge of the worlds, whether present, past or future, is all a great error. Yet what is that immutable being that contains the seed of this phenomenal wilderness?
30. What being, without changing itself and before it develops itself into creation, shows these phenomena such as the shape of the seed of the world that becomes the form of a developed forest of created beings?
31. Tell me, O king, on what solid foundation does the great Mount Meru stand like a tender filament of the lotus? What gigantic form contains thousands of Meru and Mandara mountains within its spacious womb?
32. Tell me, what immeasurable consciousness has spread myriads of intelligences in all these worlds? What supplies your strength for ruling and protecting your people, and in conducting yourself through life? In whose sight do you either lose yourself or think to exist Tell me all these, O clear sighted and fair faced king, for the satisfaction of my heart.
33. Let your answer melt down the doubt that has covered the face of my heart as with snow. If it fails to completely efface this dirt of doubt from the surface of my heart, I will never account it as the saying of the wise.
34. But if you fail to lighten my heart of its doubts and set it at ease, then know for certain that you shall immediately be made fuel to the fire of my bowels.
35. I shall fill this big belly of mine with all the people of your realm. But should you answer rightly, you shall reign in peace. Otherwise, you shall meet your end like the ignorant who are satisfied with the enjoyments of life. Vasishta speaking:—
36. Saying so, the nocturnal fiend made a loud shout like a roaring cloud to express her joy. Then she sat silently with her fearful features, like a light hearted cloud in autumn.
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Chapter 3.80 — The Minister’s Answers
1. Vasishta continued:— After the giant-like descendent of rakshasas had asked her occult questions in the deep gloom of night in that thick forest, the good and great minister began to give his replies.
2. The minister said:— Hear me, you dark and cloud-like form, unravel your riddling questions with as much ease as a lion foils the fury of gigantic elephants.
3. All your questions relate to the Supreme Spirit and are framed in enigmatic language to test the force of our penetration into their hidden meanings.
4. The soul is identical to consciousness which is more minute than a particle of air. That is the atomic principle that you asked about because it is a nameless atom imperceptible by the six organs of sense and unintelligible to the mind.
5. Underlying the atomic consciousness is the minute seed that contains this universe. Whether it is a substantial or unsubstantial reality, nobody can say.
6. It is called a reality from our notion of it being the soul of all by itself. It is from that soul that all other existences have come in to being.
7. It is a void from its outward emptiness, but it is no void as regards its consciousness (which is a reality). Because it cannot be perceived, it is said to be nothing, but because it is imperishable, it is a subtle something.
8. It is not a nothing because it permeates all things. All things are only reflections of the minute Consciousness, and its unity shines forth in the plurality, all which is as unreal as the form of a bracelet made of gold substance.
9. This atom is the transcendental vacuum. It is imperceptible owing to its minuteness. Though it is situated in all things, it is unperceived by the mind and external senses.
10. Its universal permeation cannot make it nothing, because all that exists is not That, which alone is known as the thinking principle that makes us speak, see and act.
11. No kind of reasoning can establish the non-entity of real existence because it is not capable of being seen by anybody. Yet the Universal Soul is known in its hidden form, like the unseen camphor by its smell.
12. The unlimited soul resides in all limited bodies, and the atomic consciousness pervades the vast universe in the same manner as the mind fills all bodies in its purely subtle state unknown to the senses.
13. It is one and all, unity as well as plurality, because it is the soul of each and all, both singly as well as collectively, and because it supports and contains each and all by and within itself.
14. All these worlds are like little billows in the vast ocean of Divine Consciousness whose intelligence, like a liquid body, shows itself in the form of eddies in the water.
15. This minute intellect, being imperceptible to the senses and the mind, is said to be of the form of emptiness. But being perceived by our consciousness, it is not a nothing, although of the nature of a void in itself.
16. I am That and so are you by our conviction of the unity. But if we only believe ourselves to be composed of our bodies, then I am not That, nor you are He.
17. If we rid our sense of “I” and “you” through our knowledge of truth, we cease to be the ego, and you and all other persons lose all their properties in the sole unity.
18. This particle of consciousness is immovable, though it moves over thousands of miles. We find that in our consciousness, this particle has many a mile composed in it.
19. The mind is firmly seated in the empty intellect from which it never stirs, though it goes to all places where it is never located.
20. That which has its seat in the body can never go out of it, just like a baby hanging on the breast of its mother cannot look to another place for its rest.
21. One who is free to range over large tracts will never leave his own home where he has the liberty and power to do all he likes.
22. Wherever the mind may wander, it is never affected by the climate of that place, just like a jar taken to a distant country with its lid shut does not yield any passage to the light and air of that region into it.
23. The thinking and non-thinking of consciousness, both being perceived in our minds, is said to be the exercise of intellect and the dullness of the intellect.
24. When our exercise of intellect is assimilated into the solid substance of Divine Consciousness, then our intellect is said to become solidified as a stone.
25. The consciousness of the Supreme Being has spread worlds in the infinite space that are most wonderful as they are his uncreated creations.
26. The Divine Soul is of the essence of fire, and never forsakes its form of fire. It inheres in all bodies without burning them, and it is the enlightener and purifier of all substances.
27. The blazing intelligence of the Divine Soul, purer than the ethereal sphere, produces the elemental fire by its presence.
28. The intellect, which is the light of the soul and enlightener of the lights of the luminous sun, moon and stars, is indestructible and never fades, although the light of the luminaries is lost on the last day of universal doom.
29. There is an inextinguishable light (glory), known as ineffably transcendental which the eye cannot behold, but it is perceptible to the mind as its inner illumination and presents all things to its view.
30. From there proceeds the intellectual light which transcends the conscious and mental lights and presents before it wonderful pictures of things invisible to visual light.
31. Although plant life has no eyes, it is conscious of an inner light within that causes their growth and gives the capability of bearing fruit and flowers.
32. With regard to time, space and action and existence of the world, all are only the perceptions of sense and have no master or maker, father or supporter except the Supreme Soul in whom they exist. They are mere modifications of Himself and are nothing of themselves.
33. The atomic spirit is the casket of the bright gem of the world, without changing its minuteness. The Divine Spirit is its measure and measurer, beside which there is no separate world of itself.
34. Spirit manifests itself in everything in all these worlds. It shines as the brightest gem when all the worlds are compressed in it (at the universal dissolution).
35. Because His nature is beyond understanding, He is said to be a speck of obscurity. Because of the brightness of His intellect, He is said to be a ray of light. Because we are conscious of Him, He is known to exist. Because our sight cannot see Him, He is said to be non-existent.
36. He is said to be far away because He is invisible to our eyes, and to be near because His being is the nature of our consciousness. He is described as a mountain because He is the totality of our consciousness, although He is more minute than any perceptible particle.
37. His consciousness manifests itself in the form of the universe. Mountains are not real existences. They exist like Meru in his atomic substratum.
38. A twinkling is what appears as a short instant, and a kalpa epoch is the long duration of an age.
39. Sometimes an instant, when it is filled with acts and thoughts of an age, represents a kalpa, just like an extensive country of many miles can be pictured in miniature or in a grain of the brain.
40. The course of a long kalpa is sometimes represented in the womb of an instant, just like the time to build a great city is present in the small space of a mind’s memory, as it is in the reflection of a mirror.
41. As little moments and kalpa ages, high mountains and extensive miles may abide in a single grain of the intellect, so do all dualities and pluralities unite and meet in the unity of God.
42. That “I have done this and that before” is an impression derived from the thought of our actual actions and activity. But the truth thereof becomes as untrue as our doings in a dream.
43. It is calamity that prolongs the course of time, and our prosperity diminishes its duration, just like the short space of a single night appeared like twelve long years to King Harishchandra in his misery.
44. Anything that appears as a certain truth to the mind stamps the same impression in the soul. It is the same as the impression of a golden jewelry is deeper in the soul than the idea of its gold.
45. There is nothing like a moment or an age, or anything like near or far to the soul. It is the idea in the minute intellect that creates their length or brevity, and nearness or remoteness.
46. The opposites of light and darkness, nearness and distance, and a moment and an age, are only varied impressions on the unvaried percipient mind. There is no real difference.
47. All things or objects that are perceptible to the senses are called evident or apparent. That which lies beyond them is said to be imperceptible or unapparent. But visual sensation is not self-evident, only the vision of consciousness which is the real essence.
48. As long as there is the knowledge of the jewel, there is the knowledge of the gem also, that of the real gem being lost under the apparent form.
49. By restoring attention away from the visible form of the jewel to its real essence that one is led to the sight of the pure light of the only one Brahman.
50. Brahma is viewed as reality (sat) when He is thought of as pervading all things. He is said to be unreal (asat) because He is not the object of vision. Consciousness is said to be a reality from its faculty of exercise of intellect. Otherwise it is a stolid or dull matter.
51. Consciousness is the wonderful property of the Divine Spirit in which it is present as its object (chetya). But how can a man see Consciousness if his mind is fixed to the sight of a world that is a shadow of Consciousness and moves like a tree shaken by the wind?
52. As a mirage is the reflection of the dense light of the sun, so the world is a shadow of the solid light of Divine Consciousness.
53. That which is more refined than the rays of the sun and never decays is always as uniform as it was before creation and remains apart from it. Hence its existence is equivalent to its nonexistence.
54. Just like the accumulation of sunbeams exhibits the form of a gold mine in the sky, so the golden appearance of the world prevents the deluded from seeing the knowable object of the intellect.
55. Like the appearance of a visionary city in dream, the sight of this world is neither a reality nor altogether unreal. It is a reflection of consciousness, like the dream is a reflection of images in the memory. It is only a continued medley of errors.
56. Knowing it as such, men should consider everything by the light of reason and proceed to the knowledge of truth by their intellectual culture.
57. There is no difference between a house and a void other than that the one is the object of vision and the other of consciousness. Again, all nature teeming with life is said to live in God who is light and life of all for evermore.
58. But all these living beings have no room in the empty sphere of Divine Consciousness. They live and shine like solar rays proceeding imperceptibly from that luminous orb.
59. A difference appears in these rays, both from the original light and from one another, by a curious design of Providence. But it the same in all, like the forms of the trees growing out of the same kind of seed.
60. As the tree contained in the seed is of the same kind as the parent seed, so the innumerable worlds contained in the empty seed of Brahma are also as empty as Brahma himself.
61. As the tree which is yet undeveloped in the seed does not exist without development of its parts, so the world in the womb of Brahma was discernible only to Divine Consciousness.
62. There is only one God who is one and uncreated, calm and quiet, without beginning, middle or end, and without a body and its parts. He has no duality and is one in many. He is of the form of pure light, and shines for ever with everlasting and undiminished luster.
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Chapter 3.81 — The King’s Answers
1. The Rakshasi said, “Well said, O councilor! Your explanations are sanctifying and filled with spiritual doctrines. Now let the king with lotus eyes answer the other questions.”
2. The king answered:— He whose belief consists in the renunciation of all reliance on this world, and whose attainment depends upon forsaking all the desires of the heart,
3. whose expansion and contraction causes the creation and extinction of the world, who is the object of the doctrines of Vedanta, and who is inexpressible by words or speech of humankind,
4. who is between the two extremes of doubt (whether he is or is not), and who is between both extremes (that he is and is not), and whose pleasure (will) displays the world with all its animate and inanimate beings,
5. whose universal permeation does not destroy His unity, who being the soul of all is still but one, He alone, O lady, is truly said to be the eternal Brahma.
6. This minute particle is falsely conceived as spirit (air) because it is invisible to the naked eye, but in truth, it is neither air nor any other thing except pure Consciousness.
7. This smallest of particles is said to be sound or words, but it is error to say so because it is far beyond the reach of sound or the sense of words.
8. That particle is all yet nothing. It is neither I, you or he. It is the Almighty Soul and its power is the cause of all.
9. It is the soul that is attainable with great pains, and which being gained adds nothing to our possession. But its attainment is attended with the gain of the Supreme Soul. There is no better gain.
10. Ignorance of the soul stretches the bonds of our worldliness and repeated reincarnations with their evils growing like the rankest weeds in spring, until they are rooted out by spiritual knowledge.
11. Those who are in easy circumstances in life lose their souls by viewing themselves only as solid bodies that rise quickly to view like a dense mirage by light of the sun.
12. This particle of self-consciousness contains Mount Meru and the three worlds in itself like bits of straw. They are distinguished from it in order to present their delusive appearances to us.
13. Whatever is imprinted in consciousness appears expressed without it. The fond embrace of passionate lovers in dream and imagination serves to exemplify this truth.
14. As Consciousness rose of itself with its omnipotent Will at the first creation of the world, so it exercises the same volition in its subsequent formations also, like sprigs growing from the joints of reeds and grass.
15. The hobby that enters the heart also shows itself on the outside, as in the example of children’s whims.
16. The minute intellect, small as an atom and as subtle as the air, fills the whole universe on all sides.
18. As a cunning and conceited man deludes young girls by gestures, calls, winks and glances,
19. so the holy look of Divine Consciousness serves as a prelude to the endless rotating dance of worlds with all their hills and contents.
20. It is that atom of consciousness that envelops all things within its consciousness, and represents also their forms outside it, just like a picture on canvas shows the figures of the hills and trees drawn in it, standing out as in bas-relief.
21. The Divine Spirit is as minute as the hundredth part of the point of a hair, yet it is larger than the hills it hides in itself, and as vast as infinity, being unlimited by any measure of space or time.
22. The comparison of the vast emptiness of divine understanding with a particle of air is not an exact simile. It is like comparing a mountain with a mustard seed, which is absurd.
23. The minuteness attributed to the Divine Spirit (in the Vedas) is as false as attributing different colors to a peacock’s feathers, and of jewelry to gold, which can not be applicable to the spirit.
24. It is that bright lamp that has brought forth light from its thought without any loss of its own essential brightness.
25. If the sun and other luminous bodies in the world were dull and dark in the beginning, then what was the nature of the primeval light and where was it?
26. The pure essence of the mind situated in the soul saw the light displayed on the outside by its internal particle of the intellect.
27. There is no difference between the lights of the sun, moon and fire and the darkness, out of which these lights were produced. The only difference is that of the two colors, black and white.
28. As the difference between clouds and snows consists in the blackness of the one and whiteness of the other, such is the difference between light and darkness, only in their colors not in their substance.
29. Both of these being inanimate in their nature, there is no difference between them. They both disappear or join with one another before the light of consciousness. They disappear before the intellectual light of the yogi who, under the blaze of his consciousness, perceives no physical light or darkness in his abstract meditation. They join together as light and shade, the shadow inseparably following the light.
30. The sun of consciousness shines by day and night without setting or sleeping. It shines in the bosom of even hard stones without being clouded or having its rise or fall.
31. The light of this blazing soul has lighted the sun, which diffuses its light all over the three worlds. It has filled the capacious womb of earth with a variety of provisions, just they store large baskets of food in a warehouse.
32. It enlightens darkness without destroying itself, and the darkness that receives the light becomes as enlightened as light itself.
33. As the shinning sun brings the lotus buds to light, so the light of the Divine Spirit enlightens our intellects amidst the gloom of ignorance that envelopes them.
34. As the sun displays himself by making day and night by his rise and fall, so does the intellect show itself by its development and restraint by turns.
35. All our notions and ideas are contained in the particle of the intellect, just like a healthy seed contains in its breast the leaves, flowers and fruits of the future tree.
36. These and all the powers of the mind develop themselves in their proper times, like flowers and fruits make their appearance in spring and proper seasons.
37. The particle of Divine Spirit is altogether tasteless, being so very flavorless and devoid of qualities, yet it is always delicious as the giver of flavor to all things.
38. All tastes abide in the waters (water being the receptacle of taste), like a mirror is the recipient of a shadow, but savor, like the shadow, is not the substance. It is the essence of the spirit that gives it the flavor.
39. All bodies that exist in the world and are unconsciousness of Him are forsaken by the atomic spirit of the Supreme, but they remain dependant upon Him, by the consciousness of the divine particle shining in their souls. In answer to “who are forsaken by and supported by the Divine Spirit,”
40. it is He who, being unable to wrap himself, wraps the world in Him by spreading out the clothing of his atomic consciousness over all existence.
41. The Supreme Spirit is of the form of infinite space. It cannot hide itself in anything within its sphere, which would be like hiding an elephant in grass.
42. Yet this all-knowing spirit encompasses the world, knowing it to be a trifle, just like a child holding a grain of rice in his hand. This is an act of illusion (maya).
43. The spirit of God exists even after the dissolution of the world by relying in his consciousness (chit), just like plants survive the spring by the sap they have derived from it.
44. It is the essence of Consciousness that gives rise to the world, just as the garden continues to flourish by the nourishment of the spring season.
45. Know the world is truly a transformation of consciousness, and all its productions are like plants in the great garden of the world, nourished by the spring juice of consciousness.
46. It is the sap supplied by the intellectual particle that makes all things grow up with myriads of arms and eyes. In the same manner the atom of a seed produces plants with a thousand branches and fruit.
47. Myriads of kalpas amount to an infinitesimal part of a twinkling of the atomic consciousness, as a momentary dream presents a man with all the periods of his life, from youth to age. In answer to, “What twinkling of the eye appears as many thousand kalpas,”
48. even this infinitesimal of a twinkling is too long for thousands of kalpas. The whole duration of existence is as short as a wink of His eye.
49. Only an idea makes a twinkling appear a kalpa or many kalpas, just as the idea of satiety in starvation is a mere delusion to the deluded soul.
50. Only lust makes the famished feed upon his thoughts of food. Despair of one’s life presents his death before him in his dream.
51. All worlds reside in the intellectual soul within the atom of its consciousness. Outer worlds are only reflections of the inner prototype.
52. Whatever object appears to be situated anywhere, it is only a representation of its model in some place or other, and resembles the appearance of figures in bas-relief on any part of a pillar. But the changes occurring in external phenomena are no results of the internal, which being the serene vacuum is subject to no change.
53. All existences present in Consciousness at this moment are the same as they have existed, and will ever exist inwardly, like trees in their seeds.
54. The atom of Consciousness contains the moments and ages of time, like grain within the husk. It contains these in the seed within the infinite soul of God.
55. The Soul remains quite aloof as if retired from the world, in spite of the existence and dependence of the world upon the Soul. The Divine Soul at all times remains unconcerned with its creation and its preservation.
56. The essence of the world springs from the atom of pure Consciousness. However, Consciousness itself remains apart from both the states of action and passion.
57. There is nothing created or dissolved in the world by anybody at anytime. All apparent changes are caused by the delusion of our vision.
58. This world with all its contents is as empty as the vault of the empty atmosphere. We apply the word ‘world’ to phenomena, but it is an insignificant term signifying nothing.
59. It is the particle of consciousness that is led by the delusion of maya to view scenes situated in the Divine Soul in the outward appearance of the world of phenomena.
60. The words ‘external’ and ‘internal’ as applied to the world are meaningless and not positive terms. There is no inside or outside of the Divine Soul. These are contrived for the instruction of pupils to explain its different views by consciousness.
61. The viewer looking into the invisible being within himself comes to see the soul. He who looks on the outside with his open eyes comes to view the unreal as real.
62. Therefore whoever looks into the soul can never see false phenomena as realities as others do.
63. It is the internal sight of consciousness that looks into the inner soul which is without all desires. The external eyes are mere organs to look upon the false appearance of outer objects.
64. There can be no object of sight unless there is a looker, just like there can be no child without its parent. This duality arises from the lack of knowing their unity.
65. The viewer himself becomes the view as there can be no view without its viewer. Nobody prepares any food, unless there is somebody to feed upon it.
66. It is in the power of consciousness (imagination) to create the views of its vision, just like it lies in the capacity of gold to produce all the various forms of jewelry.
67. The inanimate view never has or can have the ability of producing its viewer, just like the golden bracelet has no power of bringing gold into being.
68. Consciousness, having the faculty of reasoning (chetana), forms thoughts of what can be perceived (chetyas) within itself, which however unreal are falsely viewed as real by its intellectual vision to its own deception, just like the deception caused by the appearance of jewelry in gold.
69. The viewer (Divine Consciousness), being transformed to the view (of the visible world), is no more perceptible in it than the jewelry of gold and not gold itself.
70. Thus the viewer becoming the view still views himself as the viewer, as gold transformed into jewelry is always looked upon as gold.
71. There being only one unity apparent in all nature, it is useless to talk of the duality of the viewer and view. A word with a masculine suffix cannot give the sense of a neuter noun.
72. The viewer who feasts his eyes seeing the outer visible world cannot have sight of the inner soul with the internal eyes of his consciousness. But when the viewer shuts out the outer view, all its realities appear as unreal.
73. When the viewer perceives the unreality of what can be seen by the light of his understanding, then he comes to see the true reality. So by withdrawing the mind from seeing the bracelet form, one comes to see only its nature of gold.
74. If what can be seen is present, there must also be their viewers to whose view they are apparent. It is the absence of both viewer and the seen, and the knowledge of their unreality, that produce the belief of unity.
75. The man who considers all things in the humility of his conscious soul comes at last to perceive something in him that is serenely clear and which no words can express.
76. The minute particle of consciousness shows us the sight of the soul as clearly as a lamp enlightens everything in the dark. (Answer to, “Who shows the soul as clearly as a visible thing?”)
77. The intelligent soul is without perception of the measure, measurer and measured, like liquid gold dissolved from its form of an ornament.
78. There is nothing that is not composed of the elements of earth, water and the like. Therefore, there is nothing in nature that is apart from the nature of the atomic consciousness.
79. The thinking soul penetrates into all things in the form of their notions. Because all thoughts concentrate in the intellect, there is nothing apart from it.
80. Our desires being the parents of our wished for objects, our desires are the same as our desired. Therefore there is no difference between our desires and the object of our desire, just like there is none between the sea and its waves.
81. The Supreme Soul exists alone unbounded by time or space. Being the Universal Soul, it is the soul of all. Being omniscient, it is no dull matter at all.
82. The self-existent, being only consciousness, is not perceptible to sight. There is unity and no duality in it, but all forms unite into one in the great self of the Supreme.
83. If there is a duality, it is the one and its unity. The unity and duality of the Universal Soul are both as true as the light and its shade joined together.
84. Where there is no duality or any number above it, unity can have no application to anything, and where there is no unity, there cannot be any two or more over it because they are only repetitions of the unity.
85. Anything is in itself such as it is. It cannot be more or less than itself, but is identical with itself like water and its fluidity.
86. The multiplicity of forms which it exhibits blends into a harmonic whole without conflict with one another. The varieties within creation are contained in Brahma, like a tree with all its several parts in the embryonic seed.
87. Its dualism is as inseparable from it as the bracelet from its gold. Although the many forms in nature are evident to comprehensive understanding, yet it is not true of the true Entity.
88. Like fluidity of water, the movement of air, and the emptiness of the sky, this variety of forms is an inseparable property of God.
89. A systematic inquiry into unity and duality is the cause of misery to the restless spirit. It is the lack of any such distinction that is the highest knowledge.
90. The measure, measurement and measurer of all things, and the viewer, view and vision of the visible world are all dependent on the atom of consciousness that contains them all.
91. The atom of Divine Consciousness spreads out and contracts in itself by an inflation of its spirit as it were by a breath of air. These mountainous orbs of the world are like its limbs.
92. O the wonder and great wonder of wonders that this atom of consciousness should contain in its embryo all the three regions of the worlds, above and below one another.
93. It is an incredible delusion that must always remain an inexplicable riddle, how the enormous universe is contained in the minute atom of Consciousness.
94. As a pot contains the seed with a huge tree within its cell, so the Divine Soul contains the atom of consciousness containing the chains of worlds outstretched within itself.
95. The all-seeing eye simultaneously sees all the worlds situated within the bosom of the intellect, as microscopic sight discovers the parts of the future tree concealed in the seed.
96. The expansion of the world in the atom of Consciousness is analogous to the enlargement of the hidden parts of the seed into leaves, branches, flowers and fruit.
97. As the many forms of the future tree is contained in the uniform substance within the seed, it is in like manner that the multiplicity of worlds is situated in the unity of the atomic Consciousness. Such can be is seen by anyone who will but look into it.
98. It is neither a unity nor a duality, neither seed or its sprout. It is not thin or thick, born or unborn.
99. He is neither an entity nor a nonentity, nor graceful nor ungraceful. And though it contains the three worlds with the ether and air, yet it is nothing and has no substance at all.
100. There is no world and no non-world other than consciousness which is all of itself and is said to be such and such in any place or time, as it appears so and so to us there and then.
101. It rises as if unrisen, and expands in its own knowledge. It is selfsame with the Supreme Soul, and as the totality of all selves, it spreads through the entire emptiness like air.
102. Like a tree springs from the ground according to its seed, so the world appears to sight in the form as contained in the seed of consciousness.
103. The plant does not quickly quit its seed, lest it would dry up and die for want of its sap. So the man who sticks to the soul and seed of his being is free from disease and death.
104. Mount Meru is like the filament of a flower compared to the vastness of that atom. Everything that can be sensed has its place in that invisible atom.
105. Meru is truly a filament of the atomic flower of the Divine Soul, and myriads of Merus resemble the cloudy spots rising in the sphere of Consciousness.
106. It is that one great atom that fills the world, after having made it out of itself and given it a visible, extended and material form in its own hollow sphere.
107. As long as the knowledge of duality is not driven out of the mind, it finds the charming form of the world, as in its dream upon waking. But the knowledge of unity liberates the soul from its stay in and return to the world, which it beholds as a mass of the divine essence.
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Chapter 3.82 — Friendship with the Rakshasi; Criminals as Food
1. Vasishta continued:— The silly Karkati of the forest, having heard the king’s speech, pondered well the sense of the words and forsook her levity and malice.
2. She found the coolness and tranquility of her heart after its fervor was over, just like a peacock when the rains set in, or a lotus bed at the rising of moonbeams.
3. The king’s words delighted her heart like the cries of cranes flying in the sky gladden the passing clouds in the air.
4. The rakshasi said, “O how brightly shines the pure light of your understanding. It glows as serenely by its inner brilliance as it is illuminated by the sun of intelligence.
5. Hearing the elements of your reasoning, my heart is as gladdened as when the earth is cooled by the serene beams of humid moonlight.
6. Reasonable men like you are honored and venerated in the world, and I am as delighted in your company as a lake of lotuses with full blown buds under moonbeams.
7. The company of the virtuous scatters its blessings just like a flower garden spreads its fragrance all around and, like the brightness of sunbeams, brings the lotus buds to bloom.
8. Company of the good and great dispels all our sorrows, just like a lamp in the hand disperses surrounding darkness.
9. I have been fortunate to have found you as two great lights in this forest. Both of you are entitled to my reverence. Please let me know what good intent has brought you here.”
10. The king answered, “O offspring of the savage race of rakshasas, the people of this province are always afflicted in their hearts by a certain evil.
11. It is the stubborn disease of choleric pain that troubles the people of this part. Therefore I have come out with my guards to find her out in my nightly rounds.
12. No medicine removes this choleric pain from the hearts of men, so I have come in search of the mantra revealed to her for its cure.
13. It is my business and professed duty to persecute such wicked beings as yourself who infest our ignorant subjects in this way. This is all I have to tell you and do in this place.
14. Therefore, good lady, promise in your own words that in future you will never injure any living being.”
15. The rakshasi replied, “Well! I tell you truly, my lord, that I shall hence forward never kill anybody.”
16. The king replied, “If that be so, you who lives on animal flesh, tell me how can you support your body if you abstain from animal food?”
17. The rakshasi replied, “It has been six months, O king, since I have risen from my samadhi meditation and fostered my desire for food, which I wholly renounce today.
18. I will return to the mountain top, resume my steadfast meditation, and sit there contented as long as I like in the posture of an unmoving statue.
19. I will restrain myself by unshaken meditation until my death, and then I shall quit this body in its time with gladness. This is my resolution.”
20. “I tell you now, O king, that until the end of this life and body of mine, I shall no more take the life of any living being, and you may rely assured upon my word.
21. There is Mount Himalaya by name, standing in the heart of the northern region and stretching in one sweep from the vast east to west.
22. At first I lived there in a cave by its golden peak. I was in the shape of an iron statue, and also like a cloud fragment, and I bore the name of Karkati the Rakshasi.
23. There by the austerity of my meditation I obtained the sight of Brahma and I expressed my desire to kill mankind in the shape of a destructive needle.
24. I obtained the boon accordingly and passed a great many years in the act of afflicting living brings and feeding on their entrails in the form of choleric pain.”
25. “Then Brahma prohibited me from killing the learned and he instructed me in the great mantra.
26. He gave me the power of piercing the hearts of men with some other diseases that infest all mankind.
27. I spread myself far and wide in my malice and sucked the heart blood of men, which dried up their veins and arteries and emaciated their bodies.
28. Those I left alive after devouring their flesh and blood begat a race as lean and without veins as they had become themselves.”
29. “You will be successful, O happy king, in getting the mantra for driving away cholera pain, because there is nothing impossible that the wise and strong cannot attain.
30. Receive immediately, O king, the mantra that Brahma uttered to remove choleric pain from the cells of arteries weakened by cholera.
31. Come and let us go to the nearby river. After you are both prepared by washing and purification, then I will initiate you with the mantra.”
32. Vasishta said:— Then the rakshasi proceeded to the river side that very night accompanied by the king and his minister, all joined together as friends.
33. These two men, being sure of the rakshasi’s friendship by both affirmative and negative proofs, made their ablutions and stood on the river bank.
34. Then the rakshasi tenderly told them the mantra that Brahma had revealed to her to remove cholera pain, and which was always successful.
35. Afterwards as the nocturnal fiend was about to depart and leave her friendly companions behind, the king stopped her with his speech.
36. The king said, “O you of gigantic stature! By teaching us the mantra, you have become our teacher. We affectionately invite you to take your meal with us tonight.
37. It does not become you to break off our friendship which has grown at our very first meeting like the acquaintance of good people.
38. Give your ill-favored form a little more graceful figure and walk with us to our home and stay there at your own pleasure.”
39. The rakshasi replied, “You can well provide a female of your own kind with her proper food, but what entertainment can you give to my satisfaction? I am a cannibal by nature!
40. It is only a rakshasa’s food that can satisfy me, not the little morsels of petty mortals. This is the innate nature of our being and it can not be done away with as long as we carry our present bodies.”
41. The king answered, “Ornamented with necklaces of gold, you shall be at liberty to remain with the ladies in my house for as many days as you may like to stay.
42. Then, for your food, I will produce the robbers and felons that I seize in my territories. You will have them supplied to you constantly by the hundreds and thousands.
43. Then you can then forsake your attractive form, resume your hideous rakshasi figure, and kill hundreds of those lawless men for your food.
44. Take them to the top of the snowy mountain and devour them at your pleasure. Great men always like to take their meals in privacy.”
45. “After your recreation with that food and a short nap, you can resume your meditation. When you are tired with your meditation, you can come back to this place.
46. You can then take other offenders for your slaughter. Killing culprits is not only justifiable by law, it amounts to an act of mercy to rid them of their punishment in the next world.
47. You must return to me when you are tired of your meditation because friendship, even that formed with the wicked, is not easily done away.”
48. The rakshasi replied, “You have spoken well, king, and I will do as you say. For who is there that will slight the words of the wise spoken to him in the way of friendship?”
49. Vasishta said:— Saying so, the rakshasi assumed a graceful form and wore necklaces and bracelets, and silken robes and laces.
50. She said, “Well king, let us go together,” then followed the footsteps of the king and his counselor who walked before her and led the way.
51. Having arrived at the royal residence, they passed that night with their agreeable meal and discourse together.
52. As it became morning, the rakshasi went inside the house and remained there with the women. Meanwhile the king and the minister attended to their business.
53. Over the course of six days, the king collected together all the offenders he had seized in his territory and from other parts.
54. These amounted to three thousand heads which he gave to her. She resumed her fierce dark form of the black fiend of the night.
55. She laid hold of thousands of men in her extended grasp, like a cloud fragment holds drops of rainwater in its wide bosom.
56. She took leave of the king and went with her prey to the mountain top, just like a poor man takes gold that he happened to find in some hidden place.
57. For three days and nights she refreshed herself with her food and rested. Then regaining the firmness of her understanding, she employed herself in meditation.
58. After four or five or sometimes seven years passed, she used to get up from her tapas and return to where men live and to the court of the king.
59. There they passed some time in confidential conversation, then she returned with her prey of the offenders to her mountain seat.
60. Thus freed from cares even in her lifetime, she continued to remain as a liberated being in that mountain.
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Chapter 3.83 — Worship of Karkati as Kandara Devi or Mangala Devi
1. Vasishta continued:— The rakshasi continued her meditation and remained on friendly terms with the successive rulers of the Kirata country who kept supplying her with her rations.
2. By the power of her perfection in the practice of yoga meditation, she continued to prevent all possibility of evils, to ward off all dread and danger from demons, and to remove diseases from the people.
3. Over the course of her many years in meditation, she used to come out of her cell at certain intervals and call at headquarters to take the living creatures collected and kept to be her victims.
4. The practice is still observed by the kings of that place who sacrifice animals to her departed ghost on the hill, because none can be negligent to repay the good services of his benefactor.
5. At last she ceased her meditation, and for a long time she stopped appearing where men lived to lend her aid in removing their diseases, dangers and difficulties.
6. Then the people dedicated a high temple to her memory, and installed a statue of her in it under the names of Kandara (Cave) and Mangala Devi (Auspicious Goddess).
7. Since then it is the custom of the chiefs of the tribe to consecrate a newly made statue in honor of the Kandara Devi, the goddess of the valley, after the previous one is disfigured and broken.
8. Any king of the place who out of his vileness fails to consecrate the new statue of Goddess Kandara brings great disasters on his people out of his own perverseness.
9. By worshipping her, man obtains the fruits of all his desires. By neglecting it, he exposes himself to all sorts of evils and disasters. These are the results of the Goddess’s pleasure or displeasure with her devotees.
10. Dying and ailing people still worship the goddess with offerings for remedy of their illness and to secure her blessings. In turn, she distributes her rewards among those who worship her in her statue or picture.
11. She bestows all blessings on young babies and weak calves and cows. She kills the hardy and proud who deserve death. She is the goddess of intelligence and favors the intelligent, and presides forever in the land of the Kirata people.
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Chapter 3.84 — Imperfect Words Used to Guide to Understanding; the Power of the Mind
1. Vasishta said:— Rama, I have told you the worthy legend of Karkati, the rakshasi of Imaus, from beginning to end.
2. Rama replied, “But how could one born in a cave of the Himalayas become a black rakshasi, and why was she called Karkati? These I want clearly explained.”
3. Vasishta replied:— Rakshasa cannibals originally are of many races. Some are of dark and others of fair complexions, while many have a yellowish appearance and some of a greenish shade.
4. As for Karkati, you must know that there was a rakshasa named Karkata because of his exact resemblance to a crab.
5. I only told you the story of Karkati because of her questions which I remembered and thought would serve well to explain the omniform God in our discourse into spiritual knowledge.
6. It is evident that the pure and perfect unity is the source of the impure and imperfect duality of phenomena, and this finite world has sprung from its supreme cause who is without beginning or end.
7. These float like the waves upon waters, which apparently are of different forms, and yet essentially the same with the element on which they seem to move. So creations whether present, past or future, are all situated in the Supreme Spirit.
8. As wet wood when ignited serves to provide heat and invites the apes of the forest to warm themselves in cold weather, so the externally shining appearance of the world invites the ignorant to rely upon it.
9. Such is the temporary glow of the ever cool spirit of God in the works of creation which shows itself in many forms without changing its essence.
10. The absent world appeared and its unreality appears to consciousness as a reality, like figures carved in wood.
11. As the products of the seed, from its sprout to the fruit, are all of the same species, so the thoughts (chetyas) of the mind (chitta) are of the same nature as those originally implanted in it.
12. According to the law of the continuity of the same essence, there is no difference in the nature of the seed and its fruit. So consciousness (chit) and the thoughts (chetyas) differ in nothing except in their forms, like the waves and water differ in external appearance and not in their intrinsic substance (vastu).
13. No demonstration can show any difference between thoughts, mind and consciousness. Whatever distinction our judgment may make, it is easily refuted by right reasoning.
14. Let this error therefore vanish. It has come from nothing to nothing and like all causeless falsities, it fails of itself. You will know more of this, Rama, when you are awakened to divine knowledge. In the meantime, do away with the error of seeing duality that is different from the only existent unity.
15. After your attention to my lectures cuts the knot of your error, you yourself will come to know the significance and substance of what is called the true knowledge that is taken in different senses by various schools of philosophy. That which comes of itself in the mind is the intuitive knowledge of divine truth.
16. You have a mind like that of the common people, full of mistakes and blunders. All this will undoubtedly subside in your mind through your attention to my lectures.
17. You will be awakened by my sermons to know this certain truth, that all things proceed from Brahma into whom they ultimately return.
18. Rama replied, “Sage, you state the first cause in the ablative case indicating causation: ‘That all things proceed from Brahma.’ This contradicts the opposite passage in the Sruti scriptures in the same case, that ‘Nothing is distinct from Him.” It is inconsistent in itself.”
19. Vasishta answered:— Words are used in the scriptures to instruct others. Where any inconsistency appears, they are explained.
20. Hence, although not strictly true, we use a difference between visible phenomena and the invisible Brahma, just like we speak of ghosts appearing to children, though there are no such things in reality.
21. In reality there is no duality connected with the unity of Brahma, just as there is no dualism between a city and the sleep dream in which it appears. Again, God being immutable in his nature and eternal in decree, it is wrong to apply the mutations of nature and the mutability of will to Him.
22. The Lord is free from the states of causality and the caused, of instrumentality and instruments, of a whole and its part, and those of proprietorship and property.
23. He is beyond all affirmative and negative propositions, and their legitimate conclusions or false deductions and refutations.
24. So it is equally false to attribute the original will to God. Yet it is usual to say so for the instruction of the ignorant. There is no change in His nature from its nothing to slight wish.
25. These conscious terms and figurative expressions are used to guide the ignorant. The knowing few are far from falling into the fallacy of dualism. All intellectual conceptions cease upon the spiritual perception of God. There ensues an utter and dumb silence.
26. When in time you come to know these things better, you shall arrive at the conclusion that all this is only one thing, an undivided whole without parts and having no beginning or end.
27. The unlearned dispute among themselves from their uncertainty of truth. Their differences and dualisms all end when they understand true unity by instructions of the wise.
28. Without knowledge of the agreement of significant words with their meanings, it is impossible to know the unity, for so long as a word is taken in different senses, there will be no end of disputes and difference of opinions. Dualisms being done away, all disputes are hushed up in the belief of unity.
29. O support of Raghu’s race, place your reliance upon the sense of the great sayings of the Vedas. Do not pay any regard to conflicting passages. Attend to what I will now tell you.
30. From whatever cause it may have sprung, the world resembles a city rising to view in a vision, just like thoughts and ideas appear before the mirror of the mind from some source of which we know nothing.
31. Listen Rama, and I will relate an example of visible evidence for you how the mind (chitta) spins out the magical world from itself.
32. Having known this, O Rama, you will be able to cast away all your false conceptions. Being certain of certainty, you will resign your attachments and desires in this enchanted and bewitching world.
33. All these prospective worlds are machinations and the workings of the mind. Having forsaken these false fabrications of fancy, you will have tranquility of your soul and abide in peace with yourself forever.
34. By paying your attention to the drift of my preaching, you from your own reasoning will be able to find a mite of the medicine that cures all the illnesses of your deluded mind.
35. If you sit in silent meditation, you will see the whole world in your mind. All outward bodies will disappear like drops of oil in sand.
36. The mind is the seat of the universe as long as it is not weakened by passions and affections and afflictions of life. When the mind is rid of the turmoil of its present state, it is set beyond the world (in heavenly bliss).
37. The mind is the means to accomplish anything. It is the store-keeper to preserve all things in the warehouse of its memory. It is the faculty of reasoning, and the power to act like a respectable person. Therefore the mind is to be treated with respect as it recalls, restrains and guides us in our pursuits and duties.
38. The mind contains within it the three worlds with all their contents and the surrounding air. It exhibits itself as the fullness of ego and the cornucopia of all in its microcosm.
39. The intellectual part of the mind contains the subjective self-consciousness of ego, which is the seed of all its powers. The other part, its objective part, bears in itself the false forms of the dull material world.
40. The self-born Brahma saw the yet uncreated and formless world as already present before his mind in its ideal state, like a dream at its first creation. He saw it (mentally) without seeing it (actually).
41. He saw the whole creation in the self-consciousness of his vast mind, and he saw all material objects, the hills and all, in the knowledge (samvid) of his gross personal consciousness. At last by his subtle sightedness (sukshma vid, subtle knowledge or clairvoyance) he perceived that all gross bodies were as empty as air and not solid substances.
42. The mind with its embodying thoughts is pervaded by the omnipresent soul that is spread out as transparently as sunbeams upon clear water.
43. Otherwise, the mind is like an infant who views the appearance of the world in its unconscious sleep of ignorance. But being awakened by consciousness (chit), it sees the transcendent form of the self or soul without the mist of delusion. The delusion is caused by the part of the mind that is aware of physical senses, and it is removed by the reasoning faculties of consciousness.
44. Hear now Rama, what I am going to say about how the soul is to be seen in this world of phenomena that is the cause of misleading the mind from its knowledge of the unity to the false notion of the duality.
45. What I will say, by opposite similes, right reasoning, graceful style, and good sense of the words in which they shall be conveyed to you, cannot fail to come to your heart. By listening, your heart will be filled with a delight that will pervade your senses like the oil upon the water.
46. Speech which is without suitable comparisons and graceful phraseology, which is inaudible or clamorous, or has inappropriate words and harsh sounding letters, cannot take possession of the heart. It is thrown away for nothing, like butter poured upon the burnt ashes of an offering that has no power to rekindle the flame.
47. Whatever stories there are in any language on earth, and whatever compositions are adorned with measured sentences and graceful diction, all these are rendered acutely insightful through conspicuous comparisons, as the world is enlightened by cooling moonbeams. Therefore almost every verse in this work is embellished with a suitable comparison.
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Chapter 3.85 — Brahma Describes His Own Experience; Asks the Sun
1. Vasishta continued:— I will relate to you Rama, agreeably to your request, the story that Brahma himself told me of old. The mind (manas) produced Manu, the progeny of the mind, who begat the Manujas otherwise called men (manavas or manushyas), the offspring of the mind.
2. Once before I had asked the lotus-born god to tell me how these hosts of creation had come to being.
3. Then Brahma, the great progenitor of men, granted my request and related the story of the ten Aindava (Moon-like) brothers in his loud voice.
4. Brahma said:— All this visible world is the manifestation of the Divine Mind, like circling whirlpools and rippling swirls of water on the surface of the sea.
5. Hear me tell you how I (the personified mind) first awoke on the day of creation in a former kalpa with my volition to create (expand) myself.
6. Previously I remained alone, quietly intent upon the creation at the end of the prior day (kalpa). I had compressed the whole creation in the focus of my mind and hid it under the gloom of the primeval night.
7. At the end of the chaotic night I awoke like from a deep sleep and performed my morning prayers as it is the general law (of all living beings). I opened my eyes with a view to create and fixed my look on the emptiness all about me.
8. As far as I could see, it was empty space covered by darkness with no light of heaven. It was unlimitedly extensive, all void and without any boundary.
9. Being then determined to bring forth creation, and with the acuteness of my understanding, I began to discern the world in its simple (ideal) form within me.
10. Then I saw in my mind the great cosmos of creation, set unobstructed and apart from me in the wide extended field of emptiness.
11. Then the rays of my reflection stretched out over them from amidst the lotus-cell of my abode, and sat in the form of ten lotus-born Brahmas over the ten worlds of this creation, like so many swans brooding upon their eggs.
12. Then these separate orbs (cosmic eggs) brought forth multitudes of beings to light within their transparent aqueous atmospheres.
13. Thence sprang the great rivers and the roaring seas and oceans, and thence again rose the burning lights and blowing winds of the sky.
14. The gods began to play in the ethereal air, men moved about on the earth, and demons and serpents were confined in their homes under the ground.
15. The wheel of time turned with the revolution of seasons and their produce, and adorned the earth with her various productions by change of the seasons.
16. Laws were fixed for all things on all sides, and human actions were regulated in the Smriti scriptures as right or wrong and producing the reward of heaven or the torments of hell as their fruits.
17. All beings pursue their enjoyments and liberty, and the more they strive for their desired objects, the better they thrive in them.
18. In this way the seven worlds and continents, the seven oceans and the seven boundary mountains were brought to existence, and they continue to exist until their final dissolution at the end of a kalpa period.
19. The primeval darkness from the face of open lands fled before the light and took its refuge in mountain caverns and hollow caves. It abides in some places allied with light, as in the shady and sunny forest lands and lawns.
20. The blue sky, like a lake of blue lotuses, is haunted by fragments of dark clouds resembling swarms of black bees on high. The stars that twinkle in it are like the yellow filaments of flowers shaken by the winds.
21. The huge heaps of snow setting in the valleys of high hills resemble the lofty cottonwood trees beset by their pods of cotton.
22. The earth is surrounded by the polar mountains serving as her girdles, and the circles of polar seas serve as her sounding anklets and trinkets. She is covered by the polar darkness as if by a blue garment, and studded all about with gems growing and glowing in the bosoms of her rich and ample mines and seas.
23. The earth, covered by the ornaments of her greenness of vegetation, resembles a lady sitting dressed in her robes, having the produce of rice for her food and the busy buzz of the world for her music.
24. The sky appears like a bride veiled under the black covering of night, with glittering chains of stars for her jewels. Seasonal fruits and flowers hanging in the air resemble wreaths of lotuses about her body.
25. The orbs of worlds appear like beautiful pomegranate fruits containing all their peoples in them, like the shining seeds in the cells of those fruit.
26. Bright moonbeams, stretching both above and below and all around the three sides, appear like the white sacred thread girding the world above and below and all about, or like the Ganges River running in three directions in the upper, lower and nether worlds.
27. The clouds dispersing on all sides with their glittering lightning appear like the leaves and flowers of air-borne forests, blown away by the breezes on all sides.
28. But all these worlds with their lands and seas, their skies and all their contents, are in reality as unreal as visionary dreams and as delusive as the enchanted city of a fairyland.
29. The gods, demons, men and serpents seen in multitudes in all worlds are like bodies of buzzing gnats fluttering about fig trees.
30. Here time is moving on with his train of moments and minutes, his ages, yugas and kalpas, in expectation of the unforeseen destruction of all things.
31. Having seen all these things in my pure and enlightened understanding, I was quite confounded to think from where all these could have come into being.
32. Why is it that I do not see all that I perceive with my visual organs, like a magic scene spread out in the sphere of my mind?
33. Having looked into these for a long time with my steadfast attention, I called to me the brightest sun of these luminous spheres and addressed him saying,
34. “Approach me, O god of gods, luminous Sun! I welcome you to me!” Having approached, I said,
35. “Tell me what you are and how this world with all its bright orbs came to being. If you know anything of this, then please reveal it to me.”
36. Being thus addressed, he looked upon me, and then having recognized me, he made his salutation, and uttered in graceful words and speech.
37. The Sun replied, “O lord, you are the eternal cause of these false phenomena. How is it that you do not know it and ask me about its cause?
38. But should you, all knowing as you are, take a delight in hearing my speech, I will tell you of my unasked and un-thought of production, which I beg you to listen to.”
39. “O great Spirit, this world is composed of reality and unreality in its twofold view. It beguiles understanding to take it sometimes for a real and at others for an unreal thing. It is the great mind of the Divine Soul that is employed in these constant and unceasingly endless creations for its diversion.
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Chapter 3.86 — The Sun’s Story of Indu’s and His Wife’s Tapas & Their Ten Sons, the Aindavas
1. The Sun continued:— It was, my lord, only the other day of one of your previous kalpas, and at the foot of a mountain, beside the tableland of Mount Kailash that stands in a corner of the continent of Asia,
2. that there lived a man named Suvarnajata together with all his sons and their progeny, who had made that place a beautiful and pleasant home.
3. Among them lived a brahmin named Indu, a descendant of the patriarch Kasyapa, who was a saintly soul, virtuous and acquainted with divine knowledge.
4. He resided in his house with all his relatives and passed his time agreeably in company with his wife, who was as dear to his heart as if his second self.
5. But this virtuous couple had no children, as no grass grows in sterile soil, and the wife remained discontent at the unfruitfulness of her blossoming or seed.
6. With all the purity and simplicity of their hearts, and the beauty and gracefulness of their persons and manners, they were as useless to the earth as the fair and straight stem of the pure rice plant without its stalk of grains. The unhappy couple left for the mountain in order to make their tapas for the blessing of children.
7. They ascended Mount Kailash, which lacked any shade from shade trees and was uninhabited by living beings. There they stood fixed on one side, like a couple of trees in a barren desert.
8. They remained in their austere tapas, subsisting upon liquid food which also supported the trees. At the close of the day, and from the hollow of their palms they drank only a sip of water from a neighboring cascade.
9. They remained standing and unmoved as immovable trees, and continued long in that posture, in the manner of an erect wood in heat and cold.
10. In this manner they passed two ages before their meditation met with the approval of the god who bears the crescent of the moon on his forehead (Shiva).
11. The god with the cooling moonbeams on his forehead advanced towards the parched pair, like when the moon casts her dewy light on trees and lotuses dried and scorched under the burning sunbeams of a summer day.
12. The god appeared to them mounted on his milk-white bull, and clasping the fair Uma (Goddess Parvati) on his left, and holding the beaming moon on his head, like spring season approaches green shrubs strewing flowers upon them.
13. The couple’s faces and eyes brightened as they saw the god, just like lotuses hail the appearance of the beautiful moon. They bowed down to the god of the silvery crescent and snow-white face.
14. Then the god rising to their view like the full moon, and appearing in the midst of the heaven and earth, spoke smilingly to them in a gentle and audible voice. The breath of that voice refreshed them like the breath of spring revives the faded plants of a forest.
15. Shiva said, “I am pleased with your meditation, O brahmin! Offer your prayer to me and have your desired reward granted to you immediately.”
16. The brahmin replied, “O Lord of gods, please favor me with ten intelligent male children. Let these be born of me to dispel all my sorrows.”
17. The Sun continued:— The god said, “Be it so,” and then disappeared into the air. His great body passed through the ethereal path with a tremendous roar of thunder like the surge of the seas.
18. Then the brahmin couple returned to their home with gladness in their hearts. They appeared like the reflections of the two gods Shiva and Uma.
19. After returning, the brahmani became big with child from the blessing she received from her god Shiva.
20. In her pregnant state, she looked like a thick cloud heavy with rainwater. In proper time she and brought forth a boy as beautiful as the digit of the new moon.
21. In this way she bore ten sons in succession, each as handsome as the tender sprouts of plants. They grew up in strength and stature, and were invested with the sacramental thread.
22. In course of a short time, they attained their boyhood and became conversant in the language of the gods (Sanskrit), like the mute clouds become loud in the rainy season.
23. They shone in their circle with the luster of their bodies, as the resplendent orbs of the sky burn and turn about in their spheres.
24. In time these youths lost both parents who passed off their mortal coils to go to their last abode.
25. Losing both parents, the ten brahmin lads left their home in grief and went to the top of Mount Kailash to pass their helpless lives in mourning.
26. Here they discussed what would be best for them, and what would be the right course to take to avoid the troubles and miseries of life.
27. They talked with one another on such topics as what was the best good of humanity in this world of mortality, and many other subjects, such as:
28. What is true greatness, best riches and affluence, and the highest good of humankind? What is the good of great power, possessions, being chief, or even the gain of a kingdom? What forms the true dignity of kings and the high majesty of emperors?
29. What avails the rule of the great Indra, which is lost in one moment (of Brahma). What endures a whole kalpa and must be the best good as the most lasting?
30. As they were talking in this manner, they were interrupted by the eldest brother, with a voice as grave as that of the leader of a herd of deer to the attentive herd.
31. “Of all kinds of riches and dignities, there is one thing that endures for a whole kalpa and is never destroyed. This is the state of Brahma, which I prize above all others.”
32. Hearing this, all the good sons of Indu exclaimed in one voice, “Ah! Well said” Then they honored the eldest with kind speeches.
33. They said, “How, O brother, is it possible for us to attain to the state of Brahma, who is seated on his seat of lotuses, and is adored by all in this world?”
34. The eldest then replied to his younger brothers saying, “O you my worthy brothers, do as I say and you will be successful.
35. Sit in lotus posture and think yourselves to be the bright Brahma, full of his brilliance and possessing the powers of creation and annihilation in yourselves.”
36. Being instructed in this manner by the eldest brother, the younger brothers responded saying, “Amen.” With gladness in their hearts, they sat in meditation together with the eldest brother.
37. They remained in their meditative mood like the still images in a painting. Their minds were concentrated in the inmost Brahma, whom they adored and thought upon, thinking,
38. “Here I sit on the middle of a full blown lotus, and find myself as Brahma, the great god, the creator and sustainer of the universe.
39. I find in me the whole ritual of sacrificial rites, the Vedas with their branches and supplements and the rishis. I view in me the Saraswati and Gayatri mantras of the Vedas, and all the gods and men situated in me.
40. I see in me the spheres of the regents, of the world, and the circles of the spiritual masters revolving about me, with the spacious heaven bespangled with the stars.
41. I see this globe of land and water decorated with all its oceans and continents, its mountains and islands, hanging like an earring in the material system.”
42. Within myself I have the hollow of the infernal world, with its demons, and serpents. I have the cavity of the sky in myself, containing the homes and maidens of the immortals.
43. There is the strong armed Indra, the tormentor of the lords of peoples, the sole lord of the three worlds, who receives the sacrifices of men.
44. I see the bright net of the firmament spread over all sides of heaven, and the twelve suns of the twelve months dispensing their ceaseless beams amidst it.
45. I see the righteous rulers of the sky and the rulers of men protecting their respective regions and peoples with the same care as cowherds take to protect their cattle.
46. I find every day among all sorts of beings, some rising and falling, and others diving and floating, like the constant waves of the sea.
47. “It is I who create, preserve and destroy the worlds. I remain in myself and pervade over all existence as the lord of all.
48. I observe in myself the revolution of years and ages, and of all seasons and times, and I find the same time to be both the creator and destroyer of things.
49. I see a kalpa passing away before me, and the night of Brahma (dissolution) stretched out in my presence, while I reside forever in the Supreme Soul, as full and perfect as the Divine Spirit itself.”
50. Thus these brahmins, the ten sons of Indu, remained in this sort of samadhi meditation in their motionless postures like fixed rocks, and like images hewn out of stones in a hill.
51. In this manner these brahmins, being fully acquainted with the nature of Brahma, and possessed of the spirit of that deity in themselves, continued in their meditation for a long period. They sat in their lotus posture on seats of kusa grass, freed from the snare of the fickle and frivolous desires of this false and frail world.
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Chapter 3.87 — Ten Brother Aindavas Become the Ten Worlds of the Next Day of Brahma
1. The Sun said:— O great father of creation, in this way these venerable brahmins remained at that spot for a long time, occupied in their minds with these various thoughts and their several actions.
2. They remained in this state until their bodies dried up by exposure to the sun and air, and dropped down in time like the withered leaves of trees.
3. Their dead bodies were devoured by the voracious beasts of the forest, or tossed about like some ripe fruit by monkeys on the hills.
4. These brahmins, their thoughts turned away from outward objects and concentrated on Brahma, continued enjoying divine joy in their spirits until the close of the kalpa cycle at the end of the four ages (yugas) .
5. At the end of the kalpa, there is an utter extinction of sunlight by the constant rains poured down by the heavy pushkara and avartaka clouds at the great flood,
6. when the hurricane of desolation blew on all sides and buried all beings under the universal ocean.
7. It was then your (Brahma’s) dark night, and the previous creation slept as if in yogic sleep (yoga nidra) in your sleeping self. Thus, continuing in your spirit, you contained all things in their spiritual forms in yourself.
8. Upon your waking this day with your desire of creation, all these things are exhibited to your view, like a copy of everything that was already in your inmost mind or Spirit.
9. I have thus related to you O Brahma, how these ten brahmins were personified as so many Brahmas. These ten have become the ten bright orbs situated in the empty sphere of your mind.
10. I am the eldest among them, consecrated in this temple of the sky, and appointed by you, O lord of all, to regulate the portions of time on earthly beings.
11. Now I have given you a full account of the ten orbs of heaven, which are no other than the ten persons united in the mind of Brahma, and now appearing as detached from him.
12. This beautiful world that you behold, appearing to your view with all its wonderful structures, spread out in the skies, serves at best as a snare to entrap your senses and delude your understanding by taking the unrealities as realities in your mind.
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Chapter 3.88 — Detachment of Brahma; Need to Act; Only One’s Own Mind Can Change One’s Own Mind
1. Brahma said to Vasishta:— O brahmin who is the best of brahmins, the Sun God remained silent after telling me about the ten brahmins.
2. I thought upon this for sometime in my mind, then said, “O Sun, tell me what I am to create next?
3. Tell me O Sun, what need is there for me to make any more worlds after these ten globes have come into existence?”
4. Now, O great sage, the Sun having long considered in his mind about what I wanted him to say, replied to me in the following manner in appropriate words.
5. The Sun said:— My lord who is devoid of effort or desire, what need do you have to create? This work of creation is only for your pleasure.
6. O lord who is free from desires and gives rise to worlds like sunbeams raise waters, and the sunshine is accompanied by the shadow,
7. you are indifferent to fostering or forsaking your body and need nothing to desire or renounce for your pleasure or pain.
8. You, O lord of creatures, create all these only for the sake of your pleasure, and so you retract them all in yourself, as the sun by turns gives and withdraws his light.
9. You who is unattached to the world make your creation as a work of love to you, and not of any effort or endeavor on your part.
10. If you desist from stretching creation out of the Supreme Spirit, what good can you derive from your inactivity?
11. Do your duty as it may present itself to you, rather than remain inactive doing nothing. A dull person, like a dirty mirror that does not reflect images, is of no use at all.
12. The wise have no desire of doing anything that is beyond their reach, but they never like to leave out anything that presents itself before them and is useful.
13. Therefore do your work as it comes to you with a cheerful heart, a calm mind, and a tranquil soul, as if it were in your sleep, and devoid of desires that you can never reap.
14. You derive pleasure, O Lord of worlds, from forming the orbs of the sons of Indu, so the Lord of Gods will give you your reward for your works of creation.
15. Nobody with their external organs of vision can see the worlds as clearly as you, O lord, see with the eyes of your mind. For who, by seeing them with his eyes, can say whether you are created or uncreated?
16. Only He who has created these worlds from his mind, and no other person with his open eyes, can behold me face to face.
17. The ten worlds are not the work of so many Brahmas as it appeared to you before. Nobody has the power to destroy them when they are seated so firmly in the mind.
18. It is easy to destroy what is made by the hand, and to shut out the sensible objects from our perception, but who can annul or disregard what is ascertained by the mind?
19. It is impossible for anyone except the owner to remove whatever belief is deep-rooted in the minds of living beings.
20. No curse can remove from the mind whatever has become a habit of confirmed belief in the mind, even though it can kill the body.
21. Principle deeply rooted in the mind forms the man according to its stamp. It is impossible by any means to make him otherwise, as it is impossible to make a rock bear fruit by watering its root like a tree.
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Chapter 3.89 — The Story of the Lovers Indra & Ahalya, the Fixation of Their Minds on Each Other
1. The Sun said:— The mind is the maker and master of the world. The mind is the first supreme being (purusha). Whatever is done by the mind is said to be done. The actions of the body are held as no acts.
2. Look at the capacity of the mind in the example of the sons of Indu. They were only ordinary brahmins, but by their meditation of Brahma in their minds, they became assimilated in Brahma.
3. One thinking himself as composed of the body becomes subject to all the incidents of physicality. But he who knows himself as bodiless is freed from all evils that attend the body.
4. Looking on the outside, we are subject to the feelings of pain and pleasure, but the inward-sighted yogi is unconscious of the pain or pleasure of his body.
5. Thus it is the mind that causes all our errors in this world. Evidence of this is the example of Indra and his consort Ahalya. [The Yoga Vasishta’s story of two adulterous lovers, Indra and Ahalya, has many connections with another story that would have been well known to an India reader, that of Indra, king of the gods, seducing Ahalya, the wife of sage Gautama, one of the Seven Rishis. The sage cursed both Indra and his wife. The curse on Ahalya was removed by Rama. As the story became popular over time, the curse was that Ahalya was turned into a stone and came back to life when touched by Rama’s foot.]
6. Brahma said, “Tell me, my Lord Sun, who was this Indra and who that Ahalya, so that by hearing my understanding may have its clear-sightedness.”
7. The Sun said:— It is related my lord! In former times there reigned a king at Magadha, Indra-dyumna (Glorious Indra) by name and similar to his namesake (in prowess and fame).
8. He had a wife fair as the moon with eyes as beautiful as lotuses. Her name was Ahalya and she resembled Rohini, the moon’s favorite.
9. In that city lived a rascal at the head of all the libertines. He was the cheating son of a brahmin, and was known by the same name of Indra.
10. Now this Queen Ahalya came to hear the story of the former Ahalya, wife of Gautama, and her lust related to her at a certain time. [The story of God Indra seducing Ahalya, the wife of sage Gautama.]
11. Hearing the story, Queen Ahalya felt a passion for the other Indra, the libertine, and became impatient in the absence of his company. She was thinking only how he should come to her.
12. She was fading like a tender vine thrown adrift in the burning desert. She was burning with an inner flame on beds of cooling leaves of watery lotus and plantain trees.
13. She was pining amidst all the enjoyments of her royal state, like a poor fish lying exposed on the dry bed of a pool in summer heat.
14. She lost her modesty with her self possession. She repeated in her frenzy, “Here is Indra, and there he comes to me.”
15. Finding her in this pitiable plight, a lady of her palace took compassion on her, and said, “I will safely conduct Indra before your ladyship in a short time.”
16. No sooner did she hear her companion say, “I will bring your desired object to you,” than she opened her eyes with joy and fell prostrate at her feet, like one lotus flower falls before another.
17. Then as the day passed on, and the shade of night covered the face of nature, the lady made her haste to the house of Indra, the brahmin’s boy.
18. The clever lady used her persuasions as far as she could, and then succeeded to bring this Indra with her and present him before her royal mistress.
19. She then adorned herself with pastes and paints, and wreaths of fragrant flowers, and conducted her lover to a private apartment where they enjoyed their fill.
20. The youth, also decorated in his jewels and necklaces, delighted her with his sweet caresses, as spring season renovates the tree groves with his luscious juice.
21. Henceforward this ravished queen saw the world full with the figure of her beloved Indra, and she did not think much at all of the excellences of her royal lord, her husband.
22. After sometime, certain facial indications by the queen caused the great king to know of her love for the brahmin Indra.
23. For as long as she thought of her lover Indra, her face glowed like a full blown lotus, blooming with the beams of her moonlike lover.
24. The brahmin boy Indra also was inflamed with all his enraptured senses for love of her, and he could not remain for a moment in any place without her company.
25. The king heard the painful news of their affections for each other and of their unconcealed meetings.
26. He also observed many examples of their attachment, and at different times gave them his reprimands and punishments as they deserved.
27. They were both cast in the cold water of a tank in cold weather where, instead of betraying any sign of pain, they kept smiling together as in their merriment.
28. Then the king had them to be taken out of the tank and ordered them to repent for their crimes, but the infatuated pair was far from doing so, and replied to the king in the following manner.
29. “Great king! As long we continue to reflect on the unblemished beauty of each other’s face, so long are we lost in the meditation of one another and forget our own selves.
30. We are delighted in our persecutions, as no torment can separate us from each other. We are not afraid of separation, even though you can separate our souls from our bodies.”
31. They were thrown in a frying pan upon fire, where they remained unhurt and exclaimed, “We rejoice, O king, at the delight of our souls in thinking of one another.”
32. They were tied to the feet of elephants to be trampled, but they remained uninjured and said, “King, we feel our hearty joy at our memories of each other.”
33. They were lashed with rods and straps and many other sorts of scourges which the king devised from time to time.
34. But being brought back from the scourging ground and asked about their suffering, they returned the same answer as before. Moreover, said the brahmin Indra to the king, “This world is full with the form of my beloved one.
35. All your punishments inflict no pain on her because she views the whole world as full of myself.
36. Therefore all your punishments to torment the body can give no pain to the mind (soul) which is my true self and constitutes my personality (purusha) that resides in my person.
37. This body is only an ideal form and presents a shadowy appearance to view. You can pour out your punishments upon it for a while, but it amounts to no more than striking a shadow with a stick.
38. Nobody can break down a brave (firm) mind. Then tell me great king, what do the powers of the mighty amount to?”
39. “The causes that conspire to disturb the nature of the resolute mind are the false conceptions of external appearances. Therefore it is better to chastise such bodies which mislead the mind to error.
40. The mind is forever firm that is steadfast to its fixed purpose. The mind identifies with the object which it has constantly in its thoughts.
41. Being and not being are words applicable to bodies. They do not apply to the mind because what is positive in thought cannot be negated of it in any way.
42. The mind is immovable and cannot be moved by any effort like one can move bodies. It is impregnable to all external actions, and neither your anger or favor can have any effect on it.”
43. “It is possible for men of strong resolutions to change the course of their actions. But where is such a strong minded man to be found who is able to withstand or change the currents of his thoughts?
44. It is impossible to move the mind from its fixed fulcrum, just as it is impracticable for tender stags to remove a mountain from its base.” “This black-eyed beauty is the fixed prop of my mind.
45. She is seated in the lofty temple of my mind like Goddess Bhavani on Mount Kailash. I fear nothing as long as I see this beloved preserver of my life and soul before me.
46. I sit amidst the conflagration of a burning mountain in summer’s heat, but wherever I stand or fall, I am cooled under the shadow of her showering cloud.
47. I think of nothing except the only object of my thought and wish. I cannot persuade myself to believe me as any other than Indra, the lover of Ahalya.”
48. “It is by constant association that I have come to this belief of myself. I cannot think of me otherwise than what is in my nature. Know, O king, that the wise have only one object in their thought and view.
49. The mind, like Mount Meru, is not moved by threat or pity. It is the body that you can tame by the one or the other means. The wise, O king, are masters of their minds. There is none and nothing to deter them from their purpose.”
50. “Know it for certain, O King, that neither these bodies about us nor these bodies and sensations of ours are realities. They are only shows of truth and not the movers of the mind. On the contrary, it is the mind that supplies the bodies and senses with their powers of action, just like water supplies trees and branches with their sap.
51. The mind is generally believed to be a sensuous and passive principle, wholly moved by the outward impressions of senses. But in truth the mind is the active and moving principle of the organs of action. Because all the senses become dormant in absence of the action of the mind, so the functions of the whole creation are at a stop without the activity of the Universal Mind.”
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Chapter 3.90 — Indra’s & Ahalya’s Attachment through Reincarnations
1. The Sun said:— The lotus-eyed king, thus defied by this perverse Indra, addressed sage Bharata who was sitting by him.
2. The king spoke, “Lord, you are acquainted with all morality. See this ravisher of my wife and hear the arrogant speech that he utters before our face.
3. Please, O great sage, pronounce your curse upon him without delay, because it is a breach of justice to spare the wicked, just as it is to hurt the innocent.”
4. Being thus asked by the great king, Bharata, the best of the wise munis, considered the crime of this wicked soul Indra.
5. Then he pronounced his curse by saying, “Do you, O reprobate sinner, soon meet with your perdition, together with this sinful woman who is so faithless to her husband.”
6. Then they both replied to the king and his venerable sage, saying, “What fools must you be to have wasted your curse, the great gain of your tapas, on our devoted heads.
7. The curse you have pronounced can do us very little harm. Though our bodies should fall, yet it cannot affect our inner minds and spirits.
8. The inner principle of the soul, owing to its inscrutable, subtle and intellectual nature, can never be destroyed by anybody anywhere.
9. The Sun added:— Then this fascinated pair, head over heels in love, fell down by effect of the curse, just like when branches cut from a tree fall upon the ground.
10. Being subjected to the torment of reincarnation, they were both born as a pair of deer in mutual attachment, and then as a couple of turtle doves in their inseparable alliance.
11. Afterwards, O lord of our creation, this loving pair came to be born as man and woman, who by their practice of austerities, came to be reborn at last as a brahmin and brahmani.
12. Thus the curse of Bharata was capable only of transforming their bodies. It never touched their minds or souls which continued in their unshaken attachment in every state of their reincarnation.
13. Therefore wherever and in whatever shape they come to be reborn, they always assumed the form of a male and female pair by virtue of their delusion and memories.
14. Seeing the true love that existed between this loving pair in the forest, the trees also become enamored of the other sex of their own kinds.
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Chapter 3.91 — Brahma Wonders Whether to Create; Two Aspects to the Mind
1. The Sun continued:— My lord, therefore I say that the mind, like time, is indestructible by its nature, and the unavoidable curse of the sage could not alter its tenor.
2. Therefore it is not right for you, O great Brahma, to destroy the ideal fabric of the air-drawn world of the sons of Indu. It is improper for great souls to put a check on others’ fancies.
3. O lord of lords, what are you lacking in this universe of so many worlds that should make your great soul pine for the air built worlds of Indu’s sons?
4. The mind is truly the maker of worlds. It is known as the Prime Male (Purusha). Hence the mind fixed to its purpose is not to be shaken from it by the power of any curse or by virtue of any drug or medicine, or even by any kind of chastisement.
5. The mind that is the image of everybody is not destructible like the body, but remains forever fixed to its purpose. Therefore let the ten Aindava brothers continue in their ideal act of creation.
6. O lord who has made these creatures, remain firm in your place. See the infinite space spread before you, commensurate with the ample scope of your understanding, in the triple spheres of your consciousness and mind and the vast emptiness of space.
7. These threefold infinities of ethereal, mental and intellectual spaces, are only reflections of the infinite emptiness of Divine Consciousness. They supply you, O Brahma, with ample space to create as many worlds as you wish.
8. You are at liberty at your pleasure to create whatever you like. When you have the power to create everything, do not think that the sons of Indu have robbed you of anything.
9. Brahma said:— After the Sun had spoken to me in this manner concerning men and other worlds, I reflected awhile and then answered him saying,
10. “Well have you said, O Sun, for I see the ample space of air lying open before me. I also see my spacious mind and the vast comprehension of my consciousness. Therefore I will go on with my work of creation forever.
11. I will immediately think about multitudes of material productions. O Sun, I ordain you as my first offspring (Manu) to produce all these for me.
12. Now produce all things as you will, and according to my command,” at which the brilliant sun readily complied to my request.
13. Then this great light stood with his two-part body of light and heat. With the first, he shone like the sun in the middle of heaven.
14. With the second, his body’s property of heat, he became my agent (Manu) in the nether worlds.
15. He produced all things in the course of the revolutions of his seasons as I had asked him do.
16. Thus have I related to you, O sagely Vasishta, all about the nature and acts of the mind, and omnipotence of the great soul that infuses its might in the mind through its acts of creation and production.
17. Whatever reflection is represented in the mind manifests in a visible form and becomes compact and stands confessed before it.
18. Look at the extraordinary power of the mind that raised ordinary brahmin men to the rank of Brahma through their conception of it in themselves.
19. As the individual souls of the Aindavas were incorporated with Brahma through their intense thought of him within, so also have we attained to the level of Brahma.
20. The mind is full of innate ideas, and the figure that lays a firm hold of the mind appears expressed outside in a visible shape. There is no material substance beside one’s own mind.
21. The mind is the wonderful attribute of the soul, and bears in itself many other properties like the inborn pungency of pepper.
22. These properties appear also as the mind and are called its hyperphysical or mental faculties. It is a downright mistake on the part of some (Samkhya materialists) to understand them as belonging to the body.
23. The same mind when combined with its purer desires is also called the living principle (jiva). After all is said, it is bodiless and unknown in its nature.
24. There is nobody like me or any other person in this world except this wonderful and self-existent mind which, like the sons of Indu, assumes the false conception of being real Brahmas themselves.
25. As the Aindavas were Brahmas in their minds, so my mind makes me a Brahma also. It is the mind that makes one such and such, according to the conception that he entertains of himself.
26. It is only by a conceit of my mind that I think myself situated as a Brahma in this place. Otherwise all these material bodies are known to be as unreal, like the emptiness of the soul in which they abide.
27. The unsullied mind approximates the Divine by its constant meditation of the Divine. But being spoiled by the variety of its desires, it becomes a living being which at last turns to animal life and the living body.
28. The intelligent body shines like any of the luminous orbs in the Aindava worlds. It is brilliant with the intelligent soul, like the appearance of a visionary creation of the mind.
29. All things are the productions of the mind and reflections of itself, like the two moons in the sky, one being only a reflection of the other, and as the concepts of man’s worlds.
30. There is nothing such as real or unreal, nor is there any personality such as I or you or any other. Real and unreal are both alike, unless it is the conception that makes something appear as a reality which has otherwise no reality of itself.
31. Know the mind is both active and inert. It is vast owing to the vastness of its desires. It is lively on account of its spiritual nature of the great God. The mind becomes inert by its incorporation with material objects.
32. The conception of phenomena as real cannot make them real, any more than the appearance of a golden bracelet can make it gold, or the phenomena appearing in Brahma can identify themselves with Brahma himself.
33. Brahma being all in all, the inert also are said to be intelligent, or else all beings from ourselves down to blocks are neither inert nor intelligent.
34. It is said that lifeless blocks are without intelligence and perception, but everything that bears a like relation to another has its perception also like the other.
35. Know that everything is sentient and has its perception or sensitivity. All things possess perception because of the relation between themselves and the Supreme Soul.
36. Therefore the terms inert and sensitive, in their application to things existing in the one Divine Spirit, are meaningless. It is like attributing fruit and flowers to the trees of a barren land. The barren waste refers to the vacuum of the Divine Mind, and its trees to its unsubstantial ideas which are neither inert nor sentient like the fruit or flowers of those trees.
37. Notion or thought formed by and an act of consciousness is called the mind. Of these, the intellect or intellectual part is the active principle, but the thought or mental part is quite inert.
38. The intellectual part consists of the operation of exercise of consciousness, but the thoughts or that which is thought (chetyas), which are the acts of consciousness (chit) are known to be inert. These are viewed by the individual soul in the false light of the world.
39. The nature of consciousness (chit) is pure unity, but the mind (chitta) situated within consciousness and therefore called established-in-the-intellect (chit-stha) is a dualism of itself, and this appears in the form of duality in the world.
40. Thus, by exercise of consciousness of itself as the other form, the ideal assumes the shape of the phenomenal world. Being indivisible in itself, it wanders through the labyrinth of errors with its other part of the mind.
41. There is no error in the unity of consciousness, nor is the soul liable to error unless it is deluded by its belief in pluralities. Consciousness is as full as the ocean, with all its thoughts rising and sitting in it like endless waves.
42. That which you call the mental part of consciousness is full of error and ignorance; and the ignorance of the intellectual part produces the errors of egoism and personality.
43. There is no error of egoism or personality in the transcendental category of the Divine Soul because it is the integrity of all consciousness, just as the sea is the collection of all its waves and waters.
44. The belief of egoism rises like any other thought of the mind, and is as inborn in it as water in the mirage, which does not exist really in it.
45. The term ego is inapplicable to the pure and simple internal soul which, being weakened by the gross idea of its ardent desire, takes the name of ego, just as thickened coldness is called by the name of frost.
46. The pure substance of consciousness forms the ideas of gross bodies, just as one dreams of his death in his sleep. All-pervading consciousness, which is the all inherent and omnipotent soul, produces all forms in itself, of which there is no end until they are reduced to unity.
47. The mind manifests various appearances in the forms of things, and being of a pure ethereal form, it assumes various shapes by its intellectual or spiritual body.
48. Let the learned abstain from thoughts of the three-fold forms of the pure intellectual, spiritual and physical bodies and reflect on them in his own mind as the reflections of Divine Consciousness.
49. The mind being cleansed of its darkness, like the mirror of its dirt, shows the golden color of spiritual light replete with real joy, and by far more blissful than what this earthly clod of body can ever yield.
50. We should cleanse the mind that exists forever, rather than the body which is transient and non-existent, and which is as unreal as the trees living in the air, of which no one takes any notice.
51. Those employed purifying their bodies under the impression that the body also is called the soul (atma) are the atheistic Carvakas who are like silly goats among men.
52. Whatever one thinks inwardly in himself, he is truly transformed to its likeness, as in the example of the ten Aindava brahmin sons, and like Indra and Ahalya cited before.
53. Whatever is represented in the mirror of the mind, the same also appears in the figure of the body. But because neither this body nor anyone’s ego lasts forever, it is right to forsake our desires.
54. It is natural for everybody to think himself as an embodied being subject to death. It is like a boy who thinks he is possessed by a demon of his own imagination, until he gets rid of his false belief by the aid of reasoning.
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Chapter 3.92 — A Strong Mind Is Unaffected by Curses
1. Vasishta added:— Now hear, O support of Raghu’s race, what I next asked of the lotus-born lord Brahma, after we had finished the preceding conversation.
2. I asked him saying, “Lord, you have spoken before of the irrevocable power of curses. Then how is it that their power is frustrated by men?”
3. “We have witnessed the efficacy of curses, pronounced with potent mantra anathemas, to overpower the understanding and senses of living animals and paralyze every member of the body.
4. The mind and body are as intimately connected with each other as motion with air and fluidity with a sesame seed.
5. There is nobody except a creation of the mind, like the fantasies of visions and dreams, and like the false sight of water in the mirage, or the appearance of two moons in the sky.
6. Or else why is it that the dissolution of the one brings on the extinction of the other, such as the quiet of the mind is followed by the loss of bodily sensations?”
7. “Tell me, my lord, how is the mind unaffected by the power of curses and menace that subdue the senses? Are mind and senses both overpowered by curses, being the one and same thing?”
8. Brahma replied:— Know there is nothing in the treasure-house of this world that man cannot attain by means of his efforts in the right way.
9. All species of animal beings, from the state of the highest Brahma down to minute insects, are bicorporal. They are endowed with two bodies: mental and physical.
10. The mental body is ever active and always fickle. The other is the worthless body of flesh, which is dull and inactive.
11. The fleshy part of the body that accompanies all animal beings is overpowered by the influence of curses and charms practiced by the art of incantation (abhichara vidya) .
12. The influence of certain supernatural powers stupefies a man, making him dull and dumb. Sometimes one is about to droop down unconscious, as spell-bound persons are deprived of their external senses, and fall down like a drop of water from a lotus-leaf.
13. The mind, which is the other part of the body of embodied beings, is ever free and not subdued, though it is always under the subjection of all living beings in the three worlds.
14. He who can control his mind by continued patience on one hand and by constant vigilance on the other, is the man of an unimpeachable character and unapproachable by calamity.
15. The more a man employs the mental part of his body to its proper employment, the more successful he is in obtaining the object that he has in mind.
16. Mere physical energy is never successful in any undertaking. It is only intellectual activity that is sure of success in all attempts.
17. Focusing the mind in an effort to hurt objects unconnected with matter is as vain as trying to pierce a stone with an arrow.
18. Drown the body underwater or dip it in mud, burn it in fire or fling it aloft in the air, yet the mind turns not from its orientation. He who is true to his purpose is sure of success.
19. Intensity of physical efforts overcomes all impediments, but only mental effort leads to ultimate success in every undertaking.
20. Mark the example of the fictitious brahmin boy Indra, who employed all his thoughts to assimilate himself into the very image of his beloved, and drowned all his bodily pains in the pleasure of his thoughts of her.
21. Think of the manly fortitude of Mandavya who, when he was about to be beheaded, made his mind as detached as marble and was unconscious of his suffering.
22. Think of the sage who fell into a dark pit while his mind was employed in some sacrificial rite. He was taken up to heaven in reward of the merit of his mental sacrifice.
23. Remember also how the ten sons of Indu, by virtue of their persevering tapas, obtained their status as Brahma, which even I have not the power to withhold.
24. There have been many other such sages and master-minds among men and gods who never laid aside their mental energies, whereby they were crowned with success in their proper pursuits.
25. No pain or sickness, no fulmination or threat, no malicious beast or evil spirit can break down the resolute mind, anymore than a lean lotus leaf striking can split the breast of a hard stone.
26. Those who you say have been disturbed by tribulations and persecutions, I understand them as too infirm in their faiths and very weak both in their minds and courage.
27. Men with heedful minds have never been entrapped in the snare of errors in this perilous world. They have never been visited by the demon of despair in their sleeping or waking states.28 Therefore let a man employ himself exercising his own manly powers and engage his mind and mental energy to noble pursuits in the paths of truth and holiness.
29. The enlightened mind forgets its former darkness and sees its objects in their true light. The thought that grows big in the mind swallows it up at last, just as the imagination of a ghost lays hold of a child’s mind.
30. The new reflection effaces the prior impression from the tablet of the mind, just as an earthen pot turning on the potter’s wheel thinks no more of its nature of dirty clay.
31. The mind, O muni, is transformed in a moment to its new model, just like inflated water rises high into waves, spray and foam, glaring with reflections of sunlight.
32. The mind adverse to right investigation sees like the blind, everything in darkness even in broad daylight, and observes by deception two moons for one in the moonshine.
33. Whatever the mind has in view, it soon succeeds in accomplishing. Whether it does anything of good or evil, it reaps the reward accordingly in the gladness or bitterness of his soul.
34. A wrong reflector reflects a thing in a wrong light, just as a distracted lover sees a flame in moonbeams which makes him burn and consume in his state of distraction.
35. It is the conception of the mind that makes salt seem sweet to taste by its giving a flavor to the salted food for our zest and delight.
36. It is our conception that makes us see a forest in the fog, or a tower in the clouds appearing to the sight of the observer to be rising and falling by turns.
37. In this manner, whatever shape the imagination gives to a thing, it appears in the same form before the mind’s sight. Therefore knowing this world of your imagination to be neither a reality nor unreality, stop seeing it and its various shapes and colors as they appear to view.
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Chapter 3.93 — Brahma as the Mind: A View of the Genesis of the Mind & Body
1. Vasishta said:— Rama, I will now tell you what lord Brahma himself taught me long ago.
2. From the unspeakable Brahma, there sprang all things in their indefinable ideal state. Then the Spirit of God, being condensed by His Will, came to be produced of itself in the form of the Mind.
3. The Mind formed the notions of the subtle elementary principles in itself and became a personal agent. It became a luminous body and was known as Brahma the first Male (purusha) .
4. Therefore Rama, know this same Brahma is situated in the Supreme (parameshthi) and, being a personification of the Will of God, is called the Mind.
5. Therefore, the Mind known as Lord Brahma is a form of Divine essence and, being full of desires in itself, sees all that it wills (in their indefinable, ideal forms) present before it.
6. The mind then framed or fell of itself into the delusion of seeing its ideal images as substantial. Therefore, it is said that the world of phenomena is the work of Brahma.
7. The world proceeds in this order from the Supreme Essence. This is why some suppose that its dull material particles came into being from another source.
8. It is from that Brahma, O Rama, that all things situated in this concave world are in being, like waves rising on the surface of the deep.
9. The self existent Brahma that exists in the form of consciousness (chit) before creation assumes the attribute of egoism (ahamkara) and becomes manifest in the person of Brahma.
10. All the other powers of Consciousness that are concentrated in the personality of Ego are equivalent to those of Omnipotence.
11. The world, being evolved from the eternal ideas in Divine Consciousness, manifests itself in the mind of the great father of all, Brahma.
12. The Mind thus moving and modeling all things is called the individual soul (jiva).
13. These individual souls rise and move about in the empty sphere of infinite Consciousness (chidakasa). These unfold by the elementary particles of matter and pass into the open space surrounded by air. Then they reside in the fourteen kinds of animated nature according to the merit and demerit of their prior acts. They enter bodies through the passage of their vital breath, and become the seeds of moving and immovable beings.
14. They are then born of the generative organ, and are suddenly met with the desires of their previous births. Thus led on by the currents of their wishes, they live to reap the reward or retribution of their good or bad acts in the world.
15. Thus bound fast to action and fettered in the meshes of desire, individual souls enchained in their bodies continue to rove about or rise and fall by turns in this changeful world.
16. Scriptures say their wish is the cause of their happiness or sorrow, which is inseparable from the soul as will is from the mind.
17. Thousands of individual souls are falling off as quickly as the leaves of forest trees. Carried away by the force of their pursuits, they are rolling about like fallen leaves blown upward by the breeze in the valleys.
18. Many are brought down by their ignorance of Divine Consciousness (chit) and are bound to innumerable births on this earth, subject to unending reincarnations in various births.
19. There are some who, having passed many mean births in this earth, have risen high in the scale of beings by their tapas to better acts.
20. Same persons acquainted with spirituality have reached their state of perfection and have gone to heaven, like particles of seawater carried into the air by blowing winds.
21. The production of all beings is from the Supreme Brahma, but their appearance and disappearance in this frail world are caused by their own actions. Hence the yogi without actions is free from both these states.
22. Our desires are poisonous plants bearing the fruits of pain and disappointment. They lead us to actions filled with dangers and difficulties.
23. These desires drive us to different countries and to distant hills and valleys in search of gain.
24. This world, O Rama, is a jungle of withered trees and brambles. It requires the axe of reason to clear away these trees and bushes. So our minds and bodies are only plants and trees of our sorrow which, when rooted out by the axe of reason, will grow no more as reincarnations on this earth.
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Chapter 3.94 — Fourteen Grades of Beings; Brahma the Origin of All
1. Vasishta said:— Now hear me relate to you, Rama, the several classes of higher, lower and middling species of beings, and the various grades of their existence here and elsewhere in the scale of creation.
2. The first class in birth (idam-prathama) were the first to be produced. They are those whose long practice in a course of virtuous actions in prior states has secured to them the property of only goodness.
3. The second grade is called state of sound qualities (guna pivari). This is attained by the prosperous and leads them to meritorious deeds, to the acquisition of their desired objects, and their right dealing in the affairs of the world.
4. The third grade is termed substantiality (sasatwa) or the state of men of substance. It is attended with like results, proportioned to the righteous and unrighteous acts of men, who may obtain their liberation after a hundred reincarnations of their souls on earth.
5. The fourth grade (atyanta tamasi) comprises infatuated people who are addicted to their varying desires in this changeful world
6. and come to the knowledge of truth after passing a thousand lives in ignorance and sin, and suffering the effects proportionate to their good or evil deeds.
7. The fifth grade is composed of men of a baser nature, called adhama-satwa by the wise, and who may possibly have their liberation after a course of numberless births in different shapes and forms.
8. The sixth grade is composed of those men involved in extreme darkness (atyanta tamasi) who are doubtful of their liberation (sandigdha-moksha) and continue in the vicious course of their past lives.
9. Those who pass two or three previous births in other states and are then born with the quality of gentleness are in the seventh grade, called the gentry (rajashi).
10. The wise say that those who remain mindful of their duties and are employed in discharge of them in this state of life are entitled to their liberation soon after their death.
11. Those among the gentry (rajashi), whose acts are commensurate with those of gentlemen and the nobility, are included in the eighth class and are called nobility (raja satwiki) and are entitled to their liberation after a few births on earth.
12. The ninth class comprises the noble nobility (raja-rajashi) whose actions conform with their title, and who obtain their long longed-for liberation after a course of hundred births in the same state.
13. The next or tenth class is composed of the blinded gentry (rajatamasi) who act foolishly under their infatuation and who are uncertain of their liberation even after a thousand births.
14. The most giddy of this class are called the excessively infatuated gentry (atyanta-raja-tamashi). Their conduct in life corresponds with their name and their reincarnations do not cease at anytime.
15. Then the lower classes comprise the children of ignorant darkness (tamas) of whom the tamasas form the eleventh grade, and are said to be deprived of their liberation forever more.
16. However, there have been a few among them who have obtained their salvation by means of their divine knowledge, and their good acts during their lifetime.
17. Next follows the twelfth order who combine the qualities of darkness and enlightenment (tamasarajasa) and who are liberated after a thousand births in their former demonic state, and one hundred births in their progressive improvements.
18. Then comes the thirteenth order of those in darkest darkness (tamas-tamasi) who have to reincarnate for millions of years, both in their prior and later births, before they can have their liberation from the bondage of body.
19. Last comes the fourteenth order of beings, who continue in their state of gross ignorance (atyantatamasi) forever, and it is doubtful whether they can have their liberation at all.
20. All other masses of living beings also have proceeded from the body of the great Brahma, just as the moving waves rise from the great body of waters.
21. As the lamp flickering by its own heat scatters its light on all sides, so does Brahma glowing in himself radiate his beams in the shape of a glittering particle spread all over the universe.
22. As sparks are flung by the force of a burning fire, so these multitudes of produced beings rise from the substance of Brahma himself.
23. As the dust and filaments of mandara flowers fly and fill the air on all sides, and as moonbeams shoot out of its orb to fill the four quarters of heaven and earth, so the minutiae of divine essence emanate from the Deity and spread throughout the universe.
24. As the variegated tree produces its leaves and flowers of various colors from itself, so the varieties of created beings spring from one Brahma, the source of all.
25. As gold ornaments relate to the metal gold of which they are made and wherein they exist, so all things and persons are in relation to Brahma, out of whom they have sprung and in whom they abide.
26. As drops of water are related to the pure water of the waterfall, so Rama are all things related to the uncreated Brahma from which they issue as like drops.
27. As the air in a pot or about a basin is the same as the air that surrounds heaven, so all individual objects are the same with the undivided spirit of the all-pervading Brahma.
28. As raindrops and drops of water from water spouts, whirlpools and waves are identical with their parent waters, so are all these sights of phenomena the same as the great Brahma from where they spring and where they exist and subside.
29. As a mirage, by the fluctuation of sunbeams on sand, presents the appearance of a swelling sea wave, so all visible objects show themselves to the sight of the spectator, beside which they have no figure or form of themselves.
30. Like cooling moonbeams and burning sunlight, so all things shine with their different luster derived from Brahma.
31. It is He from whom all things have risen, and it is to Him that they return in their time; some after reincarnations of a thousand births, and others after longer periods of transmigrations in various bodies.
32. All these various forms of beings in the multiform world are moving in their respective spheres by the will of the Lord. They come and go, rise and fall, and shine in their transitory forms, like the sparks of fire, fluttering and sparkling for a moment, then falling and becoming extinct forever.
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Chapter 3.95 — Identity of Mind & Action
1. Vasishta said:— There is no difference between acts and agent. They have sprung together from the same source of their creator. They are the simultaneous growth of nature like flowers and their fragrance.
2. When human souls are freed from their desires, they are united with the Supreme Soul of Brahma, just like the blueness of the sky, which appears distinct to the eyes of the ignorant, is found to be joined with the clear firmament.
3. Know, O Rama, that it is for the understanding of the ignorant that we say that individual souls have sprung from Brahma. In reality, they are only shadows of the same.
4. Therefore it is not right for the enlightened to say that such and such things are produced from Brahma when there is nothing that exists apart or separate from him.
5. It is a mere fiction of speech to speak of the world as creation or production, but it is difficult to explain the subject and object of the lecture without the use of such fictitious language.
6. Hence the language of dualists and pluralists is adopted in monotheistic doctrines as figures of speech, just as they are in use in the popular language: this one is Brahma or Divine Soul, and those others are the individual souls.
7. It has been explained that the concrete world springs from the discrete Brahma because the production of something is the same as its material cause, though it seems different from it to common understanding.
8. Multitudes of living beings, rising like the rocks of Meru and Mandara Mountains, are joined with the main range from which they jut out.
9. Thousands and thousands of living beings are constantly produced from their common source, like the innumerable offshoots of forest trees filling the woodland sky with their variegated foliage.
10. An infinity of living beings will continue to spring from Brahma, like blades of grass sprouting from the earth below. They will likewise be reduced to Brahma, like the seasonal plants of spring that die in the hot weather of summer.
11. There is no counting the living creatures that exist at anytime, and what numbers are being born and are dying at any moment.
12. Men with their duties proceed from the same divine source, like flowers growing with their fragrance from the same stem. All these subside in the same receptacle from where they arise.
13. We see different tribes of demons, brutes, men and gods in this world coming into existence from nonexistence, and this is repeated without end.
14. We see no other cause for their continuous revolution in this manner, except the forgetfulness of their reminiscence, which makes them oblivious of their original state and makes them conform with every mode of their reincarnation into new forms.
15. Rama said, “For lack of such memory, I think that obeying the dictates of the infallible scriptures promulgated by the sages, and based on the authority of the Vedas, is the surest way for the salvation of mankind.
16. And I reckon those men as holy and perfect who are possessed of the virtues of the great, have magnanimity and equanimity of their souls, and have received the light of the unknowable Brahma in them.
17. I reckon two things to be the two eyes of the ignorant that allow them to discern the path of salvation. One is their good conduct and the other their knowledge of the scriptures, which follows the former.
18. Because one who is righteous only in his conduct but is without knowledge is never taken into account and is slighted by all to be plunged into insignificance and misery.”
19. “Again sage, both men and the Vedas agree that acts and their actors come one after the other, and not as you said both arising simultaneously from their divine origin.
20. Act makes the actor, and the actor does the work. Thus they follow one another like the seed and tree which produce one another. This mutuality of both is seen in the practice of men and ordinances of the Vedas.
21. Acts are the causes of animal births, as the seed gives birth to the sprouts of plants. In turn, works proceed from living beings like the sprouts produce the seeds.
22. The desire that prompts a person to his particular pursuit in his prison house of this world, the same yields him like fruits and no other.”
23. “Such being the case, sage, why did you say that animals are produced from the seed of Brahma without causation from their prior acts? You also said that prior acts cause the birth of animal beings.
24. On one hand, by your position of their simultaneity, you ignored the law of antecedence and sequence of birth and action to one another.
25. Then to say that Brahma is not the origin of actions, and that Brahma and other living beings are subject to their several actions, are self contradictory propositions and opposed to common sense. This question upsets the doctrine of Free Will.
26. Also to say that living beings are born together with their actions (by predestination) and are bound to them to no purpose, is like saying that fish are caught by bait they cannot eat but cause their death.”
27. “Therefore sage, please tell me about the nature of acts, for you are best acquainted with the secrets of things and can well answer my questions on the subject.”
28. Vasishta replied:— My good Rama, you have asked well about this intricate subject. I will now explain to you in a manner that will enlighten your understanding.
29. It is the activity of the mind that forms its thoughts and intentions and which are the roots or seed of actions. It is its passivity that is the recipient of their results.
30. Therefore no sooner did the principle of the mind spring from the essence of Brahma than it was accompanied by its thoughts and actions in the bodies which the living beings assumed according to their prior deserts and inborn desires.
31. As there is no difference between the flower and its fragrance, there is no distinction between the mind and its actions, which are one and the same thing.
32. The exertion of bodily activity is called an action, but the wise well know that action is preceded by a mental action which is called its thought in the mind.
33. It is possible to deny the existence of material objects like air, water, hill and others, but it is impossible to deny the operations of our mental faculties, of which we have subjective evidence in ourselves.
34. No deliberate action of the present or past life goes for nothing. All human actions and efforts are attended with their just results, to which they are properly directed.
35. As ink ceases to be ink without its inky blackness, so the mind ceases to exist without the action of its mental operations.
36. Cessation of mental activity is attended with cessation of thought, and stillness of the mind is accompanied with a cessation of actions. The liberated are free from both of these, but those who are not liberated from neither.
37. The mind is ever united with its activity as fire with its heat, and the lack of either mind or action means the extinction of both.
38. The mind, ever restless in itself, becomes identified with the actions proceeding from its activity. In turn, the actions, whether good or bad, become identified with the mind which feels their just rewards and punishments. Hence Rama, you see the inseparable connection between mind and acts. They reciprocate their actions and reactions upon each other.
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Chapter 3.96 — Different Names for Mind
1. Vasishta said:— The mind is mere thought, and thought is the mind in motion. Its actions are directed by the nature of the thoughts, and the result of the acts is felt by everybody in his mind.
2. Rama said, “Sage, please explain in more detail the immaterial mind as opposed to the material body, and its inseparable property of will or volition.”
3. Vasishta replied:— The nature of the mind is known to be composed of the property of will, which is an attribute of the infinite and almighty power of the Supreme Soul.
4. The mind is known to be of the form of that selfmoving principle which determines men’s doubt between the affirmative and negative sides (as whether it is so or not).
5. The mind is known to be of the form of ego, which is ignorant of the selfmanifesting soul of God and believes itself to be the subject of its thoughts and actions.
6. The mind is of the nature of imagination (kalpana) which is always busy in its operations. Therefore the inactivity of the mind is as impossible in this world as it is for an intelligent man not to think.
7. As there is no difference in the essence of fire and heat, so there is no difference whatever between mind and its activity, and so between the mind and soul.
8. The mind is known by many names according to its various faculties and functions, its various thoughts and desires, and their manifold operations and consequences.
9. The Divine Mind is said to be distributed into all souls by mistake and without any reason, because the All is without any substance or substratum and is indivisible in its nature. It is a mere fabrication of our desires and fancies to diversify it in different persons.
10. Whoever has set his desire in anything as if it were a reality, finds the same to be attended with the like fruit as he had expected of it.
11. It is the movement of the mind that is said and perceived by us to be the source of our actions, and the actions of the mind are as various as the branches, leaves and fruits of trees.
12. Whatever is determined by the mind is readily brought into performance by the external organs of action. Therefore, because the mind is the cause of action, it is identified with the effect.
13. Mind, understanding, egoism, intellect, consciousness, action and imagination, together with memory, desire, ignorance, and effort are all synonyms of the mind.
14. Sensation, nature, delusion and actions are also words applied to the mind to bewilder one’s understanding.
15. The simultaneous collision of many sensations diverts the mind from its clear sight of the object of its thought, and causes it to turn about in many ways.
16. Rama asked, “How is it sage, that so many words with different meanings were invented to express the transcendent cause of our consciousness (the mind), and heap them on the same thing solely for our confusion?”
17. Vasishta replied:— As man began to lose sight of his consciousness and labored under suppositions about his self, he found the mind to be the waking principle within him.
18. When man, after considering himself and other things, comes to understand them in their true light, he is then said to have his understanding (buddhi).
19. When man by false conception of himself assumes a personality by his pride, he is called an egoist, with the principle of ego or egoism causing his bondage on earth. Absolute egoism is doubting everything other than individual self-existence.
20. Thought passes from one object to another in quick succession and, like the whims of children, shifts from one thing to another without forming a right judgment of any.
21. The mind is identified with acts done by the exercise of a power immanent in itself as the agent. The result of the actions, whether physical or moral, good or bad, returns to the mind in their effects.
22. The mind is said to be fanciful because it holds onto fleeting fantasies and ignores its solid and certain truths. It is also called imagination because it presents various images of the objects of its desire (ihita kalpana). It is called kakataliya sanyoga or accidental assemblage of fancied objects. It is defined as the agglutinative and associative power that accumulates materials for imagination.
23. Memory or retention is the power of the mind to retain an image, whether known or unknown before, as if it were a certainty already known. When attended with the effort of recalling it to the mind, it is called recollection.
24. Cravings to possess objects of past enjoyment, and the mind’s efforts to attain other things, are called its desires.
25. When the mind’s clear sight of the light of the soul or self is hidden by the shadow of other gross things which appear to be real instead of the true spiritual, it is called ignorance. It is another name for deluded understanding.
26. The next is doubt, which entraps the dubious mind in the snare of skepticism and tends to destroy the soul by causing it to disbelieve and forget the Supreme Spirit.
27. The mind is called sensation because all its actions of hearing, feeling, seeing, smelling, thinking and enjoying serve to delight the senses which convey the impressions back to the mind.
28. The mind that views all phenomena of nature in the Supreme Spirit and takes outward nature as a copy of the eternal mind of God, is called nature itself.
29. The mind is called maya or magic because it converts the real into unreal, and the unreal into real. Showing realities as unrealities and the vice-versa by turns, the mind is called error or mistake of our judgment, giving assent to what is untrue and its contrary. The causes of error are said to be ignorance (avidya) and passions (tamas) .
30. The actions of the physical organs of senses are seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling, but the mind is the cause of both actions and their acts.
31. The intellect (chit), bewildered in its view of the intellectual world (chetyas), manifests itself in the form of the mind and becomes the subject of the various functions that are attributed to it.
32. Being changed into the category of the mind, consciousness loses its original state of purity and becomes subject to a hundred desires of its own making.
33. Its abstract knowledge of general truths becomes shadowed by its preconceptions of concrete and discrete gross bodies, so it comes to the knowledge of numbers and parts and is overwhelmed by the multiplicity of its thoughts and its objects of desire.
34. Consciousness is variously named the living principle and the mind by most people on earth, but it is known as exercise of intellect and understanding (chitta and buddhi) by the wise.
35. The learned give the intellect, spoiled by falling away from the sole Supreme Soul, various names according to its successive phases and functions. The wise give intellect such different names because it spoiled by its various desires and the variety of their objects.
36. Rama said, “O sir, you are acquainted with all truths. Please tell me whether the mind is a material or immaterial thing. So far I have been unable to determine this.”
37. Vasishta replied:— The mind, O Rama, is not completely a gross substance or completely an intelligent principle. Originally it is as intelligent as consciousness, but being sullied by the evils of the world and the passions and desires of the body, it takes the name of the mind.
38. Consciousness (chit), which is the cause of the world, is called heart (chitta) when it is situated in the bosom of sentient bodies with all its affections and feelings (avilam). Then it has a nature between goodness and badness.
39. When the heart lacks a uniform certainty to its purpose and a steadiness in itself, it feels inside and reflects all the changes and vicissitudes of the outer world.
40. Consciousness hanging between its own intelligence and a belief in gross objects takes the name of the mind. It is spoiled by contact with outward objects.
41. When the action of consciousness or the faculty of the intellect’s reasoning is weakened by sensations and becomes dull by its inward impurity, then it is called the mind which is neither a gross material thing nor an intelligent spiritual principle.
42. The intellectual principle is called by many names, such as mind, understanding, ego, and the individual soul or principle of animation.
43. The mind bears its different names according to the variety of its functions, just like an actor in a theatre appears under different names and costumes depending on his dramatic parts on the stage.
44. As a man passes under many titles according to his various occupations and professions, so the mind takes different names according to the various operations of its nature.
45. Besides the names that I have already mentioned for the mind, the disputants in mental philosophy have invented many others agreeably to their diverse theories.
46. They have attributed many names to the mind according to the views in which they want to exhibit its nature, such as calling it intellect, understanding or sensation and so forth.
47. One takes it as dull matter and another as the living principle. Someone calls it ego, while others apply the term understanding.
48. Rama, I have told you that individual ego, mind, the light of understanding, and the will to create are only different properties of the one and same internal principle.
49. Nyaya philosophy has taken the mind in different lights according to its own view of them. The Sankhya system explains perception and senses in a way peculiar to itself.
50. In this manner, all these terms are taken in very different meanings by the different systems of Mimamsa, Vaiseshika, Arhata and Buddhist philosophy. The Pancharatra and some other systems have given them particular meanings inconsistent with one another.
51. All these various doctrines, arising at different times and in distant countries, lead at last to the same Supreme Being, like the very many different ways leading their passengers to the same imperial city.
52. Ignorance of this supreme truth and misunderstanding among conflicting doctrines cause the adherents of different systems and sects to carry on endless and bitterly acrimonious disputes among themselves.
53. The disputants maintain their particular positions by their respective dogmatism, just like passengers persist in their accustomed paths as the best suited to them.
54. It is wrong to say that everything is the fruit of our acts, and therefore mankind should only be concerned about the performance of their actions. According to men’s various perspectives, they have come up with their explanations in their own ways.
55. The mind receives its various names from its different functions, just like a man is called an early bather (snataka) from his acts of sacred ablutions and a donor from his religious gifts.
56. As the actor gets many titles according to the different characters he performs, so the mind takes the name of a living being (jiva) from its animation of the body and its desires.
57. The mind is also said to be the heart that is perceived by everybody as residing within himself. A man without heart has no feeling or sensation.
58. It is the heart that feels the inner pleasure or pain derived from sight or touch, hearing or smelling, and eating and drinking of pleasurable or painful things.
59. As light shows the colors of things to sight, so the mind is the organ that reflects and shows the sensations of all sensible objects in the head.
60. Whoever thinks the mind is a dull material substance, or whose gross understanding cannot understand the nature of consciousness, is the dullest of beings.
61. The mind is neither intelligence (chetana) nor inert matter (jada). It is individual ego that has sprung amidst the various joys and grief in this world.
62. The mind that is one with Divine Consciousness perceives the world as absorbed into itself. But the mind polluted with matter falls into the error of taking the world for real.
63. Know Rama, that neither the pure immaterial intellect nor matter as gross as inert stone can be the cause of the material world.
64. Know then, O Raghava, that neither intelligence nor inertia is the cause of the world. The mind is the cause of visible objects, just as the mind is the light which unfolds them to view.
65. Where there is no mind, there is no perception of the outer world. Dull matter does not know of the existence of anything. Everything is extinct with the extinction of the mind.
66. The mind has many synonyms depending on its many activities, just like the one continuous duration of time undergoes a hundred different names depending on the variations of its times and seasons.
67. If ego is not recognized as a mental action, and if sensations are reckoned as actions of the body, then the name “living principle” still applies to all acts of the body and mind.
68. Whatever names or qualities of the mind are mentioned in the reasoning of different systems of philosophy, and sometimes by the advocates of an opinion, and at other times by their adversaries,
69. they are neither intelligible nor distinguishable from one another. They are all powers of the same mind which, like the flowing sea, pours its waters into innumerable outlets.
70. As soon as men begin to attribute materialistic powers and force to the nature of pure consciousness, they fall into the error of these varieties of their own making.
71. As a spider lets out its thread from itself, in the same manner the inert has sprung from consciousness and matter has come into existence from the ever active spirit of Brahma.
72. Ignorance has introduced various opinions concerning the essence of the mind. From this arose the various different expressions among opponents, all of which have the same meaning, Consciousness.
73. The same pure Consciousness is labeled the mind, understanding, living principle and egoism. The same is expressed by the words intelligence, heart, animation and many other synonyms which, being taken as meaning the same thing, should put an end to all dispute.
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Chapter 3.97 — Three Spheres: Pure Consciousness, Mental & Physical
1. Rama said, “O venerable sage, from all you have explained, I come to understand that this grandeur of the universe, being the work of the Divine Mind, is all derived from the same.”
2. Vasishta answered:— As already said, the Mind having assumed a substantial form manifested itself like water in a mirage raised by the shining blaze of its own light.
3. The mind within the Spirit of Brahma became one with the contents of the world, now showing itself in the form of man, and now appearing as a god.
4. Somewhere he shows himself as a demon and at another place like a yaksha. Here he was as a gandharva, and there in the form of a kinnara.
5. The vast expanse of the Mind includes the many countries and pictures of many cities and habitable places.
6. Such being the capacity of the mind, there is no counting the millions of bodies contained within it, like the trees and plants in a forest. All those are not worth our consideration in our inquiry about the mind.
7. It was this mind that spread out the world with all its contents. Other than the mind, there exists nothing but the Supreme Spirit.
8. The soul is beyond every category. It is omnipresent and the substratum of all existence. It is by the power of this soul that the mind moves and manifests itself.
9. The mind is known as the cause of the body. The body is work of the mind. The mind is born and becomes extinct with the body, which the soul does not. The soul has no quality that belongs to the mind.
10. By right reasoning, the mind is found to be a perishable object. When the mind perishes, the individual soul attains final liberation. The desires of the mind are the bondage of its reincarnation, but the dissolution of the mind and its desires secures its liberation.
11. After mental desires cease there is no more exertion for acts. This state is called liberation of individual souls from trouble and care. The mind thus released, never comes to be born and die again.
12. Rama said, “Sage, you have said before that human nature is principally of three kinds: the good, the gentle and the base (satva, rajas and tamas), and it is owing to the good or bad nature of their minds that men differ from one another.
13. Now please tell me, how could the wonderful mind with its good or bad propensities that are lacking in Divine Consciousness originate from pure Consciousness?”
14. Vasishta replied:— Rama, know that there are three spheres of infinite emptiness that are at immense distances from one another. These are the intellectual, mental and physical spheres.
15. These environments are common to all mankind and they are spread out everywhere. They have all sprung and come to being from the essence of Divine Consciousness (chit).
16. Space is both inside and outside of everything, pervading throughout all nature. Space implies being occupied by something or its absence. Space is called the empty sphere of Consciousness.
17. Space is called the sphere of Consciousness which embraces all space and time and which has spread out the other spheres or environments. Consciousness is the highest and best of all.
18. The physical sphere (bhutakasha, element-space) contains all created beings and extends to all ten directions about, above and below us. It is a space filled with air that supports the clouds and waters above the sky.
19. Then the emptiness of the mental sphere (chittakasha, mind-space), which has also sprung from the sphere of consciousness (chidakasha, consciousness-space), likewise has consciousness for its cause like the others, as the day is the source of all works and animal activities.
20. What we call the mind is the spoiled intellect that views itself as a dull thing amidst the gross material objects of the physical sphere. It thinks of both spheres from where it is born and where it is placed.
21. I have made use of the metaphor of spheres for the understanding of the unenlightened. Figures are used to instruct the unenlightened and not to lighten the enlightened.
22. In the consciousness sphere, you will see one Supreme Brahma filling its whole space, without parts or attributes, and intelligible only to the enlightened.
23. The ignorant need to be instructed with appropriate words and precise language showing the distinction between monotheism and belief in two gods, which is unnecessary for the instruction of the enlightened.
24. I have contrived to explain to you the nature of divine knowledge, by the parable of the three spheres, which will enlighten you as long as you are in dark on the subject.
25. The consciousness sphere is hidden by ignorance, so we are led to look into the mental and physical spheres. They are as delusive as sunbeams in a mirage, and as destructive as the flames of fire.
26. Pure consciousness, being changed to the state of the changeful mind, takes a debased figure. Then being confounded in itself, the mind weaves the magic web of the world in which it becomes entangled.
27. The ignorant guided by the dictates of their perverted minds know nothing about the nature of consciousness, which is identical with the Supreme. So the witless who unwittingly mistake white shells for bright silver are seen to labor under their delusion, until they are freed from it by the clear light of their understanding.
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Chapter 3.98 — Story of the Origin of the Heart; Deluded Men Punishing Themselves in the Desert Vasishta speaking:—
1. Whatever may be the origin and nature of the human heart (which some take to be the mind), it should be always inquired into if seeking one’s own liberation.
2. The heart fixed in the Supreme becomes purified of its worldly desires and attachments. Then, O Rama, it perceives in itself that soul which transcends all imaginations of the mind.
3. The province of the heart is to secure the stillness of the world in itself. It lies in the power of the heart either to become trapped or get its freedom from the desires and troubles of the world.
4. On this subject there hangs a curious tale relating the legend of the heart. Brahma himself told me the story a long ago, which I will now share it with you, Rama, if you will listen with attention.
5. There is a long, open and dreary desert named Ramatavi that was quite still and solitary and without an inhabitant. It was so vast that a pace in it was equal to a league.
6. In it stood a man of a terrific and gigantic figure, with a sorrowful face and troubled mind, having a thousand arms and a thousand eyes.
7. He held many clubs and maces in his many arms, and he was using them to strike his own back and breast, then running away in this direction and that.
8. Having struck himself fast and hard with his own hands, he fled a hundred leagues for fear of someone laying a hold of him.
9. Thus striking and crying and fleeing, he became tired and spent and lank in his legs and arms.
10. He fell flat with his languid limbs in a large blind pit, amidst the deep gloom of a dark night and in the depth of a dire dark cave.
11. After a long time, he scrambled out of the pit with difficulty, and again continued as before, running away and striking himself with his own hands.
12. He ran a long way until at last he fell upon a thorny thicket of karanja plants that caught him tightly in its brambles, like a moth or grasshopper caught in a flame.
13. With much difficulty, he extricated himself from the prickles of the karanja thickets and began to beat himself as before, and run in his wonted course as usual.
14. Having gone a great way off from that place, he arrived at a grove of plantain trees under cooling moonbeams, where he sat for a while with a smiling face.
15. Then he left the plantain grove and went running and beating himself in his usual way.
16. Going again a great way in his hurry, and being exhausted in all his limbs and his whole body, he fell down again in a great and darksome ditch.
17. Rising from the ditch, he entered a plantain forest, and coming out from that spot, he fell into another ditch, then in another karanja thicket.
18. Thus he was falling into one ditch after rising from thorny bushes, and repeatedly beating himself and crying in secret.
19. I saw him going on in this way for a long time, then with all my force, I rushed forward and stopped him.
20. I asked, “Who are you, sage, and why do you act in this manner? What business have you in this place, and why do you wail and trouble yourself for nothing?”
21. O Rama, he answered me saying, “I am nobody, O sage! Nor am I doing any such thing as you are saying.
22. You have stricken me here and you are my greatest enemy. You have seen me here and you persecute me, both to my great sorrow and delight.”
23. Saying so, he looked sorrowfully at his bruised body and limbs, then cried aloud and wept a flood of tears that fell like a shower of rain on the forest ground.
24. After a short while he ceased weeping, then looking at his limbs, he laughed and cried aloud in his joy.
25. After his laughter and loud shouts were over, hear, O Rama, what the man next did before me. He began to tear off and separate the members of his big body, and cast them away on all sides.
26. He first let his big head fall, then his arms, and afterwards his breast and his belly also.
27. Thus the man, having cut off the parts of his body one after another, was now ready to remove himself elsewhere with only his legs, by the decree of his destiny.
28. After he had gone, another man appeared to my sight. He had the same form and figure as the previous one, and striking his own body like the other.
29. He kept running with his big legs and outstretched stout arms until he fell into the pit, from where he rose again and resumed his flight as before.
30. He fell into a pond, then rose and ran with his body wringing with pain. He fell again in hidden caves, then moved to the cooling shade of forest trees.
31. For some time, and to my horror and surprise, I watched him now ailing, now regaling, and now torturing himself with his own hands.
32. I stopped him and asked what he was doing, to which he answered by returning to crying and laughter by turns.
33. Finding at last his body and limbs losing their strength, he thought upon the power of destiny and the state of human lot, and was prepared to depart.
34. I saw yet another following him on the same desert path. He also had been flying and torturing himself in the same way as the others before him.
35. He fell into the same dark pit in his flight. I stood there for some time watching his sad and fearful plight.
36. Finding after a long time that this wretched man was not climbing out of the pit, I advanced to help him up when I saw another man following his footsteps.
37. Seeing him to be of the same form and hastening to his impending fall in the doleful pit, I ran to stop him with the same question I had asked the others before.
38. But, O lotus-eyed Rama, the man paid no heed to my question and only said, “You must be a fool to know nothing of me.
39. You wicked brahmin!” he said to me, then went on in his course. I kept wandering in that dreadful desert in my own way.
40. I saw many such men coming one after the other to their unavoidable ruin. Though I addressed each and every one of them, yet they softly glided away by me, like phantoms in a dream.
41. Some of them gave no heed to what I said, like a man pays no attention to a dead body. Some among the pit-fallen had the good fortune of rising again.
42. Some were unable to get out of the plantain grove for a long while, and others were lost forever in the thorns and thistles of karanja thickets.
43. There were some pious persons among them who had no place for their homes, even though that great desert was so very extensive, as I have told you already.
44. This vast desert still exists, together with these sorts of men in it. That place is well known to you, Rama, as the common range of mankind. Do you remember it now, with all the culture of your mind from your early youth?
45. O that dreadful desert is this world, filled with thorns and dangers on all sides. It is a dark desert amid a thick spread darkness. Nobody who comes here finds peace and quiet in his heart except those who have acquired divine knowledge, which makes it a rose garden to them.
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Chapter 3.99 — Heart Origin: Deluded Men in the Desert Explained
1. Rama said, “What is that great desert, sage? When did I see it and how did I come to know it? Who were those men and what were they doing?”
2. Vasishta replied:— Attend O great-armed Rama, and I will tell you all. That great desert is not distant or different from this wilderness of the world.
3. That which bears the name of the world is a deep and dark abyss in itself. Its hollowness is unfathomable and impassable. Its unreality appears as reality to the ignorant, and it is the great desert spoken of before.
4. True reality is obtainable only by the light of reason, and only by the knowledge of one object. This one is full without union with any other. It is one and only by itself.
5. The big bodied men you saw wandering, they are the minds of men bound to the miseries of the world.
6. Their observer was Reason personified as myself. Only I by my guiding reason and no other person could discern the folly of their minds.
7. It is my business to awaken drowsy minds to the light of reason, just as it is the work of the sun by his enlivening rays to open lotus buds to bloom.
8. My counsels have prevailed on some minds and hearts that have received them with attention, and they have turned away from earthly troubles to the way of true contentment and tranquility.
9. But there were others who paid no attention to my lectures because of their great ignorance. They fell down into the pit after I scolded them with reproofs and rebukes.
10. Those deep and dark pits were no other than the pits of hell. The plantain groves that I described were the Nandana gardens of paradise.
11. These gardens are the place of those minds that long for heavenly joys. The dark pits are the homes of hellish hearts that can never get their release from those dark dungeons.
12. Those who, having once entered the plantain grove and never come out, are the minds of the virtuous filled with all their virtues.
13. Those who fell into karanja thickets and were unable to extricate themselves from the thorns are the minds of men entangled in the snares of the world.
14. Some minds that were enlightened with the knowledge of truth got released from the snares, but the unenlightened are bound to repeated reincarnations.
15. Souls subject to rebirth have their repeated rises and falls, from higher to lower births, and likewise vice-versa.
16. The thick thicket of karanja brambles represents the bonds of conjugal and family relations. They are the source of various human desires that are springs of all other sorrows, difficulties and dangers.
17. Minds stuck in karanja bushes are those repeatedly born in human bodies and repeatedly entangled in domestic attachments from which all other animals are quite free.
18. O support of Raghu’s race, the plantain grove that I described was cooling with moonbeams. Know that it is the refreshing arbor of heaven that gives delight to the soul.
19. Those persons are placed here who have their bodies filled with virtuous deeds and edified by persevering tapas and austerities, and whose souls are elevated above others.
20. Those ignorant, thoughtless and unmindful men who slighted my advice were themselves slighted by their own minds which were deprived of the knowledge of their own souls and of their reason.
21. Those who told me, “We are undone at your sight, and you are our greatest enemy,” were demented fools, melting away with their lamentations.
22. Those who were loudly wailing, weeping a flood of tears, were men who were bitterly sad in their minds because they were snatched from the snare of pleasures to which they had been so fondly attached.
23. Those having a little sense and reason, but not arriving to the pure knowledge of God, bitterly complained in their hearts for being forced to give up their fond enjoyments of life.
24. Those who came to their understanding wept over the pains they had inflicted on their bodies for the support of their families, and were grieved in their minds to leave behind the objects of their care, for whom they had taken such pains.
25. The minds that had some light of reason, but had not yet arrived to divine knowledge, were still sorrowing for having to leave behind their own bodies where they had their previous life.
26. Those who smiled in the cheerfulness of their hearts were men who had come to the light of reason, and it was their reason that gave consolation to their hearts.
27. The reasonable soul, removed from its bondage of the world, exults with joy to find itself liberated from the cares of life.
28. Those men who laughed to scorn their battered and shattered bodies were happy to think about how they had rid themselves of the confines of their bodies and limbs, the accomplices of their actions.
29. Those who laughed with scorn to see their falling body parts were happy to think in their minds that they were no better than instruments to their various labors in the world.
30. Those who had come to the light of reason and had found their rest in the supreme state of joy, from a distance looked down with scorn upon the former homes of their meanness.
31. The man I stopped who asked with concern (about what he was going to do) was made to understand how the power of wisdom could endure the desperate.
32. The weakened limbs that gradually disappeared from sight meant the subjection of the members of the body to the control of the mind that is freed from its corruption by riches.
33. The man with a thousand arms and eyes is a symbol of the covetous mind which looks to and longs after everything, and wants to grasp all things, as with so many hands.
34. The man striking himself with his blows symbolized the torments that a man inflicts on his own mind by the strokes of his anxieties and cares.
35. The man running away striking hard blows upon his body signified how the mind runs all about, being lashed at every moment by the strokes of his unsatisfied desires.
36. The man who afflicts himself with his own desires, then flies this way and that, signifies his fool-heartedness to hunt after everything and be a runaway from himself.
37. Thus every man is harassed by his ceaseless desires and yearns in his mind to fly to his Maker and set his heart to yoga meditation.
38. All these ceaseless sorrows are the making of one’s own mind, which being worried at last by its constant anxieties, strives to retire from them and find its final repose in meditation.
39. The mind is trapped in the net of its own wishes, just like the silk worm is trapped in the cocoon by the thread of its own making.
40. The more a man’s mind is afflicted by troubles, the more busily is it employed in its moral weaknesses, just like a boy indulges himself in his playfulness, unmindful of the evils waiting upon it.
41. The mind of man is in the same plight as that of a foolish ape who straddles a half split timber, struggles to pull it out, and looses its life by smashing its own testicles.
42. No flight can release the mind unless it is practiced to resignation, restrained from its other pursuits, and constrained to the continued practice of pious meditation, which only can relieve its sorrows.
43. The mind’s misjudgments cause accumulated sorrows that increase in height like the peak of a mount. It is the government of the mind that melts our sorrows, like hoarfrost under sunbeams.
44. Throughout your lifetime, accustom your mind to the righteous ways pointed out by the scriptures. Restrain your appetites, govern your passions, and observe the silence of holy saints and sages. At last you will arrive at the holy state of holies and rest under the cooling shade of holiness. You shall no more have to grieve under the disasters that happen to all mankind.
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Chapter 3.100 — Healing the Heart: All within God; No Bondage or Liberation
1. Vasishta continued:— I have told you how the mind originates from the essence of the Supreme Being. It is of the same kind, and yet not the same with its source, but like the waves and waters of the sea.
2. The minds of the enlightened are not different from the Divine Mind because those who have knowledge of the community of waters do not regard the waves as different from the waters of the sea.
3. The minds of the unenlightened are the causes of their error, because those not knowing the common property of water find a difference between waves and the sea.
4. For the instruction of the unlearned, it is necessary to teach them about the relationship between significant words and their meanings.
5. The Supreme Brahman is omnipotent, full and perfect and without decay forever. The mind does not have these properties that belong to the omnipresent soul.
6. The Lord is almighty and omnipresent and distributes his all-diffusive power in proportion as he pleases to everyone he likes.
7. Observe Rama, how intellectual powers are distributed in all animated bodies, and how His moving force is spread in the air, and His immobility rests in rocks and stones.
8. His power of fluidity is deposited in water, and His power of inflammation is exhibited in fire. His emptiness manifests in vacuum, and His substantiality is in all solid substances.
9. The omnipotence of Brahman is seen to stretch itself to all ten sides of the universe. His power of annihilation is seen in the extinction of beings. His punishment is evident in the sorrows of the miserable.
10. His joy is felt in the hearts of the holy, and His prowess is seen in the bodies of giants. His creative power is known in the works of His creation, and His power of destruction is displayed in the desolation of the world at the end of the great kalpa age.
11. Everything is situated in Brahman, just as the tree is contained in the seed of the same kind and afterwards develops in its roots, sprouts, leaves and branches, and finally its flowers and fruit.
12. The power called the living principle is a reflection of God. It has a nature between the thinking mind and dull matter, and it is derived from Brahman.
13. The nature of God is unchangeable, although it is usual to attribute many varieties to him, just like we call the same vegetable by different names at its different stages of growth, like a germ, a sprout, a shrub, a plant and a tree.
14. Rama, know that the entire world is Brahman who is otherwise called the Ego. He is the all pervading soul and the everlasting stupendous fabric of the cosmos.
15. That property in Him that has the power of thinking is called the mind. The mind appears to be something other than the Soul, thus we falsely see peacock’s feathers in the sky and froth in whirlpools of water.
16. The principles of thought, animation, mind and life are only partial reflections of the Divine Soul. The form of mind is the faculty of thought, just as that of life is the power of motion.
17. Thus the mind, being only the thinking power of Brahman, receives the name of Brahma. This power appearing as a part of the impersonal Brahman is identified with Ego (the personal Brahma).
18. It is our error to differ between the soul and mind, and Brahman and Brahma, because the properties that belong to the mind are the same as those of the self-existent Soul.
19. That which is variously named the principle of mind or thought is the same power of omnipotence that is settled in the mind.
20. So all the properties of the individual soul are contained in and derive from the Universal Soul of Brahma, just like all the properties of vegetation, blossoming and fructification of trees are contained in the season of spring and are dispensed among plants agreeably to their respective soil, climate and other environments.
21. As the earth yields its various fruits and flowers in their season, so the hearts and minds of men entertain their thoughts and passions in their proper times. Some appearing at one time and others at another.
22. As the earth produces its harvests according to their particular soil and season, so the heart and mind exhibit their thoughts and feelings of their own accord, and not caused by another.
23. The numbers and forms that convey ideas, as distinguished from others of the same kind (such as the figures in arithmetic and geometry), are all expressed in words coined by the mind from the mint of the mind of Brahma, the original source of ideas.
24. The mind adopts the same image as the reflections which it receives from without or the thoughts and imaginations it forms of itself. The example of the ten Aindava brothers serves to support this truth.
25. The animating principle (jiva) that is the cause of this creation resides in the Supreme Spirit, like the fluctuation seen over the still waters of the oceans.
26. The intelligent soul, as he beholds the innumerable waves, billows and surges of the sea rolling on the surface of the waters, sees these hosts of creation to be moving in the essence of Brahma.
27. There is no other reality that bears a name or form or figure or any action or motion except the Supreme Spirit in which all things move about like waves of sea water.
28. As the rising and falling and continuation and disappearance of waves occur on the surface of the sea by the fluctuation of its waters, so the creation, preservation and annihilation of the universe take place in Brahma by the agency of Brahma himself.
29. It is by the inner heat of his spirit that Brahma causes this world to appear like a mirage in himself. Whatever varieties it presents in its various scenes, they are all expansions and manifestations of the Divine Spirit.
30. All causality and instrumentality, and their effects as well as the production, continuation and destruction of all things, take place in Brahma himself, beside which there is no other cause whatever.
31. There is no craving or pleasure, or any desire or error in he who rests his dependence in the Supreme. How can one have any desire or error in himself who lives in the Supreme Self that is devoid of them?
32. Everything is a form of the Supreme Soul. All things are only forms of the Supreme Soul. The mind also is a form of it, just like a golden ornament is only a form of the gold.
33. The mind that is ignorant of its Supreme Origin is called the individual soul. Its ignorance of the Supreme Soul resembles a friend who has alienated himself from his true friend.
34. The mind misled by its ignorance of the all-intelligent God imagines its own personality to be a reality. It is like one who believes his individual soul to be produced from nothing.
35. The individual soul, although it is a particle of the Supreme Soul, shows itself in this world as no soul at all (but a form of mere physical vitality). So the weak in understanding see two moons in the sky and are unable to distinguish the true moon from the false one.
36. Because the soul is the only real entity, it is improper to speak of its bondage and liberation. The imputation of error to the soul is quite absurd in the sight of lexicographers, who define it as infallible.
37. It is a wrong impression to speak of the bondage of the soul which is ever free from bonds. It is untrue to seek the emancipation of the soul which is always emancipate.
38. Rama asked, “Sometimes the mind is certain, then it becomes uncertain. How then do you say that the mind is not under the bondage of error?”
39. Vasishta answered:— It is a false conceit of the ignorant to imagine its bondage. Emancipation is their imagination, an equally false conception.
40. Ignorance of the Smriti scripture causes one to believe in his bondage and emancipation. In reality there are no such things as bondage and liberation.
41. Imagination represents an unreality as reality, even to men of enlightened understandings, like a rope presents the appearance of a snake even to the wise.
42. The wise man knows no bondage or liberation or any error of any kind. All these three are only ideas of the ignorant.
43. At first the mind, then its bondage and liberation, and afterwards its creation of the unsubstantial material world, are all only fabulous inventions that have come into vogue among men, as the story of the boy of old.
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Chapter 3.101 — An Old Nurse Makes up a Story of Three Princes for a Boy
1. Rama said, “Tell me, O chief of sages, the story of the boy that illustrates the Mind.”
2. Vasishta replied:— Hear me Rama, tell you the tale of a silly and stupid boy who once asked his nurse to recite some pretty story for his amusement.
3. With a pleased face and with an accent sweet as honey, the nurse began to relate her fine wrought story for the pleasure of the boy.
4. Once upon a time in a desolate country, there were three high minded and fortunate young princes noted for their virtues and valor.
5. They shone in that vast desolate land resembling the spacious sky, like stars reflected in the expanse of waters below. Two of them were un-begotten and uncreated, and the third was not born of a mother’s womb.
6. Once it happened that these three went out together from their dreary abode to find a better place to live. They had no other companion with them, and they were sad in their minds and long faces as if they were exiled from their native country.
7. Having left that desert land, they set out with their faces looking forward and proceeded onward like the three planets Mercury, Venus and Jupiter in their conjunction.
8. Their bodies, delicate as sirisha flowers, were scorched by the powerful sun shining on their backs. On their way they were dried by the heat of the summer day, like wilted leaves on trees.
9. Their lotuslike feet were singed by the burning sands of their desert path, and they cried aloud like some tender fawns straying from their herd crying, “O Father save us.”
10. The soles of their feet were bruised by the blades of grass, and the joints of their bodies were weakened by the heat of the sun. Their fair forms were covered with dust flying from the ground on their lonely journey.
11. They saw a clump of three trees by the wayside, braided with tufts of spikes upon them and loaded with fruit and flowers hanging down. They were a refuge for birds and desert animals resting above and around them.
12. The first two of these trees did not grow wild, and the third, which was easy to climb, bore no seeds to produce other plants in future.
13. Under the shade of these trees, the three princes were refreshed from the fatigue of their journey. They halted there like the three gods Indra, Vayu and Yama under the thick shady branches of the parijata tree of Paradise.
14. They ate the ambrosial fruits of these trees. They drank their nectar juice to their fill and, after decorating themselves with guluncha garlands, they resumed their journey.
15. Having gone a long way, around midday they came to a confluence of three rivers flowing with rapid currents and swelling waves.
16. One of these was a dry channel and the other two were shallow with little water in them. They looked like the blinded eyeballs of blind men.
17. The princes, wet with perspiration, bathed joyfully in the almost dried up channel, just like the three gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva wash their sweating limbs in the clear stream of the Ganges.
18. They played a long while in the water and drank it, which was as sweet as milk and cheered their spirits with full satisfaction of their hearts.
19. They resumed their journey and at the end of the day, about sunset, they arrived at their future home, a newly built city standing far away on the height of a hill.
20. There were rows of flags fluttering like lotuses in the clear lake of the blue sky. The loud noise of the songs of the citizens was heard at a distance.
21. Here they saw three beautiful and good looking houses with turrets of gold and gems shining afar, like the peaks of Mount Meru under the blazing sun.
22. Two of these were not the works of art, and the third was without foundation. At last the three princes entered the last of these.
23. They entered this house and sat and walked about with happy faces. Inside, they chanced upon three pots as bright as gold.
24. The first two broke into pieces upon their lifting, and the third was reduced to dust at its touch. The far sighted princes, however, took up the dust and made a new pot with it. It means that though these sheaths are as volatile as air, yet it is possible to employ the vital principle to action.
25. Then these gluttonous princes used the pot to cook a large quantity of rice for their food, amounting to a hundred bushels minus one, enough to live on for their whole lifetime.
26. The princes then invited three brahmins (childhood, youth and age) to the food prepared by them, two of whom (childhood and youth) were bodiless and the third (old age) had no mouth with which to eat.
27. The mouth-less brahmin took a hundred bushels of the rice and ate it up because he had devoured the child and the youth. The princes took the remainder of the brahmin’s food for their meal (which was nothing).
28. The three princes having refreshed themselves with the traces of the brahmin’s food, took their rest in the same house of their next home, then went out on their journey to hunt for new homes (or repeated reincarnations).
29. Thus I have related to you, O Rama, the entire story of the boy and princes. Now consider its significance well in your mind and you will become wise thereby.
30. After the nurse finished telling her pretty parable, the boy seemed happy with what he had heard.
31. I have told you this story, O Rama, in connection with my lecture on the subject of the mind. The story serves to explain how the mind fabricates this imaginary being of the world.
32. This air-built castle of the world which has come to be taken for a reality is like the story of the body, only a false fabrication from the old nurse’s imagination.
33. It is the representation of the various thoughts and ideas of our minds that exhibit themselves to view according to our notions of them in our states of bondage and liberation.
34. Nothing really exists except the creations of our imagination. It is our fancy that fashions all the objects in their peculiar fantastic forms.
35. The heavens, earth, sky and air, and also the rivers, mountains and the sides and quarters of the sky, are all creations of our fancy, like the visions in our dreams that join and disjoin and fashion scenes in their fantastic forms.
36. Like the princes, the rivers and the future city were mere creations of the nurse’s imagination. In the same way, the existence of the visible world is only the product of man’s imaginative power.
37. Imaginative power manifests all things all around, like moving waters show the rise and fall of waves in the sea. “It gives a shape of airy nothing.” “It is the power of apprehending ideas and combining them into new forms and combinations.”
38. The imaginative power of God raised the ideas of things in his omniscient and all comprehensive soul. These ideals afterwards manifested as real by his omnipotence, just like things lying in the dark are brought to view by daylight.
39. Know from here on, O Rama, that the whole universe is the network of imagination, and your imagination is the most active power of the mind. Therefore repress the thickening phantoms of your fleeting fancy and obtain your tranquility by relying solely upon the certainty of the immutable Soul of souls.
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Chapter 3.102 — On the Indivisibility and Immortality of the Soul
1. Vasishta continued:— The ignorant are subject to errors caused by their false fancies, from which the wise are entirely free. By imagining and attributing perishable properties to the imperishable soul, the ignorant beguile themselves like children who take their dolls to be men.
2. Rama replied, “What is this imagined perishable property that is imputed to the imperishable soul? Tell me also, O greatest of theologians, what misrepresentation misleads the mind to the false conception of the unreal world for a reality?”
3. Vasishta replied:— The soul, by its continued association with unreal and perishable things, thinks itself to be one of them and takes the title of an unreal and perishable ego, just like a boy by association of his thoughts imagines a false apparition to be a real ghost.
4. All things being situated in one absolute reality, it is hard to account for one’s personal ego and to say how and from where this conception became established.
5. In fact, there is no ego except that of the Supreme Soul. Yet is the nature of the unwise to make a difference between a finite ego and infinite Ego, and between a mortal and immortal soul, as if we see two streams of water in the sunbeams of a hot, sandy desert.
6. The mind is a spacious mind (of richest gems) in this extensive creation and depends on the Supreme Soul for its support, just like waves depend upon the waters of the sea for their rise and existence.
7. Therefore, O Rama, give up your false view of the reality of the world and your reliance upon the baseless fabric of the universe. Rely with delight upon your judicious view of the true foundation and support of all.
8. Inquire now into the nature of Truth with a rational understanding. Being freed from all error and bias, discard all that is false and untrue.
9. Why do you think that the unconfined soul is confined in the body? It is vain to suppose the infinite soul is confined in any place.
10. To suppose one to be many is to make a division and create a variety in the nature of the Supreme Spirit. Again, the Divine Essence being diffused alike in all, it cannot be said to be confined in one thing and absent in another.
11. The body being hurt, the soul is supposed to be hurt likewise, but no pain or hurt or sickness of any kind can affect the unchanging soul.
12. The body being hurt or weakened or destroyed, there is no injury done to the soul, just like a blacksmith’s bellows being burned, the wind with which it was filled escapes unconsumed.
13. Whether the body lasts or falls is of no matter to us, like a flower being destroyed deposits its fragrance in the air.
14. Let any pain or pleasure befall on the body, like dewdrops falling on lotus leaves. It cannot affect us any more than a fading lotus affects or afflicts a flying bee in any manner.
15. Let the body rise or fall or fly in smoke and mix with the air. These changing forms can have no effect whatsoever on the soul.
16. The connection of the body with the soul is like that between the cloud and the wind, and between the lotus and the bee.
17. If the mind that forms a part of all living bodies is not affected by physical pain, then how is it possible that the primary power of consciousness that resides in the soul can be subject to death?
18. If you know, O wise Rama, that the soul is indestructible and inseparable, then what is the need to have sorrow for the supposed separation or disappearance of the all pervading spirit?
19. After the body is destroyed, the soul flies from it to live in the infinite space of empty air, like wind mixing with air after dispersing clouds, and a bee flying away after the lotus has faded away.
20. The mind is not relaxed with all its enjoyments of life unless it is burnt down by the knowledge of truth. Then why speak of the annihilation of the soul?
21. The connection between perishable body and imperishable soul is analogous to that of a vessel and the fruit it holds, and of a pot and the air in it.
22. As a plum is held in the hand or it falls into a pit, so the empty soul is reposed in or deposed from the body.
23. As a pot being broken, its empty part mixes with the air. So the body being dissolved, the soul remains unhurt in empty space.
24. The minds and bodies of living beings are apt to disappear at times from where they live and hide under the shroud of death. Why should we sorrow for such renegades?
25. Seeing the death and disappearance of others, no fool learns to think for himself but fears to die like all ignorant fools.
26. Therefore renounce, O Rama, your selfish desires and know the falsity of ego. Give up the bond of the body and fly upward, like a new fledged bird leaves its nest and flies above.
27. It is an act of the mind to lead us to good or evil. It is another function of the mind to fabricate the false fabric of the world, like appearances in a dream.
28. Our incorrigible ignorance stretches out these imageries only for our misery. Our imperfect knowledge shows these falsehoods as realities to us.
29. The mind gives us a dim sight of things, as we view the sky hidden by a mist. It is the nature of the mind to have a false view of objects.
30. The dull and unreal world appears as a reality to us. The imaginary duration of the universe is like a protracted dream in our sleep.
31. The thought or idea of the world is the cause of its physical existence, just as the blinking of the eye shows a thousand discs of the sun and moon in the clear sky.
32. Now Rama, employ your reason to annihilate the physical world from your mind, just as the sun dissolves snow by the heat of his beams.
33. As one wishing to overcome cold gets his object at sunrise, so he who wishes to demolish his mind succeeds at the rise of his reason.
34. As ignorance increases, so it introduces a train of deep seated errors and evils. It spreads a magic spell around it, just as Samvara the sorcerer showered a flux of gold dust about him.
35. The mind by its worldliness makes the way to its own destruction, and acts the part of its own self-destructive catastrophe by all its acts.
36. The mind wants only to preserve itself from destruction, but it is a fool who does not know its imminent death.
37. The mind by its restless desires hastens itself to a painful death. The reasonable try to avoid restlessness by their government of the mind.
38. The mind that is purified by reason is cleansed from its willingness and unwillingness and resigns itself to the will of the Divine Soul, which is ever present before it.
39. The curbing of the mind is the magnanimity of soul and gives rise to liberation from pain. Therefore try to restrain your mind and do not give it a loose rein.
40. The world is a vast wilderness full of the forests of our well being and sorrow and beset on all sides by the serpents of disease and death. The irrational mind is as the rampant lord of the desert land and quickly drives us into all sorts of dangers and difficulties. Valmiki speaking:—
41. As the sage ended his sermon, the day departed to its end and the sun declined to the west to his evening service. The assembly broke after mutual salutations and met again and greeted each other with the parting night and rising sun.
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Chapter 3.103 — The Changing Mind Vasishta speaking:—
1. Some minds are seen to break forth in passion like the torrents of oceans, and to heave and overflow on earth on every side.
2. They reduce the great to lowness and exalt the low to greatness. They make strangers of their friends and friends of strangers.
3. The mind by its thought makes a mountain of a particle, then thinks itself a lord with its little trifle.
4. The mind, elated by prosperity received by the will of God, spreads a large establishment for a while, then in a moment is reduced to poverty at its loss.
5. Whatever things are seen in this world as stationary or changing are all only accidents according to the perspective in which they are seen, just as a passing vessel is thought stationary by its passenger, but as moving by spectators on the shore.
6. The mind is so changing by the influence of time, place, power and nature of acts and things that it continually shuffles from one feeling to another, like an actor impersonating his many roles on the stage.
7. The mind takes the truth for untruth and its reverse for certainty, so it takes one thing for another and its joy and grief are all of its own making.
8. The fickle mind gets everything according to its own doing, and it regulates all the actions of our hands, feet and other members of the body.
9. Hence it is the mind that reaps the rewards of good or evil according to its past acts, just like the tree bears its fruit according to how it is pruned and watered.
10. As a child makes a variety of toy dolls from clay, so the mind is the maker of all its good and bad according to the merit or demerit of its past actions.
11. Therefore the mind that is situated in the earthen dolls of human bodies can do nothing of its own will unless it is so destined by virtue of its former acts.
12. As the seasons cause changes in trees, so the mind makes differences in the dispositions of living beings.
13. The mind indulges in its sport of deeming an inch a mile, and vice-versa of thinking something long as short, like the operations of our dreams and fancy.
14. A kalpa age is shortened to a moment and a moment is stretched into a kalpa by the different modes of the mind that regulate both the duration of time and the distance between places.
15. The perceptions of the quickness and slowness of motion, and of much or little in quantity, and also of swiftness or slowness of time, belong to the mind and not to the dull material body.
16. The feelings of sickness and error, sorrow and danger, and the passing of time and distance of place all rise in the mind like the leaves and branches of trees.
17. The mind is the cause of all its feelings, just as water is the cause of the sea and heat of fire. Hence the mind is the source of all things. It is intimately connected with whatever exists in the world.
18. The thoughts that we have of agent, effect and instrument of things, and also of the viewer, view and the instrumentality of sight, all belong to the mind.
19. The mind alone is perceived to be in existence in the world, and its representations of forests and all other things are but variations of itself! So the thinking man sees only the substance of gold, and all its various forms of bangles and bracelets are taken for nothing.
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Chapter 3.104 — A Magician, a Horse & a Stunned King Lavana
1. Vasishta said:— Rama, hear me relate a very pretty story about the world as an enchanted city stretched out by magic of the magician Mind.
2. There lies on the surface of this earth a large and populous tract of land by name of Northern Pandava, a country full of forests of various kinds.
3. The forests were deep and dense, and a number of holy hermits live in the fastness of these woods. Vidyadhara maidens had constructed many dwellings of swinging vines.
4. The breeze blew up heaps of red dust from full blown lotuses, rising as high as crimson hills on the ground decorated with wreaths and garlands from loads of flowers fallen from surrounding trees.
5. Groves of karanja plants were decorated with bundles of blossoms to the farthest boundaries of the jungle, and the sky resounded with the rustling noise of leafy date trees in the surrounding villages.
6. There was a range of tawny rocks on one side, and fields brown with ripened grain on another; while the warbling of cerulean doves echoed in the resonant groves.
7. The shrill cry of the stork sounded in the forest, and the branches of spice and patali flowers hang down like earrings on the hills.
8. Flocks of various birds made a chorus with their cries, and blooming crimson blossoms of paribhadra trees hung over the banks all along the length of running streams.
9. Maidens in the cornfields were exciting the passion of love with their singing. Breezes blowing amidst forests of fruits and flowers dropped down the blossoms in copious showers.
10. Birds, spiritual masters and seers were sitting and singing outside their homes made in mountain caves, making the valley symphonious with their celestial strains of holy hymns.
11. Kinnara and gandharva choruses were singing under their bowers of plantain trees, and the grayish and gay groves of flowers were filled with the hum of the whistling breeze.
12. The lord of this romantic country was the virtuous Lavana, a descendant of King Harish Chandra, and as glorious as his sire the sun upon earth.
13. His fair fame formed a white diadem to crown his head and adorn his shoulders with its brightness. It whitened the hills in the form of so many Shivas smeared with white ash upon his tufted head and person.
14. His sword had made an end of all his enemies who trembled as in a fit of fever on hearing his noble name.
15. His greatest effort was devoted to support respectable men, and his name was uttered like that of Hari (Vishnu) by all his people.
16. The apsara fairies sitting in the celestial seats of the gods on the tops of the Himalayan mountains gleefully sang songs of his praise.
17. The lord of the skies heard the songs of the heavenly maids, and the aerial swans and cranes of Brahma responded to the praises with their gabbling cries.
18. His uncommonly magnanimous and wonderful acts, free from the fault of being stingy, were unlike anything that was ever heard or seen by anybody.
19. His nature knew no guile and he was a perfect stranger to pride and arrogance. He kept himself steadfast to his magnanimity, as Brahma held himself fast to his rudraksha beads.
20. He used to take his seat in the royal throne amidst his courtiers, as the lord of the day occupies his seat in the sky for the eight watches of the day.
21. After he was seated there as happily as the moon in the sky, his chieftains and legions appeared before the throne with their salutations.
22. Then, as the royal party was seated in the court hall, beautiful singers began to sing and ravish the hearts of listeners with the music of lutes.
23. Then a set of handsome maids waved the beautiful fans that they held in their hands over the body of the king. Ministers and counselors, as wise as the teachers of the gods and demons (Brihaspati and Shukra), took their seats beside him.
24. Ministers engaged in the public affairs pending before them, and capable officers reported to the king on the conditions of the county.
25. There were learned pundits reciting holy legends from their books, and courteous eulogists chanting their sacred praises on one side.
26. At this time a magician appeared before the court in his fantastic attire. He boasted and blustered like a roaring cloud threatening to flood the earth with showers of rain.
27. He bowed down to the ruler of the earth, and lowly bent his capped head and neck before the court, like a tree hangs down its loads of fruit at the foot of a mountain.
28. He approached the king like a monkey advances to a shady and lofty tree loaded with fruit and flowers.
29. Then the cunning trickster conveyed the fragrance of his sense with the breath of his mouth. He addressed the lofty headed king with his sweet voice, as the humble bee hums to the lotus.
30. “Allow, O lord who sits on the earthly throne like the moon enthroned on high, to mark one wonderful feat of my art, known as the trick of Kharolikika.”
31. Saying so, he began to twirl his magic staff set with peacock feathers, which began to display many wonders like the wonderful works of creation.
32. The king saw it describing a bright circle emitting particles of its rays around. He saw it like God Indra sees his variegated rainbow sparkling afar in the sky.
33. As this time a chieftain of Sindh entered the court, like a cloud appears in the starry heaven.
34. He was followed by his swift and beautiful war-horse, just like Uchchaihshravas, the seven-headed horse of Indra, follows his master in the celestial regions.
35. The chieftain brought the horse before the king and said, “My lord, this horse is a match for Uchchaihshravas who was produced from the Milky Ocean and flies with the swiftness of the mind.
36. This horse of mine, O king of the earth, is the best of his kind and an equal of Uchchaihshravas. He is a personification of the wind in the swiftness of his flight.
37. My master has made a present of this horse to you, my lord, because the best of things is a suitable present to the best of men.”
38. After the chief ended his speech, the magician spoke in a voice as sweet as that of the swallow after the roaring of clouds is hushed to silence.
39. “My lord, ride upon this horse and wander at your pleasure with full luster on earth, as the sun shines forth in splendor by revolving round the heavens.”
40. Hearing this, the king looked at the horse and, in a voice like that of a peacock answering a roaring cloud, ordered the horse to be brought before him.
41. The king saw the horse like a figure drawn in painting, and gazed upon him with fixed eyes and without closing his eyelids, as if the king himself had been turned into a painting.
42. Having looked upon the horse for a long time, he mounted on his back and sat still with his closed eyelids, as sage Agastya was confounded at the sight of the sea and its rocks.
43. He continued for a couple of hours as if he was drowned in his meditation, and as unconscious saints remain in the enjoyment of their internal and spiritual samadhi.
44. He remained spellbound and overpowered by his own might. None could rouse the king roused from his stupefaction. He remained absorbed in some thoughts of his own mind.
45. Flapping fans ceased to wave about his body and the holders of the fans remained as still as moonbeams at night.
46. Courtiers remained motionless at seeing his stillness, as when the filaments of the lotus remain unmoved when smeared in the mud.
47. The noise of people in the courtyard became hushed and quiet, like the roaring of the clouds stops at the end of the rains.
48. Ministers were drowned in their thoughtfulness and questions at the state of their king, just like the host of gods were filled with anxiety on seeing the club-bearing Vishnu fighting with the demons.
49. People were struck with terror and dismay at seeing this paralysis of their king who remained with his eyes closed, like closed lotuses shorn of their beauty.
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Chapter 3.105 — The Magic Spell on King Lavana Is Broken
1. Vasishta continued:— After a couple of hours the king returned to his senses, like the lotus flower resuming its beauty after the mists of the rainy weather are over.
2. He shook his body decorated with ornaments upon his saddle, like a mountain shakes with its peaks and woods at an earthquake.
3. His seat also shook under him as he came to his senses and moved his body, just like the seat of Shiva on Kailash Mountain is shaken by the movement of the world-supporting elephant.
4. As he was about to fall down from the horse, he was held up by the arms of his attendants, like Mount Meru is kept from falling by the hills at its feet and sides.
5. Attendants bore the king in the deranged state of his mind, like the still waters of the sea bear the figure of the moon that is disturbed by the waves.
6. The king softly asked them, “Where am I and whose court is this?” He was like a bee shut up in the flower cup of the lotus and about to sink in the water saying, “Ah! Where am I, and where am I going?”
7. The courtiers, with a voice as sweet as the lotus uttering to the sun when he is eclipsed by Rahu, respectfully asked the king what was the matter with him.
8. The attendants and all the ministerial officers asked him what had happened, like the gods, terrified at the great flood, asked sage Markandeya about what had happened.
9. “Lord, we were greatly dismayed,” said they, “upon seeing you in that plight, because the stoutest hearts are broken by accidents proceeding from unknown causes.
10. What were those pleasant objects of your desire that had so bewitched your mind? You know that all objects that appear pleasant for the present prove to be bitter at the end.
11. How could your clear understanding, which has been pacified by the grand doctrines and precepts of the wise, fall in to the false fascinations of the foolish?
12. The minds of fools are fascinated by the trivial and cheap trifles of common people, but they are of no value to the high minded as one like yourself.”
13. “Those who are elated by the pride of their bodies have their minds always excited by uncontrollable passions that take their lead through life.
14. Your mind is elevated above common things. It is calm and quiet, enlightened by truth, and filled with excellent qualities. Yet it is strange to find it out of its wits.
15. The mind unpracticed to reasoning is led away by the currents of time and place, but the noble-minded are not subject to the influence of incantations and enchanting spells.
16. It is impossible for the reasoning mind to be weakened or deranged. A high mind, like towering Mount Meru, is not to be shaken by the boisterous winds.”
17. Thus consoled by his companions, the king’s face resumed its color, as the face of the full moon collects its brightness in the bright fortnight of the month.
18. The moonlike face of the king was brightened by his full open eyes, as the spring season is beautified by blooming blossoms after the winter frost has passed away.
19. The king’s face shone forth with astonishment, and it was mixed with fear, upon remembering the charm of the magician, just like the moon shines pale in the sky after her deliverance from the shadow of an eclipse.
20. He saw the magician and said to him with a smile, as the serpent Takshaka addresses his enemy, the weasel.
21. “You trickster,” said the king. “What was this snare that you used to trap me? How did you disturb my tranquil soul by your wily trick, like a gale disturbs the calm of the sea?”
22. “How wonderful are the captivating powers of spells derived from the Lord, whose influence had overpowered the strongest sense of my mind.
23. What are these bodies of men that are subject to death and disease, and what are our minds that are so susceptible of errors and lead us to continued dangers?
24. The mind residing in the body may be filled with the highest knowledge, yet the minds of the wisest of men are liable to errors and illusion.”
25. “Hear ye courtiers the wonderful tale of the adventures that I experienced under this sorcery from the moment I first met this magician.
26. I have seen as many passing scenes in one single moment under this wizard, as had been shown of old by Brahma in his destruction of the divine sorcery of Indra.”
27. Having said so, the king smiled and began to relate to his courtiers the strange wonders that he had seen in his state of hallucination.
28. The king said:— I saw a region full of objects of various kinds, such as rivers, lakes, cities and mountains, with many boundary hills, and the ocean surrounding the earth.
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Chapter 3.106 — King Lavana Marries a Tribal Maiden
1. The king related:— My own land abounding in forests and rivulets appeared like a miniature of this planet earth.
2. This land of which I am king and where I am now sitting in my royal assembly hall, amidst my courtiers and all these citizens, appeared like the paradise of Indra.
3. That sorcerer appeared here from a distant country, like a demon rising from the infernal region to the surface of the ground.
4. He whirled his magic wand emitting its radiance around, like the tempest rends and scatters the rainbow of Indra in fragments in the air.
5. I was looking intently at the whirling wand and the horse standing before me, then mounted on the back of the steed in the dizziness of my mind.
6. I sat on the back of this unmoving horse and seemed to ride on a fleet horse with the swiftness of pushkara and avartaka clouds riding over the tops of immovable rocks.
7. Then I went on a chase at full speed, passing over an ownerless desert, howling like the surges of the boundless ocean.
8. The horse bore me through the air as if we were blown by the winds. We dashed onward like common people who are carried afar by the currents of the unsatisfied desires of their minds.
9. Then being fatigued with my journey, and moving slowly on my wearied horse, I reached the edge of a desert which was as vacant as the mind of a pauper, and as empty as the heart of a woman.
10. It was like the wilderness of the world burned down by a conflagration, without even a bird flying over it. It was like a waste of sandy frost without a tree or any water in it.
11. In its extent, it appeared like another sky or like the eighth ocean of the world. It was like a sea on earth with its bed entirely dried up.
12. It was as expanded as the mind of a wise man, and as furious as the rage of the ignorant. There was no trace of human feet and no track with any grass or herb in it.
13. My mind was bewildered in this boundless desert, like that of a woman fallen into adversity and having no friend, food or fruit for her support.
14. The face of the sky was washed by waters appearing in the mirage of the sandy desert. I traveled panting in that dreary spot until it was sunset.
15. It was with great pain and sorrow that I crossed that vast desert, like a wise man who crosses this world, all hollow and void within.
16. After passing this desert and as the sun was setting, I reached a thick forest, tired with traversing through the hollow sphere of heaven.
17. Here birds were warbling amidst jamb and kadamba trees. They were the only friends that weary travelers could meet in their weary and lonely journey.
18. Here detached plots of long grass were seen waving their tops, like covetous men nodding their heads on finding some riches to their heart’s content.
19. This shady forest afforded me a little joy after my pains in the dry and dreary desert, just like a lingering disease seems more desirable to men than the pains attending death.
20. I got under the shade of a jambira tree and felt myself as pleased, as when sage Markandeya got to the top of the mountain during the great deluge.
21. I took shelter under the vines descending from its branches, just as the scorching top of a mountain finds temporary shade under a dark cloud.
22. As I was holding the hanging roots in my hand, the horse slid away from underneath me, like the sins of a man glide under him who puts his trust in the sacred Ganges River.
23. Fatigued with my travel that long day through the dreary waste, I took refuge under this tree like a traveler rests under the shelter of a kalpa tree at the setting of the sun.
24. All this business of the world was stopped as the sun went down to rest in the western hills
25. As the shade of night spread over the bosom of the universe, the entire forest below took itself to its nightly rest and silence.
26. I rested in the grassy hollow of a branch of that tree, my head on a mossy bed like a bird in its nest.
27. I remained there as unconscious as one bitten by a snake, and like a dead body that has lost its past memories. I was as impotent as a sold slave and as helpless as one fallen in a dark pit.
28. That one night I passed in my senselessness seemed like a long kalpa aeon. I thought I was buffeting in waves like sage Markandeya at the great deluge.
29. I passed the night under a train of dangers and difficulties that invaded me as in the state of dreaming. I had no thought about bathing or eating or worshipping my Maker.
30. I passed the night in restlessness and disquiet, shaking like the branch of a tree. This single night of trouble was as long as it was tedious to me.
31. A melancholy spread over my face, as darkness veils the face of the night. My waking eyes kept watching for the day, like the watchful eyes of blue lotuses expect the rising moon.
32. The demonic noise of wild beasts hushed in the forest at the end of the night. I began to shiver from the cold, my teeth clattering.
33. Then I saw the east red with the flush of intoxication, as if it was laughing at seeing me drown in my difficulties.
34. I saw the sun advancing towards the earth, mounted on his Airavata, the regent elephant of that quarter. He seemed as full of glee as an ignorant man has in his folly, and as a poor man in obtaining a treasure.
35. I got up from my mossy bed and shook off my bed cloth, like Shiva tossing off his elephant hide during his giddy evening dance.
36. Then I began to wander in the wide forest, just as God Rudra (Shiva) roves about the wide world after its desolation by his demons at the end of kalpas.
37. There was no animal of any kind to be seen in the desolate desert, just as the good qualities of good breeding are never found in the illiterate.
38. I saw only lively birds, perched and chirping all about the woods without intermission.
39. It was midday, when the sun had run his eighth hour and plants had dried up the dew of their morning baths,
40. when I saw a maiden carrying some food and a drinking bowl of water, just as Hari (Vishnu) in his disguise in the shape of Madhavi bore the poisonous liquor to the demons.
41. She was of a swarthy complexion and dressed in dark black clothing. When I advanced towards her like the bright moon appears towards the black and dark night, she looked at me suspiciously.
42. I asked her to give me some of her food in my great distress, because, I told her, one is enriched by relieving the distress of the needy.
43. “O good maid,” I said, “increasing hunger is consuming my stomach and I would take any food, even as the female serpent in extreme hunger devours her own young.”
44. I begged of her and yet she gave me nothing, but remained as unmoved as the goddess of fortune who declines to favor the wretched however much they implore her aid.
45. For a long time I kept following her closely from one wood to another, moving behind her in the afternoon and clinging to her like her own shadow.
46. Then she turned to me and said, “Know me to be a tribal (chandala, an outcaste) girl bearing the name of Harakeyuri. We are as cruel as rakshasa demons. We feed on human flesh and the meat of horses and elephants.
47. O king, you cannot get your food simply by begging me for it, as it is hard to have the favor of men without first meeting their own desires.”
48. Saying so, she continued moving with quick light steps at every move, then entered a grove of trees on the wayside. Then she spoke merrily to me saying,
49. “Well, I will give you some of this food if you will agree to be my husband, because base and common people do not do good to others before securing their own good.
50. My tribal father is here plowing in the field with his sturdy yoke of bulls. With his haggard, hungry and dusky stature, he looks like a demon standing in the cemetery.
51. This food is for him. I may give it to you if you agree to marry me, because the husband deserves to be served even at the peril of one’s life.”
52. To this I replied, “I agree to take you to my wife, for what fool would adhere to his family customs when his life is in danger?”
53. Then she then gave me half of the food she had with her, as Madhavi parted with half of her ambrosia to the hungry Indra of old.
54. I ate the tribal’s food and drank the beverage of jambu fruits that she gave me. Then I rested at that place and fell into a sleep caused by my fatigue and long walking.
55. Then she approached me like a black cloud approaches the sun. She held me in her arms and led me onward with her guiding hand as fondly as her second self.
56. She took me to her father, a fat and ugly fellow of repulsive appearance, like the tormenting agony of death leads a person to the hideous cell of the devil.
57. My companion whispered the news of our situation to his ears, like a black bee hums her tale softly to the ear of an elephant.
58. “This man,” she said, “is to be my husband, if you, my father, will give your consent.” To this he expressed his approval by saying, “Vadham. Be it so by the end of this day.”
59. He loosened the bulls from their yoke, as the lord of death releases his hell hounds. It was dusk when the sky was hidden by evening mist and the dust rising as the herds return, and we were dismissed from the demons’ presence to make our own way.
60. We passed the great jungle in a short time and reached the tribal’s house in the evening, just like demons pass through a cemetery to rest in their funeral vaults at night.
61. One side of the house had slaughtered monkeys, cocks and crows, swarms of flies flying over them and sucking the blood sprinkled over the ground.
62. Moist entrails and arteries of slaughtered beasts were hung up to be dried in the sun and chased by ravenous birds hovering over them. Flocks of birds fluttered over jambira trees.
63. Heaps of fat were laid up to be dried in the portico, ravenous birds flying over them. The skins of slain animals smeared with blood lay in piles.
64. Little children had bits of flesh in their hands beset by buzzing flies, and older tribals sat and rebuked the children.
65. Then we entered the house scattered with disgusting entrails and intestines. I thought I was like the ghost of a dead man standing beside the lord of death.
66. I was offered a seat of a big plantain leaf, given with due respect so that I might be seated as a welcome guest in the abominable abode of my newly earned father-in-law.
67. My squint eyed mother-in-law then eyed me with her blood-red eyeballs, and muttered with gladness in her look, “Is this our would be son-in-law?”
68. Afterwards we sat on some seats made of skin and I partook of the meal served to me as reward for my sins.
69. I heard many of those endearing words that are the seeds of endless misery, and many speeches that were unpleasant to my mind because they were of no benefit to me.
70. One day afterwards, when the sky was cloudless and the stars were shining, it came to pass that they presented a dowry of cloths and other articles before me.
71. With these they gave that frightful maiden to me and we were joined together as black and white, and as sin and its torment together.
72. The flesh-eating tribals celebrated the marriage ceremony with a profusion of wine and loud shouts of joy. They beat their noisy drums with merriment, as wicked men delight in carrying on the acts of their vileness.
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Chapter 3.107 — Life among the Tribals
1. The king continued:— What more shall I say of those festivities that had quite subdued my soul? From then on, my fellows called me Pushta-Pukkusha or cherished tribal.
2. After a week long celebration, and after I had spent a full eight months at that place, my wife discharged blood and then her child also.
3. She delivered a daughter which is the cause of sorrow as danger is the spring of disasters. This daughter grew up as quickly as the cares and sorrows of the ignorant.
4. In another three years she again brought forth, this time a black boy, just like the fruit of folly raises false expectations of fruition.
5. She gave birth to another daughter, then another boy, and thus I became an old tribal with a large family in that forest land.
6. In this manner many years passed in that place with these shoots of my sorrow, like one who murders a brahmin has to pass long years of torment in hellfire.
7. I had to undergo all the pains of heat and cold and chill winds and frost without any help in that dreary forest, like an old tortoise is constrained to move about in the mud of a pool forever.
8. Being burdened with the cares of my family and troubled by anxieties of my mind, I saw my increasing afflictions like a fire burning all around me.
9. Clad in bark and wrapped in old and ragged cloths, with a covering of grass and a straw hat on my head, I bore loads of logs from the woods, like we bear the burden of sins on our backs and heads.
10. I had to pass many a long year under the shade of dhavali trees with no other cloth or covering on me than an old tattered, dirty and stinking kaupina loincloth beset by flees and leeches.
11. I was exposed to chill cold winds during all my toils to support my family. I lay like a frog in some cave in the woods under the sharp blasts of winter.
12. The many quarrels, bickering, sorrows and wailings to which I was often exposed at home and abroad made my blood gush out in tears from my weeping eyes.
13. We passed nights on marshy grounds in the jungle, and being drenched by raining clouds, we took shelter in mountain caves with no food other than the roasted flesh of bears.
14. After the rainy season of sowing was over and the dark drizzling clouds dispersed, I was driven from my house by the unkindness of my relations and continued quarrelling with others.
15. Being thus in dread of everybody in the neighborhood, I moved to the house of another man where I lived with my wife and prattling children for some years.
16. Then vexed by the scolding of the quarrelsome tribal woman and the threats of the villainous tribals, my face became as pale as the waning moon under the shadow of Rahu.
17. My wife bit and scratched me as if a tigress had torn and gnawed upon my flesh and muscles. I was like a slave caught and sold to a hellish fiend. I thought that I had become changed into an infernal being.
18. I suffered under the torrents of snow thrown out of the caves of the Himalayas. I was exposed to showers of frost that fell continually in the dewy season.
19. I felt the iron shafts of rain on my naked body, like arrows fired from the bow of death. In my sickly and decrepit old age, I had to live upon the roots of withered vegetables.
20. I dug them out plentifully from the woodland grounds and ate them with a zest, like a fortunate man has tasting his dainty dishes of well cooked meat.
21. I took my food apart and untouched by anybody for fear of being polluted by the touch of a vile and base born family, and because the pungency of my unsavory diet made my mouth scowl at every morsel.
22. While I was famishing in this manner, I saw others eating animal flesh and sheep’s flesh bought from other places, and who pampered their bodies with the flesh they cut out from other living animals and devoured raw with great zest.
23. They bought animal flesh sold in iron pots and stuck in spits, earning rebirths into as many thousand bodies as they have killed and fed upon.
24. I often went with my spade and basket in the cool of the evening to the tribals’ gardens in order to collect the raw flesh that had been cast in the dirt for my food of them.
25. But when I was about to be cast into hell, time seemed to turn favorable by leading me to take refuge in mountain caves to seek my food there from the roots and plants growing there.
26. In this state and by my good luck, I met some tribals driving away village dogs with their clubs.
27. They gave my wife and children some bad rice like the villagers used to take, and we passed the night under the shade of a palm tree whose withered leaves rattled with the raindrops that fell in showers upon them.
28. We passed the night in company with these woodland apes, our teeth clattering with cold and the hairs of our bodies standing on their ends from the cold like a thousand thorns.
29. Raindrops decorated our bodies like granules of vivid pearls. From our hunger and lack of food, our bellies were as lean and lank as an empty cloud.
30. Then my wife and I began to quarrel in this dreadful forest. We kept shouting at each another with our clattering teeth and eyes ruddy from the cold.
31. My foul and dirty body resembled that of a dark black demon, and we roved about the borders of rivers and brooks to fish with a rod and hook in my hand.
32. I also wandered with a trap in my hand, like Yama with his noose at the desolation of the earth, and caught, killed and drank the heart blood of deer in my hunger and thirst.
33. I sucked the warm heart blood like milk from my mother’s breast. Smeared in blood, I stood like a blood sucking demon in the cemetery.
34. The vetala ghosts of the woods fled before me, as they do from the furies of the forests. I set my snares and nets in the woods for catching deer and birds of the air.
35. As people spread the nets of their wives and children, only to be entangled in them in the false hope of happiness, so did I spread my net of thread to beguile the birds to their destruction.
36. Though worried and worn out in the nets of worldly cares and surrounded on every side by the miseries of our vicious lives, yet our minds still take delight in cruel and foul acts (to the injury of others).
37. Our wishes are stretched as far and wide as a running river overflows its banks in the rainy season. But the objects of our desires fly far away from us, like snakes through their own wisdom hide themselves from the snake-eating weasel.
38. We have cast kindness off from our hearts, like the snake leaves off his skin, and take delight letting the hissing arrows of our malice fly, just as a thunderstorm falls on all animals.
39. Men delight at the sight of cooling clouds at the end of the hot season, but they avoid at a distance the rough briny shore spreading wide before them.
40. I underwent many difficulties that multiplied as thickly upon me as weeds growing in valleys. During my destined time, I moved about all corners of that hellish spot.
41. I have sown the seeds of sin under the rainwater of my ignorance to grow speedily as thorns on my way. I have laid hidden snares for the unwary innocent to bind myself in the mountain caves.
42. I have caught and killed innocent deer in traps to feed upon its flesh. I have killed the fly-whisk cow to lay my head on the hair hanging down their necks.
43. I slept unconscious of myself in my ignorance, as Vishnu lay on his huge hydra. I laid with my outstretched legs and limbs in the brown cell, resounding to the yell of wild beasts outside.
44. I also laid my body on the frost of a cave in the marshy ground of Vindhya, and wrapped my swarthy form in a tattered quilt full of fleas and hanging down my neck.
45. I bore it on my back, as a bear carries the long bristles upon him even in the hot season. I suffered the heat of wildfires that burned many wild animals that perished in groups like in the last conflagration of the world.
46. My wife bore her young ones, both for our pleasure as well as pain, like a glutton’s food serves both his gratification and sickness, and like the influence of planets is for both our good and evil.
47. Thus I, the only son of a king, had to pass sixty painful years of my life as so many kalpa ages of long duration.
48. I raved sometimes in my rage, and wept at others in my bitter grief. I lived on coarse meals and dwelt, alas, in the houses of vulgar tribals. Thus I passed so many years of my misery at that place, as one fastened to the chains of his insatiable desires is doomed to toil and moil for nothing until his death.
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Chapter 3.108 — King Lavana’s Description of Drought & Wildfire
1. The king continued to say:— Time passed away. Old age overtook me and turned my beard to blades of grass covered with white frost.
2. My days passed away in alternate joy and grief brought on by my fate and acts, just like a river flows with green and dried leaves scattered on it by the wind.
3. Every moment I suffered quarrels and arguments, misfortunes and bad luck. They beset me as thick and as fast as the arrows of sorrow flying in battle.
4. My foolish mind kept fluttering like a bird in the maze of my wishes and fancies. My heart was disturbed by passions, like the sea by its raging waves.
5. My soul was revolving on the vehicle of my wandering thoughts. I was carried away by them like floating straw to the whirlpool of the eventful ocean of time.
6. I, who moved about like a worm in the woodlands of Vindhya for my simple support, felt in the passing of years to be weakened and pulled down in my frame like a twolegged beast of burden.
7. In that state of my wretchedness, I forgot my royalty like a dead man and became convinced that I was a tribal bound to that hilly spot like a wingless bird.
8. The world appeared to me like the final desolation, a forest consumed by fire. It seemed like the seashore lashed by huge waves, or a withered tree struck by lightning.
9. The marshy ground at the foot of Vindhya was all dried up and left no grain, vegetable or water for food or drink. The whole group of tribals was about to die in dearth and dryness.
10. Clouds ceased to rain and disappeared from sight. Winds blew with sparks of fire in them.
11. Forest trees were bare and leafless and withered leaves were strewn over the ground. Wildfires were raging here and there, and the woodlands became as desolate as the homes of austere ascetics.
12. There followed a severe famine and a furious wildfire spread all around. It burnt down the whole forest and reduced grass and gravel to ashes.
13. People had ash all over their bodies and were starving for want of food and drink. The land was without any article of food or even grass or water. It had turned into a dreary desert.
14. The mirage of the desert glistened like water and deluded dry buffaloes to roll in it. There was no current of breeze to cool the desert air.
15. Only calls and cries for water came to the ears of men who were parched under the burning rays of the torrid sun.
16. The hungry mob, hurrying to browse upon branches and herbs, yielded their lives in those acts, while others sharpened their teeth tearing and devouring one another.
17. Some ran to bite the gum of catechu, thinking it to be a bit of flesh. Others swallowed stones as if they were cakes lying on the ground before them.
18. The ground was sprinkled with blood from men biting and tearing each other, like blood profusely spilled when a lion kills a big and starving elephant.
19. Every one was as ferocious as a lion in his attempt to devour another as his prey. Men fought each another like wrestlers in a contest.
20. Trees were leafless and hot winds blew like firebrands on all sides. Wild cats licked human blood spilled on the rocky ground.
21. The wildfires’ flames rose high in the air with clouds of smoke whirling with the howling winds of the forest. It growled aloud everywhere and filled the forestland with heaps of brown cinders and burning firebrands.
22. Huge serpents were burnt in their caves, and the fumes rising from these burning bodies served to grow poisonous plants while the flame stretching aloft with the winds gave the sky an appearance of the glory of the setting sun.
23. Strong, howling winds raised heaps of ashes like dust that stood like domes in the sky unsupported by pillars. Little children stood by their weeping parents, crying for fear of them.
24. There were some men who tore a dead body with their teeth and, in their great haste to devour the flesh, bit their own hands and fingers that were covered with their own blood.
25. Vultures flying in the air darted upon the smoke, thinking it a turret of trees, and pounced upon the firebrands, taking them for bits of raw flesh.
26. Men biting and tearing one another were flying in all directions when the splitting of burning wood hit their breasts and bellies and made them gory with blood gushing out of them.
27. Winds were howling in hollow caves and the flames of the wildfire flashed with fury. Snakes were hissing for fear of these, and the burned woods were falling down with hideous noise.
28. Thus beset by dangers and horrors, with no shelter other than the rugged hollows of rocks, this place presented a picture of this world with its encompassing flames burning like the twelve zodiacal suns on high.
29. Winds blowing hot in the burning woods and rocks dried up everything. The heat of the fire below and the sun above, together with the domestic disasters caused by influence of the planet Saturn, made this place a counterpart of this sorrowful world.
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Chapter 3.109 — Migration of the Tribals; Mind Creates All
1. The king continued:— As the displeasure of destiny continued these disasters to rage in this place, prematurely overtaking the forest and people with the disasters of the last dissolution,
2. some of these men with their wives and children went out from that place in search of some new places to live in foreign lands; like clouds disperse and disappear from the sky after the rainy season is over.
3. Wives, children and close relatives accompanied them, clinging like the members of their bodies, but the lean and infirm were left behind like branches broken from trees.
4. Some of these emigrants were devoured by tigers as they went out of their houses, like hatchling birds are caught by falcons as they come out of their nests.
5. Some entered into the fire like moths to put an end to their miserable lives. Others fell into pits, like fragments of rocks falling from the hills.
6. I separated from the connections of my father-in-law and others and depending upon myself, I escaped narrowly from that distressed country with my wife and children.
7. We passed pitfalls, storms, wild beasts and snakes without any harm. We came out of that forest safe from all the deadly perils along the way.
8. Arriving at the edge of that forest, we got under the shade of some palm trees where I let my children down from my shoulders as burdens of my sin and sorrows.
9. I halted here after my tiring journey and lengthened troubles, like one who had fled from the confines of hell. I took my rest like the withering lotus from the scorching sunbeams and heat of summer.
10. My tribal wife also slept under the same tree, and my two children lay fast asleep in each other’s embrace under the cooling shade.
11. Afterwards my younger son, Prach’chhaka, who was as dear to us as he was the less intelligent, rose up and stood before me.
12. He said with a depressed spirit and tears gushing out of his eyes, “Father give me soon some meat-food and drink or else I die.”
13. The little boy repeatedly made the same request, saying with tears in his eyes that he was dying of hunger.
14. I told him that I had no meat and the more I said so, the more he repeated his foolish craving, which could neither be supplied with nor put down to silence.
15. I was then moved by paternal affection and affliction of my heart to tell him, “Child, cut off a slice of my flesh, and roast and eat it.”
16. He agreed to it, and said, “Give it then.” His hunger was so pressing and his vitality was so exhausted that he could not decline to crave my flesh for his food.
17. Being then overpowered by affection and compassion, I thought of putting an end to all my grief with my life which had become so intolerable to me at his extreme distress.
18. Being unable to endure the pain of my affection, I despaired of my own life and resolved to resort to death as my only friend at this last extreme.
19. I collected some wood and heaped them together for my funeral pile. Having put it on fire, I saw it blazing as I wished.
20. As I was hurrying to throw myself on this burning pile, I suddenly was roused from my reverie by the sound of music proceeding from this palace, hailing me as king and shouting “jaya!” for my victory.
21. I understood this conjurer had wrought this enchantment on me and put me to all these imaginable troubles for so long a period.
22. Like the ignorant, I was subject to a hundred changes of fortune. Vasishta speaking:— As the great and mighty King Lavana was describing his fluctuations of fortune,
23. the sorcerer suddenly disappeared from sight. The courtiers looked around with staring eyes, then addressed the king saying,
24. “Our loyal lord, this man was no sorcerer with his own mercenary views. It was divine magic shown to our lord to demonstrate the lot of humanity and the state of the world.”
25. “Evidently this world is a creation of the mind and the imaginary world is only a display of the infinite power of the Almighty.
26. These hundreds of worldly systems display the various powers of omnipotence that delude even the minds of the most wise to believe in the reality of unrealities, as it were by the spell of magic.
27. This delusion being so powerful on the minds of wise, it is no wonder that our king would be overpowered when all common minds are laboring under the same error.”
28. “This delusive magic was not spread over the mind by any trick or art of a conjurer who wanted nothing more than his own gain.
29. They who love money never go away by themselves without getting something. Therefore we are tossed on the waves of doubt to take him for a sorcerer.”
30. Vasishta said:— Rama, though I am sitting here at this moment before you and others of this assembly, yet I am quite aware of the truth of this story. It is no fiction like the tale for the boy that I told you before, nor is it any invention or hearsay of mine.
31. Thus the mind is enlarged by the various inventions of its imagination, just as a tree is extended by the expansion of its boughs and branches. The extended mind encompasses all things, like an outstretched tree spreads over the ground. The mind’s comprehension of everything and its familiarity with the nature of all things serve to lead it to its state of perfection.
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Chapter 3.110 — Description of the Mind’s Play
1. Vasishta said:— In the beginning, the subjective Consciousness (chit) derived the power of knowing objective phenomena (chetyas) from the Supreme Cause. Then it went on to multiply and diversify the objects of its intelligence and thus fell from the knowledge of the one intelligent Universal Ego to the delusion of particular non-egos without end.
2. Thus Rama, the faculties of the mind, being deluded by the unrealities of particulars and to their utter error, continue to attribute specialty and differences to the general ones.
3. Mental powers are ever busy multiplying unrealities to infinity, just as ignorant children are prone to create false demons of their fancy only for their terror and trouble.
4. But reality soon disperses troublesome unrealities, and unsullied understanding drives off the errors of imagination, as sunshine dispels the darkness.
5. The mind brings distant objects near it and throws the nearer ones at a distance. It trots and flutters in living beings, like children leaping and jumping in bushes after little birds.
6. The wistful mind is fearful when there is nothing to fear, like a frightened traveler takes the stump of a tree for a demon standing on his way.
7. The suspicious mind suspects a friend for a foe, like a drunken sot thinks himself lying on the ground while he is walking along.
8. The distracted mind sees fiery Saturn in the cooling moon, and nectar being swallowed as poison acts as poison itself.
9. The building of a castle in the air, however untrue, is taken for truth for the time being. The mind dwelling on hopes is a dreamer in its waking state.
10. The disease of desire is the delusion of the mind. Therefore it is to be rooted out from the mind at once and with all diligence.
11. The minds of men are entangled in the net of greed like poor stags. They are rendered as helpless as beasts of prey in the forest of the world.
12. He who by his reasoning has removed the vain anxieties of his mind has displayed the light of his soul, like that of the unclouded sun to sight.
13. Therefore know that the mind makes the man, and not his body as some think. The body is dull matter, but the mind is neither a material nor immaterial substance.
14. Whatever is done with the mind by any man, know Rama, that act is actually done by him. Whatsoever is shunned by the mind, know that is kept out in actuality.
15. The mind alone makes the whole world to the utmost end of the spheres. The mind is the emptiness and the air and earth in its greatness.
16. If the mind does not join a thing with its known properties and qualities, then the sun, planets and stars would appear to be without their light.
17. The mind assumes the properties of knowledge and ignorance, from which it is called a knowing or unknowing thing. But these properties are not to be attributed to the body, for a living body is never known to be wise, or a dead carcass an ignorant person.
18. The mind becomes sight in its act of seeing and hearing when it hears anything. It is feeling when the skin touches anything and smelling when something touches the nose.
19. It becomes taste connected with the tongue and palate, and takes many other names besides according to its other faculties. Thus the mind is the chief actor on the stage of the living animal body.
20. It magnifies the minute and makes the true appear as untrue. It sweetens the bitter and sours the sweet, and turns a foe to a friend and vice-versa.
21. In whatever manner the mind represents itself in its various aspects, the same becomes evident to us both in our perceptions and conceptions of them.
22. It was by virtue of such a representation that the dreaming mind of King Harish Chandra took the course of one night for the long period of a dozen years.
23. It was owing to a similar idea of the mind that the whole creation of Brahma appeared to be situated within himself.
24. The presentation of a fair prospect before the imagination turns the present pain to pleasure, like a man bound in chains forgets his painful state in the hopes of his release the next morning.
25. The mind, being well fortified and brought under the subjection of reason, brings all the parts of the body and internal passions of the heart under our control. But a loose and ungoverned mind gives a loose rein to go astray, like the loosened thread of a string of pearls scatters the precious grains at random over the ground.
26. The mind that preserves its clear sightedness, equanimity and stability in all places and under all conditions retains its even temper and good discernment at all times under the testimony of its consciousness and approbation of its good conscience.
27. Oh Rama, you must retain your self-possession at all times, and remain like a unmoved, dumb and dull body, with your mind acquainted with the states of all things, but undisturbed by the fluctuations of the objects that come into your awareness.
28. The mind by its own nature is restless with all its vain thoughts and desires within itself. Man is carried abroad by its currents over hills and deserts and across rivers and seas to far and remote cities and countries.
29. The waking mind deems the objects of its desire to be as sweet as honey, and whatever it does not like to be as bitter as gall, even though they may be sweet to taste.
30. Some minds with too much self reliance upon themselves and without considering the true nature of things give them different forms and colors according to their own conceptions and opinions, though they are far from truth.
31. The mind is a pulsation of the power of Divine Consciousness. It ventilates in breeze and glares in luminous bodies, melts in liquids and hardens in solid substances.
32. It vanishes in emptiness and extends in space. It dwells in everything at its pleasure and flies from everywhere at its will.
33. It whitens black and blackens white, and is confined to no place or time but extends through all.
34. The mind being absent or settled elsewhere, we do not taste the sweet that we are sucking, swallowing or grinding under our teeth or licking with the tongue.
35. What is seen by the mind is seen with the eyes, and what it does not see is never seen by the visual organs, just like things lying in the dark are not perceptible to the sight.
36. The mind is embodied in the physical body accompanied by the organs of sense. But it is the mind that actuates the senses and receives the sensations. The senses are the products of the mind, but the mind is not a production of sensations.
37. Those great souls (philosophers) who have investigated the connection between the two quite different substances of body and mind, and those learned men who show us how boy and mind are mutually related, are truly worthy of our veneration.
38. A beautiful woman decorated with flowers in the braids of her hair and looking loosely with her amorous glances is like a log of wood in contact with the body of one whose mind is absent from himself.
39. The dispassionate yogi who sits reclined in his abstract meditation in the forest, owing to the absence of his mind, has no sense of his hands being bitten off by a voracious beast.
40. The mind of a sage practiced in mental abstraction may with ease be inclined to convert his pleasures to pain and his pains to pleasure.
41. The mind employed in some other thought and inattentive to the present discourse finds it like a piece of wood cut off by an axe.
42. A man sitting at home and thinking of standing on the precipice of a mountain, or falling into the hollow cave, shudders at the idea of his imminent danger. So also, one is startled at the prospect of a dreary desert even in his dream and is bewildered to imagine the vast deep under the clouds.
43. The mind feels a delight at the sight of a lovely spot in its dream, and at seeing the hills, cities and houses stretching or the clusters of stars shining in the extended plain of the sky.
44. The restless mind is busy stretching many a hill, valley, cities and houses in our dreams, like waves in the vast ocean of the soul.
45. As the waters of the sea display themselves in huge surges, billows and waves, so the mind that is in the body displays itself in the various sights exhibited in our dreams.
46. As the leaves and branches, flowers and fruits are the products of the shooting seed, so everything that is seen in our waking dreams is the creation of our minds.
47. As a golden image is no other than gold, so the creatures of our living dreams are nothing but the creations of our fanciful mind.
48. As a drop or shower of rain, and a foam or froth of the wave, are only different forms of water, so the varieties of phenomena that are sensed are only transformations of the same mind.
49. These are only the thoughts of our minds seen in our waking dreams, like the various costumes that an actor wears to represent different characters in a play.
50. As King Lavana believed himself to be a tribal for some time, so we believe ourselves to be so-and-so by the thoughts of our minds.
51. Whatever we think ourselves to be in our consciousness, the same soon comes to pass upon us. Therefore mold the thoughts of your mind in any way you like.
52. An embodied being sees many cities, towns, hills and rivers before him, all of which are only visions of waking dreams stretched out by the inner mind.
53. One sees a demon in a god and a snake where there is no snake. It is the idea that fosters the thought, as King Lavana fostered the thoughts of his ideal forms.
54. As the idea of man includes that of a woman, and the idea of father implies that of the son, so the mind includes the wish, and with every person the wish is accompanied by its action.
55. It is by its wish that the mind is subject to death to be born again in other bodies. Though the mind is a formless thing of its nature, yet by its constant habit of thinking, it contracts the notion of it being a living substance (jiva).
56. The mind is busy with thoughts of long drawn wishes that cause its repeated births and deaths, and their accompaniments of hopes and fears, and pleasure and pain.
57. Pleasure and pain are situated in the mind like oil in sesame seed. These are thickened or thinned like oil under the particular circumstances of life. Prosperity thickens our pleasure and adversity our pain; these are thinned by their reverses again.
58. Like the greater or lighter pressure of the oil-mill that thickens or thins the oil, so the deeper or lighter attention of the mind aggravates or lightens its sense of pleasure or pain.
59. As our wishes are directed by the particular circumstances of time and place, so the measurements of time and place are made according to the intensity or laxity of our thoughts.
60. It is the mind that is satisfied and delighted at the fulfillment of our wishes, and not the body which is unconscious of its enjoyments.
61. The mind is delighted with its imaginary desires within the body, like a secluded woman takes delight in the harem.
62. He who does not give indulgence to levities and fickleness in his heart is sure to subdue his mind, as one binds an elephant by its chain to the post.
63. He whose mind does not wave back and forth like a brandished sword, but remains fixed as a pillar to its best intent and object, is the best of men on earth. All others are like insects continually moving in the mind.
64. He whose mind is free from fickleness and is sedate in itself is united with his best object in his meditation of the same.
65. Steadiness of mind is attended with stillness of worldly commotions, just as the suspension of churning Mandara Mountain was attended with the calmness of the ocean of milk.
66. The thoughts of the mind embroiled in worldly cares become the sources of those turbulent passions in the heart which, like poisonous plants, fill this harmful world.
67. Foolish men, infatuated by their giddiness and ignorance, revolve round the center of their hearts like giddy bees flutter about the lotus flowers of the lake until at last, weary from their giddy circles, they fall down in the whirlpools that hurl them in irreparable ruin.
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Chapter 3.111 — The Necessity to Control the Heart & Mind
1. Vasishta continued:— Now listen to what I will tell you is the best remedy to heal the disease of the heart. It is within one’s own power and harmless and a sweet potion to taste.
2. It is by your own exertion of your own consciousness and by diligent renunciation of the best objects of your desire that you can bring back your unmanageable mind under your control.
3. He who remains at rest by giving up the objects of his desire is truly the conqueror of his mind which is reduced under his subjection like an elephant lacking its tusks.
4. The mind is to be carefully treated like a patient with prescriptions of reason and by discriminating truth from untruth, just as we distinguish a good diet from what is injurious.
5. Mold your heated imagination by cool reasoning, by precepts of the scriptures, and by association with the dispassionate, as they do heated iron with a cold hammer.
6. Like a boy who suffers no pain turning himself this way and that in his play, so it is not difficult to turn the mind from one thing to another at pleasure.
7. Employ your mind to acts of goodness by the light of your understanding and join your soul to the meditation of God by light of your spirit.
8. The renunciation of a highly desirable object is within the power of one who resigns himself to the Divine Will. Therefore, it is a shame to that worm of human being who finds this teaching difficult to practice.
9. He who in his understanding can take the unpleasant for the pleasurable may with ease subdue his mind, like a giant by his might overcomes a boy.
10. It is possible to govern the mind by one’s attention and effort, like controlling a horse. When the mind is brought still, it is easy to enter into divine knowledge.
11. Shame on that jackass man who does not have the power to subdue his restless mind. It is entirely under his own control and he can easily govern it.
12. No one can reach the best course of his life without tranquility of his mind. This is to be acquired by means of his own effort to get rid of the fond objects of his desire.
13. By destroying the mind’s appetites and through reason and knowledge of truth, one can have his absolute dominion over the mind without any change or rival in it.
14. The precepts of a teacher, the instructions of the scriptures, the efficacy of mantras, and the force of arguments are all trifles like bits of straw if the mind is not calm. Calmness can be gained by renouncing our desires and knowledge of truth.
15. Only when all the desires of the mind are cut off by the weapon of indifference to all worldly things can the one all-pervading quiescent Brahman be known.
16. All men’s bodily pains are quite at an end as soon as the mind is at rest, after the removal of mental anxieties by means of true knowledge.
17. Many persons turn their minds away from mindfulness by too much trust in their efforts and imagined expectations, and disregarding the power of destiny that rules over all human efforts.
18. The mind when is becomes long practiced in its highest duty, the cultivation of divine knowledge, becomes extinct in consciousness and is elevated to its higher state of intellectual form.
19. Join yourself first to your intellectual or abstract thoughts, and then to your spiritual speculations. Then, being the master of your mind, contemplate on the nature of the Supreme Soul.
20. Thus relying on your own efforts and converting the conscious mind to its state of detached unconsciousness, you can attain that highest state of stability that knows no decay or destruction.
21. It is by your efforts and fixed attention, O Rama, that you can correct the errors of your mind, just like one gets over his wrong perceptions of mistaking one thing for another.
22. Calmness of mind dispels anxiety. A man who is able to subdue his mind doesn’t care a fig for his subjection of the world under him.
23. Worldly possessions are attended with strife and warfare. The enjoyments of heaven also have their rise and fall. But in the improvement of one’s own mind and nature, there is no contention with anyone or any obstruction of any kind.
24. Those who cannot manage to keep their minds under proper control find it hard to manage their affairs well.
25. The thought of being dead and being born again as a man continually occupy the minds of the ignorant with the idea of their ego.
26. Nobody is born here or dies at anytime. The mind conceives its birth and death and migration in other bodies and worlds.
27. It goes from here to another world, and there it appears in another form, or it is relieved from the encumbrance of flesh, which is called its liberation. Then where is this death and why fear to die?
28. Whether the mind wanders here or goes to another world with its earthly thoughts, it continues in the same state as before unless it is changed to another form by its attainment of liberation.
29. It is in vain that we are overwhelmed in sorrow upon the death of our brethren and dependents. We know it is the nature of the mind to be deluded from its state of pure consciousness to that of error.
30. It is repeatedly stated, both before and afterwards and in many other places (of this work), that there is no other means of obtaining true knowledge without subduing the mind.
31. I repeat the same lesson, that there is no way except by government of the unruly mind to come to the light of the truly real, clear and universal knowledge of the Supreme.
32. The mind destroyed, the soul attains its tranquility and the light of the intellect shines forth in the cavity of the heart.
33. Hold fast the discus of reason, and cut off the bias of your mind. Be sure that no disease will have the power to molest you if you can have the good sense to despise objects of pleasure that are attended by pain.
34. By lopping the members of the mind, you cut it off altogether. These members, the essence of the mind, are ego and selfishness. Shun your sense that “It is I” and “These are mine.”
35. Without these feelings, the mind is cast down like a tree felled by the axe. It is dispersed like a scattered cloud from the autumn sky.
36. The mind is blown away by its lack of ego and selfishness, like a cloud by the winds.
37. It is dangerous to wage a war against winds, weapons, fire or water in order to obtain the objects of worldly desire, but there is no danger whatever in destroying the growing soft and tender desires of the mind.
38. What is good and what is not are well known for certain, even to children. Therefore employ your mind to what is good, as they train children in the paths of goodness.
39. Our minds are as stubborn and indomitable as ferocious lions of the forest. They are true victors who have conquered these and are thereby entitled to salvation.
40. Our desires, with their unsatisfied thirst after monetary gain, are like fierce lions. Desires lead us to dangers and are as delusive as the mirage of the desert.
41. The man without desires cares for nothing: whether the winds howl with the fury of storms, or the seas break their bounds, or the twelve suns (of the Zodiac) rise at once to burn the universe.
42. The mind is the root that grows the plants of our good and evil and all our happiness and sorrow. The mind is the tree of the world, and all peoples are like its branches and leaves.
43. One who has freed his mind from its desires prospers everywhere. He who lives in the dominion of detachment rests in his heavenly joy.
44. The more we curb the desires of our minds, the greater we feel our inward happiness. Like the fire being extinguished, we find ourselves cooled from its heat.
45. Should the mind long for millions of worldly mansions in its highest ambition, it is sure to have them spread out to view within the minute particle of its own essence.
46. Opulence in expectancy is full of anxiety to the mind. When gained, the expected wealth is no less troublesome to the mind. But the treasure of contentment is filled with lasting peace of mind. Therefore, be victorious over your greedy mind by abandonment of all your desires.
47. With the highly holy virtue of your un-mindfulness, and with the even-mindedness of those who have known the Divine Spirit, and also with the subdued, moderated and defeated yearnings of your heart, make the state of the uncreated One as your own.
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Chapter 3.112 — Motion (Restlessness) Is Inherent in the Mind; the Mind Is Its Own Cure
1. Vasishta continued:— Whatever the nature of the object of any man’s desire, his mind does not fail to run after it with great eagerness in every place.
2. This eagerness of the mind rises and sets by turns with the view of the desired object, like clear bubbles of water foaming and bursting of themselves with the breath of winds.
3. As coldness is the nature of frost and blackness is that of ink, so is swiftness or momentum the nature of the mind, as stillness is that of the soul.
4. Rama said, “Tell me sage, why is the mind identified with motion, and what is the cause of its velocity? Tell me also if there is any other force that can impede the mind’s motion?”
5. Vasishta replied:— We have never seen the motionless quiet of the mind. Speed is the nature of the mind, like heat is that of fire.
6. This vacillating power of motion which is implanted in the mind is known to be of the same nature as that of the self-motive force of the Divine Mind that is the cause of the momentum and motion of those worlds.
7. As the essence of air is imperceptible without its movement, so we can have no notion of the momentum of our minds apart from the idea of their vibration.
8. The mind which has no motion is said to be dead and defunct. The suspension of mental agitation is the condition of yoga stillness and leads to our ultimate liberation.
9. The mortification of the mind is attended with the subsidence of our sorrows, but agitated thoughts in the mind are causes of all our sorrows.
10. The monster of the mind, being roused from its rest, raises all our dangers and disasters, but its falling into rest and inaction causes our happiness and perfect joy.
11. The restlessness of the mind is the effect of its ignorance. Therefore Rama, exert your reason to destroy all its desires.
12. Destroy the internal desires of your mind that are raised by ignorance alone and attain your supreme joy by your resignation to the Divine Will.
13. The mind is a thing that stands between the real and unreal, and between intelligence and dull matter. The mind is moved to and fro by the contending powers on either side.
14. Impelled by dull material force, the mind is lost in the investigation of material objects until at last, by its habitual thought of materiality, it is converted to a material object, resembling dull matter itself.
15. But the mind being guided by its intellectual powers to investigate abstract truths becomes an intelligent and intellectual principle by its continued practice of thinking itself as such.
16. By virtue of the exertion of your manly powers and activities, and by force of constant habit and continued practice, you can succeed in attaining anything to which you employ your mind with diligence.
17. You also can be free from fears and find your rest in your reliance upon the Being without sorrow, provided you exercise your manly activities and use your intelligence to curb the tendencies of your mind.
18. By the force of your intelligent mind, you must lift up your deluded mind that is drowned in the cares of this world. There is no other way.
19. Only the mind is capable of subduing the mind, for who can subdue a king unless he is a king himself?
20. Our minds are the boats to lift us from the ocean of this world where we are carried too far by its beating waves and thrown into the whirlpools of despair, and where we are caught by the sharks of our greediness.
21. Let your own mind cut the mind’s net that is ensnared in this world and extricate your soul by this wise policy, which is the only means of your liberation.
22. Let the wise destroy the desires of their minds and this will set them free from the bonds of ignorance.
23. Shun your desire for earthly enjoyments and forsake your knowledge of dualism. Then get rid of your impressions of entity and non-entity and be happy with the knowledge of one unity.
24. Thought of the unknowable will remove the thoughts of known phenomena. This is equivalent to the destruction of desires, and also of the mind and ignorance.
25. The unknown One of which we are unconscious by our knowledge of phenomena transcends anything and everything known by our consciousness. Our unconsciousness is our nirvana and final extinction, while our consciousness is the cause of our sorrow.
26. By their own attention, men soon come to the knowledge of phenomena, but it is the unknowing or unconsciousness of these that is our nirvana. Our consciousness is the cause of our sorrow.
27. Destroy, O Rama, whatever is desirable to your mind and is the object of your affection. Then knowing them as reduced to nothing, forsake your desires as seedless sprouts and live content without the feelings of joy and grief.
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Chapter 3.113 — Description of Ignorance & Delusion (Avidya)
1. Vasishta continued:— False desires that continually rise in the heart are like the appearances of false moons in the sky and should be shunned by the wise.
2. They rise in the minds of the unwise amidst their ignorance. Everything that is known only by its name and not in actuality cannot reside in the minds of wise people.
3. Be wise, O Rama, and do not think like the ignorant. Consider well all that I tell you. There is no second moon in the sky, but it appears so only by deception of our optical visions.
4. There exists nothing real or unreal anywhere except the only true essence of God, just like there is no substantiality in the continuity of the waves other than the body of waters.
5. There is no reality in anything, whether existent or non-existent, all which are mere creations of your shadowy ideality. Therefore do not impute any shape or figure to the eternal, boundless and pure spirit of God.
6. You are no maker or master of anything. Then why consider any act or thing as your own? You do not know what these existences are, or by whom and from what they are made.
7. Do not think you are an actor because no actor can attempt to do anything. Discharge whatever is your duty and remain at your ease with having done your part.
8. Though you are the actor of an action, do not think of yourself as such. Mind your inability to do or undo anything. How can you boast of being the actor when you know your inability for action?
9. If truth is delectable and untruth is odious, then remain firm to what is good and be employed in your duties.
10. But as the whole world is a gallery, a magic, and an unreality, then say what reliance is there in it and what signifies pleasure or displeasure to anybody?
11. Know Rama, this egg of the world is a delusion and being nonexistent in itself, it appears as a real existence to others.
12. Know this busy sphere of the world, so full with its non-existence, to be an ideal fantasy presented for the delusion of our minds.
13. It is like a beautiful bamboo plant, all hollow within and without pith or marrow inside, or like the curling waves of the sea, both of which are born to perish without being uprooted from the bottom.
14. This world is as evaporated as the air and water flying in the air, incapable of being touched or held in the hand, and as precipitous as a waterfall in its course.
15. It appears as a flowery garden, but never comes to any good use at all. The billowy sea in the mirage presents the form of water without quenching our thirst.
16. Sometimes it seems to be straight, and at others a curve. Now it is long and now short, and now it is moving and quiet again. Everything in it, though originally for our good, conspires to our evil only.
17. Though hollow inside, the world appears to be full with its apparent contents. Though all the worlds are continually in motion, yet they seem to be standing still.
18. Whether they be dull matter or intelligences, their existence depends upon their motion. And these, without stopping anywhere for a moment, present the sight of their being quite at rest.
19. Though they are as bright as light to sight, they are as opaque in their bowels as the dark coal. Though they are moved by a superior power, they appear to be moving of themselves.
20. They fade away before the brighter light of the sun, but brighten in the darkness of the night. Their light is like that of the mirage created by the reflection of sunbeams.
21. Human greed is like a black serpent, crooked and venomous, thin and soft in its form, but rough and dangerous in its nature, and ever unsteady as a woman.
22. Without the objects of our affection, our love of the world soon ceases, like the lamp is extinguished without its oil and as the vermilion mark is soon worn off.
23. Our false hopes are as transient as the impermanent flashes of lightning. Hopes glare and flare for a moment, then disappear in the air like these transitory flashes of light.
24. The objects of our desire are often had without our seeking, but they are as frail as the fire of heaven. They appear to vanish like twinkling lightning, and being held carefully in the hand, they burn it like an electric fire.
25. Many things come to us unasked and though appearing delightful at first, they prove troublesome to us at last. Hopes delayed are like flowers growing out of season which neither bear their fruit or answer our purposes.
26. Every accident tends to our misery, as unpleasant dreams annoy our sleep and disturb our rest.
27. It is our delusion (avidya) that presents these many and big worlds before us, just like our dreams produce, sustain and destroy all appearances of vision in one minute.
28. It was delusion that made one minute appear as many years to King Lavana, and the space of one night seem like the long period of a dozen of years to Harish Chandra.
29. Such also is the case with separated lovers among rich people: that in the absence of their beloved, a single night seems like an entire year to them.
30. It is this delusive avidya that shortens the flight of time to the rich and happy and prolongs its course with the poor and miserable, all of whom are subject to the power of delusion (vipary’asa).
31. The power of this delusion is essentially spread over all the works of creation, like the light of a lamp spreads over things in its brightness and not in substance.
32. As a female form represented in a picture is no woman and has no power to do anything, so this delusion that presents us the shapes of our desired objects in the picture of the mind can produce nothing in reality.
33. The delusion consists in building aerial castles without substance in the mind. Though these appear in hundreds and thousands of shapes, they have no substance to them.
34. It deludes the ignorant, like a mirage misleads deer in a desert, but false appearances cannot deceive the knowing man.
35. These appearances, like foaming waters, are as continuous as they are impermanent. They are as fleeting as the driving frost that cannot be held in the hand.
36. This delusion holds the world in its grasp and flies aloft with it in the air. It blinds us like flying dust raised by its furious blasts.
37. Covered with dust and with heat and sweat of its body, it grasps the earth and flies all about the world. The deluded man ever works with persistence and runs everywhere after his greed.
38. As drops of rainwater falling from the clouds form the great rivers and seas, and as scattered straw tied together make a strong rope to bind beasts, so the combination of all the delusive objects in the world makes the great delusion of reality and lust.
39. Poets describe the fluctuations of the world as a series of waves and the world itself as a bed of lotuses, pleasant to sight but floating on an unstable element. But I compare it to the porous stalk of the lotus, full of perforations and openings inside, and to a pool of mud and mire with the filth of our sins.
40. Men think much of their improvement and of many other things on earth, but there is no improvement in this decaying world that is like a tempting cake with a coating of sweets, but full of deadly gall within.
41. It is like a lamp whose flame is lost and fled we know not where. It is visible as a mist, but try to lay hold on it and it proves to be nothing.
42. This earth is a handful of ashes which being flung aloft flies in particles of dust. It is like the upper sky which appears to be blue but has no blueness in it.
43. This delusion on earth as like the appearance of two moons in the sky, or in the vision of things in a dream, or in the motion of immovable things on the land to the passenger in a boat.
44. Men being long deluded by this error which has tightly laid hold of their minds, imagine a long duration of the world, as they do of the scenes in their dreams.
45. The mind being thus deluded by this error sees the wonderful productions of world to rise and fall within itself like the waves of the sea.
46. Things which are real and good appear otherwise in our error, while those that are unreal and harmful appear real and good to our deluded understandings.
47. Our strong greed, riding on the vehicle of the desired object, chases the fleeting mind as bird-catchers chase flying birds with nets.
48. Delusion, like a mother and wife, often offers us fresh delights with her tender looks and breasts distilling sweet milk.
49. But these delights serve only to poison us, while they seem to cool the worlds with their distillation, just like the crescent orb of the moon injures us with too much of her moistening influence, while it appears to refresh us with her full bright beams.
50. Blind delusion turns meek, mild and mute men into giddy and clamorous fools, like silent vetala ghosts in their dancing revelry in the silent woods at night.
51. It is under the influence of delusion that we see shapes of snakes and serpents in our brick-built and stone-made houses at nightfall.
52. It makes a single thing appear as double, like the sight of two moons in the sky, and brings near to us what is far away, like in our dreams. Delusion even causes us to dream that we are dead.
53. It causes long to appear as short, as our nightly sleep shortens the duration of time and makes a moment appear as a year, as in the case of separated lovers.
54. Look at the power of this unsubstantial ignorance, a negative thing, and still there is nothing which it cannot alter to something else.
55. Therefore be diligent to stop the course of this delusion by your right knowledge, just as they dry up a channel by stopping the current of the stream.
56. Rama said, “It is wonderful that a false conception that has no real existence and is so delicate as almost a nothing (but a name) should thus blind the understanding.
57. It is strange that something without form or figure, without sense or understanding, and which is unreal and vanishing, should so blindfold the world.
58. It is strange that a thing sparkling in darkness and vanishing in daylight, and shortsighted as the brooding owl, should keep the world in darkness.
59. It is strange that something prone to doing evil and unable to come to light and flying from sight, and having no bodily form whatever, should thus darken the world.
60. It is a wonder that one acting so miserly and consorting with the mean and vile, and ever hiding herself in darkness, should thus dominate the world.
61. It is wonderful that fallacy attended with constant sorrow and peril, and which is devoid of sense and knowledge, should keep the world in darkness.
62. It is to be wondered that error arising from anger and greed, creeping crookedly in darkness and liable to instant death, should yet keep the world in blindness.
63. It is surprising that error which is a blind, dull and stupid thing itself, and which is falsely talkative at all times, should yet mislead others in the world.
64. It is astonishing that falsehood should betray a man after attaching as closely to him as his consort, and showing all her endearments to him, but flying at the approach of his reason.
65. It is strange that man should be blinded by the womanish attire of error which beguiles the man but dares not to look at him face to face.
66. It is strange that man is blinded by his faithless consort of error which has no sense or intelligence and which dies away without being killed.”
67. “Tell me sage, how this error — which has its seat in the desires and is deeply rooted in the recesses of the heart and mind, and leads us to the channels of endless misery by subjecting us to repeated births and deaths and to the pains and pleasures of life — is to be dispelled?”
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Chapter 3.114 — Description of Error
1. Rama repeated, “Tell me sage, how to remove this stony blindness of man caused by the trick of ignorance (avidya)?”
2. Vasishta replied:— As the particles of snow melt at the sight of the sun, so this ignorance is dispelled immediately by a glance of the Supreme Spirit.
3. Until then, ignorance continues to hurl down the soul and spirit, as from a precipice to the depths of the world, and expose them to sorrows as thick as thorny brambles.
4. As long as the desire of seeing spirit does not rise of itself in the human soul, there is no end of this ignorance (avidya) and unconsciousness.
5. The sight of the Supreme Spirit destroys the knowledge of our self-existence that is caused by our ignorance, just like the light of the sun destroys the shadows of things.
6. The sight of the all-pervading God dispels our ignorance in the same manner as the light of the twelve zodiacal suns (all shining at once) puts the shadows of night to flight from all sides of the horizon.
7. Our desires are the offspring of our ignorance, and the annihilation of these constitutes what we call our liberation. A man who is devoid of desires is reckoned the perfect and consummate master (siddha) .
8. As the night-shade of desires is dissipated from the region of the mind, the darkness of ignorance is put to flight by the rise of the intellectual sun.
9. As the dark night flies away before the advance of sunlight, so ignorance disappears before the advance of true knowledge (viveka or discrimination).
10. The stiffness of our desires tends to bind the mind fast in its worldly chains, like the advance of night serves to increase the fear of demons in children.
11. Rama asked, “The knowledge of phenomena as true makes what we call avidya or ignorance, and it is said to be dispersed by spiritual knowledge. Now tell me sage, what is the nature of the Spirit?”
12. Vasishta replied:— That which is not the subject of thought, which is all-pervasive, and the thought of which is beyond expression and comprehension is the Universal Spirit.
13. That which reaches to the highest heaven of God and stretches over the lowest plots of grass on earth is the all-pervading spirit at all times, and is unknown to the ignorant soul.
14. All this is truly Brahman, eternal and imperishable Consciousness. To Him no imagination of the mind can reach at anytime.
15. That which is never born or dead and which is ever existent in all worlds, and in which the conditions of being and change are altogether wanting,
16. which is one and one alone, all and allpervading, and imperishable Unity, which is incomprehensible in thought, and is only of the form of Intellect is the Universal Spirit.
17. It is accompanied with the ever-existent, all-extending, pure and undisturbed Conscioiusness and is that calm, quiet, even and unchanging state of the soul which is called the Divine Spirit.
18. There resides also the impure mind, which is by nature beyond all physical objects and runs after its own desire. It is conceivable by Consciousness as sullied by its own activity.
19. This ubiquitous, all-potent, great and godlike mind, in its imagination, separates itself from the Supreme Spirit and rises from it like a wave on the surface of the sea.
20. There is no fluctuation or projection in the allextending tranquil soul of God, but these take place in the mind owing to its desires which cause the production of all things in the world.
21. Therefore the world, being the production of desire or will, has its extinction with the privation of desires, for that which is the growth of a thing causes its extinction also, like the wind that kindles the fire also extinguishes it.
22. The exertion of human effort gives rise to the expectation of results, but lack of desire causes the cessation of exertions and consequently puts a stop to the desire of activity and our ignorance that causes desire.
23. The thought that “I am distinct from Brahman” binds the mind to the world, but the belief that “Brahman is all” releases the mind from its bondage.
24. Every thought about one’s self fastens his bondage in this world, but release from selfish thoughts leads him to his liberation. Cease from your selfish cares and you shall cease to work with persistence for nothing.
25. There is no lake of lotuses in the sky, nor is there a lotus growing in the gold mine whose fragrance fills the air and attracts the blue bees to suck its honey.
26. The goddess of ignorance, with her uplifted arms resembling the long stalks of lotus plants, laughs over her conquests in exultation with the glaring light of shining moonbeams.
27. Such is the net of our wishes that our minds spread before us, which represent unrealities as real and take a delight to dwell upon them, like children in their toys.
28. So also is the trap spread out by our own ignorance all over this world. It ensnares busy people to their misery in all places, just as it tightly binds ignorant men and children in its chains.
29. Men are busy with worldly affairs with such thoughts as, “I am poor and bound in this earth for my life; but I have my hands and feet with which I must work for myself.”
30. But they are freed from all affairs of this life who know themselves as spiritual beings, and that their spiritual part is neither subject to bondage nor labor.
31. The thought that “I am neither flesh or bones but some thing other than my body” releases one from his bondage. One having such assurance within is said to have weakened his avidya or ignorance.
32. The imagination of earthly men paint ignorance as dark as the darkness that surrounds the highest pinnacle of Mount Meru, blazing with the blue light of sapphire, or at the primeval darkness impenetrable by sunlight.
33. Earth-born mortals also represent ignorance as the blackness which naturally covers the face of heaven by its own nature, like the blue vault of the sky.
34. Thus, in the imagination of the unenlightened, ignorance is pictured with a visible form. But the enlightened never attribute qualities of physical sensation to inanimate and imaginary objects.
35. Rama said, “Tell me sage, what is the cause of the blueness of the sky if it is not the reflection of the blue gems on the Meru’s peak? Is it a collection of darkness (at night) by itself?”
36. Vasishta replied:— Rama, the sky being only an empty vacuum cannot have the quality of blueness which is commonly attributed to it. Nor is it the bluish luster of the blue gems that are supposed to abound on the top of Meru.
37. Nor is there any possibility of a body of darkness abiding in the sky when the cosmic egg is full of light (which has displaced the primeval darkness) and when the nature of light is the brightness that stretches over the extraterrestrial regions.
38. O fortunate Rama, the sky which is a vast vacuum is open to a sister of ignorance with regard to its inner hollowness.
39. As one after losing his eyesight sees only darkness all about him, so the lack of the objects of sight in the womb of emptiness gives the sky the appearance of a dark scene.
40. By understanding this, as you come to the knowledge that the apparent blackness of the sky is no black color of its own, so you come to learn the seeming darkness of ignorance to be no darkness in reality.
41. Want of desire or its detachment is the destroyer of ignorance. It is as easy to effect it as to annihilate a lake of lotuses growing in the sky.
42. It is better, O good Rama, to distrust the delusions of this world and disbelieve the blueness of the sky than to labor under the error of their reality.
43. The thought that “I am dead” makes one as sad as when he dreams of his death in sleep. Similarly, the thought that “I am living” makes one as cheerful as when he wakes from the deadly dream of his death-like sleep.
44. Foolish imaginations make the mind as dull as that of a fool, but reasonable reflections lead it to wisdom and clear sightedness.
45. A moment’s reflection of the reality of the world and of his own essence casts a man into the gloom of everlasting ignorance, while his forgetfulness of these removes all mortal thoughts from his mind.
46. Ignorance produces passions and temptations for all transient objects. Ignorance is busy destroying the knowledge of the soul. It is destroyed only by knowledge of the soul.
47. Whatever the mind seeks is instantly supplied by the organs of action which serve as ministers subservient to the orders of their king.
48. Therefore, he who, by his diligent application to spirituality, does not attend to the dictates of his mind in the pursuit of phenomena entertains the tranquility of his inmost soul.
49. What did not exist at first has no existence even now. That which appears as existent is nothing other than the quiescent and immaculate essence, Brahma himself.
50. Let no other thought of any person, thing, place or object employ your mind at anytime, except that of the immutable, everlasting and unlimited spirit of Brahma.
51. Rely upon the superior powers of your understanding, exert your sovereign intellect, and root out all worldly desires by enjoyment of the pleasures of your mind.
52. The great ignorance that rises in the mind and raises the desires of your heart has spread the net of your false hopes for your ruin, causing your death and decrepitude under them.
53. Your wishes burst out in expressions such as, “These are my sons and these are my treasures. I am such a one and these things are mine.” All this is the effect of a magic spell of ignorance that binds you tightly.
54. Your body is a void in which your desires have produced all your selfish thoughts, like empty winds raising waves on the surface of the sea.
55. Learn, you who are seekers of truth, that the words “I” and “mine” and “this” and “that” are all meaningless in their true sense. There is nothing that may be called real at anytime except knowledge of the true self and essence of Brahman.
56. The heavens above and the earth below, with all the ranges of hills and mountains on earth and all the lines of its rivers and lakes, are only the dissolving sights seen in the same or different lights as they are represented by our ignorance.
57. Phenomena rise to view from our ignorance and disappear before the light of knowledge. They appear in various forms in the substratum of the soul, just as the fallacy of a snake appears in the substance of a rope.
58. Rama, know that only the ignorant are liable to the error of taking the earth, sun and stars for realities; not so the learned to whom the great Brahman is present in all his majesty and full glory in all places and things.
59. While the ignorant labor under the doubt of two ideas, a rope and a snake in the rope, the learned are firm in their belief and sight of one true God in all things.
60. Therefore do not think like the ignorant, but well consider all things like the wise and the learned. Forsake your earthly wishes and do not grope like the vulgar by believing the not-self to be the self.
61. Of what good is this dull and dumb body to you, Rama, (in your future state) that you are so overcome by alternating joy and grief at its pleasure and pain?
62. Like the wood of a tree, its gum resin, and its fruit and seed are not one and the same thing, though they are so closely related to one another, so this body and the embodied being are quite separate from one another, though they are so closely united with each other.
63. As the burning of a pair of bellows does not blow out the fire or stop the air blown by another pair, so the vital air is not destroyed by destruction of the body but finds its way into another form and frame elsewhere.
64. The thought that “I am happy or miserable” is as false as the idea of water in a mirage. Knowing it as such, give up your misconceptions of pleasure and pain and place your reliance upon the sole truth.
65. O how wonderful it is that men have so utterly forgotten the true Brahman and have placed their reliance on false ignorance, the sole cause of errors.
66. Do not, O Rama, give way to ignorance in your mind, which being overspread by its darkness will render it difficult for you to pass over the errors of the world.
67. Know ignorance to be a false fiend and deluder of the strongest minds. It is the baneful cause of endless sorrows and produces the poisonous fruits of illusion.
68. It imagines hellfire in the cooling beams of the watery orb of the moon. Ignorance conceives the torments of infernal fires proceeding from the refreshing beams of that celestial light.
69. It views a dry desert in wide waters rolling with waves and undulating with the fragrance of the aqueous kalpa flowers. It imagines a dry mirage in the empty clouds of autumn.
70. Ignorance builds imaginary castles in empty air and causes the error of rising and falling towers in clouds. It is the delusion of our fancy that makes us feel the emotions of pleasure and pain in our dreams.
71. If the mind is not filled and led away by worldly desires, then there is no fear of falling into the dangers that the daydreams of our earthly affairs constantly present before us.
72. The more our false knowledge lays hold of our minds, the more we feel the torments of hell and its punishments in us, like nightmares in sleep.
73. The mind pierced by error, as if by the thorny stalk of a lotus, sees the whole world revolving before it like the sea rolling with its waves.
74. Ignorance takes possession of the mind, converts enthroned princes to peasants, and reduces them to a condition worse than that of beastly hunters.
75. Therefore, Rama, give up the earthly desires that serve, at best, to bind down the soul to this mortal earth and its mortifying cares. Remain like the pure white crystal, reflecting the colors of all things around in your stainless mind.
76. Employ your mind to your duties without being tarnished by your attachment to any. Remain like the unsullied crystal, receiving the reflections of outward objects without being stained by any.
77. Knowing everything with eagerness in your watchful mind and performing all your duties with due submission, and staying away from the common track with your exalted mind, you will raise yourself above comparison with any other person.
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Chapter 3.115 — Causes of Happiness & Misery
1. Valmiki relates:— Being thus encouraged by the high minded Vasishta, Rama’s lotus eyes became opened like new blown flowers.
2. He shone forth with a pure grace, his heart expanded and his face blooming like the fresh lotus reviving at the end of night under the vivifying beams of the rising sun.
3. His smiling face shone like the moon with inward enlightenment and wonder. Then, with the nectar beams of his bright and white pearly teeth, Rama spoke out these words.
4. Rama said, “What a wonder that the lack of ignorance should subdue all things, as if it could tie down huge hills with the thin threads of lotus stalks.
5. O, that this straw of the earth, which shows itself to be so dense a body in the world, is no more than the production of our ignorance which shows the unreal as a reality.
6. Tell me more for my enlightenment regarding the true nature of this magical earth which rolls like a ceaseless stream running amidst the ethereal worlds.”
7. “There is another great question that worries my heart. What happened to the fortunate Lavana in the end?
8. Also, tell me more about the embodied soul and the animated body, whether they are in concord or discord with one another, and which of them is the active agent and recipient of the rewards of acts in this earth.
9. Tell me also who was that sorcerer and where he fled after putting the good King Lavana to all his tribulation, and then restoring him to his former exalted position.”
10. Vasishta said:— The body is like a frame of woodwork that contains nothing. It receives the reflection of an intelligence as in a dream, and this is called the mind.
11. This mind becomes the living principle (life) and also has the power of thinking. It is as unstable as a boat on the current of world of affairs, and it plays the part of a fickle monkey amidst the busy castle of the world.
12. The active principle in the body is known under different names — the mind, life and ego — and having a body for its home, it is employed in a variety of actions.
13. This active principle is subject to endless pains and pleasures in its unenlightened or un-awakened state, and the body has no relation with them.
14. Unenlightened understanding also has received many fictitious names according to the various faculties that it exhibits in its acts.
15. As long as an un-awakened mind is in its sleeping state, it perceives the busy bustle of the world as in a dream, which is unknown to the waking or enlightened mind.
16. As long as a living being is not awakened from its sleep, it has to labor under the inseparable mist of worldly errors.
17. But the darkness hanging over the minds of the enlightened is put to flight as quickly as the shade of night spreading over the bed of lotuses is dispersed at sunrise.
18. That which the learned call the heart, the mind, the individual soul, ignorance, desire, and the principle of action is the embodied being that is subject to the feelings of both pleasure and pain.
19. The body is dull matter unconscious of pain and pleasure. Men of right reason say that the embodied being is subject to pain and pleasure because of its stubborn ignorance and irrationality. The embodied being is the cause of its own misery.
20. The individual soul is the subject of its good and bad actions. It becomes confined in its body because of its irrationality and remains trapped there like a silkworm in its cocoon.
21. The mind being tied to its ignorance exerts its faculties in various ways, and turns round like a wheel in its various pursuits and employments.
22. The mind dwelling in the body makes it rise and sit, eat and drink, walk and go, and hurt and kill, all of which are acts of the mind and not of the body.
23. As the master of the house does his many acts in it, and not the house itself, so the mind acts its different parts in the body, and not the body by itself.
24. The mind is the active and passive agent of all actions and passions, and of the pains and pleasures of the body. It is only the mind that makes the man.
25. Now hear me tell you the useful moral of the story of Lavana, and how he was transformed to a tribal (chandala, outcaste) by derangement of his mind.
26. The mind has to feel the effects of its actions whether good or evil. In order that you may understand it well, listen attentively to what I will now tell you.
27. Lavana was born of the line of King Harish Chandra. One day, as he was sitting apart from all others of his court, he was thinking to himself,
28. “My grandfather was a great king and performed the rajasuya sacrifice. I, being born of his line, must perform the same in my mind.”
29. Having determined so, and getting the things ready for the sacrifice, he entered the sacrificial hall for his initiation in the sacred rites.
30. He called the sacrificial priests and honored the holy saints. He invited the gods to it and lighted the sacrificial fire.
31. Having performed the sacrifice to his heart’s content, and having honored the gods, sages and brahmins, he went to a forest to live there for a year (all in his own mind).
32. Then, having made presents of all his wealth to brahmins and other men, he awoke from his slumber in the same forest by the evening of that day.
33. Thus King Lavana attained the merit of the sacrifice, in his internal satisfaction of having attained the merit of the sacrifice.
34. Hence learn to know that the mind is the recipient of pleasure and pain. Therefore employ your attention, Rama, to the purification of your mind.
35. Every man becomes perfect in his mind in its full time and proper place, but he is utterly lost who believes himself to be composed only of his body.
36. The mind being roused to transcendental reason, all miseries are removed from rational understanding, just like the beams of the rising sun falling upon the lotus bud dispel the darkness that had closely contracted its folded petals.
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Chapter 3.116 — Moral of King Lavana’s Experience; Summary of Creation & Liberation
1. Rama asked, “Sage, what is the evidence that Lavana obtained the reward of his mental rajasuya sacrifice through his transformation into the state of a tribal, as it was wrought upon him by the enchantment of the magician?”
2. Vasishta answered:— I was myself present at King Lavana’s court when the magician made his appearance and I saw everything that took place with my own eyes.
3. After the magician finished his work and left, King Lavana respectfully asked me with the other courtiers to explain to him what had happened.
4. After I pondered the matter and had clearly seen its cause, I explained the meaning of the magician’s spell. This is the way I will now explain it to you, my Rama!
5. I remembered that all those who performed rajasuya sacrifice were subjected to various painful difficulties and dangers which they had to suffer for a full dozen of years.
6. It was then that Indra, the lord of heaven, had compassion for Lavana and sent his heavenly messenger in the form of the magician to avert his calamity.
7. He taxed the king who would make the rajasuya sacrifice with the infliction of the very many hardships in his dream, then departed on his aerial journey to the abode of the gods and spiritual masters.
8. Thus Rama, it is quite evident and there is no doubt in it. The mind is the active and passive agent of all kinds of actions and their sequences. (a) Therefore rub out the dirt of your heart, and polish the gem of your mind. Using the fire of your reason to melt the mind down like a particle of ice, attain your chief supreme good at last. (b) Know the mind is identical to ignorance, which by its magical power presents these multitudes and endless varieties of beings and things before you. (c) There is no difference in the meanings of the words “ignorance,” “mind,” “understanding” and “individual soul,” as in the word “tree” and all its synonyms. (d) Knowing this truth, keep a steady mind free from all its desires. As the orb of the clear sun of your intellect has its rise, so the darkness of your willing and unwilling flies away from you. (e) Know also this truth: there is nothing in the world that you cannot see or which you cannot make your own or which can be taken away from you. There is nothing that does not die or what is not yours or some else’s. All things become all at all times.
9. The multitudes of existent bodies and their known properties meet together in the substantiality of Brahman, just like the various kinds of un-fired clay vessels are melted down in the same watery substance.
10. Rama said:— “Sage, you said that by weakening the desires of our mind, we can put an end to our pleasures and pains. But tell me now, how is it possible to stop the course of our naturally fickle minds?”
11. Vasishta replied:— Hear, O bright moon of Raghu’s race! I will tell you the proper course for quieting the restless mind. By knowing this you shall obtain peace of mind and be freed from the actions of your organs of sense.
12. I have told you before about the triple nature of the production of beings here below which, I believe, you well remember.
13. Of these the first is that power (Brahma) who assumed to himself the shape of the Divine Will and saw in his presence in whatever he wished to produce, through which he brought the physical system into existence.
14. He thought of many changes in his mind, like those of birth and death, pleasure and pain, the course of nature and the effect of ignorance, and the like. Then having ordained them as he willed, he disappeared of himself like snow before sunlight.
15. Thus this god, the personification of Will, rises and sets repeatedly as he is prompted from time to time by his inner wish.
16. So there are millions of Brahmas born in this cosmic egg. Many have gone by and are yet to come, whose number is innumerable.
17. All living beings are in the same predicament as Brahma, proceeding continually from the entity of God. Now I will tell you how they live and how they are liberated from the bonds of life.
18. The mental power issuing from Brahma rests on the wide expanse of emptiness spread before it. Then being joined with the essence of ether, it becomes solidified in the shape of desire.
19. Then finding the miniature of matter spread out before it, it becomes the quintessence of the five elements. Having assumed afterwards the inner senses, it becomes a suitable elementary body composed of the finest particles of the five elements. It enters into grains and vegetables, which reenter into the bowels of animals in the form of food.
20. The essence of this food in the form of semen, gives birth to living beings to infinity.
21. The male child grows into boyhood, to his tutor for the acquisition of knowledge.
22. The boy next assumes his wonderful form of youth, which next arrives to the state of manhood.
23. The man afterwards learns to choose something for himself, and reject others by the clear sightedness of his internal faculties.
24. A man possessed of the right discrimination of good and evil, and of right and wrong, and who is confident of the purity of his own nature and of his belonging to the best caste (brahmin) by degrees attains supernatural powers for his own good, as also for the enlightenment of his mind, by means of his knowledge of the seven essential grounds of yoga meditation.
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Chapter 3.117 — The Seven States of Ignorance
1. Rama said, “Please sage, tell me briefly, what are the grounds of yoga meditation that produce the seven kinds of consummation that are the aims of yogi adepts. You are best acquainted with all esoteric truths. You, sage, must know better than all others.
2. Vasishta replied:— They consist of the seven descending states of ignorance and the seven ascending states of knowledge. These again diverge into many others by their mixtures together.
3. All these states of ignorance and knowledge, being deep rooted in the nature of man either by his habit or training, produce their respective results.
4. Attend now to the nature of the seven states or grounds of ignorance, and you will also come to know the nature of the seven grounds of knowledge.
5. This will be the shortest lesson that I will give you about the definitions of true knowledge and ignorance. One’s own true nature is his highest knowledge and liberation. Whatever distracts one from this knowledge to the false sense of individual ego is the cause of his ignorance that leads him to the error and bondage of this world.
6. Those who do not deviate from their awareness of the self as composed of only pure consciousness are not liable to ignorance because they lack passions, affections, and the feelings of envy and enmity.
7. The greatest ignorance and error of mankind is forgetting self awareness and diving into consciousness (chit) after thoughts of cognizable objects.
8. The space that takes place in the mind between a past and future thought of one object to another, that respite of the mind from thinking is the resting of the soul in the consciousness of its true form (swarupa).
9. That state of the soul when it is calm after the setting of the thoughts and desires of the mind, and which is as cold and quiet as the bosom of a stone, and yet without the dullness of slumber or dull drowsiness, is called the repose of the soul in its recognition of itself.
10. The soul is said to be at rest in itself and shines forth with its unsleeping intelligence when it is devoid of its sense of ego, destitute of its knowledge of dualism, and lacking in any distinction between it and the state of the one Universal Soul.
11. This state of the pure and self-intelligent soul is hidden by the various states of ignorance which I will now describe to you. These are three states of wakefulness known as embryonic waking, ordinary waking, and intense waking.
12. Again, the different states of dreaming are also said to be the grounds of its ignorance and these are waking dream, sleeping dream, sleepy waking and sound sleep (susupti). These are the seven grounds of ignorance.
13. These are the seven grounds that produce sheer ignorance. When joined with one another they become many more mixed sattes known under different names, as you will hear by and by.
14. At first there was the intelligent Consciousness which gave rise to the nameless and pure intelligence which became the source of the would-be mind and individual soul.
15. This intellect remained as the ever waking embryonic seed of all, which is why it is called the waking seed. It is the first condition of cognition, so it is said to be the primal waking state.
16. The waking state is next to the primal waking intelligence of God, and it is the belief in the individual personality of the ego.
17. The great waking (mahajagrat) is the firm belief that I am such a one, and this thing is mine, by virtue of my merits in this or bygone times (karma).
18. The cognition of the reality of anything, either by bias or mistake, is called the waking dream. Examples are the sight of two moons in the halo, of silver in shells, water in the mirage, and the imaginary castle building of day dreamers.
19. Dreaming in sleep is of many kinds, as is known by one upon awaking who doubts their truth owing to their short-lived duration.
20. The reliance placed on things seen in a dream, after one wakes from his sleep, is called his waking dream, and lasts only in the mind as a memory.
21. A thing long unseen and appearing dimly with a strong figure in the dream, if taken for a real thing of the waking state, is also called a waking dream.
22. A dream dreamt either in the whole body or the dead body of the dreamer appears as a phantom of the waking state.
23. Besides these six states, there is a sluggish state of the individual soul which is called his sound sleep (susupta) and is capable of feeling its future pleasures and pains.
24. In this last state of the soul or mind, all outward objects from a straw up to a mountain appear as mere atoms of dust in its presence, just as the mind sees a miniature of the world in profound meditation.
25. I have thus told you Rama, the features of true knowledge and error in brief, but each of these states branches out into a hundred forms with various traits of their own.
26. A long continuous waking dream is described as the waking state (jagrat) and it becomes diversified according to the diversity of its objects.
27. The waking state contains under it the conditions of the wakeful soul of God. Also, there are many things under these conditions that mislead men from one error to another, like a storm casts boats into whirlpools and eddies.
28. Some of the lengthened dreams in sleep appear like the waking sight of daylight, while others, though seen in the broad daylight of the waking state, are no better than night-dreams seen in the daytime, and therefore are called our daydreams.
29. I have thus far related to you the seven grades of the grounds of ignorance which with all their varieties are to be carefully avoided by the right use of our reason and by the sight of the Supreme Soul in ourselves.
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Chapter 3.118 — The Seven Stages of Knowledge
1. Vasishta continued:— O sinless Rama, now listen about the seven stages of awareness. This knowledge will keep you from plunging into the mire of ignorance.
2. Disputants are apt to describe many more stages of yoga meditation but in my opinion, these seven are sufficient to attain the chief good of ultimate liberation.
3. Knowledge is understanding. It is enough for understanding to know only these seven stages. However, liberation, which is the object of knowledge, transcends knowing these seven stages.
4. Knowledge of truth is liberation. Knowledge, truth and liberation are synonymous because the living being who has known the truth is freed from reincarnation by his liberation.
5. The grounds of knowledge comprise the desire of becoming good, and this good will is the first step. Then comes discretion or reasoning the second, followed by purity of mind, which is the third grade to gaining knowledge.
6. The fourth is self reliance as the true refuge, then worldly apathy as the fifth. The sixth is the power of abstraction, and the seventh or the last stage of knowledge is generalization of all in one (turya-gati) .
7. Liberation is placed at the end of these and is attained without difficulty after them. Attend now to the definitions of these steps as I shall explain them to you.
8. First of all is the desire of goodness springing from dispassion from worldly matters and consisting in the thought, “Why do I sit idle? I must know the scriptures in the company of good men.”
9. The second is discretion, which arises from association with wise and good men, study of the scriptures, habitual aversion to worldliness, and consists in an inclination towards good conduct and doing all sorts of good acts.
10. The third is the subduing of the mind and restraining it from sensual enjoyments. These are produced by the two former qualities of good will and discretion.
11. The fourth is self-reliance and dependence on the Divine Spirit as the true refuge of this soul. This is attainable by means of the three qualities described above.
12. The fifth is worldly apathy, as shown by one’s detachment from all earthly concerns and society of men, by means of the first four grounds of internal delight.
13. By practice of these five virtues and by the feeling of self-satisfaction and inner delight, man is freed from his thoughts and cares about all internal and external objects.
14. Then comes the powers of analytic thought into the abstract meanings of things. This is the sixth step to attain true knowledge. It is fostered either by one’s own effort or guidance of others in search of truth.
15. Continued practice of these six qualities, ignorance of differences in religion, and reducing all to the knowledge of the one true God of nature is called generalization.
16. This universal generalization is like a living liberated man who sees all things in the same light. Above this is the state of that glorious light which is arrived by the disembodied soul.
17. Those fortunate men, O Rama, who have arrived at the seventh stage of knowledge are those great minds who delight in the light of their souls and have reached their highest state of humanity.
18. The living liberated are not plunged in the waters of pleasure and sorrow, but remain sedate and unmoved in both states. They are at liberty either to do or to slight the discharge of the duties of their conditions and positions in society.
19. These men, being roused from their deep meditation by intruders, may assume their secular duties like men awakened from their slumber.
20. Being ravished by the inner delight of their souls, they feel no pleasure in the delights of the world, just as men immersed in sound sleep can feel no delight at the dalliance of beauties about them.
21. These seven stages of knowledge are known only to wise and thinking men and not to beasts, brutes or inert things all around us. They are unknown to barbarians and those who are barbarous in their minds and dispositions.
22. But anyone who has attained these states of knowledge, whether it be a beast or barbarian, an embodied being or disembodied spirit, has undoubtedly obtained its liberation.
23. Knowledge severs the bonds of ignorance and, by loosening them, produces the liberation of our souls. Knowledge is the sole cause of removing the fallacy of the appearance of water in the mirage and similar errors.
24. Those who are freed from ignorance, but not yet arrived at their ultimate perfection of disembodied liberation, have secured the salvation of their souls by being placed in these stages of knowledge in their embodied state during their lifetime.
25. Some have passed all these stages and others two or three of them. Some have passed six grades, while a few have attained the seventh state all at once.
26. Some have gone over three stages, and others have attained the last. Some have passed four stages, and some no more than one or two of them.
27. There are some who have advanced only a quarter or half or three-quarters of a stage. Some have passed over four quarters and a half, and some six and a half.
28. Common people walking upon this earth know nothing regarding these passengers in the paths of knowledge. They remain as blind as if their eyes were dazzled by some planetary light or eclipsed by its shadow.
29. Wise men who stand victorious on these seven grounds of knowledge are comparable to victorious kings. Celestial elephants are nothing before them, and mighty warriors must bend their heads before them.
30. Those great minds who are victors on these grounds of knowledge are worthy of veneration as conquerors of the enemies of their hearts and senses. They are entitled to a station above that of an emperor and an autocrat (samrat and virat) both in this world and in the next in their embodied and disembodied liberations.
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Chapter 3.119 — Illustration of the Gold Ring: Form Versus Substance
1. Vasishta said:— The human soul reflecting on its sense of ego forgets its essence of the Supreme Soul, just as a gold ring thinking on its round form loses its thought of the gold substance of which it is made.
2. Rama said, “Please tell me sage, how can gold have consciousness of its form of a ring, like a soul is conscious of its sense of ego?”
3. Vasishta said:— The consciousness of men relates only to their substance and not the production and dissolution of their forms. So you should ask about the substance of the soul and gold, and not of ego and the ring, which are unsubstantial nothings in nature.
4. When the jeweler sells his gold ring for the price of gold, he undoubtedly delivers the gold which is the substance of the ring and not the ring without its substance.
5. Rama asked, “If such is the case, that you take the gold for the ring, then what becomes of the ring as we commonly take it to be? Explain this to me so that thereby I may know the substance of Brahman.”
6. Vasishta said:— All form, O Rama, is formless and accidental quality without any essential property. So, if you would ascertain the nature of a non-existence, then tell me the shape and qualities of a barren woman’s son.
7. Do not fall into the error of taking the roundness of a ring as an essential property of it. The form of a thing is only apparent and not prominent to sight.
8. Water in a mirage, two moons in the sky, men’s sense of ego, and the forms of things, though appearing as real to sight and thought, cannot be proved as separate existences apart from their subjects.
9. Again, the likeness of silver appears in oyster shells but you cannot find even a particle of silver in the shell.
10. An imprudent view of a thing makes a nothing appear as real, like the appearance of silver in a shell or water in a mirage.
11. The invalidity of a nothing appears falsely as an existent entity to sight, the fallacy of a thing as something where there is nothing of the kind.
12. Sometimes an unreal shadow acts the part of a real substance, such as the false apprehension of a ghost kills a lad from fear of being killed by it.
13. After its form of jewelry is destroyed, there remains nothing in gold jewelry except gold. Therefore, the forms of the ring and bracelet are no more than drops of oil or water on a heap of sand. The forms are absorbed in the substance, just as the fluids in the sand.
14. There is nothing real or unreal on earth other than the false creations of our brain, and these whether known as real or unreal are equally productive of their consequences, like the sights and fears of ghosts in children.
15. A thing, whether it is so or not, proves itself as it is believed to be by different kinds and minds of men. Poison becomes as effective as an elixir to the sick, and ambrosia proves as heinous as hemlock with the immoderate.
16. Belief in only the essence of the soul constitutes true knowledge. Belief in individual ego and mind, as these are generally believed in this world, is ignorance. Therefore abandon the thought of your false and unfounded sense of ego as individual existence.
17. As there is no roundness of the ring inherent in gold, so there are no individual egos in the all-pervading Universal Soul.
18. There is nothing everlasting beside Brahman and no personality of Him as a Brahma, Vishnu or any other. There is no substantive existence such as the world, only Brahma’s offspring called the patriarchs.
19. There are no other worlds beside Brahma, nor is there any heaven without Him. Hills, demons, mind and body all rest in that spirit which is not any of these.
20. He is no elementary principle, nor is he any material cause. He is none of the three times of past, present and future but all. He is not anything in being or not-being.
21. He is beyond your concepts of individual ego, selfhood and selfishness, and all your entities and non-entities. There is no attribution or particularity in He who is above all your ideas. He is none of the ideal personifications of your notions.
22. He is the fullness of the world, supporting and moving all, being unmoved and unsupported by any. He is everlasting bliss without decay, having no name or symbol or cause of his own.
23. He is no being (sat) that is born and existent, nor is He non-existent. He is neither the beginning, middle or end of anything, but is all in all. He is unthinkable in the mind, and unutterable by speech. He is vacuum about the emptiness, and a bliss above all joy.
24. Rama said, “Now I understand that Brahman is the same in all things, yet I want to know what is this creation that we see all about us?”
25. Vasishta replied:— The Supreme Spirit being perfectly tranquil and all things being situated in Him, it is wrong to speak of this creation or that when there is no such thing as a creation at anytime.
26. All things exist in the all containing spirit of God, just as the whole body of water is contained in the universal ocean. But there is fluctuation in the waters owing to their fluidity, whereas there is no motion in the quiet and motionless spirit of God.
27. The light of the luminaries shines of itself, but not so the Divine light. It is the nature of all lights to shine of themselves, but the light of Brahma is not visible to sight.
28. As the waves of the ocean rise and fall in the body of its waters, so these phenomena appear as concepts in the mind of God (as his ever-varying thoughts).
29. To men of little understanding, these thoughts of the Divine Mind appear as realities. They think this sort of ideal creation will last for ages.
30. Creation is determined to be a thought of the Divine Mind. Creation is not anything different from the mind of God, just as the visible sky is nothing other than a part of Infinity.
31. The production and extinction of the world are mere thoughts of the Divine Mind, just as the formation and dissolution of ornaments take place in the same substance of gold.
32. The mind that has obtained its calm composure views creation as full of the presence of God. Those who are led by their own convictions take the nonexistent for reality, like children believing ghosts are real existences.
33. The consciousness of individual ego causes the error of the objective knowledge of creation. The tranquil unconsciousness of ourselves brings us to the knowledge of the Supreme, who is above the objective and inert creation.
34. These different created things appear in a different light to the wise who view them all in the unity of God, just as the intelligent well know that toy puppets of play soldiers are composed of mud and clay.
35. This plenitude of the world is without beginning or end and appears like a faultless or perfect piece of workmanship. It is full with the fullness of the Supreme Being and remains full in the fullness of God.
36. This fullness which appears as the created world is essentially the Great Brahma and is situated in his greatness, just as the sky is situated in the sky, tranquility in tranquility, and joy in joy.
37. Look at the reflection of a very long landscape in a mirror or the picture of a far stretching city in a miniature and you will find distances lost in their closeness. So the distances of worlds are lost in their proximity to one another in the spirit of God.
38. Some think of the world as a non-entity and others as an entity by taking the world in different lights of being a thing beside God or a reflection of Brahman.
39. After all, it can have no real entity, being like the picture of a city and not the city itself. It is as false as the appearance of clear water in a desert mirage, and that of a double moon in the sky.
40. Magicians show magic cities in the air by sprinkling handfuls of dust before our eyes. In the same way our false consciousness represents the unreal world as a reality.
41. Unless our inborn ignorance, like an arbor of harmful plants, is burnt down to the very root by the flame of right reasoning, it will not cease to spread out its branches and grow the rankest weeds of our imaginary pleasures and sorrows.
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Chapter 3.120 — King Lavana Visits the Forest Where He Lived as a Tribal; Lamentation of the Woman Tribal
1. Vasishta continued:— Now Rama, listen to the wonderful power of error displayed in changing phenomena, like the changing forms of ornaments in the substance of the same gold.
2. King Lavana, having perceived the falsehood of his vision at the end of his dream, resolved the following day to visit that great forest himself.
3. He thought to himself, “Ah! When shall I revisit the Vindhyan region? It is inscribed in my mind and I remember having undergone a great many hardships in my life there as a forester.”
4. So saying, he traveled south accompanied by his ministers and attendants, as if he was going to make a conquest of that quarter. In a few days he arrived at the foot of the mountain.
5. There he wandered about the southern, eastern and western shores of the sea. He was as delighted with his round course as the luminary of the day in his daily journey from east to west.
6. In a certain region, he saw a deep and sorrowful forest stretching wide along his path, like the dark and dismal realms of death.
7. Wandering in this region he saw everything he had seen in his dream. He inquired into former circumstances, and wandered to learn whether they were that same as what he saw in his vision.
8. He recognized the tribal (chandala) hunters of his dream, and being curious to know the rest of the events, he continued in his wandering about the forest.
9. Then he saw a hamlet at the edge of the wilderness, foggy with smoke, and appearing like the place where he bore the name of Pushta- Pukkusha or cherished tribal.
10. There he saw the same huts and hovels and the various kinds of human houses, fields and plains, with the same men and women that dwelt there before.
11. He saw the same landscapes and leafless branches of trees, shorn of their foliage by the all devouring famine. He saw the same hunters pursuing their chase and the same helpless orphans lying around.
12. He saw the old lady (his mother-in-law) wailing at the misfortunes of other women who were lamenting like her with their eyes drowned in tears at the untimely deaths and innumerable miseries of their fellow brethren.
13. The old matrons with their eyes flowing with brilliant drops of tears, their bodies and bosoms emaciated under the pressure of their afflictions, were mourning with loud cries of sorrow in that dreary district, stricken by drought and dearth.
14. They cried, “O you sons and daughters who lie dead with your emaciated bodies for want of food for these three days, say where have your lives fled, stricken as they were by the steel of famine from the armor of your bodies.
15. We remember your sweet smiles showing your coral teeth resembling red gunjaphalas to our lords as they descended from towering palm trees with red-ripe fruit held in their teeth, and growing on the cloud-capped mountains.
16. When shall we again see the fierce leap of our children springing on wolves crouching in groves of kadamba, jamb, lavanga and gunja trees?
17. Even in the face of Kama, the god of love, we do not see those graces that we used to see in the blue and black faces, the dark color of spice leaves, of our children when they feasted on their dainty food of fish and flesh.”
18. “My blackish daughter,” says one (the mother-in-law), “has been snatched away from me with my dear husband like the dark Yamuna by the fierce Yama. O they have been carried away from me like a tremendous gale blows a tamara tree branch with its clustering flowers from this woodland scene.
19. O my daughter, with your necklace of the strings of red gunja seeds gracing the firm breast of your youthful person, and with your swarthy complexion like the sea of ink gently shaken by the breeze. Ah! Where have you fled with your clothing of woven withered leaves and your teeth as black as the jet-jambu fruits?”
20. “O young prince, who was as fair as the full moon and did forsake the fairies of your harem, and who took so much delight in my daughter, where have you fled from us? Ah my daughter! She too is dead in your absence and fled from my presence.
21. Being cast on the waves of this earthly ocean and joined to the daughter of a tribal, you were, O prince, subjected to mean and vile employment that disgraced your princely character.
22. Ah! that daughter of mine with her trembling eyes, like those of the timid fawn, and O, that husband valiant as the royal tiger, you are both gone together, just as the high hopes and great efforts of men flee with the loss of their wealth.”
23. “Now without a husband and lately having also lost my daughter, and being thrown in a distant and barren land, I have become the most miserable and wretched of beings. Born of a low caste, I am cast out of all prospects in life. I have become a personification of terror to myself and a sight of horror to others.
24. O, that the Lord has made me a widowed woman and subjected me to the insult of the vulgar and the snobbery of the affluent. Prostrated by hunger and mourning at the loss of husband and child, I rove constantly from door to door begging for alms for my support.”
25. “It is better that one who is unfortunate and friendless, or subject to passion and diseases, should die sooner than live in misery. Dead and inanimate beings are far better than the living miserable.
26. Those who are without friends and who have to toil and moil in unfriendly places are like the grass of the earth, trampled under feet and overwhelmed under a flood of disasters.”
27. The king seeing his aged mother-in-law mourning in this manner, offered her some consolation through the medium of her female companions. Then he asked that lady to tell him, “Who are you? What do you do here? Who was your daughter and who is your son?”
28. She answered him with tears in her eyes. “This village is called Pukkasa-Ghosha. Here I had a Pukkasa for my husband who had a daughter as gentle as the moon.
29. She happened to have a husband, beautiful as the moon, who was a king and chanced to pass by this way. By this accident they were matched together, like an ass finding by chance a pot of honey lying on her way in the forest.
30. She lived long with him in married bliss and produced to him both sons and daughters who grew up in this forest like a gourd plant grows on a tree serving as its support.”
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Chapter 3.121 — The Reality of King Lavana’s Dream Explained; Proof of the Futility of Mind
1. The tribal continued, “O lord of men! After lapse of some time, there occurred a famine in this place owing to the drought of rain, which broke down all men under its dire pressure.
2. Pressed by extreme scarcity, all our village people scattered far abroad and they perished in famine and never returned.
3. From then on, O lord, we are exposed to utmost misery. We sit here lamenting in our helpless poverty. Behold us lord, all bathed in tears falling profusely from our never drying eyelids.” Vasishta speaking:—
4. At hearing these words from the mouth of the elderly lady, the king was lost in wonder. Looking at the face of his follower the faithful minister, he remained in dumb amazement like a figure in a picture.
5. He reflected repeatedly on this strange occurrence and its curious concurrence with his adventures in the dream. He made repeated queries relating to other circumstances. The more he heard and learned, the more he found their coincidence with the occurrences of his vision.
6. He sympathized with their sorrows and saw them in the same state as he had seen them before in his dream. Then he gave suitable gifts and presents to relieve their wants and sorrows.
7. He stayed there a long while and pondered on the decrees of destiny. Then the wheel of fortune brought him back to his house, where he entered amidst the loud cheers and low salutations of the citizens.
8. In the morning the king appeared in his court hall and sitting there amidst his courtiers, he asked me, “How is it, O sage, that my dream has come to be verified in my presence to each item and to my great surprise?
9. They answered me exactly and to the very point all that I asked of them. They have removed the doubt in my mind of their truth, like winds disperse the clouds of heaven.”
10. Know this, O Rama, it is the illusion of ignorance (avidya) that is the cause of a great many errors. It makes the untruth appear as truth, and represents sober reality as unreality.
11. Rama said, “Tell me sage, how could the dream be verified? It is a mysterious account that cannot find a place in my understanding.”
12. Vasishta replied:— O Rama, everything is possible to the illusion of ignorance which shows the fallacy of a picture in a pot. Illusion represents the actual occurrences of life as dreams and dreams as realities.
13. Distance appears to be near, as a distant mountain seen in the mirror. A long time seems a short interval, as in a night of undisturbed repose.
14. What is untrue seems to be a truth as in dreaming one’s own death in sleep. That which is impossible appears possible, as in flying in a dream.
15. The stable seems unsteady, as in the false notion of the motion of fixed objects to one passing in a vehicle. The unmoving seem to be moving to one under the influence of his inebriation.
16. The mind infatuated by its interest sees all that it thinks upon within itself as exposed to its view. It sees things in the same light as they are painted in his fancy, whether they exist or not, real or unreal.
17. As soon as the mind contracts its ignorance by its false notions of “I” and “you”, it becomes subject to endless errors without beginning, middle or end.
18. It is notion that gives shape to all things. It makes a kalpa age appear as a moment and it prolongs a moment of time to a whole kalpa.
19. A man deprived of understanding believes himself to have become a sheep, and a fighting ram thinks himself to be a lion in his ideal bravery.
20. Ignorance causes the blunder of taking things for what they are not and falling into the errors of “I” and “you.” All errors in the mind produce errors in actions also.
21. It is by mere accident that men come into possession of the objects of their desire, and it is custom that determines the mode of mutual dealings.
22. Lavana’s memory of his dream living in with the tribals of Pukkasa was the internal cause that represented to him the external picture of that place as if it were a reality.
23. As the human mind is liable to forget many things that it had actually done, so it is susceptible to remember those acts as true which were never done but merely had been thought upon in the mind.
24. In this manner, as long as I am thinking of having eaten something, it appears true to me even though I am really fasting. The thought that I have been in a distant country in a dream appears true to me while I think the thought.
25. This is how the king came to find the same conduct where the tribals lived by the Vindhya Mountains. He had been impressed with its notion in his dream as said before.
26. Again, Lavana’s false dream of the tribals took possession of their minds also.
27. The notion of Lavana settled in the minds of the tribals just like the thoughts of these people arose in the mind of the king.
28. The same sentiments and figures of speech occur to different poets of distant ages and countries, so it should not be unexpected that the same thoughts and ideas should rise simultaneously in the minds of different men.
29. In common experience, we find notions and ideas stand for the things themselves, otherwise nothing is known to exist at all without our mind’s notion or idea of it.
30. One idea embraces many others under it, like those of waves and currents are contained under that of water. So one thought is associated by others relating its past, present and future conditions of being, just as the thought of a seed accompanies the thoughts of its past and future states and its fruits and flowers of the tree.
31. Nothing is an entity or a non-entity and nothing can be said to exist or not exist unless we have a positive idea of its existence or a negative notion of its non-existence.
32. All that we see in our error is as non-existent as oil in sand. In reality, the bracelet is nothing but a form of the substance of gold.
33. A fallacy can have no connection with the reality, just as the fallacy of the world with the reality of God, the fallacy of the ring with the substance of gold, and of the serpent with the rope. The connection or mutual relation of things of the same kind is quite evident in our minds.
34. The relationship between gum resin and the tree is one of dissimilar union and affords no distinct ideas except that the tree contains the gum.
35. As all things are full of the Spirit, so we have distinct ideas of them in our minds. Minds are also spiritual substances. They are not like dull material stones which have no feelings.
36. All things in the world are intellectually true and real. Therefore we have their ideas impressed in our minds.
37. There cannot be a relationship or connection between two dissimilar things which may be lasting but are never united together. Without such mutual relation of things, no idea of both can be formed together.
38. Similar things being joined together form the wholes of the same kind, presenting one form and differing in nothing.
39. Consciousness being joined with an abstract idea produces an invisible, inner and uniform thought. Dull matter joined to another dull object forms a denser material object to view. But consciousness and material can never unite together owing to their different natures.
40. The intellectual and material parts of a person can never be drawn together in any picture. The material picture lacks the intellectual part which has consciousness and the power of knowledge.
41. Intellectual beings do not take into account the different material things like wood and stone which combine for some useful purpose, such building a house.
42. The relationship between the tongue and taste is also homogeneous. Taste and the instrument of tasting are both watery substances and there is no heterogeneous relation between them.
43. But there is no relation between consciousness and matter, like there is between stone and wood. Consciousness cannot combine with wood and stone to form anything.
44. Spiritually considered, all things are alike because they are full of the same spirit. Otherwise the error of distinction between the viewer and the view creates endless differences, like those between wood and stones and other things.
45. The combination of unseen spirits is easily conceived because spirits can assume any form at one’s pleasure and having no end.
46. Know, you who seek truth, that all things are identical with the entity of God. Renounce your knowledge of non-entities and the various kinds of errors and fallacies and know the one as all.
47. Consciousness is full with its knowledge, so there is nothing lacking in us. Consciousness presents us everything in its circumference, just like imagination in its wide range shows us the sights of its air-built castles and everything beside.
48. To Him there is no limit of time or place, but his presence extends over all his creation. Ignorance separates the creator from creation and raises the errors of “I” and “you.”
49. Forgetting the knowledge of the substance of gold, man contracts the error of taking it for the form of ornament. The mistake of jewelry for gold is like taking one thing for another, and mistaking the production for the producer.
50. The error of phenomenon vanishes upon loss of its sight, and the differences among pieces of jewelry is lost in the substance of gold.
51. The knowledge of unity removes that of a distinct creation, just as the knowledge of clay takes away the sense of toy soldiers made from it.
52. The same Brahma causes the error of the reality of the exterior worlds, just as the underlying sea causes the error of waves on its surface. The same wood is mistaken for the carved figure, and common clay is mistaken for the pot made of it.
53. Between sight and its object lies the eye of the beholder which is beyond the sight of its viewer and is neither the view nor the viewer.
54. The mind traversing from one place to another leaves the body in between, which is neither moving nor quite unmoved because only its mental part is in its moving state.
55. Remain always in that quiet state which is not waking, dreaming or sleeping, and which is not the state of consciousness or unconsciousness, but one of everlasting tranquility and rest.
56. Drive away your dullness and remain always in the company of your sound intellect like a solid rock. Whether in joy or grief, commit your soul to your maker.
57. There is nothing to lose or earn in this world. Therefore remain in uniform joy and bliss whether you think yourself to be blessed or unblessed in life.
58. The soul residing in your body neither loves nor hates anything at anytime. Therefore rest in quiet and fear nothing for what happens to your body. Do not engage your mind with the actions of your body.
59. Remain free from anxiety about the present, just as you are unconcerned about the future. Never be impelled by the impulses of your mind but remain steadfast in your trust in the true God.
60. Be unconcerned with all and remain as an absent man. Let your heart remain detached from everything like a block of stone or a toy made of wood. Look with the spiritual light of your soul and see your mind as an inanimate thing.
61. As there is no water in stone or fire in water, so the spiritual man has no mental action, nor does the Divine Spirit have any.
62. If something unseen should ever come to do any action, that action is not attributed to the unseen agent but to something else in the mind.
63. The uncontrolled selfish (unspiritual) man who follows the dictates of his fickle and willful mind resembles a man of the border land following the customs of outcastes or barbarians.
64. Having disregarded the dictates of your vile mind, you may remain at ease and as fearless as an unconscious statue made of clay.
65. He who understands that there is no such thing as the mind, or that he had one before but it is dead in him today, becomes as immovable as a marble statue with this assurance in himself.
66. There being no appearance of the mind in any case, and you having no such thing in you in reality except your soul, then say, why do you vainly infer its existence for your own error and harm?
67. Those who vainly subject themselves to the false apparition of the mind are mostly men of unsound understandings who bring destruction on themselves instead of the full moon of the pure soul.
68. Remain firm as you are with yourself (soul) by casting your fancied and fanciful mind far away from you. Be free from the thoughts of the world by being settled in the thought of the Supreme Soul.
69. They who follow a non-existence such as the unreal mind are like fools who shoot at the empty air and are cast into the shade.
70. He who has cleansed off his mind is indeed a man of great understanding. He has gone across the error of the existence of the world and has become purified in his soul. We have considered long and we have never found anything like the impure mind in the pure soul.
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Chapter 3.122 — Ascertainment of the Self or Soul
1. Vasishta said:— After the birth of a man and a slight development of his understanding, he should associate with the company of good and wise men.
2. Except by the light of scriptures and association with the good and wise, there is no way to cross the river of ignorance that runs in its constant course flowing in a thousand streams.
3. By reasoning man is able to discern what is good for him and what he must avoid.
4. Then he arrives to that ground of reason which is known as good will, or a desire to do what is good and keep from what is bad and evil.
5. Then he is led by his reason to the power of reasoning, discerning truth from untruth and right from wrong.
6. As he improves in knowledge, he gets rid of his improper desires and purifies his mind from all worldly cares.
7. Then he is said to have gained that stage of knowledge which is called the purity of his soul and mind, and of his heart and conduct.
8. When a yogi or adept attains full knowledge, he is said to have arrived at his state of goodness.
9. By this means and the curtailing of his desires, he arrives at the state called detachment or indifference to all worldly matters and he is no more subjected to the consequence of his actions.
10. From the curtailment of desires, a yogi learns to withdraw his mind from the unrealities of the world.
11. Whether sitting inactive in samadhi meditation, or doing anything for himself or others, he must fix his mind to whatever produces real good to the world. His soul being cool by the faintness of his desires is habituated to do its duties without the knowledge of what it is doing.
12. Truly, he who has subdued his mind has reached the contemplative stage of yoga meditation.
13. Thus one who has his mind dead in himself learns by practice of years to perform his duties by refraining from his thoughts of external objects. Such a one is said to have attained turiya or the fourth stage of spiritual elevation and has become liberated in his lifetime.
14. He is not glad to get anything or sorry to miss it. He lives without fear of accidents and is content with whatever he gets.
15. O Rama, you have known whatever is to be known by man. You certainly have extinguished your desire in all your actions through life.
16. Your thoughts are all spiritual and transcend the actions of the physical body, though you are in your embodied state. Do not give yourself to joy or grief but know you are free from decay and defect.
17. Spiritually you are a pure and bright substance that is omnipresent, ubiquitous and ever in its ascendancy, devoid of pleasure and pain, and of death and disease.
18. Why do you lament at or loss of a friend when you are so friendless in yourself? Being thrown alone in this world, whom do you claim as a friend of your soul?
19. We see only the particles of matter of which this body is composed. It exists and passes away from its place in its time. But there is no rising or falling of the soul.
20. Being imperishable in yourself, why do you fear to fall into nothing? Why think of the destruction of your soul, which is never subject to death?
21. When a jar is broken in two, its emptiness is not lost but mixes with the air. The body being destroyed, the indestructible soul is not lost with it.
22. As the sunlight that causes the appearance of a river in a mirage is not lost at the disappearance of the apparent river, so the immortal soul does not perish upon dissolution of the frail body.
23. There is a certain illusion which raises false appetites within us. Otherwise, the unity of the soul requires the help of no duality or secondary substance in order to be united with the sole unity.
24. There is no object of sense — whether visible, tangible, audible or of taste or smelling — that can affect the unconnected soul.
25. All things and their powers are contained in the all-powerful and allcomprehensive soul. These powers are displayed throughout the world, but the soul is as void as the empty air.
26. O Raghava, mental deception presents the phenomena of the three worlds representing diverse forms according to the threefold nature (gunas) of man.
27. There are three methods of dispelling this delusion of the mind, namely, by the tranquility of the mind, by destroying its desires, and by abandonment of acts.
28. The world is a crushing mill with its lower and upper stones of the earth and heaven. Our desires are the cords that constantly drag us under it. Therefore Rama, break off these ropes.
29. Our ignorance of spiritual knowledge is the cause of all our errors, but our acquaintance with it leads us to endless joy and ultimately to Brahman himself.
30. A living being, having proceeded from Brahman and travelled over the earth at pleasure, in the end turns to Brahman through his knowledge of Him.
31. Rama, all things have sprung from one being who is perfect joy itself, inconceivable and without decay in its nature. All these things are like the rays of that light, or like the light of that everlasting fire.
32. These are like lines on the leaves of trees, and like the curls and waves on the surface of waters. They are like ornaments made of that gold, and like the heat and cold of fire and water.
33. Thus the three worlds exist in the thought of the Divine Mind. It has sprung from the mind of God and it rests in its same state with the all-comprehending Mind.
34. This Mind is called Brahma, who is the soul of all existence. He being known, the world is known also. As he is the knower of all, he gives us the knowledge of all things.
35. This all pervasive Being is explained to us by the learned with labels like soul, intellect and Brahma, used both in scriptures and popular language.
36. The pure notion that we have of an everlasting being, apart from all ideas from physical senses and impressions, is called Consciousness and soul.
37. This Consciousness or Intelligent Soul is much more transparent than the ethereal sky. It is the fullness that contains the plenitude of the world as a disjoined and distinct reflection of itself.
38. The knowledge that the unreal reflection of world is a separate existence is the cause of all our ignorance and error. But the view of their existence in the mirror of the Supreme Soul blends them all to myself also.
39. Now Rama, you have a bodiless soul of the form of pure consciousness. You can have no cause to fall into the error of being sorry for or afraid of the vanities of the world.
40. How can the unembodied soul be affected by the passions and feelings of the body? It is only the ignorant and unintelligent who are subject to vain suspicions about unrealities.
41. Even the indestructible consciousness of the unintelligent is not destroyed by the destruction of their bodies. How then should the intelligent be afraid of their dissolution?
42. Consciousness is irresistible in its course and roves about the solar path. It is the intellectual part that makes the man, and not the outer body.
43. The soul called the inner person (purusha), whether it abides in the body or not, and whether it is intelligent or otherwise, never dies upon the death of the body.
44. Whatever miseries you meet with in this transient world, they all appertain to the body and not to the intangible soul or consciousness.
45. The intellectual soul is removed from the region of the mind. It is not approached by the pleasures and pains affecting the body and mind.
46. The soul that has curbed its earthly desires after the dissolution of its prison house of the body flies to its seat in the spirit of Brahman in the same manner as a bee lying hidden under the cover of lotus petals in the darkness of the night takes to its heavenward flight by the dawning light of the day.
47. If life is known to be frail and the living state to be a transient scene, then say, O Rama, what is lost by the loss of this prison-house of the body, and what is it that you mourn for?
48. Think therefore, O Rama, on the nature of truth and mind and not about the errors of ignorance. Be free from your earthly desires and know the sinless soul to be void of all desires.
49. The intellectual soul being tranquil and transparent, a mere witness of our doings without any doing or desire of its own, receives the reflection of the God without desire, just as a mirror reflects the images of things.
50. The soul being, as said before, a translucent particle, reflects the images of all worlds in itself like a polished gem reflects the rays of light in its bosom.
51. The relation between the detached soul and the world is like that of the mirror and its reflections. The difference and identity of the soul and the world are of the same kind.
52. As the activities of living beings have a free play with the rising sun, so the duties of the world are fully discharged by the rising of consciousness.
53. As soon as you get rid of your error of the substantiality of the world, you come to the consciousness of it being a vacuum resting in the spirit of God.
54. As the nature of a lighted lamp is to spread its light all around, so the nature of mental philosophy is to enlighten us with the real state of the soul.
55. The essence of the Supreme Soul at first gave rise to the mind (will) which spreads out the universe with its network of endless varieties. It was like the sky issuing out of the infinite emptiness and assuming the shape of blue atmosphere which is also a nothing.
56. Removal of desires melts down the mind and dissolves the mist of ignorance from the face of consciousness. Then appears the bright light of the one infinite and uncreated God, like the clear sky of autumn after the clouds disperse.
57. At first the mind grows out from the Supreme Soul with all its activities and takes the nature of the lotus-born Brahma by its desire of creation. It stretches out a variety of worlds by its creative will, like fancied apparitions appearing before the imaginations of deluded children.
58. Nonentity appears like an entity before us. It dies away at death and reappears with our new birth. The mind itself takes its rise from Divine Consciousness and displays itself in the substance of the Divine Soul, like waves playing on the surface of the waters of the deep.
BOOK IV. On Existence (Sthiti Khanda)
This section discusses the place of the individual being (jiva) in the scheme of creation. Vasishta points out that the individual is none other than the ego sense or I known as ahamkara. This ego sense is the chief impediment to living with the knowledge of ones true self (atman sthiti). It is because of the ego sense that human beings fail to recognize themselves as they really are and suffer misery. It is only when the identification with the ego sense is extinguished that a seeker attains realization of the atman, the Supreme Soul. The body and the senses are inert. It is the chidabhasa, the reflected light of the atman, that gives life to the body and makes the senses perform their functions. The objects perceived by the senses are not different from the atman. The perceiver and the objects perceived both originate from the atman and therefore are identical. When a person gains firm comprehension of this truth, he or she realizes that nothing exists apart from ones own atman or Self. This atman is then realized as both the origin of this universe and its enjoyer as well. When this knowledge becomes firm a person is freed from the duality of happiness and sorrow. Chastity (bramacharya), constant practice (abhyas), and detachment (vairagya) are the means for attaining this knowledge, which in turn leads to a firm abidance in the Self (atman stithi).
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Chapter 4.1 — Immaterial Spirit Cannot Have a Material Seed to Produce any Material World
1. Vasishta said:— Attend now Rama, to the subject of existence which follows that of production. This knowledge produces nirvana or utter annihilation of the self or soul.
2. Know that the world of phenomena that exists before you, and your knowledge of ego or selfexistence are only false conceptions of the formless nonexistence or emptiness.
3. You see tints of various colors painting the empty sky without any paint or their cause. This is only a conception of the mind without its visual perception, like the vision in a dream of one who is not in a state of sound sleep.
4. It is like a city in the sky built and present in your mind, or like shivering apes warming themselves by red clay thinking it to be red hot fire. It is pursuing an unreality.
5. The world of phenomena is only a different aspect of Brahma, like that of a whirlpool in water, and like the unsubstantial sunlight appears as a real substance in the sky.
6. It is like the baseless fabric of gold of the celestials on high, and like the air-built castle of gandharvas in the midway sky.
7. It is like a false sea in a mirage, appearing true at the time, and like the celestial utopian cities of imagination in empty air that are taken for truth.
8. It is like romantic realms with their picturesque scenes in poets’ imaginations which are nowhere in nature. It seems to be solid and thick within, but it is without any pith or solidity, like a thing in an empty dream.
9. It is like the ethereal sphere full of light all around but all hollow within. It is like the blue autumn sky with its light and flimsy clouds without any rainwater.
10. It is like an unsubstantial vacuum with the cerulean blue of solid sapphire, and like mansions and women appearing in dreams, fleeting as air and intangible to touch.
11. It is like a flower garden in a picture painted with blooming blossoms and appearing as fragrant but without any fragrance. It is luminous to sight without the inherent heat of light, and resembles the orb of the sun or a flaming fire represented in a picture.
12. It is like a domain of ideas, the language of the brain, an unreal reality, or a seeming something. It is like a painting of a bed of lotus lowers without essence or fragrance.
13. It is like the variegated sky painted with colors that it does not possess. It is as un-solid as empty air and as many colored as the rainbow without any color of its own.
14. All its various colorings of materiality fade away under the right discrimination of reason, and in the end it is found to be as un-solid a substance as the stem of a plantain tree.
15. It is like the rotation of black spots before the eyes of a blind man, and like the shape of a shadowy nonexistence presented as something existent before the naked eye.
16. Like a bubble of water, the world seems like something substantial to sight, but in reality all hollow within, and though appearing as juicy, it is without any moisture at all.
17. Bubbling worlds are as wide spread as the morning dews or frost, but take them up and you will find them to be nothing. Some think it is gross matter; others a vacuum. Some believe it is a fluctuation of thought or a false vision. Many believe it to be mere compounds of atoms.
18. I am partly of a material frame, my body and mind, but spiritually I am an empty immaterial substance. Although I can be felt by the touch of the hand, yet I am as intangible as a nocturnal fiend (an empty shadow only).
19. Rama said. “Sage, it is said that at the end of a great kalpa age, the visible world remains in its seed, after which it develops again in its present form. Please fully explain this to me.
20. Are they ignorant or knowing men who think in these ways? Please sage, tell me the truth to answer my questions and tell me about the process of development.”
21. Vasishta replied:— Those who say that the physical world existed in the form of a seed at the final sleep of Brahma are altogether ignorant of the truth and talk like children to children.
22. Hear me tell you how contrary it is to right reason and how far removed from truth. It is a false supposition leading both the preacher and hearer of such a doctrine to great error and an egregious mistake.
23. Those who attempt to show the existence of the world in the form of a germ in a physical seed maintain a very silly position, as I shall now explain unto you.
24. A seed is in itself a visible thing. It is more an object of sense than that of the mind, like seeds of rice and barley are seen to sprout forth in their germs and leaves.
25. The mind is beyond the six organs of sense and is a very minute particle. It cannot possibly be born of itself, nor become the seed of the universe.
26. The Supreme Spirit also, being more rarefied than the subtle ether and indefinable by words, cannot be of the form of a seed.
27. That which is as minute as a nothing is equivalent to nothing. It could never be a physical seed, without which there could be no germ nor sprout.
28. That which is more rare and transparent than the empty and clear sky cannot possibly contain the world with all its mountains and seas, and the heavens with all their hosts in its transcendent substratum.
29. There is nothing in any way like a substance in the substantiality of that Being. If there is anything there, why is it not visible to us?
30. There is nothing that comes of itself, and nothing material comes from immaterial spirit. Who can believe a hill proceeds from the hollowness of an earthen pot?
31. How can a thing remain with another which is opposed to it in its nature? How can there be any shadow where there is light, and how does darkness reside in the disc of the sun, or even coldness in fire?
32. How can an atom contain a hill, or anything exist in nothing? The union of a similar with its dissimilar is as impossible as that of shadow with the light of the sun.
33. It is reasonable to suppose that the material seeds of the fig and rice should bring forth their shoots in time, but it is unreasonable to believe that a large material world to be contained in an immaterial atom.
34. We see the same organs of sense and their sensations in all men in every country, but there is no uniformity in men’s understandings, nor can there be any reason assigned to this difference.
35. Those who assign a certain cause to some event betray their ignorance of the true cause. What produces the effect except the very thing by some of its accessory powers?
36. Throw far away the doctrine of cause and effect invented by the ignorant. Know the truth that there is no beginning or end and it appears as the world.
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Chapter 4.2 — There Is No Material Explanation for the World; It Exists only in Divine Consciousness
1. Vasishta said:— Now Rama who best knows the knowable, in order to dispel your belief in any separate existence of the world, all false fabrications of men, I will explain that there is only one pure and empty principle of Consciousness.
2. If we assume there was the germ of the world in the beginning, it still leaves the question, what were the accompanying causes of its development?
3. Without cooperation of the necessary causes, there can be no vegetation of the seed, as no barren woman is ever known to bring forth an offspring in spite of the seed contained in her womb.
4. If it was possible for the seed to grow without the aid of accompanying causes, then it is useless to believe in the primary cause when it is possessed of such power in its own nature.
5. It is Brahma himself who abides in his self in the form of creation at the beginning of the world. This creation is as formless as the creator himself, and there is no relation of cause and effect between them.
6. It is wrong to say that the earth and other elements are the accompanying causes of production because it is impossible for these elements to exist prior to their creation.
7. To say the world remained quiescent in its own nature, together with the accompanying causes, is like talk proceeding from the mouths of children and not of the wise.
8. Therefore Rama, there neither is or was or ever will be a separate world in existence. It is the one intelligence of the divinity that displays the creation in itself.
9. So Rama, there being an absolute absence of this visible world, it is certain that Brahma himself is All throughout endless space.
10. The knowledge of the visible world is destroyed by destruction of all its causalities, but the causes continuing in the mind will cause phenomena to appear to the view even after their outward extinction.
11. Elimination of phenomena can only result from the elimination of its causes, but if they are not suppressed in the mind, how can you eliminate the sight of phenomena?
12. There is no other means of destroying our false conception of the world except by a total elimination of phenomena from our view.
13. It is certain that the appearance of the visible world is no more than our inner conception in the emptiness of consciousness. The knowledge of “I,” “you,” and “he” are false impressions on our minds like figures in paintings.
14. Mountains and hills, lands and seas, revolutions of days and nights, and months and years, the knowledge that this is a kalpa age and this is a minute and moment, and this is life and this is death, are all mere conceptions of the mind.
15. Knowledge of the duration and termination of a kalpa and great kalpa, and that of creation and beginning and end, are mere misconceptions of our minds.
16. It is the mind that conceives millions of kalpas and billions of worlds, most of which are gone by and many are yet to come.
17. The fourteen regions of the planetary spheres and all the divisions of time and place are contained in the infinite space of Supreme Consciousness.
18. The universe continues and displays itself serenely in the Divine Mind, as it did from before and throughout all eternity. It shines with particles of light of that Consciousness as the sky is full with the radiance of sunlight.
19. The inexpressible light thrown into the mind by Divine Consciousness shows itself as creation, which in reality is a baseless fabric by itself.
20. It does not come into existence or dissolve into nothing. It neither appears nor sets at anytime but resembles a crystal glass with certain marks in it which can never be effaced.
21. Creations display of themselves in the clear Intellect of God, as the variegated skies form portions of the indivisible space of endless vacuum.
22. These are only properties of Divine Consciousness, as fluidity is that of water, motion of the wind, eddies of the sea, and the qualities of all things.
23. This creation is only a compact body of Divine wisdom, and it is contained in Divinity as its component part. Its rising and setting and continuance are exhibited alike in the tranquil soul.
24. The world is empty owing to its lack of any accompanying secondary cause. It is self-born, and to call it born or produced is to breathe the breath of a madman.
25. Rama, purify your mind from the impurity of false representations and rise from the bed of your doubts and desires. Drive away your protracted sleep of ignorance and be free from the fears of death and disease with every one of your friends in this court.
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Chapter 4.3 — The World Is Eternal; There Can Be No Creation or Dissolution
1. Rama said, “But it is said that Brahma, the lord of creation, springs up by his memory at the end of a kalpa and stretches out the world from his memory of it, in the beginning of creation.”
2. Vasishta answered:— So it is said, O support of Raghu’s race, that after the universal dissolution, the lord of creatures rises by his predestination and at the commencement of a new creation.
3. It is by his will that the world is stretched out from his recollection and is manifested like an ideal city in the presence of Brahma, the creative power.
4. The Supreme Being can have no memory of the past at the beginning of a new creation because he has no prior birth or death. Therefore this tree-in-the-sky of memory has no relation to Brahma.
5. Rama asked, “Doesn’t the memory of the past continue in Brahma at his recreation of the world, like the former memory of men upon being reborn? Or are all past memories effaced from the minds of men by the delirium of death in their past lives?”
6. Vasishta replied:— All intelligent beings, including Brahma and all others of the past age, who attain nirvana or extinction are, of course, absorbed in one Brahma.
7. Now tell me, my good Rama, where do these past memories and those-with-memories live when they are wholly lost at the final liberation of thosewith- memories?
8. It is certain that all beings are liberated and become extinct in Brahma at the great dissolution. Therefore, without the persons who remember, there cannot be memories of anything.
9. The memory of itself that lives impressed in the empty space of individual intellects, is truly the reservoir of the perceptible and imperceptible worlds. This memory is eternally present before the sight of God as a reflection of his own Consciousness.
10. It shines with the brightness of his selfconsciousness from time without beginning and end, and is identical with this world, which is therefore termed self-born.
11. The spiritual body that is the attribute of God from time without beginning is the same as the manifestation of himself (viraja) exhibited in the form of the world or the microcosm.
12. But the world is said to be composed of atoms, which compose the land and woods, the clouds and the firmament. But there are no atoms to form time and space, actions and motions, or revolutions of days and nights.
13. The atoms of matter that fill the world have other initial atoms (of spirit) which are inherent in them and cause them to appear in the forms of mountains and the like.
14. But these forms seeming to be conglomerations of atomic particles, and showing themselves to our vision as lighted objects, are in reality no substantial things.
15. Thus there is no end of the real and unreal sights of things. The real presents itself to the view of the learned, and the unreal to that of the unlearned.
16. The cosmos appears as the immutable Brahma only to the intelligent, and as the mutable visible world to the unintelligent.
17. As these bright worlds appear to roll about like eggs in their spheres, so there are multitudes of other orbs, shining in every atom in the universe.
18. We see pillars carved with figures upon figures upon figures. In the same way the grand pillar of the universe is composed of systems under systems to no end.
19. As sand on a rock, is attached but separable to it, and the grains are countless in number, so the orbs of the three worlds are like dust particles in mountainous body of Brahma.
20. It may be possible to count the particles of ray scattered in sunbeams, but it is impossible to number the atoms of light emanating from the great sun of Brahma.
21. As the sun scatters the his light particles on the sparkling waters and sands of the sea, so does the Intellect of God disperse the atoms of its light all over the emptiness of the universe.
22. As the notion of emptiness fills the mind with the idea of the visible sky, so the thought of creation, which is identical to Brahma, gives us the notion of his intellectual sphere.
23. To understand the creation as something different from Brahma separates man from him, but to take creation as synonymous with Brahma leads him to his joy.
24. The enlightened soul, free from its knowledge of the physical seed and knowing Brahma alone as the fullness filling the vacuum of intellect, knows the Knowable in his inward understanding as being that same as what has proceeded from Him.
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Chapter 4.4 — The World Exists in the Mind
1. Vasishta said:— The overthrow of the battery of the physical senses supplies us with a bridge over the ocean of the world. There is no other act whereby we may cross over it.
2. Acquaintance with the scriptures, association with the good and wise, and practice of the virtues are the means whereby a rational and self-controlled man may come to know the absolute negation of phenomena.
3. I have told you, O handsome Rama, about the causes of the appearance and disappearance of the creation, resembling the heaving and resting of the waves of the sea of the world.
4. There is no need for a long discourse to tell you that the mind is the germ of the forest of acts and this germ being nipped in the beginning prevents the growth of the tree and frustrates the doing of acts which are its fruits.
5. The mind is all. Therefore by the healing of your heart and mind, you can cure all troubles and diseases you may incur in the world.
6. The minds of men are always troubled with thoughts of the world and bodily actions. But these being deadened and defunct, we see neither the body nor the outer world.
7. The negation of the outer world and the suppression of the inner thoughts, by practice of self-denial for a long period of time, serve to curb the demon of the mind.
8. It is possible to heal the inner disease of the internal mind by administration of this best and only medicine of negation of the external world.
9. It is because of its thoughts that the mind is subject to the errors of its birth and death, and being bound to or liberated from the body and this world.
10. The mind deluded by its thoughts sees the worlds shining before it like a man in his delusion sees the imaginary city of the gandharvas drawn before him in empty air.
11. All these visible worlds exist in the mind where they seem to exist, like the fragrance in air consists in the cluster of flowers containing the essence.
12. The little particle of the mind contains the world, like a small grain of sesame contains the oil, like an attribute is contained in its subject, and a property abides in a substance.
13. The world abides in the mind in the same manner as sunbeams abide in the sun and brightness in light and heat in fire.
14. The mind is the reservoir of the worlds, as snow is the receptacle of coldness. It underlies all existence, as the sky is that of emptiness and as velocity is inherent in wind.
15. Therefore the mind is the same as the world and the world is the same as the mind, all owing to their intimate and inseparable connection with each another. The world is lost by the loss of the mind, but the mind is not lost by destruction of the world.
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Chapter 4.5 — The Story of Shukra (Bhargava): Shukra Falls in Love with a Fairy Nymph
1. Rama said, “Tell me sage, who knows all truths and is best acquainted with all that is past and is to come, how does the form of the world exist so vividly in the mind?
2. Please explain to me by some illustration how this world appears as a visible object to the inner mind.”
3. Vasishta replied:— The world truly is situated in the minds of men, just as it appeared in its firm and compact state to the ten bodiless sons of Indu.
4. It is situated in the same manner in the minds of men as the thought of King Lavana’s transformation of himself to a tribal (chandala) under the influence of sorcery.
5. It is in the same manner as Bhargava believed he possessed all worldly gratifications. Because true bliss has much more relation to the mind than to earthly possessions.
6. Rama said, “Sage, how did the son of Bhrigu came to enjoy earthly pleasures when he had been longing for heavenly joy?”
7. Vasishta replied:— Rama, listen to my narration of the history of Bhrigu and Kala, whereby you will know how he came to possess earthly enjoyments.
8. There is a tableland of Mandara Mountain that has rows of tamala trees with beautiful flowers under them.
9. Here sage Bhrigu conducted his arduous tapas (spiritual penance) in olden times and it was in this place that his high-minded and valiant son Shukra also came to perform his tapas.
10. Shukra was as handsome as the moon, radiant with his brilliant beams. He took his seat in that happy grove of Bhrigu for the purpose of his tapas.
11. Having long sat in that grove under the shade of a rock, Shukra removed himself to the flowery beds and fair plains below.
12. He wandered freely about the bowers of Mandara pleasure garden in his youthful sport, and became revered among the wise and ignorant men of the place.
13. He wandered there at random like Trisanku, between the earth and sky, sometimes playing about as a boy, and at others sitting in fixed meditation like his father.
14. He remained without any anxiety in his solitude, as a king who has subdued his enemy. Then he happened to see an apsara fairy traversing in her aerial journey.
15. He saw her with the eyes of Hari (Vishnu) fixed upon his Lakshmi as the fairy skimmed over the watery plain, decorated with wreaths of mandara flowers, her tresses waving loosely with the playful air.
16. Her trinkets jingled with her movements and her fragrance perfumed the winds of the air. Her fairy form was as beautiful as a vine, and her eyeballs rolled as in the state of intoxication.
17. The moonbeams of her body shed their ambrosial dews over the landscape and bewitched the hard heart of the young devotee as he stared at the fairy form before him.
18. She also, with her body shining like the fair full moon and shaking like a wave of the sea, became enamored of Shukra as she looked at his face.
19. Shukra then checked the impulse of his mind which the god of love had raised after her, but losing all power over himself, he became absorbed in the thought of his beloved object.
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Chapter 4.6 — Shukra Imagines Indra’s Paradise
1. Vasishta said:— Henceforth Shukra with his closed eyes continued to think of the nymph and indulge himself in his dreams of an imaginary kingdom.
2. He thought that the nymph was passing through the air to the paradise of Indra, the god with thousand eyes. He imagined he was following her closely to the happy regions of the celestial gods.
3. He thought he saw the gods decorated with garlands of beautiful mandara blossoms on their heads, hanging resplendent as liquid gold.
4. He seemed to see the heavenly maidens with their eyes like blue lotuses regaling the eyes of their spectators, and others with their eyes as beautiful as those of antelopes playing with their sweet smiles all about.
5. He saw also the Marutas (gods of the winds) bearing the fragrance of flowers, breathing their sweet scent on one another and resembling the omnipresent Vishwarupa by their heavenly journey.
6. He heard the sweet hum of bees, giddy with the perfume exuding from the trunk of Indra’s elephant. He listened to the sweet strains sung by a heavenly choir.
7. There were the swans and storks gabbling in lakes with lotuses of golden color in them. There were celestial gods lying in the tree gardens beside the holy stream of the Milky Way (Mandakini), the heavenly Ganges.
8. These were the gods Yama and Indra, and the sun and moon, and the gods of fire and the winds. And there were the regents of the worlds, whose shining bodies shaded the luster of vivid fire.
9. On one side was Airavata, the warlike elephant of Indra, with the scratches of demonic weapons on his face and tusks gory with the blood of the defeated hosts of demons.
10. Those who were transported from earth to heaven in the form of luminous stars were wandering in their aerial vehicles, blazing with golden beams of the shining sun.
11. The gods were washed by showers falling from the peaks of Mount Meru below, and the waves of the Ganges rolled on with scattered mandara flowers floating on them.
12. The alleys of Indra’s groves were tinged with saffron from heaps of mandara flower dust, and they were trodden by groups of apsara ladies playing wantonly upon them.
13. There were gentle breezes blowing among parijata plants, bright as moonbeams in the sacred bowers and blowing fragrant honey from the cups of kunda and mandara blossoms.
14. The pleasure garden of Indra was crowded with heavenly maidens smeared with the frosty dust of kesara flowers covering them like vines of the grove in their yellow robes.
15. Here were heavenly nymphs dancing in their gaiety at the tune of their lovers’ songs. There were the heavenly musicians Narada and Tamburu joining their vocal music in unison with the melody of the stringed instruments, lute and lyre.
16. Holy men and the pious and virtuous were seen to soar high in their heavenly cars, sitting there with decorations of various kinds.
17. The amorous maidens of the gods were clinging around their god Indra, like the tender vines of the garden twine about the trees.
18. There were guluncha fruit trees studded with clusters of their ripening fruit resembling sapphires and rubies and set like rows of ivory teeth.
19. After all these sights, Shukra thought of making his obeisance to Indra, who was seated on his seat like another Brahma, the creator of the three worlds.
20. Having thought so, Shukra bowed down to Indra in his own mind, as Indra was the second Bhrigu in heaven (i.e., a second father).
21. Indra received him with respect and having lifted him up with his hand, made him sit by himself.
22. Indra addressed him saying, “I am honored, Shukra, by your call. This heaven of mine is graced by your presence. May you live long to enjoy the pleasure of this place.”
23. Then Indra sat in his seat with a graceful face that shone with the light of the unspotted full moon.
24. Shukra, sitting by Indra’s side, was saluted by all the assembled gods of heaven. He continued to enjoy every joy there, having been received with paternal affection by the lord of gods and men.
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Chapter 4.7 — Shukra Imagines Embracing the Fairy Nymph
1. Vasishta said:— Thus Shukra, being among the gods in the celestial city, forgot his former nature without passing through the pangs of death.
2. Having halted awhile by the side of Sachi’s consort (i.e., Indra), he rose up to roam about the paradise, charmed with all its various beauties.
3. He looked with rapture on the beauty of his own body and longed to see the lovely beauties of heavenly beings, just as a swan is eager to meet the lotuses of the lake.
4. He saw his beloved one among them in the garden of Indra’s paradise, her eyes like those of a young deer and with a stature as delicate as that of a tender amra vine.
5. She also saw the son of Bhrigu and lost her self control. Thus he observed all her indications of amorous feelings.
6. His whole body dissolved in affection for her, like a moonstone melting under moonbeams, and so did hers likewise in tenderness for him.
7. He, like the moonstone, was soothed by her cooling beauty, beaming like moonlight in the sky. She also, being seen by him, was entirely subdued by her love to him.
8. At night they bewailed like ruddy geese at their separation from one another, and at daybreak they were filled with delight on seeing each other.
9. They were both as beautiful to behold as the sun and the opening blossom of the lotus in morning. Their presence added a charm to the garden of paradise, which promised to confer their desired bliss.
10. She committed her subdued self to the mercy of Kama, the god of love, who in his turn darted his arrows relentlessly into her tender heart.
11. Her body was covered with Kama’s arrows, like a lotus blossom hidden under a swarm of bees. She became as disordered as the leaves of a lotus disturbed under a shower of raindrops.
12. She fluttered at the gentle breath of playful winds, like the tender filaments of flowers. She moved as gracefully as a swan, her eyes as blue as the petals of blue lotuses.
13. She was deranged by the god of love like a bed of lotuses is disturbed by a mighty elephant. Her lover, Shukra, in his fancy, saw her in that plight.
14. At last the shade of night spread over the landscape of heavenly paradise, as if the god of destruction (Shiva) was advancing to bury the world under universal gloom.
15. A deep darkness spread over the face of the earth and covered it with thick gloom like the regions of the polar mountains where the hot, blazing sun is hidden by the dark shade of perpetual night, as if hiding his face in shame under the dark veil of gloom.
16. When the assembled crowds of the place retired in different directions to their respective homes, the loving pair met together in the midst of the grove.
17. Then the love smitten lady approached her lover with sidelong glances, like a bird of air alights from her aerial flight in the evening to meet with her mate on the earth below.
18. She advanced towards the son of Bhrigu, as a peahen comes out to meet the rising cloud. She saw a white washed building, a couch placed inside.
19. Bhargava (Shukra) entered the white hall like Vishnu entering the milk ocean accompanied by his beloved Lakshmi who held his hand with her down-cast countenance.
20. The apsara fairy graced Shukra like the lotus-stalk graces the bosom of the elephant. She spoke to him sweetly with words mixed with tender affection.
21. She told him in a sweet and delightful speech filled with expressions of endearment, “Behold, O my moon-faced lover! I see the curve of your bow is bent for my destruction.
22. Kama is shooting his arrows to destroy this lovelorn maid. Therefore protect me from him. I am so helpless from his rage that I have come under your protection.”
23. “Know, my good friend, that the duty of good people is to relieve the wretched from their distress. Those who do not look upon them with a compassionate eye are reckoned the basest of men.
24. Love is never abused by those who are acquainted with erotica, because the true love of faithful lovers endures to the end without any fear of separation.
25. Know my dear, that the delightful draught of love defies the dewy beams distilled by the moon, and the sovereignty of the three worlds is never as pleasing to the soul as the love of the beloved.”
26. “I derive the same bliss from the touch of your feet as lovers when they first love one another.
27. I live by the nectar of your touch, as the kumuda blooms imbibe ambrosial moonbeams at night.
28. As the fluttering chakora is delighted drinking moonbeams, so this suppliant at your feet is blessed by the touch of the leaf-like palm of your hand.
29. Embrace me now to your bosom filled with ambrosial bliss.” Saying so, the maiden fell upon his bosom with her body soft as a flower and her eyes turning like a small leaf in a gentle breeze.
30. The loving pair fell into their trance of love in that happy grove, like a couple of playful bees creep into a lotus cup under the fair filaments of the flower shaking by the gentle breeze.
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Chapter 4.8 — Reincarnations of Shukra
1. Vasishta related:— Thus the son of Bhrigu, in his daydream, believed himself to be enjoying heavenly pleasures.
2. He thought of enjoying the company of his beloved, like the full moon accompanied by the evening star, bedecked with garlands of mandara flowers and inebriated with the drink of ambrosial draughts.
3. He roved about the ideal lake of heaven (Manasarovar) filled with golden lotuses and frequented by the giddy swans and gabbling geese of heaven. He roamed beside the bank of the celestial Mandakini River (the Milky Way) accompanied by celestial singers.
4. He drank sweet nectar juice beaming like moonbeams in company with the gods. He rested under trees in groves formed by the shaking branches of parijata plants.
5. He amused himself with his favorite air spirits (vidyadharas), swinging himself in hanging cradles formed by the shady vines of the arbor and screening him from the spring sunbeams.
6. The flower beds of the Nandana gardens were trodden down under the feet of Shiva’s followers, as when the ocean was churned by Mandara Mountain.
7. Tender weeds and willows growing like golden shrubs, and the tangled bushes by the beach of the river, were trampled under the legs of heated elephants, as when they infest the lotus lakes on Mount Meru.
8. Accompanied by his sweetheart, Shukra passed moonlit nights in the forest groves of Kailash, listening to the songs and music of heavenly singers.
9. Roaming on the tablelands of Gandhamadana Mountain, he decorated his beloved from head to foot with lotus garlands.
10. He wandered with her to the polar mountain which is full of wonders, having darkness on one side and light on the other. Here they played together with tender smiles and fond caresses and embraces.
11. He thought he remained in a celestial abode beside the marshy lands of Mandara for sixty years, and passed his time in the company of the young aspara of the place.
12. He believed he passed half a yuga with his companion on the border of the Milky Ocean, and they associated with the maritime people and islanders of that ocean.
13. Next he thought to live in a garden of the city of celestial singers (gandharvas), where he believed to have lived for an immeasurable period like the genius of Time himself, who is the producer of an infinity of worlds.
14. He again found himself by the celestial seat of Indra, where he believed to have resided with his mistress for many cycles of the four yuga ages.
15. It was at the end of the merit of their acts that they were doomed to return on earth, shorn of their heavenly beauty and fine features.
16. Being deprived of his heavenly seat and vehicle, and bereft of his godlike form and features, Shukra was overcome by deep sorrow, like a hero falling in the field of warfare.
17. His great grief at his fall from heaven to earth broke his frame as if into a hundred fragments, like a waterfall falling on stony ground and breaking into a hundred streams below.
18. With their emaciated bodies and sad minds, they wandered about in the air, like birds without their nest.
19. Afterwards their disembodied minds entered into the network of lunar beams. Then, in the form of molten frost or rainwater, they grew as vegetables on earth.
20. Some of these vegetables were prepared and eaten by a brahmin in the land of Dasarna, the confluence of ten streams. The substance of Shukra changed to the semen of the brahmin and then conceived as a son by his wife.
21. The boy was trained in the society of ancient sages (munis) to the practice of rigorous austerities, and he dwelt in the forests of Meru for a whole manvantara observing his holy rites.
22. There he gave birth to a male child of human figure in a doe (to which his mistress was transformed in her next birth), and became exceedingly fond of the boy, to the neglect of his sacred duties.
23. He constantly prayed for long life, wealth and learning of his darling, and thus forsook the constancy of his faith and reliance in Providence.
24. Thus his falling off from the thought of heaven, to those of the earthly success of his son, made his shortened life an easy prey to death, just as the inhaling of air by the serpent.
25. His worldly thoughts weakened his understanding and caused him to be reborn as the son and successor to the King of Madras.
26. Having long reigned in his Kingdom of Madras by eliminating all his enemies, he was overtaken at last by old age, as the lotus flower is stunted by frost.
27. The King of Madras was released of his royal body by his desire for asceticism, whereby he became the son of a hermit in the following birth in order to perform his austerities.
28. He retired to a bank of the meandering Ganges River and there, being devoid of all his worldly anxieties and cares, absorbed himself in tapas.
29. Thus the son of Bhrigu, having passed in various forms in his successive births according to the desires of his heart, remained at last like a fixed tree on the bank of a running stream.
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Chapter 4.9 — Description of Shukra’s Body during His Austerities
1. Vasishta related:— As Shukra was indulging his reveries in this manner, he passed insensibly under the flight of a series of years which glided over him in the presence of his father.
2. At last his body withered away with age under the inclement sun, winds and rain. It fell down on the ground like a tree torn from its roots.
3. In all his former births his mind thirsted after fresh pleasures and enjoyments, just like a deer hunts from forest to forest after fresh vegetation.
4. He underwent repeated births and deaths in his wanderings in the world in search of its enjoyments. He seemed like something whirled about in a mill or a turning wheel, until at last he found his rest in the cooling beach of the rivulet.
5. Now the disembodied spirit of Shukra remained to reflect on his past incarnations in all the real and ideal forms of his imagination.
6. It thought of its former body on Mandara Mountain and how it was reduced to a skeleton of mere bones and skin by the heat of the sun and his austerities.
7. It remembered how the wind instrument of its lungs breathed out the joyous music of its exemption from the pain of action.
8. Seeing how the mind is plunged in the pit of worldly cares, the body seems to laugh at it by showing the white teeth of the mouth in derision.
9. The cavity of the mouth, the sockets of the eyes, the nostrils and ear-holes in the open face, are all expressive of the hollowness of human and heavenly bodies.
10. The body sheds the tears of its eyes in sorrow for its past pains and austerities, just like the sky rains after excessive heat to cool the earth.
11. The body was refreshed by breeze and moonbeams, just as woodlands are renovated by cooling showers in the rainy season.
12. It remembered how its body was washed on the banks of mountain streams by waterfalls from above, and how it was daubed by the flying dust and the dirt of sin.
13. It was as naked as a withered tree, and rustled to the air with the breeze, yet it withstood the keen blasts of winter like unshaken devotion in a person.
14. The faded face, the withered lungs and arteries, and the skinny belly resembled those of the goddess of famine who cried aloud in the forest in the howling of wild beasts.
15. Yet the holy person of the hermit, owing to its freedom from passions and feelings and its fervent tapas, was unhurt by envious animals and was not devoured by rapacious beasts and birds.
16. The body of Bhrigu’s son was weakened by his abstinence and self-denial, and his mind was employed in holy tapas, as his body lay prostrate on the bed of stones.
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Chapter 4.10 — Bhrigu’s Anger Evokes Yama Who Describes Shuka’s Many Lives
1. Vasishta continued:— After the lapse of a thousand years, the great Bhrigu suspended his holy meditation, disengaged his mind from its meditation of God, and rose from his holy trance.
2. He did not find his son lowly bending down his head before him, the son who was the leader of the army of virtues and who was the personified figure of all merits.
3. He saw only his son’s body lying like a skeleton before him, like wretchedness or poverty personified in that shape.
4. The skin of his body was dried by the sun and his nostrils snored like a hooping bird. The entrails of his belly sounded like dry leather-pipes with the croaking of frogs.
5. His eye sockets were filled with new-born worms, and his rib bones had become like bars of a cage with the thin skin over them resembling a spider’s web.
6. The dry and white skeleton of the body resembled the desire of fruition, which bends it to the earth to undergo all the favorable and unfavorable accidents of life.
7. The crown of the head had become as white and smooth as a Shivalinga anointed with camphor at an indu-varcha ceremony in honor of the moon.
8. The withered head erected on a bony neck bone was like the soul supported by the body.
9. The nose had shriveled into a dry stalk for lack of flesh, and the nose bone stood like a post dividing the two halves of the face.
10. The face, standing erect over the shoulders on both sides, was looking forward towards the womb of the empty sky where its vital breath had fled from the body.
11. The two legs, thighs, knees and arms had doubled in length and lay slackened with the fatigue of a long journey.
12. The shriveled flesh and skin of the belly, lean like a thin strip of wood, showed the emptiness inside of the ignorant.
13. Seeing the withered skeleton of his son lying like a worn-out post, Bhrigu reflected and rose from his seat.
14. At the sight of the dead body, he began to question in his mind whether it could be the lifeless carcass of his son or any other.
15. Thinking it to be the dead body of his son, he became angry at the god of death.
16. He prepared to pronounce his curse on the god of fate as vengeance for snatching his son so prematurely from him.
17. At this Yama, the lord of death and devourer of living beings, assumed his figurative form of a material body and appeared in an instant before the enraged father.
18. He appeared in armor with six arms and as many faces, accompanied by an army of his adherents and holding noose, sword and other weapons in his hands.
19. The rays of light radiating from his body gave it the appearance of a hill filled with heaps of crimson kinsuka flowers growing in mountain forests.
20. Rays of living fire flashing from his trident gave it the glare of golden ringlets fastened to the ears of all sides of the sky.
21. The breath of his host hurled down mountain ridges hanging about them like swinging cradles.
22. His dark sword flashed with somber light and darkened the disc of the sun, as if by the smoke of the final conflagration of the earth.
23. Having appeared before the great sage, who was enraged as the raging sea, he soothed him to calmness, as after a storm, by the gentle breath of his speech. Yama speaking:—
24. The sages are acquainted with the laws of nature and know the past and future as present before them. They are never moved with a motive for anything, and they are far from being moved without a cause.
25. You sages observe the many rules of religious austerities, and we observe the endless and immutable laws of destiny. We honor you for your holiness and not from any other desire.
26. Do not defame your righteousness by your rage, nor think to do us any harm. We are spared unhurt by the flames of final dissolution and we cannot be consumed by your curses.
27. We have destroyed the spheres of the universe and devoured legions of Shivas, millions of Brahmas, and multitudes of Vishnus. Therefore, what is there that we cannot do?
28. We are appointed as devourers of all beings and you are destined to be devoured by us. This is ordained by destiny herself, and not by any act of our own will.
29. It is the nature of flame to ascend upwards and that of fluids to flow downward. It is destined for food to be eaten by its eaters, and that creation must be destroyed by us.
30. Know this form of mine to be that of the Supreme Being, whose Universal Spirit acts in various forms all over the universe.
31. To the unstained sight, there is no other agent or object here except the Supreme, although the stained sight sees many agents and objects.
32. Agency and objectivity are terms coined only by the short sighted. They disappear before the expanded view of the wise.
33. As flowers grow on trees, so are animals born on earth. Their growth and birth, and also their fall and death, are of their own spontaneity and mistakenly called their causation.
34. As the motion of the moon is caused by no casual cause, though the unwise falsely attribute a causality to it, such also is the course of death in the world: its own spontaneous nature.
35. The mind is falsely said to be the agent of all its enjoyments in life, though it is no agent of itself. It is a mistaken belief like the false conception of a serpent in the rope where there is no serpent at all.
36. Therefore, O sage, do not allow yourself to be so angry for your sorrow, but consider the course of events that befall humankind in its true light.
37. We were not moved to any act by desire of fame or influenced by pride or passion. We ourselves are subject to destiny which predominates over all our actions.
38. Knowing that the course of our conduct is subject to destiny appointed by Divine Will, the wise never allow themselves to be subject to darkness of pride or passion at our doings.
39. That we must do only our duties at all times is the rule laid down by the wise Creator. You cannot attempt to remove it by subjecting yourself to ignorance and idleness.
40. Where is that enlightened sight, that gravity and that patience of yours, that you grovel in this manner in the dark like the blind, and slide from the broad and beaten path laid open for everybody?
41. Why don’t you consider your case as the sequence of your own acts? Why do you, who are a wise man, falsely accuse me like the ignorant?
42. You know that all living beings have two bodies here, of which one is known as the intellectual or spiritual body or mind.
43. The other is the inert or physical frame that is fragile and perishable. The minute thing of the mind lasts until its liberation and is what leads all to their good or evil desires.
44. As a skillful charioteer guides his chariot with care, so this body is conducted by the intelligent mind with equal attention and fondness.
45. But an ignorant mind that is prone to evil destroys a good body, just like little children break their dolls of clay in sport.
46. The mind is called the ruler of the body (purusha), and the working of the mind is taken for the act of the man. It is bound to the earth by its desires and freed by its freedom from earthly attractions and expectations.
47. The mind is that which thinks in itself, “This is my body here, and these are the members of my body, and this my head.”
48. The mind is called life because it has the living principle in it. The mind is one and the same and identical with understanding. It becomes the individual ego by its consciousness, and so the same mind passes under various designations according to its different functions.
49. It called heart because of the body’s affections, and so it takes many other names at will. But all earthly bodies are perishable.
50. When the mind receives the light of truth it is called enlightened intellect which, being free from its thoughts relating to the body, is set to its supreme joy.
51. Thus, as you sat absorbed in meditation, the mind of your son wandered from your presence to regions far and wide in the ways of its various desires.
52. He having left this body behind him in the mountain cave of Mandara, he fled to the celestial region, like a bird flies from his nest to the open air.
53. This mind got into the city of the guardian gods and remained in a part of Nandana garden, in the happy groves of Mandara under a dwelling of parijata flowers.
54. There he thought he passed a revolution of eight cycles of the four yugas in company with Viswachi, a beautiful apsara maiden. He clung to her like a six-footed bee clings to a blooming lotus.
55. But as his strong desire led him to the happy regions of his imagination, so he had his fall from them at the end of what he had earned, like nightly dew falling from heaven.
56. He faded away in his body and all his limbs, like a flower attached to an ear or head ornament. He fell down together with his beloved one, like ripened fruit from trees.
57. Being deprived of his aerial and celestial body, he passed through the atmospheric air and was born again on earth in a human figure.
58. He became a brahmin in the land of Dasarna, then a king of the city of Kosala. He became a hunter in a great forest, then a swan on the banks of the Ganges.
59. He became a king of the solar race, then a king of the Pundras, and afterwards a missionary among the Sauras and Salwas. Next he became a demigod (vidyadhara), and finally the son of an ancient sage (muni).
60. He became a ruler in Madras, then the son of a devotee bearing the name of Vasudeva and living on the bank of Samanga.
61. Your son also has passed many other births to which he was led to by his desire. He also had to undergo some births in lower animals.
62. He repeatedly has been a hunter (kirata) in the Vindhya Hills and at Kaikatav. He was a chieftain in Sauvira and became an ass at Trigarta.
63. He grew as a bamboo tree in the land of Keralas and as a deer in the outskirts of China. He became a serpent on a palm tree and a cock on a tamala tree.
64. This son of yours had been skilled in mantras and he practiced them in the land of vidyadharas.
65. Then he became a vidyadhara magician himself and worked his jugglery of taking ornaments from women.
66. He became a favorite of females, just as the sun is dear to lotus flowers. Being as handsome as Kama, the god of love, he became a favorite among vidyadhara ladies in the land of gandharvas.
67. At the end of the kalpa age (of universal destruction), he saw the twelve suns of the zodiac shining at once before him. He was reduced to ashes by their heat, just as a grasshopper is burnt by falling on fire.
68. Finding no other world or body where he could enter, his spirit roved about in empty air like a bird soars on high without its nest.
69. After the lapse of a long time, as Brahma again awoke from his long night of repose and again commenced his creation of the world in all its various forms,
70. the wandering spirit of your son was led by its desire, as if propelled by a gust of wind, to become a brahmin again and be reborn on this earth.
71. He was born under the name of Vasudeva as the son of a brahmin. He was taught all the Sruti scriptures among the intelligent and learned men of the place.
72. In this kalpa age he became a vidyadhara again and committed himself to the performance of his tapas on the bank of Samanga, where he is still sitting in his yoga meditation.
73. Thus his desire for the varieties of worldly appearances led him to various births in the woods and forests in the womb of this earth, covered with jungles of the thorny khadira, karanja and other bushes and brambles.
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Chapter 4.11 — Yama (Time) on the Mind as the Cause Producing the World
1. Yama (Time) continued:— Your son is still engaged in his rigorous austerities on the bank of the Samanga River, rolling with its loud waves on the beach, and the winds blowing and howling from all sides.
2. He has been sitting still in his firm tapas with matted braids of hair on his head and beads of rudraksha seeds in his hand and controlling the members of his body from going astray.
3. O venerable sage, if you wish to know the dreams in his mind, you shall have to open your intellectual eye in order to pry into the thoughts of others.
4. Vasishta said:— Saying so, Yama, the lord of world who sees all at one view, made the muni dive with his intellectual eye into the thoughts of his son.
5. By his perception, the sage immediately saw all the incidents in the sequence of births in his son’s mind as if they were reflected in the mirror of his own mind.
6. Having seen the mind of his son in his own mind, the muni returned from the bank of Samanga to his own body on Mount Mandara where it was left in its sitting posture in the presence of Yama.
7. Surprised at what he saw, the sage looked upon Yama with a smile. Dispassionate as he was, he spoke to the god in the following soft and dispassionate words. Bhrigu speaking:—
8. O god who is lord of past and future, we are only ignorant children before you, whose brilliant insight sees at once the three times of past, present and future.
9. The knowledge of the existence of the world, by its varying forms and fluctuations, whether it is a real entity or not, is the source of all errors of the wisest of men.
10. It is you, O powerful god, who knows what is inside this world, while to us it presents its outward figure only in the shape of a magic scene.
11. I knew very well that my son is not subject to death. Therefore I was struck with wonder to see him lying like a dead body.
12. Thinking that the imperishable soul of my son was snatched by death, I was led to the brainless desire of cursing you on his untimely death.
13. For though we know the course of things in the world, yet we are subject to impulses of joy and grief owing to prosperity and adversity.
14. Moreover, to be angry with wrong doers, and to be pleased with those that act rightly, have become the general rule in the course of the world.
15. As we are subject to the error of the reality of the world, we labor under the sense of what is our duty, and what we must refrain from. But deliverance from this error removes all such responsibilities from us.
16. When we fret at death, without understanding its intention, we are to be blamed, of course.
17. You have made me acquainted with the thoughts of my son. I can see the whole scene on the bank of Samanga River.
18. Of the two bodies of men, the mind alone is omnipresent, the leader of the outer body of animated beings. The mind therefore is the true body that reflects and makes us conscious of the existence of ourselves, as also of the exterior world.
19. Yama replied:— You have rightly said, O brahmin, that the mind is the true body of man. It is the mind that molds the body according to its will, just as the potter makes a pot at his pleasure.
20. The mind frames a form and gives a feature to the person that it did not have before, and it destroys one in existence in a moment. Imagination gives an image to an airy nothing, like children see ghosts before them in the dark.
21. It is well known to everybody that the mind’s power creates apparent realities out of absolute unreality, in dream and delirium, in misconceptions and fallacies and all kinds of error, like the sight of magic cities and talismans.
22. It is from their reliance on visual sight that men consider the material body to be the principal body, and they conceive the mind as a secondary or supplementary part.
23. It was the Divine Mind that formed the world from its thought. Therefore the world of phenomena is neither a substance by itself nor is it a nothing.
24. The mind is part of the body and spreads itself into many forms through its thoughts and desires, like the branch of a tree shoots forth in blossoms and leaves. As we see two moons by optical deception, so one mind appears as many in many individuals.
25. The variety of the mind’s desires makes it perceive and produce varieties of things, like pots and pictures and the like.
26. The same mind thinks itself as many by the diversity of its thoughts, such as “I am weak,” “I am poor,” “I am ignorant,” and the like.
27. The thought, “I am none of the fancied forms which I feign to myself, but of that form from where I am,” causes the mind to be one with the everlasting Brahman by divesting it of the thoughts of all other things.
28. All things springing from Brahma sink at last in him, like the huge waves of the wide and billowy ocean rise only to subside in its calm and undisturbed waters below.
29. They sink in the Supreme Spirit, resembling one vast body of pure, transparent, cold and sweet water, and like a vast mine of brilliant gems of unfailing brightness.
30. One thinking himself to be a little wave diminishes his soul to littleness.
31. But one believing himself to be a large wave enlarges his spirit to greatness.
32. He who thinks of himself as a little being, fallen from above to suffer in the nether world, is born upon earth in the form he took for his pattern.
33. But he who thinks himself to be born to greatness soon rises by his energy and becomes as big as a hill and shines with the luster of rich gems growing upon it.
34. He rests in peace who thinks himself to be in the cooling orb of the moon. Otherwise the body is consumed with cares, like a tree on the bank is burnt down by fire.
35. Others like forest trees are fixed and silent and shudder for fear of being burnt down by the wildfire of the world, though they are situated at ease, such as beside the running streams of limpid water, and as high as on mountain tops of inaccessible height.
36. Those who think they are surrounded by worldly affairs are like wide-stretching trees awaiting their fall by impending blasts of wind.
37. Those who wail aloud for being broken to pieces under the pressure of their misery are like the noisy waves of the sea breaking against the shore and shedding their tears in the form of watery spray.
38. But the waves are not of one kind, nor are they altogether entities or nullities in nature. They are neither small or large nor high or low, nor do these qualities abide in them.
39. Waves do not abide in the sea, nor are they without the sea or the sea without them. They are of the nature of desires in the soul, rising and setting at their own accord.
40. The dead are undying and the living are not living. Thus is the law of their mutual succession which nothing can prevent or alter.
41. As water is universally the same and transparent in its nature, so the all pervading spirit of God is pure and holy in every place.
42. This one and the same spirit is the body of God and is called the transparent Brahman. It is omnipotent and everlasting and constitutes the whole world appearing as distinct from it.
43. The many wonderful powers that it contains are all active in their various ways. The different powers produce different ends and are all contained in that same body. All the natural and material forces have the Divine Spirit for their focus.
44. Brahma was produced in Brahman just as the wave is produced in water. Male and female are produced from the neuter Brahman, changed to and forming both of them.
45. That which is called the world is only an attribute of Brahma. There is not the slightest difference between Brahma and the world.
46. Truly this plenitude is Brahma, and the world is nothing other than Brahma himself. Think intently upon this truth and shun all other false beliefs.
47. There is one eternal law that presides over all things, and this one law branches forth into many, bringing forth a hundred varieties of effects. The world is a collection of laws that are only manifestations of the Almighty power and omniscience.
48. Both the inert and active proceed from the same, and the mind proceeds from the consciousness (chit) of God. Various desires evolve by the power of the mind from their exact prototypes in the Supreme Soul.
49. Therefore it is Brahma that manifests itself in the visible world and is full with various forms, like the sea with all its waves and surges.
50. It assumes to itself all varieties of forms by its volition of evolution or the will of becoming many. It is spirit that displays itself in itself and by itself, like seawater displays its waves in its own water and by itself.
51. As the various waves are nothing other than seawater, so all these phenomena are not different from the essence of the Lord of the world.
52. As the same seed develops itself in the various forms of branches and buds, twigs and leaves, and fruits and flowers, so the same almighty Seed evolves itself in the multitude of varieties of creation.
53. As strong sunlight displays itself in variegated colors in different bodies, so does Omnipotence display itself in various vivid colors, all of which are unreal shades.
54. As the bosom of a colorless cloud receives the variety of transient colors displayed in the rainbow, so the inscrutable spirit of the Almighty reflects and refracts the various colors displayed in creation.
55. Inert matter and inactivity proceed from the active agent without a secondary cause, like the active spider produces the passive thread, and the living man brings his dull torpor in sleep upon himself.
56. Again, the Lord makes the mind produce matter only for its own bondage, just like He makes the silkworm weave its own cocoon for its own confinement.
57. The mind of its own will forgets its spiritual nature and makes a strong prison house for itself, like the silkworm weaves its own coating.
58. But when the mind by its own free will inclines to think of its spiritual nature, it gets its release from the prison-house of the body and bondage in the world, just like a bird or beast is released from its cage, or a big elephant let loose from his chains and the tying post.
59. The mind gradually molds itself into the form which it constantly thinks upon in itself. The mind derives from within itself the power to be what it wishes to become.
60. The long sought power when acquired becomes as familiar to the soul as the dark clouds that attend the sky in the rainy season.
61. The newly obtained power is assimilated with its recipient, just like the virtue of every season is manifested in its effect upon the trees.
62. There is no bondage or liberation of human soul, or of the Divine Spirit. We cannot account for the use of these words among mankind.
63. There is no liberation or bondage of the soul which is the same with the divine. It is this delusive world that shows the immortal soul under the veil of mortality, or as eclipsed by and under the shadow of temporary affairs.
64. The unsteady mind has wrapped the steady soul under the sheath of error, just like the silkworm’s cocoon covers the dormant worm.
65. All bondages that bind the embodied soul to earth are the works of the mind which is the root of all worldly ties and affections.
66. All human affections and attachments to the visible world are born in and remain in the mind, although they are as distinct from it as the waves of the sea or moonbeams are produced from and contained in their receptacles.
67. The Supreme Spirit is stretched out like one universal ocean agitated into myriads of waves and billows. Consciousness itself is spread out like the water of the universal ocean containing everything that is watery and earthly in its infinite bosom.
68. All those who appear as Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, and also they who have become gods and those who are called men and male creatures,
68-1 are all like the waves of the sea raised spontaneously by the underlying spirit. So are Yama, Indra, the sun, fire, Kubera and the other gods.
68-2 So too are the gandharvas and kinnaras, the vidyadharas and the other gods and demigods who rise and fall or remain for a while like the waves of the sea.
68-3 They rise and fall as waves on every side, though some continue for a longer duration, like the lotus-born Brahma and others.
68-4 Some are born to die in a moment, like petty gods and men. Others are dead almost as soon as they are born, such as insects and some worms.
69. Worms and insects, gnats and flies, and serpents and huge snakes rise in the great ocean of the Divine Spirit like drops of water scattered about by waves of the sea.
70. There are other moving animals like men and deer and vultures and jackals that are produced on land and mountains, in woods and forests, and in marshy grounds.
71. Some are long lived and others live for a short time. Some live with higher aims and ambitions, and others with no other care than self-preservation of their contemptible bodies.
72. Some think of their stability in this world of dreams, and others are betrayed by their false hope of the stability of worldly affairs, which are quite unstable.
73. Some subject to penury and poverty have little to effect in their lives. They always torment themselves with thoughts that they are poor, miserable, weak and ignorant.
74. Some are born as trees and others have become like gods and demigods. Some are furnished with moving bodies; others are dissolved like water in the sea.
75. Some are no less durable than many kalpas, and others return to the Supreme Spirit by the moonlike purity of their souls. All things have risen from the ocean-like Spirit of Brahman, like its moving undulations. The mind is everyone’s intellectual consciousness.
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Chapter 4.12 — Yama on the Mistake of Individual Consciousness; Different Levels of Awareness
1. Yama said:— The consciousness of gods, demigods and men as distinct beings is quite wrong because they are in no way distinct from the infinite ocean of Divine Spirit of which they are all like undulations.
2. Our false conceptions make us distinguish between ourselves and the Supreme Soul. The thought of being separate and apart from the Supreme Spirit is the cause of our degradation from our pristine holiness and the image of God, in which man was made at first and was infused with his holy spirit.
3. Remaining within the depth of the Divine Spirit, yet thinking ourselves to live without it, is the cause of keeping us in darkness on the surface of the earth.
4. Our consciousness of ourselves as Brahma, being spoiled by the various thoughts in our minds, becomes the root of our activities; while the pure consciousness of “I am” is free from all actions and energies.
5. The inner desire of the heart and mind becomes the seed of earthly actions which sprouts forth in thorny plants like the karanja, a handful of which fills the ground with thick weeds.
6. Living bodies lie scattered like pebbles on earth, rolling about or lying down with their temporary joy and grief in continued succession, owing to their ignorance of themselves.
7. From the highest heaven of Brahma down to the lowest deep, there is a constant undulation of the Divine Spirit, like the vibration of the wind, which keeps all beings in their successive wailing and rejoicing, and in their constant births and deaths.
8. There are some of pure and enlightened souls, like the gods Hari (Vishnu), Hara (Shiva) and others. Some are of somewhat darkened understandings, such as men and the inferior demigods.
9. Some are placed in greater darkness, like worms and insects. Others are situated in utter darkness, like trees and vegetables.
10. Some grow far away from the great ocean of the Divine Spirit, like the grass and weeds of the earth that are ever degraded owing to their being the emblems of sin. Others, like dull stones and heinous snakes, are barred from elevation.
11. Some have come to being only with their bodies and they do not know that death, like a mouse burrowing a house, has been undermining the fabric of their bodies.
12. Some have gone through the ocean of divine knowledge and become like gods in their living bodies, like Brahma, Hari, and Hara.
13. Some, having a little understanding, have gone down the depth of holy knowledge without ever reaching the bottom or finding its other shore.
14. Some beings, having undergone many births and having many more yet to pass through, remain abortive and unenlightened without the light of truth.
15. Some are tossed up and down, like fruit flung from the hand. Those flying upward have gone higher still, and those going down have fallen still lower and lower.
16. It is forgetfulness of Supreme joy that causes one to wander in various births of happiness or sorrow. Knowledge of the Supreme causes the cessation of reincarnation, just like the memory of Garuda destroys the power of the most destructive poison.
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Chapter 4.13 — Yama Explains to Bhrigu How Thoughts Create; They Go to Shukra
1. Yama said:-— Among these various species of living creatures, which resemble the waves of the ocean and are as numerous as the plants and vines of spring,
2. there are some among the yakshas, gandharvas and kinnaras who have overcome the errors of their minds and have well considered everything before and after them, and who have become perfect in their lives, passing as the living liberated persons in this world.
3. There are others among the moving and unmoving who are as unconscious of themselves as wood or stone. Many are worn out with error and are incapable of judging for themselves.
4. But those awakened to sense have the rich mine of the scriptures, framed by the enlightened to guide their souls.
5. Those awakened to sense and whose sins are washed off have their understanding purified by the light of the scriptures.
6. The study of good works destroys the errors of the mind, just as the course of the sun in the sky destroys the darkness of the night.
7. Those who have not succeeded to dispel the errors of their minds have darkened their understandings by a mist of ignorance, like the frosty sky of winter, and they find the phantoms of their error dancing like demons before their eyes.
8. All living bodies are subject to pain and pleasure, but it is the mind which constitutes the body, and not the flesh.
9. The body that is seen to be composed of the five elements to make flesh and bones is a creation of the imagination of the mind. It has no substantiality.
10. What your son had thought of in his mental body he found in that same body. He was not accountable to anybody for anything or whatever passed in his mind.
11. Whatever acts a man wills to do in his own mind, the same comes to take place in a short time. There is no other agency of anybody else required to bring them about.
12. Whatever the mind did in a moment and of its own accord, moved by its own will or desire, there is nobody in the world who has the power to do or undo at anytime.
13. The suffering of the torments of hell, the enjoyment of heavenly bliss, and the thoughts of birth and death are all fabrications of the mind that labors under these thoughts.
14. What need I to tell more in the manner of writers of many words on this subject, other than go to the place where your son is situated?
15. Shukra, having tasted the pleasure and pain of all these states at a moment’s thought of his mind, is now seated in penance (tapas) on the bank of the Samanga River under spreading moonbeams.
16. His vital breath, having fled from his heart, became like a moonbeam sparkling in a dew drop and entered the uterus in the form of virile semen. Vasishta speaking:—
17. Saying so, the lord of death smiled to think of the course of nature, and taking hold of Bhrigu’s hand in his own, they departed together like the sun and moon.
18. “O wonderful is the law of nature!” said Bhrigu slowly to himself, and then rose higher and higher, as the sun ascends above his rising mountain.
19. With their luminous bodies, they arrived at the spot of Samanga River and shone on high above the tamala trees below. Their simultaneous rising in the clear sky made them appear like the sun rising with the full moon over a cloudy horizon.
20. Valmiki said:— As the muni Vasishta was describing these things, the sun went down his setting mountain, and the day departed to its evening service. The court broke with mutual salutations to perform their evening rites and observances, after which they joined the assembly at the dawn of the next day.
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Chapter 4.14 — Yama & Bhrigu Awaken Shukra from His Tapas; He Remembers His Past Lives
1. Vasishta said:— Yama and Bhrigu departed from the cave of Mandara Mountain and traveled towards the bank of Samanga River.
2. As they descended from the mountain they saw a great light below proceeding from the bodies of the celestials sleeping in the tree groves of golden vines.
3. Birds were playing in sprays formed by cradling vines under the canopy of heaven. Lovely antelopes looked face to face, their eyes resembling blue lotuses.
4. They saw spiritual masters sitting on their stony seats upon elevated rocks, their bodies full of vigor and their eyes looking on the spheres with defiance.
5. They saw the lords of the elephant herd, their big trunks as large as palm trees, plunging in lakes covered with flowers falling constantly from the branches of flowering trees on the shore.
6. They saw mountain bulls dozing in their giddiness and sitting as if intoxicated, while their bodies were reddened by the red dust of flowers and their tails flushed with the crimson dust blown by the breeze.
7. There were deer whose tails served as fans for the mountain king immersed in pools filled with falling flowers.
8. They saw kinnara lads sitting on the tops of straight and stately date trees, playing by pelting each other with date fruit that stuck to the reeds below.
9. They saw big monkeys jumping about with their hideous reddish cheeks and hiding themselves in wide spreading vines.
10. They saw spiritual adepts clad with vests of the tawny clouds that shrouded them and being hit with mandara flowers thrown by celestial ladies.
11. The uninhabited foothills of the mountain were like the solitary walks of Buddhist wanderers, and the streams at its foot were flowing as if they were running to meet the sea, covered under yellow vests of kunda and mandara flowers of the spring season.
12. Trees decorated with wreaths of flowers and shaken by the breeze seemed like bacchanals giddy with the honey of flowers, rolling their dizzy eyes formed of fluttering bees.
13. They walked about here and there and looked at and admired the grandeur of the mountain, until at last they descended on the nether earth decorated with its cities and human dwellings.
14. In a moment they arrived at the bank of the Samanga, flowing with the loosened flowers of all kinds as if it were a bed of flowers itself.
15. Bhrigu saw his son on one of its banks, his body changed to another form and his features quite altered from his former state.
16. His limbs were stiff and his sense at a standstill as he sat with his mind fixed on steady meditation. He seemed to have been there a long time to rest from the turmoil of the world.
17. He thought upon the course of the currents of the world that continually flow with successive joy and sorrow to man, who gets rid of them after his long trial.
18. He became motionless as a wheel after its long winded motion. He found his rest after his prolonged whirling in the whirlpool of the ocean of the world.
19. He sat retired like a lover reclined solely on the thought of his beloved object. His mind was at rest after its long wanderings.
20. He sat in a state of uniform meditation without a shadow of division or differentiation, smiling with a cold apathy at all the pursuits of mankind.
21. Liberated from all concerns, released from the enjoyments of life, and free from the snare of desires and fancies, he rested in the supreme bliss of the soul.
22. His soul was at rest in the everlasting rest of God, just as a pure crystal catches the color of the gem that is next to it.
23. Bhrigu saw his son in the calmly composed and awakened state of mind, freed alike from his thoughts of what was desirable and from his hatred of what was disgusting.
24. Yama, seeing the son of Bhrigu, said to the father in a voice, hoarse as the sounding sea, “Lo there your son.”
25. “Awake,” he said to Bhargava (Shukra), which startled him from his meditation just like the roaring of a cloud rouses a slumbering peacock from his summer sleep.
26. Upon opening and lifting up his eyes, Shukra saw the god standing with his father on one side, both so pleased at the sight that their faces glowed like the discs of the sun and moon.
27. Shukra rose from his seat of kadamba leaves and made his obeisance to them who appeared to have come to him like the gods Hari and Hara in the disguise of a couple of brahmins.
28. After their mutual salutations, Yama and Bhrigu sat on a slab of stone and appeared like the venerable gods Vishnu and Shiva seated on the pinnacle of Meru.
29. The brahmin boy, having ended chanting his mantras on the bank of Samanga, approached them with a voice as sweet as nectarine juice of ambrosia.
30. “My lords, I am emancipated at your sight this day. You have blessed me by your sights, resembling those of the sun and moon appearing together.
31. The darkness that reigned in my mind, which no light of scriptures or spiritual or temporal knowledge or even my austerities could remove, is dispelled today by the light of your presence.
32. A kind look of the great gives as much joy to the mind as draughts of pure ambrosia satisfy the heart.
33. Tell me who are you, whose feet have sanctified this place like the glorious orbs of the day and night enlighten the sky?”
34. Being addressed in this manner, Bhrigu desired that Shukra remember his prior births, which he could well do by his enlightened understanding.
35. Bhrigu acquainted him with the state of his former birth, and he remembered it instantly by the clairvoyance of his inward sight.
36. He was struck with wonder at the memory of his former state. He smiled with a joyful face and glad heart to think on what he had been. Then Shukra said as follows.
37. “Blessed is the law of the Supreme Being that is without beginning or end and is known here below as destiny, and by whose power the world revolves like a two-wheeled carriage.
38. I see my countless and unknown births from first to last, and the innumerable accidents to which they were subject, for an entire kalpa duration of the world.
39. I have undergone great hardships and known prosperity also with the toil of earning. In different lives I have wandered, and I remember having roamed for a long time over the mountainous regions of Meru.”
40. “I drank water reddened with the pollen of mandara flowers and wandered along the bank of the heavenly Mandakini (the Milky Way) filled with lotuses.
41. I wandered about mandara groves filled with flowering vines like gold. I wandered under the shade of the kalpa trees of Mount Meru, and in the flowery plains above and about it.”
42. “There is nothing of good or evil that I have not tasted or felt or done myself. There is nothing that I have not seen or felt or known in my past lives.
43. Now I know the knowable and I have seen the imperishable one in whom I have my repose. Now I have rested after my toils were over and I have passed beyond the domain of error and darkness.”
44. “Now rise, O father, and let us go see that body lying on Mandara Mountain which is now dried like a withered plant.
45. I have no desire to remain in this place, or go anywhere of my own will. It is only to see the works of fate that we wander all about.
46. I will follow you with my firm belief in the one adored deity of the learned. Let that be the desirable object of my mind, and I will act exactly in conformity with my belief.”
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Chapter 4.15 — Shukra Laments His Original Body; Behaving in the Physical Body
1. Vasishta said:— Thus contemplating on the course of nature, these lovers of learning (Brighu, Shukra and Yama) moved with their spiritual bodies from the bank of the Samanga.
2. They ascended into the sky and passed through the small openings in the clouds to the region of the spiritual masters, from where they descended to the lower world and arrived at the valley of Mandara.
3. There, on a cliff of that mountain, Shukra saw the dried body of his former birth lying covered under dark and dewy leaves of trees.
4. He said, “Here is that shriveled body, O father, which you had nourished with many a dainty food.
5. There is that body of mine that my wet-nurse had so fondly anointed with camphor, aromatic agalwood, and sandal paste.
6. This body of mine was used to repose on cooling beds made with heaps of mandara flowers in the airy spots of Meru.
7. This body of mine used to be so fondly caressed by heavenly ladies of time past. Now it is lying on the bare ground below to be bitten by creeping insects and worms.
8. This body of mine that was accustomed to ramble in the garden plots of sandalwood now lies like a dried skeleton on a naked place.
9. My body now lies impassive of the feelings of delight in the company of heavenly nymphs and withers away unconscious of the actions and passions of its mind.
10. Ah my pitiable body! How you rest here in peace, forgetful of your former delights in the different stages of life and unconscious of the thoughts of your past enjoyments and amusements.
11. O my body that has become a dead corpse dried by sunbeams. You have become so hideous in your skeleton frame as to frighten me.
12. I take fright to look upon this body in which I had taken so much pleasure before, now reduced to a skeleton.
13. I see ants creeping over that breast of mine which was formerly adorned with necklaces studded with starry gems.
14. Look at the remains of my body, now only a load of dry bones, but whose appearance of molten gold had attracted the hearts of beautiful women.
15. Behold the stags of the forest flying with fear at the sight of the wide open jaws and withered skin of my carcass, which with its horrid mouth frightens the timid fawns in the woods.”
16. “I see the cavity of the withered corpse’s belly is filled with sunshine, like the mind of man enlightened by knowledge.
17. My dried body, lying flat on a mountain stone, resembles the mind of the wise, abashed at the sense of its own unworthiness.
18. It seems to be emaciating itself like an ascetic sitting in a trance (samadhi) on the mountain, dead to the perceptions of color, sound, touch and taste, and free from all its desires and passions.
19. It is freed from the demon of the mind and is resting in its joy without any apprehension of the vicissitudes of fate and fortune, or fear of fall.
20. The joy that attends the body upon calming the demon mind is not to be had from possession of any vast dominion of the world.”
21. “See how happily this body is sleeping in this forest, free from all its doubts and desires in the world, liberated from the network of its fancies.
22. The restlessness of the apish mind disturbs and troubles the body and is hurled down by its excitation like a tall tree uprooted from its bottom.
23. This body, free from the impulses of the mischievous mind, is sleeping in its highest and perfect joy and is quite released from the jarring turmoil of the world clashing like the mingled roaring of lions and elephants fighting each other.
24. Every desire is a fever in the bosom, and the group of our errors is like the mist of autumn. Mankind has no release from these except by the dispassion of their minds.”
25. “They who have had the high-mindedness to lay hold on the tranquility of their minds have gone beyond the bounds of worldly enjoyments.
26. It is by my good fortune that I came to find this body of mine, resting in these woods without its troublesome mind, and freed from all its tribulations and feverish anxieties.”
27. Rama said, “Venerable sage who is versed in all knowledge, you have already described Shukra’s passing through many births in different shapes and feeling all their casualties of good and evil.
28. Why did he have so much regret for his body begotten by Bhrigu, in disregard of all his other bodies and the pains and pleasures which attended upon them?”
29. Vasishta answered:— Rama, the other bodies of Shukra were merely the creations of his imagination, but that of Bhargava, the son of Bhrigu, was the actual one, produced by the merit of his earlier acts.
30. This was the first body with which he was born by the will of his maker, being first formed in the form of subtle air, then changed into the shape of wind.
31. This wind entered into the heart of Bhrigu in a flux for the vital and circulating breaths, and being joined in time with the semen, formed the germ of Shukra’s body.
32. The person Shukra received the brahmin sacraments and became his father’s associate until at last it was reduced to the form of a skeleton in course of a long time.
33. It was because this was the first body that Shukra obtained from Brahma the creator that he lamented so much for it.
34. Though dispassionate and devoid of desire as Shukra was, yet he sorrowed for his body, according to the nature of all being born of flesh.
35. This is the way of all flesh, whether it be the body of a wise or unwise man. This is the usual custom of the world, whether the person was mighty or not.
36. Those acquainted with the course of nature and those who are ignorant of it, like brutes and beasts, are equally subject to the course of the world, bound in the net of fate and liable to grief and sorrow.
37. The wise and the unwise are on an equal footing with respect to their nature and custom. Only the difference in desire distinguishes one from the other. The lack of desires or the bondage to desires is the cause of their liberation or bondage in this world. Lack of desires is the great aim that distinguishes the great from the meanmindedness of the base.
38. As long as there is the body, there is the feeling of pleasure in pleasure and pain in pain. But the mind that is unattached to and unaffected by them makes itself show wisdom.
39. Even great souls are seen to feel happy in pleasure and become sorrowful in matters of pain, showing themselves as wise in their outward circumstances.
40. The shadow of the sun is seen to shake on water, but not so the fixed sun himself. So the wise are moved in worldly matters, though they are firm in their faith in God.
41. As the unmoved and fixed sun seems to move in his shadow on the wave, so the wise man who has rid himself of worldly concerns still behaves like the unwise in it.
42. He is free who has the freedom of his mind, although his body is held in bondage. But he labors in bondage whose mind is enslaved by error, though he is free in his body.
43. Feelings of the mind cause happiness, misery, liberty and bondage, just like the flames of fire cause light.
44. Therefore conform yourself with the custom of the society in your outward conduct, but remain indifferent to all worldly concerns in your inner mind.
45. Remain true to yourself by giving up your concerns in the world, but continue to discharge all your duties in this world by the acts of your body.
46. Take care of the inner sorrows, bodily diseases, and the dangerous whirlpools and pitfalls in the course of your life. Do not fall into the black hole of selfishness, which gives the soul its greatest anguish.
47. Mind, O lotus-eyed Rama, that you mix with nothing and let anything mix with you. Be of a purely enlightened nature and rest content in your inner soul.
48. Think in yourself the pure and holy spirit of Brahma, the Universal Soul and maker of all, the tranquil and uncreated All, and be happy forever.
49. If you can rescue yourself from the great gloom of the individual ego and arrive at the state of pure indifference to all objects, you will certainly become great in your mind and soul and be the object of universal veneration.
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Chapter 4.16 — Shukra’s Original Body Is Brought Back to Life
1. Vasishta continued:— The god Yama interrupted Shukra’s long lamentation and addressed him in words that sounded as deep as the roaring of a cloud.
2. Yama said, “Now, O Shukra, cast off your body of the devotee at the Samanga River and enter this dead body in the manner of a prince entering his palace.
3. You shall perform austere penance with this your first born body and by virtue of that you shall become the teacher of the daitya race of giants.
4. Then at the end of the great kalpa, you shall have to leave your mortal body forever, as one casts off a faded flower.
5. Having attained the state of living liberation by merit of your prior acts, you shall continue as the teacher of the leader of the great asura demons forever.”
6. “Farewell. We shall now depart to our desired dwellings. Know for certain that there is nothing desirable to the mind that it cannot accomplish.” Vasishta speaking:—
7. Saying so, the god vanished from before the weeping father and son, moving in the burning sky like the dispenser of light, the sun.
8. After the god had gone and gained his destined state among the gods, the two Bhrigus remained to contemplate on the inexplicable and unalterable course of destiny.
9. Shukra entered his withered corpse, as spring enters into a faded plant, in order to adorn it again with its spring bloom and its springing blossoms.
10. His brahmin body immediately fell down on the ground, staggering as when a tree falls down with its uprooted trunk, and immediately became disfigured in its face and limbs.
11. The old sage Bhrigu, seeing the dead body of his son come back to life, sanctified it with propitiatory mantras and sprinkling of water from his sacred water pot (kamandalu).
12. The veins and arteries and all the cells and cavities of the dead body were again supplied with their circulating blood, just like dry river beds are filled with floods in rainy weather.
13. The body filled with blood made the limbs bloom like the growth of lotuses in rainy lakes and the bursting of new shoots and buds in spring plants.
14. Shukra then rose up from the ground breathing the breath of life, like a cloud ascending to the sky by force of winds.
15. He bowed down to his father standing in his holy figure before him, like a rising cloud clings and kisses the foot of the lofty mountain.
16. Then the father embraced the revived body of his son and shed a flood of affectionate tears upon him, like a high risen cloud washes a mountain top with showers.
17. Bhrigu looked with affection on the newly risen old body of his son and smiled to see the resuscitation of the body that he had begotten.
18. He was pleased to know him as the son born of himself and to find his features impressed on him.
19. Thus son and father graced each other by their company, as the sun and lotus-lake rejoice to see one another after the shade of night.
20. They rejoiced at their reunion, like a loving pair of swans at the end of the night of separation, and like a joyous couple of peacocks at the approach of rainy clouds.
21. The worthy father and son sat awhile to pause after all their works and troubles were at an end, then they rose up to discharge the duties that were at hand.
22. They set fire to the body of the Samanga River brahmin and reduced it to ashes. For who is there among earth-born mortals who should ignore the customary usages of his country?
23. Afterwards the two devotees Bhrigu and Shukra continued to dwell in that forest, like the two luminaries of the sky, the sun and moon.
24. They both continued as living liberated guides of men by their knowledge of all that was to be known, and by preserving the equanimity of their minds and the steadiness of their dispositions amidst all the changes of time and place.
25. In course of time Shukra became the teacher of the demons, and Bhrigu remained in his patriarchal rank and authority among the sons of men.
26. Thus the son of Bhrigu, who was first born as Shukra, gradually was led away from his holy state by his thought of the heavenly nymph, and subjected to various states of life to which he was prone.
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Chapter 4.17 — The Difference between Shukra’s Daydreams & Ordinary Daydreams
1. Rama said, “Tell me sage, why do others’ daydreams not have the same result as that of Bhrigu’s son?”
2. Vasishta replied:— The reason is that Shukra’s body at first issued from the will of Brahma. He was born of the pure family of Bhrigu without being corrupted by any other birth.
3. The purity of mind which follows upon decreasing desires, is called its coolness, and the same is known as the stainless state of the soul.
4. Whatever the man of a pure and contrite spirit thinks in his mind, the same comes to take place immediately, like the turning of seawater turns into an eddy.
5. As the errors of various wanderings occurred to the mind of Shukra, so it is with everybody, as Bhrigu’s son is an example.
6. As the serum contained in the seed develops itself into shoots and leaves, so the mind evolves in all the forms that are contained therein.
7. Whatever forms of things are seen to exist in this world, they are all false appearances, as are their disappearances also.
8. Nothing appears or disappears to anyone in this world, only error and fantasies in the air that show themselves to those bewitched by this magic scene of the world.
9. Our notions of this part of the world present their forms to our view, and the appearance of thousands of such worlds in the mind is mere idea, as false as the show of a magic lantern.
10. As the sights in our dream and the images of our imagination are never apart from our minds, and as they cannot show themselves to be seen by others, such is our false conception of the world.
11. So all places and things are only imaginary ideas. They show themselves as real objects only to the blind sight of the ignorant.
12. Ghosts, demons, and devils are also only imaginary figures of the mind, born in the shallow brain of men to terrify themselves with their hideous shapes.
13. Thus have we all become like the dreaming son of Bhrigu, understanding the false creations of our imagination as sober realities.
14. So the creation of the world and all created things are pictured in the mind of Brahma and make their repeated appearances before him as the phantoms of a fantastic mental fabrication.
15. All things that appear to us are as false as these phantoms. They proceed from the mind of Brahma just like the varieties of trees and shrubs are produced from the same sap of spring season.
16. Considered from a philosophical viewpoint, it will be found that the will or desire of each person produces the objects of his desire.
17. Everybody sees everything in the world according to the nature of the thoughts in his mind, then he dies with his wrong view of it.
18. In its idea, anything appears to exist which in reality is nonexistent, though it is apparent to sight. The existence of the world is like a lengthened dream. The visible world is a wide spread snare of the mind, like chains at the feet of an elephant.
19. The reality of the world depends upon the reality of mind which causes the world to appear as real. The loss of the one destroys them both because neither can exist without the other.
20. The pure mind has the true notions of things and reflects the true image of everything, as the gem polished from its impurities receives a perfect reflection of everything.
21. The mind is purified by its habit of fixed attention to one particular object. It is the mind undisturbed by desires that receives the true light and reflection of things.
22. As the gilding of gold or any brilliant color cannot stand on base metal or on a piece of dirty cloth, so it is impossible for the weakened mind to apply itself intensely to anyone particular object.
23. Rama asked, “Sage, how did the mind of Shukra receive the reflection of the shadowy world and its temporary movement? How did these fluctuations arise and remain in his mind?”
24. Vasishta said:— Shukra was impressed with the thoughts of the world from his father’s lectures. These impressions remained in his mind like the future peacock resides in the egg.
25. The world is naturally situated in the embryo of the mind of every species of living being. The world gradually evolves from the mind like shoots, sprouts, leaves and flowers from a seed.
26. Everybody sees in his mind what his heart desires to possess, as it is in the case of our prolonged dreams.
27. Know it this way, O Rama, that a partial view of the world arises in each person’s mind in the same manner as it appears in the mind in a dream at night.
28. Rama said, “But tell me sage, whether the thought and the things thought of simultaneously meet in the mind of the thinker, or is it only the mind that thinks of the object which it never meets?”
29. Vasishta replied:— The soiled mind cannot easily unite with the object of its thought, just as a dirty and cold piece of iron cannot join with a pure red-hot one, unless it is heated and purified from its impurity.
30. The pure mind and its pure thoughts are readily united with one another, as pure waters mix together into one body of the same kind, which muddied water cannot do.
31. Lack of desire constitutes the purity of the mind, which is readily united with immaterial things of the same nature like itself. The purity of the mind leads to its enlightenment, and these being united in one leads it to the Supreme.
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Chapter 4.18 — Incarnations of the Living Spirit
1. Vasishta continued:— Living souls (jivatman) residing in the seeds of material bodies in all parts of the world differ from one another according to the difference in their knowledge of themselves.
2. As long as there is no willingness or unwillingness connected with the identity of the living soul, it reposes in a state of rest, not unlike that of sound sleep (susupti).
3. But living souls addicted to their wishes identify with those wishes and find themselves born here below in their desired shapes.
4. The subtle particles of the living soul and its inclinations run in one channel to the reservoir of life and are thickened into one living being by their combinations.
5. Some are situated apart from one another and dissolve separately. Some are joined together and are born like two gunja fruit growing together.
6. The universe consists of thousands of orbs like gunja fruit and contains the combinations of atoms on atoms and those unconnected with one another. The totality forms the great garden of God, Brahman.
7. These particles of the living soul and its inclinations being joined with one another become dense and thick and remain in the same place where it has grown.
8. As ideas in the mind fall away, the mind changes and a different succession of births follow to suit those changes.
9. Thus every regeneration of the mind in a new life is accompanied by its particular desires and their results. The new life is attended with its proper body unless the mind has been cleared of those thoughts.
10. As pure spirit in the form of vital breath (prana) performs the functions of the body, so the mind being reborn in a new body is employed in all the functions of that body.
11. The souls of all living beings are subject to the three states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep. These states are caused by the mind and not by the body.
12. The soul in its state as an individual person does not give rise to the body and passes under the triple conditions like seawater gives rise to the waves.
13. The living soul that has attained its intellectual state, beyond the conditions of sound sleep (susupti), is awakened to the knowledge of itself and is released from its rebirth, while the ignorant soul is subject to be born again.
14. Though knowing and unknowing souls attain the state of deep sleep and resemble each other in kind, yet the unknowing deep sleep soul that is not awakened to the knowledge of its spirituality is doomed to be reborn in the mortal world.
15. Omnipresent consciousness makes it pass into the mind of its next birth and exhibit itself in different forms in all its succeeding and subordinate regenerations.
16. These repeated births and regenerations are as endless as the many layers in the trunk of a plantain tree. The spirit of Brahma is adjacent to and pervades the whole, like the lofty leaves of the same tree.
17. The influence of the Divine Spirit is as cool as the cooling shade of a plantain tree. It is of its own nature and it is as unchangeable as the core of the plantain tree, in spite of the changes in all its outer coats and coverings.
18. There is no difference or diversity in the nature of Brahma the Creator in his repeated and manifold creations of worlds. He being the seed of the world shoots forth by his moisture into the form of the expanded tree of the world and becomes the same seed again.
19. So Brahman taking the form of the mind becomes the same Brahma by the memories of his mind, just as the sap of the soil makes the seed bring forth fruit which reproduces the same seed.
20. So the productive seed proceeding from Brahma displays itself in the form of the world. But as nobody can say what is the cause of the sap in the seed, so no one can tell why the spirit of God teems with productive seed (of Brahma) in it.
21. So no one should inquire into the cause of Brahma because his nature is inscrutable and indefinable. It is improper to say he is this or the other.
22. One must not attribute causality to what is not the cause, or impute causation of material bodies to the immaterial spirit of God that is the prime and supreme cause of all. We must reason rightly regarding what is certain truth and not argue falsely about what transcends our knowledge.
23. The seed casts off its seedy form and assumes the shape of fruit, but Brahman (the seed of all) contains the fruit (of the universe) in his bosom without laying aside the seed.
24. The seed of the fruit bears a material form, but Brahman the universal seed has no form at all. Therefore it is improper to compare the visible seed with the invisible Brahman who is beyond all comparison.
25. Brahman evolves himself in his creation and does not produce the world like fruit from seed. Therefore know the world is the empty heart of Brahman and is neither born nor unborn of itself.
26. The viewer viewing the view is unable to see his inner self because his consciousness, engrossed by external objects, is disabled from looking into itself.
27. Of what use is wisdom to one whose mind labors under the error of water in a mirage? What power has a mirage over a mind that possesses wisdom?
28. As one who sees a clear sky does not see every part of it, and as the eye that looks on all others does not see itself, so we see everything about us outside ourselves.
29. As one who sees a clear sky does not see what is above the sky, so we see ourselves and others as material beings. But we cannot see the inner part of the immaterial soul, as wise men do.
30. Brahma, who is as clear as the sky, cannot be perceived despite all our efforts because the sight of the sky as a visible thing cannot be compared to the invisible Brahman.
31. Such a sight cannot present itself to us unless we can see the true form of God. But the sight of subtlest things is far from being visible to the beholder.
32. We see only the outward sight because we cannot see the beholder of the sight. The beholder (God) is the only being in existence and all that can be seen is nothing.
33. God, permeate in everything that is visible, cannot be seen as a personal God or anything visible as a distinct thing. Because whatever the almighty King proposes to do, he instantly forms their notions and becomes the same himself.
34. As the sweet saccharine juice of the sugarcane thickens itself into the form of the sugar candy, so the will of God becomes compact in the solid body of the universe.
35. As the moisture of the ground in spring becomes incorporated in plant life bringing forth flowers and fruit, so the energy of Divine Consciousness turns itself into the living spirit which soon appears in a physical form.
36. Everything we see cannot be separated from our idea of it in our mind, so the inner notion shows itself in the shape of the visible object, like a vision in a dream, which is only a representation of thoughts entertained in our minds.
37. The ideas of self and others are like granules in the mind, like grains of salt produced in salty ground from the earth’s moisture. So the multitudes of thoughts in the mind are exactly like the grains of salt on the seashore.
38. As the serum of the earth appears in various shapes, so the sap of consciousness produces an infinity of ideas and thoughts growing like trees in the wilderness of the mind.
39. These trees again shoot forth in branches and leaves, of which there is no end. So every other world is like a forest supplying its sap to innumerable plants, like thoughts in the mind.
40. Consciousness perceives in itself the existence of everything as distinctly as the inherent power of the living soul exhibits itself in creation.
41. Every one’s intellect, by virtue of its former acts and their memories impressed upon the mind, perceives the existence of the world in the same manner as his living soul happens to meet with everything as present before it.
42. There are some living souls who meet and join with others and propagate their species, then cease to exist after having lived a long time together.
43. You must observe with keen sight and a well discerning mind in order to look into the different states and thoughts of others.
44. There are thousands of worlds contained in the mind, like atoms in earth, the ample space of the sky, and in water. Worlds reside in those atoms like oil in mustard seeds.
45. When the mind becomes perfect, it comes to be a living being. Consciousness being purified becomes all pervasive. Hence consciousness becomes one with the living spirit.
46. The individual selves from the lotus-born Brahma and all other living beings are only their own self-deception. The sense of the existence of the world is like a protracted dream rising and setting in the mind.
47. Some beings pass through successive states of existence, like a man passing from one dream to another, and they think they are firmly established in them, just as one supposes to be settled in some house appearing in his dream.
48. Whatever consciousness dwells upon at any time or place, it immediately sees the same appearing before it, just like anything seen in dream appears to be true to the dreamer at that time.
49. The atom of consciousness contains the particles of all our notions, just like the seed contains the powdery particles of future leaves, branches, flowers and fruit.
50. I consider the atoms of consciousness and the mind contained within the particles of the material body to be both empty and joined in one without causing a duality in their nature.
51. Consciousness conceives many other atomic germs within itself under the influence of particular times, places, actions and circumstances that cannot be extraneous from itself.
52. It is this particle of consciousness that displays creation like the vision of a dream before it. It is this conception that led the gods Brahma and others to the idea of their visible bodies, as it makes little insects think of their own bodies.
53. All that is displayed in this (outer) world is in reality nothing at all. Yet these living beings, though possessing the particles of consciousness in them, falsely conceive the duality of an extraneous existence.
54. Some intellects (of particular persons) display themselves in their bodies and derive pleasure from their consciousness through their eyes and external organs.
55. Others look on outer objects as receptacles of consciousness from the belief that the all pervasive, inseparable and imperishable Intellect (Soul) must abide in each and every one of them.
56. Some men view the entire physical world within the body instead of the all pervading consciousness of Brahma as Vishwarupa, the Universal Form. These being hardened by long habit of thinking so are plunged in the gulf of error.
57. They wander from one error to another just like a man sees one dream after another. They roll about in the pit of their delusion, like a stone hurled down from a hill.
58. Some persons rely on the union of the body and soul. Others who rely on the soul alone are placed beyond the reach of error. Many who rely only on their consciousness shine as rational beings.
59. They who think in terms of other people’s errors are to be considered as under the influence of false dreams in their sleep.
60. God being the all-pervading spirit of nature is truly seen in the spirit of everybody. Because He is everywhere, his omnipresence is present in everything in all places.
61. God, shining as everyone’s living soul, resides as the soul of each soul and mind whether directly or indirectly created.
62. One living being is born in another, and that again within another, like the layered bark of plantain trees that grow one under the other over the inmost core.
63. By changing from thinking about phenomena to recognizing their essence in the invisible fullness, we get rid of our error of the reality of the world of form, as we do of the ornament in the material gold.
64. He who does not inquire into the questions “Who am I?” and “What is the world?” is not liberated in his inner soul and suffers under the continuous fever of a false life.
65. He is successful in his inquiry who by his good understanding comes to know how to curb his worldly greed day by day.
66. As proper routine is the best medicine to secure the body’s health, so the habit of keeping the organs of sense under control is the only way to improve understanding.
67. He who rambles with his words and does not discern with his mind is like a blazing fire in a picture. No one can be wise until he gets rid of his false wit.
68. As the perception of air comes by feeling and not by word of the mouth, so wisdom proceeds from the curtailing of desires.
69. Ambrosia in a painting is no ambrosial food, fire in a picture is not burning flame, a beauty in a drawing is no beautiful maid, and wisdom in words only is lack of wisdom.
70. At first wisdom serves to weaken our passions and enmity, then to uproot them at once, and at last it lessens our desires and endeavors and gives the appearance of holiness to its possessor.
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Chapter 4.19 — Differences between Waking & Dreaming States
1. Vasishta continued:— Brahma is the seed of life and remains as empty air everywhere. Hence there are many kinds of living beings situated in the world within the womb of universal Life.
2. All living beings composed of dense consciousness and soul contain other living animals underneath, like the manifold layers of the plantain tree, and insects contained in the womb of earth.
3. Worms and insects that grow out of the dirt and scum of earth and water in the hot season and appear filthy to our sight nevertheless are living beings full of particles of consciousness.
4. However living beings strive for their progress, so they prosper in their lives according to the different scopes of their thoughts and actions.
5. Those who worship gods go to the region of gods. Those who worship yaksha nature spirits meet in the world of yakshas. Those who adore Brahma ascend to the world of Brahma, Brahmaloka. Therefore resort to what is the best and greatest refuge.
6. Shukra the son of Bhrigu obtained his liberation at last by the purity of his conscience, even though he was enslaved of his own nature to phenomena at his first sight of them (the apsara fairy).
7. A child born on earth first has purity of its soul, then it becomes of the same nature as the education he gets, and not otherwise.
8. Rama said, “Please sage, tell me the difference between the states of waking and dreaming. What are the states of waking watchfulness, waking dream and waking delusion?”
9. Vasishta answered:— The waking state is that in which we have a sure reliance. Dreaming is the state in which we place no certain reliance and we believe it to be untrue.
10. Dream is something that seems like the waking state but lasts only for a moment. If an object is seen over a length of time and distance, it is said to be a waking dream or dreaming wakefulness.
11. The state of waking dream can be of longer or shorter duration during which what we see appears the same at all places and times.
12. Dreaming, as long as it lasts, is also like waking, but waking seems like a dream when the objects of its vision are not lasting.
13. A dream that is understood as an occurrence of the waking state is believed to be waking, but the inner consciousness of dreaming makes it a dream.
14. As long as one knows anything to be lasting before him, he believes himself to be waking. But no sooner is it lost to him, than he thinks himself to have been dreaming it.
15. Now hear how it is. There is a principle of life in the body that causes it to live. This vital element is an electric force called life (jiva chetana).
16. When the body is active with the powers of the mind, speech and the other members of action, its vital element is put into motion by the vital breath that it breathes.
17. This breath circulating throughout the body gives it the powers of sense and consciousness which have their seats in the heart and mind where the false conception of the world is hidden.
18. The mind circulates about the outer world, through the passages of sight and other organs, and sees within itself the forms of many changing shapes and figures.
19. As long as these forms remain permanent in the mind, it is called the waking state. So far have I told you about the cause of waking, now hear me expound on the laws of sleep and dreaming.
20. When the body is weary with action of its limbs, mind or speech, the living element becomes still and remains at rest with the calm and quiet soul residing within the body.
21. The internal actions of the body and mind being quieted and the motion of the heart being at rest, the living principle becomes as still as the flame of a lamp unshaken by wind.
22. The vital power ceases to exert itself in the members of the body and ceases to keep consciousness awake. The senses of sight and others do not act upon their organs, nor do they receive sensations from without.
23. Life lies latent in the inner heart, like liquid oil residing in a sesame seed. It lies as dormant in the interior part as cold within frost and fluidity in clarified butter.
24. The particle of consciousness that has taken the form of life, after being purified from its earthly impurity, mixes with the internal soul and attains the state of sound sleep, as if lulled to unconsciousness by a cooling breeze.
25. One who feels that his mind to be incapable of passion, who deals unconcernedly with every one, and who has reached the fourth stage of consciousness beyond the three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping, is said to be deadened in life (turiya).
26. When the vital principle again comes to action after the enjoyment of its sound sleep, either in this or the other world, it takes the name of living element or mind or self-consciousness.
27. This principle of life and though, sees within itself the ebbs and flows of many worlds, just like a large tree and all its parts and productions are observed to be contained within the seed.
28. When the breeze of the vital breath puts a slight motion to the element of life, it becomes conscious of its self-existence as “I am.” The motion being accelerated, life finds itself flying in the air.
29. When the vital breath is immersed in the fluids (phlegm) of the body, life gets the feeling of humidity in itself, as a flower perceives its own fragrance.
30. When it is assailed by internal bile, then it has the feeling of its inner heat and sees all outward objects with its melancholy temperament.
31. When it is full of blood, it perceives a fiery redness in itself, like that of a red rock, or like the crimson red of the setting sun in the sky.
32. Whatever one desires to have, he sees the same in himself in his sleep, and this is by the force of his inner vital breath acting upon his mind as it does upon his outward organs.
33. When the organs are not besieged by external objects that disturb the inner senses of the mind, the mind indulges itself reflecting upon many things. This is called its dreaming state.
34. But when the organs are besieged by outward objects and the mind is moved by motion of vital breath (vayu) to their sight and perception, it is called the state of waking.
35. Now, O great-minded Rama,! you have learned the inner process of your mind. But there is no reality in it or in this existent world which is subject to the evils of death, desire and destruction.
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Chapter 4.20 — The Mind Is the Person, not the Body
1. Vasishta said:— Now Rama, I have told you all this in order to explain the nature of the mind to you, and for no other reason.
2. Whatever the mind often thinks upon with a strong conviction of its reality, it immediately assumes that form, like an iron ball igniting from contact with fire.
3. Therefore the convictions of being or not being and of receiving or rejecting a thing depend upon the imagination of the mind. They are neither true nor untrue but merely fluctuations of the mind.
4. The mind is the cause of error, and it is the mind which is the framer of the world. The mind also stretches itself in the form of the universe (vishwarupa) in its gross state.
5. The mind is called the person (purusha, person, i.e., the ruler of the body) which, being brought under control and directed in the right course, produces all prosperity.
6. If the body were the person, how could the high-minded Shukra pass into various forms in his very many transmigrations?
7. Therefore the mind (chitta) is the ruler of the body (purusha) which is rendered conscious (chetya) by it. Whatever form the mind assumes to itself, it undoubtedly becomes the same.
8. So inquire into what is great, devoid of attributes and error, and which is easily attainable by everybody. Be diligent in your inquiry and you will surely succeed to obtain it.
9. Hence whatever is seated in the mind, the same comes to pass on the body. But what is done by the body never affects the mind. Therefore, O fortunate Rama, apply your mind to truth and shun whatever is untrue.
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Chapter 4.21 — Philosophy of the Mind Creating Its Own Reality; Different Schools of Thought
1. Rama said, “Venerable sage who is acquainted with the mysteries of all things, I have a great question swelling in my heart like a huge surge of the sea.
2. How is it, sage, that any foulness could attach to the mind when it is situated in the eternal purity of the infinite Spirit unbounded by time and space?
3. Again, as there is nothing, there never was anything, and there never will be anything other than the entity of the Holy One, how and from where could this foulness come in Him?”
4. Vasishta answered:— Well said Rama! I see that your understanding is approaching the way to your liberation and exhaling the sweetness of the blossoms of the Nandana garden of paradise.
5. I see your understanding is capable of judging both deductively (reason) and inductively (observation) and is likely to attain that acme which was gained by the gods Shankara (Shiva) and others.
6. However, it is not yet the proper time and place for you to ask this question. It should be asked when I come to the conclusion of the subject.
7. You should ask this question when I come to the conclusion, and it will be demonstrated to you as clearly as the location of a place on a map placed in the palm of your hand.
8. Your question will be most suitable at the end, just as the sounds of the peacock and swan are best suited to the rainy season and autumn.
9. The blueness of the sky is pleasant to look upon at the end of the rainy weather, but it is odd to speak of it during rain.
10. It is best to investigate into the mind by the nature of its acts and operations that tend to be the causes of the repeated births of mankind.
11. The mind by its nature has the power of thinking and, as determined by the seekers of salvation, the mind leads all the organs and body part to their several actions.
12. Men learned in scriptures and eloquent in speech have given various names to the mind in different systems of philosophy according to the mind’s various perceptive faculties and different functions and operations in the body.
13. Whatever nature the mind assumes by the fickleness of its thoughts, it receives the same name and nature for itself, just like the same fleeting air receives from blowing different smells.
14. The mind delights itself with thoughts of its desired objects and assimilating itself into their natures.
15. It receives the same form in which it delights and which it assumes to itself in its imagination.
16. The body, being subject to the mind, is molded in the same form as the mind, just as wind is perfumed by the fragrance of the flower bed through which it passes.
17. The inner senses being excited actuate the outward organs of sense in their own ways, just as the exciting motion of winds drives the dust of the earth before their course.
18. The mind exerts its powers to make the external organs perform their several functions, just as flying winds drive dust in different directions.
19. Such are the acts of the mind which is said to be the root of action, and these combine together as inseparably as the flower and its fragrance.
20. Whatever nature the mind adopts to itself by its accustomed habit, the same shoots forth in the form of the mind’s two kinds of movement: will and action.
21. The mind does its action and brings about the result by its diligent application. In the same way, the mind enjoys the results and enslaves itself to the enjoyment.
22. The mind understands what is its right course, which is whatever agrees with its temperament, and the mind knows for certain that there is no other way to its real good other than its accustomed course.
23. Minds of different casts follow different pursuits according to their particular inclinations. Minds employ themselves in the acquisition of wealth and virtues, desired objects and liberation according to whatever they think is their best choice.
24. Kapila (Samkhya) philosophers say the mind is a pure substance, like immaterial consciousness, and this view is adopted in their philosophy and scriptures.
25. These men, relying on the error of their own hypothesis, teach their supposed view of the mind to others as the only light to guide them in the way of their salvation.
26. But the teachers of Vedanta doctrines acknowledge the mind as Brahma himself and preach peace and self-control as the only means to attain liberation.
27. The authoritative assertion of Vedanta is that there is no other way to the salvation of the supposed mind, and it is an assumed dogma in other schools also.
28. The Vijnanavada philosophers also have ascertained and upheld peace and selfgovernment as the leaders to liberation, but this too is an expression of their false understandings.
29. Thus all sects give out their own views in the false rules they have adopted for the salvation of their supposed minds. Each school asserts that there is no other way to salvation except what they lay down.
30. So Buddhists and the other sectarians propose a variety of fictitious methods for the liberation of the mind out of their arbitrary will in their respective scriptures.
31. The arbitrary rules of the learned, and those unsupported by the Sruti scriptures, are as numerous and varying from one another as bubbles in clear water.
32. Mighty Rama, know that the mind is the source of all these rules and methods, just as the sea is the source of every kind of gem.
33. There is no innate sweetness in sugarcane or bitterness in the neem leaf, both of which are sucked by insects. There no heat or cold inherent in the sun or moon. It is the intrinsic habit of the mind that makes the difference.
34. Thus those who want to enjoy the unadulterated happiness of their souls should habituate their minds to assimilate themselves to that happy state, and they are sure to have the same.
35. The mind having fled from the sphere of the phenomenal world becomes exempt from all its pleasure and pain, like a young bird with feathers flying in the air by casting off its eggshell and leaving its cage below.
36. O sinless Rama, cherish no fondness for the phenomenal world, which is an unreal illusion full of fear and un-holiness stretched out to catch the mind.
37. The wise describe our consciousness of the world as a magic scene (maya), an appearance of ignorance (avidya), a mere thought, and the cause and effect of our acts.
38. Know that the delusive mind stretches the visible world before you. Therefore rub it off from the mind like dirty mud.
39. This visible appearance that naturally appears before you in the form of the world is called a product of ignorance by the wise.
40. Men being deluded by it are at a loss to know their real good, like the blinded eye is incapable of seeing the brightness of the day.
41. Contemplation of objects presents phenomena to our view, like trees in the empty sky. Being without thought of objects removes their images from inner and outer sights.
42. The abstract meditation of the thoughtful yogi weakens the outward impressions, and by dissociating the soul from all external things, keeps it steady and calm in itself.
43. The mind, by removing its attention from unreal sights, is inclined to the right view of things and produces clarity of understanding and a detached tranquility of the soul.
44. The mind that regards neither realities nor unrealities and is unconscious to pleasure and plain feels in itself the delight of its singleness or unity.
45. Application of the mind to unworthy thoughts and to the internal or external sights of things blocks the soul from tasting the sweets of its unity.
46. The mind that is subject to endless desires is like the clear sky hidden by clouds. Such a mind wanders in the maze of doubt between truth and untruth, such as supposing the rope to be the serpent.
47. Man, by the mist of his doubts, obstructs his own sight of the clear sky of his consciousness. But he is unaware of his error’s obstruction and indulges the fancies of his imagination that adds to his error.
48. He takes the true, incorruptible and supreme Brahma in a different light, as one mistakes one thing for another in the dark or in his error.
49. When man is rid of his false imagination, he comes to the knowledge of true God and his happiness, like one freed from his false apprehension of a tiger in a thicket is set at rest with himself.
50. The imaginary monster of one’s imprisonment in the emptiness of the body is dispersed by his insight into it, just as the fear of a lion lurking in the jungle is removed upon finding no such thing.
51. So when you look deeply, you will find no bondage in the world. The notions that this is the world and this is myself are only errors of the mind.
52. Flight of fancy fills the mind with illusions of good and evil, just as the shade of evening presents apparitions of vetala ghosts to little children.
53. Our fancies alight on us at one time and depart at another. They assume different forms at will, just like our consorts act the part of wives in our youth and nurses in our old age.
54. She acts the part of a housewife in her management of household affairs, and she is taken as a mistress when she embraces us in her bosom.
55. Like an actress, the mind forgets to display its parts when it plays another, so everybody is absorbed in the thoughts he has in his head and neglects other thoughts which are absent.
56. The ignorant do not perceive the selfsame unity in all the things he sees in the world. They see everything in the light of the ideas they have imprinted in their minds.
57. They also meet with results in the forms they have in mind, even though in reality they are not what they seem to be, nor are they entirely false.
58. Man sees everything in the same manner in which he thinks it in himself. If his fancy is an elephant in the sky, he sees elephants in clouds.
59. In his thought he believes these elephants are pursuing their mates, so it is the thought that gives the outward forms of things.
60. Rama, repel your drowsiness and behold the Supreme Soul in your soul. Be like a bright jewel by repelling the shadows of all external things.
61. It is impossible, O Rama, that one so enlightened as you will receive the reflection of the world as dull matter, like others do.
62. Being certain of its immateriality. Never taint your mind with its outward coloring or the knowledge of its reality, but know the reflection of the world is in no way distinct from the Supreme Spirit.
63. Keep in your mind that Being who is without beginning or end, and meditate on the spirit in Spirit. Do not let the reflections of your mind stain the pure crystal of your soul.
64. Be on your guard so you never allow the reflections of your mind to taint the clear crystal of your soul. Remain unmindful of phenomena and do not regard any worldly desire.
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Chapter 4.22 — Qualities of the Mind Resting in Supreme Joy
1. Vasishta continued:— Men of sound judgment are free from mental disturbance and are perfect in their mastery over themselves by restraining the flight of the mind and fastening it to its inner awareness.
2. They swerve from the sight of phenomena as unworthy of their notice. They seek knowledge of their chief good. They behold the all-seeing God in their mental and external sights and have no perception of unintelligent phenomena.
3. They are dormant amidst the thick gloom of error spreading over the confused paths of life. They are awake under the transcendent light of divine knowledge that requires the vigilance of the living.
4. They are utterly indifferent to the sweet pleasures of this life, as they are also indifferent to the cheerless prospects of future enjoyments.
5. They are mixed with the water of spiritual unity and in the boundless ocean of omnipresence. By their rigorous austerities, resembling the vigorous heat of the sun, they melt away like ice in a river.
6. At the disappearance of their ignorance, all their restless desires and passions are set to rest, like the turbulent waves of rivers subside of themselves in the absence of stormy clouds.
7. The net of desires that ensnares men like birds in traps is cut asunder by a spirit of dispassion, just like the meshes of a net are torn apart by a mouse’s teeth.
8. As the seeds of kata fruit serve to purify foul water, so philosophy tends to cleanse human nature of its errors.
9. The mind that is free from passions, from worldly connections and contentions, and from dependence on anyone or anything, is also liberated from the bonds of ignorance and error, like a bird set free from its cage.
10. When the disturbances of doubts are settled and the wandering of curiosity is over, then the full moon of internal fullness sheds its light over the mind.
11. As the mind’s true greatness appears after it sets from the height of its dignity and high-mindedness, so it begins to have its equanimity in a state resembling the calm sea after a storm.
12. As long as the shadow of concerns hangs over the mind, it is darkened and stupefied and broken in the heart, until the sun of renunciation rises to dispel its gloom.
13. The sunshine of consciousness makes the lotus-bed of intelligence shine in its pure luster and unfolds the foliage of its virtues before the dawning light above it.
14. Intelligence is charmer of hearts and delighter of all in the world. It is fostered by the quality of goodness, just as the moon becomes full by her increasing digits (phases).
15. What more shall I say on this subject, other than he who knows the knowable (God) has his mind expanded like the sphere of heaven which has no beginning nor end.
16. The mind enlightened by reasoning is as exalted in its nature as to take pity on even the gods Hari, Hara, Brahma and Indra.
17. The gods, continually seeking to quench their thirst from waters appearing in the mirage, like the thirsting deer (running to them by mistake), are far from tasting the happiness of egoistic yogis.
18. Desires in the hearts of all beings subjects them to repeated births and deaths causing the ignorant, but not the wise, to appear and disappear like waves of the sea.
19. The world presents no other show in its course except that of the appearance and disappearance of bodies. Now they are seen to move about as the sport of time, and then fall as a prey to it forever.
20. But the spiritual body is neither born nor dies in this world. It is not affected by the decoration or loss of the material body but remains unchanged as the emptiness of a pot, both when it exists and when it is broken to pieces.
21. As understanding rises with its cooling moonbeams within us, it dispels the mist of false desires rising before us like a mirage in a dreary desert.
22. The spectacle of the world presents its dusky appearance to our view only as long as we do not consider the questions, “What am I, and what are all these about me?”
23. He sees rightly who sees his body as an apparition of his error and the abode of all evils, and that his body does not serve the spiritual meditation of his soul and his maker.
24. He sees rightly who sees that his body is the source of all the pain and pleasure which afflict at different times and places, and that the body does not answer his purpose of spiritual edification.
25. He sees rightly who sees the One Ego pervading infinite space and time as the source of all accidents and events that constantly take place in them.
26. He knows rightly who knows the Ego to be as minute as a millionth or billionth part of the point of a hair, and pervading the entire infinity of space and eternity of time.
27. He perceives rightly who perceives the Universal Soul to permeate all the various objects of his sight and knows them as sparks of the Light of Consciousness.
28. He perceives rightly who perceives within himself the omnipotence of the infinite Spirit present in all states and conditions of beings, and the same Consciousness to abide in and preside over all.
29. He understands rightly who understands by his wisdom that he is not his body that is subject to diseases, dangers, fears and anxieties, and to the pain and pangs of old age and death.
30. He understands rightly who understands his soul as stretching above and below and all about him, whose magnitude has no bounds nor equal to it.
31. He knows full well who sees his soul as a string to which all things are strung like pearls on a necklace, and that it is not the mind or heart that is seated in the brain or bosom.
32. He thinks rightly who imagines neither himself nor anything else as existent except the imperishable-Brahman, and who knows himself as living between reality and unreality.
33. He is right who beholds what they call the three worlds to be only parts of his self, and that the three worlds have been rolling about him like the waves of the sea.
34. He is wise who looks with pity upon the frail world and who has compassion for the earth as his younger sister.
35. That great soul who has withdrawn his mind from the earth looks brightly upon the earth by repressing his reliance on the interests of his individual ego.
36. He sees the truth who finds his body and the whole world filled by the colossus figure of Consciousness without the opposition of any sensible object.
37. He who looks on the states of misery and happiness that attend worldly life as only the fluctuating conditions of ego has no cause to regret or rejoice at them.
38. He is the right-sighted man who sees himself situated in a world filled with Divine Spirit. He has nothing to desire or dislike in this state of existence.
39. He is the discerning man who has weakened his estimation and dislike of what is desirable and disgusting to him in the world, and who sees the world as full of the essence of that Being whose nature is beyond comprehension and conception.
40. That man of great soul is a great god whose soul, like the all-pervading sky, extends over all and penetrates through every state of existence without receiving the color dye of any.
41. I bow down to that great soul who has passed beyond the states of light, darkness and fancy.
42. I bow down to Shiva of transcendental understanding whose faculties are wholly engrossed in meditation of the Eternal Being who presides over the creation, destruction and preservation of the universe, and who is manifest in all the various wonderful and beautiful grandeurs of nature.
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Chapter 4.23 — The Wonders within the Realm of the Body
1. Vasishta continued:— The man liberated in this life and settled in the Supreme state of joy is not tarnished by reigning over the realm of his body and turning about like a wheel.
2. The body of a wise man is like a princedom to him, calculated for his benefit and of no disadvantage. It is comparable to the dwelling of a holy hermit for the consummation of his efforts and liberation.
3. Rama said, “O great sage, how can you call the body to be the dominion of a man, and how can a yogi have his princely joy in it?”
4. Vasishta replied:— Beautiful is this city of the body. Being enlightened by the light of the mind, it is filled with every good to mankind and it produces endless blessings in both worlds.
5. The eyes are the windows of this city, letting out the light for the sight of distant worlds. The two arms are like the two hinges of this city-gate, with hands like latches reaching to the knees.
6. The hairs on the body are like moss and grass on the walls, and the porous skin resembles the netted covering of the palace. Thighs and legs are like the columns of a building, and the feet with ankles and toes are like pedestals of the columns.
7. Lines marked under the soles of the feet are like inscriptions marked on the foundation stone and upon the base of column pedestals. The outer skin that covers flesh, marrow, veins and arteries, and the joints of the body are like the beautiful plaster of the building hiding the mortar and bricks inside.
8. The middle part of the body above the two thick thighs contains the aqueducts, beset by hairy bushes about them, and like rivers running amidst a city, between rows of trees on both sides of the banks.
9. The face is the royal garden beautified by eyebrows, forehead and lips. Glances of the eyes are like blooming lotuses, and the cheeks are like flat planes in it.
10. The broad bosom is like a lake with nipples like lotus buds. Streaks of hair on the breast are as its herbage, and the shoulders are the rocks projecting from it.
11. The belly is the store-house, eager to receive the delicious articles of food. The long lungs of the throat are blown loudly by internal winds.
12. The bosom is considered to be the treasury where jewels are kept. The nine openings of the body serve as so many windows for the citizens to breathe.
13. There is the open mouth like an open doorway, with its teeth slightly seen as its gratings. The tongue moving in the door way like a naked sword is like the tongue of goddess Kali, thrust out when she devours her food.
14. The ear-holes are covered by hair-like long grass, and the broad back resembles a large plain surrounded by rows of trees on its borders.
15. The two private passages serve as sewers and drains of the city to let out its dirt. The heart is the garden-ground where passions promenade like ladies.
16. Here understanding is bound in chains like a prisoner, and the organs of sense are let loose as monkeys to play about. The face is like a flower garden. Its smiles are its blooming blossoms.
17. The life of the man who knows the proper use of his body and mind is prosperous in everything. It is attended by happiness and advantages and no disadvantage whatever.
18. This body is the source of infinite trouble to the ignorant, but it is the fountain of infinite happiness to the wise man.
19. Its loss is no loss to the wise, but its continuance is the cause of continued happiness to the wise man.
20. The body serves as a chariot to the wise who can travel everywhere by riding in it. The body of a wise man can produce and procure everything conducive to his welfare and liberation.
21. Having a body is of no disadvantage to the wise man. He can use it to obtain everything: all the objects of his hearing and seeing, of his touch and smelling, and his friends and prosperity.
22. It is true that the body is subject to a great amount of pain and pleasure, but a wise man can well bear with them.
23. A wise man reigns over the dominion of his body without any pain or trouble in the same manner as one remains the lord of his house without any anxiety or disturbance.
24. He is not addicted to licentiousness like a high spirited horse. He is not subject to greed after some poisonous plant, so he does not part with the auspicious daughter of his prudence.
25. The ignorant can see the cities of others, but not see the gaps and breaks of their own. It is better to root out the fears of our worldly enemies (passions) from the heart, than live under their subjection.
26. Beware of diving into the perilous river that flows fast by the dreary forest of this world with its currents of desires, whirlpools of greed, and sharks of temporal enjoyment.
27. Men often bathe their outer bodies in holy streams without looking to the purification of their inner souls. They shave their hair where rivers meet the sea in hopes of obtaining their object.
28. All sensual people are adverse to the unseen happiness of the next world and dwell on the pleasure of their own imagination in the inner recesses of their minds.
29. This city of the body is pleasant to one acquainted with his spiritual nature because he deems it as the paradise of Indra filled with pleasurable fruit as well as the fruit of immortality.
30. All things depend on the existence of the city of the body, yet nothing is lost by its loss since the mind is the seat of everything. These bodily cities that fill the earth cannot be unpleasant to anybody.
31. The wise man loses nothing when he loses the citadel of his body, just as the emptiness in a vessel is never lost when the vessel breaks.
32. As the air in a pot is not felt by touch like the pot itself, so is the living soul that resides in the city of the body.
33. The omnipresent soul situated in this body enjoys all worldly enjoyments until at last it comes to partake of the joy of liberation which is its main object.
34. The soul does all actions, yet it is no doer of them but remains as witness of whatever is done by the body, and sometimes presides over the actions actually done by it.
35. The playful mind rides on the swift car of the body, like mounting on a carriage to get to one’s destination, and passes in its unimpeded course to distant journeys.
36. Seated there, the mind plays with its favorite and lovely objects of desire that are seated in the heart as its mistresses.
37. These two lovers, (mind and heart, will and desire) reside side by side in the same body, just as the moon and the star Vishakha happily remain gladly in the same lunar mansion.
38. The sage, like the sun, looks down from above the earth’s atmosphere on the hosts of mortals who have been cut down by misery, like heaps of brambles and branches scattered in the woods.
39. The sage has full satisfaction of his desires and full possession of his best riches. He shines like the full moon without fear of waning.
40. The worldly enjoyments of the wise do not tend to spoil their nature, just as the poisonous drink of Shiva was not capable of doing him any injury.
41. The food that is one’s habit is as gratifying to him as a thief who by long acquaintance forgets his thievishness and becomes friendly to his neighbors.
42. The wise man looks upon the separation of his friends and possessions in the light of the departures of the visiting men and women, or actors and actresses at the end of a play in a theatre.
43. As passengers chance to meet unexpectedly on their way to see a play, so the wise people look unconcernedly at their meeting and separation from the occurrences of life.
44. As our eyesight falls indifferently on all objects about us, so the wise man looks unconcernedly upon all of life’s things and transactions.
45. The wise man is self sufficient in all conditions of life. He neither rejects the earthly blessings that are presented to him, nor does he long or strive hard for what is denied to him.
46. The regret of longing after what one does not possess, like the fear of losing what he possesses, does not trouble the mind of the wise, like the plumes of a dancing peacock do not shake the unshaken mountain.
47. The wise man reigns like a monarch free from all fears and doubts, devoid of all cares and curiosity, and with a mind free from false fancies.
48. The soul that is immeasurable in itself is situated in the Supreme Soul, just like the boundless Milky Ocean is contained in the body of the one universal ocean.
49. Those who are sober in their minds and tranquil in their spirits laugh to scorn the vile beasts of sensuality as being madmen, as are those who have debased themselves to the state of mean reptiles by the meanness of their sensual appetites.
50. The sensualist eager to gratify his senses is as much ridiculed by the wise as a man who takes a woman deserted by another is derided by his tribe.
51. The unwise man becomes wise by renouncing all the pleasures of his body and subduing the emotions of his mind by his reason, just like a rider subdues an uncontrollable elephant by the goad in his hand.
52. He whose mind is bent on the enjoyment of bodily pleasures should first of all check that inclination, just like they pull poisonous plants from the ground.
53. The well governed mind, once let loose, returns to its former habits like a spoiled boy, like a tree withered in summer heat grows luxuriant at a slight rainfall.
54. That which is full out of its time does not become fuller in its season, like the river that is ever full receives no addition over its fullness in the rains.
55. The mind that is naturally greedy wishes for more with all its fullness, like the sea with enough water to flood the earth receives rain waters and the outpourings of innumerable rivers in its unsatisfied womb.
56. The mind that is restrained in its desires is gladdened with little gains, and these being increased are reckoned as blessings by the restrained mind.
57. A captive prince, who when he was free was unsatisfied with his realm, is content with his morsel of bread when freed.
58. You must chastise your reprobate members and mind with the writhing of your hands gnashing of your teeth and twisting of your limbs and body.
59. The brave and wise man who intends to overcome his enemies must first of all strive to subdue the internal enemies of his own heart and mind and the members of his body.
60. On this earth, those men are reckoned the most prosperous and best disposed in their minds who have the courage to govern their minds instead of being governed by them.
61. I revere those pure and holy men who have quelled the huge and crooked serpent of their minds, lying coiled in the cave of their hearts, and who rest in the inner tranquility and serenity of their souls.
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Chapter 4.24 — The Non-Entity of the Mind
1. Vasishta continued:— The vast domain of death in the region of hell is full with the furious elephants of our sins and the uncontrollable enemies of the senses with the arrows of desires.
2. Our senses, being the sources of all misdeeds and wicked actions, are our invincible enemies. They are the ungrateful miscreants working against the body in which they have found their refuge.
3. Wandering senses, like flying birds, have found their nest in the body from where, with outstretched wings of right and wrong, they pounce on their prey like vultures.
4. He who can trap these greedy birds of the senses under the snare of right reason is never ensnared in the trap of sin, but breaks its bonds as an elephant does his chains.
5. He who indulges himself in sensual pleasures which at first are pleasant, will be disgusted with them in process of time.
6. He who possesses the treasure of knowledge in his frail body is not overcome by his inner enemies of sensual appetites.
7. The kings of earth are not as happy in their earthly citadels as the lords of the cities of the own bodies and the masters of their own minds.
8. He who has brought his senses under his slavery and reduced the enemy of his mind to subjugation has the blossoms of his understanding ever blooming within him as in the spring meadow.
9. He who has weakened the pride of his mind and subdued the enemies of his senses has his desires all shrunken like lotuses in cold weather.
10. So long as the demons of our desires infest the region of our hearts, we are unable to bring the mind under the subjugation of our knowledge of the true One.
11. He is the faithful servant who acts according to the will of his master. He is the true minister who does good services to his prince. He is the best general who has command over the forces of his own body, and the best understanding is guided by reason.
12. The wife is loved for her endearments and the father is revered for his protection of the child. A friend is valued by his confidence, and the mind for its wisdom.
13. The mind is called our father because it enlightens our understanding with the light of the scriptures, and for leading us to perfection by losing itself in the Supreme Spirit.
14. The mind that has well observed and considered all things, that is enlightened and firm in its belief and is employed in laudable pursuits, is truly a valuable gem within the body.
15. The mind as a counselor of our good teaches us how to cut down the tree of our transmigration and produce the tree of our future bliss.
16. Such is the gem of the mind, O Rama, unless it is soiled by the dirt and filth of sin and vice. Then it requires washing and cleaning with the water of reason in order to throw its light on you.
17. Be not dormant to cultivate reason as long as you abide in the dark abode of this world. Do not thrust yourself to every accident that awaits upon ignorant and unreasonable men.
18. Do not overlook the mist of error that spreads over this world of illusion, abounding with multitudes of mishaps and mischief.
19. Try to cross the wide ocean of the world by riding on the strong boat of your reason, using your discrimination to chart the right course against the currents of your sensual desires.
20. Know your body to be a frail flower and all its pleasure and pain to be unreal. So never take pleasure and pain for realities, as in the instance of the snare, snake and the matting, but remain above sorrow for anything as in the instance of Bhima and Bhasa.
21. O high minded Rama, give up your misjudgments of reality and of yourself, and of this and that thing. Direct your understanding to the knowledge of the Reality which is beyond all these. Then, by forsaking your belief and reliance in the mind, continue in your course of eating and drinking as before.
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Chapter 4.25 — Story of Dama, Byala & Kala Created by Demon King Sambara
1. Vasishta said:— O intelligent Rama, who shines as the delight of mankind in this world and endeavors to attain your chief good by the accomplishment of your best objects,
2. do not let the example of the demons Dama the snare and Byala the snake apply to your case. Try to extricate yourself from vain sorrowing by the lesson of fortitude as given in the story of Bhima and Bhasa.
3. Rama asked, “What is that parable of the snare and the snake which you say must not apply to my case? Please tell me in order to remove the sorrows of my mind and of all mankind. And what is that example of fortitude by Bhima and Bhasa that I should imitate in order to rid all earthly sorrow?
5. Please tell me and enlighten me with your purifying words, like the roaring of rainy clouds serves to alleviate the summer heat of peacocks.”
6. Vasishta replied:— Rama, hear me relate both of these stories so that you may derive the benefit of learning from their examples.
7. There lived one Sambara, the chief of demons and a profound sorcerer in an underground cavern filled with enchanting wonders like a sea of gems.
8. He constructed a magic city in the sky with gardens and temples of gods and artificial suns and moons emblazoning its ceiling.
9. It was decorated with rich stones resembling the gems of Sumeru Mountain. The demon’s palace was full with opulence and treasures of every kind.
10. The beauties in his harem vied with the celestial dames in their charming strains. The trees of his pleasure garden were shaded by an awning of bright moonbeams on high.
11. Blue lotuses blooming in his bedroom made the blue eyed maids of his court blush. Swans in the lakes cackled about the beds of golden lotuses in them.
12. The high branches of golden plants bore blossoms of artificial lotuses, and rows of karanga trees dropped down showers of mandara flowers on the ground.
13. His garden-house consisted of both cold and hot baths, and refrigerators and fireplaces for hot and cold seasons. The turku weapons of the demons had baffled the arms of Indra himself.
14. Flower gardens on all sides surpassed the mandara groves of paradise. Demon magic skill had planted rows of sandalwood trees with their encircling snakes all around.
15. The inner compound was strewn over with gold dust and vanquished the glory of heaven. The palace courtyard was covered with heaps of flowers up to the knee.
16. The earthen figure of Shiva that was exposed for show surpassed the image of Hari (Vishnu) holding his discus and the mace. Jewels sparkling like fireflies in the inside apartment resembled the twinkling stars in the arena of heaven.
17. The dark night of the subterranean dwelling was illuminated by a hundred moon-lights like the starry heaven, and he chanted his martial songs before his idol deity.
18. His magical elephant drove away Indra’s Airavata, and his inner apartment contained a hoard of precious treasures from the three worlds.
19. All wealth, prosperity, grandeur and dignity paid their homage to him. The whole host of demons honored him as their commander.
20. The protection of his arms gave shelter to the whole body of demons. He was the receptacle of all sound judgment and the reservoir of every kind of treasure.
21. This destroyer of gods (devas and suras) had a gigantic and terrific appearance. He commanded a large army of demons (asuras) to defeat the deities.
22. Whenever this magician demigod went to sleep or left for somewhere out of his city, the gods sought every opportunity to harass the demonic force.
23. This enraged Sambara to such a degree that he broke trees in his rage and he ordered his generals to protect his legions.
24. The gods, finding their opportunities, killed the demons one by one like hawks pounce and kill feeble and timid sparrows.
25. The king of the demons then appointed other generals over his army, and they were as swift-footed and hoarse sounding as the waves of the sea.
26. When the leader of the demon band pursued his enemies to their station above the heavens, the gods also destroyed them in a short time.
27. The gods fled from their heavenly abode for fear of them, like timid deer flying into the thick thickets at the sight of Shiva’s and Gauri’s bull.
28. The gods were weakened with weeping, and the faces of apsara nymphs were covered in tears. The demon saw the heavenly abode abandoned by the celestials, as if the desolation of the world.
29. He wandered about in his rage, plundering and took away all the valuables of the place. He burnt down the cities of the rulers of heaven, and then returned to his own abode.
30. The enmity between the deities and demons was so intense on both sides that it forced the gods to quit their heavenly abodes and hide in distant parts of the world.
31. But the enraged gods succeeded at last by their perseverance to defeat and slay all the generals and combatants that Sambara set against them.
32. Then the defeated demon gave vent to his fury and began to breathe out living fire from his nostrils like a burning mountain.
33. After much searching in the three worlds, he found the hiding place of the gods, as a wicked man succeeds in his purpose by his best endeavors.
34. Then to protect his army, he produced by his sorcery three very strong and fearful demons with hideous appearances like that of death.
35. These horrible leaders of his army, being produced in his magic, flew upward with their enormous bodies resembling the flying mountains of old.
36. They had the names of Dama the snare, Byala the snake, and Kata the mat given them for their entrapping, enfolding and enwrapping the enemy, according to the demon’s wish.
37. They were beings without previous births and devoid of changing desires. The lack of their prior acts made them move about as freely as spiritual beings in one uniform tenor of their course.
38. These were not born like men from the seeds of their previous acts with solid and substantial bodies. They were mere artificial forces and airy forms, copies of images in the demon Sambara’s mind.
39. Being born in this way, they followed events as they happened like blind sheep. Just like a boy moves his limbs when he is not in sound sleep, these three demon generals performed actions devoid of subtle karmic impressions and self or egoism.
40. They did not know the sudden attack of the enemy on them or their attack on the enemy.
41. They did not know running away from battle. They did not know birth or death, victory or defeat, or war as a matter of fact.
42. But they attacked the enemy in front of them with blows that turn even mountains into dust.
43. Sambara was pleased with them. He was confident that with their help he would defeat the enemy.
44. Sambara was confident that his army, strong and stable under the shades of the shoulders of the three demons, could withstand the onslaught of the gods just as Mount Meru stands firm in spite of the blows of the teeth of the elephants carrying earth from the eight quarters.
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Chapter 4.26 — Description of Battle between Gods and Demons
1. Vasishta continued:— So thinking, the chief of the demons dispatched his generals Dama, Byala and Kata to lead his armies to destroy the gods upon earth.
2. The demonic army rose out of the foaming sea and infernal caverns in full armor and wielding fiendish arms. Then bursting forth with hideous noise, the demon soldiers soared aloft with their huge bodies like mountains flying on high.
3. Their monstrous and mountainous bodies hid the disc of the sun in the sky, and their stretching arms smote him of his rays. They increased in number and size under the leadership of Dama, Byala and Kata.
4. Then the dreadful hosts of the celestials issued out from the forests and caverns of heavenly Mount Meru like torrents of the great deluge.
5. The forces under the flags of gods and demons fought together with such obstinacy that it seemed to be an untimely and deadly struggle between the gods and demons as during the prior world.
6. The heads of decapitated warriors decorated with shining earrings fell down on the ground like the orbs of the sun and moon which, being shorn of their beams as at the end of the world, were rolling in the great abyss of chaos.
7. Heroes hurled huge hills with the hoarse noise of roaring lions. Hills were blown up and down by the blast of an all destroying tornado.
8. Warriors’ broken weapons fell on mountain tops and were ground to granules. They fell like hailstones upon lions that had been resting on their sides below.
9. The sparks of fire that flew about from the clashing of the weapons were like the scattered stars of the sky flying at random on the last day of dissolution.
10. Vetala ghosts as big as tala palm trees were beating the tala time of their giddy dance with the tali clapping of their palms, dancing over heaps of carnage floating on floods of blood flowing like a bloody sea on the surface of earth.
11. Showers of flowing blood put down the flying dust of the battlefield. Numbers of crowned heads separated from their bodies glistened among the clouds like so many stars sparkling in the sky.
12. Demons filled all sides blazing like burning suns with their luminous bodies. They held tall kalpa branches in their hands to strike the enemy and used to break down the tops and peaks of mountains.
13. They ran about with their swinging swords in hand, breaking down buildings by the speed of their motion, like blasts of a gale. The rocks they hurled at the enemy were reduced to dust, like the ashes of a burning mountain.
14. The gods also pursued them like sacrificial horses, driving the weaponless demons like clouds before the storm.
15. They fell upon and laid hold of them like cats pouncing upon rats, seizing them for their prey. Meanwhile demons also seized gods like bears lay hold of men climbing tall trees with fear.
16. Thus gods and demigods dashed against one another, like forest trees in a storm strike each other with their branching arms, and scattered the flowers of bloodshed on both sides.
17. Their broken weapons lay scattered on all sides, like heaps of flowers lying on the sides of a hill after a strong gale has passed.
18. There was a close fight between both armies, a confused noise filling the vault of the sky which, like the hollow of an udumbara tree, resounded to the combined hum of gnats rumbling within.
19. The elephants that rule the different quarters of the skies sent their loud roars, answering the tremendous noise of the world-destroying cloud.
20. The thickened air grew as hard as the solid earth with gathering clouds, and thickened clouds, so dense a fist could grab them, were heavy and slow in their motion.
21. Broken weapons repelled by war-chariots hit against the hills and emitted a rattling noise from their inner hollowness, like the discordant sounds of a chorus.
22. Mountain forests were set on fire by fiery weapons, and burning rocks melted down their lava with a noise as dreadful as that of volcanic Mount Meru with its melting gold and blazing with the brightness of the twelve suns of the zodiac.
23. The clamor of battle was like that of the beating waves of a boisterous ocean filling the vast deep of the earth, resounding hoarsely by their impact.
24. Demons hurled huge rocks that flew like birds in the air with their flapping wings sounding like thunder claps, while the hoarse noise of rocky caverns sounded like the deep sounding ocean.
25. The clamor of warfare resembled the rumbling of the ocean when it was churned by Mandara Mountain, and the clashing of weapons sounded like the gods clapping their hands in their revelry for the ambrosial nectar.
26. In this war between the two armies, the haughty demons gained the day and laid waste to the cities and villages of the gods, together with their lands of hills and forests.
27. The mountainous bodies of demons were also pierced by the gods’ great weapons, and the roof of heaven was filled with flying weapons flung by the hands of both parties.
28. Bursting rockets broke the peaks and pinnacles of rocks by the hundreds, and flying arrows pierced the faces of both gods and demigods.
29. Whirling discs lopped off the heads of the warriors like blades of grass, and the clamor of the armies rolled with an uproar in the midway sky.
30. Struck by flying weapons, heavenly charioteers fell upon the ground and their celestial cities were deluged by the hydraulic engines of the demons.
31. Flights of swords, spears and lances flew in the air like rivers running down mountain sides. The vault of heaven was filled with war-whoops and shouts of the combatants.
32. The palaces of the ruling gods were falling under the blows of demons from behind, and their female apartments echoed with the lamentations and jingling bells of the goddesses.
33. The stream of flying weapons from the demons washed the bodies of fighting men with blood, making them fly off from the battlefield with hideous cries.
34. Death was now lurking behind, now hovering over the heads of the gods and leaders of armies, like a black bee now skulking in, and then flitting over the lotuses. Armies on both sides were defeated by the blows of the gods and demigods on the battlefield.
35. Demons flew in the air like winged mountains moving around the sky, making a whizzing rustle that was dreadful to hear.
36. The mountainous bodies of the demons, pierced by the gods’ weapons, were gushing out with streams of blood that converted the earth below to a crimson sea and tinged the air with purple clouds over the mountain heights.
37. Many countries and cities, villages, forests, vales and dales were laid waste, and innumerable demons, elephants, horses and human beings were put to death.
38. Also numbers of elephants were pierced with long and pointed shafts of steel and iron, and the bodies of huge Airavatas were bruised by the blows of steeled fists.
39. Flights of arrows falling in showers like flood rains crushed the tops of mountains. The friction of thunderbolts broke down the bodies of mountainous giants.
40. Furious flames of heavenly fire burned the bodies of the infernal hosts who, in their turn, quenched the flames with water-spouts drawn out of an underground deep.
41. Enraged demons flung up and hurled huge hills against the gods’ falling fires which, like a wild conflagration, melted the hard stones to liquid water.
42. The shadow of the demons’ weapons spread a dark night in the sky which the gods destroyed by the artificial flame of lightning, blazing like so many suns in heaven.
43. The fire of the lightning dried up the waters of the raining clouds, and the clashing of arms emitted a shower of fire on all sides.
44. The shower of thunder-arms broke down the battery of mountain ramparts, and the sleep-weapon of slumber dispelled by that of its counteraction.
45. Some bore the sawing weapon, while others held the Brahmastra, the invincible weapon of warfare that dispels the darkness of the field by its flashing.
46. The air was filled with shells and shots fired by firearms. Machines for hurling stones crushed the missile weapons of fire.
47. War chariots, with their up-lifted flags and moonlike discs, moved like clouds about the horizon, while their wheels rolled with loud roaring under the roof of heaven.
48. The constant thunders of heaven were killing demons in numbers, who were again restored to life by the great art of Shukra that gave immortality to demonic spirits.
49. Now the gods were victorious, and now flying away defeated. Now they were looking to their good stars, and now to the inauspicious ones in vain.
50. They looked upon heaven with uplifted heads and eyes for signs of good and evil, but from the heaven above the world on the earth below appeared like a sea of blood.
51. The rage of stubborn enmity made the world seem like a forest of full blown red kinsuka flowers, and like a sea of blood filled with mountains of dead bodies.
52. Dead bodies hanging on tree branches appeared as their fruit moving to and fro by the breath of winds.
53. The roof of the sky was filled with forests of long and large arrows, and with mountains of headless trunks with their hundred arms.
54. As these torsos leaped and jumped in the air, they plucked the clouds and stars and the heavenly cars of the celestials with their numerous arms and hurled their mountain-like missile arms and clubs and arrows to the heavens.
55. The sky was filled with the broken fragments of buildings falling from the seven spheres of heaven. Their constant fall raised a noise like the roaring of flood clouds.
56. These sounds were resounded by the elephants of the deep (Patala), while the bird of heaven, Garuda, was snatching gigantic demons as his prey.
57. The dread of the demons drove the celestial deities, the siddhas and sadhyas (deities who guard sacred rites), and the gods of the winds, together with the kinnaras, gandharvas and charanas from all their different quarters to one indistinct side.
58. Then there blew a tremendous tornado like the alldestroying north wind of universal desolation, laying waste the trees of the garden of paradise and threatening to destroy the gods. The thunders of heaven were splitting and breaking down mountains flung to the face of the sky.
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Chapter 4.27 — Brahma Advises the Defeated Gods to Foster the Demons’ Ego
1. Vasishta related:— As the war of the gods and titans raged violently on both sides, and their bodies were cut by the others’ weapons,
2. streams of blood gushed out from their wounds like waterfalls in the Ganges basin. Gods caught into the snares of demigods groaned and roared aloud like lions.
3. Byala with his stretching arms was crushing the bodies of the gods. Kata was harassing them in their unequal challenge with them.
4. The demons waged their battle with the rage of the midday sun, and put to flight the Airavata elephant of Indra, the leader of the gods.
5. Gods dropped down with their bodies gored with wounds and spouting with blood. Their armies fled on all sides like the currents of a river overflowing and breaking down its bank.
6. Dama, Byala and Kata pursued the flying and fleeing gods in the same manner as a raging fire runs after wood for its fuel.
7. The demons sought and searched long after the gods in vain, for they had disappeared like deer and lions among the thickets after breaking loose from their traps.
8. Failing to find the gods, the generals Dama, Byala and Kata returned with cheerful hearts to their chief in his home in the infernal region.
9. The defeated gods halted awhile, then prayed to almighty Brahma in order to consult him on the means of gaining victory over the demons.
10. Brahma then appeared to the blood smeared gods with his purple countenance, like the bright and cooling moonbeams appear in the evening on the surface of the sea, colored with the crimson colors of the setting sun.
11. The gods bowed down before Brahma and complained of the danger that was brought upon them by Sambara through his generals Dama, Byala and Kata, whose doings they fully described to him.
12. The judging Brahma, having heard and considered all this, delivered the following encouraging words to the host of gods before him.
13. Brahma said:— “You will have to wait another hundred thousand years before you can destroy Sambara under the arms of Hari (Vishnu) in an open engagement.
14. Today you have been forced to flee by the demonic Dama, Byala and Kata who have been fighting with their magical arts.
15. They are elated with pride at their great skill in warfare, but it will soon vanish like the shadow of a man in a mirror.
16. These demons, led by their ambition to annoy you, will soon be reduced under your might like birds caught in a snare.
17. The gods, being devoid of ambition, are free from the vicissitudes of pain and pleasure. They have become invincible by destroying the enemy through their patience.
18. Those who are caught and bound fast in the net of their ambition, and led away by the thread of their expectation, are surely defeated in their aims, just like birds are caught with a string.
19. The learned who are devoid of desire and are unattached to anything in their minds are truly great and invincible, as nothing can elate or depress them at anytime.
20. A man, however great and experienced he may be, is easily overcome by a boy when he is enticed by his greed to pursue after everything.
21. The knowledge that “this is I” and “these are mine” is the bane of human life. One with such knowledge of his self and egoism becomes the receptacle of evils like the sea of briny waters.
22. He who confines his mind within a narrow limit for lack of his great and extended views is called dastardly and narrow-minded man in spite of all his learning and wisdom.
23. He who puts a limit on his soul (atma), which is both unbounded and infinite, surely reduces his divine grace to minuteness by his own making.
24. If there is anything in the world beside the one Self that may be yours or worth your desire, you may long to have it. But all things being only parts of the universe, there is nothing particular for anyone to have or seek.
25. Reliance on earthly things is the source of unhappiness, while our disinterest with all things is the fountain of everlasting joy.
26. As long as the gods are independent of worldly things, they must remain invincible. But if they are dependent on them, they will perish like a swarm of gnats in the flame of a wildfire.
27. It is man’s inner desire that makes him miserable in himself and allows him to become subdued by others. Otherwise, worm-like man is as firm as a rock.
28. Where there is any desire in the heart, it is thickened and hardened in time, just like everything in nature increases in its bulk in time. But not so things that are not in existence, such as the lack of desires.
29. O Indra, if you want to cause their destruction, try to foster both ego selfishness and the ambition of Dama and others for their universal dominion.
30. Know that it is greed that causes poverty and all dangers to mankind, just like the karanja tree is the source of its bitter and pernicious fruit.
31. All those men who rove about under the bondage of greed have bid farewell to their happiness by subjecting themselves to misery.
32. One may be very learned and well-informed in everything, and he also may be a noble and great man, but he is sure to be tied down by his greed, just like a lion is tied by his chain.
33. Greed is known as the trap of the mind, which is situated like a bird in its nest of the heart, as it is within the hollow of the tree of the body.
34. A miserable man by his greed becomes an easy prey of the clutches of death, just like a bird is caught in a boy’s net and lies panting on the ground owing to its greed.
35. You gods need not bear the burden of your weapons anymore, nor toil and moil in the field of war any longer, but try your best to inflame the pernicious greed of your enemies to the utmost.
36. Know, O chief of the gods, that no arm or weapon or any program or policy is able to defeat the enemy until they defeat themselves by their lack of patience and excess of their greed.
37. Dama, Byala and Kata have become elated with their success in warfare. Now they must cherish their ambition and foster their greed to their ruin.
38. No sooner have these ignorant creatures of Sambara gained their high desires, than you are sure to foil their vain attempts.
39. Now you gods, excite your enemies to the war by your policy of creating in them an ambition and intense desire for conquest. By this you will gain your object.
40. They, being subject to their desires, will be easily subdued by you, for nobody that is led blindfold by his desires in this world is ever master of himself.
41. The path of this world is either even or rugged according to the good or restless desires of our hearts. The heart is like the sea in its calm after storm, when its waves are still as our subsided desires, or as boisterous as the stormy sea with our increasing greediness.
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Chapter 4.28 — Description of Renewed Battle between Gods & Demons
1. Vasishta continued:— Saying so, the god Brahma vanished from the sight of the gods, just as the wave of the sea retires and mixes with its waters after having dashed and crashed against the shore.
2. The gods, having heard Brahma’s words, returned to their respective homes as the breeze bearing the lotus fragrance blows it to the forests on all sides.
3. They stayed in their delightful houses for some days, like bees resting themselves in the cells of flowers after their wanderings.
4. Having refreshed and invigorated themselves over the course of time, they gave the alarm of their rising with the beating of their drums, sounding like the peals of the last day.
5. Immediately the demons rose from the infernal regions and met the gods midway in the air, and commenced their dreadful attack upon them.
6. There was a clashing of armor, clattering of swords and arrows, the flashing of lances and spears, and the crackling of mallets and various other weapons such as battle axes and discuses, thunderbolts, and hurling of rocks and huge trees and the like.
7. There were many magical weapons that ran on all sides like the torrents of rivers, while rocks and hills, high mountains and huge trees were flung and hurled from both sides, filling the earth with confused noise and rumbling.
8. The encampment of the gods was beset by a magical flood of demons resembling the Ganges River, while showers of firearms and missiles of all sorts were hurled upon their heads from above.
9. Many big bodies of gods and demons rose and fought and fell by turns, like the elemental bodies of earth and other elements rise and disappear from view by the act of illusion (maya).
10. Big bombs broke the heads of mountains, and the earth became a vast sheet of blood like a red sea. Heaps of dead bodies on both sides rose like forests to the face of heaven.
11. Living lions with iron bodies, rows of sawlike teeth, and nails white as kasa flowers were let loose by the magic art to roam rampant in the airy field. They devoured the stone flung by the gods and demons, and burst out into shells and shots and many other weapons.
12. Serpentine weapons flew with their mountainous shapes in the ocean of the sky. Their eyes flashed with their venomous heat, burning with the fire of the twelve suns on the last day of desolation.
13. A hydraulic engine sent forth floods of weapons, whirling like whirlpools and sounding loud as the rattling thunder, sweeping hills and rocks in their currents.
14. Stone missiles thrown by the garuda engine to the gods’ aerial battlefield emitted at intervals water and fire, sometimes shining as the sun, and at others becoming altogether dark.
15. Garuda weapons flew and roared in the sky, and firearms spread a conflict of burning hills above. The gods’ towers burned and fell upon the earth, and the world became as unendurable as in its conflagration on the last day.
16. Demons jumped up to the sky from the surface of the earth, as birds fly to heaven from mountain tops. Gods fell violently on the earth like pieces of rock plummeting to the ground.
17. Long weapons sticking in the bodies of gods and demons were like bushes with their burning pain. Their big statures appeared like rocks decorated with trees growing on them.
18. Gods and demons wandering with their mountainous bodies, all streaming in blood, appeared like the evening clouds of heaven pouring the purple floods of the celestial Mandakini River (the Milky Way).
19. Showers of weapons fell like waterfalls or rain showers, and the tide of thunders flowed as fast as the fall of meteoric fire in haphazard confusion.
20. Those skilled in the arts were pouring floods of purple fluids mixed with the red clay of mountains from the pipes of elephant’s trunks, just like they sprinkle the festive water of Holi mixed with red powder through a syringe.
21. Gods and demons, though worried by one another, did not yet give up their hope of victory, but hurled weapons from their hands to harass each other. Riding on the broad backs of big elephants, they wandered in the air spreading their brightness all around.
22. Then they wandered in the sky like flights of inauspicious locusts, their bodies pierced in the heads, hands, arms and breasts. They filled the vault of the world like flying clouds obscuring the sun and the sides of heaven, and the surface and heights of the earth.
23. The earth was battered and rent to pieces by fragments of broken weapons falling from the waists of combatants who assailed one another with their loud shouts.
24. The sky echoed to the thunderclaps of weapons striking each other, the clattering of the stones and trees, and the blows of the warriors on one another, as if it was the commotion of the day of universal destruction.
25. The disordered world seemed to approach its untimely end from the blowing of furious winds mixed with fire and water, and the many suns of the gods and demons shining above and below.
26. All quarters of heaven seemed to be crying aloud with the sounds of hurling weapons rolling as mountain peaks, roaring as lions, and borne by the blowing winds on all sides.
27. The sky appeared as an ocean of illusion burning with the bodies of warriors like flaming trees, and rolling in surges of gods’ and demons’ dead bodies floating on it like mountains. The edges of the earth seemed like forest made by the clubs, lances, spears and many other weapons constantly falling upon them.
28. The horizon was surrounded by the big and impenetrable line of demonic bodies resembling the chain of Mount Sumeru encircling the earth. The earth itself resembled an ocean filled with the mountainous bodies of fallen warriors and towers of celestial cities blown down by the winds.
29. The sky was filled with violent sounds, and the earth and its mountains were washed by torrents of blood. Bloodsucking demons danced on all sides and filled the cavity of the world with confusion.
30. The dreadful warfare between gods and demons resembled the tumults that rage through the endless space of the world that rise and fall with the alternations of pleasure and pain to which it is constantly subject.
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Chapter 4.29 — Defeat of the Demons
1. Vasishta continued:— In this manner, the energetic and murderous demons repeated their attacks and waged many wars with the gods.
2. They carried on their warfare sometimes by fraud and often by their aggressiveness, and frequently after a truce of open war was made with the gods. They sometimes fled, renewed their strength, then attacked again in the open field. Other times they lay in ambush, concealed in their underground caves.
3. Thus they waged their battle against the celestials for five and thirty years, by repeatedly flying and withdrawing from the field, then reappearing with their arms.
4. They fought again for five years, eight months and ten days, shooting their firearms, trees and stones and thunders upon the gods.
5. Being used to warfare for such a long a period, at last they grew proud of their superior strength and repeated successes and entertained the desire of their final victory.
6. Their constant practice in arms made them sure of their success, just as the nearness of objects casts their reflection in the mirror.
7. But as distant objects are never reflected in the glass, so the desire for anything is never successful without intense application to it.
8. So when the desires of the demons Dama and others became identified with their selves, their souls degraded from their greatness and became confined to their belief of the desired objects.
9. All worldly desires lead to false expectations, and those entangled in the snares of their expectations are thereby reduced to meanness in their spirits.
10. Falling into the errors of egotism and selfishness, the demons were led into the blunder of me-ism, thinking these things as “mine,” just as a man mistakes a rope for a snake.
11. Being reduced to the depravity of selfishness, they began to think their personalities consisted in their bodies. They began to reflect how their bodies could be safe and secure from harm from head to foot.
12. They lost their patience by continually thinking about protecting their bodies, their properties and their pleasures of life.
13. Desire of their enjoyments diminished their strength and valor. Their former acts of gallantry now became a dead letter to them.
14. They thought only how to become lords of the earth, and thus became lazy and weak like lotus flowers without water.
15. Their pride and egoism led their inclination towards the pleasures of good eating and drinking and to the possession of every worldly good.
16. They began to hesitate to join in warfare and became as timid as timid deer afraid to encounter furious elephants ravaging the forest.
17. They moved slowly in despair of their victory and for fear of losing their lives in their encounters with the gods’ furious elephants in the field.
18. These cowards, wishing to preserve their bodies from the hands of death, became so powerless that they rested satisfied with their enemies’ feet on their heads.
19. Thus these unnerved demons were as unable to kill the enemy standing before them as a fire without enough fuel is unable to consume the sacred ghee offering.
20. They became like gnats before the aggressive gods, standing with their bruised bodies like beaten soldiers.
21. What more needs to be said? The demons were overpowered by the gods and fled from the battlefield in fear of their lives.
22. When the demons Dama, Byala, Kata and others were repulsed by the prowess of the gods and fled cowardly in different ways,
23. the remaining demons fell down before the gods and fled from the air on all sides, like the falling stars of heaven at the end of a kalpa age.
24. They fell upon the summits of mountains, and in the trees of the Sumeru Range. Some were wrapped in the folds of the clouds above, and others fell on the banks of distant seas below.
25. Many fell in the cavities of the eddies of seas, and in the abyss of the ocean, and in the running streams. Some fell into far distant forests, and other dropped down amidst the burning woods of wild fire.
26. Some being pierced by the arrows of the celestials, fell in distant countries, villages and cities on earth. Others were hurled into thick jungles of wild beasts and in sandy deserts and in wild fires.
27. Many fell in the polar regions, some landing on the mountain tops and others sinking in the lakes below. Several were tossed over the countries of Andhra, Dravida, Kashmir and Persia.
28. Some sank in billowy seas and in the watery maze of the Ganges, and others fell on distant islands, in different parts of Asia, and in the nets of fishermen.
29. Thus the enemies of the gods lay everywhere with their mountainous bodies, all full of scars from head to foot and mutilated in hands and arms.
30. Some were hanging by their outstretched entrails on tree branches, gushing out with blood. Others with cropped off crowns and heads were lying on the ground with open and fiery eyes.
31. Many were lying with their broken armor and weapons, slashed by the superior power of the enemy, their robes and garments all dismantled and torn by their fall.
32. Their helmets which were terrific by their blaze were hanging down their necks. The braids of their hair, woven with stones, hung loosely about their bodies.
33. Their heads covered with hard brazen and pointed crowns were broken by stone slabs hurled upon them from the hands of the gods.
34. In this manner, at the end of the battle, the demons together with all their weapons were destroyed on all sides. They were devoured like seawater dissolves dust.
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Chapter 4.30 — The Subsequent Lives of Dama, Byala & Kata
1. Vasishta continued:— Upon destruction of the demons, the gods were exceedingly joyous, but Dama and the other demon leaders became immersed in sorrow and grief.
2. Sambara was full of wrath, and his anger was ignited like an all-destroying fire against his generals, whom he called aloud by their names and said, “Where are they?”
3. But they had fled from their abodes for fear of his anger. Dama, Byala, and Kata hid themselves in the seventh sphere of the infernal regions.
4. There dwelt the horrid instruments of death, formidable as their lord Yama himself, and who were glad with their duty of guarding the abyss of hell.
5. The fearless guards of hell received them into their favor, and having given them shelter in the hell-pit, gave them their three maiden daughters in marriage.
6. In their company, they passed a period of ten thousand years and gave a free vent to their evil desires up to the end of their lives.
7. Their time passed away in such thoughts as these, that, “This is my consort and this my daughter, and I am their lord.” They were bound together with ties of mutual affection as strong as the chain of death.
8. It happened on one occasion that Yama, the god of retributive justice, came by to survey the state of affairs in that sad mournful pit of hell.
9. The three demons, being unaware of Yama’s rank and dignity, failed to make their obeisance to the lord of hell, and at their peril took him to be one of Yama’s servants.
10. Then a nod of Yama’s eyebrows assigned to them a place in the burning furnace of hell, where they were immediately cast by the stern porters of hell’s gate.
11. There they lay burning with their wives and children until they were consumed to death, like a straw hut and withered trees.
12. The evil desires and wicked propensities that they contracted in the company of the hellish crowd caused their reincarnation in the forms of Kiratis to carrying on their slaughters and atrocities like Yama’s thralls.
13. Getting rid of that birth, they were next born as ravens, and then as vultures and falcons of mountain caves.
14. Then they were transformed into the forms of hogs in the land of Trigarta, and then as mountain rams in Magadha, and afterwards as heinous reptiles in caves and holes.
15. Thus, after passing successively into a variety of other forms, they are now lying as fish in the woodland lakes of Kashmir.
16. Being burnt in hellfire at first, they now have their temporary rest in the waters of the lake and drink its filthy water, whereby they neither die nor live to their hearts content.
17. Having thus passed over and over into various births, and having been transformed again and again to be reborn on earth, they are rolling like waves of the sea to all eternity.
18. Thus like their endless desires, they have been eternally rolling like weeds in the ocean of the earth. There is no end to their pains until the end of their desires.
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Chapter 4.31 — Reality is within God; There Is no Reality without
1. Vasishta continued:— It was for your enlightenment, O high minded Rama, that I have told you the story of Dama, Byala, and Kata so that you may derive instruction thereby, and not let it go for nothing as a mere idle story.
2. Slighting the truth and following untruth incur endless miseries of which the careless pursuer of untruth is scarcely aware.
3. See how great was the leadership of Sambara’s army and how they defeated the hosts of the immortal gods. Reflect on the change of their state to contemptible fish in a dry and dirty quagmire.
4. See their former strength which put legions of immortals to flight, and think on their later base servitude as hunters under the chief of Kiratis.
5. See at first their unselfishness of mind and great patience, then at last their vain desires and assumption of the vanity of egotism.
6. In the forest of the world, selfish ego is the root of the extended branches of misery that produces and bears the poisonous blossoms of desire.
7. Therefore, O Rama, be diligent to wipe the sense of your ego from your heart. Try to be happy by always thinking, “This I is nothing.”
8. The error of egoism hides the bright moon of truth like a dark cloud and causes the cooling moonbeams to disappear from sight.
9. The three demons Dama, Byala and Kata, being under the demonic influence of ego and by the excess of their illusion, believed their non-entity to be a positive entity.
10. They are now living as fish in the muddy pool of a lake among the forest lands of Kashmir. Presently they are content feeding with zest upon the moss and weeds growing in it.
11. Rama said, “Tell me sage, how did they come to existence when they were non-existent before? For neither can a nothing be an existent being nor an entity become a non-entity at anytime.”
12. Vasishta replied:— So it is, O strong armed Rama, that nothing can ever be something and anything can never be nothing. But it is possible for a little thing to be great, and for a great one to be reduced to minuteness.
13. Tell me, what non-entity has come to being or what entity has been lasting forever? All these I will explain to you by the best proofs and examples.
14. Rama answered, “Why sage, all that is existent is ever present before us as our own bodies, and all things beside ourselves. But you said Dama and the other demons were unreal, produced by the magic of Sambara. How could they become real?” Vasishta speaking:—
15. Yes Rama, the non-existent and unreal Dama and others seemed to exist by mere illusion, like a mirage appears to be full of water by optical illusion.
16. It is in the same manner that we, these gods and demigods, and everything else are unrealities in fact, and yet we seem to turn about and speak and act like real persons.
17. My existence is as unreal as yours, yet it appears as real as our dream of death in sleep.
18. As the sight of a dead friend in a dream is not real, so the notion of the reality of the world ceases upon the conviction of its unreality, just as that of the death of the person seen in a dream.
19. But such assertions of our non-existence are unacceptable to those deluded into the belief of the reality of the objects of the senses. It is the habit of thinking its reality that will not listen to its contradiction.
20. This mistaken impression of the reality of the world cannot be effaced without the knowledge of its unreality derived from the scriptures and the certainty of thinking it so.
21. He who preaches the unreality of the world and the reality of Brahman is derided by the ignorant as a mad man.
22. The learned and the ignorant cannot agree on this subject, just as drunken and sober men cannot reach an understanding. One who has the distinct knowledge of light and darkness knows the difference between shade and sunlight.
23. It is impossible to turn the ignorant from their belief in the reality of unrealities to truth, just as it is impossible to make a corpse stand on it legs and walk.
24. It is in vain to preach the doctrine of that “Brahman is all” to the vulgar who do not know pure meditation and remain devoted to their ideas that things which can be sensed are real.
25. The learned who know themselves to be Brahman know that it is useless to lecture the ignorant on this subject.
26. The intelligent man, who believes that the supremely quiet spirit of Brahman pervades the whole universe, cannot be distracted by anyone from his firm belief.
27. Nothing can shake the faith of the man who knows himself as nothing but the Supreme Being who is all in all, and who thinks himself to be dependant on the substantiality of God, just as the form of a ring depends on its substance of gold.
28. The ignorant have no notion of the spirit, only matter which they believe to be the cause and effect of its own production. A learned man sees the substantive spirit in all forms of creation, just like he sees the substance of gold in all the ornaments made of that metal.
29. An ignorant man is composed of only his ego and a sage is filled with only his spirituality. Neither is ever thwarted from his own belief.
30. What is one’s nature or habit of thinking can hardly be altered, for it would be foolish for one habituated to think himself as a man to take himself for a pot or otherwise.
31. Therefore, though we and others, and that Dama and the other demons, are nothing in reality, yet who can believe that we or these or those are not ourselves?
32. There is but One Being that is really existent, who is truth and consciousness himself and of the nature of emptiness and pure understanding. He is immaculate, all pervading, quiescent and without rise or fall.
33. Being perfect silence and void, he seems as nothing existent, yet all these creations exist in that emptiness as particles of his own splendor.
34. As the stars are seen to shine resplendent in the darkness of night, and as worms and waves are seen to float on the surface of waters, so do all these phenomena appear to occur in his reality.
35. Whatever that Being purposes himself to be, he immediately conceives himself to be the same. It is only that empty Consciousness which is the true reality. All others are also real when viewed in It and rising and setting in It out of Its own will.
36. Therefore there is nothing real or unreal in the three worlds. It is all of or in the same form as it is viewed by Consciousness. It all arises before Consciousness of its own spontaneity.
37. We also have sprung from that Divine Will, like Dama and others. Therefore there is no reality or unreality in any of us, except at the time when we exist or cease to do so.
38. This infinite and formless void of Consciousness is omnipresent and all pervading. In whatever form this Consciousness manifests itself in any place, it appears there in the same figure and manner.
39. As divine Consciousness expanded itself with the images of Dama and others, it immediately assumed those shapes by its notions of the same.
40. So it is with every one of us, that all things are produced to our view according to our notions presented to our consciousness.
41. What we call the world is the representation of things to us as in our dream. It is a hollow body like a bubble rising in the empty ocean of Consciousness and appearing as the water in a mirage.
42. The waking state of the empty intellect is called the phenomenal world, and its state of sleep and rest is what we call liberation, emancipation or salvation from pain.
43. But Consciousness which never sleeps, nor has to be awakened at anytime, is the emptiness of the Divine Mind, in which the world is ever present in its visible form.
44. There the work of creation is united with the rest of nirvana, and the cessation of the act of creation is joined with uninterrupted quiet. Yet no difference whatever exists in God between alternating work and rest at anytime.
45. The Divine Intellect views its own form in the world, and it views the world in itself in its true sense; like a blinded eye sees the inner light in its orbit.
46. The Divine Intellect, like the blinded eye, sees nothing outside, but views every form within itself. This is because there is no visible or phenomenal world other that what is within the empty sphere of the Intellect.
47. There are all these things everywhere, as we have ideas of them in our minds, but there is never anything anywhere if we have no previous idea of it in the mind. It is the one quiet spirit of God which lies extended in all these forms coming to our knowledge. Therefore knowing him as all in all, give up all your fears and sorrows and duality, rest in peace in his unity.
48. The great intellect of God is as solid and clear as a block of crystal, which is both dense and transparent in the inside. They appear to be all hollow within, but replete with the images of all things from without.
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Chapter 4.32 — Dama, Byala & Kata Obtain Liberation; On Good Conduct
1. Rama said, “Tell me sage, how did Dama, Byala and Kata finally obtain their liberation, like all other virtuous souls, and become released from the torments of hell, like children getting rid of the fear of yaksha demons and pisacha ghosts?”
2. Vasishta replied:— Hear, O support of Raghu’s race, what Yama said about Dama, Byala and their companions when they asked for their liberation through his attendants in hell.
3. Yama said that Dama and others would obtain their liberation upon death releasing them from their demonic bodies, and upon hearing the account of their lives and actions.
4. Rama said, “Tell me sage, how, when and from what source did Dama and others come to learn the accounts of their lives, and how they obtained their release from hell.”
5. Vasishta replied:— These demons, transformed into fish in a pool by the bank of the great lotus lake in Kashmir, underwent many miserable births in their fish-like forms in that same pond.
6. In that marshy ground, they were crushed to death under the feet of buffaloes. Then they were transformed into the shapes of cranes frequenting that lake of lotuses.
7. They fed upon moss and mushrooms and tender petals of lotuses. They had to live upon the leaves of aquatic plants and vines that floated on the surface of the waves.
8. They swung in cradles of flowers, rested on beds of blue lotuses, dived in vortices of the waters, and flew under the cooling showers of rainy clouds.
9. At last, these charming cranes and herons were cleansed of their brutish foulness by their vegetable food of sweet fruits and flowers and by their pure beverage of the crystal lake, the food of holy saints.
10. Having by these means obtained a clear understanding, they were prepared for their release from their brutish states, like men who become able to distinguish and get hold of the good and virtuous qualities of sattva (purity, balance) and rajas (activity) from the evil of tamas (passivity) are entitled to their liberation.
11. Now in the happy valley of Kashmir there is a city by name of Adhisthana which is surrounded on all sides by mountains and trees. It is very romantic in appearance.
12. In the middle of that city there is a hill known as Pradyumna Sekhara. It resembles a pistil rising from the center of a lotus flower.
13. On the top of that hill there is an building towering above all other buildings, and piercing the sky with its high turrets that appear like pinnacles above its summit.
14. On the northeast corner of that building, there is a hollow at the top of its towering turret. It is overgrown with moss and continually resounds to the blowing winds.
15. There the demon Byala, in the form of a sparrow, built his nest and chirped his meaningless notes, like one who repeats Vedic hymns without knowing their meaning.
16. At that time there was a king in that city named Yasaskara or the renowned who reigned there like Indra over the gods in heaven.
17. The demon Dama became a gnat and dwelt in that building and continued to buzz his low tune in the crevice of a lofty column.
18. It came to pass that the citizens of Adhishthana prepared a playground named Ratnavati-vehara in that city.
19. There resided the king’s minister, Narasimha by name. He understood the fates of human kind, just as the astronomer knows the stars of heaven on a small celestial globe which he holds in his hand.
20. It also happened at that time that the deceitful demon Kata was as reborn as a parrot and became the minister’s favorite, kept in a silver cage in his house.
21. It then turned out that the minister recited the poetic story of the war between demons and gods to the residents of his palace.
22. The parrot Kata happened to hear it. He remembered his past life, whereby he was absolved of his sins and attained his final liberation.
23. The sparrow living on top of Pradyumna Hill also chanced to hear the story of his life in that palace, and he obtained his liberation thereby.
24. Dama, who lived in the palace in the form of a gnat, also happened to hear the minister’s recital of his tale, and thereby obtained his peace and release.
25. In this manner, O Rama, the sparrow on Pradyumna Hill, the gnat in the palace, and the parrot in the playground all had their liberation.
26. Thus I have told you the whole story of the demon Dama and the others, which should fully convince you of the vanity of the world.
27. Only the ignorant are tempted to vanity by their error, just like those led to the delusion of water in a mirage. Even the great are liable, like these demons, to fall low by their error.
28. Think how one of these demons who had reduced the high Meru and Mandara Mountains with a nod of his eyebrows was constrained to remain as a contemptible gnat in the crack of a pillar in the palace.
29. Look at the other who threatened to destroy the sun and moon with a slap, living at last as a poor sparrow in a hole of the peak of Pradyumna Hill.
30. Look at the third who balanced Mount Meru like a flower bouquet in his hand, lying imprisoned as a parrot in the cage at the house of Narasimha.
31. When the sphere of pure consciousness is colored with ego, it is debased into another form and another birth without changing its nature.
32. A man’s wrong desires make him take the untruth for truth, just like a person’s excessive thirst makes him mistake a mirage for water, and thereby he loses both his way and his life.
33. Only those men can cross the ocean of the world who by the natural bent of their good understanding are inclined to study scriptures and look forward to their liberation by rejecting whatever is vicious and untrue.
34. Those prone to false reasoning and heresy by rejecting revelations are subject to various changes and miseries. They lose the best of life and fall like running water into a pit.
35. But those who walk by the dictates of conscience and follow the path pointed by the Vedas are saved from destruction and attain their best state.
36. O high-minded Rama, he whose greed makes his mind always long after having this thing and that thing loses the highest goal of his being (parama purushartha), leaving not even ashes or any other trace behind.
37. The high-minded man regards the world like straw and shuns all its concerns like a snake casting off its skin.
38. He whose mind is illumined by the wonderful light of truth is always taken under the protection of the gods, just as the cosmic egg is protected by Brahma.
39. Nobody should walk in paths that are long and wearisome, crooked and winding, and surrounded by dangers and difficulties. Rahu, the ascending node of the moon, lost its life by its curved course to drink the nectarine beams of the moon.
40. He who abides by the dictates of the true scriptures and associates with the best of men is never subject to the darkness of error.
41. Those renowned for their virtues have the power to bring their destiny under their command, convert all their evils to good, and render their prosperity perpetual.
42. Those who are unsatisfied with their qualifications, and those who thirst after knowledge and are seekers of truth, are truly called human beings. All others are only brutes.
43. Those whose hearts are like lakes brightened by the moonbeams of fame have the form of Vishnu seated in their hearts, just as in the sea of milk.
44. Repeatedly desiring enjoyments of what has been enjoyed and seeing what has often been seen is not the way to get rid of the world. It is the cause of repeated birth for the same enjoyments and sights.
45. Continue to abide by the established rule of conduct, act according to the scriptures and good customs, and break off the bonds of worldly enjoyments, which are all only vanities.
46. Let the world resound with the renown of your virtues reaching to the skies, because your fame and not the enjoyments you have enjoyed will immortalize your name.
47. Those whose good deeds shine like moonbeams and are sung by the maidens of heaven are said to be truly living. All others unknown to fame are really dead.
48. They who aspire to their utmost perfection by their unfailing effort and acting according to the precepts of the scriptures are surely successful in their attempt.
49. Patiently adhering to the scriptures without hastening for success and perfecting one’s self by long practice produce the ripe fruits of consummation.
50. Now Rama, renounce all your sorrow and fear, your anxieties, pride and hastiness. Conduct yourself according to the law and scriptures and immortalize your name.
51. Take care that your sensuous soul does not perish like prey in the snare of your sensual appetites, or like a blind old man falling into the hidden pits of this world.
52. Do not allow yourself to be degraded below the vulgar, but consider well the scriptures as the best weapons to defeat the dangers and difficulties of the world.
53. Why endanger your life in the muddy pit of this world, like an elephant falling in a pit under the keen arrows of the enemy? Avoid and only taste its enjoyments and you are free from all danger.
54. Of what use is wealth without knowledge? Therefore devote yourself to learning and consider your riches to be only trash and bubbles.
55. Knowledge of heretical scriptures has made beasts of men, making them miserable and unhappy by their unprofitable arguments.
56. Now wake and shake off the dullness of your long, deep and death-like sleep, like the torpor of an old tortoise lying in a bog.
57. Rise and accept an antidote to ward off your old age and death. This prescription is knowledge that all wealth and property are for our evil and all pleasures and enjoyments tend only to sicken and weaken our bodies.
58. Know difficulty to be your prosperity and your detachment from the world to be your great gain. Conduct yourself according to the meaning of the scriptures, as they are supported by good custom.
59. Acts done according to the scriptures and good customs produce the best fruits, that of immortality.
60. He who acts well according to good customs, who considers everything by good reason, and who is indifferent to the pains and pleasures of the world flourishes like an tree in spring with the flowers and fruits of long life and fame, virtues and good qualities and prosperity.
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Chapter 4.33 — Effort Attains; Ego & Its Three Forms
1. Vasishta continued:— Knowing that the complete success of every undertaking depends on your own effort at all times and places, you should never be slack in your efforts.
2. See how Nandi gratified the wishes of all his friends and relations by his own exertions, and how he became victorious over death itself by his adoration of Mahadeva Shiva by the side of a lake.
3. See also, how the danava demigods by their greater wealth and prowess got the better of the gods who were filled with every perfection, just like elephants destroy a lake of lotuses.
4. See how Marutta, the king of demons, by means of his sacrifice through the great sage Samvarta (the law giver), created another world like that of Brahma.
5. See, how Vishwamitra the general obtained the dignity of being one with Brahman by his great energy and continued efforts. By his austerities, he obtained what is impossible for another.
6. See how in days of yore the poor and unfortunate Upamanyu obtained his nectar-like food of cake and curdled milk from the Milky Ocean by worshipping Shiva.
7. See how the god Vishnu devoured the demons of the triple world like a wildfire destroys the tender filaments of lotuses, and how the sage Sweta became victorious over death by means of his firm faith in Shiva.
8. Remember, how the chaste Savitri brought back her spouse Satyavana from the realm of death by prevailing on stern Yama with the sweet politeness of her discourse.
9. There is no great effort of any kind that goes unrewarded in this world. All impossibility is possible by ardent pursuit.
10. So men having full knowledge of the spirit and exerting their utmost devotion are able to root out their destiny of reincarnation that is filled with so much pain and pleasure.
11. All visible things are full of danger in the sight of the intelligent. There is no pleasure to be had from anything without its accompanying pain.
12. Though it is difficult to know the Supreme Brahman and easy to attain supreme joy, yet Brahman should be sought at first as the giver of all joy.
13. Forsake your pride and rely on your unalterable peace of mind. Consider well your worthiness in your understanding and remain attentive to the wise and good.
14. In this ocean of the world, there is no way for your salvation except by your attendance on the wise. All your pilgrimages, austerities and learning of the scriptures are of no avail to your liberation.
15. He is called wise whose greediness, anger and false conceptions decline day by day and who walks in the path of righteousness, as taught in the scriptures.
16. The company of spiritual guides serves to dispel phenomena from the sight of the devout, like invisibles hidden from sight.
17. In the absence of the objects of perception, only the Supreme Spirit remains in view and the human soul, having nothing else to rest upon, rests at last only in the Supreme Soul.
18. Phenomena did not exist before nor are they produced from nothing. They are not in existence though we see them in our presence, nor will they exist in the future. The Supreme alone exists forever without change or decay.
19. I have already shown you by various examples the falsehood of phenomena. Now I will show you the falsity of existence, as it is known to the learned.
20. Now that we have our passive consciousness of the three worlds, this being the sober truth of the wise, there can be no room for the unrealities of matter and illusion to enter into our belief.
21. The world is whatever wonders are displayed by the active consciousness to the inactive soul.
22. The notion of the world is derived from the rays of the central intellect stretching to the circumference of understanding. There being no difference between the radiating point and the radiated circle, we acknowledge the identity of the radiator, the radius and the circle.
23. The opening and shutting of intellectual eye causes the notions of the appearance and disappearance of the world in continued succession.
24. One unacquainted with the true sense of ego is blind within the luminous sphere of consciousness, but he who knows its true meaning finds himself within the sphere of spiritual light and loses himself in the divine light.
25. He who understands Divine Ego no longer retains any notion of his own ego but mixes with the Supreme Soul like a drop of water lost in the waters of the ocean.
26. In reality there exists no “I” or “you” or any visible world or anything else. Upon right reasoning, all these blend in the one Ego which remains and exists after all other existences.
27. Even clear understandings are sometimes clouded by false appearances, like children seized with false fear of demons or ogres.
28. As long as the moonlight of consciousness remains hidden by the darkness of individual ego, the lotus lake of spirituality will not bloom.
29. The feeling of ego being wiped from the mind, the sense of self and selfish passions will vanish of themselves from the heart and there will be an utter end to fears of death and hell, as also to desires of heaven and liberation.
30. As long as ego feelings float like clouds over the mind, there will be no end of desires growing in the heart like weeds in the plains.
31. As long as the cloud of ego continues to overcast the mind and obscure its consciousness, the humidity of dullness will fill its sphere and prevent the light of consciousness from piercing through it.
32. Ego pride is unmannerly in men. It is taken in the light of vanity. It is the cause of sorrow and not delight. It is like imaginary ghosts to children.
33. The vain assumption of egoism produces a great many errors. It leads to the ambition of gaining an infinity of worlds, as it was in the case of the foolish demons.
34. There is no error greater than the conceit that “I am such and such a great man.” There will never be a greater error to lead us to utter darkness.
35. Whatever joy or grief falls upon us at anytime in this changing world, it is all the effect of the rotating wheels of ego turning up and down at every moment.
36. He who weeds and roots out the germs of ego from his heart truly prevents the tree of worldliness from growing out in a hundred branches.
37. Belief in the individual ego is the sprout of the trees of our lives in their endless cycles through the world. The sense that “this is mine” is the cause that makes ego expand into a thousand branches.
38. Our desires and the objects of our desires disappear as swiftly as birds in flight. Upon mature consideration, they prove to be only bubbles bursting on the fleeting, impermanent waves of our lives.
39. It is because we have no knowledge of the one Ego that we think ourselves as “I”, “you”, “this” or the other. It is by shutting out our view of the only Soul that we see the constant revolutions of this world and that.
40. As long as the darkness of egoism reigns over the wilderness of human life, the goblin of selfishness infest it with its wanton revelry.
41. The vile man seized by the avaricious demon of selfishness is at an utter loss to satisfy his needs with any moral precept or spiritual mantra.
42. Rama said, “Tell me, O venerable brahmin, how can we suppress our egoism or selfishness and evade the dangers and difficulties in our course through the world?”
43. Vasishta replied:— It is by seeking to settle the mind in the resplendent soul that shines in the transparent mirror of consciousness. In this way it is possible for anybody to suppress his sense of personal existence.
44. A close investigation into human life proves it to be a maze full with the false shows of magic. It is not worth loving or hating and it is not capable of causing our ego pride.
45. He whose soul is free from selfishness, who is devoid of the impressions of phenomena, whose course of life runs in an even course, is the man who can have no sense of ego in him.
46. He who knows his inner self to be beyond the external world and who neither desires nor dislikes anything in the world, and who preserves the serenity of his temper at all times, is not susceptible of egoism.
47. Whoever thinks himself to be the inner ideal, distinct from outward phenomena, and keeps the calm equanimity of his mind, is not ruffled by the feeling of his egoism.
48. Rama said, “Tell me, sage, what is the form of ego? Does it exist in the body or mind or both? Is it eliminated when the body dies?”
49. Vasishta replied:— Rama, in this triple world there are three sorts of egoism. Two are of superior nature, but the third is of a vile kind and is to be abandoned by all.
50. The first is the supreme and undivided Ego that is diffused throughout the world. It is the Supreme Soul (paramatma) beside which there is nothing in nature.
51. The feeling of this kind of Egoism leads to the liberation of men, as in the state of the living-liberated. The next form of self-consciousness is the knowledge of ego as distinct and apart from all, and as minute as the hundredth part of a hair. This ego is good also.
52. This second form of ego also leads to the liberation of human souls, even in the state known as living-liberation.
53. The last and worst kind of ego is identification with the body and all its parts. This ego takes the body to be the soul or self.
54. This third and last kind is the popular belief of mankind who take their bodies as parts of themselves. It is the basest form of ego and must be forsaken in the same manner as we shun our inveterate enemies.
55. The man debased by this kind of ego can never come to his right sense. Under the thrall of this powerful enemy, a man remains subject to all the evils of life.
56. Possessed with this wrong notion of himself, every man is constantly troubled by various desires in his mind, and these expose him to all the evils of life.
57. By means of the better senses of ego, men transform themselves into gods, but the common form of ego debases a man to the state of a beast and its attendant evils.
58. That “I am not the body” is the certainty arrived at by the great and good who, believing themselves to be of the first two kinds of ego, are superior to the vulgar.
59. Belief in the first two kinds raises men above the common level, but the ego of lower kind brings every misery on mankind.
60. It was owing to their baser sense of ego that the demons Dama, Byala and others were reduced to that deplorable state, as was related in their story.
61. Rama said, “Sage, describe to me the state of a man who has discarded the third or popular kind of ego from his mind, a man who attains the well being of his soul in both the present and future worlds.”
62. Vasishta replied:— Having cast off this poisonous ego, a man rests in the Supreme Spirit in the same manner as the believers in the two other sorts of ego.
63. The first two views of ego place the egotist in the Ego of Divine Unity.
64. But all these views of ego, in reality, are only different forms of dualism. When lost in the Unity, all consciousness of distinct personality is absorbed in the Supreme One.
65. Good understanding should always strive to its utmost to get rid of its common and gross sense of ego, identity with the body, in order to feel in itself the indescribable joy of the Unity.
66. The greatest good that one can attain for his highest state of joy (parama padam) is to renounce the unholy belief in one’s separate personality in his material body.
67. The man who gives up his identity as a personal ego in his body is not debased or lost, either by his indifference to or by his management of worldly affairs.
68. The man who has rid his mind of ego by reducing his selfishness is indifferent to pain and pleasure, just as the satisfied are to the taste of sweet or sour.
69. The man detesting the pleasures of life has his full bliss presented before himself. The mind is cleared of its doubts and darkness has nothing hidden from its sight.
70. By investigation into the nature of the ego and forsaking this gross selfishness, a man crosses over the ocean of the world of his own accord.
71. The man who has nothing of his own, who knows himself as nothing, and yet who has all and thinks himself as all in all, and who though possessed of wealth and properties has the generosity of his soul to disown them to himself, he truly is situated in the Supreme Soul and finds his rest in the state of Supreme bliss.
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Chapter 4.34 — End of the Story of Dama, Byala & Kata: Bhima, Bhasa & Dridha
1. Vasishta continued:— Now, hear me describe what Samvara did after the flight of Dama and his army, and how he remained in his rocky stronghold in the region of hell.
2. After the complete overthrow of Samvara’s entire army and their downfall from heaven like innumerable raindrops falling from a great cloud, and after dispersing itself and disappearing in autumn,
3. Samvara remained motionless for many years in his strong citadel, numbed by the loss of his forces defeated by the gods. He wondered about the best means of overcoming the gods.
4. He thought, “The demons Dama and others that I produced by my black arts are all defeated in battle by their foolishness and vanity of pride and ego.
5. Now I will produce some other demons by the power of my charm, and endue them both with the power of reason and acquaintance with spiritual science so that they may know and judge for themselves.
6. These, being acquainted with the true nature of things and devoid of false views, will not be subject to pride or vanity, but will be able to defeat the gods in combat.”
7. Thinking in this way to himself, the arch-fiend produced a host of good demons by his skill in sorcery. These creatures of his spell filled the space of the sky, like bubbles foam and float on the surface of the sea.
8. They were all knowing and acquainted with what could be known. They were all dispassionate and sinless and solely intent on their allotted duties, with composed minds and good dispositions.
9. They were known under the names of Bhima, Bhasa and Dridha, and by the holiness of their hearts, they looked upon all earthly things as mere straw.
10. These infernal spirits burst out of the ether and sprang up to the upper world, then spread over the face of the sky like a swarm of locusts. They cracked like guns and roared and rolled about like the clouds of the rainy season.
11. They fought with the gods for many cycles of years, yet they were not elated with pride owing to their being under the guidance of reason and judgment.
12. No one could defeat them because they had no desire of having anything and no thought that “this is my own.” They had no identity as a personal existence, such as, “This is me, and that one is another.”
13. They were fearless fighting the gods because they knew that they were as mortal as themselves, and because they lacked any knowledge of any difference between one another.
14. They attacked with a firm conviction that the unsubstantial body is nothing, the intellect is lodged in the pure soul, and that there is nothing which we call “I” or “another.”
15. These demons were devoid of the sense of themselves or their fears. They necessarily had no fear of death. They were employed in their present duties without thoughts of past or future.
16. Their minds were attached to nothing. They slew their enemies without thinking themselves as their slayers. They did their duties and thought themselves as no doers of them. They were utterly free from all desires.
17. They waged war under the sense of doing their duty to their master, while their own nature was entirely free from all passion and affection, always remaining at even tenor.
18. The infernal force under the command of Bhima, Bhasa and Dridha bruised and burned and slew and devoured the celestial phalanx, as men knead and fry and boil rice and afterward eat it up as their food.
19. The celestial army, harassed on all sides by Bhima, Bhasa and Dridha, fled precipitately from the height of heaven, as the Ganges runs down from the Himalayan heights.
20. The defeated legion of the gods then resorted to the god Vishnu, sleeping on the surface of the ocean of milk, just as the clouds of heaven are driven by winds to the tops of mountains.
21. The god Vishnu, lying as Narayana folded in the coils of the serpent like a consort in the arms of his mistress, gave the gods their hope of future final success.
22. The gods hid themselves in that ocean, until it pleased Lord Vishnu to proceed out to destroy the demons.
23. Then there was a dreadful war between Vishnu and Samvara which broke and bore away the mountains as in an untimely great deluge of the earth.
24. The mighty demon, finally overthrown by the might of Narayana, was sent to and settled in the city of Vishnu after his death.
25. The demons Bhima, Bhasa and Dridha were also killed in their unequal struggle with Vishnu and were extinguished like lamps by the wind.
26. They became extinct like flames of fire, and it was not known where their vital flame fled. It is the desire of a person that leads him to another state, but these having no wish in them had no other place to go.
27. Hence the soul without wish is liberated, but not the mind full of yearning desires. Therefore, O Rama, use your reason to have a mind and soul without wishes.
28. A full investigation into truth will immediately put down your desires, and the extinction of desires will restore your mind to rest like an extinguished candle.
29. Complete wisdom consists in the knowledge of there being nothing real in this world, that our knowledge of reality is utterly false, and that nothingness is the true reality.
30. The whole world is full with the spirit of God, whatever otherwise one may think of it at anytime. There can be no other thought of it except that it is a nothingness, and this forms our perfect knowledge of it.
31. The two significant words “will” and “mind” are mere insignificant fictions, like the head and trunk of the ascending and descending nodes of a planet which, upon their right understanding, are lost in the Supreme Spirit.
32. The mind accompanied by its desires is confined in this world, but when the mind is released from desires it is said to have its liberation.
33. The mind gains its existence in the belief of men because of the many ideas of pots and pictures and other things that are imprinted in it. But when these thoughts are repressed, the mind also vanishes of itself, like the phantoms of yaksha demons.
34. The demons Dama, Byala and Kata were destroyed because they relied on their minds, but Bhima, Bhasa and Dridha were saved by their belief in the Supreme Soul as pervading all things. Therefore, O Rama, reject the examples of the former and imitate those of the latter.
35. “Be not guided by the example of Dama, Byala and Kata,” is the lesson that was first delivered to me by Brahma the lotus-born and my progenitor himself.
36. This lesson I repeat to you, O Rama, as my intelligent pupil, that you may never follow the example of the wicked demons Dama and others, but imitate the conduct of the good spirits Bhima and others in your conduct.
37. It is constant pain and pleasure that forms the fearful feature of this world. There is no other way of evading all its pangs and pains except by your apathetic behavior, which must be your crowning glory in this life.
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Chapter 4.35 — Description of Detachment & Bliss
1. Vasishta continued:— Blessed are the virtuous who have cleansed their hearts from the dirt of ignorance. Victorious are those heroes who have conquered their insatiable and uncontrollable minds.
2. It is self-control, the management of one’s own mind, that is the only means of wading through all troubles and distress amid all the dangers and difficulties of this world.
3. Hear the summary of all knowledge and retain and cultivate it constantly in your mind. The desire of enjoyment is our bondage in the world and its abandonment is our release from it.
4. What need is there of many teachings? Learn this one truth as the sum and substance of all. All pleasures are poisonous and destructive. You must fly from them as from venomous snakes and a raging fire.
5. Consider well and repeatedly that all that can be perceived by the senses are like hydras and dragons, and their enjoyment is gall and poison. Keep them at a distance and pursue your lasting good.
6. The mind of desires produces destructive evils, like sterile ground is fertile only for thorns and brambles.
7. The mind devoid of desire lacks its expansion, as the heart lacking its passions and affections is curbed and contracted in itself.
8. The well disposed mind always teems with virtues that are opposed to wrong acts and vice, just like fertile ground grows good and useful trees in spite of weeds and bushes.
9. When the mind gains its serenity by culture of good qualities, the mist of its errors and ignorance gradually fade and fly away like clouds before the rising sun.
10. Good qualities shining in the mind, like stars in a moonlight sky, give rise to the light of reason, like the bright sun of the day.
11. As the practice of patience grows familiar in the mind, like medicinal vamsa-lochana within bamboo, it gives rise to the quality of firmness in a man, like the moon brightens the spring sky.
12. Company of the good is a tree that gives its cooling shade of peace and yields the fruit of salvation. Its effect on righteous men is like that of the stately sarala tree distilling the juice of spiritual joy from the fruit of samadhi.
13. Thus prepared, the mind becomes devoid of its desires and enmity and is free from all troubles and anxieties. It becomes dull to the feelings of grief and joy, and also of pain and pleasure, and all its restlessness dies in itself.
14. Its doubts about the truth of scriptures die away, just as the table of values and all its curiosities for novelties are put to a stop. Its veil of myths and fictions is unveiled, and its ointment of error is rubbed out of it.
15. The mind’s attempts, efforts, malice, disdain, distress and disease are all removed. The mist of its grief and sorrow and the chain of its affections are all blown and torn away.
16. It discards the children of its doubts, repudiates the consorts of its greed, and breaks loose from the prison-house of its body. It then seeks the welfare of the soul and attains its godly state of holiness.
17. It abandons the causes of its stoutness and relinquishes its choice of this thing and that. Then remembering the dignity of the soul, it casts off the covering of its body like straw.
18. The elevation of the mind in worldly affairs tends to its destruction, and its depression in these leads to its spiritual elevation. The wise always lower their minds (pride) but fools are for elevating them.
19. The mind makes the world its own and ranges all about it. The mind raises mountains and climbs over them. The mind is like an infinite vacuum. It comprehends all emptiness in itself and it makes gods of friends and foes of others.
20. When understanding is soiled by doubts and forgets the true nature of consciousness, and when it is full of all its worldly desires, then it takes upon the name “mind.”
21. Consciousness perverted by its various desires is called the living soul or the animal soul, which is distinct from the rational soul.
22. Understanding which forgets its intellect and falls into the error of its own personality is what we call the internal principle of the mind which is all hollow within.
23. The soul is not the man of the world nor is it the body or its blood. All material bodies are only gross and dull matter, but the soul in the body is empty air and intangible.
24. The body being dissected into atoms and analyzed in all its particles presents nothing but blood and entrails, just like the plantain tree, when cut into pieces, presents nothing but its folded rinds.
25. Know that the mind and living soul make a man assume his mortal form. The mind takes its form by itself according to his own choice.
26. Man stretches his own sphere of action by his own choice only to entrap himself in it, just as the silkworm weaves its cocoon for its own imprisonment.
27. The soul lays down its error of being the body when it has to leave the body at some time or other, then the soul assumes another form as the germ sprouts forth into leaves.
28. As the desire or thought is in the mind, so is it born in its next state of transmigration. Hence the new born babe is given to sleeping because it thinks itself to be still dead, lying in the nighttime of his death. It is also given to the dreaming of those things which had been the objects of its desire or thought in its previous state or birth.
29. So sour becomes sweet by mixture with sugar, and bitter seed produces sweet fruit by being sown with honey. So on the contrary, sweet becomes bitter by mixing in gall and wormwood.
30. Aiming after goodness and greatness makes a man good and great. One wishing to be an Indra, a lord of gods, dreams of his lordliness in his sleep.
31. An inclination to meanness demeans a man and a tendency to vileness maligns his conduct in life, just like one deluded by his imagination of devils comes to see their apparitions in his nightly visions.
32. But what is naturally foul or fair can hardly turn otherwise at anytime, as a still lake never becomes muddy and a dirty pool never becomes glassy.
33. The perverted mind produces the fruits of its perversion in all its actions, while pure-mindedness is filled with the effects of its purity everywhere.
34. Good and great men never forsake their goodness and greatness, even in their fall and decline, so the glorious sun fills the vault of heaven with his glory even when he is sinking below the horizon.
35. There is no restriction or freedom of the human soul to or from any action or thing in this world. The soul is a mere passive and neutral consciousness of all that passes before it like a magic scene.
36. The world is a magical city, like a mirage appearing to sight. It is of the nature of a delusive panorama that shows many moons of the one whose unity admits of no duality. So the one Brahman is represented as many by delusion.
37. All this truly is the essence of Brahman and this is the sober reality. The material world is insubstantial and when seen truly appears as a hollow phantom.
38. The ignorant person’s misjudgment is that “I am not the infinite but an infinitesimal,” but the certainty of my infinity and supremacy is the means for my absorption into the Infinite and Supreme.
39. The belief of one’s individuality as “I am this” in his undivided, all pervasive and transparent soul is the cause of bondage to his personality. It is a web spun by his false dualism.
40. The supreme truths of true philosophy are the lack of knowledge of one’s bondage or freedom, the knowledge of his unity or duality, and his belief in the totality of Brahman.
41. The conditions for beholding Brahman in the soul are its perfect transparency amounting to its emptiness, and its lack of attachment to visible appearances, and also its indifference to all that is. There is no other way.
42. The condition for receiving the sight of Brahman is the purity of the mind produced by acts of holiness, just like the whiteness of a cloth can receive any color upon it.
43. O Rama, think that your soul is same with the souls of all other persons and abstain from all other thoughts, whether what is desirable or undesirable, what invigorates or enfeebles the body, or what brings liberation after bondage, or salvation after sinfulness.
44. The mirror of the mind, cleansed by the knowledge of the scriptures and made dispassionate through understanding, receives the reflection of Brahman like a clear crystal reflecting the images of things.
45. Sight which is familiar with visible objects, and not with images and ideas in the mind, is called false vision of what is soon lost from view.
46. When the mind is fixed upon God by abstracting its sight from all mental visions and what the eye sees, it has then the view of the Supreme before it.
47. Visible sights which are obvious to view are all only unreal phantoms. It is the absorption of the mind in the Divine that makes it identical with the Divine and no other.
48. We see something with our attention now, but it was not in our sight before or after we turn away. Therefore it must be considered absent in between before and after. Therefore one unacquainted with his mind is as ignorant as the man who is unaware of what he holds in his own hand.
49. One having no knowledge that the world is the same with the Supreme Spirit is always subject to misery, but the negation of any distinction between what can be perceived and God gives us both the pleasure of our enjoyments here and our liberation in future.
50. It is ignorance to say that water is one thing and its wave is another, but it shows intelligence to say they are the one and the same thing.
51. The vanities of the world are associated with sorrow. Therefore discard all aspects of vanity. The abandonment of extravagance ultimately will lead to your attainment of wisdom.
52. The mind composed of vain desires is an unreality in itself. Therefore, O Rama, why should you sorrow for something which in reality is nothing?
53. O Rama, look upon all things as traps set to ensnare the soul and regard them with an eye of apathy and unconcern, as an unkind kinsman looks upon his relatives.
54. As the unkind relative is unconcerned with the joys and grief of his relations, so should you remain aloof from all things by knowing the falsehood of their nature.
55. Rely on that eternal Spirit which is infinite knowledge and joy, and which is between the viewer and the view. After the swiftness of the mind’s flight is at an end, it will be fixed to the truth and adhere to it like clay.
56. The airy flight of the mind being restrained, the sluggish body must cease to run about and the dust cloud of ignorance will no more spread over the city of the world.
57. When the rains of our desires are over and the calmness of the mind is restored, when the shuddering cold of dullness has fled, when the mud of worldliness is dried up,
58. when the channel of our thirst is dried up, when drinking pots are sucked up and emptied, when the forest of the heart is cleared and its brambles are rooted out, and when the frost of false knowledge has disappeared,
59. then the mist of error vanishes from view, like the shadow of night on the approach of dawn, and the cold of dullness is put to flight, like the poison of snake-bite by the potent charm of mantras.
60. Then the streams of our desires do not run down the rock of the body, nor do the peacocks of our fleeting wishes fly and sport on its top.
61. The sphere of our consciousness becomes as the clear sky and the light of the living soul shines as brightly over the body like the midday sun.
62. The cloud of error is dispelled and succeeded by the light of reason. The longings of the soul, purified of their impurities, make it shine brilliantly amidst its sphere.
63. Then raptures of serene delight shoot forth in the soul like blooming blossoms in the open air, and a cool light is shed upon it, like the cooling beams of the autumn moon.
64. This ecstasy of the soul unfolds all prosperity before it and fructifies with abundance the well cultivated ground of the reasoning mind.
65. It sheds its clear light all over the world and shows the depths of the hills and forests and everything on earth in their clearest light.
66. This bliss expands the mind and makes it translucent. It makes the heart like a clear lake, blooming with blossoms of the lotus of truth (sattva) without the dust of ego activity (rajas). It is never infested by the swarming passions of pride or idleness (tamas).
67. The mind, cleansed of its selfishness, turns to universal benevolence and philanthropy. Being quite calm in itself without any desire of its own, the mind reigns as lord over the city of its body.
68. The man whose investigation has made him acquainted with all things, whose soul is enlightened with truth, whose mind is melted down from his pride, who is calm and quiet in his understanding, and who looks with pity at the unpleasant course of men’s births and deaths, he truly lives happily in the realm of his body without feverish anxiety about anything.
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Chapter 4.36 — Description of the Intellect’s Creation
1. Rama said, “Tell me O brahmin, for the sake of my advancement in knowledge, how does the mundane system exists in the extra mundane immaterial soul?”
2. Vasishta replied:— Worlds have no separate existence except in the Supreme Mind. They are all situated in Divine Consciousness like future waves exist in a calm sea.
3. As the all-pervading sky cannot be seen owing to its extreme lack of substance, so the undivided nature of the all-pervasive Consciousness cannot be perceived on account of its subtlety.
4. As a gem has its own brilliancy whether or not someone moves it, so the unreal world has its potential existence in the Divine Spirit, both in its states of action and inactivity.
5. As clouds in the sky do not touch the sky or have a tangible feeling of the sky’s emptiness, so the worlds existing in the receptacle of the intellectual soul have no contact with the extraneous intellect, which is unconnected with its contents.
6. As the light residing in the waters of the sea or a pot of water is not connected either with the water or the pot, nor is it felt by us but by its reflection, so the intangible soul abides unconnected in its receptacle of the body and reflects itself only to our knowledge.
7. Consciousness is devoid of every desire and designation. It is nameless and formless, but our intelligence gives names and forms to its reflections from some one of our intelligible ideas, such as the living soul and the like.
8. Consciousness is clearer than translucent air and finer than it by a hundred times. It is known as an undivided whole by the learned who view it as identical with the whole undivided world, which consciousness comprehends within itself.
9. As seawater shows itself in various forms in all its waves, so consciousness does not differ from various representations of its own motion that it shows to us.
10. The diversities of our subjective and objective knowledge of “myself” and “yourself” and “these” are like the varieties of surging waves in the ocean of consciousness. These are false notions because they are only representations of the same element, the very same consciousness.
11. The various states of consciousness (chit), exercise of consciousness (chinta), intelligence (chittam) and that which is intelligible (chetyas), all belong to the main principle of the soul. They are differently conceived by the learned and ignorant, but the difference is a mere conceit.
12. Consciousness presents two different aspects to wise and unwise people. To the ignorant, it shows its unreal nature in the realistic conception of the world. To the learned, it exhibits its luminous form in the identity of all things with God.
13. Consciousness by its internal (intellectual) light enlightens the luminous bodies of the sun and stars. It gives a relish to things by its internal taste and it gives birth to all beings from its inborn ideas of them.
14. It neither rises nor sets, nor gets up or sits. It neither proceeds nor recedes back and forth. It is not here nor is it nowhere.
15. The pure and transparent consciousness, which is situated in the soul, displays in itself the phantasmagoria which is called the world.
16. As a heap of fire emits its flame, a luminous body blazes with its rays, and as the sea swells in surges and breaks in with its inlets, so consciousness bursts out in its creations.
17. Thus consciousness which is self-manifest and omnipresent of its own nature, develops and envelops the world by its own manifestation and sight, and by its acts of integration and segregation, and its acts of accretion and secretion.
18. By its own error and of its own accord, it is led to forget and forsake its state of infinity. By assuming its individual personality of ego, it is converted to an ignoramus.
19. By its act of specialization, it falls from its knowledge of generals to that of particulars and comes to make differences between positive and negative, and inclusion and exclusion.
20. It strives and struggles within the confines of the sensuous body and it multiplies in these bodies like weeds sprouting out of the bosom of the earth.
21. It is consciousness that stretches the spacious vacuum to make room for the subsistence and growth of everything. Consciousness makes the all and ever moving air and the liquid water for the vitality and nourishment of all.
22. It makes the earth firm and the fire bright and the fixed worlds all around. It employs time by its injunctions and prohibitions.
23. It gives fragrance to flowers, growing by degrees their filaments and pistils. It makes the moisture in porous ground to grow vegetables on earth.
24. The rooted trees bear fruit from their juicy saps beneath, displaying their leaves with outlines in them like their veins and arteries.
25. It renovates the forest with its gifts of various colors, and dies them with the variety of colors from the rainbow of Indra.
26. Consciousness bids the thin layers of rocks, fruits and flowers to wait upon the flowery season of spring, then brings their fruits to perfection under the heat of the summer sun.
27. It makes the dark blue clouds of heaven wait for the approach of rainy weather, and causes the harvest of fields to follow in the train of autumn.
28. The cold season is decorated with its smiling frost, in its faces of the ten sides of the sky. Dewy weather is made to blow its icicles of dew drops on the wings of winter’s chilling winds.
29. It makes ever-moving time revolve in its rotation of years and cycles and yuga ages, and it causes the tide of creation to roll on in its waves of worlds on its bosom of the ocean of eternity.
30. The decrees of Consciousness remain fixed with a wonderful stability, and the earth continues firm with its quality of containing all things.
31. It made the universe abound with fourteen kinds of beings in as many worlds, the fourteen planes of creation (chaturdasa-bhuvana). These are as different in their modes of life as in their forms and figures.
32. These are repeatedly produced from and reduced to nothing, and move in their accustomed courses forever, like bubbles in the waterless ocean of eternity.
33. Here the miserable multitudes move madly in vain struggles after their desired objects, and in their imbecility under the subjection of disease and death. They are constantly coming to life and going away in their exits, remaining in their living states and acquiring their ends, and forever running back and forth in their repeated births and deaths in this world.
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Chapter 4.37 — Upasama: Stillness of the Soul; Apparent Activity of the Mind
1. Vasishta added:— In this manner, these series of worlds are revolving in their unchanging course, repeatedly appearing and disappearing in the substantiality of Brahman.
2. All this is derived from the one self-existence. All this has become the reciprocal causes of one another by their mutual transformations, and again they are destroyed of themselves by their mutual destructiveness of one another.
3. But as the motion of the waters on the surface does not affect the waters in the depth of the sea, so the fluctuations of the changing scenes of nature make no alteration in the ever tranquil spirit of Brahman.
4. As the desert in summer heat presents the waters of mirage to the clear sky, so the false world shows its delusive appearances to the mind.
5. As the calm soul seems to be giddy in the state of one’s drunkenness, so the essence of consciousness, which is always the same, appears as otherwise in its ignorance.
6. The world is neither a reality nor unreality. It is situated in Consciousness but appears to be placed outside it. It is not separate from the soul, although it seems to be different from it, as the ornament appears to differ from its gold.
7. Rama, that soul of yours whereby you perceive form and figures and sound and smell is the Supreme Brahman pervading all things.
8. The pure soul, being one in many and inherent in all external objects, cannot be thought of as being different from those that appear other than itself.
9. Rama, it is the difference of human thoughts that judges differently of the existence and non-existence of things, and of their good and bad natures also. It judges the world to exist either within or outside the Divine Spirit.
10. Because it is impossible for anything to exist outside the Spirit of God, it was the Spirit that willed to become many. As there was nothing beside itself which it could think of or find for itself, it was necessarily that it became so of itself without the aid of any extraneous matter.
11. Therefore the will to do this or that or try for one thing or other does not relate to the soul but to the mind. Thus the soul without choice, having no will of its own, does nothing except think on what is in itself. It is not an active agent owing to the union of all agency, instrumentality and objectivity in itself. It abides nowhere, being both the recipient and content, the container and the contained of everything in itself. Neither is the will-less soul action-less when the acts of creation are perceptible in itself. Nor is it possible that there is any other cause of them.
12. Rama, you must know the nature of Brahman to be no other than this. Knowing him as no agent and without a second, be free from all anxiety.
13. I will tell you more. Though you may continue to do a great many acts here, yet tell me in a word, what do you do that is worth doing? Rely on the lack of your own agency and be quiet as the wise sage. Remain as calm and still as the clear ocean when unshaken by breeze.
14. Know well that it is not possible for the swiftest runners to reach their goal of perfection no matter how far they may run. You must desist in your mind from pursuing worldly objects and persist to meditate on the spirituality of your inner intellectual soul.
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Chapter 4.38 — The Same Stillness of Spirit; the Mind as the Agent
1. Vasishta resumed:— Such being the state of the wise, the actions they are seen to do, whether of goodness or otherwise or pleasurable or painful, and regardless of what they are engaged in, are false and as nothing and do not affect them as they do other worldly mortals.
2. For what is a person’s action other than the exertion of mental and voluntary energies, with a fixed determination and desire of performing some physical acts?
3. The action of a man is defined to be the production of an act by appliance of the proper means, the exertion and action of the body in conformity with one’s ability, and the completion of the effect compatible with one’s intention, together with the enjoyment of the result of such agency.
4. Moreover, whether a man is agent or no agent of an action and whether he goes to heaven or dwells in hell, his mind is subject to the same feelings as the desires he has in his heart.
5. Hence the agency of the ignorant arises from their wishing to do a thing, whether they do it or not. But not so of the wise, who having no will, are not culpable even for their involuntary actions. Untutored minds are full with the weeds of vice, but well cultivated souls are quite devoid of them.
6. He who has the knowledge of truth becomes relaxed in his earthly desires. Though he acts his part well, he does not long eagerly for its result like others do. He acts with his body but with a quiet unconcerned mind. When successful, he attributes the gain to the will of God, but the worldly minded arrogate the result to themselves, though they could not bring it about.
7. Whatever the mind intends truly comes to pass, and nothing is achieved without the application of the mind. Therefore, agency belongs to the mind and not to the body.
8. The world proceeds from the Divine Mind. The world is a development of the mind and it is situated in the (infinite and eternal) mind. Knowing all things to be manifestations of the powers of consciousness, the wise man remains cool to his desires.
9. The minds of those who know the soul come to the state of perfect detachment from their desires, just as when a false mirage of water is set down by raining clouds, and particles of morning dews are dried up by the raging sun. It is then that the soul is said to rest in its perfect bliss (turiya).
10. This is not the joy of the gusto of pleasure or the pain of sorrow or discontent. It does not consist of the liveliness of living beings or the inertness of stones. It is not situated in the midst of these opposites but in the knowing mind which is all rapture and ecstasy, infinite bliss (bhumananda).
11. But the thirst of an ignorant mind leads it to the moving waters of earthly pleasures, just like an elephant is misled to a foul pool where he is plunged in its mud and mire without finding anything that is really good.
12. Here is another example based upon a stanza in the scriptures which says, “A man dreaming himself to be falling into a pit, feels the fear of his fall in his imagination even when he has been sleeping in his bed; but another who actually falls in a pit when he is fast asleep, is quite unconscious of his fall. Thus it is the mind which paints its own pleasure and pains, and not the bodily action or its inactivity.”
13. Hence whether a man is the doer of an action or not, he perceives nothing of it when his mind is engrossed in some other thought or action. But he sees everything within himself who beholds everything in the abstract meditation of his mind. The thinking mind sees outward objects as reflections that are cast out from his pure consciousness.
14. Thus the man knowing the knowable soul, knows himself to be inaccessible to the feelings of pleasure and pain. Knowing this as a certainty, he finds that nothing exists apart from what is within the container of his soul, which is as minute as a thousandth part of a hair. This being ascertained, he views everything in himself. With this certainty of knowledge, he comes to know his self as a reflection of all things, present in all of them. After these determinations, he comes to the conclusion that he is not subject to pain or pleasure. Thus freed from anxieties, the mind freely exercises its powers over all customary duties without being concerned about them.
15. He who knows the self remains joyous even in his calamity and shines like the moonlight which enlightens the world. He knows that it is his mind and not his self that is the agent of his actions, although he is the doer of them. Knowing that the mind is the agent in all his actions, he does not assume to himself the merit of the exercise of his limbs, hands and feet, nor does he expect to reap the rewards of all his constant labors and acts.
16. Unrestrained minds become unrestrained agents, their mental actions (thoughts) become habits, and their endurance brings about the consequences. Thus the mind is the root of all efforts and exertions, of all acts and actions, of all their results and productions, and the source of suffering the consequences of actions. By doing away with your mind, you make a clean sweep of all your actions and thereby avoid all your miseries resulting from your acts. All these are at an end with the trance of the mind is at an end. It is a practice in yoga to relieve the excitement of the mind from its ever varying purposes.
17. See how a boy is led by the fancy of his mind to build his toy or hobby-horse, which he dresses and paints in his willful play without showing any concern or feeling of pleasure or pain in its making or its breaking, however he pleases. So does man build his aerial castle and level it without any sense of gain or loss. It is by his acting in this manner in all worldly matters that no man is spiritually entangled to them.
18. Amidst the dangers and delights of this world, what cause can there be for your sorrow other than you have the one and not the other? But what is there so delectable and delightful to be desired in this world that at the same time is not impermanent and perishable? Only your self, your soul which is neither the active nor the passive agent of your actions and enjoyments, although people attribute actions and their fruitions to it by their error.
19. The importance of actions and emotions to living beings is a mistake and not veritable truth. If we consider things correctly, we find no action or emotion having any relationship to the soul. Only the sensualist feels attachment or aversion to the senses and conscious actions and enjoyments, and not those who are detached from sensuous affections.
20. There is no liberation in this world for the worldly minded, while liberation is fully realized by the yogi whose mind, in its state of living liberation (jivan-mukta), is free from attachments to the world.
21. Though the sage is established in the light of his self-consciousness, yet he is aware of the distinctions between unity and duality, the true entity from the non-entities, and he sees the omnipotence in all powers that are displayed in nature.
22. To him there is no bond or freedom, no liberation or bondage whatever, and the miseries of ignorance are all lost in the light of his enlightenment.
23. It is in vain to wish for liberation when the mind is tied down to the earth. So it is redundant to talk of bondage when the mind is already fastened to it. Shun them both by ignoring your individual ego and remain fixed to the true Ego. Continue in this way to manage yourself with an unruffled mind on this earth.
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Chapter 4.39 — Vasishta Postpones the Question of Impurity from Purity; the Unity of All Things
1. Rama replied, “Tell me, O high-minded sage, how could creation proceed from the Supreme Brahma, whom you describe as remaining as still as a painting in the canvas of emptiness?”
2. Vasishta replied:— O prince, such is the nature of Brahman that all power constantly flows from him, therefore every power is said to reside in him.
3. In him resides entity and non-entity. In him there is unity, duality and plurality, and the beginning and end of all things.
4. This is one and nothing else. It is like the sea whose waters have endless varieties of shapes. It represents the images of myriads of stars in its bosom, rising spontaneously of themselves.
5. As Consciousness becomes dense, it makes the mind and the mind brings forth all the powers of thinking, willing and acting. These it produces, accumulates, contains, shows and then absorbs in itself.
6. Brahman is the source of all living beings, and of all things seen all around us. His power is the cause that exhibits all things in their constant course or quiescence.
7. All things spring from the Supreme Spirit and they reside in his all comprehensive mind. They are of the same nature as that of their source, like the water of the sweet and salt lakes.
8. Rama interrupted and said, “Sage, your discourse is very dark, and I cannot understand the meaning of what you are saying.
9. There is the nature of Brahman, which you said to be beyond the perception of the mind and senses. Then what are these perishable things which you say have proceeded from him? If your reasoning comes to this conclusion, then I cannot rely upon it.”
10. “It is the law of production that anything produced from something is invariably of the same nature with that of its producer.
11. As light is produced from light, grain comes from grain, and man is born of man, and all kinds come out of their own kind.
12. Therefore the productions of the immutable Spirit must also be unchangeable and spiritual in their nature.”
13. “Beside all this, the Intellectual Spirit of God is pure and immaculate. This creation is all impure and gross matter.”
14. Upon hearing these words, the great sage said:— Brahman is all purity and there is no impurity in him. The waves moving on the surface of the sea may be foul, but they do not soil the waters of the deep.
15. Rama, you cannot conceive of there being a second person or thing beside the one Brahman, just as you can have no conception of fire beside its heat.”
16. Rama replied, “Sage, Brahman is devoid of sorrow, while the world is full of sorrows. Therefore I cannot clearly understand your words when you say this to be the offspring of that.”
17. Valmiki said to Bharadwaja:— At these words of Rama, the great sage Vasishta remained silent. He stopped his lecture and contemplated.
18. His mind lost its accustomed clarity, then recovering its clear vision, he pondered within himself in the following manner.
19. The educated and intelligent mind that has known the knowable One has reached the end of the subject of liberation by its own reasoning and intuition, as that of Rama.
20. It is no fault of the educated to have questions until it is explained to them to their full satisfaction, as in the case of Rama.
21. The half-educated are not fit to receive spiritual instruction because their view of phenomena, which dwells on obvious objects, proves to be the cause of their ruin.
22. But he who has come to understand in a transcendental light, and who has a clear insight of spiritual truths, feels no desire for sensual enjoyments and instead advances in course of time to the conclusion that Brahman is all in all things. (If the mind is pure, it instantly comprehends the truth.)
23. First the disciple has to be prepared and purified with the teachings and practice of stillness and self-control. Then he is to be initiated in the creed that “All this is Brahman and you are that pure Spirit.”
24. But who so teaches the faith of “all is Brahman” to the half taught and ignorant truly entangles him in the strong snare of hell.
25. The well discerning sage should tell only those who are enlightened in their understanding, whose desire of sensual gratifications has abated, who are free from their worldly desires, who are cleansed of the dirt of their ignorance, and who are prepared to receive religious and spiritual instruction.
26. The spiritual guide who instructs his student without weighing well his habits and conduct is a silly teacher and sinks into hell and has to dwell there until the last day of judgment.
27. The venerable Vasishta, who was the chief of sages and like the bright sun on earth, having considered these things, spoke to Rama as follows.
28. Vasishta said:— I will tell you Rama, at the conclusion of this lecture, whether the attribution of the impurity of gross bodies is applicable to Brahman or not.
29. For now, know that Brahma is almighty, all pervading, omnipresent and is all himself. Because of his omnipotence, he can do and become all and everything of itself.
30. You see various practices of magicians and tricks of jugglers in producing, presenting, and hiding many things in the sight of men. These are all only unreal shows. In the same way Brahman produces, presents and removes all things from and into himself.
31. The world is filled with gardens like those in fairylands, and the sky is full with the airy castles of gandharvas and the abodes of gods. Men are seen to descend from the cloudless sky to the surface of the earth, and rise upwards to heaven (in vimanas, flying chariots).
32. Fairy cities, like the palaces of the gandharvas of the ethereal regions, are shown on earth and filled with the fairies of fairyland.
33. Whatever there is or has been or is to be in this world are all like reflections of the revolving sky and heavenly bodies, or of a brass ball affixed to the top of a tower and darting its golden light below.
34. All these are only exhibitions of the various forms of manifestations of the selfsame God.
35. Whatever takes place at anytime or in any place and in any form is only a variety of the One Selfexistent reality. Therefore why, O Rama, should you give vent to your sorrow or joy, or wonder at any change of time or place or nature and form of things? They are all full of the spirit of God and exhibit the endless aspects of the Infinite Mood.
36. Let the intelligent preserve the sameness of their minds and dispositions amidst all changes, knowing them to be the varying conditions of the same unvarying Mind.
37. He who sees his God in all and is filled with equanimity has no cause for surprise, grief or delight or any other fluctuation of his mind in response to any change in nature or the ups and downs of his fortune.
38. In all the variations of time and place, and in all external circumstances, the unaltered mind continues to see the varieties of the power of his Maker.
39. The Lord proposes these plans in the formation of his creation and exhibits as the sea does its waves in endless varieties and successions from the fullness of his mind.
40. So the Lord manifests the powers situated in himself, as the sea does its waves in itself, as milk forms butter, as earth produces earthenware, or thread is woven into cloth. The fig tree brings forth its fruit and all other varied forms are contained in their sources. But these changes in form are phenomena and not real. They are mere appearances of the spectrum, like those of apparitions and phantoms.
41. There is no agent or object, no actor or act, or anything which is acted upon, nor is there anything that becomes nothing except by the variety of the one unity.
42. The mind that witnesses spiritual truths and retains its calmness unimpaired and unaffected by external accidents comes to see the light of truth by itself.
43. If there is a lamp, there is light also. The sun shining brings the day with him. Where there is a flower, there is its fragrance. So where there is a living soul, there is the knowledge of the world.
44. The world appearing all around is like the light of the soul. It appears like the motion of the wind of which we have no notion of its reality or unreality.
45. The immaculate Soul is the prime power of the appearance and disappearance of the myriads of gross bodies which, like the revolving stars of the sky and the seasonal flowers of spring, appear and reappear to us by turns, like the ups and downs of wheels in motion.
46. All things die away when our souls are without us, but how can anything be nothing when we are in possession of our souls?
47. All things appear before us in the presence of our souls and they vanish from before us in their absence from the body.
48. Everything is born with us with our souls and is lost with loss of them. The living have all, but the dead are lost to view. (The human soul, when joined with the Divine, has a clear view of everything.)
51. The minds of men are endowed with their knowledge at their very birth. Then growing bigger by degrees in course of time, they expand themselves into the form of this spacious forest of the world.
52. The woods of the world are the fastening post of the soul where our blooming desires are filled with fruits of poignant grief. It branches out with gratifications, blossoms with old age, and is breaking its good post and wandering at large of its free will. Therefore Rama, cut off the tree of worldly existence (samsara) with the sword of discrimination.
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Chapter 4.40 — Identity of the World with Brahman; Using Words
1. Rama said, “Tell me, sage, about the production of animal beings from Brahman, and let me know their different names and natures in full length.”
2. Vasishta replied:— I will tell you in brief the manner in which different species of beings are produced from Brahman, and how they are destroyed afterwards, and also how they obtain their liberation in the end,
3. also the manner of their growth and sustenance and fitness in the world.
4. The omnipotent energy (chit-shakti) of the consciousness of Brahman becomes whatever is thought of (chetya) in Divine Consciousness.
5. The exercise of consciousness becomes condensed to a certain subtle form which, having the powers of thought, becomes the principle called the mind.
6. Then the mind, by an effort of its conception (called the will), expands itself to an unreal (ideal) scenery like that of the fairyland, by falling off from the nature of thoughtlessness that is Brahman.
7. Consciousness, when remaining in its original state, appears as a vacuum or space, but upon manifesting itself in the form of the mind, men see it as the visible sky.
8. Taking the conception of the lotus-born, it finds itself in its conceived form of the lotus, god Brahma the Creator, and then it thinks of creation in the form of Prajapati or lord of creatures.
9. He then formed this creation from his thought (chitta). It contains the fourteen worlds with all the multitudes and varieties of living beings in them.
10. The mind itself is an emptiness with an empty body. Thought is the mind’s field of its action, and its sphere is full with the false workings of the mind.
11. In the mind of Brahma there are many kinds of beings, some laboring under great ignorance like beasts and brute creatures. There are some with enlightened minds such as the sages. Others stagger in the intermediate class, like the majority of mankind.
12. Among all living beings confined in this earth, only the human race living in this part (India) are capable of receiving instruction and civilization.
13. But most of these are subject to diseases and distress, suffering under the thrall of their ignorance, enmity and fear. Therefore it is for their benefit that I will deliver my lecture on social and saintly conduct.
14. I will also talk about the everlasting, imperishable and omnipresent Brahman who is without beginning or end, whose mind is without error, and who is of the form of Intellectual light.
15. I will explain how endless beings are put to motion by the momentum of a particle of his motionless body, resembling the rolling of boisterous waves on the surface of a clear and tranquil ocean.
16. Rama asked, “Sage, how can there be a part of the infinite Spirit, or a momentum of the motionless God, or a change or effort from one who is altogether without them?”
17. Vasishta replied:— It is the usual and current mode of expression, both in scriptures and language, for people to talk in terms of, “All this is made by or come from Him.” But it is not so in its real and spiritual sense.
18. No change or partition, and no relation of space or time, bears any reference to the Supreme, who is unchangeable, infinite and eternal. There is no appearance or disappearance of Him at anytime or place, who is ever invisible everywhere.
19. There never was nor can there ever be any way of representing the incomprehensible, except by symbolical expressions. Therefore, I have made use of words that are used in common speech.
20. Whatever words or expressions are used as symbolic of some sense, whether they express “produced from it” (tajja) or “change of the same” (tanmaya), the same should be used in that sense all along.
21. It is tajja when we say “fire proceeds from fire” (meaning, the “mundane Brahma comes out of the spiritual Brahma.” Here fire is symbolical of Brahma and the world). It is tanmaya in the expression “Brahma is the producer and produced” (meaning the identity and transformation of the Creator to the creation).
22. The first expression is applied to the world as proceeding from Brahma, but the other expression, that of the producer and produced, also means the creative power which made the world.
23. The expression, “This is one thing and that another” (idam-anyat) is false. The difference is verbal and not real because there is no proof of it in the nature of God, which is one and all.
24. The mind, by reason of its birth (tajja) from Brahma, possesses both the power and intelligence of his Consciousness, and is enabled to accomplish its intended purpose by means of its intense application.
25. To say that one flame of fire produces the other is mere word dispute. There is no truth in this assertion.
26. That one produces the other is also false reasoning because the one Brahma, being infinite, could produce no other thing beside reproducing himself.
27. It is the nature of argument to contradict each another by replies and rejoinders, but it is not right to defeat an adversary by false reasoning.
28. The learned know Brahman as the ocean rolling in its endless waves, and significant words and their meanings go together like Brahman and his creation.
29. Brahman is consciousness, Brahman is the mind, Brahman is intelligence, and Brahman is substance (vastu). He is sound, he is understanding, and he is in the principles of things.
30. The whole universe is Brahman and yet he is beyond all this. In reality the world is a nothing for all is Brahman alone.
31. This is one thing and that is another, and this is a part of the great soul, are all contradictory assertions of ignorance. No words can express the true nature of the unknown.
32. The spirit rises as the flame of fire and this flame signifies the mind. Its tremor signifies the fluctuation of the mind, which in reality is not the case, there being no rise or fall of the Divine Mind.
33. It is untruth that wavers and equivocates in double meanings. It deviates from the truth, as the defective eye sees a double moon in the sky.
34. Brahman being all of himself and all pervading and infinite of his own nature, there can be no other thing beside himself and anything that is produced of him is likewise himself.
35. Beside the truth of the existence of Brahman, there is nothing which can be proved as absolutely certain. It is a scriptural truth that says, “Truly, all this is Brahman.”
36. This also must be the conclusion, which you will arrive at by your reasoning, and which I will propose with many examples and teachings in the Book of Nirvana (Liberation).
37. This single question raises many things of which you are ignorant. You will come to know fully in the future, and your questions on this subject will be dispelled.
38. Unreality having disappeared, reality appears to view, just as the darkness of night being dispelled, the visible world comes to sight.
39. The spacious world which appears to your false sight will vanish, O Rama, on your attainment of the state of calm stillness. False appearances must disappear from your vision as soon as the light of truth comes to dawn upon your soul.
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Chapter 4.41 — Use of Words; Description of Ignorance
1. Rama said, “Sage, I feel your speech to be as cooling and shining as the water of the milky sea. It is as deep and full as the vast ocean.
2. Sometimes I am puzzled, other times I am enlightened by the variety of your discourses, as a rainy day is now hidden by a cloud, and again shines forth brightly with sunshine.
3. I understand Brahman as infinite and inconceivable and the life and light of all that exists. I know that light never sets. But tell me, how do people attribute many qualities that are foreign to his nature?”
4. Vasishta replied:— The wording and meaning of my lectures to you are all used in their right and ordinary sense. They are neither insignificant nor meaningless, equivocal or ambiguous, or contradictory of one another.
5. You will understand the proper significance of my phraseology when the eyesight of your understanding becomes clearer and when the light of reason rises in your mind.
6. Do not make the mistake of relying upon your ordinary understanding to interpret the meanings of my words or the phraseology I have used to explain the subject of my lectures and the intention of the scriptures.
7. When you come to know the clear truth of Brahman, you will know more regarding the distinctions of significant words.
8. Distinctive verbal signs are invented to communicate our thoughts, to convey our instructions to others, and for our knowledge of the intention of the scriptures.
9. Words and their meanings and phrases and their constructions are used for the instruction of others. They are applied for the use of the ignorant. They never apply to those who are acquainted with truth.
10. There is no attribute or imputation that bears any relation with the free and unsullied soul. It is the dispassionate spirit of the supreme Brahman, and the same is the soul of the existent world.
11. This subject will again be fully discussed and expanded upon with various arguments when we arrive at the conclusion of this subject (in the Book of Nirvana).
12. I have said this much about words and terminology because it is impossible to penetrate the deep darkness of ignorance without the means of much talk.
13. As conscious ignorance offers herself a willing sacrifice on the shrine of knowledge, she bids her adversary, the destroyer of error, to take possession of her seat in the bosom of man.
14. One weapon is foiled by another, one dart is removed by the other, one poison is destroyed by another, and one foe is driven out by another enemy.
15. So Rama, the mutual destruction of errors brings joy to the soul. It is hard to detect the error, but no sooner it is found out than it is destroyed. It means the refutation of false doctrines by one another.
16. Ignorance obscures the keenness of our insights and presents the false and gross world before us. We all view this wonderful universe, but we do not know what or how it is.
17. Unobserved, it rushes to our view, but being examined with attention and keen observation, it flies away. We know it is a phantasm, and yet find it appearing with dimensions and forms before us.
18. O the wonderful enchantment that has spread out this world and made unreality appear as a sober reality to the knowledge of every one of us.
19. This earth is a distinct, widely extended superstructure resting on the indistinct surface of an unknown foundation. He is the best of beings who has stretched this enchantment.
20. When you are enlightened with the thought that all this is non-existent in reality, you will become the knower of the knowable (God) and understand the meaning of my lectures.
21. So long as you are not awakened to true knowledge, trust my words and know this immensity to be the creature of the incorrigible and immovable ignorance.
22. All this immensity that appears to sight is only the picture of your mistaken thought. It is all unsubstantial, only a mere manifestation of your deluded mind.
23. He is entitled to liberation whose mind is certain of the reality of Brahman, and who knows the moving and unmoving figures outside to be the thoughts of the mind presented to the sight.
24. The whole immensity of the earth is like a net set to catch the birds that are the fleeting mind. It is as false as a landscape in a dream, an unreality that appears as real to the mind.
25. He who looks upon the world without attachment to it is never subject to grief or sorrow on any account. He who thinks all these forms are formless sees the formless spirit.
26. The forms of the formless spirit are the formation of ignorance. When the blemishes of passions and change do not belong even to great souls, how can these attributes relate to the greatest God?
27. Attributes given to the Supreme Spirit are like dust thrown upon the surface of clear water. Only our thoughts attribute qualities to the inconceivable one, just as we attribute certain meanings to words that have no corresponding substance in reality.
28. Custom establishes the meanings of words that continue to be inseparably joined with them. It is custom that determines the use of words in scriptures.
29. As cloth cannot be thought of without its thread, so the soul is unintelligible without the medium of words giving its true definition.
30. It is possible to gain knowledge of the soul from scriptures without one being self-conscious of it, just as it is possible to cross the sea of ignorance by means of spiritual knowledge.
31. Rama, when the soul is in any way polluted by the blemishes of ignorance, it is impossible to arrive at the state of what is called imperishable life and bliss.
32. The existence of the world truly depends on the existence of the Supreme. Know this and do not question how or where it came to exist.
33. Let your thoughts be focused only on how to get rid of this unreality, for it is upon the disappearance of the unreality that you can know the real truth.
34. Leave off thinking from where all this came, how it is, and how it is destroyed at last. Believe that it is really nothing, only appearing without being actually seen.
35. How can one know how his mistake makes unreality appear as reality when the mistake has taken a firm footing in his mind?
36. Try your best to destroy your mistaken prejudice and then you will know the truth. Truly men who are freed from prejudice are the greatest heroes and the most learned in the world.
37. Strive to destroy your harmful ignorance, or it is sure to overpower you as it does the rest of mankind.
38. Take care lest your ignorance should enthrall you to the pain of repeated reincarnations. Know ignorance to be the root of all evil and companion of every vice. It creates a man’s interest in what proves to be his peril.
39. Quickly abandon this false view, the harmful cause of your fears and sorrows, and of your diseases and dangers, and the germ of errors in the mind, and thereby cross this perilous ocean of the world.
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Chapter 4.42 — From Brahman to Ordinary Mind: Producing Individual Souls
1. Vasishta continued:— Rama, now hear what is the antidote against the widespread disease of ignorance and the raging epidemic of unreality, which vanish from view upon your close inspection of it.
2. I am going to expand upon something I was going to mention earlier (in Chapter 40. concerning the qualities of sattva (purity) and rajas (activity) in order to investigate the powers of the mind.
3. The same Brahman who is all-pervading, undecaying and immortal, without beginning or end and free from error, is known as intellectual light.
4. The Intellect, which is the body of Brahma and has its vibration in itself, becomes agitated and condensed at intervals, like the translucent water of the ocean has its motion of itself and becomes dense and thickened by its disturbance.
5. As seawater is agitated in itself without any motion or excitation from without, so the almighty Power exerts its force in itself throughout all eternity and infinity.
6. As the air stirs in its own bosom of emptiness forever, so the power of the Divine Spirit exerts itself spontaneously and freely in its own sphere of the spirit.
7. As a flame rises high of its own accord, so the power of the Spirit extends in itself in all directions.
8. As the sea seems to move with its sparkling waters, reflecting the sun and moonbeams upon its surface, so the almighty Spirit appears to shake with the fleeting reflections of creation in its bosom.
9. As the sea sparkles with the golden beams of the starry sky, so the vast translucent soul of God shines with the light of its own intellectual sphere.
10. As chains of pearly rays glitter to our sight in the empty sky, so diverse forms of things fly about in the vast emptiness of Consciousness.
11. These intellectual images, being pushed forward by the force of Consciousness, begin to roll in its empty sphere like waves in the sea.
12. These images, although inseparable from the Consciousness of the Divine Spirit, yet seem to be apart from it, like light shining through the holes of needles and other openings.
13. The universal Omnipotence exhibits itself in those particular forms, as the moon shows her various crescent shapes in her different phases.
14. Thus the intellectual power of the Supreme Spirit, coming to shine forth as light, refracts itself in various forms as the very many appearances of that great light.
15. The Supreme Spirit, though conscious of its nature of infinity and indivisibility, yet assumes to itself the state of its individuality in every separate and limited form of created beings.
16. When the Supreme Entity takes these several forms upon itself, it is immediately joined by a train of qualities and properties, with quantity, modality and the like as followers in its train.
17. Unsubstantial Consciousness, deeming itself as a substance by being separated from the Supreme Soul, becomes divided into infinity like the waves of the seawater.
18. As there is no material difference of the armlet and bracelet from the same gold with which they are made, so Consciouness and the Soul are one and same thing. The thought makes the difference in their different modes.
19. As there is no difference between one lamp and the others that are lighted from the same light, so it is of all souls and intellects: they are alike in their nature, but differ only in their particular attributes.
20. Consciousness, being put to action by the force of the soul on particular occasions, pursues its desires and the objects of its fancy.
21. The same consciousness also, taking its forms of will and action at different times and places, is called the embodied soul or spirit, and also known as kshetrajna, the knower of the field.
22. The witness consciousness is so named from its familiarity with the body (kshetra) and its knowledge of its inner and outward actions.
23. This being filled with its desires, is designated as ego or selfishness, and this again being soiled by its fancies, takes the name of understanding.
24. Understanding leaning towards its wishes is called the mind, which when it is compacted for action, takes the name of the senses or sensation.
25. Next the senses are furnished with their organs called the organs of sense, which being joined with the organs of action, the hands and feet, are together called the body.
26. Thus the living soul being tied to its thoughts and desires, and being trapped in the net of pain and sorrow, is called the heart (chitta, the memory aspect of the mind).
27. Thus the gradual development of consciousness produces its successive results. These are the different states or conditions of the living soul, and not so many forms of it, but all these are the impurities of the soul.
28. The living soul becomes associated with egoism in its embodied state, and this being polluted by its egoistic understanding becomes entangled in the net of selfish desires, which becomes the mind.
29. The lustful mind becomes eager to graft itself in its consorts and offspring, and to secure the false possessions of the world to itself and without a rival.
30. The tendencies of the mind pursue their desired objects, as the cow follows the lusty bull. The mind runs after its objects only to be polluted by them, as the sweet stream of the river meets the sea to become bitter and briny.
31. Thus the mind, being polluted by its selfishness, loses the freedom of its will and becomes bound to its desires, like silkworms in their cocoons.
32. The mind exposes the body to confinement by its pursuit of its desires, until it comes to feel the bitterness of its own bondage and the bitter regret of the conscious soul.
33. Knowing itself to be enslaved, it bids farewell to the freedom of its thought and knowledge and begets gross ignorance within itself, which rages and ranges free in the forest of this world with its horribly monstrous appearance.
34. The mind, containing within it the flame of its own desires, is consumed to death like a chained lion in a fire.
35. It assumes to itself the agency of all its various acts under its subjection to a variety of desires. Thus it exposes itself to the changes of its state in this life and all its future births.
36. It labors continually under all of its eight-fold states of understanding; namely knowledge, intelligence and activity or active agency, and its egoism or selfishness, all of which are causes of all of its sorrows.
37. It is sometimes called nature (prakriti or character) or the seat of self delusion (maya). The mind is often converted to foulness (malas) and very often to activity.
38. It is sometimes called bondage and is often synonymous with the heart-mind. It is also called ignorance (avidya, literally, not-knowledge) and also frequently identified with the will or volition.
39. Know Rama that the heart-mind is tied to the earth by a chain of sorrow and misery. It is full to the brim with greed and grief and it is the abode of passions.
40. It is living dead with the cares of age and the fear of death to which the world is subject. It is troubled with desires and disgust and stained by its ignorance and passions.
41. It is infested with the prickly thorns of its wishes and the brambles of its acts. It is quite forgetful of its origin and it is beset by the evils of its own making.
42. It is confined like a silkworm in its own cocoon where it is doomed to dwell with its sorrow and pain. Although it is only a minute particle in its shape, it is the seat of endless hellfire.
43. It is as minute as the soul, and yet appears as huge as the highest hill. This world is a forest of wild poisonous trees branching out with their fruits of decay and death.
44. The snare of desire is stretched over the whole world. Its fruits are like those of Indian fig trees which have no core or flavor within.
45. The mind being burnt by the flame of its sorrow and bitten by the serpent of its anger, and being drowned in the boisterous sea of its desires, has entirely forgotten its great Father (Brahma).
46. It is like a lost male deer straying out of its herd, and like one deprived of reason by his sorrows, or more like a moth burned by the flame of world affairs.
47. It is torn away like a limb from its place in the Spirit and thrown in an unsuitable spot. It is withering away like a lotus plant plucked from its root.
48. Being cast amidst the bustle of business among men who are inimical or like dumb pictures to him, every man is groveling in this earth amidst dangers and difficulties.
49. Man is exposed to the difficulties of this dark and dismal world like a bird that has fallen into the waters of the sea. He is entangled in the snare of the world like one snatched to a fairyland in the sky.
50. The mind is carried away by the current of business like a man borne by the waves of the sea. Lift it, O brave Rama, from this pit, as they do an elephant sinking in the mud.
51. Lift up your mind by force, O Rama, like a bullock from this delusive puddle of the world where it is shorn of its brightness and is weakened in its frame.
52. Rama, the man whose mind is troubled in this world by successions of joy and grief, or by the vicissitudes of weakness from old age, disease and death, is no human being. He resembles a monstrous rakshasa demon, although he may have the figure of a man on him.
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Chapter 4.43 — Varieties of Living Souls
1. Vasishta continued:— Thus the living soul, being derived from Brahman, assumes to itself the form of the mind and is tossed about with the thoughts and cares of the world. Then it is changed into thousands and millions of forms that it creates to itself in its imagination.
2. It has undergone many prior births and is in the course of migrating into many more. It will reincarnate into many more as multitudinous as the flitting particles of a waterfall.
3. These atomic souls of living beings, being subjected to their desires by the great variety of their wishes, are made to wander under many forms to which they are bound by their desires.
4. They wander constantly in different directions and in distant countries, both by land and water. They live or die in those places, like bubbles blow out only to float and burst and then sink in the water below.
5. Some are produced for the first time in a new kalpa age and others are born a hundred times in it. Some have had only two or three births while the births of others are beyond number.
6. Some are yet unborn and are to be born yet on earth and many others have passed their births by attainment of their liberation at last. Some are alive at present and others are no more to be born.
7. Some are born again and again for myriads of kalpas. Some remain in one state all along and many in various states repeatedly changing their forms and natures.
8. Some are subjected to the great misery of hell and some are destined to a little joy on earth. Some enjoy the great delights of the gods in heaven and others are raised to the glory of the heavenly bodies above.
9. Some are born as kinnaras (half-human, half-horse celestials) and gandharvas (male nature spirits), and others as vidyadharas (supernatural spirits) and huge serpents. Some appear in the forms of the Sun god, Indra and Varuna, and others in those of the three-eyed Shiva and the lotus-born Brahma.
10. Some become the kushmanda demons and vetala demon-ghosts, and others as yaksha (nature-spirit) and raksha demon cannibals. Some again become the brahmins and the ruling class, and others become vaisyas (merchant castes) and shudras (worker castes).
11. Some become swapacha (low caste) and chandala (outcaste), and others as Kiratis and Pukkasa tribals. Some become the grass and greens on earth, and others as the seeds of fruits and roots of vegetables, or as moths and butterflies in the air.
12. Some are formed into varieties of herbs and creeping plants, and others into stones and rocks; some into jama and kadamba trees, and others into sala, palm and tamala forests.
13. There are some placed in prosperous circumstances, becoming ministers and generals and rulers of states, while others are clad in rags and remain as religious recluses, munis and silent hermits in the woods.
14. Some are born as snakes, serpents, worms, insects and ants. There are others in the forms of great lions, big buffaloes, deer and goats, and fleet antelopes in forests.
15. Some are begotten as storks and cranes, ruddy geese and cuckoos. Others become their pastures in the shapes of lotuses, water lilies, and other aquatic shrubs and flowers.
16. Some are brought forth as elephants and their cubs, and as wild boars, bulls and asses. Others come into being as bees and beetles, flies and gadflies, gnats and mosquitoes.
17. Many are born to difficulties and dangers, and many to prosperity and adversity. Some are placed in hell pits and others in their heavenly abodes.
18. Some are situated in the stars and some in the hollows of trees. Some move upon the wings of the winds and others rest in the still air above or fly freely in the sky.
19. Many dwell in the sunlight of the day and many subsist under the moonbeams at night. There are others subsisting upon the beverage they draw from herb-like plants.
20. Some are liberated in their lifetime and wander about freely in this earth. Others live in blissful states. Some are altogether free in their reliance in the Supreme Spirit.
21. There are some that require long periods for their blessed and ultimate liberation. Others disbelieve the intellectuality and spirituality of mankind and dislike being reduced to the singleness of the One Soul, or to be reduced to their oneness or unity with the Supreme Soul.
22. Some become regents of the skies above and others roll down in the form of mighty streams. Some become females of beautiful appearances and others as ugly hermaphrodites and freaks.
23. Some are of enlightened understandings and some are darkened in their minds. Some are preachers and lecturers of knowledge and others are in ecstatic consciousness of samadhi.
24. The living souls who are dominated by their desires are so powerless of themselves that they have forgotten their freedom and are fast chained to their wishes.
25. They rove about the world, now flying up and then falling down in their hopes and fears. They are constantly tossed up and down, like play balls flung on all sides by the relentless hands of playful Death.
26. Trapped in the hundred fold snare of desire and converted to the various forms of their wishes, they pass from one body to another, as birds fly from one tree to alight on another.
27. The endless desires of the living soul, bred and led by the false imaginations of the mind, have spread this enchanted snare of illusion (maya) known by the name of the great world.
28. Stupefied souls are doomed to wander about in the world, like waters in a whirlpool, as long as they do not come to understand the true nature of their selves as selfsame with the Supreme-Self.
29. Having known and seen the true Self by forsaking their false knowledge of their individual egos, they come to their consciousness of themselves as identical with the divine Self. Having attained this in process of time, they are released from their doom of revisiting this world of pain and sorrow.
30. However, there are some unconscious beings who, in spite of their attainment of this knowledge, after passing into a hundred lives in it in various shapes, are so perverted in their natures that they have to return again to this earth.
31. Some, after having attained higher states, fall down again by the lowness of their spirits and appear in the shapes of brute creatures, and at last have to fall into hell.
32. There are some great minded souls who, having proceeded from the state of Brahman, have to pass here a single life, after which they are absorbed in the Supreme Soul.
33. There are multitudes of living beings in other worlds also, some of whom have become like the lotus-born Brahma and others as Shiva.
34. There are others who have become like the gods or brute creatures in them, and there are snakes and other reptiles also in them, as well as in this earth.
35. There are other worlds as obvious to view as this earth, and there are many such worlds that have gone by, and others are yet to appear.
36. In the other worlds there are various other creatures of different shapes produced by various unknown causes and which have their growths and deaths like those of this earth.
37. Some are produced as gandharvas and others as yakshas. Some are generated as sura demigods and some others as asura and daitya gods.
38. The manners and modes of life of the peoples in other parts of the globe are like those of men living in this part of the earth.
39. All creatures move according to their own natures and mutual relations for ever more, like the waves and currents of a river move forward, following and followed by others in regular succession.
40. The entire creation moves onward in eternal progression in its course of evolution and involution, and in its motions of ascent and descent like the waves of the ocean.
41. In this manner, multitudes of living beings with consciousness of their self-existence proceed from the Supreme Spirit, rising from and at last falling into it.
42. All created beings are detached from their source, like light from the lamp and solar rays from the sun. They are like sparks of red hot iron and the flashing sparks of fire.
43. They are like the minute moments of time and the flying odors of flowers, or the cold icicles and particles of rainwater carried by breeze and cooling the air all around.
44. The flitting particles of life, flying from one spot to another and filling different bodies with animation, are at last absorbed in the mainspring of vitality from where they had risen.
45. Particles of vital air, being thus spread out and scattered over the universe, come to assume the various forms of animated beings in all the worlds. But they are all mere creations of our ignorance. In reality they are like the rolling waves of water in the vast ocean of eternity.
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Chapter 4.44 — Description of Brahma’s Self-Birth
1. Rama asked, “Now I understand how particles of the Divine Spirit take the forms of living souls, but I cannot conceive how it assumes the physical body composed of bones and ribs.”
2. Vasishta replied:— Why don’t you know it, Rama, when I have explained it to you before? Where have you lost your deductive reasoning of arriving to the conclusion from those premises?
3. All these physical bodies in the world and all these moving and unmoving persons and things, are only false representations rising before us like the visions in our dreams.
4. The phenomenal world differs from dreams only in it being a longer and more delusive. It is like the optical illusion of seeing a double moon or seeing a mountain in the delusion of darkness.
5. The enlightened mind, cleared of its drowsiness of ignorance and freed from the chains of its desire, views the world to be no more than a dream.
6. The world is a creation naturally conceived in the imagination of all living souls. The world remains impressed upon the soul until the soul attains its final liberation.
7. The fleeting essence of the soul is like the whirling current of waters, or like the germ of a seed, or more like the leaflet of a sprout.
8. As the flower is contained in the branch and the fruit within its flowers, so this creation of the imagination is contained in the receptacle of the mind.
9. As the ever-changing form of the chameleon exhibits only a particular color at a time, so the evervarying mind shows only the form that is prominent in its thought for the time being.
10. The same thought assumes a visible form, like clay taking the form of a pot. Good thoughts and actions of the prior state of life serve to give the soul a good form in its next birth on earth.
11. We see the mighty lotus-born Brahma situated in the bud of that flower and find it to be the effect of the good thoughts he had in his mind.
12. This unlimited creation is the false fabrication of imagination from which the living soul in conjunction with the mind obtains the state of Virinchi, Brahma the Creator.
13. Rama said, “Sage, I need to be fully informed whether all other beings sprang from the same cause as Brahma, the lotus-born.”
14. Vasishta answered:— Let me tell you again, O long-armed Rama, how Brahma has a body. From his example, you will learn about the existence of the world.
15. The Supreme Soul, which is unlimited by time or space, of his own will and by the power of his omnipotence takes the limited forms of time and space upon himself.
16. The same becomes the living soul and is filled with various desires in itself of becoming many.
17. When this limited power which is Brahma thinks on the state of his having been the Cosmic Egg (hiranyagarbha) in his former state of existence in the prior kalpa, he is immediately transformed to that state which is in his mind, and which is ever busy with its thoughts and imaginations.
18. First it thinks of the clear sky, the receptacle of sound, which is perceptible by the auditory organs. This thought being condensed in the mind makes it vibrate like the wind does the air.
19. Then it thinks about the vibrations of air, which are the objects of feeling, through the porous skin and the mind. It is moved by the thoughts of air and wind to assume that form which is invisible to the naked eye.
20. The condensation of the elements of air and wind together produce the idea of light which is the cause of sight and which has colors and forms for its objects. Thus the mind, moved by its triple thoughts of air, wind and light, produces the property of fire.
21. These immediately join to produce the idea of coldness, the property of water. Then the mind forms the ideas of the four elements of air, wind, fire and water.
22. These united together produce the gross form of earth, the receptacle of scent. Then the mind, filled with its thoughts of these minute elementary particles, forsook its fine form of the spirit for its gross body of the five elements (the fifth being ether, akasha).
23. The mind saw this body shining like a spark of fire in the sky, which joined with its sense of self, ego, and understanding, formed its personality.
24. This is called the spiritual body within the eightfold embodiment (earth, water, fire, air, space, mind, intellect and identity). The spiritual body is situated like a bee in the middle of the lotus-like heart and it gives growth to the outer body by its inner working.
25. It is thickened by the action and internal heating process of the heart, like the bel fruit or woodapple. The outer body receives the qualities of the inner mind, just as a jewel shines with the luster of the little particle of gold, melted and infused within.
26. The quality of the inner soul or mind manifests itself in the outer body in the same way as the quality of a seed appears in the form and taste of its fruit. Then the mind dwells upon the thoughts of its actions, which are expressed in the different organs and actions of the body, all produced by the motions of inner thoughts and acts, just like tree leaves and branches are projected by the inner process and operations of the seed.
27. Its thoughts of up and down lift and lower its head and feet upward and downward. Its thoughts of both sides extend its two arms to the right and left.
28. Its thoughts of backward and forward place its back behind and its breast and belly before. The hairs on the head and fingers of the hands are like the filaments and twigs of trees.
29. In this manner did Brahma, who is called a muni and a mental being because his body sprung from his mind, produced the different parts of his body according to his thoughts of their usefulness to him.
30. He brought the body and its limbs to compactness, just as the seasons bring their fruits and grains to perfection. Thus everything is perfected in time, and all beings have their beautiful bodies and figures.
31. He, Lord Brahma, was the progenitor of all beings filled with the qualities of strength and understanding, activity, dignity and knowledge.
32. Being begotten by the empty Brahman, he resides in the lap of emptiness. He is of the form of melted gold, like every other luminous body in the heavens.
33. Though situated in the Supreme, yet the mind of Brahma is liable to the mistakes of his own making, and at times it quite forgets having no beginning, middle or end, like his Source.
34. Sometimes the lord thinks he is identical with the waters that existed in his mind before creation; at another as the cosmic egg which was as bright as the fire of universal destruction.
35. Sometimes the lord thinks he is the dark forest that covered the earth before creation of living animals, and then as a lotus bed. Afterwards he became many forms at each phase and epoch of creation.
36. Thus Brahma became the preserver of many kinds of beings which he created of his own will from his mind at each stage or kalpa-period. Of these beings, Brahma was the first that issued from Brahman himself.
37. When Brahma was first begotten, he remained in his happy state of unconsciousness and forgetfulness, but being delivered from his mental inactivity in the womb, he came to see the light.
38. He took a physical body with its breathings and respirations. It was covered with pores of hair and furnished with gums and thirty-two teeth.
39. It had the three pots of shin bones, thighs, and backbone standing on feet below, with the five airs, five partitions, nine cavities, and a smooth skin covering all the limbs.
40. It is accompanied by twice ten fingers and their nails, and with a couple of arms and palms and two or more hands and eyes.
41. The body is the nest of the bird of the mind and it is the hole of the snake of lust. It is the cave of the goblin of greediness and the den of the lion of life.
42. It is a chain at the feet of the elephant of pride and it is a lake of the lotuses of our desire. The lord Brahma looked upon his handsome body and saw that it was good.
43. Then the lord thought in himself, from his view of the three times of the past, present and future, and from his sight of the vault of heaven with a dark mist like a swarm of flying locusts,
44. “What is this boundless space? What had it been before? How did I come into being?” Thus pondering in himself, he was enlightened in his soul.
45. He saw in his mind the different past creations and recollected the various religions and their various sects which had grown upon earth one after the other.
46. He produced the holy Vedas as spring does its flowers. He formed with ease all varieties of creatures from their archetypes in his mind.
47. He set them in their various laws and customs for their temporal and spiritual welfare, as he saw them in the city of his mind.
48. From their prototypes in his eternal mind, Brahma thought upon the innumerable varieties of scriptures which had existed before and all of which came to exist on earth in their visible forms, like flowers springing from the womb of spring season.
49. Thus, O Rama, did Brahma take upon himself the form of the lotus-born and create by his activity all the different creatures form the models of them that existed in his mind, and which took their various forms in the visible world at his will.
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Chapter 4.45 — Dependence of All on God; Nothing Is Lost Which Doesn’t Exist
1. Vasishta continued:— The world appears as substantial but has nothing substantive in it. It is all a emptiness, a mere representation of images and aimless digressions of the mind.
2. Neither time nor space is filled by any world at all, but by the great Spirit who has no form except that of vacuum.
3. This is all imaginary and as visionary as a city seen in a dream. Whatever is seen anywhere is fallacy existing in infinite emptiness.
4. It is a painting without its base, a vision of unrealities. It is an uncreated creation and a multi-colored picture without its canvas.
5. The imagination of the mind has stretched the three worlds and made the many bodies contained in them. Memory is the cause of these creations, as the eyesight is the cause of vision.
6. The spectacle and display of the world is like a false representation, like the elevations and depressions in a painting. They are not distinct from the Supreme Spirit in which they are situated as buildings stand on their foundation.
7. The mind has made the body for its own home, as some silkworms build their cocoons. The soul also has its sheaths.
8. There is nothing which the mind can not get or build in its empty imagination, however difficult or unattainable it may appear to be.
9. What impossibility is there when the mind in its secluded cell possesses the same powers that reside in omnipotence?
10. It is not impossible, O Rama, for anything to be or not to be at anytime or always, when there is the omnipotent Lord who can create or annihilate all things at his will.
11. Remember that if the mind is empowered to make its own body and to form others in its imagination, how much more is the power of the Almighty to make and unmake all things at his will.
12. It is Divine Will that has brought the gods, demigods and all mankind into existence. It is by the cessation of the Will that they cease to exist as a lamp is extinguished for lack of oil.
13. See the sky and all things under it to be displayed by Divine Will and understand the universe as the visionary scene of your dream laid open to your sight.
14. There is nothing that is born or dies here at anytime, because everything is a nothing in its true sense.
15. There is nothing that becomes more or less in any way when there is nothing in existence. How can soul have a body when it is bodiless? How can the soul be divided when it is an undivided whole?
16. Rama, by your keen sightedness you see that all these bodies are bodiless. As the mirage is made to appear by the heat of the sun,
17. so do these false appearances seem as true to you from the certainty of your individual mind. So also Brahma and others are only creatures of your fancy.
18. They are as false as the sight of two moons in the sky by your false imagination. It is the great fallacy of your mind that represents these false forms of the world before you.
19. As the passenger in a boat sees the fixed objects on earth to be moving about him, so these varieties of visible objects offer themselves to your view.
20. Know the world is an enchanted scene presented by the magic of your error (maya). It is a fabrication of the working of your mind. It is a nothing though appearing as a reality.
21. All this world is Brahman. What else is there beside him? What other adjunct can he have? What is that? From where did it come and where is it located?
22. That this is a mountain and that is a tree are appendages affixed by our error and mistake. It is the prejudgment of the mind that makes unreality appear as a reality.
23. The world is the creation of error and the idol of fools. Shun your fond desire and thoughts of it, Rama, and think of your unworldly soul.
24. The world is as false as the visionary scene of a prolonged dream, or a building in the sky of the fancies of the mind.
25. Shun this grand display of the world which is so substantial to sight and so insubstantial when felt. It is the den of the serpents of desire foaming with the poison of their passions.
26. Knowing the world as unreal, try to regard it as nothing, because the wise will never go after a mirage knowing it as such.
27. The foolish man who runs after some imaginary object of his heart’s desire is surely exposed to trouble and disappointment for his folly.
28. Whoever desires to have anything in this world, after knowing it as an unreality, surely perishes with his soul for his forsaking the reality.
29. Only an error of the mind makes it mistake a rope for a snake. It is the variety of the thoughts and pursuits of men that makes them roll about in the world.
30. When some vain thought labors in the mind, like the moon appearing to move under water, it deceives only little children and not the wise like yourself.
31. He who pursues virtues for his future happiness surely kindles the fire of his intelligence to destroy the frost of his ignorance.
32. All gross bodies seen here in this world are creatures of the workings of the mind, like building castles in the sky in our thoughts.
33. It is the heart’s desire that produces these things, as it is lack of desire that destroys them all. The unrealities appear as true like fairylands appearing to view.
34. Know Rama, that nothing that exists is lost upon the dissolution of the world, and nothing which is non-existent of its nature can ever come into existence.
35. Tell me Rama, what things are entire or broken, or are growing or decaying, when these ideas are only the formations of your sound or unsound mind or the working of your fancy?
36. Children make and break their toy dolls of clay at will. In the same way the mind raises and erases its thoughts of all things in the world.
37. As nothing is lost or drowned in the magical trick of a conjuror, so nothing is dead or dissolved in the magical sea of this world.
38. The unrealities being all untrue, it is true that nothing is lost by their loss. Hence there is no cause for our joy or sorrow in this unreal world.
39. If the world is altogether an unreality, I do not know what there is that could be lost in it. And if nothing whatever is really lost in it, what reason can there be for the wise to sorrow for it?
40. If God is the only absolute existence, what else is there for us to lose? The whole universe being full with Brahman, there can be no cause for our joy or sorrow for anything whatever.
41. If the unreality can never come into existence, it cannot have its growth. What cause is there of our sorrow for their lack of growth or existence?
42. Thus everything is only unreal and merely a cause of our delusion. What can a wise man have to desire that may be reckoned as the best boon for us?
43. But when all this is taken in the sense of being full with the Divine Spirit, what thing is there so trifling for a wise man to dispose or refuse to take?
44. But he who considers the world as an unreality is never subject to joy or sorrow at his gain or loss of anything. Only the ignorant are elated or depressed at the one or the other.
45. That which was not before nor will remain afterwards is likewise the same nothingness at present. Therefore who desires the non-existent is said in the scriptures to be nothing himself.
46. What was before and what will be in the end, the same is in being even now. Therefore, what is always in being is that entity alone that is seen everywhere and at all times.
47. There are the unreal sky and moon and stars seen underneath the water. It is only a deluded child who likes to look at them, but never the wise.
48. Children take a liking for light, empty and flashy trinkets which are of no good or use to them or anybody else. Children prefer to be sad at their loss rather than derive any good from their gain whatever.
49. Therefore, O lotus-eyed Rama, do act like a child but conduct yourself like the wise by looking at these fleeting trinkets as ever impermanent. Rely on the Everlasting alone.
50. Rama, do be not sad or sorry to learn that all these, together with yourself and myself, are nothing in reality. Do not be glad or joyful to know that all these and ourselves are real entities. But consider alike whether these be or not be. Because it is the one Being that becomes and un-becomes anything. It is the only Being that becomes all things.
51. Valmiki said:— As the sage was explaining in this manner, the day glided away to its dusk. The sun departed to his even tide and evening service, and with him the assembly parted to their evening ablutions and rest. After, with the rising sun, they assembled again in the court.
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Chapter 4.46 — Description of Living-Liberation
1. Vasishta said:— No man knows sorrow as long as he is in possession of his pleasant home, family and wealth. But knowing them to be a short-lived enchantment and accompaniment, why should he be sorrowful when they disappear?
2. What pleasure or pain can one derive either from the grandeur or destruction of his castle in the sky? What cause for joy can he have in his ignorant children, or of sorrow upon their death?
3. What joy is there in the increase of our wealth or family, seeing them as the increasing mirage of water which can never satisfy the thirsty.
4. There is increase of care with the increase of wealth and family. There is no happiness in the increase of worldly possessions and affections.
5. The abundance of carnal enjoyments which are delightful to the ignorant sensualist is quite distasteful and disgusting to the abstentious, wise and learned.
6. The wise seek their lasting welfare. What joy do the wise have in the possession of temporary wealth and family to which they are quite indifferent?
7. Therefore, O Rama, be truly wise in your conduct in this world. Shun the transient as they are transitory and lay hold of whatever offers itself to you.
8. Renunciation of what is not had and enjoyment of what one has are the true characteristics of the wise and learned.
9. Take care of this bewildering world where your enemies lurk in many deceitful shapes. Conduct yourself as a wise man evading the dangers that wait upon the unwise.
10. They are great fools who do not look deeply into things and who think the world is without any fraud or guile.
11. Fools are led by the deceitful speech of cheats to fall into the temptations of the world. Men of right understanding place no reliance in them, nor do they plunge themselves into the pit of errors.
12. He who knows the unrealities and who places no reliance in anything is said to have mastered all knowledge and is never liable to error.
13. He who knows himself to be as frail as anything in this frail world, who has his faith in neither, is never liable to fall into the error of taking either of them for real.
14. Placed between the unreality and reality of this and the next life, you must have the good sense to stick to the Truth and neither wholly reject nor stick to this or the next.
15. Though engaged in business, yet O Rama, you must remain quite indifferent to all things because the indifferent without desires are truly happy in this world.
16. He who has nothing to desire or leave, but lives as he is obliged to live, has his intellect unstained like the lotus leaf to which dripping waters never stick.
17. Let your accessory organs manage your outward affairs or not, but keep your impassive soul quite unconcerned with all.
18. Do not let your mind be plunged and deeply engaged with the objects of sense by vainly thinking they are your properties and possessions, but manage them or not with utter detachment of your mind.
19. Rama, when you come to feel that the objects of the senses have ceased to give any relish to your soul, then you shall know that you have reached the acme of your spiritual knowledge and passed over the boisterous sea of the world.
20. The embodied or disembodied soul, whether living or dead, that has ceased to have any taste for sensuous enjoyments has attained its liberation without its wishing for it.
21. Rama, try by your superior intelligence to separate your mind from its desires, just like they extract perfume from flowers.
22. They who have not been swept away by the waves of their desires into the middle of this world ocean are said to have got over it; but others are no doubt drowned and lost in it.
23. Sharpen your understanding like the edge of a razor, use it to erase the weeds of doubt, and after scanning the nature of the soul, enter into your spiritual state of blessedness.
24. Move about as those who have attained true knowledge and who have elevated their minds with true wisdom. Do not act as the ignorant worldling who is mindful of the present state and unmindful of the future.
25. In conducting yourself in this world, you should imitate those who are liberated in their lifetime who are great in their souls and understandings, and who are ever satisfied with themselves. Do not follow the examples of the greedy and wicked.
26. Those who have knowledge of both worlds neither slight nor adhere to the customs of their country, but follow them like other people during their lifetime.
27. Great men knowing the truth are never proud of their power or good qualities, nor of their honor or prosperity like vulgar people.
28. Great men are not depressed by adversity or elated by prosperity, but remain fixed like the sun in the sky without anything to support it.
29. Great minds, like warriors, ride in the chariots of their bodies, clad in the armor of their knowledge. They have no desire of their own but conduct themselves according to the course of the time.
30. You too Rama have gained your extensive learning in philosophy. It is by virtue of your prudence that you can manage yourself with ease.
31. Suppress the sight of what can be seen and avoid your pride and enmity. Then roam wherever you will and you will meet with success.
32. Be sedate in all circumstances, unattached to the present and wishing to know all other things in future. Have the calm composure of your mind, and go where you will.
33. Valmiki said:— Being advised in this manner by the pure doctrines of the sage, Rama’s face brightened. Full within himself with the ambrosia of his knowledge, he shone forth like the ambrosial moon with her cooling beams.
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Chapter 4.47 — Description of Innumerable Different Worlds, their Gods & Time
1. Rama said, “O venerable sage who is acquainted with all religious doctrines and is versed in all branches of the Vedas, I am set at perfect ease by your holy preaching.
2. I never tire of hearing your speech, which is equally abundant, clear and elegant.”
3. “Sage, you have spoken of the birth of Brahma during your lecture on the productions of sattva and rajas qualities. I want you to tell me more about that subject.”
4. Vasishta answered:— There have been many millions of Brahmas and many hundreds of Shivas and Indras together with thousands of Narayanas that have gone by.
5. There have also been various kinds of beings in many other worlds, having manners and customs widely differing from one another.
6. There also will be many other productions in the worlds, simultaneous with others, and many to be born at times remotely distant from one another.
7. Among these, the births of Brahma and the other gods in the different worlds are as wonderful as the productions of many things in a magic show.
8. Some creations were made with Brahma as the first born, others with Vishnu and some with Shiva as the next created beings. There were some other (minor productions) having the munis for the patriarchs.
9. One Brahma was lotus-born, another was produced from the water, a third was born of an egg, and the fourth was produced in the air.
10. In one egg the sun was born with all his eyes, and in another Indra as Vasava lord of the Vasus (his attendant gods). In some, one was born the lotus-eyed Vishnu, and in another he with his three eyes as Shiva.
11. In one age a solid earth was born having no holes for the growth of vegetables. In another, it was overgrown with vegetation. In some it was filled with mountains and finally covered by living creatures.
12. The earth was full of gold in some place and it was hard ground at others. It was mere mud in many places and covered with copper and other metals in some.
13. There are some wonderful worlds in the universe, and others more wonderful still than they. Some are luminous and bright and others whose light has never reached us.
14. There are innumerable worlds scattered in the vacuum of Brahma’s essence, and they are all rolling up and down like waves in the ocean.
15. The splendors of worlds are seen in the Supreme like waves in the sea, and as a mirage in the sandy desert. They abide in Him as flowers on a mango tree.
16. It may be possible to count the particles of the solar rays, but not the number of worlds abounding in the Supreme Spirit.
17. These multitudes of worlds rise and fall in the Universal Spirit, like gnats flying and following others in swarms during the rainy season.
18. It is not known how long they have been in existence, what numbers have gone by, or how many remain at the present time.
19. They have been rolling without beginning like the waves of the sea. Those that are past and gone had their previous ones, and they their prior ones also.
20. They rise over and over to sink lower and lower again, just like the waves of the sea rise aloft and fall low by turns.
21. There are many series of mundane worlds like the egg of Brahma which pass away in the thousands, like the hours in course of the year.
22. There are many such bodies beside the world system of Brahma (brahmanda) revolving at present in the spacious mind of Brahma.
23. Many more physical worlds will grow in the infinity of the Divine Mind, and they will also vanish away in course of time, like the fleeting sounds in the air.
24. Other worlds will come into existence in the course of other creations, just as pots come to be formed of clay and leaves grow from germs in endless succession.
25. The glory of the three worlds appears to sight in consciousness just like it exists in the Divine Mind.
26. The rising and falling of worlds are neither true nor wholly false. They are like the bragging of fools and the orchids of the air.
27. All things are like sea waves which vanish no sooner than they appear to view. They are all like paintings impressed on the mind.
28. The world is a perspective, and all things are only paintings in it. Without the canvas of the mind, they are not. They are represented in it like figures on a canvas.
29. Those learned in divine knowledge consider creations proceeding from the Spirit of God like showers of rain falling from water contained in the clouds.
30. Visible creation is no more distinct from God than seawater exuding from the earth and the earth itself, or the leaves and seeds of the simul tree from the tree itself.
31. All created things that you see in their gross or subtle forms have proceeded from the emptiness of the Divine Mind. They are strung together, like a rosary of large and small gems and beads.
32. Sometimes the subtle air is solidified in the form of atmosphere, and from that is produced the great Brahma, thence called the air-born lord of creatures.
33. Sometimes the atmospheric air is condensed into a solid form, and that gives birth to a Brahma under the title of the atmospheric lord of creation.
34. At another time light is thickened into a luminous body, and thence is born another Brahma bearing the name of the luminous lord of all creatures.
35. Again, water condensed at another time produces another Brahma designated the watery lord of creation.
36. Sometimes the particles of earth take a denser form and produce a Brahma known as the earthly Brahma.
37. By extraction of the essences of these four Brahmas a fifth is formed under the name of the fivefold Brahma who is the creation of the present world.
38. Sometimes by the condensation of water, air or heat, a being is produced in the form of male or female.
39. Sometimes from the speaking mouth of this being, and from his feet and back and the eyes, different men are produced under the names of brahmins, kshatriyas, vaisyas and shudras (the four castes of priests, rulers and warriors, those engaged in business, and workers).
40. Sometimes the great Being causes a lotus to grow out of his navel in which is born the great Brahma known as the lotusborn.
41. All these theories of creation are idle dreams, false as the dreams in our sleeping state. They are the reveries of fancy like the whirling currents of water.
42. Tell me, what do you think of these theories in your own judgment? Do they not appear like stories told to children?
43. Sometimes they imagine a being produced in the pure emptiness of the Divine Mind. This they call the golden and mundane egg which gave birth to the egg-born Brahma.
44. It is also said that the first and Divine Male casts his seed in the waters which grows up into a lotus-flower which they call the great world.
45. This lotus is the great womb of the birth of Brahma, and at another time of the sun also. Sometimes the gods Varuna and Vayu are born of it, and therefore they are called egg-born.
46. Thus Rama are the different accounts of the production of Brahma the Creator. Equally various are the descriptions of this un-solid and unsubstantial creation.
47. I have already told you about the creation of one of these Brahmas, and mentioned the production of others without specifying their several works.
48. It is agreed by all that creation is only the development of Divine Mind, although I have described various processes of its production for your acquaintance.
49. The pure (satwiki) and other productions, of which I told you before, have all come to existence in the manner I have described for you.
50. Now know the endless succession of all things in the world. Creation is followed by destruction like pleasure is followed by pain, and ignorance is followed by knowledge, and bondage by liberation.
51. Past creations and objects of affection being gone, others come to rise in future, as lamps at home are lit and extinguished by turns.
52. The production and destruction of all bodies are like those of Brahma and the lamps. They assume their forms in their time, but become an undistinguishable mass after death.
53. The four ages of the world, namely the Satya, Treta, Dwapara, and Kali Yugas (golden, solver, brass and iron ages) revolve in endless rotation, like the wheel of the potter or of any other engine.
54. The manvantaras (ages of Manu, fourteen to a day of Brahma) and kalpa cycles succeed one another like day and night, morning and evening, and the times of work follow those of rest.
55. All worlds and things are under the subjection of time. They are subject to repeated successions, and there is nothing without its rotation.
56. They all proceed of their nature from the vacuum of Divine Consciousness, like sparks of fire flash from a red-hot iron.
57. All things once manifest, are next concealed in the Divine Mind, just as a season’s fruits and flowers disappear after their appearance in season.
58. All productions are only fluctuations of the mind of the Supreme Spirit. Their appearances to our view are like the sight of two moons to weak eyes.
59. It is the consciousness alone that exhibits these appearances to our view. They are always situated in consciousness, though they appear outside it like beams from an inner disc.
60. Rama, know that the world is never in existence. It is a motionless show of the power that resides in the Supreme Spirit.
61. It is never as it appears to you, but quite a different thing from what it seems to be. It is a show that depends on the power of the Omnipotent.
62. The conclusion of the learned holds good to the present time: What world exists since the great will of God (mahakalpa). There is no more any other world to come into existence in future.
63. All this is Brahman to the intelligent, and there is no such thing as the world, which is a mere theory of the unintelligent.
64. The unwise consider the world as eternal from the continued uniformity of its course. But the effect of the everlasting error raises the false supposition of the world.
65. It is their theory of repeated reincarnations. They cannot say anything otherwise, but must conclude the world as such in order to keep pace with their doctrine.
66. But it is to be wondered, if they see the constant perishable nature of all things all around, why do they not consider the world to be destructible?
67. So others (the Samkhyas), seeing the continuous course of the sun and moon and the stability of mountains and seas all about, conclude from these false analogies that the world is indestructible.
68. There can be nothing whatever which does not reside in the wide expanse of the Divine Mind. But as these are only the conceptions of the mind, they can never have any visible or separate form of existence.
69. All these appear in repetition, and also repeated is the course of our births and deaths, as those of pain and pleasure follow one another, and our rest and actions following each other for evermore.
70. This same vacuum and these quarters of the sky, with all these seas and mountains, appear in the recurrent course of creation with their various colors, like sunshine seen through the chink of a wall.
71. Gods and demigods appear again and again and all people come and depart by turns. Bondage and liberation are ever recurrent, and Indras and Somas ever reappear to view.
72. The god Narayana and the demigods appear by turns, and the sky is always revolving with the regents of all its sides, the sun and moon, clouds and winds.
73. Heaven and earth appear again like a lotus flower full open to view, having Mount Meru for its seed core and Sahya Peak for its filament.
74. The sun resumes his course in the maze of the sky like a lion and destroys the thick darkness with his rays, just as the lion kills a huge elephant with his beaming nails.
75. See again the moving moon shining with her bright beams resembling the white filaments of flowers and anointing the faces of the ethereal goddesses with sweet ambrosial light borne by the air and breezes of heaven.
76. Again the holy tree of heaven sheds its heaps of flowers on the deserts of meritorious men as rewards of their virtuous acts.
77. Behold again the flight of time, riding like an eagle on its two wings of acts and actions, and passing with the noise of pat-pat over the vast maze of creation.
78. See another Indra appearing, after the bygone lords of gods have passed away, and taking his seat on the lotus-like throne of heaven like a contemptible bee.
79. Again the wicked age of Kali appears to soil the holy Satya Yuga, like the black body of Narayana fills the clear waters of the deep, or like a blast of wind sweeps the dust of the earth on its transparent surface.
80. Time forms the plate of the earth like a potter, turning his wheel constantly to bring on the revolutions of his creations in successive kalpas.
81. Veteran time, skilled in the work of renovation, withers away the freshness of creation, just like the autumn winds blast the foliage of a forest in order to produce them again.
82. The dozen zodiacal suns, rising at once and burning creation, leaves dead bodies all around like white bones scattered in a country.
83. Again, pushkara and avartaka clouds pour down their rainwater, deluging the tops of the boundary mountains and filling the face of the earth with foaming bubbles swimming on the surface of one sheet of water.
84. After the waters have subsided and the winds have ceased to blow, the world appears as a vast vacuum void of all beings.
85. Again we see living beings filling the earth and feeding for some years upon the moisture of its vegetation, leaving their decayed bodies and being mixed up with their souls in the Universal Spirit.
86. Again at other times, the Divine Mind stretches out other creations, and these are drawn like pictures of fairylands on the canvas of vacuum.
87. Again creation appears to view, and again it is submerged in the waters of the flood, both of which follow one another like the axles of a wheel.
88. Now Rama, consider whether there is any stability of anything in this revolutionary world, other than it being a maze of continuous delusion.
89. The revolution of the world resembles the hallucination of Dasura’s mind. It is a fantasy without any solidity in it.
90. The world appearing so extensive and thickly peopled is only a fancied unreality, like the false appearance of two moons in the sky. Though appearing as real by our ignorance of its nature, it is made of unreality and is not worth reliance.
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Chapter 4.48 — Story of Dasura; He Receives Agni’s Boon to Live Treetop
1. Vasishta continued:— All worldly men who are engaged in various activities and who are perverted in their understanding with desires of wealth and enjoyments, can never learn the truth until they get rid of their worldliness.
2. Only he who has cultivated his understanding and subdued his sensual organs can perceive the errors of the world, as one knows a bel fruit held in his hand.
3. Any rational being who properly sees the errors of the world will forsake his delusion of egoism, like a snake casts off his skin.
4. Thus, being unaware of his selfishness, he has no more to be born. He is like a fried grain that can never germinate, though it be sown in the field and lie there forever.
5. It is pitiful that ignorant men take so much pains for the preservation of their bodies, which are ever subject to diseases and dangers and are liable to perish today or tomorrow, all at the expense of their souls.
6. Therefore, O Rama, do not take so much care for the dull body like the ignorant, but regard only for the welfare of your soul.
7. Rama said, “Tell me sage, the story of Dasura which illustrates the visionary and air-drawn form of this rotating universe, all hollow within.”
8. Vasishta replied:— Hear me repeat for you, O Rama, the story of Dasura. It is an illustration of the delusive form of the world, which is no more than the built-in-the-air utopia of our brains.
9. On the surface of this land there is the great and wealthy province of Magadha which is full of flower trees of all kinds.
10. There is a forest of wide extending kadamba groves, which was the pleasant playground of charming birds of various sorts and colors.
11. Here the wide fields were full of corns and grains, the edges of the land were filled with groves and trees, and stream banks were filled with blooming lotuses and water lilies.
12. The groves resounded with the melodious strains of country girls, and the plains were filled with blades of blossoms bedewed by the nightly frost and appearing as arrows of the god of love.
13. Here at the foot of a mountain, decked with karnikara flowers and beset by rows of plantain plants and kadamba trees, was a secluded spot overgrown with moss and shrubs.
14. It was sprinkled over with the reddish dust of crimson flowers carried by the winds, and was resonant to the warbling of water fowls singing in unison with the melodious strains of aquatic cranes.
15. On a sacred hill overhanging that spot, there rose a kadamba tree crowded by birds of various kinds. There on it dwelt a holy sage of great austerity.
16. He was known by the name of Dasura. He was engaged in austere penance, sitting on a branch of his kadamba tree with his exalted soul, devoid of passions.
17. Rama said, “I want to know, O sage, from where and how did that hermit come to dwell in that forest, and why was he sitting on that tall kadamba tree?”
18. Vasishta replied:— His father was the renowned sage Sharaloma, who lived on the same mountain and resembled the great Brahma in his abstract meditation.
19. Like Kacha, the only child of Brihaspati, the preceptor of the gods, Dasura was the only son of Sahraloma. From his boyhood, he and his father came to dwell in the forest.
20. Sharaloma lived many years in this way until he left his mortal frame for his heavenly abode, as a bird quits its nest to fly into the air.
21. Dasura, being left alone in that lonely forest, wept bitterly and lamented over the loss of his father with wailing as loud as the shrieks of a heron upon separation from its mate.
22. Being deprived of both his parents, he was full of sorrow and grief in his mind. He began to fade away like the lotus blossom in winter.
23. He was seen in this sad plight by the woodland god of that forest who, taking compassion on the forlorn youth, approached him unseen and said in an audible voice,
24. “O sagely son of the sage! Why do you weep like the ignorant? Why are you so dejected, knowing the instability of worldly things?”
25. “In this frail world everything is unstable. The course of nature is for all things to be born, live, then perish into nothingness.
26. Whatever is seen here, from the great Brahma down to the meanest object, is all doomed to perish beyond a doubt.
27. Therefore do not wail at the death of your father, but know that like the rising and falling sun, everything is destined to its rise and fall.”
28. Hearing this audible voice, the youth wiped his eyes red hot with weeping and held his silence like the screaming peacock at the loud sound of the clouds.
29. He got up and devoutly performed the funeral ceremonies for his father, then set his mind to the success of his steady devotion.
30. He engaged in austerities according to brahmin law and discharged his ceremonial rites according to the old Vedic Srauta ritual to accomplish his sundry vows.
31. But not knowing the knowable (Brahman), his mind could not find rest in his ceremonial acts or find purity on the surface of the stainless earth.
32. Not knowing that the world was full with Divine Spirit and the holiness of the earth is in every place, he thought the ground polluted and did not find his rest anywhere.
33. Therefore, of his own accord, he made a vow to sit on the branch of a tree, which he believed was untainted with the pollution of the earth.
34. He thought, “I will perform my austerities on these branching trees and repose myself like birds and woodland spirits on the branches and leaves of trees.”
35. Thus sitting on high, he lit a burning fire underneath him and he was going to offer oblations of living flesh on it by paring bits of his shoulder blade (mixed with blood).
36. Agni, the god of fire, thought in himself that because fire is the mouth through which the gods receive their food, the offering of a brahmin’s flesh would completely burn down their faces.
37. Thinking so, the god of fire appeared before him in his full blaze, like the bright sun appears before the lord of speech, Brihaspati (Jupiter).
38. Agni uttered gently saying, “Young brahmin, accept your desired boon from me, as a shopkeeper takes out his treasure from the safe in which it is deposited.”
39. Being thus approached by the god, the brahmin boy saluted him with a laudatory hymn. After adoring him with suitable offerings of flowers, the boy addressed him in the following manner.
40. “Lord, I find no holy place upon earth. It is full of inequity and sinful beings. Therefore I pray that you make the tops of trees the only places where I live.”
41. Being so asked by the brahmin boy, the god pronounced, “Be it so,” from his flaming mouth, and vanished from sight.
42. As the god disappeared from before him, like daylight from the face of the lotus flower, the son of the sage was fully satisfied with his desired boon. His face shone like the full moon.
43. Conscious of the success of his desire, his gladdened countenance brightened with his blooming smiles, just as the white lotus, as soon as it perceives the smiling moonbeams falling upon it, blushes with its smiling petals.
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Chapter 4.49 — Description of Dasura’s Kadamba Forest
1. Vasishta continued:— Thus Dasura remained in the forest that reached to the region of the clouds and formed a stage for the halting of the tired horses of the meridian sun at midday.
2. Its far stretching boughs spread a canopy on all sides under the roof of heaven, and it looked to the skies all around with its full blown blossoming eyes.
3. Gentle winds shed fragrant dust from the tufts of its hanging hairs, which, studded with swarms of fluttering bees and its leaves waving like palms of its hands, brushed over the face of its fairy sky.
4. The banks with their long shrubbery and the crimson filaments of their milk-white blossoms smiled like the fair faces of beauties with their teeth colored reddish from betel leaves.
5. Creeping plants danced with delight and shed dust from the pistils of their flowers clustered in bunches and beaming with the luster of the bright full moon.
6. The earth with its thickening thickets, warbling chakoras among them, appeared like the milky path of heaven studded with stars singing heavenly tunes.
7. Groups of peacocks sitting on the tops of branching trees appeared with multi-colored trains, like rainbows among the green foliage, seeming as bluish clouds in the blue sky.
8. White fantail deer, half of their bodies hidden under the cover of the woods and their fore parts appearing outside, looked like so many moons with their dark and bright sides in the sky.
9. The warbling of chataks, joined with the trill of cuckoos and the whistling of chakoras, filled the groves with a continuous harmony.
10. Flocks of white herons sitting on their nestling boughs seemed like bodies of siddha-master aerial beings sitting quietly in their refuge places in heaven.
11. Waving vines with ruddy leaflets shaking with the breeze, their blooming blossoms beset by bees, resembled the apsara nymphs of heaven flapping their rosy palms and looking at the skies.
12. Clusters of kumuda blue lotuses moving on the sky-blue waters with their yellow filaments, shedding their golden dust around, appeared like rainbows and lightning darting their radiance in the blue sky.
13. The forest’s thousands of uplifted branches seemed like the god Vishwarupa lifting his thousand arms on high, dancing with the breeze, the sun and moon hanging like earrings on either side.
14. Elephant herds lying under the branches and clusters of stars shining above gave the woodlands an appearance of the sky, with its dark clouds moving below the blazing stars above.
15. The forest was like a warehouse of all sorts of fruits and flowers, just as the god Brahma is the reservoir of all sorts of productions.
16. The ground glistened with falling small flowers and the powdery dust of the flowers, just as the sky glitters with the luster of solar and stellar light.
17. Flights of birds flying on tree branches fluttering about their nests and flocks of fowls feeding on the ground made the forest appear like a city with its people above, below and all about it.
18. Its bowers resembled the inner apartments of houses, with blossoms waving like flags over them, and strewn over with the white powdery dust of flowers, as they decorate floors with flowers and powders, and flowers hanging over them like over house windows.
19. There was the joint harmony of humming bees and buzzing beetles, twittering of chakoras and parrots, and cooing of kokilas in the thick canopy of the woods and issuing out of their holes like the music of songstresses coming out in unison from the hollows of windows.
20. Birds of various kinds hovered about the coverings of woodland goddesses, as they were the only guests of their lonely retreats.
21. Bees were continually hummed over the powdery pistils of flowers. The sound of waterfalls constantly diffused from nearby high hills.
22. Here gentle soft warm breezes continually played with waving flowers and white clouds covered lofty trees, as they do the tops of mountains.
23. The sturdy woods that resembled high hills were rubbed by the scabby cheeks of elephants and stood unmoved, though they were constantly dashed by their huge legs and feet.
24. Birds of multi-colored feathers that dwelt in the hollows of the trees were like the various races of beings dwelling in the person of Vishnu.
25. With the movements of their painted leaves, resembling the fingers of their palms, trees seemed to keep time with the dancing vines and point out the modes of their vibration.
26. They danced in delight with their branching arms and clasping armlets of vines to think on the nourishment that every part of their bodies affords to all kinds of living beings.
27. Thinking how they are the support of thousands of creeping plants which entwine round them as their consorts, the trees sang their joyous chime with the buzzing of bees about them.
28. Kind aerial masters who dropped flowers from the trees were hailed by the bees and cuckoos with their joyous notes and tunes.
29. The blooming blossoms of the kadamba tree made it seem to be laughing in derision at the five woody trees on the forest edge which were not bearing their flowers.
30. With its uplifted head reaching to the sky and flights of birds flying over it like hairs on its head, the kadamba tree seemed to defy the parijata tree of Indra’s heaven.
31. A swarm of bees thronging all about the kadamba tree gave it the appearance of thousand eyed Indra, with whom it competed with its greater number of eyes.
32. The tree had a tuft of flowers on some part of its head, appearing like the hood of a snake decorated with gems, as if the infernal serpent had mounted its top with his crowned head in order to survey the wonders of heaven.
33. Smeared with the pollen of its flowers, the tree appeared like the god Shiva anointed with his powdered ashes, while its shady dwelling overhung with luscious fruits refreshing passing travelers with rest and repast.
34. The kadamba tree was like the Nandana garden of paradise, having alcoves under its thickening branches and caves formed by the flowery vines below it, while the birds of heaven hovered about it like its perpetual inhabitants.
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Chapter 4.50 — Dasura’s Survey of the Heavens
1. Vasishta continued:— Dasura remained in this flowery tree as if he lived on a hill of flowers. In his mind he felt the delight which flowery spring and its fruit could infuse in the heart.
2. He mounted and sat over the high and airy treetop and looked on all sides like the god Vishnu surveying the worlds.
3. There, sitting on a branch that reached to the sky, he engaged in his tapas (penance), devoid of fear and desire.
4. From this his leafy and easy couch of repose, he cast his curious eyes to see the wonders of nature on all sides.
5. He saw a river at a distance, glittering like a necklace of gold. He saw the summits of distant hills rising like nipples on the breast of the earth. The fair face of the sky appeared like the face of a fairy covered under the blue veil of a cloud.
6. The green leaves of trees were like the green garb of this fairy, and clusters of flowers were like garlands on her head. Distant lakes appearing like water-pots were decorated by their aquatic plants and flowers.
7. The fragrance of blooming lotuses seemed like the fairy’s sweet breathing, and the gurgling of the waterfalls sounded like trinkets fastened to her feet.
8. The trees touching the skies were like the hairs on her body, the thick forests resembled her thighs, and the orbs of the sun and moon were like earrings hanging from her ears.
9. Fields of grain seemed like the dots of her sandal paste, and the rising hills were like her breasts covered by a cloudy cloak on their tops.
10. The seas with their shining waters were her mirrors that reflected the rays from the jewels on her starry frame.
11. The season’s fruits and flowers were like embroidery on her bodice, and the rays of the sun and moon were like powders or sandalwood paste over her body.
12. Clouds covering the landscape were her garment, and trees and plants on the forest edges were as the fringes or the skirts of her dress. In this manner he saw all ten sides of heaven full with the form of a fairy queen.
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Chapter 4.51 — Dasura Begets a Son
1. Vasishta continued:— Dasura remained as an ascetic in his hermitage in that forest. He was known as Kadamba Dasura and he was a giant of austere penance.
2. Sitting on the leaves of the vine growing on the branch of that tree, he looked up to heaven. Then sitting himself in the lotus posture, he called his mind back to himself.
3. Unacquainted with spiritual adoration and unpracticed as to the ceremonial ritual, he started to perform his mental sacrifice with a desire of gaining its reward.
4. Sitting on the leaves of the vines in his aerial seat, he employed his inner spirit and mind to discharge his sacrificial rites of the sacred fire and horse sacrifice.
5. For the space of full ten years he continued there in his acts of satisfying the gods with his mental sacrifices of the bull, horse and human immolations; their rewards in his mind.
6. In process of time, his mind was purified and expanded and he gained the knowledge of the beatification of his soul.
7. His ignorance being dispelled, his heart became purified of the dirt of worldly desires. He came to behold a woodland goddess standing beside his leafy and mossy seat.
8. She was a body of light and dressed in a robe of flowers. Her form and face were beautiful to behold, and her large bright eyes turned wistfully towards him.
9. Her body breathed the fragrance of the blue lotus and her figure charmed his inner most soul. Then he spoke to the goddess standing before him, her eyes demurely looking down.
10. “What are you, O tender lady who looks like a vine covered with flowers? You defy Kama, the god of love, with your beautiful form and eyes resembling lotus petals.
11. Why do you stand like a forest nymph, a goddess befriending flowering vines?” Thus approached, the dame with deer-like eyes and protruding bosom replied to him.
12. She said to the hermit with a sweet and charming voice, “May you prosper in obtaining the objects of your wishes.
13. Anything which is desirable and difficult to attain in this world is surely obtainable when sought after with proper effort by the great.
14. I am, O brahmin, a woodland goddess of this forest, which is so full of creeping plants and decorated by beautiful kadamba trees.”
15. “I strayed here to see the festive joy of the woodland goddesses, which always takes place in this forest on this thirteenth day of the lunar month of Chaitra.
16. Here I saw my companions enjoying their festival of love and felt myself sorry among them to think of my childlessness.
17. Finding you accomplished in all qualifications, I have come here with my intent of begetting a son by you.
18. Please sage, do procreate a son in me or else I will burn my body to get rid of my sorrow of childlessness.”
19. Hearing the woodland lady speaking in this manner, the hermit smiled at her, gave her a flower with his own hand, and spoke kindly to her.
20. “Leave, O lady! Commit yourself to the worship of Shiva for a whole month and then, like a tender vine, you shall give birth to a boy as beautiful as a bud by this time of the year.
21. But that son, who you desired of me at the sacrifice of your life, will give himself over to austerities like mine and will become a seer like myself.”
22. So saying the sage dismissed the suppliant lady now gladdened in her face, and she promised to perform the necessary for her blessing’s sake.
23. Then the lotus-eyed lady left and went to her home. The hermit passed his months, seasons and years in his holy meditation.
24. After a long time the lotus-eyed lady returned to the sage with her boy, now grown up to the twelfth year of his age.
25. She made her obeisance and sat before him with her boy of the moon-bright face. She uttered her words, sweet as the murmur of a humble bee to a stately amra tree.
26. “This, sage, is the would be son (Bhavya) of both of us, whom I have trained in all the branches of learning.
27. He is only untaught in the best knowledge, that which releases the soul from its return to this world of troubles.
28. My lord, please instruct him in that knowledge, for who is there that should like to keep his own son in ignorance?”
29. Being so asked by her, Dasura spoke to the tender mother and asked her to leave the child and leave.
30. She being gone, the boy remained submissive to his father and dwelt by his side as his student, like Aruna waiting upon the Sun.
31. Accustomed in austerity, the boy continued to receive his best knowledge from his father’s various lectures. He passed a long time with his father in that place as the sage’s son.
32. The boy was taught with various narratives and tales, with many examples and visible illustrations, and also with historical accounts and the evidence of the Vedas and the Vedanta.
33. The boy remained attendant on his father’s lessons without feeling any anxiety. He formed his right notions of things by means of their instruction.
34. Thus the magnanimous father instilled true knowledge into the mind of his son through the fourfold process of right reasoning and correct diction, rather than the elegance of expression, as the cloud by its hoarse sounds indicates approaching rain to the peacock.
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Chapter 4.52 — The Allegory of Air-Born King Khottha (Mind) and His Grand City
1. Vasishta continued:— Once I passed by that way in my invisible body to bathe in the heavenly stream of Mandakini (Milky Way) in the ethereal regions.
2. After my departure from that region by the way of the Seven Rishis (variously the Pleiades or the Big Dipper), I arrived at the place where Dasura lived on his high kadamba tree.
3. I heard a voice from the hollow of the tree in the forest, which was as charming as the buzzing of a bee fluttering about the bud of a lotus.
4. “Attend my intelligent son!” said Dasura, “to a story that I will tell you by way of a simile of worldly things. It is pleasant to hear.” Dasura speaking:—
5. There is a very powerful king renowned in all the three worlds for his great prosperity. His name is Khottha or air-produced, and he is able to grasp the whole world.
6. All the lords of the earth bend their heads lowly under his rule and bear the badge of their submission to him as a great honor, as poor men are proud to carry a bright gem on the head.
7. He exulted in his valor and possession of all kinds of rarities. There was no one in the three worlds was able to conquer him.
8. His unnumbered acts and exploits are filled with successive pains and pleasures. They are as interminable as the continuous waves of the sea.
9. No one has been able to check the prowess of that mighty brave king by force of fire or sword, as none has ever been able to press the wind in his hand.
10. Even the gods Indra, Vishnu and Shiva have fallen short of following his steps in his ambitious pursuits and in the splendid inventions of his imagination.
11. With his triple form of satwika, rajasika and tamasika qualities (pure, active and passive), he encompasses the world and is able to accomplish all sorts of actions.
12. He is born in the extensive emptiness of the spirit of Brahman with his triple body like that of a bird (flesh, bones and feathers) and he remains in vacuum like air and sound.
13. He built a city in that unlimited space of the universe, having fourteen provinces (the planetary spheres) in its triple divisions of the earth and regions above and below it.
14. It is beautified with forests and groves and pleasure-lawns and hills, and bounded by seven lakes of pearly waters on all sides.
15. It is lit by two lamps of hot and cooling light (the sun and moon) which revolve above and below the city in their daily and nightly courses, as those of righteous and nefarious people.
16. The king peopled this great city of his with many self-moving bodies that move in their spheres quite ignorant of themselves.
17. Some of these are appointed in higher and some in lower spheres, and others move in their middle course. Some are destined to live a longer time and others doomed to die in a day.
18. Their bodies are covered with black skins and hairs and furnished with nine holes which are continually receiving air and carrying it out to keep them alive.
19. They are supplied with five lights of sensation and perception. They are supported by three posts, two legs and a back bone, and a framework of white bones for the beams and bamboo rafters. It is plastered over with flesh like moistened clay and defended by two arms like latches on door way.
20. The great king placed his yaksha of egoism as sentinel to guard this house. This guard is as ferocious as a fierce bhairava manifestation of Shiva in the dark (ignorance), and as timid as a bhairava by day.
21. The masters of these moving bodies play many pranks in them, like a bird plays and frolics in its own nest.
22. This triple-formed king is always fickle and never steady. He resides in many bodies and plays his games there guarded by his egoism sentinel. He leaves one body for another at will, like a bird alights from one branch to another.
23. This fickle minded prince is ever changeful in his will. He lives in one city and builds another for his future home.
24. Like one under the influence of a ghost, he stirs up from one place and runs to another, like a man builds, breaks and rebuilds his aerial castle as a hobby.
25. The mind sometimes wishes to destroy its former frame and move to another, and it effects its purpose at will.
26. After it had subsided to rest, the mind is produced again as the wave of the sea. Slowly and gradually it pursues a different course in its renewed course of life.
27. In his new life, this king sometimes repents of his own conduct and acts, and then laments for his ignorance and miseries and knows not what to do.
28. Sometimes he is dejected by sorrow, and at other times elated by success, like the current of a river, now going down in the hot season, then overflowing its banks in the rains.
29. This king is led by his hobbies like the waters of the sea by the winds. It puffs and swells, falls and rises, runs fast and ceases to flow at once as in a calm sea.
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Chapter 4.53 — Explanation of the City
1. Vasishta continued:— Then the boy asked his holy father, who was sitting reclined on his sacred kadamba tree in the midst of the forest of great Asia in the gloom of night.
2. The son said, “Tell me sage, who is this air-born king of supernatural form who you described just now? I do not fully comprehend its meaning, and I want it to be explained to me clearly.
3. Sage, you said that this king constructs a new home for himself while residing in his present body, and leaves for it after he leaves the old frame. This seems impossible to me, as the joining of one tense with another, the present with the future.”
4. Dasura replied:— My son, hear me tell you the meaning of this parable, which will explain to you the nature of this revolving world in its true light.
5. First I told you that in the beginning, a non-entity sprang from the entity of God, and this non-entity being stretched out afterwards gave rise to this illusory world called the cosmos.
6. The empty spirit of the Supreme Deity gives rise to his formless will, which therefore is called air-born (or mind-born). It is born of itself in its formless state from the formless Spirit, and dissolves itself into the same, just like a wave rising from and falling in the bosom of the sea.
7. Will produces everything, and there is nothing produced except by the Will. The Will is the same as its object, which constitutes and exists in it, and it lives and dies along with its object.
8. Know the gods Brahma, Vishnu, Indra, Shiva and the Rudras are offspring of the willful Mind, just like branches are the offshoots of the main tree and summits are projections of the principal mountain.
9. This Mind, in its form of Virinchi, the first manifestation as Brahma, builds the city of the three worlds in the vacuum of Brahman by reason of it being endowed with intelligence from Omniscience.
10. This city is composed of fourteen worlds (planetary spheres) containing all their peoples, together with chains of their hills and forests and those of gardens and groves.
11. It is furnished with the two lights of the sun and moon, and adorned with many mountains for human sport.
12. Here pearly rivers flow in their winding courses and bear their swelling waves and rippling waves, shining like chains of pearls under sunbeams and moonlight.
13. The seven oceans appear like so many lakes of bright waters and, shining with their undersea fires, they resemble the lotus beds and mines of gems beneath the blue sky.
14. It is a distinguished place where gods, men and savages make their commerce with commodities leading either to heaven above or to hell below.
15. The self-willed king (the mind) has employed many persons to act their several parts before him for his pleasure.
16. Some are placed high above this stage to act as gods and deities. Others are set in lower pits of this earth and infernal regions to act their miserable parts as men and naaga serpents.
17. Their bodies are made of clay and their frame work is of white bones. Their plastering is the flesh under the skin like an air-powered machine.
18. Some of these bodies have to act their parts for a long while, while others make their exits in a short time. Some are covered with caps of black hair, and others with white and grey on their heads.
19. All these bodies are furnished with nine crevices, consisting of the two ear holes, two sockets of the eyes, and two nostrils with the opening of the mouth, which are continually employed in inhaling and exhaling cold and hot air by their breathing.
20. The ear holes, nostrils and palate serve as windows to the abode of the body. The hands and feet are the gate ways, and the five inner organs are like the lights of these homes.
21. Then the mind creates of its own will the delusion of egoism, which like a yaksha demon takes possession of the whole body, but flies before the light of knowledge.
22. The mind, accompanied by this delusive demon, takes great pleasure in diverting itself with unrealities.
23. Egoism resides in the body like a rat in a barn or a snake in hollow ground. Upon advance of the sunlight of reason, ego falls down like a dew drop from the blade of grass.
24. It rises and falls like the flame of a lamp in the home of the body. With all its desires, it is as noisy as the sea with its ceaseless waves.
25. The mind constructs a new house for its future home by virtue of its interminable desires in its present house, and which are expected to be realized and enjoyed in its future state.
26. But no sooner does it cease to foster its desires than it ceases to exist and loses itself in that state of supreme bliss of which there can be no end.
27. But it is born and reborn by its repeated desires, just as a child sees a ghost by its constant fear of it.
28. Ego spreads the view of this miserable world before him. Absence of self knowledge blocks the sight of all objects from view, like a veil of thick darkness that hides all things from sight.
29. In this way, one’s own attempt exposes himself to the miseries of the world, then he wails at his fate like a foolish monkey that brought on its own destruction by pulling out the peg from the chink in the timber.
30. The mind remains in eager expectation of the enjoyment of its desired objects, like a stag standing with its mouth lifted waiting for a drop of honey to fall from a honeycomb hanging on high.
31. The wistful mind now pursues its desired objects, then forsakes them in disgust. Now it longs for joy, then it grows sulky at its failure like a fretful child.
32. Now try diligently, my boy, to extricate your mind from all outward objects and fix your attention to the inner object of this meditation.
33. The willful mind takes at its pleasure its good, bad and moderate or sober forms, known under the names of sattva, rajas and tamas.
34. The bad or weakened form of the mind delights in worldliness and by debasing itself with all its greedy desires, reduces itself to the state of worms and insects in future births.
35. The good disposition of the mind is inclined towards virtuous deeds and the acquisition of knowledge. By these means the mind advances both to its solitude and self enjoyment.
36. In its form of moderation, the mind observes the rules and laws of society and conducts itself in the world in the company of friends and members of the family.
37. After renunciation of all these three forms, sattva, rajas and tamas (purity, action and laziness) and abdication of egoism and desires, it reaches to the state of the absolute Supreme Being.
38. Therefore shun the sight of what can be seen and repress your fleeting mind by your sober intellect. Diminish your desires for all internal as well as external goods.
39. For though you may practice your austerities for a thousand years and crush your body by falling from a precipice upon stones,
40. and although you burn your body alive on a flaming pyre or plunge yourself into the undersea fire, or if you fall in a deep and dark pit or well or rush upon the edge of a drawn and sharp sword,
41. or if you have Brahma himself or even Shiva for your teacher, or get a very kind and tender hearted ascetic for your religious guide,
42. or whether you are situated in heaven or on earth or in the hell regions of Patala below, you have no way of liberation except by keeping your desires under control.
43. Therefore, exert your courage and dominate your irresistible, violent desires and passions, which will secure your pure and transcendent joy of peace and holiness.
44. All things are linked together under the bondage of desire. This bond being broken asunder makes desired objects vanish into nothing.
45. The real is unreal and the unreal is real, just as the mind may make it appear to be. All reality and unreality consists in our conception of them, and in nothing else.
46. As the mind conceives a thing to be, so it perceives the same in actuality. Therefore, if you want to know the truth of it have no conception of anything.
47. Act as the world goes, without liking or disliking anything. Thus, desires being at an end, consciousness will rise to the unfathomable beyond the knowledge of the mind.
48. The mind, having sprung from the Supreme Soul in the form of goodness, afterwards is inclined towards the unrealities of the world and surely alienates itself from the Supreme and exposes itself to all sorts of misery.
49. We are born to the doom of death, but let us not die to be reborn to the miseries of life and death again. It is for the wise and learned to take themselves to that state which is free from these pains.
50. First learn the truth and attain the true knowledge of your soul. Then abandon all your desires and dislikes of the world. Being thus prepared with a dead-like unconsciousness of your internal feelings, you will be able to come to the knowledge of that transcendental state which is full of perfect bliss and blessedness.
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Chapter 4.54 — Dasura Explains: Desires Vanish when You Give Them No Thought
1. The son asked, “What is this desire, father? How is it produced and grown? How is it destroyed at last?”
2. Dasura replied:— Desire or will is situated in the mind, which is the mental part of the one eternal, universal and spiritual substance of God.
3. Desire gets the form of a monad from a formless unit, then by its gradual expansion extends over the whole mind and fills it like a flimsy cloud soon covers the sky.
4. Remaining in Divine Consciousness, the mind thinks of what can be thought as if they were distinct from itself. Its longing after them is called its desire, which springs from it like a germ from its seed.
5. Desire is produced by desiring something, and it increases itself both in size and quantity only for our trouble, and not for any good or happiness at all.
6. The accumulation of our desires forms the world, just as the accumulation of waters makes the ocean. You have no trouble without your desire. Being free of desire, you are free from the miseries of the world.
7. It is by mere chance that we meet the objects of our desire, and an act of unavoidable chance makes us liable to lose them. They appear before us as secondary lights in the sky, then fly away like a mirage vanishes from view.
8. As a man who has jaundice from eating a certain fruit sees everything as yellow with his jaundiced eye, so the desire in the heart of man pictures the unreal as a reality before him.
9. Know this truth that you are an unreality yourself and you must become an unreality afterwards.
10. He who has learnt to disbelieve his own existence and that of all others, and who knows the vanity of his joy and grief, is not troubled by the gain or loss of anything.
11. Knowing yourself as nothing, why do you think of your birth and your pleasures here? You are deluded in vain by the vanity of your desires.
12. Do not entertain your desires or think of anything that is nothing. By living in this manner you may be wise and happy.
13. Try to relinquish your desire and you will evade all difficulties. Cease to think of anything and your desire for it will disappear of itself.
14. Even the crushing of a flower requires some effort, but it requires no effort to destroy your desire. It vanishes of itself when you lack it thought.
15. You have to open the palm of your hand to get a hold of a flower, but you have nothing to do to destroy your frail and false desire.
16. He who wants to destroy his desire can do it in a instant by forgetting the thought of his desired object.
17. Thoughts repressed from other objects and fixed in the Supreme Spirit will enable one to do what is impossible for others to effect.
18. Kill your desire by desiring nothing. Turn your mind from all things by fixing it in the Supreme, which you can easily do yourself.
19. Our desires being quieted, all worldly cares come to a standstill and all our troubles are put to a dead stop.
20. Our wishes constitute our minds, hearts, lives, understandings and all our other faculties of desire. These are all only different names for the same thing without any difference in meaning.
21. There is no other business of our lives than to desire and to be doing, and when done to be desiring again. As this restless craving is rooted out of the mind, it sets it free from all anxiety.
22. The world below is as empty as the hollow sky above us. Both are empty nothings, except that our minds make something or other of them agreeably to its desire or fancy.
23. All things are unsubstantial and unsubstantiated by the unsubstantial mind. The world being only a creation of our fancy, something essential desired, there is nothing substantial for you to think about.
24. Our reliance on unrealities proving to be unreal leaves no room for our thinking about them. The suppression of their thoughts produces a perfection of detachment. There is nothing more desirable on earth. Therefore forget all that is unreal.
25. The proper discernment of things will preserve you from the excess of joy and grief. The knowledge of the vanity of things will keep out your affection or reliance on any person or thing.
26. The removal of reliance on the world removes our attachment to it and consequently prevents our joy or sorrow at the gain or loss of anything.
27. The mind that becomes the living principle stretches out his city of the world by an act of its imagination, then turns it about as the present, past, and future worlds.
28. The mind that is subject to the sensational, emotional and willful feelings loses the purity of its intellectual nature and plays many parts by its sensuousness.
29. The living soul also forgets the nature of the Universal Soul from which it is derived and is transformed to a puny animalcule in the heart of man, where it plays its pranks like an ape in the woods.
30. Its desires are as irrepressible like the waves of the ocean, rising and falling in expectation of having every object of the senses.
31. Our desire is like every piece of straw that is lit by fire, and it burns and blows out in its invisible form within the mind.
32. Our desires are as fickle as flashes of lightning. They proceed from the minds of the ignorant like lightning bolts from watery clouds. They are equally fleeting and misguided, and must be speedily avoided by the wise.
33. Desire is undoubtedly a curable disease as long as it is a transient disease of the mind. But it becomes incurable when it takes a deep root in it.
34. The knowledge of the unreality of the world quickly cures the disease of desire, but the certainty of worldly knowledge makes it as incurable as the impossibility of removing the blackness of coal.
35. What fool will attempt to wash a coal white, or convert a materialist to a spiritualist, or turn a raven or black man to whiteness?
36. The mind of a man is like a grain of rice covered under its husk, which is soon husked upon the threshing-floor.
37. The worldliness of the wise is as soon removed like the husk of rice, and the blackness of a cooking kettle.
38. The blemishes of a man are blotted out by his own efforts. Therefore you must try to exert yourself to action at all times.
39. He who has not been able to master his vain desires and hobby whims in this world will find them vanish of themselves in course of time. Nothing false can last forever.
40. The light of reason removes the false conception of the world, just like the light of a lamp dispels darkness from a room at sight and night vision removes the secondary moon.
41. The world is not yours, nor are you of this world. There is nobody or anything here related to you, nor are you related to any. Never think otherwise or take the false for true.
42. Never foster the false idea in your mind that you are master of large possessions and pleasant things. Know yourself and all pleasant things are for the delight of the Supreme Maker and Master of all.
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Chapter 4.55 — Vasishta and Dasura Meet; Further Description of the Kadamba Forest
1. Vasishta said:— Hear me, Rama, who is the delight of Raghu’s race and shines like the moon in the firmament of Raghu’s family. After I heard the conversation between Dasura and his son,
2. I descended from the sky to the top of the kadamba tree, which was decorated with its green leaves and beautiful fruits and flowers. Then with my spiritual body, I sat myself slowly and silently on top of the tree, as a light cloud descends on the summit of a mountain.
3. I saw Dasura there, sitting like a giant by subduing the organs of his body and shining with the luster of his penance, like fire blazing with its flame.
4. The light issuing from his body reflected purple gold on his seat and lit that spot like sunbeams emblazon the world.
5. Seeing me present myself before him, Dasura spread a leafy seat for me to sit down and then honored me according to the rules of ceremonial law.
6. Then I joined with the luminous Dasura to continue his discourse, which was meant for the edification of his son and salvation of mankind from the miseries of life.
7. With Dasura’s permission, I looked into the hollow of the tree and saw herds of stags grazing fearlessly about it.
8. It was as delightful as a dwelling overhung with vines where smiling flowers shed their light and breathed their fragrance to the winds.
9. Fantail deer flapped their long, hairy and moon-bright tails against the herb-like tree, like flimsy white clouds sweep over the sky.
10. The tree was adorned with fringes of pearly dewdrops and arrayed all over with the flowery garb of its blossoms.
11. Smeared with the dust of its flowers, it appeared to be anointed with sandal paste, while its reddish bark cloaked it in roseate red.
12. Decorated with flowers, the tree seemed to be standing in its bridal attire. It resembled a bridegroom embracing his twining brides.
13. The dwellings of shrubberies all around resembled the leafy huts of hermits which, covered with their blossoms, looked like a city flying flags in festivity.
14. Shaken by the stags in the act of rubbing their bodies, the trees darted their flowers abundantly upon the ground. Outlying lands were as shattered as if they were broken by the horns of fighting bulls.
15. Peacocks daubed with flower dust flying on the top of a nearby hill looked evening clouds gliding over it.
16. Here a goddess seemed to be playing on the lawns, red flowers in her hands and smiling sweetly with blooming blossoms. She reveled with the nectarine honey of flowers and shed her beauty on all sides.
17. The closing buds, resembling her eyelids, were lulled to sleep by the forest breeze breathing constantly with the fragrance of the flowers. Clusters of flowers forming her breasts were hidden under the bodice of leaves.
18. She sat at the window of her alcove, formed by twining creepers and vines, dressed in the purple garb of the flying powdery dust of flowers.
19. She swung in her swinging cradle of bluish blossoms adorned with various floral ornaments from head to foot.
20. She moved about the flowers in the garb of a woodland goddess, looking on all sides with her azure eyes of fluttering blue-bees, and singing to them with the sweet notes of the black kokila nightingales in the trees.
21. The bees, tired with their labor of love, refreshed themselves by sipping the dewdrops trickling on the tops of flowers. Then taking their repast on the starch-like meal, they slept together with their mates in the cells of flower cups.
22. The bee couples living in the flower cells, giddy from sipping the honey of the flower cups, were humming their love tunes to each other.
23. For a moment the sage remained attentive to the murmur proceeding from the village beyond the forest. Now he listened with pricked up ears to the busy buzz of blue bees and flies at a distance.
24. Then the sages looked down and saw moonbeams spread like a sheet of fine linen over the blades of grass on the ground below.
25. They saw beautiful antelopes sleeping in their leafy beds on the ground below the stretching branches of shady trees, as if they were the progeny of their native forest.
26. They saw fearless birds chirping on the branches and others sleeping confidently in their nests. They saw the ground covered with living creatures feasting on the ripe fruits that had fallen.
27. They saw long lines of black bees lying mute on the ground like strings of beads, blackening it with their dark bodies.
28. The forest was smelling with fragrance and the sky was covered by a cloud of flowers. The dust of kadamba blossoms colored the ground with a perfumed grey, and kadamba fruit covered the face of the land.
29. What more need be said other than there was no part of the tree which was not useful to living beings.
30. Here deer were sleeping on fallen leaves and there others were resting on the bare ground. Birds sat on the banks and beaches of the streams all about that lofty tree.
31. As they were looking at the beauties of the forest in this manner, the night passed away as quickly as a night of festivity.
32. The son of the hermit kept talking with me on many subjects and derived many useful instructions from my teaching.
33. As we conversed with each other on different subjects, the night passed away as quickly as that of a conjugal pair.
34. Now it began to dawn and blushing flowers began to open their petals while the host of stars on high disappeared from their arena of the sky.
35. I then took my leave and was followed by the hermit and his son for some distance from their kadamba tree, where I left them for my aerial course to the heavenly stream.
36. There, having performed my holy ablution, I came down under the roof of heaven and then entered the celestial region of the sages, which is situated in the midway sky.
37. Now I have related to you, Rama, this story of Dasura that you may learn from his example the unreality of the apparent world which is only a shadow of the ideal one.
38. It was for this reason that I told you what Dasura had said by way of explanation of the phenomenal world as a shadow of the ideal world.
39. Therefore, know the Spirit like Dasura, and imitate his example in the magnanimity of your soul. Forsake the unreal and pursue reality for your permanent delight.
40. Rub out the dirt of desire from your mind and see the image of truth in it as in a mirror. Thus you will attain the highest state of knowledge and be honored in all worlds as a perfect being.
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Chapter 4.56 — The Paradox of the Soul as Passive Cause; Spirit & Corporeality Do Not Mix
1. Vasishta continued:— Knowing the world to be a nothingness, you must cease to take any delight in it. For what reasonable being is there who would delight in its unreality?
2. If you take the phenomenal world for a reality, you may continue to enslave yourself to the unreal material and lose the spiritual nature of your soul.
3. If you know it to be a temporary existence, why should you take any interest in what is so frail and unstable, rather than care for your immortal soul?
4. The world is no substantial existence, nor are you a being of its emptiness. The world is only a clear reflection of the Divine Mind extending over all infinity.
5. The world is neither an agent nor is it the act of any agent. It simply is the reflection of the ideal without any agency of its own.
6. Whether the world is with or without an agent, or has a maker or not, still you cannot determine whether it is a real substance except that it appears so to your mind.
7. The soul is devoid of all organs of action and with all its activity, it remains motionless and without action, as anything that is inactive and immovable.
8. The world is the production of a fortuitous chance, and none but children place any reliance on it.
9. The world is neither stable nor fragile, but it is mutable from one state to another. It is known to us by its repeated reproductions and visibility.
10. It is neither everlasting nor a momentous thing. Its constant mutability contradicts its firmness, and its nothingness is opposed to its temporariness.
11. If the soul is the active power without its organs of action, it must be unfailing and entire because the continuance of its inorganic operations cannot weaken its powers.
12. Therefore there is an irresistible destiny which is absolutely overruling. The soul is existence and nonexistence itself. It is sedate and continuous, and all visible disturbances are only false appearances.
13. The limit of a hundred years for human life is only a very small portion of unlimited duration. Therefore it is very astonishing that anyone should be concerned with this small portion of his existence (in disregard of his eternal life).
14. If we grant that worldly affairs are durable, yet still they are not deserving of your reliance, because what faith can you rely on the union of two opposites such as the mind and matter?
15. And if the state of worldly things is unsteady and uncertain, it can not be deserving of your confidence. Say, can you be sorry at the dissolving of the foam and froth on milk or water? Then why should you lament at the loss of the perishable?
16. Know, O strong armed Rama, that reliance on the world is the fetter of the soul to it. It does not behoove anybody to join the perishable and imperishable together like water and its froth.
17. Although the soul is the agent (or source) of all actions, yet it remains as no agent at all. It is unconnected with its actions, as the lamp with its light.
18. Doing all it does nothing, like the sun directing the business of the day without doing anything by itself. It moves like the sun without moving from its place, but retains its station in its own orbit.
19. There is some hidden cause guiding the course of the world other than the soul and body, just as there is an unknown cause of the course of the Aruna River in spite of its being blocked by stones.
20. When you have known this for certain by your own proficiency, O Rama, and when you have well ascertained this truth by its clearest evidence,
21. you ought no more place any reliance on material things, which are as false as an ambient flame, or a vision in dream, or as any falsehood whatever.
22. As a stranger is not to be taken into your friendship on his first appearance, so you must never trust or rely on anything of this world through your ignorance.
23. Never place your reliance on anything of this world with the fond desire of an over-heated man looking towards the moon, or a cold-stricken man towards the sun, or a parched man does towards water in a mirage.
24. Look upon this ideal world (which is born of your brain) as you look upon a creature of your conception, a vision in your dream, an apparition, or the appearance of two moons in the sky by your visual deception.
25. Shun your reliance on the fair creation of your imagination and without minding what you are, conduct yourself cheerfully in your sphere.
26. Shun your desires and the thoughts of your agency, even when you are doing anything at all.
27. It is a general law that the proximity of the cause causes the act, even without the will of the actor, just as the presence of a lamp enlightens the room without the will of the lamp.
28. Look at the kurchi tree blooming and blossoming under the influence of heavy clouds, and not of its own accord. So it is destined for the three worlds to appear to sight under the influence of the Supreme Being.
29. As the appearance of the sun in the sky employs all beings to their daily duties without his will or command, so the omnipresence of God causes the actions of all beings of their own spontaneity and without his will, act or fiat.
30. And as a bright gem reflects its light without any will on its part, so the mere existence of God causes the existence of all worlds.
31. Thus are causality and its lack both situated in your soul, which therefore is called the cause of your actions because of its presence in the body, but in no way its cause owing to its lack of will.
32. The entity of the soul being beyond the perception of sense, it is neither the agent nor recipient of any action. But being confined in the conscious body, it is thought to be both an active and passive agent.
33. Thus the properties of both causality and its lack reside in the soul. You may take it in any light you want for your purpose and rest content with your belief.
34. But firmly believing yourself to be situated in the body doing actions without thinking of yourself as their author will save you from the guilt of all your acts.
35. The man who does not employ his mind to his actions becomes indifferent (vairagya) to the world. He is free from the world who is certain that he is no agent of his actions.
36. Whether a man is fond of his enjoyments or forsakes them in disgust, it is all the same to he who thinks himself to be no actor of them.
37. But if you wish to remain Rama with your high ambition of doing everything in the world, that is also good, and you may try to do that.
38. But if I do not fall into such a great error as to have this high aspiration of yours, then I am never liable to the passions of anger, enmity, and other violent emotions in this world.
39. The bodies that we bear are nourished by some and burned by others. Such being the state of our own being, we have no cause for our joy or sorrow in it.
40. Knowing ourselves to be the authors of our own happiness and misery, and knowing that we are the causes for the rise and dissolution of the world in our view, we have no reason to be joyful or sorry about it.
41. When we have that sweet composure which is a balm to all the diseases in our soul, then there is an end of the joys and sorrows of our own making.
42. Fellow feeling for all living beings makes the best state of the mind. The soul that is so disposed is not subject to reincarnation.
43. Rama, make this the best lesson for your conduct in life, that with all your activities you continue to think yourself as no actor at all.
44. Remain quiet and steady as you are by resigning all things to themselves. Never think that it is you who does or undoes anything.
45. But if you look to the different ways in which you do one thing or the other, then you can have no rest or quiet but must run in the way that leads to the trap of perpetual struggle and misery.
46. The belief of a man’s corporeality, that he is a destructible body and not a spiritual being, is only a bed of thorns to him. Therefore it must be avoided by all means in order to evade the danger of his imminent destruction.
47. Corporeality is to be shunned as a hell-hound feeding on dog meat. After the cloud of corporeality disappears from view, the light of spirituality will appear.
48. After the clouds of corporeal desires disperse, the pure light of spirituality presents the appearance of bright moonbeams of holiness. It is by the help of this light that the spiritual person is able to steer across the ocean of this world.
49. Rama, remain in that best and blessed state in which the wisest, best and holiest of men have found their rest. It is the constant habit of thinking yourself as nothing and not doing anything, or that you are all things and are doing everything as the Supreme Soul knows itself to be, or that you are some person having a personality of your own, and yet nobody.
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Chapter 4.57 — The Question of Duality again Deferred; First Avoid Desire
1. Rama said, “Your words, O brahmin, are true and well spoken. I find the soul to be the inactive agent of actions, the impassive recipient of their effects, and the spiritual cause of the corporeal.
2. I find the soul to be the sole lord of all and omnipresent in its course. It has the nature of consciousness and the form of transparency. It resides in all bodies, as the five elements compose the bodies of land and sea.
3. Now I come to understand the nature of Brahman. I am as pacified by your speech as the heated mountain is cooled by rainwater.”
4. “From its seclusion and unwillingness, the soul neither does nor receives anything, but its universal action of pervading makes it both the actor and sufferer.
5. But sage, there is a question too vivid and irritating in my mind. I pray you remove it by your enlightened speech, as moonbeams dispel the darkness of the night.
6. Tell me sage, where do these dualities come from? There is the reality of one and the unreality of the other, and that this is “I” and that is not me. If the soul is one and indivisible, how is this one thing and that another?
7. There being but one self-existent and self-evident soul from the beginning, how does it become subject to these opposites, like the bright disc of sun comes to be hidden under clouds?”
8. Vasishta answered:— Rama, I will give the correct answer to this question of yours when I come to my conclusion. Then you will learn the cause of these dualities.
9. Rama, you will not be able to comprehend my answers to these questions until you become acquainted with my solution to the question of liberation.
10. Only an adult youth can appreciate the beauty of a love song. So it is that only a holy man can grasp the sense of what I say about these abstruse subjects.
11. Sayings of such great importance are as fruitless with ignorant people as a work on erotic subjects is useless to children.
12. There is a time and a season for every subject for men, just as autumn produces the harvest and not spring.
13. The preaching of a sermon is selectable for old men like fine colorings are suitable for clean canvas. So a spiritual discourse of deep sense suits one who has known the Spirit.
14. A little earlier I mentioned something which may serve to answer your question, although you have not fully comprehended its meaning.
15. When you come to know the Spirit in your own spirit, you will doubtlessly come to find the answer to your question by yourself.
16. I will fully expound on the subject of your question at the conclusion of my argument when you have arrived at a better knowledge of these things.
17. The spiritual man knows the spirit in his own spirit, and it is the good grace of the Supreme Spirit to manifest itself to the spirit of the spiritual man.
18. Rama, I have already described the argument concerning the agency and inertness of the soul, yet it is your ignorance of this doctrine that makes you foster doubts.
19. The man bound to his desires is a bondsman, and one freed from them is said to be set free from his slavery. Cast away your desires and you will have no cause to seek freedom.
20. First forsake your foul desires, then be free from your desire of worldly possessions. Then foster your better wishes, and at last incline to your pure and holy leanings.
21. After having conducted yourself with pure desires, get rid of even these at the end. Then being freed from all desires, be inclined towards and united with your intellect.
22. Then renounce your intellectual propensity, together with your mental and conscious inclinations, and finally having reached the state of settled tranquility, get rid of your mind also in order to set yourself free from all other desires.
23. Be an intellectual being and continue to breathe your vital breath. But keep your imagination under control and take no account of the course of time or the revolution of days and nights.
24. Forsake your desire for the objects of sense and root out your sense of individual ego which is the root of desire. Let your understanding be calm and quiet and you will be honored by all.
25. Drive away all feelings and thoughts from your heart and mind, for he who is free from anxieties is superior to all.
26. Let a man practice his samadhi trance or other sorts of intense meditation or not, he is reckoned to have obtained his liberation whose elevated mind has lost its reliance on worldly things.
27. The man devoid of desires has no need to observe or avoid pious acts. The freedom of his mind from dependence on anything is sufficient for his liberation.
28. A man may have well studied the scriptures, and discussed about them in conversation, yet he is far from perfection without perfect renunciation and silence.
29. There are men who have examined everything and wandered in all parts of the world, but there are few who have known the truth.
30. Of all things observed in the world, there is nothing that may be truly desirable and is sought after by the wise.
31. All this excitement of the world and all the pursuits of men tend only towards the support of the animal body. There is nothing in the world that leads to the edification of the rational soul.
32. Search all over this earth, in heaven above and in the infernal regions below, and you will find only few people who have known what is worth knowing.
33. It is rare to find a wise man whose mind is devoid of its firm reliance on the vanities of the world, whose mind is freed from its desire or disgust of something or another as agreeable or disagreeable.
34. A man may be lord of the world or he may pierce through the clouds and search heaven (by yoga), yet he cannot enjoy the solace of his soul without his knowledge of it.
35. I admire those high minded men who have bravely subdued their senses. It is from them that we have the remedy to remove the curse of our repeated births.
36. I see every place filled by the five elements, and a sixth is not to be seen anywhere in the world. Such being the case everywhere, what else can I expect to find in earth or heaven or in the regions below?
37. A wise man, relying on his own reason and judgment, steps out from the abyss of this world as easily as he leaps over a ditch. But he who has cast aside his reason finds the world as wide as the broad ocean.
38. The man of enlightened understanding looks upon this globe of the earth like the bulb of a kadamba flower, round as an apple or a ball. He neither gives nor receives nor wants anything in this world.
39. Shame on the foolish who fight for this tiny piece of earth and wage warfare destroying millions of their fellow creatures.
40. How can anyone live and enjoy the blessings of this world for a whole kalpa when he can not escape the sorrow consequent on the loss of all his friends during that period?
41. He who has known the self has no craving for heavenly bliss within himself because he knows his gain of all the three worlds can never lead to the strengthening of his soul.
42. But the avaricious are not content with all they have and like the body of this earth, is not full with all its hills and mountains and surrounding seas.
43. There is nothing in this earth or in the upper and lower worlds which is of any use to the sage acquainted with spiritual knowledge.
44. The mind of the self-knowing sage is one vast expanse like the spacious sky. It is tranquil and sedate and unconscious of itself.
45. It views the body as a network of veins and arteries, pale and white as frost and all cellular within.
46. It sees the mountains floating like foam on the surface of the transparent ocean of Brahman. It looks upon consciousness as blazing brightly like the sun over the mirage of existence.
47. It finds the nature of the soul to be as extensive as the ocean containing creation as its waves. It considers the all-pervasive soul to be like a big cloud raining down in showers of scriptures and knowledge.
48. Fire, moon and sun, as every opaque atom in nature, appear as fuel in a furnace that needs to be lit by the blaze of the intellect.
49. All embodied souls of men, gods and demigods rove in the wilderness of the world, feeding upon their fodder of food like deer grazing in their pasture.
50. The world is a prison house in which everyone is a prisoner with his wearisome body. The bones are the latches of this dungeon, the head its roof, the skin its leather, and the blood and flesh of the body are like the drink and food of the imprisoned.
51. Men are like dolls covered with skin for the amusement of children. They are continually wandering in quest of food, like cattle running towards their pasture grounds.
52. But the high-minded man is not of this kind. He is not moved by worldly temptations, just as a mountain is not shaken by a gentle breeze.
53. The truly great and wise man rests in that highest state of eminence in which the stations of the sun and moon are seen as the lower regions.
54. It is by the light of the Supreme Spirit that all the worlds are lit and the minds of all are enlightened. But the ignorant are immersed in the ocean of ignorance and nourish only their bodies in disregard of their souls.
55. No worldly good can allure the heart of the wise who have tested the vanity of temporal things. No earthly evil can obscure their souls which are as bright as the clear sky which no cloud can darken.
56. No worldly pleasure can gladden the soul of the wise man, just as the dance of monkeys can give no joy to the heart of Shiva which delights in the dancing of Parvati.
57. No earthly delight can have its seat in the heart of the wise, as sunlight is never reflected in a gem hidden under a bushel.
58. The material world appears to be a solid rock to the unmoved ignorant, but it seems like a fleeting wave to the wise. The ignorant take great pleasure in the transitory enjoyments of the world, but the wise take them to no account, as a swan despises to look upon the moss of a lake.
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Chapter 4.58 — The Song of Kacha
1. Vasishta said:— Regarding this subject, Rama, I will tell you the holy song sung of old by Kacha, the son of Brihaspati, the teacher of the gods.
2. This son of the divine tutor lived in a grove in some part of Mount Meru where by means of his holy meditation he found the tranquility of his spirit in the Supreme Soul.
3. His mind being filled with the ambrosial nectar of divine knowledge, he derived no satisfaction at the sight of the visible world composed of the five elements.
4. Being rapt in his mind with the vision of the Holy Spirit, he saw nothing else beside him. Then he fervently uttered to himself the following joyful song.
5. “What is there for me to do, refuse, receive or reject, and what place is there for me to go or refrain from going when this whole is filled by Divine Spirit like the water of the great deluge?
6. I find pleasure and pain inherent in the soul and the sky and all its sides contained in the magnitude of the soul. Thus knowing all things to be full of the Holy Spirit, I forget and sink all my pains in my spirit.
7. The Spirit is inside and outside of all bodies. It is above and below and on all sides of all. Here, there and everywhere is the same Spirit. There is no place where it is not.
8. The Spirit abides everywhere and all things abide in the Spirit. All things are the same with the Spirit and I am situated in the same Spirit.
9. There is nothing intelligent or unconscious which is not the Spirit. All is Spirit and so am I also. Spirit fills the whole space and is situated in every place.
10. I am as full of that Spirit and its indescribable bliss as the all encompassing water of the great deluge.” This was how Kacha was thinking in the dwelling of the golden mountain.
11. He uttered the sound Om, and it rang on all sides like the ringing of a bell. First he first uttered the vowel “O” and then the nasal “m” which tops it like a tuft of hair. He remained meditating on the spirit in his mind, not as situated in or without it.
12. Rama, thus did Kacha continue to think in himself and chant his holy hymn, being freed from the foulness of flesh and rarefied in his spirit like the breath of the wind. His soul was as clear as the sky in autumn after the dark clouds of the rainy season are dispersed.
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Chapter 4.59 — How Brahma Creates and Sustains
1. Vasishta continued:— There is nothing in this world except the gratification of carnal desires and the pleasure of eating, drinking and lust with the vulgar. But the good and great desire the lasting good of men.
2. Crooked and creeping beings and things, beasts and wicked men, and ignorant people are gratified only with carnal pleasures. They are all fond of everything that is conducive to their bodily enjoyments.
3. They are human asses who dote on the beauty of female bodies which are no better than lumps of flesh, blood and bones.
4. This may be desirable to dogs and devouring animals, but not to man. All animals have fleshy bodies, just as trees have trunks of wood and minerals their forms of earth.
5. There is the earth below and the sky above and nothing that is extraordinary before us. The senses pursue sensible objects, but human reason finds no delight in them.
6. Men’s consciousness only leads them to error. True happiness, which is desired by all, is situated beyond all sensible objects and gratifications.
7. The result of worldly pleasure is sorrow and misery, just as the product of a flame is soot and blackness. The functions of the mind and senses are all fleeting and have their rise and fall by turns. All enjoyments are short lived owing to the fleeting nature of objects and the decay of our powers of enjoyment.
8. Prosperity fades away like a plant encircled by a poisonous snake. Our consorts die away as soon as anything born of blood and flesh.
9. The delusion of love and lust makes one body embrace another, both of which are composed of impure flesh and blood. Such are the acts, O Rama, that delight the ignorant.
10. Wise men take no delight in this unreal and unstable world which is more poisonous than poison itself and is able to infect even those who have not tasted the bitter affliction of grief.
11. Because the thought of your materiality has taken possession of your mind, forsake your desire of enjoyment and seek to be united with your spiritual essence.
12. Whenever the thought of making the unreal world arises in the mind of Brahma the Creator, he takes an unreal body upon himself of his own will.
13. It becomes as bright as gold by his own light, then he is called Virinchi on account of his will, and he is also called Brahma because he is born of Brahma.
14. Rama asked, “How does the world become a solid substance from having been a visionary form in the spirit or mind of God?”
15. Vasishta replied:— When the lotus-born Brahma rose from his cradle of the embryo of Brahma, he uttered the name of Brahman, which is why he was called Brahma.
16. He then had the conception of the world in his own imagination, and that conception assumed a visible and solid form by the power of his will. It is called the conceptional or ideal world.
17. At first he conceived a luminous idea of light which, having assumed a visible form, spread on all sides like a creeping plant in autumn is stretched all about.
18. The rays of this light pierced all sides like threads of gold. They shone and spread themselves both above and below.
19. Concealed in this light, the lotus-born cosmic egg (hiranyagarbha) conceived in his mind a figure like his luminous form and produced it as the four-faced Brahma.
20. Then the sun sprung forth from that light and shone like a globe of gold amidst his world-encircling beams.
21. He held the locks of his flaming hair on his head, which flashed like fire all around him and filled the sphere of heaven with heat and light.
22. Afterwards the most intelligent Brahma produced some other luminous forms (marichis) from portions of that light which proceeded from it like waves of the ocean.
23. These most potent and competent beings were possessed of their own concepts and will, and in a moment they produced figures as they thought of and willed.
24. They conceived the forms of various other beings which they produced one after the other as they desired and willed.
25. Then Brahma remembered the eternal Vedas and the many ceremonial rites which he established as laws in his house of this world.
26. Having taken the gigantic body of Brahma and the extensive form of the mind, he produced the visible world as his own offspring.
27. He stretched seas and mountains, and made trees and upper worlds. He raised Mount Meru on the surface of the earth and all the forests and groves upon it.
28. It was he who ordained happiness and misery, birth and death, and disease and decay. He created the passions and feelings of living beings under their threefold divisions of sattva, rajas and tamas.
29. Whatever has been created by the hands (faculties) of the mind of Brahma, the same continues to be perceived by our deluded vision.
30. He gave the mind and laws to all beings and he makes the worlds again as they are situated in his mind.
31. Therefore it is error that has given rise to the false conception of the eternity of the world. It is the conception of the mind alone that creates the ideal forms.
32. The acts of all things in the world are produced by their conception and wishes. It is the concept or thought that binds even the gods to their destiny.
33. The great Brahma that was the source of the creation of the world sits in a meditative mood contemplating on everything that he has made.
34. It was by a motion of the mind that the wonderful form of the living principle was formed, and it was this that gave rise to the whole world with all its changing phenomena.
35. A motion of the mind made the gods Indra, Upendra and Mahendra and others, as it did the hills and seas in all the worlds above and below us, and in the ten sides of the heaven above.
36. Then Brahma thought in himself, “I have thus stretched out at large the network of my desire. I will now cease from extending the objects of my desire any further.”
37. Being so determined, he ceased from the toil of his creation and reflected on the eternal Spirit within his own spirit.
38. By knowing the Spirit, his mind was melted down by its brightness and reclined on it with the same ease as one finds in his soft sleep after long labor.
39. Being freed from his selfishness and egoism, he felt that perfect tranquility which the soul receives by resting in itself and which is like the calm sea after it subsides in itself.
40. The Lord sometimes leaves off his meditation, like the reservoirs of water sometimes overflow their banks and boundaries.
41. He beholds the world as a valley of misery with very little of happiness in it and where the soul is tightly bound to its alternating passions and is led by its changing hopes and fears.
42. He takes pity on the miserable condition of man, and with a view towards their welfare and for their guidance, he promulgates sacred scriptures and rites which are full of meaning.
43. He propounds the Vedas and their branches, the Vedangas, which are filled with spiritual knowledge and the teachings of wisdom. He revealed the Puranas and other scriptures for the salvation of mankind.
44. Again the spirit of Brahma reclined on the Supreme Spirit and was relieved from its toil. He remained as tranquil as the calmed ocean after it was churned by Mandara Mountain.
45. Brahma having observed the efforts of mankind on earth, and having prescribed to them the rules of their conduct, returned to himself where he sat reclined on his lotus seat.
46. Sometimes he remains entirely devoid of all his desires. At other times, from his great kindness, he takes his cares for mankind upon himself.
47. He is neither simple in his nature nor does he assume or reject his form in the states of his creation and cessation. He is nothing other than consciousness which is neither present nor absent in any place.
48. He is conversant with all states and properties of things, and is as full as the ocean without intermixture of any crude matter in him.
49. Sometimes he is quite devoid of all attributes and desires and is only awakened from his inertness by his own desire of doing good to his creatures.
50. I have thus expounded to you about the existence of Brahma and his real states of sattwika, madhyanika and suranika creation.
51. The intellectual sattwika creation is what rises of itself in the Spirit of Brahma, and the mental is the result of his mind and will. The first is the direct inspiration of Brahma into the Spirit of Brahma.
52. After creation of the material world by the rajas (active) nature of Brahma, there rises the visible madhyanika creation in the air by the will of the creator.
53. In the next step of animal creation, some were born as gods and others as yaksha demigods, and this is called suranika because the suras or gods were created in it.
54. Every creature is born in the shape of its inherent nature, then it is either elevated or degraded according to the nature of its associations. It also lays the foundation of its future state of bondage to birth or liberation by its acts commenced in the present life.
55. In this manner, O Rama, the world has come to existence. Its creation is evidently a work of labor, as it is brought into being by various acts of motion and exertion of the body and mind. All these products of the god’s will are sustained by continuous force and effort on his part.
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Chapter 4.60 — Production of Sattvic and Rajas-Sattvic Beings
1. Vasishta continued:— O strong armed Rama, after the great father of creation took himself to his activity, he formed and supported the worlds by his energy and might.
2. All living and departed souls are tied like buckets to the rope of their desire and made to rise and fall in this old well of the world by the law of their predetermined destiny.
3. All beings proceeding from Brahma and entering the prison house of the world have to be concentrated into the body of the air-born Brahma, just as all the waters of the sea have to be whirled into the whirlpool in the sea.
4. Others are continually springing from the mind of Brahma, like sparks of fire struck out of a red-hot iron, while many are flying into it as their common center.
5. Rama, all lives are like waves in the ocean of the everlasting spirit of Brahma. They rise and fall in him according to his will.
6. They enter into the atmospheric air like smoke rising and entering the clouds, at last mixed together by the wind in the spirit of Brahma.
7. Then they are overtaken by the elementary atoms flying in the air which lay hold on them in a few days just as demons seize the host of gods with violence.
8. Then the air breathes the vital breath in these bodies which infuses life and vigor in them.
9. Thus living beings manifest themselves on earth, while others are flying as living spirits in the form of ethereal smoke.
10. Some appear in their subtle elemental forms in their airy cells in the sky and shine as bright as the beams of the luminous moon.
11. Then they fall upon the earth like pale moonbeams falling on the Milky Ocean.
12. They land like birds in the groves and forests and become stiffened by sipping the juice of fruits and flowers.
13. Then losing their aerial and bright forms of moonbeams, they settle on those fruits and flowers and suck their juice like infants hanging upon their mothers’ breasts.
14. The protozoa are strengthened by drinking the juice of fruit ripened by the light and heat of the sun, then they remain in a state of unconsciousness until they enter the animal body.
15. The animated microscopic organisms remain in the womb with their undeveloped desires in the same manner as unopened leaves are contained in the seed of a fig tree.
16. All lives are situated in the Great God like fire is inherent in wood and a clay pot resides in the earth. After many processes they have their full development.
17. One that has received no bodily form and moves without manifesting itself is said to be a satya (truth) or spiritual being and has a large scope of action.
18. He who gets his liberation in or after his lifetime is said to have a pure (sattvika) birth, but whoever is obliged to be reborn by his acts is said to belong to the active-pure (rajas-sattvika) class.
19. Anyone of this class who is born to rule over others becomes giddy with pride (tamas, passive) is said to be of the nature of ignorance (tamasika). I will now speak of this class of beings.
20. Those originally born with pure (sattvika) nature are pure in their conduct and have never to be born again.
21. Men of active-pure (rajas-sattvika) temperament have to be reborn on earth, but being elevated by their reasoning powers, they have no more to be born in this lower world.
22. Those who have directly proceeded from the Supreme Spirit (without any mixture of these natures) are men filled with every quality and are very rare on earth.
23. The various classes of tamasic (idle, lazy) creatures of ignorance are both unconscious and speechless. They are of the nature of immovable plants and minerals and need no description.
24. How many among gods and men have been reborn to the cares of the world owing to the demerit of their past action! I myself, though filled with knowledge and reason, am obliged to lead a life of the rajas-sattvika kind (owing to my interference in society).
25. It is by your ignorance of the Supreme that you behold the vast extent of the world, but by considering it rightly, you will soon find all this to be only the one unity.
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Chapter 4.61 — Rajas and Sattva Qualities to Be Desired
1. Vasishta continued:— Those who are born with the nature of rajas-sattva remain highly pleased in the world and are as happy on their faces as the face of the sky with the serene light of moonbeams.
2. Their faces are not darkened by melancholy but are as bright as the face of heaven. They are never exposed to troubles, like lotus flowers are exposed to night frost.
3. They never deviate from their even nature, but remain unmoved like immovable bodies. They persist in their course of beneficence, like trees yielding their fruit to all.
4. Rama, the rajas and sattva natured man gets his liberation in the same manner as the disc of the moon receives its ambrosial beams.
5. He never forsakes his mildness, even when he is in trouble. He remains as cool as the moon even in her eclipse. He shines with the lovely virtue of fellow-feeling to all.
6. Blessed are the righteous who are always even tempered, gentle and as handsome as forest trees beset by vines with clusters of blossoms.
7. They keep in their bounds, just as the sea remains within its boundaries, and they are meek with their even tempers, like yourself. Hence they never desire or wish for anything in the world.
8. You must always walk in the way of the godly and not run to the sea of dangers. You should go in life this way without pain or sorrow.
9. Your soul will be as elevated in the rajasic and sattvic states by avoiding the ways of the ungodly and considering well the teachings of the scriptures.
10. Consider well in your mind the frail acts that are attended with various evils. Do those acts which are good for the three worlds, both in their beginning and end and forever to eternity.
11. The intelligent, because they are free from narrow views, think that false mental images, the offspring of ignorance, are dangerous to them and not otherwise.
12. For the enlightenment of your understanding, you should always remember and say, “O Lord! What am I, and where does this multiplicity of worlds come from?”
13. By diligently considering these subjects in the society of the wise and righteous, you must neither be engaged in your ceremonial acts nor continue in your unnecessary practices of rituals.
14. You must look at the disconnectedness of all things in the world from you and seek to associate with the righteous, like peacock yearning for rainy clouds.
15. Our inner egoism, outer body, and the external world are the three seas surrounding us one after the other. Only right reasoning provides the raft to cross over them and bring us under the light of truth.
16. By refraining to think of the beauty and firmness of your exterior form, you will come to perceive the internal light of your consciousness hidden under your egoism, like the thin, connecting thread concealed under a string of pearls.
17. That eternally existent and infinitely extended blessed thread connects and stretches through all beings. Like pearls strung with a thread, all things are linked together by the latent spirit of God.
18. The empty space of Divine Consciousness contains the whole universe just like the emptiness of air contains the glorious sun, and like the hollow of the earth contains an ant.
19. The same air fills the cavity of every pot on earth, so it is the one and the same consciousness and spirit of God which fills, enlivens and sustains all bodies in every place.
20. As the ideas of sweet and sour are the same in all men, so the consciousness of the Intellect is alike in all mankind.
21. There being only one real substance in existence, it is a tangible error for ignorant folks to say, “This one exists and the other perishes or vanishes away.”
22. There is no such thing at anytime, Rama, which being once produced is resolved into nothing. All these are neither realities nor unrealities, only representations or reflections of the Real One.
23. Whatever is visible and of temporary existence is without any perceptible substantiality of its own. It is only an object of our fallacy, beyond which it has no existence.
24. Why, O Rama! should anybody suffer himself to be deluded by these unrealities? All these accompaniments here are no better than causes of our delusion.
25. The accompaniment of unrealities tends only to our delusion here. If they are taken for realities, to what good do they tend other than to delude us the more?
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Chapter 4.62 — Vasishta Exhorts Rama How to Conduct Himself Vasishta speaking:—
1. The diligent and rational inquirer after truth has a natural tendency to rely on the company of the wise and the well matured guru, and discusses matters of the scriptures by the rules of the scriptures he has learned before, and not talk randomly.
2. In this way, by discussing the abstract science of yoga with the good and great and un-avaricious learned, he can attain true wisdom.
3. The man who is so acquainted with the true sense of the scriptures and qualified by his habit of dispassion in the society of holy men shines as the model of intelligence, like yourself.
4. Your liberal mindedness and self-reliance, combined with your cool headedness and all other virtues, have set you above the reach of misery and all mental affliction, and also has freed you from future reincarnation by your attainment of liberation in this life.
5. Truly have you become like the autumn sky cleared of its gloomy clouds. You are freed from worldly cares and you are filled with the best and highest wisdom.
6. He is truly liberated whose mind is freed from the fluctuations of its thoughts and from the flights and fumes of its thickening fancies and ever crowding particulars.
7. Henceforward all men on earth will try to imitate the noble disposition of the equanimity of your mind, which is devoid of its passions of love and hatred, as also of affection and enmity.
8. Those who conform to the customs of their country and conduct themselves in the ordinary course of men in their outward demeanor, and cherish their inner sentiments in the close recesses of their bosoms, are reckoned as truly wise and are sure to get over the ocean of the world on the floating raft of their wisdom.
9. The meek man who has a spirit of universal toleration like yours is worthy of receiving the light of knowledge and of understanding the significance of what I say.
10. Live as long as you have to live in this frail body of yours and keep your passions and feelings under the sway of your reason. Act according to the rules of society and keep your desires under subjection.
11. Enjoy the perfect peace and tranquility of the righteous and wise, and avoid both the cunning of fox-like deceivers of others and the silly foolishness of children.
12. Men who imitate the purity of manners and conduct of those who are born with the property of goodness also acquire the purity of their lives in process of time.
13. The man who is habituated in the practice of manners and the modes of life of another person is soon changed to that mode of life, though he be of a different nature or of another species of being.
14. The practices of past lives accompany all mankind in their succeeding births as their preordained destiny. Only by our vigorous efforts are we able to avert our fates, like kings using their greater might to overcome a hostile force.
15. Only through patience does one redeem his good sense. Only by patient effort may one advance to a higher birth from his low and mean condition.
16. The good have attained better births in life because of their good understanding. Therefore, O Rama, employ yourself polishing your understanding.
17. A God-fearing man is possessed of every good and exerts his efforts to attain Godliness. Only by manly efforts do men obtain the most precious blessings.
18. Those of the best kind on earth long for their liberation in future, which also requires the exertion of tapas and meditation for its attainment.
19. There is nothing in this earth or below or in the heaven of the celestials above which is unattainable to a concerned man through his self-efforts.
20. It is impossible for you to obtain the object of your desire without the exercise of your patience and dispassion, and through the exertion of your prowess and austerities of celibacy (brahmacharya, a chaste student). Nor is it possible to succeed in anything without the right use of reason.
21. Try to know yourself and do good to all creatures by your courage. Employ your good understanding to drive away all your cares and sorrows. In this way you will be liberated from all pain and sorrow.
22. O Rama who is filled with all admirable qualities and endued with the high power of reason, keep yourself steady in acts of goodness and never may the false cares of this world overtake you in your future life.
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Book 2
Book 3
Book 4
Book 5
Book 6a
Book 6b