Yoga-Vasistha

UpasanaYoga.org
Yoga-Vasistha
English Translation

Last Selected:

⇦ Return Clicking ✅ below updates Last Selected.
(If Browser retains data between sessions)

Book 1 Book 2 Book 3 Book 4 Book 5 Book 6a Book 6b

Yoga Vasishta by Valmiki, The original Sanskrit attributed to Sage Valmiki, translated to English by Vihari Lala Mitra (1891), edited by Thomas L. Palotas (2013), www.shivabalayogi.org

Books 5 & 6a

BOOK V. On Dissolution, Becoming Quiet (Upasama Khanda)
The previous section on firm abidance set out the goal of abiding in the atman. The upasanti prakarana gives instruction on the ways and means for attaining that goal. The chief obstacle to Self realization is the false identification of the atman with the body (dehatmabodha). This false identification is the result of ahamkara or the ego sense. This section gives practical guidance to eliminate ones identification with the ego and describes a number of methods and yogic processes for this purpose. The major ones are inquiry into the true nature of the Self (vichara), seeing all creation equally as varied manifestations of the one brahman or God (samadarsana), considering oneself as pure consciousness (chit) in all conditions of life and at all times, and performing ones allotted duties in life without any attachment. When as a result of these practices a person becomes perfectly unattached to the fruits of actions (asanga), all attachments, aversions and fears disappear and the person becomes qualified for attaining the samadhi stage.

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 Ch 34 Ch 35 Ch 36 Ch 37 Ch 38 Ch 39

Ch 40 Ch 41 Ch 42 Ch 43 Ch 44 Ch 45 Ch 46 Ch 47 Ch 48 Ch 49

Ch 50 Ch 51 Ch 52 Ch 53 Ch 54 Ch 55 Ch 56 Ch 57 Ch 58 Ch 59

Ch 60 Ch 61 Ch 62 Ch 63 Ch 64 Ch 65 Ch 66 Ch 67 Ch 68 Ch 69

Ch 70 Ch 71 Ch 72 Ch 73 Ch 74 Ch 75 Ch 76 Ch 77 Ch 78 Ch 79

Ch 80 Ch 81 Ch 82 Ch 83 Ch 84 Ch 85 Ch 86 Ch 87 Ch 88 Ch 89

Ch 90 Ch 91 Ch 92 Ch 93

✅
Chapter 5.1 — The Midday Ritual

1. Vasishta said:— Rama, now hear me propose to you the subject of quietude or rest, which follows that of existence and sustenance of the universe. This knowledge will lead you to nirvana, final extinction.

2. Valmiki says:— As Vasishta was delivering his holy words, the assembly of the princes remained as still as the stars in the clear sky of an autumn night.

3. Listening princes, looking with muted gaze at the venerable sage amidst the assembly, resembled the unmoving lotuses looking at the bright sun from their breathless beds.

4. Harem princesses forgot their joy at hearing the sermon of the sage. Their minds became as cool and quiet as in the long absence of their consorts.

5. Ladies fanning with fans in their hands remained as still as a flock of flapping geese resting on a lotus bed, and the jingling of gems and jewels on their arms ceased like the chirping of birds on the trees at night.

6. The princes who heard these doctrines sat reflecting on their hidden meanings, their index fingers to the tips of their noses in thoughtfulness. Others pondered on their deep sense by laying fingers on their lips.

7. Rama’s face flushed like the blushing lotus in the morning and it brightened by casting away its melancholy, as the sun shines by dispelling the darkness of night.

8. King of kings Dasharata felt as delighted hearing the lectures of Vasishta as a peacock is gladdened by the roar of rain clouds.

9. Sarana, the king’s minister, removed his unstable monkey mind from his state affairs and applied it intensely to attend to the teachings of the sage.

10. Lakshman, who was well versed in all learning, shone as a digit (one-twelfth phase) of the bright crescent moon with the internal light of Vasishta’s instructions, and the radiance of his spiritual knowledge.

11. Satrughna, the subduer of his enemies, was so full of delight in his heart at the teaching of the sage that his face glowed with joy, like the full moon with all her digits.

12. The other good ministers, whose minds were absorbed in the cares of state affairs, were set at ease by the friendly admonition of the sage. They glowed in their hearts like lotus buds expanded by sunbeams.

13. All the other chiefs and sages present in that assembly had the gems of their hearts cleansed of their impurity by Vasishta’s preaching. Their minds glowed with fervor from his impressive speech.

14. At this instant the loud sound of conch shells arose resembling the full swell of the sounding ocean and the deep and deafening roar of summer clouds. The conch sound filled the roof of the sky and announced the time of midday service.

15. The loud uproar of the shells drowned out the sage’s feeble voice, just as the high sounding roar of rain clouds puts down the notes of the sweet cuckoo.

16. The muni stopped his breath and stopped speaking because it is vain to speak where it is not heeded or heard.

17. Hearing the midday shout, the sage stopped for a moment. After the noisy confusion was over he addressed Rama and said:—

18. Rama, thus far I have delivered to you my daily lecture for this day. I will resume it next morning and tell you all that I have to say on the subject.

19. It is ordained for the twice born classes (dvijas, the three upper castes) to attend to their religious duties at midday. The lecture does not require us to swerve from discharging our noonday services at this time.

20. Rise therefore, O fortunate Rama, and perform your sacred ablutions and divine services with which you are well acquainted and give your alms and charities also as they are ordained by law.

21. Saying so, the sage rose from his seat with the king and his courtiers. He resembled the sun or moon rising from the eastern mountain with their retinue of stars.

22. Their rising made the whole assembly rise after them, like a gentle breeze moving a bed of lotuses with the black eyes of black bees sitting upon them.

23. The assembled princes rose up with their crowned heads and marched with their long and massive arms like a body of big elephants from the Vindhyan Hills with their clumsy legs.

24. As they pushed up and down in their hurry, the jewels on their bodies rubbed against each other and displayed with a blaze like that of reddened clouds at the setting sun.

25. The jingling of gems on crowns resembled the humming of bees and the flashing reflections from crowns spread various colors of the rainbow around.

26. The beauties in the court hall, resembling tender vines and holding fans like clusters of blossoms in their leaf-like palms, formed a forest of beauties about the elephantine forms of the brave princes.

27. The hall reflected the glints of blazing bracelets and looked as if it was strewn with the dust of mandara flowers blown away by the winds.

28. There were crystal tanks of pure water mixed with ice and powdered camphor. The landscape around was whitened by kusa grass and the flowers of autumn.

29. Gems hanging from princes’ head-dresses cast a reddish color over the hollow dome of the hall, making it appear like the evening twilight that precedes the shade of night which puts an end to the daily works of men.

30. The fair faces of fairy ladies were like lotuses floating on the watery luster of the strings of pearls hanging upon them. They resembled lines of bees fluttering about lotuses. The anklets at their feet emitted a ringing sound like the humming of bees.

31. The large assemblage of princes arose amid the assembled crowds of men and presented a scene never seen before by the admiring people.

32. The rulers of the earth bowed down lowly before their sovereign and departed from his presence and the royal palace in large bodies, like waves of the sea, glistening like rainbows by the light of their shining ornaments.

33. The chief minister Sumantra and others who were best acquainted with royal etiquette prostrated themselves before their king and the holy sage, then took their way towards the holy stream to perform their sacred ablutions.

34. The rishis Vamadeva, Vishwamitra and others stood in the presence of Vasishta and waited for his leave to make their departure.

35. King Dasharata honored the sages one by one, and then left them to attend to his own business.

36. Citizens returned to the city, and foresters retired to their forests. The aerial beings flew in the air, and all went to their respective homes in anticipation of rejoining the assembly the next morning.

37. The venerable Vishwamitra, being invited by the king and Vasishta, stayed and passed the night at Vasishta’s home.

38. Vasishta was honored by all the princes, sages and great brahmins, and adored by Rama and the other princes of King Dasharata’s royal family.

39. Then Vasishta proceeded to his hermitage, with the obeisance of the assembled crowd on all sides, and followed by a large retinue just as the god Brahma is accompanied by bodies of celestials.

40. He then gave leave to Rama and his brother princes, and to all his companions and followers, to return to their homes from his hermitage in the woods.

41. He bade farewell to the aerial, earthly and underground beings that kept him company with their formal praise of his merits. Then entering his house, he performed his brahmin rites with a dutiful disposition.

✅
Chapter 5.2 — That Night Rama Ponders Vasishta’s Lectures

1. Valmiki continued relating the story to Bharadwaja, saying:— After the moon-bright princes returned to their residence, they performed their daily services according to the daily ritual.

2. Vasishta and the other saints, sages, and brahmins, even the king and princes, were all engaged in their holy services at their own houses.

3. They bathed in sacred streams and fountains filled with floating lotuses and other aquatic plants, their edges frequented by reddish geese, cranes and storks.

4. After they had performed their ablutions, they made donations of lands, cattle, seats and beddings, sesame grains, gold and gems, and food and clothing to the holy brahmins.

5. Then in their own houses, they worshipped the gods Vishnu and Shiva in their temples and made offerings to the sun and the rulers of the skies with offerings of the gold and gems that are sacred to the particular gods and planets.

6. After their offerings were over, they joined with their sons and grandsons, friends and relatives and their guests also in partaking of their lawful food.

7. Shortly after this, daylight faded away at the eighth watch of the day and the charming city scene began to disappear from sight.

8. People employed themselves with their proper duties at the end of the day and took to their evening service with the failing beams of the setting sun.

9. They recited their evening hymn, repeated their japa mantras, and uttered their prayer for the forgiveness of sins. They read aloud their hymns and sang their evening songs of praise.

10. Then rose the shade of night to allay the sorrow of lovelorn ladies, as the moon arose from the Milky Ocean of the east to cool the heat of the setting sun.

11. Then the princes of Raghu’s race reclined on their downy and flowery beds sprinkled with handfuls of camphor powder and appearing like a sheet of spreading moonlight.

12. The eyes of all men were folded in sleep and they passed the long night as if it were only a short interval. But Rama kept awake in his bed, meditating on all things he had heard from the sage.

13. He continued to reflect on Vasishta’s lectures which appeared as charming to him like the cry of a parent elephant brings joy to its tender young. Rama’s thoughts:—

14. What does this wandering of ours in this world mean? Why are all these men and other animals bound to make their entrances and exits in this fleeting theatre?

15. What is the form of our mind and how is it to be governed? What is this illusion (maya) of the world? From where did it rise and how is it to be avoided?

16. What is the good or evil of getting rid of this illusion, and how does it cover and overpower the soul? Can it be made to leave by any means in our power?

17. What did the muni say with regard to the means and effect of curbing the desires of the mind? What did he say regarding restraining of our organs? And what about the tranquility of the soul?

18. Our hearts and minds, our living souls and their delusion tend to stretch out the phenomenal world before us. Our own souls make a reality of unreal existence.

19. All these things are linked together in our minds and are weakened only by the weakening of our mental desires. But how are these to be avoided in order to get rid of our misery?

20. The slender light of reason is over-shadowed, like a single crane in the air, by the dark cloud of passions and desires. Then how am I to distinguish right from wrong, like a goose separates milk from water?

21. It is as hard to shun our desires and it is impossible to avoid our troubles here without the utter annihilation of our desire. Here is difficulty in either of two ways.

22. On the one hand, the mind leads us to spiritual knowledge. On the other, the mind seduces us to worldliness. We know not which way to be led by it. The difficulty is as great as a man climbing a mountain or a child escaping from his fear of a yaksha spirit.

23. All worldly turmoil ends upon attainment of true joy, just as the anxieties of a maiden are over after she has obtained a husband.

24. When will my anxieties become still and when will my cares come to an end? When will my soul have its holiness and my mind find its rest from acts of merit and demerit?

25. When shall I rest in that state of bliss which is as cooling and complete in itself as the full moon with all her digits? When shall I wander about the earth at large, free from worldly cares and ties?

26. When will my fancy stop from its flight and concentrate on the inner soul? When will my mind be absorbed in the Supreme Soul, like a turbulent wave existing in the breast of the quiet sea?

27. When shall I get over this wide ocean of the world, which is disturbed by the turbulent waves of our desires and is full of the hungry crocodiles of our greedy greed? When will I rid myself of this feverish passion?

28. When shall I rest in that state of complete, unemotional stillness of mind which is the goal of those who seek liberation and of the all-tolerant and indifferent philosopher?

29. Ah, when will this continuous fever of my worldliness decrease? It has irritated my whole body by its inward heat and has deranged my humors out of their order!

30. When will this heart of mine cease to throb from its cares, like the light of a lamp ceasing to flutter without wind? When will my understanding gain its light after dispersing the gloom of my ignorance?

31. When will these organs and body parts gain their respite from their constant functions? When will this parched frame of mine get over the sea of greed, like a garuda crossing oceans with ease?

32. When will the light of reason, like the clear atmosphere of the autumn sky, dispel this dark cloud of my ignorance that envelopes my heavenly essence under the veil of this sorry and miserable form?

33. Our minds are filled with the weeds of mandara plants of the Nandana pleasure-garden of paradise. But my soul yearns for its restitution in the Supreme Spirit.

34. The dispassionate man is said to be set in the pure light of reason. Therefore, I long to attain that passionless state of my mind.

35. But my restless mind has made me a prey to the python snake of grief, and I cry out in my sorrow, “O my father and mother! Help me to get out of this difficulty!”

36. I also exclaim, “O my sister understanding! Consent to comply with the request of your poor brother, and consider well the words of the wise sage for our deliverance from misery.

37. I also call you also to my aid, O my good sense, and beg of you, O progeny of your virtuous mother, to remain firm by my side as I struggle to break the bonds of the world.”

38. Let me first reflect on what the sage said about renunciation (vairagya), then on the conduct of one who longs for his liberation, and next about the creation of the world.

39. Afterwards let me remember all that he said on the existence of the universe, together with his beautiful illustrations, all of which are filled with sound wisdom and deep philosophy.

40. Although a lesson may be repeated a hundred times over, it proves to be of no effect unless it is considered with good understanding and the right sense of its meaning. Otherwise, it is like the empty sound of autumn clouds without a drop of rain.

✅
Chapter 5.3 — Description of the Royal Assembly

1. Valmiki continued:— In this manner, Rama passed the long night with his lengthy series of reflections, eagerly awaiting dawn, like a lotus longing for the rising sun at daybreak.

2. Gradually the stars faded away at the appearance of the rising morning light in the east. The face of the sky became dimly pale before it was washed over with the white of twilight.

3. The beating of morning drums and the alarm of trumpets roused Rama from his thoughts. He rose with his moonlike face blooming like a full blown lotus in its leafy bed.

4. He performed his morning ablution and devotion, then joined his brothers and a few attendants to go to the hermitage of sage Vasishta.

5. Having arrived there, they found the sage entranced in his meditation in his lonely solitude. From a respectful distance, they lowly bent down their heads before him.

6. After making their obeisance, they waited on him in the compound until the twilight of morning brought daylight over the face of the sky.

7. The hermitage thronged with princes and chiefs, saints, sages and brahmins as if the celestials were gathered for a meeting in the highest heaven of Brahma.

8. The abode of Vasishta was full of people and the crowds of cars, horses and elephants waiting outside made it equal in grandeur to a royal palace.

9. After a while the sage rose from his deep meditation and gave suitable reception to the assembled throng that bowed down before him.

10. Then Vasishta, accompanied by Vishwamitra and followed by a long parade of munis and other men, came out of the hermitage and got into a carriage, sitting down in the manner of the lotus-born Brahma sitting on his lotus seat.

11. He arrived at Dasharata’s palace which was surrounded by a large army. There he got down from his car, as when Brahma descends from his highest heaven to the city of Indra attended by the entire host of celestials.

12. He entered the grand court hall of the king and was saluted by courtiers lowly bending down before him, just as when a stately gander enters a bed of lotuses amid a body of aquatic birds (all staring at him).

13. The king also got up and descended from his high throne, then advanced three paces barefoot to receive the venerable sage.

14. Then entered a large collection of chiefs and princes, with groups of saints, sages, brahmins and hotri (reciter) and potri (corrector) priests.

15. Next came the minister Sumantra and others, with the learned pundits Somya and others. Rama and his brothers followed with the sons of royal ministers.

16. Next came the ministerial officers, the ministerial priests, and the principal citizens, with bodies of the Malava wrestlers and servants of all orders, and townsmen of different professions.

17. All these took their respective seats and sat in the proper order of their ranks. They kept looking intently on sage Vasishta with uplifted heads and eyes.

18. The murmur of the assembly was hushed and the eulogists’ recitations stopped. Greetings and conferences were at an end and there ensued a still silence in the assembly.

19. Winds blew sweet fragrance upward from the cups of full blown lotuses and scattered the sweet dust of their filaments in the spacious hall.

20. Clusters of flowers hung about the hall, diffusing their scents all around. The entire court hall seemed to be sprinkled with perfumes of all sorts.

21. Queens and princesses sat at the windows to see the assembly in the outer hall. They sat upon their couches in the inner apartment which was spread over with flowers.

22. They saw everything by the light of the sun which shining through the lattice work of the windows. They also saw by the radiance of the gems sparkling on their delicate bodies. Attendant women remained silent, without waving their fans or chowries.

23. The earth was sown with orient pearls by dawning sunbeams, and the ground was covered with flowers glistening at the sunlight. Light locusts did not descend upon them, thinking them to be sparks of fire, but kept hovering in the midway sky as if the body of a dark and moving cloud.

24. Respectable people sat in mute wonder to hear the holy lectures of Vasishta, because agreeable advice derived from the society of the good is beyond all estimation.

25. Spiritual masters, vidyadharas, saints, brahmins and respectable men gathered from all sides of the sky and forests and from all cities and towns. They gathered around about Vasishta and saluted him in silence, because deep veneration is naturally mute and lacking in words.

26. The sky was covered with golden dust carried by fluttering bees from the cups of the starch-like lotuses where they had been enclosed at night. Soft airs blew the tinkling sound of ringing bells hanging on strings in the door ways of houses.

27. The morning breeze was now blowing with the fragrance of various flowers, mixing with the perfume of sandal paste, and making bees fly and flutter on all sides with their sweet humming music.

✅
Chapter 5.4 — Dasharata’s Praise; Rama Asks Vasishta to Continue

1. Valmiki continued:— Then King Dasharata made this speech to the chief of sages, speaking in a voice that sounded like a deep cloud and in words equally graceful as they were worthy of confidence. Dasharata speaking:—

2. Venerable sage, your speech of yesterday speaks of your intellectual light. It reveals that you have overcome all afflictions by your extremely emaciating austerities.

3. Yesterday’s words have delighted us by their discernment and gracefulness, as if by a shower of enlivening ambrosia.

4. The pure words of the wise are as cooling and edifying to the inner soul as clear and nectar-like moonbeams. They both serve to cool and dispel the gloom of the earth.

5. The good sayings of the great give the highest joy resulting from imparting a knowledge of the Supreme and by immediately dispelling the gloom of ignorance.

6. The knowledge of the inestimable gem of our soul is the best light that we can have in this world. The learned man is like a tree covered by the vines of reason and good sense.

7. The sayings of the wise serve to purge our improper desires and doings, as moonbeams dispel the thick gloom of night.

8. Your sayings, O sage, serve to lessen our desires and greed which chain us to this world, just as autumn winds diminish the black clouds in the sky.

9. Your lectures have made us perceive the pure soul in its clear light, as the eye-salve of antimony makes a man born blind see pure gold with his eyes.

10. The mist of worldly desires that has covered the atmosphere of our minds is now beginning to disperse by the autumn breeze of your sayings.

11. Your sayings of sound wisdom, O great sage, have poured a flood of pure delight into our souls, just as the breezy waves of nectar-like water or the breath of mandara flowers infuse into the heart.

12. O my Rama! Those days spent attending on the wise are truly cheerful. Otherwise, the rest of the days of one’s lifetime are indeed dark and dismal.

13. O my lotus-eyed Rama, ask now what more you need to know about the imperishable soul, as the sage is favorably disposed to tell you everything. Valmiki speaking:—

14. After the king had ended his speech, the venerable and high minded sage Vasishta, who was seated before Rama, addressed him.

15. Vasishta said:— O Rama, the moon of your race, do you remember all that I have told you so far? Have you reflected on the meaning of my sayings from first to last?

16. Do you recollect, O victor of your enemies, the subject of creation and its division into the triple nature of goodness and all, and their subdivision into various kinds?

17. Do you remember what I said regarding the one in all, and not as the all, and the one Reality ever appearing as unreality? Do you retain in your mind the nature and form of the Supreme Spirit that I have expounded to you?

18. Do you, O righteous Rama who is deserving of every praise, bear in your mind how this world came to appear from the Lord God of all?

19. Do you fully retain in your memory the nature of illusion, and how it is destroyed by the efforts of the understanding, and how the Infinite and Eternal appears as finite and temporal in space and time?

20. Do you, O blessed Rama, keep in your mind that man is no other than his mind, as I have explained to you by proper definition and arguments?

21. Have you, Rama, considered well the meanings of my words, and did you reflect in your mind at night yesterday’s reasoning?

22. It is by repeated reflection in the mind and learning by heart what you have learnt that you derive the benefit of your learning, and not by negligently laying it aside.

23. You are a proper receptacle for learning only when you retain a rational discourse and a holy sermon like brilliant pearls in the chest of your capacious and reasoning breast.

24. Valmiki said:— Rama being thus addressed by the sage, the valiant progeny of the lotus-seated Brahma found his time to answer him in the following manner.

25. Rama replied:— O sage who is acquainted with all scriptures and creeds, you have expounded sacred truths to me. I have, O noble sage, fully comprehended their meaning.

26. I have deposited everything that you said verbatim in the casket of my heart. I have well considered the meaning of your words during the stillness of my sleepless night.

27. Your words like sunbeams dispel the darkness of the world. Your radiant words of yesterday delighted me like the rays of the rising sun.

28. O great sage, I have carefully preserved the substance of all your past lectures in my mind, as one preserves the most valuable and brilliant gems in a safe.

29. What accomplished man is there who will not bear on his head the blessings of admonitions so very pure and holy, and so very charming and delightful at the same time?

30. We have shaken off the dark veil of the ignorance of this world and have become as enlightened by your favor as autumn days after rain clouds disperse.

31. First your instructions are sweet and graceful, then they are enlightening in the middle, then at the end they are sacred by the holiness they confer.

32. Your flowery speech is always delightful to us by the quality of its blooming and unfading beauty, and by virtue of it conferring our lasting good on us.

33. O sage who is learned in all scriptures, who is the channel of the holy waters of divine knowledge, and who is firm in your protracted vows of purity, cleanse us of the impurity of our many sins through your purifying lectures.

✅
Chapter 5.5 — Lecture on Tranquility of the Soul and Mind

1. Vasishta said:— Now listen with attention to the subject of tranquility for your own good. In it you will find the best answers.

2. Rama, know that this world is a continuous illusion upheld by men of active (rajas) and passive (tamas) natures. The properties of action and passions (rajas) and ignorance (tamas) support this illusory fabric, like pillars supporting a building.

3. Men born with the sattvic nature of goodness, like yourself, easily lay aside this deep-rooted illusion like a snake sluffing off its time-worn skin.

4. But wise men of good (sattvic) dispositions, and those of the mixed natures of goodness and action (rajas-sattva) always think about the structure of the world and its prior and future states.

5. The understanding of the sinless, enlightened by the light of the scriptures or improved in the society of men or by good conduct, become as far sighted as the blazing light of a torch.

6. By one’s own analysis one should try to know the soul in himself. He who does not know the knowable soul in himself is no way intelligent.

7. Intelligent, polite, wise and noble men are said to have a mixed nature of goodness and action (rajas-sattva) in them. The best example of such a nature is found, O Rama, in your admirable disposition.

8. Let the intelligent look into the phenomena of the work, and by observing what is true and untrue in it, attach themselves only to the truth.

9. That which was not before and will not be at the end is no reality at all. But what continues in being both at first and last is true existence and nothing else.

10. He whose mind is attached to what is not truth, what is unreal both at first and at last, is either an infatuated fool or a brute animal that can never be brought to reason.

11. The mind makes and stretches out the world in its imagination. Upon a closer investigation, the mind is in nothingness.

12. Rama said, “I am fully persuaded to believe, sage, that the mind is the active agent in this world and is subject to decay and death.

13. But tell me sage, what are the surest means of guarding the mind from illusion, because only you are the sun to remove the darkness of Raghu’s race.”

14. Vasishta replied:— The best way to guard the mind from delusion is first the knowledge of the scriptures. Next is the exercise of dispassion, then the company of the good, all of which lead the mind towards its purity.

15. The mind filled with humility and holiness should have recourse to teachers who are learned in philosophy.

16. The instruction of such teachers makes a man practice first his rituals, then leads the mind gradually to abstract meditation of the most holy.

17. When the mind comes to perceive by its own thoughts the presence of the Supreme Spirit in itself, it sees the universe spread before it like cooling moonbeams.

18. A man is tossed about like straw floating on the wide ocean of the world, until he finds his rest in the still waters under the coast of reason.

19. Human understanding comes to know the truth when it puts down all its difficulties by means of its reasoning, just as pure water passes over its sandy bed.

20. The reasonable man distinguishes truth from untruth like a goldsmith separating gold from ashes. But the unreasonable are like the ignorant, incapable of distinguishing one from the other.

21. The Divine Spirit is imperishable once it is known to the human soul. Error can have no access to the soul as long as it is enlightened by the light of the Divine Spirit.

22. The mind ignorant of truth is ever liable to error, but when acquainted with truth, it becomes free from its doubts and is set beyond the reach of error.

23. O you men who are not acquainted with the Divine Spirit, you bear your souls only for your own misery, but knowing the spirit, you become entitled to eternal happiness and tranquility.

24. How you are lost to your souls by blending with your bodies! Expand the soul from under the earthly frame and you will be quite at rest with yourselves.

25. Your immortal soul has no relation to your mortal bodies, just as pure gold bears no relation to the earthen crucible in which it is contained.

26. The Divine Spirit is distinct from the living soul, just as the lotus flower is separate from the water which upholds it, and like a drop of water is unattached to the lotus leaf on which it rests. My living soul is crying to that Spirit with my arms uplifted, but it pays no heed to my cries.

27. The mind is of a gross nature and resides in the shell of the body like a tortoise dwelling in its hole. It is illogically intent upon its sensual enjoyments and is quite neglectful about the welfare of the soul.

28. It is so shrouded by the impenetrable darkness of the world that neither the light of reason nor the flame of fire, nor the beams of the moon, nor the gleams of a dozen of zodiacal suns have the power to penetrate into it.

29. But the mind being awakened from its dormancy begins to reflect on its own state. Then the mist of its ignorance flies off like the darkness of the night at sunrise.

30. As the mind reclines itself constantly on the downy bed of its meditation for the sake of its enlightenment, its eye perceives this world to be only a valley of misery.

31. Rama, know that the soul is not stained by its outer covering of the body, just like the sky is unsoiled by the clouds of dust that hide its face, and like the petals of the lotus are untainted by the dew-drops falling upon them at night.

32. As dirt and clay cling to the outside of a gold ornament but cannot pierce inside, so the gross material body is attached outside the soul without touching its inside.

33. Men commonly attribute pleasure and pain to the soul, but they are as separate from it as raindrops and flying dust in the sky are different from each other.

34. Neither the body nor the soul is subject to pain or pleasure, all of which relate to the ignorance of the mind. This ignorance being removed, it will be found that they belong to neither.

35. O Rama, do not take pain or pleasure to your mind, but view them in an equal light, as you view things in the tranquility of your soul.

36. All the outspreading phenomena of the world that are seen all about us are like the waves of the boundless ocean of Divine Spirit, or like the gaudy tail of the peacock displayed in the sphere of our own souls.

37. The bright substance of our soul presents the picture of creation to us, just as a bright gem casts its glare to no purpose but by its own nature.

38. The spirit and the material world are not the same thing. The spirit is the true reality, and the duality of the world is only a representation or counterpart of the Spirit.

39. But Brahman is the whole totality of existence, and know that the universe is the expansion of the Universal Soul. Therefore, O Rama, give up your error of distinguishing one thing from another.

40. Rama, there can be no distinction in the everlasting and all extensive fullness of Brahman, just as there is no difference in the water of the wide extended ocean.

41. All things being one and alike in the identical substratum of the Supreme Soul, you cannot conceive of there being any other thing in it, just as you cannot imagine a particle of frost to abide in fire.

42. By meditating on the Supreme Soul in yourself and by contemplation of the intelligent Spirit in your own intellect, you will find the glory of the Supreme Spirit shining brightly in your pure spirit.

43. Therefore ease your mind, O Rama, and know that there is no mistake or error in believing the all as one and that there is no new birth or new born being. All is ever existent in the Supreme.

44. Ease yourself, O Rama, by knowing that there is no duality and that there is no opposite of things, except their oneness in the Divine unity. Then knowing yourself as a spiritual being situated in the purity of Divine essence, you shall have no need of meditation or adoration. Knowing that you are not separated from God, forsake all your sorrow.

45. Be tolerant, composed and even-minded. Remain tranquil, silent and meek in your mind. Be as a rich jewel, shining with your internal light. Thus you will be freed from the feverish vexations of this worldly life.

46. Be rational, dispassionate and calm in your desire. Remain sober minded and free from ardent expectations. Rest satisfied with what you get of your own lot in order to be free from the feverish heat of worldliness.

47. Be unimpassioned and unperturbed with earthly cares. If you will be free from the fever heat of this world, be pure and sinless, and neither be stingy nor extravagant.

48. Be free from all anxiety, O Rama, by obtaining that good which the world cannot give, and which satisfies all our earthly wants. Have this super-mundane bliss, O Rama, and be as full as the ocean and free from the feverish cares of this world.

49. Be loosened from the net of your loose desires and wipe off the ointment of delusive affections from your eyes. Let your soul rest satisfied with yourself and be free from the feverish anxieties of the world.

50. With your spiritual body reaching beyond unbounded space and rising above the height of the highest mountain, be free from the feverish and petty cares of life.

51. You must be free from the fever of life by enjoying what you get and asking nothing of anybody anywhere, and by your charity rather than your lack and asking.

52. Enjoy the fullness of your soul in yourself like the sea, and contain the fullness of your joy in your own soul like the full moon. Be self-sufficient with the fullness of your knowledge and inner bliss.

53. Knowing this world as unreal as an optical illusion, no wise man is misled to rely on its untruthful scenes. So you Rama, who is knowing and not deluded and is sane, sound headed and of enlightened understanding, must always be charming with your perfect ease from sorrow and care.

54. Now Rama, rule over this unrivalled kingdom as directed by your sovereign father and manage well everything under your own inspection. This kingdom is filled with every blessing and the rulers are all loyal to their king. Therefore you must not omit doing what is your duty or be elated with your happy lot of royalty.

✅
Chapter 5.6 — Doing One’s Duty; Merit Accrues through Lifetimes

1. Vasishta continued:— In my opinion, a man is liberated who does his works from a sense of his duty and without any desire of his own or sense of his own agency.

2. Whoever having obtained a human form is engaged in acts out of his own choice and with a sense of his own agency, is subject to ascent and descent to heaven and hell by turns.

3. Some people who are inclined to undutiful acts by neglecting the performance of their destined duties are doomed to descend into deeper hells and to fall into greater fears and torments from their former states.

4. Some men who are tightly bound to the chain of their desires and have to feel the consequences of their acts are made to descend from their brutal life to the state of vegetables, or to rise from it to animal life again.

5. Some who are blessed with the knowledge of the Spirit from their investigation of abstruse philosophy, break through the chains of desire and rise to the state of single aloneness in divine unity (kaivalya) .

6. There are some men who, after ascending gradually in the scale of their creation in former births, have obtained liberation in the present life of active goodness (rajas-sattva) .

7. Such men, being born again on earth, assume their bright qualities like the crescent moon and are united with all prosperity like a kurchi plant covered with blossoms in its flowering time of the rainy season.

8. The merit of prior acts follows one in his next state and the learning of past life meets a man in his next birth, like a pearl born in a reed.

9. The qualities of respectability and pleasantness, of affability and friendliness, and of compassion and intelligence attend upon these people like their servants at home.

10. Happy is the man who is steady in the discharge of his duties and is not overjoyed or depressed at the fruition or failure of their results.

11. The defects of the dutiful, and their pain and pleasure in the performance of duties, are all lost under the sense of their duty, just as the darkness of night is dispelled by the light of the day and the clouds of rainy season are dispersed in autumn.

12. The man of a submissive and sweet disposition is liked by everybody, just as the sweet music of reeds in the forest attracts the ears of wild antelope.

13. The qualities of the past life accompany a man in his next birth, like swallows in rainy weather.

14. Thus being qualified by his prior virtues, a good man has recourse to an instructor for the development of his understanding, who thereupon puts him in the way to truth.

15. A man with the qualities of reason and resignation of his mind beholds the Lord as one and of the same form as the imperishable soul within himself.

16. The spiritual guide awakens the dull and sleeping mind by his right reasoning, then instills into it the words of truth with a calm face and mind.

17. They are the best qualified in later births who learn first to awaken their worthless and dormant minds, just as they rouse a sleeping male deer in the forest.

18. First by diligent attendance on good and meritorious gurus, then by cleansing the gem of their minds with the help of reasoning, pure hearted men come to the light of truth and perceive the divine light shining in their souls.

✅
Chapter 5.7 — Two Ways to Attain Self Realization: Effort & Intuition

1. Vasishta continued:— Rama, I have told you how mankind generally attains knowledge. Now I will tell you of another different method.

2. Rama, we have two ways that are best calculated for the salvation of souls born in human bodies on earth. The one is through attainment of heavenly bliss and the other by their final blessing of bliss.

3. There are two methods of gaining these objects. One is the observance of the teacher’s instructions which gradually leads one to his perfection in the course of one or many births.

4. The second is the attainment of knowledge by intuition (self-inquiry), the self culture of a partly intelligent being. This is like obtaining fruit falling from heaven.

5. Hear now about the attainment of intuitive knowledge, which is like getting fruit fallen from the sky, from an old tale which I will now relate.

6. Hear the happy and holy story which removes the chains of our good and evil deeds, and which the last born men (now living) must taste with a zest for their enlightenment, as others taste a fruit fallen from heaven for their entertainment.

✅
Chapter 5.8 — Janaka Hears the Songs of the Holy Masters (Siddhas)

1. Vasishta continued:— There lives the mighty King of Videha, Janaka by name, who is blessed with all prosperity and unbounded understanding.

2. He is like the ever fruitful wish-fulfilling tree to the host of his suitors, and like the vivifying sun to his lotus-like friends. He is like the genial spring to the small flowers of his relatives, and like Kama the god of love to females.

3. Like the changing moon, he gives delight to the twice born brahmins, as that luminary makes lilies bloom. Like the bright sun he destroys the darkness of his gloomy enemies. He is an ocean of gems of goodness to all and the support of his kingdom, like Vishnu the supporter of the world.

4. One spring evening Janaka happened to wander about a forest abounding in young vines with bunches of crimson blossoms on them, resonant with the melody of sweet sounding kokila nightingales warbling their tuneful choirs.

5. He walked among flowery pleasure gardens resembling graceful beauties with ornaments upon them, and sported in their covered shelter as the god Indra sports in his Nandana pleasure garden.

6. Leaving his attendants behind him, he stepped into a grove standing on the plain of a hill in the midst of that romantic forest, which was smelling with the fragrance of flowers borne all about by playful winds.

7. In one place within a covered shelter of tamara trees, he heard a mingled voice like that of some invisible aerial spirit masters (siddhas).

8. I will now recite to you, O lotus-eyed Rama, the songs of the spiritual masters (siddhas) living in the retired solitudes of mountainous regions and dwelling in the caverns of hills. The songs relate principally to their spiritual meditations.

9. The masters sang, “We adore that Being which is neither the subjective nor objective, and which in our belief is the positive joy that rises in our souls and has no fluctuation in it.”

10. Others chanted, “We adore that Being which is beyond the triple states of the subject, its attribute and its object. It is the spiritual light of the soul which exists from before the light of vision, and which is derived from the light of the sun.”

11. Others chanted, “We adore that Being which is in the midst of all that is and what is not.”

12. Some sang, “We adore that real Existence which is all, who owns all things, by whom all is made, from whom all has sprung, for whom they exist, in whom they exist, to whom do all returns, and into which they are all absorbed.”

13. Some sang, “We adore that Spirit which begins with the letter ‘a’ and ends in ‘h’ with the dot ‘m’ and which we continually inspire and respire in our breathings (aham hansah, “I am He.”).”

14. Others said, “Those who forsake the Lord situated within the cavity of their hearts and resort to others outside are truly in search of trifles by ignoring the wish-fulfilling gem (kaustabha) they have in their hands.”

15. Others again declared, “By forsaking all other desires, one obtains this object of his wish. This being had, the poisonous plants of all other desires are entirely uprooted from the heart.”

16. Some of them pronounced saying, “The foolish man who knows the tastelessness of all worldly things, but still attaches his mind to earthly objects, is an ass and not any human being.”

17. Others said, “The sensual desires that constantly rise like snakes from the cavities of the body are to be killed by the cudgel of reason, as Indra broke the hills by his thunderbolts.”

18. At last they said, “Let men try to secure the pure happiness of stillness which serves to give tranquility to the minds of the righteous. The sober-minded who are situated in their real and natural temperament have their best rest in the lap of undisturbed and everlasting tranquility.”

✅
Chapter 5.9 — Janaka’s Reflections

1. Vasishta continued:— Upon hearing these compositions of the spiritual masters, King Janaka was dejected in his mind, like a coward at the noise of a conflict.

2. He returned towards home and traveled there in silence, like a stream gliding in its silent course under trees on the shore towards the bed of the distant ocean.

3. He left behind all his domestics in their respective rooms below, and ascended alone to the highest balcony, like the sun mounting the top of a mountain.

4. There he saw flights of birds randomly flying in different directions. He thought how men hurried about in the same manner and mourned their deplorable conditions. Janaka thinking to himself:—

5. Ah how miserable that I have to move about in the pitiable state of the restless mob that rolls about like a rolling stone, pushed backward and forward by another.

6. I have a short span of endless duration allotted to my share of lifetime, yet I am a senseless fool to place my trust in the hope of its durability.

7. The duration of my royal rule is short also as it is limited to my lifetime. How can I be secure of its continuance, like a thoughtless man?

8. I have an immortal soul lasting from before and to continue even after my present existence. The present life is destructible, yet I am a fool to rely upon it like a boy believing a painted moon to be real.

9. Ah, what sorcerer has bewitched me by his magic wand to make me believe that I am not spellbound at all!

10. What faith can I rely upon in this world which has nothing substantial or pleasant and nothing grand or real in it? Yet I do not know why the world deludes my mind.

11. What is far from me appears to be near by my sensation of the same, and that which is nearest to me appears to be farthest away. Knowing this I must abandon outer objects in order to see the inner soul.

12. This hurry of men in their pursuits is as impetuous and transient as the torrent of a whirlpool. It drops them in the depths of their dangers. It is not worth the pain it gives to the spirit.

13. Years, months, days and minutes revolve with the succession of our pains and pleasures. But these are all swallowed up by the repeated retinues of our misery.

14. I have well considered everything and found them all perishable and nothing durable or lasting. There is nothing to be found here worthy to be relied upon by the wise.

15. Those standing at the head of great men today are reduced low in the course of a few days. What worth is there in giddy and thoughtless greatness that is deserving of our respect?

16. I am bound to earth without a rope. I am soiled without any outward dirt. I am fallen though sitting in this building. O my soul, how you are destroyed while living!

17. From where has this causeless ignorance overpowered my intelligent soul? From where has this shadow covered my soul’s brightness like a dark cloud obscuring the sun?

18. Of what value are rich possessions and numerous relations to me when my soul is in despair, like children under the fear of ghosts and evil spirits?

19. How shall I place any reliance upon my sensual enjoyments which foreshadow death and disease? What dependence is there on my possessions which are filled only with anxieties and cares?

20. It matters not whether these friends, the feeders on my fortune, may last or leave me at once. My prosperity is only a bubble and a false appearance before me.

21. Men of greatest opulence, many good and great men and our best friends and kindest relatives, have gone by and now live in only our memory.

22. Where are the riches of the earth’s monarchs and where are Brahma’s former creations? The past has given way to the present and these are to be followed by the future. Therefore there is no reliance upon anything.

23. Many Indras have been swallowed up like bubbles in the ocean of eternity. Therefore expectation of longevity is ridiculous to the wise.

24. Millions of Brahmas have passed away and their productions have disappeared under endless successions. Kings of earth have fled like their ashes, reduced to dust. Then what is the confidence in my life and stability?

25. The world is only a dream by night. The body with its sense organs is only a misconception of the mind. If I place any credence in them, I am really to be blamed.

26. My conception of myself and perception of other things are false imaginations of my mind. My egoism has laid hold of me, like a demon seizing an idiot.

27. Fool that I am, seeing that I do not see how the span of my life is measured every moment by imperceptible instants of time, leaving only a small portion behind.

28. I see the juggler of time seizing Brahmas, Vishnus and Shivas and making playthings of them on his playground of the world, flinging them all about like balls.

29. I see days and nights constantly passing away without presenting me an opportunity to behold the true imperishable one.

30. The objects of sensual enjoyment lurk in the minds of men like cranes chattering in lakes. There is no likelihood of the true and best object in anyone’s mind.

31. We meet with one hardship after another and buffet in waves of endless miseries in this earth. Yet we are so shameless that we do not feel disgusted with them.

32. We see all the desirable objects to which we attach our thoughts are frail and perishing, yet we do not seek the imperishable one and our everlasting good in the equanimity of the soul.

33. Whatever we see as pleasant in the beginning, or in the middle, or in the end, and at all times are all unholy and subject to decay.

34. Whatever objects are dear to the hearts of men are all found to be subject to the changes of their rise and fall.

35. Ignorant people are everywhere inclined to evil acts. They grow day by day more hardened in their wicked practices. They repent every day for their sins, but never reprove themselves for the better.

36. Senseless men, being devoid of sense in their boyhood and heated by their passions in youth, are never the better for anything. In their latter days they are oppressed with the care of their families. In the end they are overcome by sorrow and remorse.

37. Here entrance and exit are both accompanied by pain and sorrow. Here every state of life is contaminated by its opposite. Everything is unsubstantial in this seemingly substantial world, yet the ignorant rely on its unreal substantiality.

38. The real good here, derived by means of painful austerities, are the arduous sacrifices for the consecration of a king (rajasuya), the one-year horse-wandering ceremony (asvamedha), and others for the attainment of heaven. Yet even heaven has no reality and lasts for only a small portion of a kalpa as compared with eternity.

39. What is this heaven and where is it situated, whether below or above us or in this nether world, where its residents are not overtaken by multitudes of locust-like evils?

40. We have serpents creeping in the cells of our hearts and we have bodies filled with the brambles of diseases and dangers, and we do not know how to destroy them.

41. I see good mixed with evil and pain abiding with pleasure. There is sorrow seated on top of joy. I do not know where to go for help.

42. I see the earth full of common people constantly being born and dying in multitudes, but I find few honest and righteous men in it.

43. These beautiful forms of women, their eyes like lotuses, the gracefulness of their allurements, and their charming smiles, are soon made to fade and die away.

44. Of what value am I among these mighty beings who, at the twinkling of their eyes, have created and destroyed the world, yet have succumbed to death at last?

45. You are constantly in search of what is more pleasant and lasting than others, but never seek after that highest prosperity which is beyond all your earthly cares.

46. What is this great prosperity in which you take so much delight? It is only a mere vexation of your spirit which proves this vanity to be only your calamity.

47. Again, what are these adversities which you fear so much? They may be the source of your true prosperity by setting you free from earthly disturbances and leading you to future joy.

48. The mind is broken to pieces by its fears, like fragments of the moon floating on the waves of this ocean of the world. Its selfishness has tossed it to and fro, and when this world is rid, it is set at perfect ease.

49. There is an unavoidable fate activating our worldly affairs and accidents. Therefore it is impudent to welcome some as good and to avoid others as evil.

50. We are prone to things that are pleasant to sight, but they have a mortal flame in them that consumes us like poor moths in flames; bright to see but fatal to feel.

51. It is better to roll in the continuous flames of hellfire to which one is accustomed than to rise and fall repeatedly in the furnace of this world, like from the frying pan into the fire.

52. The wise say this world is a boundless ocean of grief. Then how can anybody who has fallen here expect any happiness here?

53. Those who have fallen and not been altogether drowned in sorrow think their lesser sorrows are light and delight, like one condemned to be beheaded is glad to escape with a light punishment. The world appears to have been created by accident, even as a coconut might appear to have fallen because a crow coincidentally happens to land on the tree that same moment.

54. I have become the vilest of the vile and resemble a block of wood or stone. There is no difference between me and an ignorant clown who never has had a thought of eternal concern in his head.

55. The great tree of the world, with its many branches, twigs and fruit, has sprung from the mind and is rooted in it.

56. It is the conception of the world in my mind that causes its existence and presents its appearance before me. Now I will try to efface this conception from my mind and forget this world altogether.

57. I will no longer allow myself to be deluded like monkeys with the forms of things that I know are not real, only changing and fleeting ideas.

58. I have woven and stretched out the web of my desires and gathered only sorrows and sorrows. I fell into and fled from the snare of my own making, and I am now resolved to take my rest in the soul.

59. I have wailed and bitterly wept a great deal thinking of the depravity and loss of my soul. Henceforth I will cease to lament, thinking that I am not utterly lost.

60. I am now awakened, and I am happy to learn who is robbing my soul. It is my own mind, and this I am determined to kill because it has for so long deprived me of the inestimable treasure of my soul.

61. For so long my mind was at large like a loose and unstrung pearl. Now will I pierce it with the needle of reason and string it with the virtues of self control and subjection to wisdom.

62. The cold icicle of my mind will melt from the solar heat of reason. My mind will be confined in the endless meditation of its Eternal Maker.

63. I am now awakened to my spiritual knowledge, like these holy masters, saints and sages. I will now pursue my spiritual inquiries for the contentment of my soul.

64. Having now found my long lost soul, I will continue to look upon its pure light with joy in my lonely retirement. I will remain quiet and still in contemplation of my soul, like a motionless cloud in autumn.

65. Having cast away the false belief of my corporeality and that these possessions and properties are mine, and having subdued my mighty enemy the mind by my force, I will attain the tranquility of my soul with the help of my reason.

✅
Chapter 5.10 — Silent and Solitary Reflections on Janaka

1. Vasishta related:— While Janaka was musing in this way, his chamberlain entered and came before him, like Aruna standing before the chariot of the sun.

2. The chamberlain said, “O sire, your kingdom is safe under your protecting arms. Now rise to attend to the daily rites, as it becomes your majesty.”

3. “The maidservants are waiting with their water pots for your bath, filled with water perfumed with flowers, camphor and saffron. They present themselves before you like river nymphs.

4. The temples are hung with fine muslin as white as the fibers of lotus stalks, and they are decorated with lotuses and other flowers with bees fluttering upon them.

5. Men with feather-fans, chariots, elephants, horses and umbrellas stand ready to serve you at the time of your bath.”

6. “The altars are filled with heaps of flowers, aromatic incense and rice, and adorned with every decoration in a princely style.

7. The brahmins are waiting there for your majesty’s presence. After making their sacred ablution and purifications, and offering their prayers for the remission of sins, they expect to get worthy gifts from you.

8. The handmaids are attending to their duties, graced with fans in their hands. The feasting ground is cleansed with sandal paste and water.”

9. “Therefore arise from your seat and perform your prescribed duties, because it does not become the best of men to be late in the discharge of their duties.”

10. Though asked in this way by the head chamberlain, yet the king remained in his meditative mood, thinking on the wonderful phenomena of nature.

11. Janaka thought to himself:— This royalty and these duties of mine are for a very short time. I do not require these things that are so transitory in their nature.

12. I must leave these things that at best are only waters of a mirage. I must remain close to myself in my lonely seclusion, like a calm and solitary lake.

13. The pleasures of this world displayed around us are entirely useless to me. I will promptly leave them and remain in my happy retirement.

14. O my heart, to avoid the snares of disease and death, abandon your shrewdness in pursuing the objects of your desire.

15. Whatever state or condition of life the heart hankers for its delight, it is sure to meet with some difficulty, distress or disappointment coming out of the same.

16. Whether your heart is engaged or disengaged with the objects of sense, you will never find any object, either in act or thought, that is conducive to the true happiness of your soul.

17. Therefore forsake thoughts of the vile pleasure of your senses and concentrate on those thoughts that are filled with the true happiness of the soul. Vasishta speaking:—

18. Thinking in this manner, Janaka remained in mute silence. His restless mind became as still and made him sit down like a picture in painting or like a statue.

19. The chamberlain uttered not a word more. He stood silent in mute respect and fear of his master, and from his knowledge of the dispositions of kings.

20. Janaka, in his state of silent meditation, reflected again on the vanity of human life, with cool calmness of his mind, and thought. Janaka thinking to himself:—

21. Now must I be diligent to find the best and most precious treasure in the world, and know what is that imperishable thing to which I must bind my soul as its surest anchor.

22. What is the good of doing or not doing my acts? Nothing is produced of anything which is not perishable in its nature.

23. It matters not whether the body is active or inactive because all the body’s actions end in utter inaction as all force is reduced to rest. It is the pure consciousness within me that always remains the same and it loses nothing from the loss of the body or from lack of physical action.

24. I do not wish to have what I have not, or dare leave what I already have. I am content with myself. So let me have what is mine and what I have.

25. I get no real good by my acts here, nor do I lose anything by refraining from them. What I get by my acts or lack of action is all zero and void of vanities, and nothing to my purpose or liking.

26. Whether I am doing or not doing, and whether my acts are proper or improper, I have nothing to desire here, nor anything desirable that I have to expect from them.

27. I have got what was due according to my past actions. This body is the result of my former acts. It may continue its motion and actions or it may become still and fade away. It is all the same to me.

28. The mind being set at ease by lack of its action or passion, the actions of the body and its members are similarly at ease by not doing.

29. The acts of men which happen to take place as the results of their destiny or previous actions, are reckoned as no acts of theirs.

30. The impression which the inner soul bears of its past actions and passions give its color to the later nature and character of men’s actions. Now that my soul has obtained its imperishable state of spirituality, I am free from the frequent changes of transmigrations of my body and mind.

✅
Chapter 5.11 — Subjection of the Mind

1. Vasishta related:— Thinking this way, Janaka rose up to perform his daily rites as usual and without any sense of his agency. He did his duty in the way as the sun rises every day to bring the morning: without his consciousness of it.

2. He discharged his duties as they presented themselves to him and without any concern or expectation of their rewards. He did them awake as if he were sleeping.

3. Having discharged his duties of the day and honored the gods and the priests, he passed the night absorbed in meditation.

4. His mind being set at ease and his wandering thoughts repressed from their objects, he pondered in his mind in the dead of night. Janaka thought:—

5. O my mind that is wandering all about with the revolving world, know that your restlessness is not agreeable to the peace of my soul. Therefore rest quietly from your wanderings abroad.

6. It is your business to imagine many things at your pleasure because you think you have a world of thoughts present before you every moment.

7. You shoot forth in innumerable sorrows by the desire of endless enjoyments, like a tree shoots out into a hundred branches from being watered at the roots.

8. Our births and lives and worldly affairs are all productions of our yearning thoughts. Therefore I pray that you, O my mind, rest quietly by abandoning your earthly desires.

9. O my friendly mind, weigh well this transient world in your thoughts. Should you find anything of substance in it, depend upon it.

10. Forsake your fond reliance on these visible phenomena. Leave these things and wander about at your free will without caring for anything.

11. Whether this unreal scene appears or disappears from your sight, in either case you should not suffer by being affected by it.

12. You can have no concern with visible objects. What concern can one have with any earthly thing that is nonexistent of itself, like an unsubstantial shadow?

13. The world is an unreality like yourself. Therefore there can be no true relation between two unrealities. It is only a dispute over words to maintain the relation of two negatives to one another.

14. Even if we assume that you are a reality and the world is unreal, still there can be no agreement between you, as there is none between the living and the dead, or between positive and negative ideas.

15. Should both mind and world be realities and co-exist for ever, then there can be no reason for the joy or sorrow of the one at the gain or loss of the other.

16. Therefore avoid the great malady of worldliness and enjoy the silent joy in yourself, like one sitting in the undisturbed depth of the ocean with the rolling tide and waves above his head.

17. Do not be consumed by the fiery remorse of worldliness, like a puppet by fireworks. Do not be burnt down to the darkness of despair in this gloomy scene of the world.

18. O wicked mind, there is nothing here so good and great that you can attain your high perfection through it — except to forsake all mental fluctuations and depend with full resignation on the unchangeable One.

✅
Chapter 5.12 — On the Greatness of Reasoning (Self Inquiry)

1. Vasishta continued:— Janaka, having earnestly reasoned with his mind in this manner, then attended to the affairs of state without shrinking from them, yet mentally detached.

2. He was not pleased by the happy tasks and tidings but was indifferent to them, his fixed attention serving as if he were in slumber and not the actor.

3. From then on, he was not intense doing his duties nor did he forsake them altogether. He simply and unconcernedly attended to the business that presented itself to him.

4. His constant habit of reasoning allowed him to understand the eternal truth and preserved his consciousness from blunders, like the sky untouched by flying dust.

5. By his cultivation of reasoning, his mind was enlightened and filled with all knowledge.

6. Unaccustomed to duality, his mind learned to know only the sole unity, and his intelligent soul shone within him like the fully bright sun in the sky.

7. He became acquainted with the Soul that is inherent in all bodies. He saw all things abiding in the omnipotence of Consciousness and identical with the infinite.

8. He was never too joyful or exceedingly sad, but preserved his equanimity amidst the conflicts of his soul and sensible objects.

9. Since that time, the venerable Janaka became liberated in his living state and is renowned as a veteran sage among mankind.

10. He continues to rule the land of the Videha people without being subject to feelings of joy or sorrow, not even for a moment.

11. Knowing the causes of good and evil, he is neither elated nor dejected at any favorable or unfavorable circumstance of his life, nor does he feel glad or sad at any good or bad accident relating the state.

12. He completes his duties without setting his mind to them. His mind is wholly employed in his intellectual speculations.

13. Remaining thus in his trance state of sound sleep (abstraction, samadhi), his thoughts are quite withdrawn from all objects about him.

14. He is unmindful of the past and heedless about the future. He enjoys only the present moment with a happy heart and a cheerful mind.

15. Janaka obtained the obtainable and what is worthy to be obtained by his own reasoned analysis and not, O lotus-eyed Rama, by any other desire.

16. Therefore we should reason and reflect in our minds until we succeed and arrive at the conclusion of the subject.

17. The presence of the Holy Light is not to be had by a teacher’s lectures or the teaching of scriptures. It is not the result of good acts or the company of holy men. It is the result of your own reasoning.

18. A good understanding assisted by the power of good perception leads to the knowledge of that highest state which acts of piety cannot do.

19. He who has the keen light of the lamp of his perception always before him is able to see both the past and future. No shadow of ignorance intercepts his vision.

20. Through keen perception one is able to cross the sea of dangers, like a passenger using a boat to cross a river.

21. A man without foresight is overtaken even by small mishaps, like a light straw is blown away by the slightest breeze.

22. One who is endowed with foresight passes over the eventful ocean of the world without need of the assistance of friends or the guidance of scriptures.

23. The man with foreknowledge sees the result of his actions beforehand, but one without foresight is at a loss to judge imminent events.

24. Good company and learning strengthen understanding, just as watering a plant helps it grow and bear fruit.

25. Infant understanding, like a tender shoot, takes a deep root in time and having grown up like a tree, it bears sweet fruit in its season, like cooling moonbeams at night.

26. Whatever efforts men make to acquire external property, they would be better served to devote those efforts to improve their understanding.

27. First dullness of understanding must be destroyed for it is the source of all evils, the storehouse of misery, and the root of the tree of worldliness.

28. Great minded men understand whatever good they may expect to find on this earth, in heaven above, and in the world below.

29. Only through good understanding can a man cross the ocean of the world, and not by his charities, pilgrimages or religious austerities.

30. The sweet fruit of tree of knowledge is the divine blessing for each mortal man on earth.

31. Wisdom uses its sharp nails to scratch and nip the heads of the elephantine bonds of giddiness with as much ease as a strong lion kills a deer or a weak jackal.

32. An ordinary man, by knowing more than others, is often seen to become the ruler of men. The wise and discreet are entitled to glory in both worlds.

33. (Simple) reason overcomes all its adversaries who indulge in diverse (convoluted) forms of reasoning, just as a disciplined warrior is able to overcome a host of unrestrained savages.

34. Reasoning is the philosopher’s stone that converts base metals to gold. Rational souls safeguard reasoning as the greatest treasure. It yields the desired fruits of men like the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree of paradise does with a thought.

35. He who reasons rightly crosses the wide ocean of the world with his reasoning, while the unreasonable rabble are born away by its waves, just as a skillful boatman cuts across the current while the unskilled boatman is tossed about by waves.

36. A well directed understanding leads to the success of an undertaking, but misguided intellect goes to rack and ruin. The one sails to the shore before the wind, but the other is tossed in his wrecked vessel over the wide gulf of the world.

37. The keen sighted and unbiased wise man is never overcome by evils arising from his desires, just as an enemy’s arrows do not pierce the body of a soldier in armor.

38. A man’s wisdom gives him an insight into everything in the world. The all knowing man is not subject to dangers or the reverses of his fortune.

39. The breath of intelligence drives away the dark and wide-stretching cloud of blind egoism that hides the sunlight of the Supreme Spirit within us.

40. Improvement of understanding is the first necessity towards knowledge of the Supreme Soul, just as cultivation of the ground is of primary importance to the farmer who desires reaping a rich harvest.

✅
Chapter 5.13 — Government of the Mind: Consciousness Is Real, Mind (Imagination and Will) Is Not

1. Vasishta continued:— Now Rama, like King Janaka and without any difficulty or failing, reflect on the Supreme Spirit in your own spirit and know what the wise meditate upon.

2. The wise men of the active-pure (rajasa-satvika) variety, like Janaka and other holy sages, obtain their desired objects by themselves.

3. As long as you continue to restrain your organs of sense from their objects, Divine Soul will grace your inner soul with its presence.

4. When the Lord God and Supreme Soul is gracious to you, you will see a halo of light cast over all things dispersing all grief from your sight.

5. The sight of the Supreme Spirit will remove the plentiful seeds of bias from your mind, and it will drive away the sorrowful sights of misery pouring upon your view in copious showers.

6. Continue like Janaka in the willful discharge of your duties, and prosper by placing your intellectual sight on the divine light shining in your inner spirit.

7. It was by reflecting inwards that Janaka found the impermanence of the world. By placing his faith in the unchangeable Spirit, in time he found its grace.

8. Hence the pious acts of men, their riches and their friends are of no use for their salvation from the miseries of life. Only their own efforts are of use for the enlightenment of their soul.

9. They who place their reliance upon faith in gods and depend upon them to fulfill their desires and future rewards are perverted in their understanding and cannot be heirs to immortality.

10. He is saved from misery in this ocean of the world by reliance on his own reasoning and resignation, and by his spiritual vision of the Supreme Spirit.

11. Attaining this blessed knowledge of intuition which removes our ignorance is what they call getting fruit fallen from heaven.

12. The intelligence which looks into itself, as Janaka did, finds the soul developing of itself inside, just as the lotus bud opens of itself in the morning.

13. The firm conviction of the material world melts into nothing under the light of perception, just as thick and hard ice dissolves to liquid under the sun’s heat.

14. The consciousness that “this is I” is like the shade of night, and it is dispelled at the rise of the sun of intellect when the omnipresent light appears vividly to sight.

15. As soon as one loses his selfconsciousness that “this is me”, the all-pervading Soul opens fully to his view.

16. As Janaka abandoned consciousness of his personality together with his desire, so you, O intelligent Rama, forsake them by your acute understanding and the discernment of your mind.

17. After the cloud of egoism is dispersed and the sphere is cleared all around, the divine light shall shine as brightly as a second sun.

18. It is the greatest ignorance to think of one’s own personality. When this thought is relaxed by the sense of our nothingness, we give room to the manifestation of holy light in the soul.

19. Do not think of the entity or non-entity of yourself or others, but preserve the tranquility of your mind from thoughts of both positive and negative existences in order to get rid of your sense of distinction between producer and the produced.

20. Again, fostering a fondness for something as good and a hatred for others as bad is only a disease of your mind that serves only to make you uneasy.

21. Do not be fond of what you think to be beautiful or be disgusted at what appears hateful to you. Get rid of these opposite feelings and be even minded by fixing it on the One before whom all things are alike and equally good.

22. They who view the desirable and the detestable in the same light are neither fond of the one nor adverse to the other.

23. Until the fancy of the desirability of one thing and the dislike of the other is effaced from the mind, it is as hard to have the good grace of equanimity, just as it is difficult for moonlight to pierce a cloudy sky.

24. The mind that considers one thing to be appropriate and another as inappropriate is deprived of the blessing of detachment, just as the sakota plant is despised because it has no flowers or fruit.

25. Where there is a craving for the desirable and an aversion to what is unseemly, and when there is a cry for gain and an outcry at one’s loss, it is impossible for even mindedness, dispassion or tranquility to abide in the mind.

26. There being only the essence of one pure Brahman diffused throughout the universe, it is very improper to take the one as many, and among them something as good or bad.

27. Our desires and dislikes are the two apes living on the tree of our hearts. While they continue shaking and swinging that tree with their jogging and jolting, there can be no rest.

28. Freedom from fear and desire, from exertions and action, together with wisdom and equanimity are the inseparable accompaniments of ease and rest.

29. The qualities of forbearance and feeling for our fellows, accompanied with contentment and good understanding, and joined with a mild disposition and gentle speech, are the indispensable companions of a wise man who rid himself of desires and his feelings of liking or dislike.

30. The mind running to meanness is to be repressed by restraining passions and desires, just like the current of water is stopped by its valve.

31. Shun the sight of external things. They are the roots of error and fallacy. Always consider their internal properties, both when you are awake and asleep, and also when you are walking about or sitting down.

32. Greedy men are caught like greedy fish in the hidden net of desires that are incapable of being satisfied. That net is woven with the threads of worldly cares, and it is under the waters of worldly affairs.

33. Now Rama, cut the meshes of this net with the knife of your good understanding and throw it in the water, like a tempest tearing thick clouds apart and scattering them in the air.

34. Try, O gentle Rama, to uproot the root of worldliness that sprouts forth in the weeds of vice. Use the hatchet of your perseverance and the eliminating shovel of your penetration.

35. Employ your mind to cut down the cravings of your mind, like using an axe to cut down a tree, then you will rest quietly as you arrive at the state of holiness.

36. Having destroyed the former state of your mind by its present state, try to forget them both in future by your heedless mind and manage yourself unmindful of the world.

37. Your utter oblivion of the world will prevent the revival of your mind and stop the reappearance of ignorance which accompanies the mind.

38. Whether you are waking or sleeping or in any other state of your life, you must remember the nothingness of the world and give up your reliance on it.

39. Leave off your selfishness, O Rama, and rely upon the detachment of your soul. Lay hold of what ever offers itself to you and without seeking for it.

40. As the Lord God does everything and yet is aloof from everything, so must you do all acts outwardly without you mixing in anything.

41. Knowing the knowable, one finds himself like the uncreated soul and a great lord of all. But being apart from that soul, he sees only the material world spread before him.

42. He who has the sight of the inner spirit is free from thoughts of the external world and is not subjected to joy or grief or sorrow or any other evil of his life.

43. He is called a yogi who is free from passions and hatred, and looks on gold and rubbish in the same light. He is joined with his joy in his yoga and disjoined from all worldly desires.

44. He enjoys the fruit of his own acts and minds not what he wastes or gives away. He has the evenness of his mind in every condition and is unaltered by pain or pleasure.

45. He is not plunged into any difficulty who receives what he gets and is employed with whatever offers of itself to him without considering the good or evil that he is to gain by it.

46. He who is certain of the truth of the spiritual essence of the world, yearns not for its physical enjoyments but remains even-minded at all times.

47. The dull mind follows the active intellect in accomplishing its objects, just as the carnivorous cat or fox follows a lion in search of meat scraps.

48. As the servile band feeds on the flesh acquired by the lion’s prowess, so the mind dwells upon visible and sensible objects which it perceives by power of the intellect.

49. Thus the unsubstantial mind lives upon the outer world with the help of the intellect. But as it comes to remember its origin from consciousness, it recoils back to its original state.

50. The mind, moved and lit by the heat and light of the lamp of consciousness, becomes extinct without its physical force and grows as motionless as a dead body.

51. The nature of consciousness is known to exclude the idea of motion or pulsation from it. The scriptures call the power that has vibration reasoning or the mind.

52. The breathing (or vibration) of the mind, like the hissing of a snake, is called its imagination, but by knowing consciousness as the self, the mind comes to the true knowledge of the inner soul.

53. Consciousness free from thoughts is the ever lasting Brahman, but being joined with thought, it is called the imaginative principle or the mind.

54. This power of imagination, having assumed a definite form, is called the mind. The mind with its will and its choices is situated in the heart of living beings.

55. With its two distinct powers of imagination and will, the mind is employed in the acts of discriminating and choosing the agreeable from what is disagreeable to it.

56. Consciousness, being seated in the heart with its thoughts and wills, forgets its spiritual nature and remains as a dull material substance.

57. The intellect being this confined in the hearts of all animals in this world, continues in utter oblivion of its nature until it is awakened of itself, either by its intuition or the instruction of teachers or otherwise.

58. Intellect is awakened by instruction from the scriptures and teachers, by the practice of dispassion, and by subjugation of the organs of sense and action.

59. When the minds of living beings are awakened by learning and self-control, they tend towards the knowledge of the great Brahman, or else they wander at random about the wide world.

60. We must therefore awaken our minds that are dormant to divine knowledge, rolling in the pit of worldliness from intoxication of the wine of error.

61. As long as the mind is not awakened, it is unconscious of everything. Though it perceives what can be perceived, yet this perception is as false as the sight of a city in our fancy.

62. But when the mind is awakened by divine knowledge to the sight of the Supreme Being, it presents everything in itself, just as the inner fragrance of flowers also pervades the outer petals.

63. Though consciousness has the quality of knowing everything contained in all the three worlds, yet it has only little knowledge of them because of its insufficient desire to know them.

64. The mind without intellect is a dull block of stone, but it is opened by divine light, like the lotus bud opening under sunlight.

65. The mind that imagines is as devoid of understanding as a statue made of marble is unable to move about by itself.

66. How can regiments drawn in a painting wage a war? How can moonbeams make the medicinal plants emit their light?

67. Who has seen dead bodies smeared with blood running about on the ground? Who has witnessed stone fragments singing musical choruses in the woods?

68. Where does the stone idol of the sun dispel the darkness of the night? Where does an imaginary forest of the sky spread its shade on the ground?

69. Of what good are the efforts of men who are as ignorant as blocks of stones and who are led by their error in many ways, other than to endanger themselves by the mirage of their minds?

70. Imagination displays the non-existent as existent in the soul, just as sunbeams show clear oceans in desert sands.

71. The learned sages call the moving principle in the body the mind. They know it as a mere force of the winds, like the vital breath of living beings.

72. Those whose self-consciousness is not disturbed by the currents of their passions and desires have their spiritual souls like an unperturbed stream.

73. But when this pure consciousness is fouled by false fancies of this and that, and that “this is I” and “that is mine”, then the soul and the vital principle are both taken together to form a living being.

74. The mind, the living soul and understanding are all only fictitious names of an unreality according to the conceptions of false thinkers, and not of them who know the true spirit.

75. In reality there is no mind, no understanding, no thinking principle, and no body. There is only the reality of the one Universal Spirit which is ever existent everywhere.

76. The one Universal Spirit is the soul which is all this world. It is time and all its fluctuations. It is more transparent than the atmosphere, and it is clear because it is nothing at all.

77. It is not always apparent, owing to its transparency, yet it is ever existent because of our consciousness of it. The spirit is beyond all things and is perceived by our inner perception.

78. The mind vanishes into nothing before our consciousness of the Supreme Soul, just as darkness is dispelled from where the sun shines.

79. When the transparent and self-conscious soul raises other figures of its own will, then the presence of the soul is forgotten and lays hidden under the grosser creations of the mind.

80. The faculty of the Supreme Spirit that wills is labeled the mind. It is detachment and lack of our own will that produces our liberation.

81. Such is the origin of the mind which is the root of creation. Will is a faculty of our consciousness, otherwise called the soul.

82. The intellectual essence, after falling from its state of detachment and being defiled by its desires, becomes the principle of production or producing desired objects.

83. The mind becomes extinct through loss of vital power, just as the shadow of a thing disappears by removing the substance.

84. The living body perceives in its heart the notion of a distant place that exists in the mind. This proves the identity of the vital breath and the thinking mind.

85. Therefore, by repressing the mind the vital breath is also repressed, which produces longevity and health.

86. Stone has the capability of mobility, and fuel of inflammability, but vital breath and mind do not have powers of vibration or thinking (without the force of the intellect and the spirit).

87. The breath of life by itself is inert, and its pulsation is the effect and composed of the surrounding air. So the action of the mind is due to the force of consciousness whose transparency pervades all nature.

88. The mind is the union of intellectual and vibrating powers. Its production is as false as the falsity of its knowledge.

89. Mental power is called error and also illusion, and these in ignorance of the Supreme Brahman produce the knowledge of this poisonous world.

90. The powers of the intellect and vibration, combined with those of imagination and will which constitute the mind, produce all worldly evils unless they are weakened and kept under restraint.

91. When intellect thinks or has perception by the pulsation caused by the air, the wind of breath gives pulsation to the intellect and causes its power of reasoning. This intellectual power gives rise to all the thoughts and desires of the mind.

92. The vibrating intellect extending over the undivided sphere of the universe is truly thinking power. The mind is a false imagination like the ghost of infants.

93. The intellect is the power of reasoning, which cannot be thwarted anywhere by anything else, like the mind, just as there is no power to contest the almighty Indra.

94. Thus, as there no relation between reasoning and the mind, it is wrong to attribute the mind with the power of thinking. The two are unrelated.

95. How can this union of consciousness with only its vibration be called the mind with its multifarious functions? The commander alone, without the component parts of cavalry, elephants and others, cannot be called an army.

96. Therefore there is no such thing as a good or bad mind in any of the three worlds. The bias of its existence will be utterly removed by full knowledge of spirituality.

97. It is in vain and to no purpose that people imagine the existence of the mind. It is proved to be an unreality and has no substantiality of its own.

98. Therefore, O magnanimous Rama, never give rise to false imaginations of any kind, and particularly that of the mind which never exists anywhere.

99. False fantasies arise like a mirage from the lack of full knowledge of things. They spring in the heart, which is as barren as a desert, for want of the rain of full knowledge.

100. The mind is a dead thing owing to its lack of form or action, and yet, as it is idolized in the circles of common people, it is a wonder.

101. It is a wonder that the mind, having no soul or essence, no body or size or support of its own, should spread its net over all ignorant minds.

102. One who falls victim to his unarmed and impotent mind is like a man who says his body has been injured by a lotus flower falling upon it.

103. The man who is undone by his inert, dumb and blinded mind is like one who complains of being burned by the cool beams of the full moon.

104. People are truly killed by an antagonist who is present before them, but it is a wonder that the ignorant are foiled by the non-existent mind of their own making.

105. What is the power of that which is a creation of mere fancy, an unreal presentation of ignorance, and which being sought after is nowhere to be found?

106. It is a great wonder that men should be overcome by their impotent minds that deal only in delusions.

107. Ignorance is ever exposed to dangers and the ignorant are always the victims of error. Know the unreal world is the creation of only ignorance and of the ignorant.

108. O, the misery of miseries that the ignorant make this creation of ignorance for themselves, and that they fabricate a living soul for the sole purpose of their sufferings.

109. I know this frail world is a creation of the false imagination of the ignorant, and that this earth is as fragile as to be broken and carried away by the waves of the ocean.

110. It is like black eye-liner that is broken down by surrounding waters or seas serving as its grinding mill. Yet men are maddened with it, like those struck by moonbeams.

111. The visible world disappears at the sight of reason, just as a man flies from the sight of his foe. The mind’s streams of imaginary creations flee like hosts of demons defeated by the gods.

112. Thus this world, which is a false creation of fancy and exists nowhere except in the idle brains of the ignorant, is lost into nothing at the sight of reason.

113. He who is not able to govern his mind and efface the thoughts of this false world that only arise in the minds of the ignorant, is not worthy of being advised in the abstruse doctrines of spirituality.

114. Those who are confirmed and self-sufficient in their belief of what can be perceived by the physical senses are unable to grasp the subtle science of abstract philosophy, and therefore are unfit to receive spiritual instruction.

115. Men accustomed to the loud beatings of drum are as unconscious to the soft tunes of the lute as they are startled at seeing the face of a sleeping friend.

116. They who fly with fear away from the loud preaching of false preachers cannot have the patience to listen to the silent lesson of their inner guide. They who are deluded by their own minds can hardly be reclaimed by any other.

117. Those who are tempted to taste the bitterness of worldly pleasures as being sweet, are so subdued by its effects on their understanding that they altogether lose the power of discerning the truth. Therefore it is useless to reason with them.

✅
Chapter 5.14 — Impossibility of Curing the World; the Parade of Prey; the Thinking Principle

1. Vasishta said:— Multitudes of men are carried away by the torrents and waves of the sea of worldly pursuits. They are deaf and dumb to the admonitions of their spiritual instructors.

2. They are not fit to derive the benefit of the spiritual knowledge which I have propounded in this yoga scripture by my rational discourses.

3. They who are born blind and can see nothing are not to be shown a painting of a garden by an intelligent artist, portrayed with blooming blossoms and beautiful flowers.

4. There is no fool who would present fragrant odors to one whose nostrils are snorting under some nasal disease, and there is no dolt so great who would consult an ignorant man on spiritual matters.

5. What fool is there who would refer a question on law or religious subjects to one of ungoverned passions and organs of sense, or whose eyeballs are rolling with the intoxication of wine?

6. Who asks of the dead the way he should go, or one in the grave about where to walk in the city? What witless man seeks the help of an idiot to clear his doubts?

7. Of what good is it to advise a person with little wit, whose serpentine mind is coiled and creeping in the cave of his heart? Though it lies there in silence and sightless, is yet ungovernably wild.

8. Know there is no such a thing as a well governed mind. Though you may fling it away from you, yet it is never lost or annihilated.

9. The simpleton who does not control his false and delusive mind is tormented to death by its venomous smart, as if stung by a deadly reptile.

10. The learned understand the vital powers. They know the operations of the organs of action and they depend on the action and force of the soul. Say then, O Rama, what is that thing which they call the mind?

11. The vital breath gives force for bodily actions and the soul produces the power of knowledge. The organs act by their own force and the Supreme Spirit is the main source of all.

12. All forces are only parts of the omnipotence of the Supreme Spirit. Their different names are only inventions of men.

13. What is it that they call the individual living soul which has blindfolded the world? What do they label as the mind? It is really an unreality without any power of its own.

14. Rama, I have seen the continued misery arising from their false conception of the unreal mind. My pity for them has caused my constant sorrow.

15. But why should I feel sorrow for the ignorant rabble who bring their sorrow by their own error? The common herd is born to their misery like beasts and brutes.

16. The ignorant rabble are born in their dull material bodies only for their destruction. They are born to die away constantly, like the waves of the ocean.

17. What pity shall I take for those who are seen every day perishing under the jaws of death, like numbers of animals immolated in the shambles?

18. For whom shall I sorrow when I see billions and trillions of gnats and moths destroyed daily by gusts of wind?

19. For whom shall I sorrow when every day throughout hills and forests I see hunters and sportsmen killing millions of deer and other game?

20. For whom shall I feel when I find innumerable schools of small fish in the waters eaten every day by bigger ones?

21. I see an infinite number of microscopic organisms eaten by flies and fleas, which in their turn are eaten by hungry spiders and scorpions.

22. The frog feeds on flies and in turn is eaten by snakes. Birds of prey swallow the snake and the weasel preys upon snakes.

23. The weasel is killed by the cat, which is killed by the dog. The bear destroys the dog and is at last destroyed by the tiger.

24. The lion overcomes the tiger, and is overcome on its turn by the sharabha. The sharabha is overthrown by its fall on rocky steeps in its attempt to jump over gathering clouds.

25. The clouds are worsted by tempests, and these again are obstructed by rising rocks and mountains. The mountains are split by thunderbolts, and the thunderbolts of heaven are broken by the thundering Indra.

26. This Indra is defeated by Vishnu, his younger brother, and Vishnu is made to undergo his incarnations in the shapes of men and beasts. He is subjected to the changing fortunes of pain and pleasure and to the conditions of disease, decay and death.

27. Big animals are fed upon by leeches and fleas that stick to their bodies and suck their blood. Men filled with knowledge and armed with weapons are infested by bloodsucking bugs and gnats.

28. Thus hosts of living bodies are continually exposed to feed upon and to be fed upon by one another with remorseless hunger.

29. There is a constant growth of leeches, fleas, ants, other small insects and worms on the one hand, and a continued dissolution of both big and puny bodies in every place on earth.

30. The womb of the waters bears breeds of fish, whales, hippopotamus and other aquatic animals, and the bowels of the earth produce multitudes of worms and reptiles to infinity.

31. The air teems with broods of birds of various kinds and the woods abound with wild beasts, lions and tigers, fleet deer and other brutes.

32. There are inborn worms growing in the intestines and upon the skin of animal bodies. Parasitical insects and microscopic organisms feed upon the bark and leaves of trees.

33. Insects are seen born in the crusts of stones, such as frogs, worms and others. Many kinds of worms and insects are found growing and feeding upon the feces and excrements of animals.

34. In this manner an endless number of living beings are being born and perishing for ever and ever. It is of no use to them whether kind hearted men are joyous or sorrowful at their births and deaths.

35. The wise can have no cause for joy or grief in this continued course of constant births and deaths of the living world.

36. Such is the nature of all the different species of animal beings. They constantly grow to fall off like the leaves of trees.

37. The kind hearted man who wishes to remove the sorrows of the ignorant by his advice, attempts an impossibility as great as that of shrouding the all pervasive sunshine by means of his umbrella.

38. It is useless to give advice to the ignorant who are no better than beasts in their understandings, just as it is fruitless to talk to a rock or a block of wood or a stone in the wilderness.

39. The dull headed ignorant, who are no better than beasts, are dragged by their willful minds like cattle by their halters.

40. To see the ignorant plunged in the skin of their perverted minds, employed in acts and rites for their own ruin, would make even stones melt into tears.

41. Men of ungoverned minds are always exposed to dangers and difficulties, but the purified minds of the wise are free from the evils and mishaps of life.

42. Now Rama, consider well the miseries of ungoverned minds and take yourself to the knowledge of the knowable one.

43. Never entertain the vain hobgoblin of a mind in your imagination. The mind has no real existence of its own. Beware of this false belief, which may betray you like the imagined ghosts of children.

44. As long as you are forgetful of the soul, you must remain in utter ignorance and remain tortured by the serpent residing in the recess of your heart.

45. Now you know the whole truth, as I have explained it to you. It is only your imagination that presents you with the idea of your mind, and you must get rid of that idea forever.

46. If you rely upon what can be perceived, you are subject to the delusion of your mind. No sooner do you shun your reliance on phenomena than you are liberated from your illusion of it.

47. The visible world is a combination of the three qualities of purity, action and passivity (sattva, rajas and tamas). It is presented before you by your illusion (maya), like a trap to capture beasts.

48. Think of the nonexistence both of the subjective-self and the objective world. Remain as firm as a fixed rock on earth, and behold the Lord only in the form of infinite space in your heart.

49. Rama, shun the false thoughts of your self-existence and those of the visible world. Forsake your belief in duality in order to settle yourself in infinite unity.

50. Continue to meditate on the soul, as it is situated between the subjective viewer and the objective view of this world, and as it exists in your vision which lies between the two.

51. Forsake your ideas about the subjects and objects of your taste, and think about their intermediate state of taste as being one with the soul.

52. Rama, place yourself in the position of your power of thinking which lies between the thinker and what can be thought of. Support your soul on the support-less soul of all, and remain steady in your meditation.

53. Forsake the cares of the world and be exempt from thoughts of existence and non-existence. Meditate on the Universal Soul and be settled with your soul in that Soul.

54. When you have learned to think on the thinkable One by renouncing the thought of your own existence, then you shall arrive to that state of unconsciousness which is free from misery.

55. Know your thoughts to be your chains and your self-consciousness to be your binding chain. Therefore, O Rama, loosen the lion of your soul from the prison house of your mind.

56. By departing from the state of the Supreme Soul and falling into the thoughts of the mind, you will be crowded by your imaginations and you will see all about you only the objects of your thoughts.

57. The knowledge that reasoning or the power of thought is distinct from the soul introduces the existence of the unhappy mind. For the sake of true happiness, you must get rid of that separation.

58. When you become conscious of the Supreme Soul in you and permeated throughout all nature, then you will find the thinker and his thinking, the thinkables and their thoughts, all vanish into nothing.

59. The thought that “I have a soul and a living soul also” brings all the miseries to which we are exposed throughout all eternity.

60. The consciousness that “I am the one soul and not a distinct living being” is called tranquility of the spirit and its true joy.

61. O Rama, when you are certain that the world is the Universal Soul itself, you will find the false distinctions of your mind and individual living soul to be nothing in reality.

62. When you perceive that all this is your very self, then your mind will melt away into the soul, as darkness dissolves in sunlight and shadows disappear in the air.

63. As long as you cherish the snake of your mind within yourself, you are in danger of catching its poison. But when the mind is removed through your yoga meditation, you escape the danger immediately.

64. Be bold, O Rama, and destroy the mighty demon of the deep rooted error of your mind by the power of the mantras of your perfect knowledge.

65. Upon disappearance of the demon of the mind from the dwelling of your body, as when a demon yaksha disappears in the air, you will be free from every disease, danger, care and fear.

66. Dispassion and detachment joined with the knowledge of unity melt down the substance of the mind and confer the best and highest state of joy and rest in the Supreme Spirit, bringing on that state of tranquility which is the main aim of everybody. May all these blessings attend upon you.

✅
Chapter 5.15 — On Greed

1. Vasishta continued:— The soul by following the unholy essence of the mind, which is the source of the world, is led to fall into the trap laid by the mind for all living beings.

2. The soul then loses the brightness of its spiritual form and takes the gross shape of the senses. It waits upon the guidance of the mind and indulges in its impure imaginations.

3. It falls into greed which, like a poisonous plant, makes it senseless and spreads a fearful anesthesia over it.

4. Greed like a dark night hides the soul under the gloom of oblivion and produces endless pains to the soul.

5. The god Shiva withstood the flame of the kalpa conflagration, but nobody can withstand the fierce fire of greed.

6. It bears a form as formidable as that of a long, sharp and black dagger, cold in appearance but very injurious in its effects.

7. Greed is an evergreen plant bearing bunches of plentiful fruit on high which, when obtained and tasted, prove to be bitter and gall.

8. Greed is a hungry wolf prowling in the recess of the heart, feeding unseen on the flesh, blood and bones of its sheltering body.

9. Greed is like a rainy stream full of foul and muddy water overflowing and breaking down its banks, then leaving its dirty bed empty.

10. The man stricken with greed remains stingy and broken hearted at all times. His spirits are dampened and his sordid soul is debased before mankind. He is dejected, weeps and lays himself down in despair.

11. He who does not have this black adder of greed burrowing in the recess of his heart has the free play of his vital breath, which is otherwise poisoned by the breath of the viper rankling in his breast.

12. The heart that is not darkened by the gloomy night of greed feels the rays of humanity sparkling in it, like the play of bright moonbeams.

13. The heart that is not eaten up by the corroding cares of greed is like a tree without cankers blooming with its blossoms of piety.

14. The current of greed is ever running amidst the wilderness of human desires with ceaseless torrents and waves, and hideous whirlpools and vortices around.

15. The thread of greed, like the long line of a flying kite, whirls and furls and pulls mankind as its toys and playthings.

16. Rude, rough and hardhearted greed, like a remorseless axe, breaks and cuts down the tender roots of virtues.

17. Foolish men led by greed fall into the pit of hell, like ignorant deer enticed by grass scattered over its cover fall into the black hole of a trap.

18. Men are not so much blinded by their aged and decayed eyesight as they are blinded by the invisible greed seated in their hearts.

19. The heart which is nestled by the ominous owl of greed is as pitiful as the god Vishnu who became a dwarf because he begged for a bit of ground from Bali.

20. A divine power has implanted this greed which cannot be satisfied in the heart of man. This greed whirls him about as if tied by a rope, like the sun revolving around its center in the sky.

21. Fly from this greed which is as heinous as a venomous snake. It is the source of all evils, even of death in this mortal world.

22. Greed blows on men like the wind. Greed makes men sit still like stones. Greed makes some as calm as the earth, and greed ransacks the three worlds in its rapid course.

23. This entire parade of men is impelled back and forth by greed, as if pulled by ropes. It is easy to break ropes, but not the bond of greed.

24. Rama, get rid of greed by forsaking your desires. Because the wise have determined that the mind dies away from lack of its desires.

25. Never observe the distinctions of “my”, “yours” and “his” in any of your wishes, but wish for the good of all alike. Never foster any bad desire.

26. The thought of self in what is not the self is the parent of all our grief. When you cease to think the not-self as the self you are then reckoned among the wise.

27. Cut off your egoism, O gentle Rama, and dwell in your unearthly self by forgetting yourself, and by dispelling your fear from all created beings.

✅
Chapter 5.16 — Two Ways to Abandon Greed: Reason and Insight

1. Rama said, “Sage, what you are saying, about me abandoning my egoism and greed, is too deep for me to understand.

2. Sage, how is it possible to give up my ego without giving up this body and everything that is related to it?

3. Egoism is the chief support of the body, like a post supports a thatched house.

4. The body will surely perish without its egoism. Its durability will be cut short, like a tree is felled by sawing on its trunk.

5. Now tell me, O most eloquent sage, how can I live by giving up my egoism (which is myself)? Answer me according to your right judgment.

6. Vasishta replied:— O lotus-eyed and respectful Rama, the wise, who are well acquainted with the subject, say there are two ways to abandon desires. One is called the knowable (based on knowledge or direct realization) and the other they call the thinkable (based on contemplation, reasoning).

7. There is a knowledge that I am the life of my body and its powers, and these are the supports of my life, and that I am something.

8. But weighing this internal conviction by the light of reason proves that I am not related to the external body and the body does not bear any relation to my internal soul.

9. Therefore, one performs one’s duties with calmness and coolness of understanding without any desire for results. This is called abandonment of desire through reasoning.

10. The understanding that views things in an equal light and, by forsaking its desires, relinquishes the body without taking any concern for it, is called the knowing abandonment of desires.

11. He who foregoes with ease the desires arising from his egoism is called the thinking renouncer of his desires and is liberated in his lifetime.

12. He who is calm and even-minded by his abandonment of vain and imaginary desires is a knowing deserter of his desires and is also liberated in this world.

13. Those who abandon the desires in their thoughts and remain with listless indifference to everything are like those who are liberated in their lifetime.

14. They are also called liberated who have their composure (detachment) after abandonment of their desires and who rest in the Supreme Spirit with their souls disentangled from their bodies.

15. Both these sorts of renunciation are equally entitled to liberation. Both are extricated from pain and both lead liberated souls to the state of Brahma.

16. The mind, whether engaged in acts or disengaged from them, rests in the pure spirit of God by forsaking its desires.

17. The former kind of yogi is liberated in his embodied state and free from pain throughout his lifetime. But the latter who has obtained his liberation in his bodiless state after his death, remains quite unconscious of his desires.

18. He who feels no joy or sorrow at the good or evil which befalls him in his lifetime, as it is the course of nature, is called the living liberated man.

19. He who neither desires nor dreads the casualties of good or evil that are incidental to human life, but remains quiet regardless of them as in his dead sleep, is known as the truly liberated man.

20. He whose mind is free from thoughts of what is desirable or undesirable to him, and free from differentiation of “mine,” “yours” and “his” is called the truly liberated.

21. He whose mind is not subject to excess joy or grief, hope or fear, anger, boasting or miserliness, is said to have his liberation.

22. He whose feelings are all dulled within himself as in his sleep, and whose mind enjoys its joy like the beams of the full moon, is said to be a liberated man in this world.

23. Valmiki says:— After the sage had said so far, the day departed to its evening service with the setting sun. The assembled audience retired to their evening ceremonial washings, and with the rising sun on the next day, returned to the assembly.

✅
Chapter 5.17 — Describing Liberation while Living and Brahman beyond Words

1. Vasishta said:— It is difficult, O Rama, to describe in words the inexplicable nature of the liberation of disembodied souls. But let me tell you more about the liberation of living beings.

2. The desire of doing one’s duties without expectation of reward is also called living liberation, and those who do their duties in this way are said to be the living liberated.

3. The wise sages describe dependence of beings on their desires and their strong attachment to external objects as their bondage and chains in this world.

4. But the desire to conduct oneself according to the course of events without any expectation of results also constitutes the liberation of the living as one’s duties are performed with the body only.

5. The desire to enjoy external objects is truly the bondage of the soul. Indifference to worldly enjoyments constitutes one’s freedom in his living state.

6. Lack of greed and anxiety in anticipation of some gain, and absence of joy and change in one’s disposition afterwards make true freedom of men.

7. O high-minded Rama, know that desire, which is eager expectation to possess anything, is the greatest bondage of men.

8. He who is devoid of desire for anything, whether existent or nonexistent in the world, is the truly great man with the greatest magnanimity of his soul.

9. Therefore Rama, forsake the thoughts both of your bondage and liberation, and also of your happiness and misery. Get rid of your desire for the real and unreal and remain as calm as the undisturbed ocean.

10. Think yourself, O most intelligent Rama, to be devoid of death and decay. Do not stain your mind with fears of disease or death.

11. These substances are nothing, nor are you any of these things that you see. There is something beyond these, and know that you are that very thing (which is the soul).

12. The phenomenon of the world is an unreality and everything here that appears real in your sight is unreal. Knowing yourself to be beyond all these, what earthly thing is there that you can crave?

13. All reasoning men, O Rama, consider themselves in one of four different lights in their minds. I shall now explain these to you in brief.

14. He who considers his whole body as the offspring of his parents (devoid of his spiritual part) is surely born to bondage of the world.

15. But they who are certain of their immaterial soul, which is finer than the point of a hair, are another class of men who are called wise and are born for their liberation.

16. There is a third class of men who consider themselves as same with the Universal Soul of the world. Such men, O support of Raghu’s race, are also entitled to their liberation.

17. Then there is a fourth class who consider themselves and the whole world to be as insubstantial as the empty air. These surely partake in liberation.

18. Of these four kinds of beliefs, the first leads to bondage and the other three, growing from purity of thought, lead to the path of liberation.

19. Among these, the first is subject to the bondage of greed, but the other three, proceeding from pure desire, are crowned with liberation.

20. In my opinion, those of the third kind, who consider themselves one with the Universal Soul, are never subject to sorrow or pain.

21. The magnitude of the Supreme Spirit extends over and below and all about existence. Therefore the belief that “All in one” or “One in all” never holds a man in bondage.

22. The fourth kind, those who believe in emptiness and maintain the principles of nature or illusion, are in ignorance of the divine knowledge that represents God as Shiva, Lord, He, and eternal Soul.

23. He is all and everlasting without a second or another like him. He is pervaded by his omniscience, and not by the ignorance called illusion (maya).

24. The spirit of God fills the universe like the water of the ocean fills the deep. The spirit of God stretches from the highest heaven to the lowest abyss of the infernal regions.

25. Therefore only His reality is ever existent. No unreal world exists at anytime. Liquid water fills the sea, and not the swelling wave that rises in it.

26. As the bracelets and armlets are nothing other than gold, so the varieties of trees and herbs are not distinct from the Universal Spirit.

27. It is the one and same omnipotence of Supreme Spirit that displays different forms in its works of the creation.

28. Never be joyful or sorry for anything belonging to you or another. Do not feel delighted or dejected at any gain or loss that may happen to occur to you.

29. Be of an even disposition, and rely on your essence as one with the Supreme Soul. Attend to your many duties. Be observant of unity in your spiritual concerns and dualities in your worldly affairs.

30. Beware of falling into the hidden holes of this world in your pursuit of varieties of objects. Do not be like an elephant falling into a hidden pit in the forest.

31. O Rama of great soul, there cannot be a duality as it is thought in the mind. O Rama of enlightened soul, there cannot be any unity or duality of the soul. The true essence is ever existent without unity or duality. It is called the all and nothing particular, and as itself (swarupa) .

32. There is no ego or your subjective-self, nor are there any objective worlds that you see. All this is the manifestation of the eternal and imperishable Omniscience. Know this world to be neither an entity nor non-entity by itself.

33. Know the Supreme Being to be without beginning and end, the enlightener of all lights, the undecaying, unborn and incomprehensible one. He is without part and without any change in him. He is beyond imagination and beyond all the imaginary objects about us.

34. Know for certain in your mind that the Lord is always present in the full light of your consciousness. He is the root of your consciousness. He is of the nature of your inner soul. He is conceivable in the intellect. He is the Brahman, the all and everlasting, the all-pervading, the subjective “I” and the objective “you” and this world.

✅
Chapter 5.18 — Living Liberation or True Joy of Man; Everything Is Connected

1. Vasishta continued:— Rama, I will now describe the nature of those great men who conduct themselves in this world with their desires under their control and whose minds are not blemished by evil inclinations.

2. The sage whose mind is freed in his lifetime conducts himself unconcerned in this world. He smiles secure at its occurrences and is regardless of the first, last and middle stages of his life.

3. He is attentive to his present business and unmindful of every other object about him. He is devoid of cares and desires and his thought is only of his internal reflections.

4. He is free from anxiety in all places who tolerates whatever he happens to meet. He sees the light of reason in his soul and walks in the romantic gardens of his thoughts.

5. He who is neither elated nor depressed in any state of his life, who does not fall down under any circumstance, rests in transcendental bliss with prospects as bright as the cooling beams of the full moon.

6. Whose generosity and courage do not forsake him, even when he is troubled by his bitterest enemies, and who is observant of his duties to his superiors, such a man is not dejected in this world.

7. Who neither rejoices nor laments at his lot, who neither envies nor yearns after the fortune of another, but pursues his own business in quiet silence, is the man that is never downcast in this world.

8. Who, when asked, says what he is doing, but unasked remains like a dead block, and who is free from desire and disgust, he is never depressed in his heart and mind.

9. He speaks agreeably to every one and gently utters what he is required to say. He who understands the intentions of others is never put out.

10. He sees the right and wrong dealings of men and the acts of the depraved desires of their minds. Knowing all human affairs as clearly as looking in a mirror in his hand, he holds his peace with every one.

11. Standing on his firm footing (detachment) and knowing the frailty of worldly things, he smiles at the changing fortunes of nature with the cold frigidity of his heart.

12. Rama, such is the nature of the great souls who have subdued their minds and know the course of nature, as I have described to you.

13. I am unable to describe the fond beliefs of the minds of the ignorant populace who are plunged in the mud of their sensual enjoyments.

14. Women, devoid of understanding and graced with their personal charms, are the idols of these people who are fond of their golden forms without knowing them to be the flames of hellfire.

15. Wealth, the fond object of foolish people, is filled with every ill and evil desire. Its pleasure is poison and produces misery. Prosperity is full with danger.

16. Use of wealth to do meritorious deeds and various acts of piety is also filled with a great many evils, which I do not have the power to recount.

17. Therefore Rama, keep your sight on the full view of your spirit by retracting it from external phenomena and internal thoughts. Conduct yourself in this world as one liberated in his lifetime.

18. Being free from all your inner passions and feelings of affection. Having given up all your desires and expectations, continue performing your outward duties in this world.

19. Follow all your duties in life with a noble flexibility of your disposition, but preserve the philosophic renunciation of everything in your mind and conduct yourself accordingly in this world.

20. Think well on the fleeting states of all earthly things and fix your mind upon the lasting nature of your soul. Thus conduct yourself in this transitory stage with thoughts of eternity in your mind.

21. Rama, conduct yourself with inner detachment and lack of all desire, but show your outward desire for whatever is good and great. Be detached within yourself but full of effort in your external behavior.

22. O Rama, conduct yourself among men with a pretended activity in your outward appearance, but with real inaction in your mind. Show yourself as the doer of your deeds, but know in your mind that you are no actor at all.

23. O Rama, conduct yourself with full knowledge of this world as if you are acquainted with the natures of all beings. Go wherever you please with your intimate acquaintance of everything here.

24. Behave yourself with mankind with a pretended appearance of joy and grief, and of condolence and congratulation with others, and an assumed shape of activity and action among mankind.

25. Manage yourself, O Rama, with full possession of your mind, unaffected by pride or vanity, as if it were as clear as the spotless sky.

26. Go through your life unshackled by the bonds of desire. Join in all the outward acts of life with an unaltered evenness of mind under every circumstance.

27. Do not give room to thoughts of your bondage or liberation in this world, or of the embodiment or release of your soul here. Think the revolving worlds to be a magic scene and preserve perfect tranquility of your mind.

28. Know all this as an illusion. Only ignorance presents the false appearance of the world to sight. Yet we take them for true, as you see water in the burning sunbeams in a desert.

29. The unobstructed, uniform and all pervading soul can have no restriction or bondage. What is unrestricted in itself cannot have its release.

30. Lack of true knowledge presents the false view of the world before us. Knowledge of truth disperses the view, just as the knowledge of the rope dispels the false appearance of the snake in it.

31. You have known the true essence of your being by your right discernment. Thereby you are free from the sense of your personality and are set free as the subtle air.

32. You have known the truth and must give up your knowledge of untruth, together with the thoughts of your friends and relatives, all which are unreal in their natures.

33. Such being the case, you must consider your soul as something other than those, and that you have received your soul from the supreme source of all.

34. This soul bears no relation to your friends or possession, to your good or evil actions, or to anything whatsoever in this world.

35. When you are convinced that this very soul constitutes your essence, you have nothing to fear from the false appearance of the world which is no more than a misconception.

36. You can have no concern for the well-being or grief of a friend or foe who is not born so to you. For every one being born for himself, you have no cause for joy or grief for anybody.

37. If you know that you had been before (creation) and that you shall be so forever afterwards (to eternity), you are truly wise.

38. If you are troubled so much with concern for friends in this life, then why not mourn those who are dead and gone in your present and past lives?

39. If you were something other than what you are now, and if you have to be something different in the future, why then should you sorrow for what does not have its self-identity?

40. If you are to be born no more, after your past and present births, then you have no cause for sorrow, being extinct yourself in the Supreme Spirit.

41. Therefore there is no cause for sorrow in anything that occurs according to the course of nature. Instead be joyful pursuing the duties of your present life.

42. But do not indulge the excess of your joy or grief, but preserve your equanimity everywhere by knowing the Supreme Spirit pervades all.

43. Know yourself to be the form of infinite spirit stretching wide like the extended vacuum, and that you are the pure eternal light, the focus of full brightness.

44. Know your eternal and invisible soul is distinct from all worldly substances, a particle of that Universal Soul which dwells in and stretches through the hearts of all bodies, like the unseen thread running through the holes and connecting the links of a necklace.

45. You learn from the unlearned that the continuation of the world is caused by the reproduction of what has been before; not so from the learned (who know the world to be nothing). Know this and not that, and be happy in this life.

46. The course of the world and this life is ever tending to decay and disease. Ignorance represents them to be progressing to perfection. But you who are intelligent know their real natures (of frailty and unreality).

47. What else can be the nature of error but falsehood, and what may the state of sleep be except dream and drowsiness?

48. Who do you call your good friend, and who do you say is your great enemy? They all belong to the sole One and proceed alike from the Divine Will.

49. Everything is frail and unsteady and has its rise and fall from and into the Supreme Spirit. It is like the wave of the sea, rising and falling from and into the same water.

50. Worlds are rolling upward and going down again, like the axis and spokes of a wheel.

51. The celestials sometimes fall into hell, and the denizens of hell are sometimes raised to heaven. Animals of one kind are regenerated in another form, and the people of one continent and island are reborn on another.

52. The wealthy are reduced to poverty, and the poor are raised to wealth. All beings are seen to be rising and falling in a hundred ways.

53. Who has seen the wheel of fortune move slowly in one straight forward course forever, not tumbling in its ups and downs or turning to this side and that in its winding and uneven route? Fixedness of fortune is a fiction, like finding frost in fire.

54. Those who are called wealthy, with all fortune, position, friends and relations, are seen flying away in a few days of this transient life.

55. The thought of something as one’s own or another’s, and of this and that as mine, yours, his or someone else’s, are as false as the appearance of double suns and moons in the sky.

56. That this is a friend and this other a foe, and that this is myself and that one is another, are all only false ego conceptions of your mind and must be wiped away.

57. However, make it your pleasure to mix with the blinded populace and those who are lost to reason. Deal with them in your usual unaltered way.

58. In your journey through this world, conduct yourself in such a manner that you do not sink under the burden of your cares of it.

59. When you come to your reason, lay down your earthly cares and desires. Then shall you have that composure of mind that will exonerate you from all your duties and dealings in life.

60. It is the part of low-minded men to reckon one as a friend and another as no friend. Noble minded men do not observe such distinctions between man and man.

61. There is nothing where I am not and nothing which is not mine.

62. The intellects of the wise are as clear as the spacious sky. There is no rising or setting of their intellectual light which views everything as serenely as in the serenity of the atmosphere and as plainly as the plain surface of the earth.

63. Know Rama that all created beings are friendly and useful to you, and there is no person or thing in the world with which you are not related in some way.

64. It is false to look anyone as a friend or foe among the various orders of created beings in the universe. In reality, each may be of help to you, however unfriendly they may appear at first.

✅
Chapter 5.19 — On Family Relationships: the Story of Punya and Pavana

1. Vasishta continued:— I will now give you an example on the subject, the story of two brothers born of a sage on the banks of Ganges where it flows in three directions.

2. I have been talking about friends and enemies, so this wonderful tale from the past occurs to my mind. Hear this holy story.

3. On this continent of Asia, there a mountainous region surrounded by gardens and forests with the high Mount Mahendra rising above the rest.

4. It touched the sky with its lofty peaks, and its wishfulfilling kalpa tree spread its shadow over the hermits and kinnaras that took shelter beneath it.

5. The place resounded with the sound of sages chanting the Sama Veda hymns as they passed from its caves and peaks to the region of Indra.

6. Fleecy clouds constantly drizzled rainwater from its thousand peaks, washing plants and flowers below. They appeared like tufts of hair hanging down from heaven to earth.

7. The mountain echoed with the loud roars of impetuous eight-legged sharabhas, and with the thunder from the hollow mouths of its dark and deep clouds, like the world-destroying kalpa clouds.

8. The thundering noise of its cascades falling from precipice to precipice into its caverns would make the loud crashing of ocean waves blush by comparison.

9. There, on a tableland upon the craggy top of the mountain, flowed the sacred stream of the heavenly Ganges for the ablution and drink of the hermits.

10. There, on the banks of the triple path river Ganges, was a shining mountain, sparkling like bright gold and decorated with blossoming trees.

11. There lived a sage named Dirghatapa who was a personification of meditation and a man of enlightened understanding. He had a noble mind and was accustomed to the austerities of tapas.

12. This sage was blessed with two children as beautiful as the full moon. They were named Punya (Meritorious) and Pavana (Holy) and they were as intelligent as the sons of Brihaspati who are known as the two Kachas.

13. Dirghatapa lived with his wife and their two sons on the bank of the river amid a grove of fruit trees.

14. In course of time, the two children arrived at the age of discretion. Punya, the elder of the two, was superior to the other in all his merits.

15. The younger boy, Pavana, was half awakened in his intellect, like the half blown lotus at the dawn of the day. His lack of intelligence kept him from knowing the truth and the certainty of his faith.

16. In the course of all destroying time, the sage came to complete a hundred years, and age and infirmity reduced the strength of his tall body and long life.

17. His vitality decrepit, he bade farewell to his desires in this world, so frail and full of a hundred fearful accidents to human life.

18. At last the old devotee Dirghatapa left his mortal frame in a cave of that mountain, like a bird quitting its old nest forever, or a water-bearer laying down the burden from his shoulders.

19. His spirit fled like the fragrance of a flower to that empty space which is ever tranquil, free from attributes and thought, and of the nature of pure consciousness.

20. The sage’s wife, finding his lifeless body lying on the ground, fell down upon it and remained motionless like a lotus flower plucked from its stalk.

21. She also was long accustomed to the practice of yoga, according to her husband’s instruction, so she also left her un-decayed body, like a bee flits from an un-faded flower into empty air.

22. Unseen by men, her soul followed her husband’s as the light of the stars disappears in the sky at the dawn of the day.

23. Seeing the death of both parents, the elder son Punya was busily employed in performing their funeral services, but the younger Pavana was deeply absorbed in grief at their loss.

24. Being overwhelmed by the sorrow in his mind, he wandered about in the woods. Not having the firmness of his elder brother, he continued to wail in his mourning.

25. The magnanimous Punya performed the funeral ceremonies of his parents, then went in search of his brother mourning in the woods.

26. Punya said:— My boy, why is your soul overcast by the cloud of your grief? Why do you shed tears from your lotuseyes as profusely as rain showers, only to render you blind?

27. Know, my intelligent boy, that both your father and mother have gone to their ultimate blissful state in the Supreme Spirit, called the state of salvation or liberation.

28. That is the last resort of all living beings and that is the blessed state of all self subdued souls. Then why mourn for them who have returned and are reunited with their own proper nature?

29. You vainly indulge yourself in false and fruitless grief. You are mourning for what is not to be mourned at all.

30. Neither is she your mother nor he your father. You are not the only son of them who have had numerous children in their repeated births.

31. You also have had thousands of fathers and mothers in your bygone births, in as much as there are many streams of running waters in every forest.

32. You are not the only son of they who have had innumerable sons before you. Generations of men have passed away like the currents of a running stream.

33. Our parents also had numberless children in their past lives, and the branches of human generation are as numerous as the innumerable flowers and fruit on trees.

34. The numbers of our friends and relatives in our repeated lives in this world have been as great as the innumerable flowers and fruit of a large tree in all its many seasons.

35. If we are to lament over the loss of our parents and children who are dead and gone, then why not also lament those we have lost and left behind in all our past lives?

36. It is all only a delusion, O my fortunate boy, that is presented before us in this illusive world. In truth, O my conscious child, we have nobody who we may call to be our real friends or positive enemies in this world.

37. In a true sense, there is no loss of anybody or anything in the world. It is only that they appear to exist and disappear, like the appearance of water in the dry desert.

38. The royal dignity that you may see, adorned with a stately umbrella and flapping fans, is only a dream that lasts a few days.

39. Consider these phenomena in their true light and, my boy, you will find that none of these nor ourselves nor anyone of us is to last forever. Therefore shun your error of the passing world from your mind forever.

40. That these are dead and gone and these others exist before us are only errors of our minds and creatures of our false notions and fond desires. There is no reality in them.

41. Our notions and desires paint and present these various changes before our sight, like sunshine presenting water in a mirage. So our fancies, working in the field of our ignorance, produce the false conceptions that roll on like currents in the eventful ocean of the world, bringing the waves of favorable and unfavorable events to us.

✅
Chapter 5.20 — Punya Reasons with Pavana

1. Punya said:— Who is our father and who our mother? Who are our friends and relatives, except our notion of them as such? Friends and relatives are like dust raised by the gusts of our airy fancy.

2. The conceptions of friends and enemies and our sons and relatives are the products of our affection and hatred of them. These being the effects of our ignorance are soon made to disappear into airy nothing upon enlightenment of understanding.

3. The thought of one as a friend makes him a friend. Thinking one as an enemy makes him an enemy. The knowledge of a thing as honey and of another as poison is owing to our opinions of them.

4. There being only one Universal Soul equally pervading the whole, there can be no reason to conceive of one as a friend and another as an enemy.

5. My boy, of what you are? What makes your identity when your body is only a composition of bones, ribs, flesh and blood, and not yourself?

6. Being viewed in its true light, there is nothing as “myself” or “yourself.” A fallacy of our understanding makes me think of me as Punya and you as Pavana.

7. Who is your father and who is the son? Who is your mother and who your friend? One Supreme Self pervades all infinity. Who do you call the self and who the not self?

8. If you are a spiritual substance and have undergone many births, then you have had many friends and properties in your past lives. Why do you not think of them also?

9. You had many friends in flowery fields where you pastured in your former form of a stag. Why do you not think of those deer who were once your dear companions?

10. Why do you not lament for your lost swan companions in the pleasant pool of lotuses where you did dive and swim about in the form of a gander?

11. Why not lament your fellow trees in the forest where you once stood as a stately tree?

12. You had lion comrades on the rugged mountain crags. Why do you not lament them also?

13. You had many mates among the fish in clear lakes decked with lotuses. Why not lament your separation from them?

14. You were a monkey in the grey and green woods of the country of Dasarna. You were a prince in land of frost and a raven in the woods of Pundra.

15. You were an elephant in the land of Haihayas and an ass in that of Trigarta. You became a dog in the country of Salya and a bird in the woods of sarala trees.

16. You have been a pipal tree in the Vindhyan Mountains and a wood insect in a large oak tree. You were a cock on Mandara Mountain, then born as a brahmin in one of its caves.

17. You were a brahmin in Kosala and a partridge in Bengal. You were a horse in the snowy land and a beast in the sacred ground of Brahma at Pushkara.

18. You were an insect in the trunk of a palm tree, a gnat in a big tree, and a crane in the woods of Vindhya. Now you are my younger brother.

19. You have been an ant for six months and lain within the thin bark of a bhugpetera tree in a glen of the Himalayan hills. Now you are born as my younger brother.

20. You have been a centipede in a dunghill at a distant village where you lived for a year and half. Now you have become my younger brother.

21. Once you were the child of a Pulinda tribal woman and you lived on her breasts like the honey sucking bee on the core of a lotus. That same person is now my younger brother.

22. In this manner, my boy, you were born in many other shapes and had to wander all about Asia for numberless of years. And now are you my younger brother.

23. Thus I see the past states of your existence caused by the prior desires of your soul. I see all this by my clear discernment and all-viewing sight.

24. I also remember several births that I had to undergo in my state of ignorance, which I see clearly before my enlightened sight.

25. I was a parrot in the land of Trigarta and a frog at the beach of a river. I became a small bird in a forest and was then born in these woods.

26. Having been a Pulinda hunter in Vindhya, then a tree in Bengal, and afterwards a camel in the Vindhya range. I am at last born in this forest.

27. I, who have been a chataka cuckoo in the Himalayas and a prince in Paundra province, then a mighty tiger in the forests of Sahya Hill, am now become your elder brother.

28. He who had been a vulture for ten years, a shark for five months, and a lion for a full century is now your elder brother in this place.

29. I was a chakora wood in the village of Andhara, a ruler in the snowy regions, then a proud son of a priest named Sailacharya in a hilly region.

30. I remember the various customs and pursuits of different peoples on earth that I had to observe and follow in my repeated reincarnations among them.

31. In those different lives, I had many fathers and mothers and many more brothers and sisters, and also friends and relatives numbering hundreds and thousands.

32. For whom shall I lament and which shall I forget among this number? Shall I wail only for those I lose in this life? But these also are to be buried in oblivion like the rest, and such is the course of the world.

33. Numberless fathers have gone by, and unnumbered mothers also have passed away and died. Innumerable generations of men have perished and disappeared, like withered leaves falling off.

34. There are no bounds, my boy, to our pleasures and pains in this terrestrial world. Lay them all aside and let us remain unmindful of all existence.

35. Forsake your thoughts of false appearances, relinquish your firm conviction of your own ego, and look to that ultimate course which has led the learned to their final blessing.

36. For what is this commotion of people except a struggle to rise and fall? Therefore strive for neither, but live regardless of both like an indifferent sage.

37. Live free from your cares of existence and nonexistence. Then you shall be free from your fears of decay and death. Remember calmly your self alone. Do not be like the ignorant. Do not allow anything or any accident to move you from your self possession.

38. Know that you have no birth nor death, no fortune or sorrow of any kind, no father or mother, and no friend or foe anywhere. You are only your pure spirit. You have nothing of an unspiritual nature.

39. The world is a stage that presents many acts and scenes. Only those play their parts well who are excited neither by its passions and feelings.

40. Those who are indifferent in their views have their quietude amidst all the occurrences of life. Those who have known the true One remain only to witness the course of nature.

41. Those who know God do their acts without thinking themselves their actors, just as the lamps of night witness the objects around without their consciousness of them.

42. The wise witness the objects as they are reflected in the mirror of their minds, just as a mirror and gems receive the images of things.

43. Now my boy, rub out all your wishes and visible signs of memories from your mind and see the image of the serene spirit of God in your innermost soul. Learn to live like the great sages, with the sight of your spiritual light and by effacing all false impressions from your mind.

✅
Chapter 5.21 — Suppression of Desires by Suppression of Thoughts

1. Vasishta continued:— Pavana, having been lectured by Punya in this manner, became as enlightened in his intellect as the landscape at daybreak.

2. After, they continued living in that forest with the perfection of their spiritual knowledge. They wandered about in the woods to their hearts content.

3. After a long time, they both attained nirvana and rested in their disembodied state of nirvana, like a lamp without oil wasting away of itself.

4. Thus is the end of men’s great boasts of having large crowds of followers and numberless friends in their embodied states of lifetime. Alas, they carry nothing with them to their afterlife, nor do they leave anything behind which they can properly call theirs.

5. The best means of release from the many objects of our desires is the utter suppression of our desires, rather than fostering them.

6. Yearning after objects increases our desire, just as our thinking of something increases our thoughts about it. Fire that burns bright from its fuel soon dies out without it.

7. Now rise, O Rama, and remain aloft as in your aerial car by losing your worldly desires. Look from above with pity upon the miseries of groveling mortals.

8. This is the divine state known as the position of Brahma, which looks from above with unconcerned serenity upon all. By gaining this state, the ignorant are also freed from misery.

9. One walking with reason as his companion, and having good understanding for his consort, is not liable to fall into the dangerous traps that lie hidden in his way throughout life.

10. Being deprived of all properties and destitute of friends, one has no other help to lift him up in his adversity except his own patience and reliance upon God.

11. Let men elevate their minds with learning, dispassion, and the virtues of self-dignity and valor in order to rise above the difficulties of the world.

12. There is no greater good to be derived by any means than by the greatness of mind. It gives security which no wealth or earthly treasure can confer on men.

13. It is only men of weak and crazy minds who are made to swing to and fro, rising and sinking in the tempestuous ocean of the world.

14. The mind filled with knowledge and full with the light of truth finds the world filled with ambrosial water, and moves over it as easily as a man walking on dry shoes, or on a ground covered with leather.

15. Lack of desire fills the mind much more than the fulfillment of its desires. Dry up the channels of desires like autumn heat parches a pool.

16. Otherwise, desires empty the heart and lay open its gaps to be filled by air. The hearts of the greedy are as dry as the bed of the dead sea that was drained by Agasti (son of Agastya).

17. The spacious garden of the human heart flourishes with the fruit of humanity and greatness only as long as the restless ape of greed does not infest its fair trees.

18. The mind devoid of greed views the triple world with the twinkling of an eye. The comprehensive mind sees all space and time as infinitesimally small compared to its conception of the infinite Brahman with itself.

19. The coolness in the mind of a man who is not greedy is not found in the watery luminary of the moon, or in the icy caverns of the snow-capped Himalayas. Neither the coldness of plantain juice nor sandalwood paste is comparable with the cool headedness of one without desire.

20. The mind that does not desire shines more brightly than the full moon and more brilliantly than the bright face of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity.

21. The urchin of appetite darkens the mind like a cloud obscures the moon, and like black ink obliterates a fair picture.

22. The tree of desire stretches its branches far and wide on every side, darkening the mind with their gloomy shadows.

23. When the branching tree of desire is cut down at its roots, the plant of patience which was stunted under it shoots forth in a hundred branches.

24. When the unfading tree of patience takes the place of the uprooted desires, it produces the tree of paradise that yields the fruit of immortality.

25. O well-intentioned Rama, if you do not allow the sprouts of mental desires to germinate in your bosom, then you have nothing to fear in this world.

26. When you become sober-minded after moderating your heart’s desires, you will have the plant of liberation growing in its full luxuriance in your heart.

27. When the grasping owl of desire nestles in your mind, it is sure you will be invaded by every evil which the foreboding bird brings on its home.

28. Thinking is the power of the mind and thoughts dwell upon the objects of desire. Therefore abandon your thoughts and their objects and be happy with your thoughtlessness of everything.

29. Anything that depends on any faculty is lost upon inaction of that faculty. Therefore by suppression of your thoughts you can put down your desires and thereby have rest and peace of mind.

30. Be free minded, O Rama, by tearing off all your mind’s worldly ties. Become a great soul by suppressing your mean desires of earthly frailties. For who is not set free by being loosened from the chains of desire that bind his mind to this earth?

✅
Chapter 5.22 — The Story of Mahabali, the Benevolent King of Demons, and His Father Virochana

1. Vasishta said:— O Rama who is the bright moon of Raghu’s race, you should also follow the example of Bali in acquiring wisdom by self-discernment.

2. Rama said, “Venerable sage who is acquainted with all natures, it is by your favor that I have gained all that is worth gaining in my heart, and that is our final rest in the purest state of infinite bliss.

3. O sage, it is by your favor that my mind is freed from the great delusion of my many desires, just as the autumn sky is cleared of the rainy season clouds.

4. My soul is at rest and as cold as a stone. It is filled with the ambrosial nectar of divine knowledge and its holy light. I find myself resting in perfect bliss and as illumined as the queen of the stars rising in her full light in the evening.

5. O you dispeller of my doubts who resembles the clear autumn sky that clears the clouds of the rainy season, I am never full or satisfied with all your holy teachings.

6. For the advancement of my knowledge, tell me how Bali came to know transcendental truth. Explain it fully unto me, as holy saints reserve nothing from their humble students.

7. Vasishta replied:— O Rama, pay attention to the interesting story of Bali. Your attention to it will give you knowledge of the endless, everlasting and unvarying truth.

8. In a particular part in the womb below this earth there is a place called the infernal region.

9. It is peopled by milk-white goddesses born in the sweet water of the Milky Ocean. They are of the race of demons and they filled every gap and chasm of this place with their offspring.

10. In some places it was peopled by huge serpents with a hundred and thousand heads that hissed loudly with their parted and forked tongues and long fangs.

11. In other places there were mountainous bodies of demons walking in lofty strides, seemingly able to fling worlds like candy and devour them.

12. In another place there were big elephants holding up the earth on their raised trunks and supporting islands on their strong, long tusks.

13. In other places there were ghosts and devils making hideous shrieks and noise. There were groups of hellish bodies and putrid carcasses of ghostly shapes.

14. Concealed in the dark womb of the nether world depths were rich mines of gems and metals reaching to the seventh and lowest layer the infernal regions.

15. Another part of this place was sanctified by the dust of the lotus-like feet of the divine sage Kapila who was adored by gods and demigods who prostrated their exalted heads at his holy feet.

16. Another part of it was presided by the god Shiva in his form of a golden Shivalinga which was worshipped by lady demons with abundant offerings and merry revelries.

17. Bali, the son of Virochana, ruled in this place as the king of demons. He supported the burden of his kingdom on the pillars of the demons’ mighty arms.

18. He forced the gods, the supernatural vidyadharas, the serpents, and even the king of the gods to serve at his feet like his vassal retinue, and they were glad to serve him as their lord.

19. He was protected by Vishnu who contains the shining worlds in the treasure of his belly (brahmanda), and who is the preserver of all embodied beings, and the support of the sovereigns of the earth.

20. The name Bali struck terror in the heart of Airavata, the elephant that bears Indra, making his cheeks fade with fear, just as the sound of a peacock petrifies the insides of serpents.

21. The intense heat of his valor dried up the waters of the sevenfold oceans of the earth and turned them into seven dry beds, as under the fire of the universal conflagration.

22. But the smoke of his sacrificial fire was like a charm supplying people with water. It caused the rains to fall as profusely from above as the seas below contain waters from above.

23. His frown made the high heads of mountains stoop low to the ground and caused the lofty skies to lower with water, like the high branches of trees when overloaded with fruit.

24. This mighty monarch, after he had made an easy conquest of all the treasures and luxuries of the world, ruled over the demons for myriads of years.

25. Thus he lived for many ages that glided on like the course of a river rolling about in whirlpools. He witnessed the constant flux and reflux of generations of gods, demons and men in the three worlds.

6. At last, the king of the demons felt a distaste for all the enjoyments of life that he had tasted to excess. He also felt an uneasiness amidst the variety of his pleasures.

27. He retired to the farthest polar mount of Meru. There, sitting on a ledge of one of its shining heights, he reflected on the state of this world and the vanity of mortal life. Bali thinking to himself:—

28. How much longer shall I have to rule over this world with my untiring labor? How much more must I remain to roam about the triple world in my successive reincarnations?

29. Of what use is it to me to have this unrivaled sovereignty, which is a wonder in the three worlds. Of what good is it for me to enjoy this abundant luxury, so charming to the senses?

30. Of what permanent delight are all these pleasures to me? They are pleasant only for the present short time and within a moment they are sure to lose all their taste and my zest for them.

31. There is the same rotation of days and nights in unvarying succession, and the same acts repeated day after day. To continue in the same unvaried course of life for a great length of time is rather shameful and in no way pleasant to anyone.

32. The same embraces of our beloved and eating the same food day by day are amusements fit only for playful children. They are disgraceful and disgusting to great minds.

33. What man of taste will not be disgusted to taste the same sweets that he has tasted over and over again and which have become vapid and tasteless today? What sensible man can continue in the same course without feelings of shame and remorse?

34. The revolving days and nights bring the same revolution of duties. I imagine this constant repetition of the same acts is as ridiculous to the wise as chewing ground meat.

35. The actions of men are like those of waves that rise to fall, then rise again to subside in the waters.

36. Repetition of the same act is the occupation of mad men. A wise man would be laughed at if he kept repeating the same sound, like children conjugating a verb in all its moods, tenses and inflexions.

37. What action is there that once completed does not reoccur, but crowns its actor with his full success all at once?

38. Or if this bustle of the world were for a short duration only, yet what is the good that we can derive from engaging in this commotion?

39. The course of actions is as interminable as the ceaseless repetition of boyish sports. It is hollow harping on the same string. The more the string is played, the more it reverberates its hollow sound.

40. I see no such gain from any of our actions. I see nothing that being once gained may prevent our further efforts.

41. What can our actions bring beside the objects of sense gratification? They cannot bring about anything that is imperishable. Vasishta speaking:— Saying so, Bali fell into a trance (samadhi) of his profound meditation.

42. Then, coming to himself, he thought, “Ah! I remember now what I had heard from my father.” So thinking he stretched his eyebrows and gave expression to what he thought in his mind. Bali thinking to himself:—

43. I had asked my father Virochana, who was versed in spiritual knowledge and acquainted with the manners of the people of former and later ages,

44. “What is that ultimate state of being where all our pains and pleasures cease to exist, and after its attainment we have no more to wander about the world or pass through repeated reincarnations?

45. What is that final state towards which all our endeavors are directed, where our minds are freed from their error, and where, after all our wanderings and reincarnations, we obtain our full rest?

46. What is that best of gains which gives full satisfaction to the cravings of the soul? What is that glorious object whose sight transcends all other objects of vision?”

47. “All those various luxuries and superfluities of the world are in no way conducive to our real happiness because they mislead the mind to error and corrupt the souls of even the wisest of men.

48. Therefore, O father, show me that state of imperishable joy whereby I may attain everlasting repose and tranquility.”

49. I remember my father was sitting under the shade of the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree of paradise, whose flowers were fairer far than the bright moonbeams covered the ground all around. He spoke to me in his sweet mellifluous accents the following speech, for the purpose of removing my error.

✅
Chapter 5.23 — Virochana’s Story about the Ruler’s (Soul’s) Undefeatable Minister (the Mind)

1. Virochana (Bali’s father) said:— My son, somewhere in this universe there is an extensive country with a spacious sky whose ample space is able to hold thousands of worlds and many more spheres in it.

2. It is without the wide oceans and seas and high mountains that are here on this earth. It has no forest, river or lake or any holy pilgrimage place as you see here below.

3. There is no land or sky. There is no heavenly body in its sky, nor are there these suns and moons, or the rulers of the spheres, or their inhabitants of gods and demons.

4. There are no races of yakshas and rakshas, or those tribes of plants and trees, woods or grass, or the moving and immovable beings as you see upon the earth.

5. There is no water, no land, no fire and no air. There are no sides of the compass, nor regions you call above and below. There is no light or shadow, nor are there any peoples, or the gods Vishnu, Indra and Shiva, nor any of the lesser gods or demigods there.

6. There is a great sovereign of that place who is full of indefinable light. He is the creator of all and pervades all, and is all in all, but quite quiescent in all places and things.

7. He elected a minister who was clever in administration, brought about what was impossible to be done, and prevented all mishaps from coming to pass.

8. The minister neither ate nor drank, nor did he know anything besides minding and doing his master’s commands. In all other respects he was as inactive as a block of stone.

9. He conducted every business for his master who remained quite retired from all business, enjoying his rest and ease in his seclusion and leaving all his concerns to be managed by his minister.

10. Bali said, “Tell me sage, what place is that which is devoid of all population and free from all disease and difficulty? Who knows that place and how can anyone reach it?

11. Who is that ruler of sovereign power and who is that minister of so great might? Who, being quite apart from the world, is inseparably connected with it and is invincible by our almighty demonic power?

12. Tell me, O terror of the gods, this marvelous story of the great might of that minister in order to remove the cloud of doubt from my mind. Why he is unconquerable by us?”

13. Virochana replied:— Know my son, this mighty minister cannot be overcome even by a gigantic force of asura giants, even if they were aided by millions of demons fighting on their side.

14. He is invincible, my son, by the god of a thousand eyes (Indra), and also by the gods of riches (Kubera) and death (Yama) who conquer all. Neither immortals nor giants can ever overpower him by their might.

15. All weapons are defeated in their attempt to hurt him. Swords, mallets, spears, bolts, discs and cudgels hurled against him are broken to pieces as if striking against solid rock.

16. He is unapproachable by missiles, invulnerable to arms and weapons, and cannot be taken by the dexterity of warriors. It is by his resistless might that he has brought gods and demigods under his subjection.

17. It was he who defeated our forefathers, the mighty Hiranyakashipu and Hiranyaksha, before they were destroyed by the great Vishnu who felled the giant asuras like a storm breaks down sturdy and rock-like oaks.

18. The gods Narayana and others (who had been the instructors of men) were all defeated by him and confined in their cells in the wombs of their mothers (by a curse of sage Bhrigu who denounced them to become incarnate in human forms).

19. It is by his favor that Kama, the god with his flower bow and five arrows, has been enabled to subdue and overcome the three worlds and boasts of being their sole emperor.

20. The gods and demigods, the intelligent and the foolish, the deformed and the irascible are all moved by his influence.

21. The repeated wars between the gods and demons are the sports of this minister.

22. This minister is only manageable by its lord, the silent soul, or else it is as dull as an immovable rock or restless as the wind.

23. For the soul’s advancement in spiritual knowledge, it feels a desire to subdue its minister who otherwise is uncontrollable through lenient measures.

24. You are said to be valiant if you can conquer this greatest of the giants in the three worlds who has been worrying all people out of their breath.

25. After the rising of consciousness, the world appears as a flower-garden, like a lake of blooming lotuses at sunrise. The setting of consciousness covers the world in darkness like at sunset.

26. It is only by the aid of your intellect and by removal of your ignorance that you can subdue this minister and be famed for your wisdom.

27. By subduing this minister, you become the conqueror of the world, though you are no victor of it. By not subjugating this minister, you can have no subjection over the world, though you may be the master of it.

28. Therefore to effect your perfect consummation and to secure your everlasting happiness, be diligent to overcome this minister by your best and most ardent exertions.

29. It is easy for he who has been able to subdue this minister by his superior might to overcome the triple world and keep all its beings of gods and demons, the bodies of naagas and men, the races of yakshas and rakshas, and the tribes of serpents and kinnaras.

✅
Chapter 5.24 — Virochana on Mind Control: Hiring Teachers and Practicing Reason & Detachment; and Realization

1. Bali said, “Sage, tell me plainly. Who is this minister that is so mighty? How can such a mighty being be defeated and brought under subjection?”

2. Virochana replied:— Though that minister is invincible and stands above all in his great might, yet I will tell you way in which he may be overcome by you or anyone else.

3. Son, if you employ the proper means, it is easy to bring him under subjection. Otherwise, he will have the upper hand over you like a snake’s poison that is not timely repelled by efficacious mantras and incantations.

4. The ministerial mind, if it is brought up like a boy in the right way, leads a man to the presence of the sovereign soul, like royal service advancing the civil servant before his king.

5. The appearance of the master makes the minister disappear from sight, just as the disappearance of the minister brings one to the full view of his king.

6. As long as one does not approach the presence of his king, he cannot fail to serve the minister, and as long as he is employed in service of the minister, he cannot come in sight of his king.

7. The king being kept out of sight, the minister is seen to exercise his might, but the minister kept out of view, the king alone appears in full view.

8. Therefore must we begin with the practice of both these exercises at once, namely, approaching by degrees to the sight of the king, and gradually slighting the authority of the minister.

9. You must use courageous and diligent effort for both these practices in order to arrive at the state of your well being.

10. When you are successful in your practice, you are sure to reach that blissful country. Though you are a prince of the demons, nothing can prevent your entrance to it.

11. That is a place where the blessed live whose desires are at rest and whose doubts are dissipated, and whose hearts are filled with perpetual joy and calmness.

12. Now my son, hear me explain what that place is which I called a country. It is the seat of liberation and where there is an end of all our pains.

13. The king of that place is the soul of divine essence which transcends all other substances. It is the soul that appoints the mind as its wise minister.

14. The mind contains the ideal world in its bosom and exhibits its conscious form to the senses, just as a clay mold for a pot is a model of the pot, and as smoke has the pattern of a cloud in its essence and represents its shadowy forms in the sky.

15. Therefore, when the mind is conquered, everything is subdued and brought under subjection. But without adopting the proper means for its subjugation, the mind is invincible.

16. Bali asked, “Sage, how are we to quell the mind? Tell me plainly so that I may use that method to conquer this invincible barrier to bliss.”

17. Virochana answered:— The means for subduing the mind are the lack of reliance or confidence in all external and sensible things, and the absence of all desire for temporal possessions.

18. This is the best method to remove the great delusion of this world and to subdue the big elephant of the mind.

19. This method is both very easy and practicable on one hand, as it is arduous and impracticable on the other. A constant habit of thinking so makes it easy, but lacking the habit renders it difficult.

20. A gradual habit of renouncing our fondness for temporal objects shows itself in time in our resignation of the world, just as continuous watering the roots of plants makes them grow into large trees.

21. It is difficult to master anything, even by the most cunning, without proper cultivation over time, just as it is impossible to reap a harvest from an unsown and uncultivated field.

22. All embodied souls are destined to wander about the wilderness of the world as long as their hearts do not surrender their attachments to the objects of sense in nature.

23. Without the habit of apathy, it is impossible to have a distaste for sensible objects, just as it is impossible for an able bodied man to travel abroad by sitting motionless at home.

24. The firm determination to abandon the entanglements of life and a habitual aversion to pleasures and enjoyments make a man advance to purity, just as a plant grows in open air to its full height.

25. There is no good to be derived on earth without the exertion of one’s courage. Man must give up his pleasure and the vexation of his spirit in order to reap the fruit of his actions.

26. People speak of destiny as if it were a power, yet destiny has no shape or form. It means whatever comes to pass, and it is also called our lot or fate.

27. The word destiny is also used by men to describe an accident over which they have no control and to which they submit with passive obedience.

28. They use the word destiny to repress our joy and grief. But destiny, however fixed as fate, is overcome and set aside by means of courageous efforts.

29. As the delusion of a mirage is dispelled by the light of its true nature, so courageous effort upsets destiny by effecting whatever it wishes to bring about.

30. If we want to know what causes the good or bad results of our actions, we must learn that they turn as the mind wishes to mold them to being.

31. Whatever the mind desires and decrees, the same becomes destiny. There is nothing destined in the ordinary sense of the word.

32. It is the mind that does all this. The mind is the employer of destiny. The mind destines the destined acts of destiny.

33. Life, the living soul, is spread out in the hollow sphere of the world like air in vacuum. The psychic fluid circulates through all space.

34. Destiny is no reality, only a label invented to express the property of fixity, as the word rock is used to denote stability. Hence, as long as the mind retains its free will and activity, there is no fixed fate or destiny.

35. After the mind is set at rest, there remains the principle of the living soul (jiva). This is called the embodied spirit (purusha) which is the source of the energies of the body and mind.

36. Whatever the living soul intends to do by means of its spiritual force, the same comes to take place and nothing else.

37. Reliance on this spiritual power will uproot your dependence on bodily food. There is no hope for spiritual happiness until there is a distaste towards temporal enjoyments.

38. It is hard to attain the dignity of the all conquering self-sufficiency as long as one has the dastardly spirit of his earthly cravings.

39. As long as one is swinging in the cradle of worldly affairs, it is hard to find rest in the covered shelter of peaceful tranquility.

40. It is hard to get rid of your serpentine desires without continued practice of detachment and unconcern with worldly affairs.

41. Bali replied, “Tell me, O lord of demons, how does indifference to worldly enjoyments take deep root in the human heart and produce the fruit of longevity of the embodied spirit on earth?”

42. Virochana replied:— The sight of the inner spirit produces indifference to worldly things, just as the growth of vines produces grapes in autumn.

43. The sight of the inner spirit produces our internal unconcern with the world, just as the glance of the rising sun infuses its brightness in the cup of the lotus.

44. Therefore sharpen your intellect with the whetstone of right reasoning. See the Supreme Spirit by withdrawing your mind from worldly enjoyments.

45. There are two modes of intellectual enjoyment for those who are imperfect in their knowledge. One consists of book learning. The other is paying attention to the teacher’s lectures.

46. Those who are a little advanced in learning have the double advantage of their mental enjoyment, namely, reflecting on book learning and consultation with wise teachers on practical points.

47. Those who are accomplished in learning also have two parts to their duties, namely, the profession of teaching the scriptures to others and the practice of detachment for themselves.

48. The soul being purified, a man is fit for spiritual learning, as only clean linen is fit to receive every good color.

49. Like a boy on the path of learning, the mind is to be restrained by degrees by means of persuasion and good lectures, and then by teaching scriptures, and lastly by discussion of their doctrines.

50. After its perfection in learning and the dispersion of all difficulties and doubts, the mind shines like a piece of pure crystal and emits its brightness like cooling moonbeams.

51. Then, by its complete knowledge and clear understanding, it sees in both its God, the Spirit, and its body as the seat of its enjoyments on earth.

52. It constantly sees Spirit before it by means of its understanding and reason, which also help it relinquish its desire for worldly objects and enjoyments.

53. The sight of the Spirit eliminates desires, and the absence of desires brings the light of Spirit to sight. Therefore they are related to each other like wick and oil produce lamplight to dispel the night’s darkness.

54. After one loses his taste for worldly enjoyments, and after sight of the Supreme Spirit, the soul finds its perpetual rest in the essence of the Supreme Brahman.

55. The living souls who place their happiness in worldly objects can never taste true joy unless they rely completely on the Supreme Spirit.

56. It may be possible to derive some delight from acts of charity, sacrifices and holy pilgrimage, but none of these can give the everlasting rest of the Spirit.

57. No one feels a distaste for pleasure unless he examines its nature and effects in himself. Nothing can teach the way of seeing the soul unless the soul reflects on itself.

58. My boy, that which requires no effort to attain is of no good whatsoever. There is no true happiness without the surrender of earthly enjoyments.

59. The supreme joy of resting in the state of Brahman cannot be found anywhere in creation, whether in this mundane sphere or anywhere else beyond these spheres.

60. Therefore always expect that your soul will find its rest in the Divine Spirit. Rely on the exertion of your courage and leave aside your dependence on the eventualities of destiny.

61. A wise man detests all worldly enjoyments as if they are the strong bolts locking the door of bliss. It is the settled aversion to earthly pleasures that brings a man to his right reason.

62. As the increasing gloom of rain clouds is followed by the serenity of autumn skies, so clear reasoning comes after detestation of enjoyments that flee with the advance of reason.

63. As seas and the clouds of heaven help one another by lending each other their waters, so right reasoning and apathy to pleasures tend to produce each other by turns.

64. Disbelief in destiny and courageous efforts follow each another, as helping one another follows friendship.

65. You must grit your teeth to create a distaste even for those things you acquired legally according to the customs of your country.

66. First you must acquire your wealth through courageous effort, then get good and clever men in your company by means of your wealth.

67. Association with the wise, by exciting the reasoning power, produces an aversion to the sensual enjoyments of life which in turn produces an increase of knowledge and learning.

68. These lead gradually to the utter renunciation of worldly objects.

69. Then, by means of your reasoning, you attain that supreme state of perfect rest and holiness of your soul.

70. You will no longer fall into the mud of your misconceptions, but as a pure essence, you will no depend upon anything and you will become as the venerable Shiva.

71. Thus the steps to attain perfection are first, the acquisition of wealth according to the custom of the caste and country, then its employment in the service of wise and learned men. Next follows your abandonment of the world, which is succeeded by your attainment of Spiritual Knowledge by the cultivation of your reasoning powers.

✅
Chapter 5.25 — Bali Reflects on What His Father Virochana Had Taught

1. Bali thought to himself:— In this manner did my wise father advised me on this subject. Fortunately I remember this now for the enlightenment of my understanding.

2. It is now that I feel my aversion to the enjoyments of life. Now by my good luck I come to perceive the bliss of tranquility, like the clear and cooling ambrosial drink of heavenly bliss.

3. I am tired of all my possessions. I am weary of my continued accumulation of wealth to satisfy my endless desires. The life-long care of family has also grown tiresome to me.

4. But how charming is this peace and tranquility of my soul, which is quite even and all cool within itself. Here all our pleasures and pains meet upon the same level of equality and detachment.

5. I am quite unconcerned with anything and I am highly delighted with my indifference to all things. I am gladdened within myself as by the beams of the full moon. I feel the orb of the full moon rising within myself.

6. O, the trouble of acquiring riches! It is attended by the loud bustle of the world, agitation of the mind, burning of the heart, and fatigue of the body. It is accompanied by constant anxiety and affliction of the heart.

7. The limbs and flesh of the body are smashed by labor. All the physical exercises that once pleased me now seem like the long and lost labors of my former ignorance.

8. I have seen the sights of whatever was worth seeing. I have enjoyed enjoyments without limit. I have overcome all beings. But what is the good of all this?

9. There is only a reiteration of the very same things that I had there, here and elsewhere. Nowhere do I find anything new, anything that I had not seen or known before.

10. By resigning everything and its thought from my mind, I am now sitting here in full possession of myself. I find nothing whatever, not even any thought forms any component part of me.

11. The best things in heaven above, on the earth, and in this infernal region are reckoned to be women and wealth, but the cruel hand of time destroys or wastes all these sooner or later.

12. All this time I have acted foolishly by waging a continuous struggle with the gods for the sake of trifling worldly possessions.

13. What is this phantom of the world? It is only a creation of the brain. Great souls take no delight in it whatsoever. Then what is the harm of forsaking it forever?

14. Alas! I have spent such a large portion of my lifetime pursuing trifles in the ignorant giddiness of my mind.

15. My unsteady and fluctuating desires have led me to do many foolish acts in this world of odds and trifles, which now fill me with remorse and regret.

16. But it is vain to be overwhelmed by the sad thoughts of the past when I should use my courageous efforts to improve the present.

17. By reflecting on the eternal cause of the endless infinity of souls in the Soul one can attain his perfect joy, just as the gods got ambrosia from the Milky Ocean.

18. To expel my ignorance in these matters, I most consult my teacher Shukra concerning the ego, the soul, spiritual vision, and the Soul of souls.

19. I must refer these questions to the most venerable Shukra, who is always uncritical of his favorites. By his advice, I possibly shall settle in the highest perfection of seeing the Supreme Spirit in my spirit. Because the words of the wise are always filled with full meaning and are fruitful of the desired object.

✅
Chapter 5.26 — Shukra Teaches Bali that All Is Consciousness

1. Vasishta said:— So saying the mighty Bali closed his eyes and thought upon the lotus-eyed Shukra living in his heavenly abode.

2. Shukra, who was sitting intently meditating on the all-pervading spirit of God, came to know in his mind that he was remembered by his disciple Bali in his city.

3. Then Shukra, the son of Bhrigu whose soul was united with the all-pervading infinite and omniscient Spirit, descended with his heavenly body to the shining window of Bali.

4. Bali knew the body of his teacher by its brightness, just as the lotus flower perceives the rising sun by his dawning beams.

5. He honored his guru by adoring his feet on a seat decked with gems, and garlanding his guide with mandara flowers.

6. As Shukra sat and took his rest from the labor of his journey, his body was strewn with offerings of gems and his head covered with heaps of mandara flowers. Bali addressed Shukra,

7. “Venerable sage, your illustrious presence emboldens me to address you, as the morning sunbeams send all mankind to their daily work.

8. Sage, I have come to feel an aversion towards all kinds of worldly enjoyments that produce the delusion of our souls. I want to know the truth about it so I can dispel my ignorance of myself.

9. In short, sage, tell me what are these enjoyments good for? How long do they extend? What in reality am I, you, or these other people?”

10. Shukra answered:— I can not tell you in length about it as I soon have to return to my place in the sky. Hear me, O monarch of demons, briefly say this much for now.

11. There is truly only consciousness in reality. All other existence is truly consciousness and full of consciousness. The mind is consciousness, and I, you, and these people are collectively the same consciousness.

12. If you are wise, know you derive everything from this universal Consciousness. Otherwise, all gifts of fortune are as useless to you as offerings of butter on (ordinary) ashes.

13. The trap of the mind is to see consciousness as something thinkable, an object of thought. What confers liberation to the soul is the belief that consciousness is free and incomprehensible.

14. Knowing this for certain, look on everything in the same way. See the Spirit in your spirit in order to arrive at the state of Infinite Spirit.

15. I must immediately return to the sky where the Seven Rishis (saptarshis) are assembled and where I must continue performing my divine service.

16. I tell you, O king, that as long as you are in your body, you must not abstain from your duties, though your mind may be free from everything. Vasishta speaking:—

17. So saying, Shukra flew like a bee smeared with the powdery gold dust of the lotus to the golden roof of heaven. He passed through the watery path of waving clouds to where the revolving planets were ready to receive him.

✅
Chapter 5.27 — Bali’s Detachment

1. Vasishta said:— After Shukra, the son of Bhrigu and senior in the assembly of gods and demigods, made his departure, Bali, the best among the intelligent, reflected in this way. Bali thinking to himself:—

2. Truly the seer said that Consciousness composes the three worlds, that I am this Consciousness, and Consciousness fills all the quarters and shows itself in all our actions.

3. It is Consciousness which pervades the inside and outside of everything. There is nothing anywhere which is without Consciousness.

4. It is Consciousness that perceives sunbeams and moonlight, or else, had not there been this intellectual perception, there would be no distinction between them and darkness.

5. If there were no intellectual perception as this earth is land, then there would be no distinction between earth and water, nor would the word earth apply to land.

6. If consciousness could not understand vast space as the quarters of the sky, and the mountains as vast bulges on earth, then who could call the sides of space and mountains by those names?

7. If the world were not known as the world and the vacuum as emptiness, then who could distinguish them by the names that are in common use?

8. If this big body was not perceived by consciousness, how could we properly call the bodies of embodied beings by their names?

9. Consciousness resides in every organ of sense. It dwells in the body, mind and all its desires. Consciousness is in the internal and external parts of the body. Consciousness is all that is in existence and non-existence.

10. Consciousness forms my whole self by its feeling and knowing everything that I feel and know. Otherwise, without guidance of consciousness, I cannot perceive or conceive or do anything with my body.

11. Of what value is my body which is inert and unconscious as a block of wood? Consciousness makes my self and the intelligent spirit is the Universal Soul.

12. I am the intellect which resides in the sun and in the sky. I am the consciousness which dwells in the bodies of all beings. I am the same intellect which guides the gods and demigods, and dwells alike in bodies that move and don’t move.

13. Consciousness being the sole existence, it is in vain to suppose anything besides. There being nothing otherwise, there can be no difference between friend or foe to us.

14. What if I, Bali, strike off a person’s head from his body? I can not injure the soul which is everywhere and fills all space.

15. Feelings of love and hatred are properties of consciousness (Soul). These feelings are not separated from the soul by its separation from the body. Hence passions and feelings are inseparable from Consciousness or soul.

16. There is nothing to be thought of beside Consciousness. There is nothing to be obtained anywhere, except from the spacious womb of Consciousness which comprehends all the three worlds.

17. But passions and feelings, the mind and its powers, are mere attributes and not properties of Consciousness. Consciousness, being altogether a simple and pure essence, is free from every attribute.

18. Consciousness (chit) is the Ego, the omnipresent, the all pervasive and ever blissful soul. It is beyond all other attributes, and without duality or parts.

19. The term Consciousness (chit) as applied to the nameless power of reasoning (chiti) is only a verbal symbol signifying the omniscient Intelligence manifest in all places.

20. The Intellect (chit) is the Supreme Lord that is ever awake and sees all things without manifesting any appearance of himself. He is purely transparent and beyond all visible appearances.

21. All its attributes are lame, partial and imperfect. Even time, which has its phases and parts, is not a proper attribute for it. It is only a glimpse of its light that rises before us, but the eternal and infinite light is beyond our comprehension.

22. I must think of Consciousness only in the form of light within my own self. I must know it apart from all other phenomena and thoughts, quite aloof from all shades and colors.

23. I salute His identical form of Consciousness and the power of Reasoning, unaccompanied by the intelligible and employed in its proper sphere.

24. I salute that light of His in me, which represents everything to me, which is beyond all thought, and which is of the form of Consciousness going everywhere and filling all space.

25. It is the quiet consciousness of all beings, the real Intellect and the Great. Consciousness (chit) is as infinite as space, yet more minute than an atom and spreading in all alike.

26. I am not subject to the states of pleasure and pain. I am conscious of my self and of no other existence beside myself. I am Consciousness without the phenomena spread out before me.

27. No worldly entity or non-entity can work any change in me, for the possession of worldly objects would destroy me at once (by their separating my soul from God).

28. In my opinion, there can be nothing that is distinct from me when we know all things are produced from the same source.

29. What one gets or loses is no gain or loss to any, because the same Ego always abides in all and is the maker of all pervading everywhere.

30. Whether I am any thought object or not, it matters little for me to know because Consciousness is always a single thing, though its phenomena are endless.

31. As long as my soul is not united with the Divine Spirit, I am in sorrow. Vasishta speaking:— So reasoning, the most discerning Bali fell to a deep meditation.

32. He reflected on the half mantra of Om, a symbol of Infinite God. He sat quietly with all his desires and fancies lying dormant in him.

33. He sat undismayed by suppressing his thoughts and his thinking powers within him. He remained with his subdued desires, after having lost consciousness of his meditation, of being the person meditating, and of the object of meditation (i.e., nirvikalpa samadhi).

34. While Bali was entranced in this manner, at the window decorated with gems, he became illumined in his mind like a lamp flame unshaken by the wind. He remained long in his steady posture, like a statue carved of a stone.

35. He sat with his mind as clear as the autumn sky after having cast off all his desires and mental anxieties, filled within himself with his spiritual light.

✅
Chapter 5.28 — Bali’s Meditation, Shukra’s Advice to the Demons

1. Vasishta continued:— Bali’s attendant servant demons ascended hastily to his high crystal palace and stood at the door of his chamber.

2. There were his ministers Dimbha and others among them, and his generals Kumuda and others also. There were likewise the princes Sura and others in the number, and his champions Vritta and the rest.

3. There were Hayagriva and the other captains of his armies, with his friends Akraja and others. His associates Laduka and some more joined the retinue, with his servants Valluka and many more.

4. There were also the gods Kubera, Yama and Indra who paid him their tribute, and the yakshas, vidyadharas and naagas who rendered him their services.

5. There were the heavenly nymphs Rambha and Tilottama in the number, with the fanning and flapping women of his court. The deputies of different provinces and of hilly and maritime districts were also in attendance.

6. These, accompanied by the spiritual masters inhabiting different parts of the three worlds, all waited at that place to render their services to Bali.

7. They look at Bali reverently, their heads bending down with the crowns upon them, their arms hanging loosely with bracelets upon them.

8. The great asuras made their obeisance to him in due form, and were stupefied with sorrow and fear, struck with alternating wonder and joy at his sad condition.

9. The ministers kept pondering about what was the matter with him, and the demons sought their all knowing teacher Shukra to explaining the situation.

10. Quick as thought, they saw the shining figure of Shukra standing before them, as if they saw the phantom of their imagination appearing tangibly to view.

11. Shukra, being honored by the demons, took his seat on a sofa. In his silent meditation he saw the state of the mind of the king of demons.

12. He remained for a while to behold with delight how the mind of Bali was freed from errors by the exercise of its reasoning powers.

13. The illustrious teacher, whose personal brightness put to shame the brightness of the Milky Ocean, then said smiling to the listening throng of the demons.

14. “Know you demons, this Bali has become an adept in his spiritual knowledge. He has fixed his seat in holy light by the working of his intellect.

15. Leave him alone, you good demons. Let him remain in his reverie in this position, resting in himself and beholding the imperishable one within himself.

16. Lo! here the weary pilgrim has got his rest. His mind is freed from the errors of this false world. Do not disturb him with your talking, who is now as cold as ice.

17. He has received that light of knowledge amidst the gloom of ignorance, like a waking man beholds the full blaze of the sun when he awakes at dawn after the darkness is dispersed.”

18. “In time he will wake from his samadhi and rise like the germ of a seed sprouting from the seed vessel in its proper season.

19. You leaders of demons, go from here and perform the duties that your master has assigned to you, for it will take a thousand years for Bali to wake from his samadhi.”

20. After Shukra, the guru and guide of the demons, had spoken in this manner, they were filled with alternate joy and grief in their hearts, and cast aside their anxiety about him, as a tree casts its withered leaves away.

21. The asuras then left their King Bali resting in his palace and returned to their respective offices, as they had been employed heretofore.

22. It now became night and all men retired to their earthly abodes, the serpents entered into their holes, the stars appeared in the skies, and the gods reposed in their celestial domes. The rulers of all sides and mountainous tracts went to their own quarters, and the beasts of the forest and birds of the air fled and flew to their own dens and nests.

✅
Chapter 5.29 — Bali Returns to Ordinary Consciousness

1. Vasishta related:— After a thousand years passed in Bali’s unconsciousness, he was roused to consciousness by the gods beating heavenly drums above.

2. Bali being awake, his city (Mavalipuram) was renovated with fresh beauty, as the lotus-bed is revivified by the rising sun in the eastern horizon.

3. Bali, not seeing any demons before him, fell into reflecting upon the dreams he had seen in his state of samadhi.

4. He thought, “O how charming was that cooling bliss of spiritual delight in which my soul had been enraptured for a short time.

5. O how I long to resume that state of joy! These outward enjoyments which I have tasted to my fill cease to please me anymore.

6. Not even the delights of the full moon can compare to the waves of bliss I felt in my soul during my entranced state of unconsciousness.”

7. Bali was attempting to resume his state of samadhi when he was interrupted by attendant demons, as the moon is intercepted by clouds.

8. He glanced at them and was going to close his eyes in meditation after making his prostration on the ground, but was interrupted by their gigantic statures standing around him.

9. He then reflected, “The intellect being devoid of its option, there is nothing for me to desire. Only the mind that is fond of pleasures vainly pursues them.

10. Why should I desire my freedom when I am not confined or attached to anything here? It is childish to seek liberation when I am not bound to anything below.”

11. “I have no desire for liberation or fear of bondage since the disappearance of my ignorance. What need do I have of meditation? What good is meditation to me?

12. Meditation and lack of meditation are both mistakes of the mind. We must depend on our courage and hail all that comes to pass on us without rejoicing or shrinking.

13. I require neither thoughtfulness nor thoughtlessness, neither enjoyments nor their privation, but must remain unmoved and firm as one sane and sound.

14. I have no longing for the spiritual or craving for temporal things. I do not have to remain in a meditative mood or in the state of giddy worldliness.”

15. “I am not dead (because my soul is immortal) and I cannot be living (because the soul is not connected with life). I am neither a reality (as the body) nor an unreality (composed of spiritual essence only). I am not a material or aerial body (being neither this body nor vital air). I am not of this world or any other, but identical with the great Conscious Void.”

16. “When I am in this world, I will remain here quietly. When I am not here, I will abide calmly in the solace of my soul.

17. What shall I do with my meditation and what shall I do with all my royalty? Let anything come to pass as it may, I am nothing for this or that, nor is anything mine.

18. Though I have nothing to do (because I am not a free agent, nor master of my actions), yet I must do the duties belonging to my station in society.”

19. After reaching this determination in his mind, Bali, the wisest of the wise, looked upon the demons with detachment, like the sun looking upon lotuses.

20. With the nods and glances of his eyes, he received their homage, like passing winds bear the fragrances of flowers.

21. Then Bali, ceasing to think on the object of his meditation, approached them concerning their respective duties under him.

22. He honored the gods and his gurus with due respect and saluted his friends and officers with his best regards.

23. He honored all his servants and suitors with his largesse, and he pleased attendant maidens with various persons.

24. So he continued to prosper in every department of his government, until he made up his mind to perform a great sacrifice.

25. He satisfied all beings with his great gifts and gratified the great gods and sages with due honor and veneration. Then he commenced the ceremony of the sacrifice under the guidance of Shukra and the chief gurus and priests.

26. Then Vishnu, the lord of Lakshmi, came to know that Bali had no desire of earthly reward. Vishnu appeared at the sacrifice to crown Bali with the success of his undertaking and confer upon him his desired blessing.

27. He cunningly persuaded Bali to make a gift of the world to Indra his elder brother, who was insatiably fond of all kinds of enjoyment.

28. Having used his artifices to deceive Bali dispossess him of the three worlds, Vishnu shut him in the nether world, just as they confine a monkey in a cave under the ground.

29. Thus Bali continues to remain in his confinement to this day with his mind fixed in meditation for the purpose of again attaining the rule of Indra in a future state of life.

30. The living liberated Bali, being thus restrained in the infernal cave, looks upon his former prosperity and his present adversity in the same light.

31. There is no rising or setting of his consciousness in the states of his pleasure or pain. His intelligence remains one and the same in its full brightness, like the disc of the sun in a painting.

32. He saw the repeated ebb and flow of worldly enjoyments and settled his mind in utter indifference to them.

33. He overcame multitudes of changing fortunes for multitudes of years in all his reincarnations in the three worlds, and at last found his rest in utter disregard of all mortal things.

34. He felt thousands of comforts and disquiets and hundreds of pleasures and privations of life. After his long experience of these, he found his rest in his perfect quiescence.

35. Bali, having forsaken his desire of enjoyments, enjoyed the fullness of his mind in the absence of his desires. He rejoiced in the self-sufficiency of his soul and in the loneliness of his underground cave.

36. After a course of many years, Bali regained his sovereignty of the world and governed it for a long time to his heart’s content.

37. But he was neither elated by his elevation to the dignity of Indra, the lord of gods, nor was he depressed at this subjugation to prosperity.

38. He was one and the same person in every state of his life, and enjoyed the equanimity of his soul, resembling the serenity of the ethereal sphere.

39. O Rama, I have related to you the whole story of Bali’s attainment of true wisdom. I advise you now to imitate his example for your elevation to the same state of perfection.

40. Learn, as Bali did by his own discernment, to think of yourself as the immortal and everlasting soul. Try to reach the state of your oneness with the Supreme Unity by your courageous self-control and self-resignation.

41. Bali, the lord of demons, exercised full authority over the three worlds for more than a millennium, but at last he came to feel an utter distaste for all the enjoyments of life.

42. Therefore, O victorious Rama, forego the enjoyments of life, which are sure to be attended with a distaste and nausea at the end. Take yourself to that state of true joy which never grows tasteless.

43. These visible sights, O Rama, are as numerous as they are temptations to the soul. They appear as even and charming as a distant mountain, but proves to be rough and rugged as you approach it.

44. Restrain your mind in the cavity of your heart from its pursuit of perishable objects of enjoyment, either in this life or in the next, which are so alluring to all men of ordinary sense.

45. Know yourself to be identical with consciousness which shines like the sun throughout the universe and illuminates every object in nature without distinction or partiality.

46. Know yourself, O mighty Rama, to be infinite spirit and the transcendent soul of all bodies that has manifested itself in manifold forms that are like the bodies of the internal intellect.

47. Know your soul to be like a thread passing through and interwoven with everything in existence, like a string connecting all the links of creation, like so many gems of a necklace or the beads of a rosary.

48. Know yourself as the unborn and embodied soul of Viraj, the resplendent Brahma, which is never born and never dies. Never fall into the mistake of thinking pure consciousness is subject to birth or death.

49. Know your desires are the causes of your birth, life, death and diseases. Therefore shun your desire of enjoyments and enjoy all things in the manner of the all witnessing consciousness.

50. If you remain in the everlasting light of the sun of your consciousness, you will come to find the phenomenal world to be only a phantom of your dream.

51. Never regret or sorrow for anything. Do not think of pleasures or pains which do not affect your soul. You are pure consciousness and the all pervading soul which manifests itself in everything.

52. Know that what is desirable are your evils and the undesirable (abstinence) is for your good. Therefore shun the former by your continued practice of the latter.

53. By forsaking your ideas of desirable and undesirable, you will develop a habit of mentally ceasing desires. When the habit takes a deep root in your heart, you no longer have to be reborn in the world.

54. Retract your mind from everything to which it runs like a boy after vain bright trinkets. Settle your mind in yourself for your own good.

55. Thus by using your best efforts to restrain your mind, and also by your habit of self-control, you will subdue the rampant elephant of your mind and ultimately reach your highest bliss.

56. Do not become like ignorant fools who believe their bodies are their chief good and who are infatuated by false reasoning and infidelity, deluded by impostors to gratify their sensual desires.

57. What man is more ignorant in this world and more subject to its evils than one who derives his spiritual knowledge from one who smatters in theology and relies on the dogmas of pretenders and false philosophers?

58. Dispel the cloud of false reasoning from the atmosphere of your mind by the hurricane of right reasoning which drives all darkness before it.

59. You can not be said to have right reasoning until you come to the light and sight of the soul, both by your own efforts and by grace of the Supreme Spirit.

60. Neither the Vedas nor Vedanta, nor the science of logic or any other scripture can give you any light of the soul unless it appears of itself within you.

61. It is by cultivating yourself, aided by my instruction and divine grace, that you have gained your perfect knowledge and appear to rest yourself in the Supreme Spirit.

62. There are three ways in which you come to spiritual light. First, a lack of knowledge of duality, then the brightness of your intellectual light (the soul) by the grace of God, and third the wide extent of your knowledge derived from my instructions.

63. You are now free of your mental maladies. You have become sound by abandonment of your desires, by removal of your doubts and errors, and by forsaking the mist of your fondness for external objects.

64. O Rama, as you get rid of the errors of your understanding, so you advance by degrees in gaining your knowledge, in cherishing your resignation, in destroying your defects, in imbibing the bliss of ecstasy, in wandering with exultation, and in elevating your soul to the sixth sphere. But all this is not enough unless you attain Brahma itself.

✅
Chapter 5.30 — The Story of Prahlada: Narasimha Destroys Hiranyakashipu and the Age of Demons

1. Vasishta continued:— Rama, listen to the instructive story of Prahlada, the lord of demons who became a spiritual adept by his own intuition.

2. There was a mighty demon in the infernal regions named Hiranykashipu who was as valiant as Vishnu himself and had expelled the gods and demigods from their abodes.

3. He mastered all the treasures of the world and wrested its possession from the hands of Vishnu, just like a swan encroaching upon a bee on the large leaves of a lotus.

4. Hiranykashipu defeated the deva gods and the asura demons and ruled over the whole earth, like an elephant masters a lotus-bed by chasing the swans away.

5. The lord of the asuras, having usurped the monarchy of the three worlds, had many sons in course of time, as spring brings forth the shoots of trees.

6. These children grew up to manhood in time, with the display of their courageous prowess. Like so many brilliant suns, they stretched their thousand rays on all sides of the earth and skies.

7. The eldest, Prahlada, became the regent, just as Vishnu’s Kaustubha diamond is pre-eminent among all precious gems.

8. Hiranykashipu delighted exceedingly in his fortunate son Prahlada like the year rejoices in its flowering time of spring.

9. Supported by his son on one hand and possessed of his force and treasures on the other, Hiranykashipu became puffed up with his pride, like a swollen elephant emitting foam from his triangular mouth.

10. Shining with his luster and elated by his pride, he dried and drew up the moisture of the earth by his unbearable taxation, like the all-destroying suns of universal dissolution parch the world by their rays.

11. His conduct annoyed the gods, the sun and the moon, just as the behavior of a haughty boy becomes unbearable to his fellow comrades.

12. They all applied to Brahma to destroy the arch demon, because the repeated misbehaviors of the wicked are unbearable to the good and great.

13. It was then that lion-like Narasimha clattered his nails resembling the tusks of an elephant and thundered loudly like the rumbling noise of the regent elephants of all the quarters of heaven fills concave world on its last doomsday.

14. Narasimha’s tusklike nails and teeth glittered like lightning flashing in the sky. The radiance of his earrings filled the hollow sphere of heaven with curling flames of living fire.

15. The sides and caves of mountains presented a fearful aspect. Huge trees were shaken by a tremendous tempest that rent the skies and tore the roof of heaven.

16. He emitted gusts of wind from his mouth and entrails which drove the mountains before them. His eyeballs flashed with the living fire of his rage which was about to consume the world.

17. His shining mane shook with the glare of sunbeams. The pores of the hairs on his body emitted sparks of fire like the craters of a volcano.

18. Mountains everywhere shook with a tremendous shaking, and the whole body of Narasimha shot forth a variety of arms in every direction.

19. Vishnu in his Narasimha form of half man and half lion killed the gigantic demon by goring him with his tusks, like an elephant goring the body of a horse with a grating sound.

20. The population of the demon hell city was burnt down by gushing fire from his eyeballs which burned like the all devouring conflagration of the last doomsday.

21. The breath of his nostrils drove everything before it like a hurricane. The clapping of his arms sounded like great waves crashing on hollow shores.

22. Demons fled before him like moths from burning fire. They became extinct as extinguished lamps at the blazing light of the day.

23. After the burning of the demon hell city and the expulsion of the demons, the infernal regions presented a void waste like at the last devastation of the world.

24. After the lord Narasimha had expelled the demonic race at the end of the demon age, he disappeared from view with the grateful greetings of the council of gods.

25. The surviving sons of the demon, who had fled from the burning of their city, were afterwards led back to it by Prahlada, just as migrating fowls are made to return to the dry lake bed by a rain shower.

26. There they mourned the dead bodies of demons, lamented at the loss of their possessions, and performed funeral ceremonies for their departed friends and relatives.

27. After burning the dead bodies of their friends, they invited the few demons who had fled to safety to return to their deserted homes.

28. The demons and their leaders continued to mourn with gloomy minds and disfigured bodies, like lotuses beaten down by the frost. They made no effort or attempt, like figures in a painting. They had no hope of resuscitation, like a tree struck by lightning.

✅
Chapter 5.31 — Prahlada Bemoans the Demon’s Loss and Praises Vishnu

1. Vasishta continued:— Prahlada remained unhappy in his underground region, brooding over sad thoughts of the destruction of the Danava demons and their homes. Prahlada thinking to himself:—

2. Ah, what is to become of us when this Vishnu is bent to destroy the best amongst us, like a monkey pulling out shoots and sprouts of trees?

3. Nowhere on earth or in the infernal regions do I see any Daitya demons left to enjoy their properties. They are all stunted in their growth like lotuses growing on mountain tops.

4. They rise only to fall like the loud beating of a drum. Their rising and falling are like the waves of the sea.

5. Sorrow to us who are so miserable in both our inner and outer circumstances. Happy are our enemies of light, the gods who have overcome us. O the terrors of darkness!

6. Our friends of the dark infernal regions are all darkened in their souls with loss of courage. Their fortune is as transitory as the expansion of the lotus leaf by day and its contraction at night.

7. We see the gods, who were mean servants at the feet of our father, have usurped his kingdom in the way timid deer usurp the sovereignty of the lion in the forest.

8. We find our friends all disfigured and effortless, sitting melancholy and dejected in their hopelessness like lotuses with their withered leaves and petals.

9. We see the houses of our gigantic demons filled with clouds of dust and frost, blown by gusts of wind by day and night, and resembling the fumes of fire which burnt them down.

10. The inner apartments are laid open without doors or enclosures, overgrown with the sprouts of barley shooting out as blades of sapphires from underneath the ground.

11. Ah, there is nothing impossible to irresistible fate that has so reduced the mighty demons who used to pluck flowers from the mountain tops of Meru like big elephants. Now we have come to this sad condition of the wandering gods of the past.

12. Our ladies cringe like frightened deer at the rustling of the breeze amidst the leaves of trees. They fear enemy arrows whistling and hurling through the open air.

13. O, the shining guluncha blossoms that decorated our women’s ears are now shorn, torn and left desolate by the hands of Vishnu, like the lonesome plains of the desert.

14. They have robbed us of the all-producing wish-fulfilling kalpa trees and planted them in their Nandana pleasure gardens now teeming with their shooting gems and green leaflets in the ethereal sphere.

15. The eyes of haughty demons that formerly looked with pity on the faces of their captured gods are now indignantly looked upon by victorious gods who have made captives of them.

16. It is known that the fluids pouring from the mouths of spouting elephants of heaven on the tops of the mountains fall down in the form of cascades and gives rise to rivers on earth.

17. But the foam flowing from the faces of our elephant-like giants is as dry as dust at the sights of the gods, just like a channel is sucked up in the dry and dreary desert of sand.

18. Ah, where have those Daitya demons fled whose bodies were once as big as the peaks of Mount Meru and were fanned by fragrant breezes breathing with the scented dust of mandara flowers?

19. The beautiful ladies of the gods and gandharvas, once kept as captives in the inner apartments of demons, are now snatched from us and placed on Meru as if they were transplanted to grow there as heavenly plants.

20. O how painful is it to think that the fading graces of our captured girls are now mocked by heavenly apsara nymphs in their disdainful dance over their defeat and disgrace.

21. O it is painful to think that the lady attendants who fanned my father are now waiting upon the thousand-eyed Indra in their servile toil.

22. O, the greatest of our grief is our sad and distressing fall at the hands of a single Vishnu who has reduced us to this state of helpless impotency.

23. The gods resting under the thick and cooling shades of trees are as cool as the rocks of the icy Himalayas. They do not burn with rage or complain in grief like we.

24. The gods protected by the power of Vishnu are raised to the height of prosperity. They mock and restrain us in these caves, as apes on trees do dogs below.

25. The faces of our fairies, though decked with ornaments, are now bedewed with drops of their tears, like lotus leaves with the cold dew of night.

26. The old stage of this aged world, which was defeated and about to be pulled down by our might, is now supported upon the blue arms of Vishnu, like the roof of heaven standing upon the blue arches of the blue sky.

27. Vishnu has become the support of the celestial host when it was about to be hurled into the depth of hell. Vishnu supports in the same manner as the great tortoise supported Mount Mandara as it churned and sank in the Milky Ocean.

28. Our great father and these mighty demons under him have been laid down to dust like the lofty hills that were leveled to the ground by the blasts of heaven at the end of the kalpa age.

29. The leader of the celestial forces, the peerless destroyer of Vishnu, is able to destroy all and everything by the fire in his hands.

30. His elder brother Indra, by the force of the thunderbolts held by his mightier arms, baffles battle-axes in the hands of the mighty demons, like big male monkeys killing their male offspring.

31. The lightning weapons of the lotus-eyed Vishnu are invincible, and there is no weapon which can foil the force of Indra’s thunder.

32. This Vishnu is invincible in warfare. He defeated our forefathers in previous battles in which they uprooted and flung great rocks at him and waged many dreadful campaigns.

33. He who stood victorious in those long, dreadful and destructive wars of times past cannot be expected to be afraid of us.

34. I have thought of only one way to oppose the rage of Vishnu, besides which I find no other way for our safety.

35. Therefore with all possible speed, let us go to him for help, with full contriteness of our souls and understanding, because that god is the true refuge of the pious and the only resort of everybody.

36. There is no one greater than he in all the three worlds. I have come to know that only Vishnu is the cause of the creation, preservation and destruction or reproduction of the world.

37. From this moment therefore, I will think only of that unborn Narayana for ever more. I must rely on that Narayana, who is present in all places and is full in myself and filling all space.

38. Worship of Narayana forms my faith and profession for my success in all undertakings. May this faith of mine ever abide in my heart, as the wind has its place in the midst of empty air.

39. Vishnu is to be known to fill all sides of space and vacuum, and every part of this earth, and all these worlds. My ego is the immeasurable Spirit of Vishnu. My inborn soul is full of Vishnu.

40. He who is not full with Vishnu in himself does not benefit by his adoration of Vishnu, but he who worships Vishnu by thinking himself as such finds himself assimilated with his god and becomes one with him.

41. He who knows Vishnu to be the same with Prahlada, and not different from him, finds Vishnu to fill his inward soul with his spirit.

42. Vishnu’s garuda eagle flies through the infinite space of the sky as the presence of Vishnu fills all infinity. His golden light of his body is the seat of my Vishnu also.

43. The claws of this bird serve as Vishnu’s weapons. The flash of his nails is the flash of Vishnu’s weapons.

44. Vishnu has four arms wearing armlets representing the four shining heights of Mount Mandara with which Vishnu churned the Milky Ocean.

45. This moonlike figure with the flapper fan in her hand and rising from the depth of the Milky Ocean is the goddess of prosperity (Lakshmi), the consort of Vishnu.

46. She is Vishnu’s brilliant glory which he easily acquires. She is ever attendant on his person with undiminished luster. She illuminates the three worlds like a radiant medicinal tree (mahaushadhi).

47. Vishnu’s other companion is called Illusion ( Maya) which is ever busy in the creation of worlds upon worlds, and in stretching a magical enchantment all about them.

48. The goddess Victory (Jaya) is an easily earned attendant for Vishnu. She shines as a shoot of the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree, extending to the three worlds as an all-pervading plant.

49. These two warming and cooling luminaries of the sun and moon serve to manifest all the worlds to view. They are the two eyes situated on the forehead of my Vishnu.

50. This azure sky is the blue color of the body of my Vishnu, which is as dark as a mass of watery cloud and darkens the sphere of heaven with its sky blue radiance. The meaning of the word Vishnu was afterward changed to the residing divinity in all things from the root vish (white).

51. Here is the whitish conch in the hand of my Vishnu which blows its fivefold notes (panchajanya) and is as bright as the vacuum, the receptacle of sound, and as white as the Milky Ocean of heavens.

52. Here I see the lotus in the hand of Vishnu, representing the lotus of his navel, the seat of Brahma, who rose from and sat upon it like a bee to form his hive of the world.

53. I see the club of my Vishnu’s hand, studded with gems, in the lofty peak of Mount Sumeru beset by its shining stones and hurling down demons from its precipice.

54. I see here the discus of my Vishnu in the rising luminary of the sun which fills all sides of the infinite space with the radiant beams that emanate from it.

55. I see there in the flaming fire the flashing sword of Vishnu, which like an axe has cut down the gigantic bodies of daitya demons like trees, giving great joy to the gods.

56. I also see Vishnu’s great bow in the variegated rainbow of Indra, and also the quiver of his arrows in the pushkara and avarta clouds pouring down their rains from above like piercing arrows.

57. Vishnu’s big belly is the vast emptiness of the sky which contains all worlds and all past, present, and future creations in its spacious womb.

58. I see the earth as the footstool of Brahma and the high sky as the canopy on his head. His body is the stupendous fabric of the universe and his sides are the sides of the compass.

59. I see the great Vishnu visibly manifest shining under the blue dome of heaven, mounted on his mountain-like eagle and holding his conch shell, discus, cudgel and the lotus in his hands.

60. I see wicked and evil minded demons flying from me like straw blown and carried away by the winds.

61. This dark deity with his blue sapphire color and yellow covering, holding the club and mounted on the garuda eagle and accompanied by Lakshmi, is nothing other than the identical Imperishable One.

62. What adverse spirit can dare approach this all-devouring flame without being burnt to death, like a flight of moths falling on a great fire?

63. None of these hosts of gods or demigods that I see before me is able to withstand the irresistible course of the determination of Vishnu. All attempts to oppose it will be as vain as for our weak-sighted eyes to shut out the light of the sun.

64. I know the gods Brahma, Indra, Shiva and Agni (the god of fire) praise Vishnu as their Lord in endless verses and many tongues.

65. This Lord is ever resplendent with his dignity and is invincible in his might. He is the Lord beyond all doubt, dispute and duality, and is joined with transcendent majesty.

66. I bow down to that person who stands like a firm rock amidst the forest of the world and is a defense from all fears and dangers. Vishnu is a stupendous body having all the worlds situated in its womb and forming the essence and substance of every distinct object of vision.

✅
Chapter 5.32 — Prahlada and the Daitya Demons Worship Vishnu; the Gods Complain

1. Vasishta continued:— After Prahlada had meditated on Vishnu in this manner, he made an image of him as Narayana and thought about worshipping that enemy of the asura demon race.

2. To make the figure a form of Vishnu himself, he invoked the spirit of Vishnu to settle in this his outer figure also.

3. It was seated on the back of the heavenly bird garuda, arrayed with the quadruple attributes (will, intelligence, action and mercy) and armed with the four arms holding the conch shell, discus, club and lotus.

4. His two eyeballs flashed like the orbs of the sun and moon in their outstretched sockets. His palms were as red as lotuses, and his bow Saranga and the sword Nandaka hung on his two shoulders and sides.

5. “I will worship this image,” thought Prahlada, “with all my adherents and dependants, with an abundance of grateful offerings agreeable to my taste.

6. I will worship this great god always with all kinds of offering of precious gems and jewels, and all sorts of articles for bodily use and enjoyment.”

7. Having thus made up his mind, Prahlada collected an abundance of various things and made offerings of them in his mind for his worship of Vishnu, the lord of Lakshmi.

8. He offered rich gems and jewels in plates of many kinds, and presented sandal pastes in several pots. He burned incense and lit lamps in rows, and placed many valuables and ornaments in sacred vessels.

9. He presented wreaths of mandara flowers and chains of lotuses made of gold, together with garlands of leaves and flowers of kalpa plants, and bouquets and nosegays studded with gems and pearls.

10. He hung hangings of leaves and leaflets of heavenly trees, and chaplets and trimmings of various kinds of flowers, as vakas and kundas, kinkiratas and white, blue and red lotuses.

11. There were wreaths of kahlara, kunda, kasa and kinsuka flowers, and clusters of asoka, madana, bela and kanikara blossoms likewise.

12. There were small flowers of the kadamba, vakala, nimba, sindhuvara and yuthikas also, and likewise heaps of paribhadra, gugguli and venduka flowers.

13. There were strings of priyangu, patala, pata and patala flowers, and also blossoms of amra, amrataka and gavyas, and the bulbs of haritaki and vibhitaki myrabolans.

14. Flowers of sala and tamara trees were strung together with their leaves, and tender buds of sahakaras were fastened together with their starch-like pistils.

15. There were ketakas and kamala flowers and the shoots of ela cardamums together with everything beautiful to sight and the tender of one’s soul likewise.

16. Thus did Prahlada worship his lord Vishnu in the inner apartment of his house, with offerings of all the richest things in the world, joined with true faith and earnestness of his mind and spirit.

17. Thus did the monarch of Danava demons worship his lord Vishnu externally in his holy temple, furnished with all kind of valuable things on earth.

18. The Danava sovereign became the more and more gratified in his spirit in proportion as he adored his god with more and more of his valuable outer offerings.

19. Henceforward Prahlada continued to worship his lord god day after day with earnestness of his soul and the same sort of rich offerings everyday.

20. It came to pass that the Daityas, after the example of their king, one and all turned Vaishnavas and worshipped Vishnu in their city and temples without intermission.

21. This information reached heaven and to the abode of the gods, that the Daityas having renounced their hatred to Vishnu, had completely turned into his faithful believers and worshippers.

22. The gods were all astonished to learn that the Daityas had accepted the Vaishnava faith. Even Indra and the thirty-three Rudras about him marveled how the Daityas came to be so.

23. The astonished gods left their celestial abode to go to the warlike Vishnu resting on his serpent couch in the Milky Ocean.

24. They related to him the whole story of the Daitya demons. They asked what was the cause of their conversion, and they were very much astonished.

25. The gods said, “How is it Lord that the demons who had always been adverse to you have now come to embrace your faith? It appears to us as an act of magic or hypocrisy.

26. How different is their present transformation to the Vaishnava faith, which is acquired only after many reincarnations of the soul, from their former spirit of rebellion in which they broke down the rocks and mountains.”

27. “The rumor that a clown has become a learned man is as amusing as it is doubtful, just as the news of blossoms budding out of season.

28. Nothing is graceful without its proper place. A rich jewel loses its value when it set with worthless pebbles.

29. All animals have their dispositions conforming to their own natures. Then how can the pure faith of Vishnu agree with the dog-like natures of the Daityas?

30. Our bodies pierced by thorns and needles do not grieve us as much as seeing things of opposite natures set in conjunction with one another.

31. Whatever is naturally adapted to its time and place, the same seems to suit it then and there. Therefore the lotus has its grace in water and not upon the land.”

32. “Where are the vile Daityas, prone to their misdeeds at all times? How far can the Vaishnava faith reach for those who can never appreciate its merit?

33. O lord, as we are never glad to learn of a lotus bed left to parch in the desert soil, so we can never rejoice at the thought that the race of demons will place their faith in Vishnu, the lord of gods.”

✅
Chapter 5.33 — Vishnu Explains Prahlada to the Gods; Appears to Prahlada

1. Vasishta said:— The lord of Lakshmi, seeing the gods clamoring in their accusation of the demons, gave his words to them in sounds as sonorous as those of rainy clouds responding to the loud noise of screaming and thirst-stricken peacocks.

2. The Lord Vishnu said, “You gods, do not marvel at Prahlada’s faith in me as it is because of his virtuous acts in past lives that this pious prince is entitled to his final liberation in this his present life.

3. He shall not have to be born again in the womb of a woman, or be reproduced in any form on earth, but must remain aloof from regeneration, like a fried pea which does not germinate anymore.”

4. “A virtuous man turning impious becomes the source of evil, but an unworthy man becoming meritorious is doubtless a step towards his better being and blessedness.

5. You good gods who are quite happy in your blessed seats in heaven must not let the good deserts of Prahlada be any cause for your uneasiness.”

6. Vasishta resumed:— The lord having thus spoken to the gods became invisible to them, like a feather floating on the surface of waves.

7. The assembly of immortals then returned to their heavenly abodes after taking their leave of the god, just as the particles of seawater are carried to the sky by the soft warm breezes, or by the agitation of Mandara Mountain.

8. Henceforth the gods were pacified towards Prahlada, because the mind is never suspicious of one who has the credit of his superiors.

9. Prahlada also continued his daily adoration of his god with the contriteness of his heart and in the formulas of his spiritual, oral and bodily services.

10. It was in the course of his divine service in this manner that he attained the joy proceeding from his right discrimination, self-resignation and other virtues with which he was crowned.

11. He took no delight in any object of enjoyment, nor felt any pleasure in the society of his consorts, all which he shunned as a male deer shuns a withered tree and the company of human beings.

12. He did not walk in the ways of the ungodly or spend his time in anything but religious discourses. His mind did not dwell on visible objects, like the lotus that never grows on dry land.

13. His mind did not delight in pleasures, which were all linked with pain, but longed for its liberation, which is as entire of itself and unconnected with anything as a single grain of unperferated pearl.

14. His mind was abstracted from his enjoyments, but not yet settled in its samadhi of ultimate rest. He was wavering between the two states, like a cradle swinging both ways.

15. The god Vishnu, who knew all things by his all-knowing intelligence, saw the unsettled state of Prahlada’s mind from his seat in the Milky Ocean.

16. Pleased at Prahlada’s firm belief, he proceeded by an underground route to the place of his worship and manifested before him at the holy altar.

17. Seeing his god manifest to his view, the lord of the demons worshipped him with two-fold veneration, and made many respectful offerings to his lotus-eyed deity, more than his usual practice.

18. He then gladly glorified his god with many prayers in gratitude for appearing before him in his house of worship.

19. Prahlada said, “I adore you, O my lord Vishnu, who is unborn and without decay, who is the blessed receptacle of three worlds, who dispels all darkness by the light of your body, and who is the refuge of the helpless and friendless.

20. I adore my Vishnu in his complexion of blue lotus leaves and the color of autumn. I worship him whose body is of the color of the dark bhramara bee and who holds the lotus, discus, club and conch-shell in his arms.”

21. “I worship the god who dwells in the lotus-like hearts of his devotees with his appearance of a swarm of dark bees, who holds a conch-shell as white as the bud of a lotus or lily, with earrings ringing in his ears with the music of humming bees.

22. I resort to Vishnu’s sky-blue shade, shining with the starry light of his long stretching nails, his face shining like the full moon with his smiling beams, and his breast waving like the surface of Ganges with sparkling gems hanging upon it.

23. I rely on that deity who slept on the leaf of a fig tree, who contains the universe in himself in his stupendous form of Viraj, who is neither born nor grown but is always the whole by himself, and who is possessed of endless attributes of his own nature.”

24. “I take my refuge in Vishnu whose bosom is daubed with the red dust of the new-blown lotus, and whose left side is adorned by the blushing beauty of Lakshmi whose body is covered by a red colored cloth and smeared with red sandal paste like liquid gold.

25. I take my refuge under that Vishnu who is the destructive frost to the lotus-bed of demons, who is the rising sun to the opening buds of the lotusbed of the deities, who is the source of the lotus-born Brahma, and who is the receptacle of the lotus petal seat of our understanding.

26. My hope is in Vishnu, the blooming lotus of the bed of the triple world, and the only light amidst the darkness of the universe, who is the principle of consciousness (chit) amidst the gross material world, and who is the only remedy for all the evils and troubles of this transient life.”

27. Vasishta continued:— Vishnu the destroyer of demons, who is graced on his side by the goddess of prosperity, being praised with many such graceful speeches of the demon lord, answered him as lovingly in his blue lotus-like form as when the deep clouds respond to the peacocks’ screams.

✅
Chapter 5.34 — Prahlada’s Discrimination Leads to Self Realization

1. The Lord said, “O you rich jewel on the crown of the Daitya race! Receive your desired reward of me to alleviate your worldly afflictions.”

2. Prahlada replied, “What better blessing can I ask of you, my Lord, than to instruct me in what you think is your best gift above all other treasures of the world, and which is able to benefit and reward all our wants in this miserable life.”

3. The Lord answered, “May you have a sinless boy, and may your right discrimination of things lead you to your rest in God and the attainment of your supreme joy, after the dispersion of your earthly cares and the errors of this world.”

4. Vasishta continued:— Being thus bid by his god, the lord of demons fell into a profound meditation, his nostrils snoring loudly like the gurgling waters of the deep.

5. As Lord Vishnu departed from his sight, the chief of the demons made his oblations after him, consisting of handfuls of flowers and rich gems and jewels of various kinds.

6. Then seated in lotus posture (padmasana), legs folded over one another upon his elevated and elegant seat, he chanted his holy hymn and reflected within himself. Prahlada’s contemplation:—

7. My deliverer from this sinful world has asked me to have my discrimination. Therefore I must discriminate between what is true and false.

8. I must know that I am in this dark world and I must seek the light of my soul and the principle that makes me speak, walk and take pains to exert myself.

9. I perceive that I am nothing of this external world, like any of its green trees or hills. External bodies are all of a gross nature, but my ego is quite a simple and pure essence.

10. I am not this unconscious body, which is both dull and dumb and is made to move for a moment by means of the vital airs. The body is an unreal appearance of a transitory existence.

11. I am not the unconscious sound, which is an empty substance produced in emptiness. It is perceptible through the ear hole and is as fleeting and insubstantial as empty air.

12. Nor am I the unconscious organ of touch or the momentary feeling of touch. I find myself to be an inner principle with the faculty of reasoning and the capacity of knowing the nature of the soul.

13. I am not even my taste, which is confined to the tasting of certain objects and to the organ of the tongue, which is a trifling and ever restless thing, sticking to and moving in the cavity of the mouth.

14. I am not my sight, which is employed in seeing only what is visible. It is weak and decaying and never lasting in its power, nor capable of viewing the invisible Spirit.

15. I am not the power of my smell, which belongs only to my nasal organ and is conversant with scented substances for a short moment only.

16. I am pure consciousness and not any of the sensations of my five external organs of sense. I am neither my mental faculty, which is ever frail and unsteady, nor is there anything belonging to me or participating of my true essence. I am the soul and an indivisible whole.

17. I am pure consciousness without the objects of reasoning. My pure consciousness pervades internally and externally over all things and manifests them to view. I am the whole without its parts, pure without foulness and everlasting.

18. It is my reasoning that manifests this pot and that painting to me and brings all other objects to my knowledge by its pure light, just like the sun and a lamp show everything to sight.

19. Ah! Now I remember the whole truth: that I am the immutable and all pervading Spirit, shining in the form of consciousness.

20. This essence evolves itself into the various faculties of sense, just as the inner fire unfolds itself into the forms of its flash and flame and its sparks and visible light.

21. This principle also unfolds itself into the forms of the different organs of sense, just as the all-diffusive heat of the hot season shows itself in the shape of mirage in sandy deserts.

22. Likewise this element, the spirit, constitutes the substance of all objects, just as it is the light of the lamp which causes various colors of things, as the whiteness or other color of a piece of cloth or any other thing.

23. The spirit is the source of the perception of all living and waking beings, and of everything else in existence. Just as a mirror reflects all outward appearances, so the soul is the reflective organ of all its internal and external phenomena.

24. It is only through this immutable intellectual light that we perceive the heat of the sun, the coldness of the moon, the solidity of a rock, and the fluidity of water.

25. This is the prime cause of every object of our continuous perceptions in this world. This is the first cause of all things, without having any prior cause of its own.

26. This produces our notions of the continuity of objects that are spread all around us. They all take the name of objects from their objectivity of the soul.

27. It is this formless cause which is the prime cause of all malleable and secondary causes (such as Brahma the creative agent and others). It is from this that the world has its production, as coldness is the product of cold and the like.

28. The gods Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and Indra, who are causes of the existence of the world, all owe their origin to this prime cause who has no cause of Himself.

29. I hail that Supreme Soul which is impressed in me and is apart from every object of thought of the intellect, and which is self manifest in all things and at all times.

30. All beings stand in relation to the modes and modalities of this Supreme Being. They are immersed as properties in that intellectual Spirit.

31. Whatever this internal and intelligent Soul wills to do, the same is done everywhere. Nothing other than the Soul exists in reality anywhere.

32. Whatever is intended to be done by this intellectual power, the same receives a form of its own. Whatever is thought to be undone by the intellect, the same is dissolved into nothing from its substantiality.

33. These numberless series of worldly objects are like shadows cast on the immense mirror of emptiness.

34. All these objects increase and decrease in size under the light of the soul, like the shadows of things enlarging and diminishing themselves in sunshine.

35. This internal Soul is invisible to all beings except those whose minds are melted down in piety. It is seen by the righteous in the form of the clear sky.

36. This great Cause, like a large tree, gives rise to all visible phenomena like its germ and sprouts. The movements of living beings are like the flittering of bees about this tree.

37. It is this that gives rise to the whole creation both in its ideal and real and mobile or quiescent forms, just as a huge rock gives growth to a large forest with its various kinds of big trees and small shrubs.

38. It is not separate from anything existing in the womb of this triple world, but resides alike in the highest gods as in the lowest grass below. It manifests them all to our view.

39. This is one with the ego and the all-pervading soul. It is situated as the moving spirit and the unmoving dullness of the whole.

40. The Universal Soul is beyond the distinction, of “my”, “your” or “his” individual spirit. It is above the limits of time and place, of number and manner, of form or figure or shape or size.

41. The one intelligent soul, by its own intelligence, is the eye and witness of all visible things. It is represented as having a thousand eyes and hands and as many feet.

42. This is that supreme ego of myself that wanders about the sky in the body of the shining sun, and also wanders in other forms, as those of air in the current winds.

43. The sky is the azure body of my Vishnu with its accompaniments of the conch shell, discus, club and the lotus in the clouds, all of which are tokens of prosperity in this world by their blissful rains.

44. I find myself identical with this god while I am sitting in my lotus posture in this state of samadhi, and when I have attained my perfection in stillness.

45. I am the same with Shiva, the god with his three eyes, his eyeballs rolling like bees on the lotus face of Gauri. I am in the form of the god Brahma and I contain the whole creation in me, like a tortoise contracting its limbs in itself.

46. I rule over the world in the form of Indra. As a monk I command the monastery which has come down to me. I am an Indra when I rule over my domain, and a poor monk when I dwell in my humble cell.

47. I am both male and female, and I am both boy and girl. I am old as regards my soul, and I am young with regard to my body, which is born and ever renewed.

48. The ego is the grass and all kinds of plants on earth. It is also the moisture which grows them, like its thoughts in the ground of consciousness. In the same manner as herbs grow in holes and wells have their moisture, the ego or soul is the core and foundation of all substance.

49. It is for pleasure that this ego stretched out the world, like a clever boy who makes dolls of clay in his play.

50. This ego is me who gives existence to all being, and it is I in whom they live and move about. Being at last forsaken by me, the whole existence dwindles into nothing.

51. Whatever image is impressed in the clear mirror of my intellect, that and nothing else is in real existence because there is nothing that exists apart from myself.

52. I am the fragrance of flowers and the color of their leaves. I am the figure of all forms and the perception of everything that can be perceived.

53. Whatever movable or immovable thing is visible in this world, I am its inmost heart without having any of its desires in my heart.

54. As the primary element of moisture is diffused in nature in the form of water, so my spirit is spread over plants and all other things at large in the form of vacuum.

55. I enter inside everything in the form of consciousness, and I extend in the manner of various sensations at my own will.

56. As butter is contained in milk and moisture is inherent in water, so the power of consciousness is spread in all beings, and so ego is situated inside all things.

57. The world at all times, whether present, past or future ages, exists in consciousness. The objects of intelligence are all inert and devoid of motion, like the mineral and vegetable productions of earth.

58. I am the all-grasping and all-powerful form of Brahman which fills infinite space and is free from any diminution or decrease in shape or size. I am this all-pervading and all-productive power known as the Universal Form (virat murti).

59. I have gained my boundless empire over all worlds without seeking or asking for it, and without subduing it like Indra of old or crushing the gods with my arms.

60. O the extensive spirit of God! I bow down to that spirit in my spirit and find myself lost in it, as in the vast ocean of the universal deluge.

61. I find no limit to this spirit as long as I am seated in the enjoyment of my spiritual bliss. I appear to move about like a minute mollusk in the fathomless expanse of the Milky Ocean.

62. This temple of the cosmic egg is too small and constricted for the huge body of my soul. It is impossible for me to be contained in it, just as it is impossible for an elephant to enter into the eye of a needle.

63. My body stretches beyond the region of Brahma, my attributes extend beyond the categories of the various schools of philosophy, and there is no definite limitation given of them to this day.

64. The attributes of a name and body to the unsupported soul are falsehoods, and it is false to compress the unlimited soul within the narrow bounds of the body.

65. To say this is I and this is another are altogether wrong. What is this body or my want of it, or the state of living or death to me?

66. How foolish and short-witted were my forefathers, who having forsaken this spiritual domain, wandered as mortal beings in this frail and miserable world.

67. How great is this grand sight of the immensity of Brahman. How mean are these creeping mortals with their high aims and ambition and all their splendors of royalty.

68. My pure intellectual sight, filled with endless joy and accompanied by ineffable tranquility, surpasses all other sights in the whole world.

69. I bow down to the Self situated in all beings, which is the intelligent and intellectual soul, and quite apart from whatever is the object of reasoning or thought.

70. I who am the unborn and uncreated soul rule triumphant over this perishing world by my attainment to the state of the great Universal Spirit, which is the chief object of gain, the supreme good of mortal beings, and which I live to enjoy.

71. I take no delight in my unpleasant earthly dominion which is full of painful greatness. I would not like to lose my everlasting kingdom of good understanding, which is free from trouble and full of perpetual delight.

72. Cursed be the wicked demons who are so sadly ignorant of their souls and resort to their strongholds of woods and hills and ditches for the safety of their bodies, like the insects of those places.

73. Ignorance of the soul leads to serving the dull ignorant body with articles of food and clothing. This was how our ignorant elders pampered their bodies for no lasting good.

74. What good did my father Hiranyakasipu reap from his prosperity of a few years in this world? What did he acquire worthy of his descent in the line of the great sage Kasyapa?

75. He who has not tasted the blissfulness of his soul has enjoyed no true blessing during his long rule of a hundred years in this world.

76. He who has gained the ambrosial delight of his spiritual bliss, and nothing of the temporary blessings of life, has gained something which is ever full in itself and of which there is no end to the end of the world.

77. It is the fool and not the wise who forsakes this infinite joy for the temporary delights of this world. Such a fool resembles the foolish camel which foregoes his fodder of soft leaves in order to browse the prickly thorns of the desert.

78. What man of sense would turn his eyes from such a romantic sight and like to roam in a city burnt down to the ground? What wise man is there that would forsake the sweet juice of sugarcane in order to taste the bitterness of nimba?

79. I reckon all my forefathers as very great fools for leaving this happy prospect in order to wander in the dangerous paths of their earthly dominion.

80. Ah, how delightful is the view of flowering gardens and how unpleasant is the sight of the burning deserts of sand. How very quiet are these intellectual reveries and how very boisterous are the cravings of our hearts!

81. There is no happiness to be had in this earth that would make us wish for our sovereignty in it. All happiness consists in the peace of the mind, which always concerns us to seek.

82. It is the calm, quiet and unaltered state of the mind that gives us true happiness in all conditions of life and the true kingdom of things in all places and at all times, and under every circumstance in life.

83. The virtue of sunlight is to enlighten all objects, and that of moonlight to fill us with its ambrosial nectar. But the light of Brahman transcends them both by filling the three worlds with its spiritual glory which is brighter than sunbeams and cooler than moonlight.

84. The power of Shiva stretches over the fullness of knowledge, and that of Vishnu over victory and prosperity. Fleetness is the character of the mental powers and force is the property of the wind.

85. Inflammation is the property of fire and moisture is that of water. Silence is the quality of devotees for success in their tapas and eloquence is the qualification of learning.

86. It is the nature of aerials to move about in the air and of rocks to remain fixed on the ground. The nature of water is to set deep and run downwards and that of mountains to stand and rise upwards.

87. Equanimity is the nature of Buddhists and drunken merry making is the liking of wine-drinkers. Spring delights in its flowering and the rainy season exults in the roaring of its clouds.

88. Yaksha demons are full of delusiveness, celestials are familiar with cold and frost, and those of the torrid zone are habituated to its heat.

89. Thus many other beings are suited to their respective climates and seasons and are habituated to the very many modes of life and varieties of habits to which they have been accustomed in the past and present times.

90. It is the one uniform and Unchanging Consciousness, according to its changeable will and velocity, that ordains these many forms and changing modifications of powers and things.

91. The same unchanging Consciousness presents these hundreds of changing scenes to us, just as the same and unchanging light of the sun shows a thousand varying forms and color to the sight.

92. The same Consciousness sees at a glance all these great multitudes of objects that fill the infinite space on all sides, in all the three times of the present, past and future.

93. The identical pure Consciousness knows at once the various states of all things presented in this vast phenomenal world, in all the three times that are existent, gone by and are to come hereafter.

94. At one and the same time, this pure Consciousness reflects all things existent in the present, past and future times. It is full with the forms of all things existing in the infinite space of the universe.

95. Knowing the events of the three times, and seeing the endless phenomena of all worlds present before it, Divine Consciousness continues full and perfect in itself and at all times.

96. Understanding ever continues the same and unaltered in spite of the great variety of its perceptions of innumerable objects of sense and thought, such as the different tastes of sweet and sour in honey and nimba fruit at the same time.

97. Consciousness, by abandonment of mental desires and knowing the natures of all things by reducing their dualities into unity, is in its state of acuteness.

98. It views them alike with an equal eye and at the same time in spite of the varieties of objects and their great difference from one another.

99. By viewing all existence as non-existence, you get rid of your existing pains and troubles. By seeing all existence in the light of nothingness, you avoid the suffering of existing evils.

100. The intellect being withdrawn from its view of the events of the three tenses, and being freed from the chains of its fleeting thoughts, there remains only a calm tranquility.

101. The soul being inexpressible in words proves to be described only in negative terms. There ensues a state of one’s perpetual unconsciousness of his soul or self existence.

102. In this state of the soul it is equal to Brahman, which is either nothing at all or the all of itself. Its absorption in perfect tranquility is called its liberation from all feelings.

103. The intellect weakened by its will does not see the soul in a clear light, as the deceived eye has only a dim and hazy sight of the world.

104. The intellect weakened by the dirt of its desire and dislike is impeded in its heavenly flight, like a bird caught in a snare.

105. They who have fallen into the snare of delusion by their ignorant choice of this or that are like blind birds falling into the net in search of their prey.

106. Entangled in the meshes of desire and confined in the pit of worldliness, our fathers were barred from this unimpeded sight of spiritual light and endless delight.

107. In vain did our forefathers flourish for a few days on the surface of this earth only to be swept away by a gust of wind like fluttering flies and gnats into the ditch.

108. If these foolish pursuers of painful worldly pleasures had known the path of truth, they would never have fallen into the dark pit of unsubstantial pursuits.

109. Foolish folks are subject to repeated pains and pleasures by their various choice of things. They follow the fate of short-lived worms born to move and die in their own ditches and ponds.

110. He is said to be really alive who lives true to nature and who, by the rising cloud of his knowledge of truth, suppresses his mirage of desires and aversions.

111. The hot and foul fumes of fancy fly far away from the pure light of reason, just as the hazy mist of night is dispersed by the bright beams of moonlight.

112. I hail that soul which dwells as the inseparable consciousness in me. At last I come to know my God that resides like a rich gem enlightening all the worlds in myself.

113. I have long thought upon and sought after you, and at last I have found you rising in myself. I have chosen you from all others. Whatever you are, I hail you, my Lord, as you appear in me.

114. I hail you in me, O lord of gods, in your form of infinity within myself and in the shape of bliss within my soul of bliss. I hail you, O Supreme Spirit, who is superior to and master of all.

115. I bow down to that cloudless light shining like the full moon within me, and to that identical form which is free from all predicates and attributes. It is the self risen as light in myself. The Soul (atman) is identical to that blissful soul which I find in myself.

✅
Chapter 5.35 — Prahlada in Praise of Self Realization

1. Prahlada continued:— Om is the proper form of the One devoid of all modifications. That Om is this all that is contained in this world.

2. It is intelligence devoid of flesh, fat, blood and bones. It abides in all things and is the enlightener of the sun and all other luminous bodies.

3. It warms the fire and moistens the water. It gives sensation to the senses and enjoys all things in the manner of a king.

4. It rests without sitting. It goes without walking. It is active in its inactivity. It acts all without coming in contact with anything.

5. It is the past and gone, and also the present and even now. It is both the next moment and remote future also. It is all that is fit and proper, and likewise whatever is unfit and improper.

6. Undaunted, it produces all productions and spreads the worlds over one another. It continues to turn the worlds around, from the sphere of Brahma to the lower grounds of grass.

7. Though unmoving and immutable, yet it is as fleeting and changeable as the flying winds. It is inert as the solid rock and more transparent than the subtle ether.

8. It moves the minds of men like winds shaking the leaves of trees. It directs the organs of sense like a charioteer manages his horses.

9. Consciousness sits as the lord of this bodily house, carried about like a chariot by the equestrians of the senses. Sitting at its own ease as sole monarch, it enjoys the fruitions of the bodily actions.

10. It is to be diligently sought after and meditated upon and praised at all times, because only this way can one have his salvation from the pains of his age and death and the evils of ignorance.

11. It is easily to be found and as easy to be known as a friend. It dwells like the humble bee in the recess of everyone’s lotus-like heart.

12. Uncalled and not invoked, it appears of itself from within the body. At a slight call it appears manifest to view.

13. Constant service and attendance on this all-opulent Lord never make him proud or haughty, as they do any other rich master by his humble attendants.

14. This Lord is as closely situated in everybody as fragrance and fluidity are inherent in flowers and sesame seeds, and as flavor is inseparably connected with liquid substances.

15. Our lack of reason makes us ignorant of Consciousness that is situated in ourselves. Our reasoning power serves to manifest it to our sight as our most intimate friend.

16. As we come to know by our reasoning that this Supreme Lord situated in us, we come to feel an indescribable delight like the sight of a beloved and loving friend.

17. As this dearest friend appears to view, his benign influence shedding full bliss about us, we come to see such glorious prospects as to immediately forget all our earthly enjoyments.

18. All a person’s chains are broken and fall off, and all his enemies are put to an end whose mind is not perforated by his cravings, like houses dug by injurious mice.

19. When this One in all is seen in us, the whole world is seen in Him. He being heard, everything is heard in Him. He being felt, all things are felt in Him. He being present, the whole world is present before us.

20. He wakes over the sleeping world and destroys the darkness of the ignorant. He removes the dangers of the distressed and bestows His blessings upon the holy.

21. He moves about as the living soul of all, and rejoices as the animal soul in all objects of enjoyment. It is He who glows in all visible objects in their various colors.

22. He sees himself in himself. He is quietly situated in all things, like pungency resides in peppers, sweetness in sugar, and the like.

23. He is situated as intelligence and sensations in the inner and outward parts of living beings. He forms the essence and existence of all objects in the entire universe.

24. He forms the emptiness of the sky and the velocity of the winds. He is the light of fiery bodies and the moisture of aqueous substances.

25. He is the firmness of the earth and the warmth of fire. He is the coldness of the moon and the entity of everything in the world.

26. He is blackness in inky substances and coldness in the particles of snow. As fragrance resides in flowers, so he resides in all bodies.

27. His essence fills all space just as the essence of time fills all duration. His omnipotence is the fountain of all forces, just as His omnipresence supports everything everywhere.

28. As the Lord unfolds everything to light by the external organ of sight and the internal organ of thinking, so the great God enlightens gods by his own light.

29. I am that I am, without attributes in me. I am like the clear air, not stained by particles of flying dust. I am like lotus leaves untouched by their supporting and surrounding waters.

30. As a rolling stone gathers no moss, so there is nothing that touches or bears any relation to my airy mind. The pain and pleasure which affect the body cannot affect my form of the inner soul.

31. The soul, like a gourd fruit, is not injured by showers of rain falling on the outer body which resembles its hard crust. Consciousness, like lamp flame, is not to be held fast by a rope.

32. So this ego of mine which transcends everything is not to be tied down by anything to the earth, nor does it bear any relation to the objects of sense or my mental desires, or anything existing or not in existence in this world.

33. Who has the power to grasp emptiness or confine the mind? You may cut the body into a thousand pieces, but you cannot divide the invisible and the indivisible empty Spirit rising in me.

34. A pot may be broken or bored or removed from its place, but there is no loss sustained by the air that it contains. In the same way, the body may be destroyed, but there is no damage done to the unconnected soul. The mind is as false a name as that of a demon pisacha.

35. The destruction of the gross body does not injure the immaterial soul. What is the mind but the perceptive power of my desires and gross pleasures and pains?

36. I had such a perceiving mind before, but now I have found my rest in quiescence. I find the mind is another thing beside myself because it perceives and partakes of the enjoyments of life and is exposed to the dangers that take the body.

37. There is another one in me which beholds the actions of the other as a theatric act and witnesses the exposure of the body to peril as its last sad catastrophe.

38. The mind is the wicked spirit caught in ignorance, but the pure spirit has nothing to suffer. I feel neither the wish to continue worldly enjoyments nor a desire to forsake them altogether.

39. Let what may come to pass on me, and whatever may happen to pass away from me. I have neither the expectation of pleasures nor an aversion to suffering pain.

40. Let pleasure or pain take or forsake me as it may without my being concerned or taking heed of either because I know fluctuating desires are constantly rising and setting in the sphere of my mind.

41. Let these desires depart from me for I have nothing to do with them, nor have they any concern with me. Alas! How all this time ignorance, my greatest enemy, has misled me to these desires!

42. It is by favor of Vishnu and by virtue of my pure Vaishnava faith rising in me of itself that my ignorance is now wholly dispelled from me and the knowledge of the True One is revealed to me.

43. My knowledge of truth has now driven away egoism from my mind, just as they drive a spirit from its hiding place in the hollow of a tree.

44. I am now purified by admonition (mantra) of divine knowledge. The tree of my body is now set free from egoism which sat like a demon yaksha in it.

45. My body has become like a sacred tree, blooming with heavenly flowers and freed from the evils of ignorance, poverty and vain wishes which previously infested it.

46. Loaded with the treasure of sacred knowledge, I find myself sitting here as one supremely rich. Knowing all that is to be known, I see sights that are invisible to others.

47. Now I have that in which nothing can be wanting and in which there is no want. It is by my good fortune that I am freed from all evils and the venomous serpents of worldly cares.

48. My chill and frigid ignorance is melted down by the light of knowledge. The hot mirage of my desires is now quenched and cooled by my quietude. I see the clear sky on all sides without any mist or dust. I rest under the cooling shade of the tranquility of my soul.

49. It is by my glorification of God, my thanksgivings to Vishnu, my holy rites, and my divine knowledge and quietism that I have obtained, by grace of my God, a spacious room and elevated position in spirituality.

50. I have that God in my spirit. I have seen and known him in his spiritual form. He is beyond my own ego and I remember him always in this manner.

51. I remember Vishnu as the great Spirit, the eternal Brahman in his nature, while my selfish ego is confined like a snake in the holes of my organic frame, which is wholly the land of death.

52. It is entangled in the bushes of its pricking desires resembling prickly karanja ferns amidst the tumults of raging passions and a thousand other disturbances of this world.

53. It is placed amidst the conflagration of disasters, encircled by the flames of smart pain at all times. It is subject to continual ups and downs of fortune, and repeated risings and fallings in its journey in this world.

54. It has its repeated births and deaths owing to its interminable desires. Thus I am always deceived by this great enemy, my own egoism.

55. The animal soul is powerless at night, as if caught in the clutches of a demon in the forest. So while I am in this state of meditation, I feel deprived of its power and action.

56. By grace of Vishnu the light of my understanding is roused. I see my God by means of this light and I lose sight of my demonic egoism.

57. The sight of demonic egoism dwelling in the cavity of my mind disappears from my view in the same way as the shadow of darkness flies from the light of a lamp, and as the shade of night is dispersed by daylight.

58. After a lighted lamp is extinguished, you do not know where its flame has fled. In the same way, when we see God before us, we do know where our lordly egoism is hidden.

59. My rich egoism flies at the approach of reason, just like a heavily loaded robber flies before the advance of daylight. Our false egoism vanishes like a demon at the rising of the true Ego of God.

60. My egoism being gone, I am set at ease like a tree freed from a poisonous snake rankling in its hollow cavity. When I am awakened to my spiritual light, I am at rest in my unconsciousness in this world.

61. I have escaped from the hand of my captor and gained my permanent ascendency over others. I have my internal equanimity and I have allayed the mirage of my thirst after vain glory.

62. I have bathed in the cold bath of rainwater and I am pacified like a rock after the cooling of its conflagration. I am cleansed of my egoism by my knowledge of the true meaning of the term.

63. What is ignorance and what are our pains and affliction? What are our evil desires and what are our diseases and dangers? All these with the ideas of heaven and liberation, together with the hope of heaven and the fear of hell, are only false conceptions proceeding from our egoism or selfishness.

64. As a picture is drawn on a canvas and not in empty air, so our thoughts depend upon our selfish principle and its want. As clear linen receives the yellow color of saffron, so the pure soul receives the image of God. Egoism weakens the soul with the irritable passions of the heart, like the inborn color of a dirty cloth makes a good dye defective.

65. Purity of the inner soul is like the clarity of the autumn sky. It is devoid of the cloudiness of egoism and the drizzling drops of desires.

66. I bow down to you, O my innermost soul inmost that is a stream of bliss to me, with pure clear waters amidst and without the dirt of egoism about you.

67. I hail you, O my soul that is an ocean of joy to me, not infested by the sharks of sensual desires and undisturbed by the undersea fire of the latent mind.

68. I prostrate myself before you, O my living soul that is a mountain of delight to me, without the hovering clouds of egoistic passions or the wild fires of gross desires and desires.

69. I bow to you, O soul in me that is the heavenly Lake Manasa to me, with blooming lotuses of delight and without the waves of cares and anxieties.

70. I greet you, my internal spirit floating in the shape of a swan on the lake of the mind of every individual, and residing in the cavity of the lotus crown chakra (brahmarandhra) with your outstretched wings of consciousness and standing.

71. All hail to you, O full and perfect spirit that is the undivided and immortal soul which in your several parts of the mind and senses is like the full moon containing all its digits in its entire self.

72. Obeisance to the sun of my consciousness is always in its ascendency and dispels the darkness of my heart. My consciousness pervades everywhere, yet it is invisible or dimly seen by us.

73. I bow to my intellectual light which is an oil-less and wick-less lamp of benign brightness that burns in full blaze within me. It is the enlightener of nature and quite still in its nature.

74. Whenever my mind is heated by Kama Deva’s fire, I cool it by the coolness of my cold and detached intellect coolness, just as they temper red hot iron with a cold, hard hammer.

75. I am gaining my victory over all things by killing my egoism by the Great Ego, and by making my senses and mind destroy themselves.

76. I bow to you, O all subduing faith that crushes our ignorant doubt by your wisdom, that dispels unrealities by your knowledge of the reality, and that removes our cravings by your contentedness.

77. I exist solely as the transparent spirit by killing my mind by the great Mind, by removing my egoism by the sole Ego, and by driving the unrealities by the true Reality.

78. I place my body’s reliance only upon the moving principle of my soul, without consciousness of my individual existence, my egoism, or my mind and all its efforts and actions.

79. At last I have obtained, of its own accord and by the infinite grace of the Lord of all, the highest blessing of cold heartedness and detachment in myself.

80. By subsiding the demon of my ignorance and from disappearance of the demon of my egoism, I am now freed from the heat of my feverish passions.

81. My false egoism has fled from the cage of my body by breaking its string of desires to which its feet were fast bound. I do not know where it has fled.

82. I do not know where the bird of my egotism has flown from its nest in the tree of my body, after blowing away its thick ignorance as dust.

83. Ah, where is my egoism fled, with its body smeared with the dust and dirt of worldliness, and battered by the rocks of its desires that can never be satisfied? It is bitten by the deadly serpents of fears and dangers, and pierced in its heart by repeated disappointments and despair.

84. O, wonder to think what I had been all this time when I was bound fast by my egoism in the strong chain of my personality.

85. I think I am a new born being today, and to have become high-minded also, by being removed from the thick cloud of egoism which had shrouded me all this time.

86. I have seen and known and obtained this treasure of my soul, as it is presented to my understanding by the verbal testimonies of the scriptures, and by the light of inspiration in my hour of samadhi meditation.

87. My mind is set at rest and released from the cares of the world, like a fire that is extinguished. It is released from all other thoughts and desires and the error of egoism. I am now set free from my affections and passions and all delights of the world, and also my craving after them.

88. I have passed over the impassable ocean of dangers and difficulties and the intolerable evils of reincarnation by the disappearance of my internal darkness and the sight of the one great God in my consciousness.

✅
Chapter 5.36 — Prahlada’s Hymn to the Soul

1. Prahlada continued:— I thank you, O lord and great spirit who is beyond all things and is found in myself by my good fortune.

2. Except you, O my Lord, I have no other friend in the three worlds who embraces and looks upon me when I pray to you.

3. It is you who preserves and destroys all and who gives all things to everybody. It is you who makes us move and work and praise your holy name. Now you are found and seen by me, and now you go away from me.

4. You fill all beings in the world with your essence. You are present in all places, but where have you fled and gone from me?

5. Great is the distance between us, even as the distance of the places of our birth. It is my good fortune, O friend, that has brought you near me today and presented you to my sight.

6. I hail you, O blissful One who is my maker and preserver. I think that you are the stalk of this fruit of the world, and you are the eternal and pure soul of all.

7. I thank the holder of the lotus and discus, and you also who bears the crescent half moon on your forehead, great Shiva. I thank the lord of gods, Indra, and also Brahma, who is born of the lotus.

8. Use of words makes a distinction between you and ourselves. But this is a false impression, like that between waves and their element water.

9. You show yourself in the shapes of the endless varieties of beings. Existence and extinction are your two states from all eternity.

10. I thank you who is the creator and beholder of all and who manifests innumerable forms. I thank you who is the whole nature yourself.

11. I have undergone many tribulations in the long course of past lives. By your will I became deprived of my strength and at last was burnt away.

12. I have seen luminous worlds and observed many visible and invisible things, but you are not to be found in them, so I gained nothing.

13. All things composed of earth, stone and wood are formations of water. There is nothing here that is permanent, O God, beside yourself. You being obtained there is nothing else to desire.

14. I thank you Lord who is obtained, seen and known by me this day, and who shall be preserved by me and never obliterated from my mind.

15. Your bright form, interwoven by the rays of light, is visible to us by inverting our sight into the innermost recesses of our heart.

16. As the feeling of heat and cold is perceived by touch, and as the fragrance of the flower is felt in the oil with which it is mixed, so I feel your presence by your coming in contact with my heart.

17. As the sound of music enters into the heart through the ears and makes the heart strings thrill and the hairs of the body stand on end, so is your presence perceived in our hearts also.

18. As the objects of taste are felt by the tip of the tongue which conveys their taste to the mind, so is your presence felt by my heart when you touch it with your love.

19. A man takes up a sweet scenting flower, perceptible only by the sense of smell, and decorates his outer body with it How can one slight to look and lay hold of his inner soul which shoots through every sense of his body?

20. How can we in any way forget the Supreme Spirit which is well known to us by means of the teachings of the Vedas, Vedanta, Sidhantas and the Puranas, as also by the logic of schools and the hymns of the Vedas?

21. These things which are pleasant to the bodily senses do not gladden my heart when it is filled by your translucent presence.

22. By your effulgent light the sun shines so brightly. By your benign luster the moon dispenses her cooling beams.

23. You have made these bulky rocks and upheld the heavenly bodies. You have supported the stable earth and lifted the spacious firmament.

24. Fortunately you have become myself and I have become one with yourself. I am identical with you and you with me, and there is no difference between us.

25. I thank the great spirit that is expressed by turns by the words “myself” and “yourself” and “mine” and “yours.”

26. I thank the infinite God who dwells in my mind without personal ego. I thank the formless Lord who dwells in my tranquil soul.

27. O Lord, you dwell in my formless, tranquil, transparent and conscious soul, just as you reside in your own spirit which is unbounded by the limitations of time and space.

28. By you the mind has its action, the senses have their sensations, the body has all its powers, and the vital and respiration breaths have their inflations and deflations.

29. The organs of the body are led by the rope of desire to their various actions. Being united with flesh, blood and bones, the body’s organs are driven like the wheels of a car by the charioteer of the mind.

30. I am the consciousness of my body. I am not the body itself or my egoism of it. Therefore let it rise or fall. It is of no advantage or disadvantage to me.

31. I was born at the same time as my ego. It was long afterwards that I had knowledge of my soul. Last of all I had my unconsciousness in the manner of the world approaching its dissolution at the end.

32. Long have I travelled in the lengthy journey of the world. I am weary with fatigue and now rest in quiet, like the cooling fire of the last doomsday conflagration.

33. I thank the Lord who is all and yet without all and everything. I thank you, my soul that likewise is me. I thank you above those scriptures and teachers that teach the subjective ego and the objective you.

34. I hail the all the witnessing power of that providential spirit that has made these ample and endless provisions for others, without touching or enjoying them itself.

35. You are the spirit that dwells in all bodies in the form of the fragrance of flowers, like breath in bellows and oil residing in sesame seeds.

36. How wonderful is this magic scene of yours that you appear in everything and preserve and destroy it in the end without having any personality of your own.

37. At times you make my soul rejoice by manifesting all things before it, like a lighted lamp. You also make my soul joyful when it is extinguished like a lamp after its enjoyment of phenomena.

38. This universal frame is situated in an atom of yourself, just like a big banyan tree is contained in the embryo of a grain of its fig.

39. You are seen, O Lord, in a thousand forms that glide under our sight, like the various forms of elephants, horses, carts and other things are seen in clouds passing in the sky.

40. You are both the existence and absence of all things that are either present or lost to our view. Yet you are quite apart from all worldly existences. You are aloof from all entities and non-entities in the world.

41. O my soul, forsake the pride and anger of your mind and all the foulness and slyness of your heart, because the high-minded never fall into the faults and errors of common people.

42. Think over and over upon the actions of your past life and the long series of your wicked acts. Then with a sigh blush to think upon what you have been before and cease to do such acts anymore.

43. The bustle of your life is past. Gone are your bad days when you were wrapped in the net of your tangled thoughts on all sides.

44. Now you are a monarch in the city of your body. You have the desire of your mind presented before you. You are set beyond the reach of pleasure and pain and you are as free as the air which nobody can grasp.

45. Now you have subdued the difficult to manage horses of your bodily organs. You have mastered the incapable of being subdued elephant of your mind. You have crushed your enemy of worldly enjoyment. So now rule as the sole sovereign over the empire of your body and mind.

46. You are now become like the glorious sun shining within and without us day by day. You traverse the unlimited fields of air by your continued rising and setting at every place in our meditation of you.

47. O Lord, you are ever asleep, and by your own power, you rise also. Then you look on the luxuriant world as a lover looks on his beloved.

48. These luxuries, like honey, are brought from great distances by the bees of the bodily organs. The spirit tastes the sweets by looking upon them through the windows of its eyes.

49. The seat of the intellectual world in the head is always dark. There is a path in it made by the breathings of inspiration and respiration which leads the soul to the sight of Brahma.

50. O Lord, you are the scent of your flower-like body. You are the nectar juice of your moonlike frame, the moisture of this bodily tree, and the coolness of its cold humors.

51. You are the juice, milk and butter that support the body. You being gone, the body is dried up and becomes fuel to feed the fire.

52. You are the flavor of fruits and the light of all luminous bodies. It is you who perceives and knows all things and gives light to the visual organ of sight.

53. You are the vibration of the wind and the force of our elephantine minds. You are the acuteness of the flame of our intelligence.

54. You give us the gift of speech, stop our breath, and make it break forth again on occasion.

55. All these various series of worldly productions bear the same relation to you as the varieties of jewelry relate to the gold of which they are made.

56. You are called by the words “I”, “you”, “he”, and the like. It is you yourself who calls yourself such as it pleases yourself.

57. You are seen in the appearances of all the productions of nature, just as we see the forms of men, horses and elephants in the clouds when they glide softly on the wings of the gentle winds.

58. You invariably show yourself in all your creatures on earth, just as a blazing fire presents the figures of horses and elephants in its bright flames.

59. You are the unbroken thread by which the orbs of worlds are strung together like a chain of pearls. You are the field that grows the harvest of creation by the moisture of your intellect.

60. Things that were nonexistent and unproduced before creation have come to light from their hidden state of reality by your agency, just as the flavor of meat becomes evident by the process of cooking.

61. The beauties of existences are imperceptible without the soul, just as the graces of a beauty are not apparent to one devoid of his eyesight.

62. All substances are nothing whatever without your inherence in them, just as the reflection of the face in the mirror is to no purpose without the real face or figure of the person.

63. Without you the body is a lifeless mass, like a block of wood or stone. The body is imperceptible without the soul, like the shadow of a tree without sunlight.

64. The succession of pain and pleasure ceases to be felt by one who feels you within himself, just as the shades of darkness, the twinkling of stars, and the coldness of frost cease to exist in bright sunlight.

65. It is by a glance of your eye that the feelings of pain and pleasure rise in the mind, just as the rising sunbeams tinges the sky with its variegated colors.

66. Living beings perish in a moment at the deprivation of your presence, just as a burning lamp is extinguished in darkness at the extinction of its light.

67. The gloom of darkness is conspicuous with the lack of light but coming in contact with light, it vanishes from view.

68. So the appearances of pain and pleasure present themselves before the mind during your absence from it and vanish into nothing at the advance of your light.

69. The temporary feelings of pleasure and pain can find no room in the fullness of heavenly joy, just as a minute moment of time is of no account in the abyss of eternity.

70. The thoughts of pleasure and pain are like the short lived fancies of a fairyland or castles in air. They appear by turns at your pleasure, but they disappear altogether as soon as your form is seen in the mind.

71. By your light in our visual organs, things appear to sight at the moment of our waking. You reproduce them into being. It is also by your light poured into our minds that they are seen in our dream, as if they are all asleep in death.

72. What good can we derive from these false and transient appearances in nature? No one can string together the seeming lotuses that are formed by the foaming froth of the waves.

73. No substantial good can come to us from transitory mortal things, just as nobody can string together the transient flashes of lightning into a necklace.

74. Should the rationalist take the false ideas of pain and pleasure for sober realities, then what distinction can there be between them and the irrational realists?

75. Should you, like the nominalist (who believes there is nothing general except names), take everything which bears a name to be a real entity, then I will tell you no more than you are too fond to will to give fictitious names to imaginary things.

76. But the soul is indivisible without desire or egoism. We know nothing whether it is a real substance or not, yet its agency is acknowledged on all hands in our bodily actions.

77. All joys that are boundless in your spiritual body be yours who is ever disposed to tranquility, who is beyond the knowledge of the Vedas, and who is yet the theme of all scriptures.

78. All joy to you who is both born and unborn with the body, who is decaying and without decay in your nature, who is the unsubstantial substance of all qualities, and who is known and unknown to everybody.

79. I exult now and am calm again. I move and am still afterwards. I am victorious and live to win my liberation by your grace. Therefore I hail you who is myself.

80. When you are situated in me, my soul is free from all troubles and feelings and passions. It is placed in perfect rest. There is no more fear of danger or difficulty or of life and death, nor any craving for prosperity when I am absorbed in everlasting bliss with you.

✅
Chapter 5.37 — Prahlada Meditates for Thousands of Years; the Asura Kingdom in Chaos

1. Vasishta said:— Prahlada the victor over hostile hosts, was sitting in divine meditation, absorbed in his entranced bliss for a long time.

2. The soul reposing in its original state of unalterable ecstasy made his body as still as a rock in painting or a figure carved in relief on stone.

3. In this manner, sitting in his house in a posture as unshaken as the firm Mount Meru is fixed upon the earth, a long time passed in his meditation.

4. The great asura demons of his palace tried to rouse him in vain because his deadened mind remained deaf to their calls like a solid rock. He was impassive as a parched grain to the showers of rain.

5. For thousands of years he remained intent upon his God, his gaze fixed and firm, as unmoved as the carved sun upon a sundial.

6. Having thus attained the state of supreme bliss, the sight of unhappiness disappeared from his view as it is unknown to the supremely blissful being.

7. During this time the whole extent of his kingdom was overtaken by spreading anarchy and oppression, as if ruling over the poor fishes.

8. Because after Hiranykashipu was killed and his son became an ascetic, there was nobody left to rule over the kingdoms of the asura race.

9. As Prahlada was not to be roused from his meditation slumber by the solicitations of the Daitya demon chiefs or the cries of his oppressed people,

10. the enemies of the gods were as sorry not to have their graceful lord among them as the bees are aggrieved for lack of the blooming lotus at night.

11. They found him absorbed in his meditation, like when the world is drowned in deep sleep after the sun departs below the horizon.

12. The sorrowful Daityas left his presence and went away wherever they liked. They roved about at random, as they do in an ungoverned state.

13. In time the infernal regions became the seat of anarchy and oppression. Good and honest dealings bade farewell all at once.

14. The houses of the weak were robbed by the strong and the restraints of laws were set at nothing. People oppressed one another and robbed women of their clothes.

15. There were crying and wailing of people on all sides and houses were pulled down in the city. Houses and gardens were robbed and spoiled and outlawry and rapacity spread all over the land.

16. The asuras were in deep sorrow. Their families were starving without food or fruit. There were disturbances and riots rising everywhere and the face of the sky was darkened on all sides.

17. They were derided by the youths of the gods and invaded by vile robbers and envious animals. Houses were robbed of their properties and laid waste and empty.

18. The asura kingdom became a scene of horror with lawless fighting for wives and properties of others, and the wailings of those who were robbed of their wealth and wives. It made the scene seem like the rule of the dark Kali age when atrocious marauders are let loose to spread devastation all over the earth.

✅
Chapter 5.38 — Vishnu Decides to Restore Order and Awaken Prahlada

1. Vasishta continued:— Now Vishnu, who slept on his couch of the snake in his watery house of the Milky Ocean and whose delight was to preserve the order of all groups of worlds,

2. after he rose from his sleep at the end of the rainy season, looked into the course of world in his own mind for achieving the objects of the gods.

3. At a glance of his thought, he surveyed the state of the triple world composed of heaven, earth and the regions below. Then he directed his attention to the affairs of the infernal regions of the demons.

4. There he saw Prahlada sitting in his intense meditation samadhi. Then Vishnu looked into the increasing prosperity of Indra’s palace.

5. Sitting as he was, on his serpentine couch in the Milky Ocean with his arms holding conch-shell, discus, club and lotus in his four hands and

6. in his lotus posture, Vishnu thought in his brilliant mind about the states of the three worlds, like fluttering bee inspecting a lotus.

7. He saw Prahlada immersed in his meditation and the infernal regions left without a leader. He saw that the world was about to be devoid of the Daitya race. Vishnu thinking to himself:—

8. This lack of demons is likely to cool the military ardor of the gods, as the lack of clouds dries up the waters on earth.

9. Liberation obtained by deprivation of dualism and egoism brings a man to a state of asceticism, just as the lack of moisture dries up and kills a promising plant.

10. If the gods are at rest and contented in themselves, there would be no need of sacrifices and offerings to please and appease them. Eventually this will lead to the extinction of the gods (because they rely upon being fed with butter and fat from the sacrifices).

11. The end of religious and sacrificial rites among mankind will bring on the destruction of human race (owing to their impiety), which will cause the desolation of the earth (by wild beasts).

12. With it, the impressions (samsara) of worldly existence ceases. My creation after the Deluge melts away at the improper time like snow by the heat of the sun.

13. What is the good of my benevolent guidance if I were to allow this fruitful earth to go to ruin by my neglect?

14. What would I have to do in this empty void of the world after the extinction of these created beings into nothing? I would have to change my active nature to a state of cold inactivity and lose myself into the samadhi of final liberation.

15. I see no good in the untimely dissolution of the order of the world. Therefore, I would have the Daityas live to its end.

16. It is owing to the struggles of the demons that the gods are worshipped with sacrifices and other religious rites for their preservation of the earth. Therefore the demons are necessary for the continuation of these practices.

17. Therefore I shall have to visit the nether world and restore it to its right order. I shall appoint the lord of the demons to observe his proper duties, like the return of spring fructifies trees.

18. If I raise any other Daitya as chief of the demons and leave Prahlada in his meditation, surely Prahlada will disturb the gods instead of being obedient to them. Because no demon can get rid of his demonic nature like Prahlada.

19. Prahlada is to live to old age in his sacred body until the end of the kalpa age.

20. So it is determined by Destiny, the divine and overruling goddess, that Prahlada will continue to rule to the end of the kalpa in this very body of his.

21. Therefore I must go and awaken the Daitya chief from his samadhi, like roaring cloud rousing sleepy peacocks on the tops of hills and the banks of rivers.

22. Let that sleeping prince who has rid himself of his ego rule unconcerned over the Daitya race, just as the unconscious pearl reflects the colors of its adjacent objects.

23. In this way, both gods and demigods will be preserved on the face of the earth, and their contention for superiority over each other will furnish occasion for the display of my prowess.

24. Though I am indifferent to the creation and destruction of the world, yet its continuation in the primordial order is of much concern to others, if not to my insusceptible self.

25. Whatever is alike in its existence and nonexistence is the same in both its gain and loss (to the indifferent soul). Any effort for having anything is mere foolishness since addition and subtraction presuppose one another.

26. Therefore I shall hasten to the infernal region and awaken the Daitya prince to his sense of duty. Then I will resume my calmness and not play about on the stage of the world like the ignorant.

27. I will proceed to the city of the demons amidst their tumultuous violence and rouse the Daitya prince like sunshine raising a drooping lotus. I shall bring the people to order and union like the rainy season collects fleeting clouds on the summits of mountains.

✅
Chapter 5.39 — Vishnu’s Awakens Prahlada & Exhorts Him to Live Out His Life

1. Vasishta continued:— Thinking thus within himself, Vishnu started from his abode in the Milky Ocean with his companions and moved like the immovable Mandara Mountain with all its accompaniments.

2. He entered the city of Prahlada, which resembled Indra’s city, by an underground passage lying under the waters of the deep.

3. There he found the prince of the asura demons, sitting under a golden dome in his hypnotic samadhi, like Brahma sitting in his meditative mood in a cave of Sumeru Mountain.

4. The Daityas, their bodies changed by the bright rays of Vishnu’s presence, fled far away from him, like a flock of owls from the bright beams of the rising sun.

5. Then Vishnu, accompanied by two or three Daitya chiefs, entered Prahlada’s apartment like the bright moon entering the pavilion of the sky at evening accompanied by two or three stars.

6. There, seated on his eagle, fanned with the fan of Lakshmi, armed with his weapons, and beset by the saints hymning his praise,

7. Vishnu said, “O great soul! Rise from your samadhi!” Then Vishnu blew his five-note conch shell, its sound reaching heaven’s dome.

8. The loud sound of the conch blown by the breath of Vishnu immediately roared with redoubled force like the clouds of the sky or the waves of the great flood.

9. Terrified at the sound, the Daityas fell flat and fainting on the ground like flocks of swans and geese stunned by the thundering noise of clouds.

10. But the party of Vaishnavas rejoiced at the sound without the least fear. They flushed with joy like kurchi flowers blooming at the sound of the clouds.

11. The lord of the Danava demons was slowly roused from his meditative sleep, just as kadamba flowers open by degrees during intervals of rain.

12. By an act of exhaling he brought down his vital breath which was confined in the vertical membrane of the cranium, like the Ganges River gushes out from high hills and mixes and flows with the whole body of waters into the ocean.

13. In a moment vital breath circulated throughout Prahlada’s whole body, like sunbeams spreading over the whole world at sunrise.

14. As vital breath entered into the cells of the nine organs of sense, his mind became susceptible of sensations received through the organs of the body like reflections in a mirror.

15. The intellect desiring to know the objects and relying in the reflections of the senses, takes the name of the mind, just as the reflection of a face in the mirror refracts itself again to the visual organ.

16. The mind having opened or developed itself, his eyelids were about to open of themselves, like the petals of the blue lotus opening by degrees in the morning.

17. Then breathing, by conveying the sensations to the body through the veins and arteries, gave it the power of motion, just as the current breeze moves the lotuses.

18. The same vital breath strengthened the powers of his mind in a short time, like waves of a river become more powerful when it is full of water.

19. At last his eyes being opened, his body shone forth with life by its mental and vital powers, like a lake blushing with blooming lotuses when the sun rises above the horizon.

20. At this instant, Lord Vishnu bade him to awake instantly at his word, and Prahlada rose like a peacock awakened at the roar of a cloud.

21. Finding Prahlada’s eyes shining with light and his mind strong with its past memories, the lord of the three worlds spoke to him in the same manner as he had formerly addressed the lotus-born Brahma himself. Vishnu speaking:—

22. O holy youth! Remember your large dominions and bring your youthful form and figure to your mind. Then think and ponder why you are transforming yourself into this torpid state without cause.

23. You have no good to desire and no evil to shun. You look on want and plenty in the same light. You must know that what is destined by God is all for your good.

24. You shall have this body until the end of the kalpa. So I tell you, rule over this kingdom as a liberated soul having no ups and downs of the mind.

25. You shall have to live here for a kalpa period in the living liberated state of your mind and in full possession of your dominions. You shall have to pass your time with this body of yours and without any anxiety or earthly trouble whatever.

26. The body being decayed by this time, you still shall have to abide with your greatness of soul to the end until the body is broken down like an earthen vessel and the vital life, like air contained in a pot, comes to mix with the common air of emptiness.

27. Your body, liberated in its lifetime, is to endure in its purity to the end of the kalpa and will witness generations passing before it without any diminution of itself.

28. It is still a long time until the doomsday at the end of the kalpa, when the twelve suns will shine together, rocks will melt away, and the world will be burnt down to ashes. Why then do you waste away your body even now?

29. Now the winds are not raging with fury, nor is the world grey with age and covered with ashes. The marks on the foreheads of the gods are still fresh. Then why waste your body before its time?

30. The lightning of flood clouds are not flashing or falling like asoka flowers. Then why do you vainly waste your precious body so prematurely?

31. The skies do not pour out their showers of rainwater on earth to flood mountain tops, nor do they burst out in fire and burn them down to ashes. Why then do you waste away your body in vain?

32. The old world is not yet dissolved into vapor or fused to fumes and smoke. The gods are not extinct leaving Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva to survive them. Why then do you waste yourself in vain?

33. The earth on all sides is not submerged under water leaving only the sight of high mountains, so why waste away your body in vain?

34. The sun is not yet shooting his fiery rays in the sky with such fury as to split mountains with hideous cracks, nor do doomsday clouds of world flood rattle and crackle in the midway sky.

35. I wander everywhere on my vehicle of Garuda and take care of all animal beings lest they die before their time. Therefore I do not like your negligence of yourself.

36. Here we are and there are the hills. These are other beings and that is yourself. This is the earth and that the sky. All these are separate entities and must last of themselves. Then why should you neglect your body and not live like the living?

37. A man whose mind is deluded by gross ignorance and one who is the object of afflictions are truly led to hail their deaths.

38. Death is welcome to he who is too weak, too poor, grossly ignorant, and always troubled by such and similar thoughts in his mind.

39. Death is welcomed by him whose mind is chained in the trap of greedy desires and thrills between its hopes and fears, and who is hurried and carried about in quest of greed and is always restless within himself.

40. He whose heart is parched by the thirst of greed and whose better thoughts are choked by it, like grain sprouts are destroyed by worms, is the person who welcomes death at all times.

41. He who lets the creeping passions of his heart grow as big as palm trees to overshadow the forest of his mind and bear the fruits of continued pain and pleasure is the man who hails his death at all times.

42. He whose mind is irritated by the weeds of cares growing as strong as the hair on his body, and who is subject to the constant evils of life, is the man who welcomes death for his relief.

43. He whose body is burning under the fire of diseases and whose limbs are slackened by age and weakness is the man to whom death is a remedy and who resorts to its aid for relief.

44. He who is tormented by his ardent desires and raging anger, like the poison of a snake bite, is like a withered tree and invites instant death for his release.

45. The soul quitting the body is called death, and this is unknown to the spiritually minded person who is quite indifferent about the entity and nonentity of the body.

46. Life is a blessing to him whose thoughts do not wander beyond the confines of himself, and also to the wise man who knows and investigates the true nature of things.

47. Life is also a blessing to he who is not given to his egotism, whose understanding is not darkened by untruth, and who preserves his evenness in all conditions of life.

48. His life is a blessing to he who has the inner satisfaction and coolness of his understanding, who is free from passions and hatred, who looks on the world as a mere witness, and who has his concern with nothing.

49. He is blessed in his life who has the knowledge of whatever is desirable or detestable to him and lives aloof from both with all his thoughts and feelings confined within himself.

50. His life is blessed who views all gross things in the light of nothing and whose heart and mind are absorbed in his silent and conscious soul.

51. Blessed is his life who having his sight represses it from viewing the affairs of the world, as if they are entirely unworthy of him.

52. His life is blessed who neither rejoices nor grieves at what is desirable or disadvantageous to him, but has his contentment in every state of life whether favorable or not.

53. He who is pure in his life and keeps company with pure minded men, who spreads the purity of his conduct all about and shuns the society of the impure, is as graceful to behold as the white swan with its snow white wings in the company of the fair fowls of the silvery lake.

54. Blessed is his life whose sight and memory and the mention of whose name give delight to all persons.

55. Know the life of that man, O lord of demons, to be truly happy whose lotus-like appearance is as delightful to the bee-like eyes of men as the sight of the full moon is delightful to the world.

✅
Chapter 5.40 — Vishnu Further Explains Living Liberation to Prahlada

1. The Lord continued:— Soundness of the body is what men call life, and quitting the present body for a future one is what they call death.

2. You are released from both these states, O high minded youth, and you have nothing to do with your life or death anymore.

3. I will tell you about the components of life and death. If you know this, you will not have to live or die like other living beings on earth.

4. Though situated in the body, yet you are as un-embodied as a disembodied spirit. Though embosomed in emptiness, yet are you as free and fleet as the wind because you are unattached to emptiness.

5. Your ability to perceive the touch of objects proves that you are an embodied being. Your soul is said to be the cause of that perception, as open air is said to be the cause of the growth of trees by putting no hindrance to their height. But neither is the soul the cause of perception nor is air the cause of trees’ growth.

6. To the monistic immaterialist, the perception of outward things is no proof of their materiality or of the corporeality of the soul that perceives, just as the sight of things in a dream is no proof of their substantiality.

7. All things are comprehended in yourself by the light of your consciousness. Your knowledge of the one in all comprehends everything in it. Then how can you have a body either to take as yourself or to reject it from you?

8. Whether the season of spring appears or not, or a hurricane happens to blow or subside, it is nothing to the pure soul which is clear of all connection whatever.

9. Whether the hills fall headlong to the ground, or the flames of destruction devour all things, or rapid gales rend the skies, it is no matter to the soul which rests secure in itself.

10. Whether creation exists or not, or whether all things perish or grow, it is nothing to the soul which exists of itself.

11. The Lord of this body does not waste by the waste of its frame, nor is he strengthened by strength of the body. He does not move by any bodily movement or sleep when the body and its senses are absorbed in sleep.

12. From where do you get this false thought in your mind that you belong to the body, that you are an embodied being, and that you come to take, retain and quit this mortal frame at different times?

13. Forsake the thought that you will do so and so after doing this and that. They who know the truth have given up such desires and vain expectations.

14. All waking and living persons have something to do in this world, and thereby they have to reap the results of their actions. But he who does nothing does not take the name of an active agent and has nothing to expect.

15. He who is not the agent of an action has nothing to do with its consequence, for he who does not sow the grains does not reap the harvest.

16. Ending of action and its fruition brings on a quiescence which, when it has become habitual and firm, receives the name of liberation.

17. All intellectual beings and enlightened men and those who lead pure and holy lives have all things under their comprehension. Therefore there is nothing left for them to learn anew or reject what they have learnt.

18. It is for limited understandings and limited powers of the body and mind to grasp or leave out some thing. But to men of unbounded capacities, there is nothing to be received or left out.

19. When a man is set at ease after he ceases having any relationship to being a possessor or possessing any external object, and when this sense of his not having any relationship becomes a permanent feeling in him, then he is said to be liberated in his lifetime.

20. Great men like you, being placed in this state of perpetual unconcern and rest, discharge their duties with as much ease as if sleeping.

21. When one’s desires are drowned in his reliance on God, he views the existing world shining in his spiritual light.

22. He takes no delight in the pleasing objects about him, nor does he regret others’ afflictions. All his pleasures are within his own soul.

23. With his wakeful mind, he meets all his affairs with his spiritual unconcern, like a mirror receiving the reflections of objects without being tainted by them.

24. In his waking he rests in himself, and in his sleep he reclines amidst the drowsy world. In his actions he turns about like frolicking children and his desires lie dormant in his soul.

25. O you, great soul, continue to enjoy your supreme bliss for the period of a kalpa by placing your mind’s reliance upon victorious Vishnu. Enjoy the prosperity of your dominions by exercising your virtues and good qualities.

✅
Chapter 5.41 — Installation of Prahlada in His Kingdom

1. Vasishta said:— After Vishnu, the receptacle of the three worlds and observer of everything that passes in them, had spoken in this way with his lucid speech, shedding the coolness of moonbeams,

2. Prahlada became full blown in his body. His eyes shone forth like blooming lotuses. Then he spoke out with full possession of his mental powers.

3. Prahlada said:— Lord! I was greatly tired from my very many state affairs, and from thinking about the welfare and sorrow of my people. Now I have found a little rest from my labor.

4. By your grace, my lord, I am settled in myself. Whether I am in my meditation or waking state, I enjoy the tranquility of my mind at all times.

5. I always see you with the clear vision of my mind seated in my heart. By my good luck, now I have you now in my presence outside of it.

6. All this time I have been sitting without any thought in me. I was mixed up in my mind’s internal vision of you like air in air.

7. I was not affected by grief or dullness, or infatuated by my zeal of asceticism or a wish to renounce my body.

8. The one All being present in the mind, there is no room for any grief at the loss of anything. No care for the world or caution of the body or life or any fear of any kind abides in His presence.

9. I had been situated in my holy, saint-like state simply by pure desire of holiness rising spontaneously within me.

10. Yes my Lord, I am disgusted with this world and long to resign its cares, together with all the mutations of joy and grief that alternately rise in the minds of the unenlightened.

11. Yet I do not think that our embodied state is subject to misery. I do not think that being freed from the bonds of the body is the cause of our release. Worldliness is a venomous snake in the bosom. It torments only the ignorant, not the sage.

12. It is the ignorant and not the learned whose minds fluctuate with the thoughts that this is pleasure and the other is pain, and that I have this and am in want of another.

13. The ignorant man thinks himself to be a person distinct from another. So all living beings are devoid of the knowledge of truth and entertain and exult in their egoistic thoughts.

14. The false idea that such things are acceptable to me and others are not so serves only to delude the ignorant, not the wise.

15. All things being contained and situated in my all-pervading spirit, how can we accept one and reject another thing, as distinct from and undesirable to the identical one?

16. The whole universe, whether real or unreal, is a manifestation of omniscience. We know not what is desirable or detestable in it to be accepted or rejected by us.

17. It is only by discrimination of the nature of the viewer and the view, and by reflecting on the Supreme Soul in one’s self, that the mind receives its rest and tranquility.

18. During my samadhi I was freed from the consciousness of my being or not being, and of whatever is desirable or detestable to anyone. I continue in the same state of my mind even after I am awakened.

19. This state being familiar to me, I see everything in the spirit within myself and I act according as it pleases you.

20. O lotus-eyed Vishnu, you are adored in all the three worlds! Therefore it benefits you to receive my adoration also, offered in the proper form. Vasishta speaking:—

21. Saying so, the lord of Danava demons presented a platter of presents before the god, like the lord of hills making offerings to the full moon.

22. First he worshipped Vishnu, together with his weapons and his vehicle Garuda. Then he adored the bands of the gods and apsara nymphs who accompanied him and the three worlds contained in him.

23. After he had done worshipping the lord of the worlds, with the worlds situated within and without him, the Lord of Lakshmi spoke to him saying,

24. “Rise, O lord of Danavas, and sit upon your throne and I shall perform your inauguration this very moment.”

25. Vishnu then blew his five-note conch shell summoning the five races of gods, spiritual masters, true disciples, men and Daitya demons to attend the ceremony.

26. After this the lotus-eyed god placed Prahlada on the throne which he deserved, causing him to sit like cloud rests on a mountain summit.

27. Then Vishnu caused him to make a sacred ablution with the waters that were presented before him from the milky and other oceans, and those of the Ganges and other holy rivers.

28. The assembly of brahmins and rishis and all groups of spiritual masters and vidyadharas, together with the rulers of the quarters (lokapalas) attended and assisted at the ceremony.

29. Then Vishnu, the immeasurable Spirit, anointed the great asura demon in the kingdom of the Daityas. The Maruta winds sang his praises, as they do the hymns of Vishnu in heaven.

30. Then blessed by the gods and praised by asuras, Prahlada greeted them all in turn and in the end was addressed by Vishnu, the slayer of Madhu.

31. The Lord said:— Rule here as sole monarch as long as Mount Meru stands on the earth and the sun and moon shine in the sky. Be filled with all praiseworthy virtues of your own.

32. Govern your kingdom without any interested motive of your own and without showing any symptom of anger or fear on your part. Preserve your moderation and a tolerant spirit in all your affairs.

33. May you never have any disquiet in this kingdom of excellent soil and plenteous provisions. Do not create any disturbance to the gods in heaven or to men on earth below.

34. Conduct yourself in your proper course at all events which may occur to you at anytime or place. Never allow yourself to be led astray by the sudden whims of your mind or the freaks of fancy.

35. Keep your spiritual being in mind and abandon your egoism and selfish views altogether. Then by managing your affairs in one even tenor, both in your want and prosperity, you will evade all the changing ways of fortune.

36. You have seen both the ways and dealings of this world, and measured also the immeasurable depth of spiritual knowledge. You know the state of everything in every place and require no one’s advice.

37. As you are now perfectly devoid of anger, passions and fears, there is no more any chance of further conflict between the gods and asuras under your rule over them in future.

38. No more will the tears of asura women wash the decorations on their faces, nor will the currents of rivers rise as high as lofty trees with floods of tears from their weeping eyes.

39. From this day on, the cessation of hostilities between the gods and demons will render the earth as quiet as the calm ocean after its churning by Mandara Mountain.

40. No more will the wives of gods and demigods be led away in captivity by one another. In the future they will rest fearless under the marital roofs of their husbands.

41. Now let your expectations rise from their dormancy in many long nights of dismal darkness. Be crowned with success and prosperity. O descendant of Danu, enjoy your unconquerable royal fortune, as in the company of your charming consort.

✅
Chapter 5.42 — God Realization in the Form One Worships God

1. Vasishta continued:— The lotus-eyed Vishnu, having said all this to Prahlada, left the abode of the asura with the whole concourse of assembled gods, kinnaras and men.

2. Prahlada and his associates threw handfuls of flowers on the departing god as he was mounted on the back of Garuda, the king of birds.

3. The god crossed the heavenly Ganges and reached the Milky Ocean, where he took his serpent couch like a black bee sitting on a lotus leaf.

4. The god Vishnu sat on his serpent seat with as much ease as Indra sits in heaven in the assembly of the gods, and as the lord of the demons was made to sit in the infernal region wholly devoid of all his cares.

5. Rama, now I have told you the whole story of Prahlada coming to his sense from the samadhi state of unconsciousness. This story is as charming to the holy listener as cooling moonbeams are refreshing to a tired traveler.

6. The man who ponders in his mind the manner of Prahlada awakening to life is regenerated in that blissful state from the sinfulness of his former condition.

7. A simple repetition of this story wipes off the sins of men. The deep consideration of its spiritual meaning leads one to his eternal salvation.

8. The ignorant are released from their ignorance, and the deep thinker is released from his sins. Therefore, do not neglect to ponder well on it for the remission of all your sins.

9. The man who considers well the manner of Prahlada attaining liberation gets a remission of all his sins committed in his repeated previous states of life.

10. Rama said, “Tell me sage, how did the sound of the five-note conch shell rouse the mind of devout Prahlada from its immersion in holy meditation?”

11. Vasishta replied:— Rama, know there are two states of liberation attending sinless persons. One is the emancipation in his embodied state in this life and the other is after his departure from here.

12. Embodied liberation means one continues in his living body, but with a state of mind freed from its attachment to worldly things and liberated from the desire of fruition and reward of all his meritorious acts.

13. Disembodied liberation is obtained after the soul is released from the body and is settled in the Supreme Spirit. It is freedom from the recurrence of future life and birth in this mortal world.

14. The living liberated man is like a fried grain whose germinating power is parched within itself and the desire of whose heart is purified from every expectation of future reward or regeneration.

15. He who resigns himself solely to the meditation of the great soul remains in the pure, holy and magnanimous state of his mind. He continues as if he were asleep in his living and waking states.

16. Being thus entranced in his inner meditation, he continues in a samadhi state for a thousand years and wakes again to his senses if he is allowed to live after that period.

17. Prahlada remained thus with his holy thoughts suppressed within himself until he was roused from his samadhi by the shrill sound of the conch shell.

18. Vishnu is the soul of all beings, and he who assimilates himself to that god in his thought becomes identified with the Supreme Soul, which is the cause of all.

19. No sooner the god thought that Prahlada should come to his sense than his sensation came immediately to him at the Divine Will.

20. The world has no other cause but the Divine Spirit which with the assistance of the causal elements takes different forms upon itself at the time of creation. Therefore it is the spirit of Vishnu that constitutes the world.

21. Worship of God (as Vishnu) in spirit presents Vishnu to the spiritual sight. Worship of Vishnu in his outward form represents the figure to the soul and the inner mind.

22. O Rama, put all visible sights out from your view and look at the innermost soul within yourself. When you are accustomed to such spiritual meditation, soon you will have the sight of your God.

23. The world presents a scene of gloomy rainy weather with showers of grief falling on all sides. It is likely to freeze us in ignorance unless we look to the sun of our reason.

24. By grace of God we can avoid the delusions of the world, just as we can escape a demon by means of a spell.

25. The thick darkness of the mind is dispersed and cleared off in time through the will of the spirit. The world is a network of delusion which is scattered like smoke by the breeze of reason.

✅
Chapter 5.43 — Worship of the Formless Versus the Forms of God

1. Rama said, “Sage, your knowledge of all truths and the light of your holy discourses have gratified me as much as cooling moonbeams gratify medicinal plants.

2. Your gentle and purifying words are as gratifying to my ears as beautiful and sweet flowers delight the external senses.

3. Sage, if the efforts of men, as you said, are the causes of their success, how did Prahlada attain enlightenment without his effort or attempt?”

4. Vasishta replied:— Yes Rama, it was by his courageous efforts that the high-minded Prahlada acquired his divine knowledge. There was no other cause.

5. The soul of man is the same as the spirit of Narayana. There is no difference between them, just as there is none between oil and sesame seed, or cloth and its whiteness, and as the flower and its fragrance are not distinct things.

6. Vishnu is the same as his spirit and the soul of man, and the human soul is the same with Vishnu. Vishnu and soul are synonymous terms, like plant and vegetable.

7. First Prahlada came to know the soul by himself. Afterwards, through his intellectual power he was led to his devotions to Vishnu, and he made many converts after his own example.

8. By his own efforts Prahlada obtained his grace and blessing from Vishnu. By the exercise of his own reasoning he came to the knowledge of the Eternal Mind.

9. Sometimes the soul is awakened of itself by one’s own intuition. At other times the soul is roused by the grace of the personal god Vishnu owing to one’s faith in his person.

10. And though this god may be pleased with a devotee’s prolonged service and devout worship, yet the god is unable to confer spiritual knowledge to one devoid of his reasoning faculty.

11. Hence the primary cause of spiritual light is a man’s intelligence, which is only gained by exertion of his mental powers. The secondary causes may be the blessing and grace of a god, but I wish that you prefer the former method for your salvation, your own intuition.

12. Therefore, first exert your personal efforts to keep the fivefold organs of sense under proper control. Regularly and diligently practice cultivating your understanding and the power of reasoning.

13. For know that whatever gain anyone makes at anytime is only due to his own efforts and not by any other means whatever.

14. Only by relying upon your personal powers can you surmount the insuperable barriers of your sensual desires. Then by crossing over the ocean of this world, you reach the other shore of supreme joy.

15. It requires no personal effort to see an idol of Vishnu, but the mere sight of the idol is not enough to save you, or else the birds and beasts would all be saved by looking at it.

16. If a spiritual guide had the power to save his foolish followers by his preaching, it would also be possible for the spiritual guides of camels and cattle to save their herds in their future lives.

17. It is only in the power of the mind to acquire anything good for one’s self. The favor of Vishnu or Shiva or the influence of money is not able to effect anything.

18. It is by constant practice accompanied by self-resignation and selfcontrol that one is able to effect anything. Whatever he is unable to do by these means is impossible for anyone in the three worlds.

19. Look to the spirit in the spirit and adore the spirit in your own soul. Behold the Supreme Soul in yourself, have the Universal Soul in your own soul, and thus remain with it.

20. Fools who flee from studying the scriptures or practicing self-devotion and reason have adopted the Vaishnava faith as a path leading to their better being.

21. Practice and diligence are said to be steps to self-enlightenment, and rites and ceremonies are represented as secondary courses resorted to when people are unable to practice the former!

22. The senses being unmanageable, what is the good of ceremonial observances? The senses being under control, it is useless to observe the ritual.

23. Without rationality and dispassion of his spirit, it is hard to have Vishnu. When there is cool and calm reasoning of the mind, it is as useless to have the idol of Vishnu as placing a lotus in the hand of the dead and liberated.

24. When you have the qualities of abstraction and composure in your mind, think you have everything in yourself. These being in your possession, you become an adept. Otherwise, you are an ass in a forest.

25. Men are eager to find favor in the sight of the gods, but they do not seek the favor of their hearts and minds.

26. Vishnu, the indwelling spirit of the body, is situated in the innermost soul of every individual. Only the ignorant fool forsakes the innermost Vishnu and seeks the outer form to lead him to the other.

27. The consciousness dwelling in the cavity of the heart is the true body of the everlasting spirit. The outward form of Vishnu, holding the conch shell, club, lotus and the discus, is only a false representation.

28. He who forsakes the real form to follow the fictitious one lets ambrosia pass from his hand in order to pursue some promised sweet delicacy.

29. He who is not settled in the charming scenery of his spiritual meditation lets his frantic mind rove at large after every object that presents itself before him.

30. He who does not have the abstract knowledge of the soul in himself is governed by his infatuated mind and worships the image bearing the conch, discus, club, and lotus in its hands as the supreme lord and god.

31. By practice of continued austerity and a prolonged worship of this deity, the devotee’s mind becomes purified in process of time and gets rid of its turbulent passions at last.

32. The daily practice of self-control and abstract meditation gives the mind purity and, like the mango fruit, the mind gets its accompanying virtues one by one.

33. The soul is said to obtain the virtues of peace, contentment and rest through the external adoration of Vishnu. This is why the practice of idol worship is prescribed in the scriptures.

34. He who obtains his blessing from the all powerful god gets it as a reward for the merit of his long practice, like the fruit of a tree.

35. Mental labor is the foundation of every improvement and of all lasting good in life, just as a well cultivated soil is the cause of a good harvest.

36. Even digging the ground and shaping a hill produces no good without application of the mind.

37. Men may undergo a thousand reincarnations and wander about the earth in various births and shapes, and yet they find no rest or composure of their minds.

38. They may worship Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva forever, and gain their favor also, and yet can have no salvation owing to the perturbed state of their minds.

39. Leave off worshipping the visible form of Vishnu, either internally or externally in your mind or before your sight. Put an end to your reincarnation by meditating only upon your consciousness.

40. Behold the unstained form of the one infinite God in your conscious self by forsaking whatever it is conscious of. Taste the sweet essence of the one real entity, and go over the ocean of repeated births in the mortal world.

✅
Chapter 5.44 — The Story of Gadhi: His Tapas, Vishnu’s Boon, and His Death

1. Vasishta said:— Rama, only government of the restless mind is able to destroy the delusion which causes the interminable reincarnations in this mortal world. There is no other means to this end.

2. Listen attentively, O sinless Rama, to this story which I am going to relate to you in order to show you the intricacies of understanding the nature of worldly delusions.

3. In this land there is the large district of Kosala which is full of forests and fruitful trees, like gardens of wish-fulfilling kalpa trees, and abounding with minerals like Sumeru Mountain.

4. There lived a learned brahmin named Gadhi who was intelligent and versed in the Vedas and an image of virtue.

5. From his youth he continued with the calmness of his mind, abstracted from and indifferent to worldly affairs. He was a pure and unstained soul like the clear sky above.

6. Intent on some fixed purpose of his mind, he left the company of his friends and went to a forest to perform austere tapas.

7. There he found a lake filled with full blown lotuses, the moon shining in the sky with scattered stars about her, all shedding their brightness like showers of rain.

8. He went down into the lake and stood in the waters up to his neck. His body was below water and his head floated over it like a lotus. He stood upon his tapas, intent with a view to have the sight of Vishnu present before him.

9. Thus he passed full eight months, his body immersed in the water of the lake. His face was shriveled and wan, like the lotuses of his lake for lack of sunshine.

10. When he was emaciated by his austerities, his god Vishnu appeared before him like a dark cloud of rainy weather appearing over the parched earth of the hot season.

11. The Lord said, “Rise O brahmin from the water and receive your desired blessing of me. The tree of your tapas vow is now flowering with its expected fruit.”

12. The brahmin replied, “I bow to you, O my lord Vishnu! You are the receptacle of the three worlds and the reservoir of innumerable starry worlds which rise like lotuses in the lake of your heart, whereon you sit like a black bee.

13. My Lord, I want to see the spiritual delusion which you have ordained to blindfold this world and which is known as Vishnu Maya.”

14. Vasishta said:— To this the god replied, “You shall truly behold this delusion, and get rid of it afterwards by virtue of your devotion in tapas.” Saying so, the god disappeared from his sight like a castle in the sky.

15. Vishnu being gone, the good brahmin got up from his watery bed like the fair and humid moon rises from the cool and white Milky Ocean.

16. He was glad in his soul at the sight of the lord of world. His heart was full blown with joy, like kumuda lotuses unfolding at the sight of the moon.

17. Then he passed some days in that forest, overjoyed in his mind by the sight of Vishnu, and employed himself in discharging his brahmin duties.

18. Once when he had been bathing in the lake covered with full-blown lotuses, he thought upon the words of Vishnu, like great sages reflecting upon the meanings of the Vedas.

19. Then, while discharging his priestly functions in the sacred water, he made his mental prayer to purge his sins.

20. As he was performing this act in the water, he chanced to forget his sacred prayers, became confused, and was drowned in deep water.

21. He thought that his body had fallen down like a mountain tree in the valley below by a blast of wind, and that his dead corpse was taken up and mourned over by his friends.

22. He thought that his vital breath had fled from his being and the limbs of his body were as motionless as sugar cane flattened by a hurricane.

23. He thought his face had faded away and grown as pale as the withered leaf of a tree, and that his body had turned to a carcass and was lying on the ground like a lotus bud torn from its stalk.

24. His eyeballs were as dull and dim as the stars are shorn of their beams with the morning. The ground seemed to be as dry to him, filled with flying dust everywhere, as if there was a drought.

25. He believed his dead body was beset all about by his kind friends, weeping upon it with sad and sorrowful faces, loudly lamenting and crying over it like birds upon trees.

26. He thought his faithful wife was sitting at his feet like a handsome lotus flower, weeping profusely with showers of tears from her lotus-like eyes like waters rushing through a broken embankment.

27. His sorrowing mother, with her loud wailing and mournful crying, was buzzing like a humming bee and holding her chin, newly overgrown with whiskers, in her tender hand.

28. His friends were sitting by his side with dejected looks, trickling tears dropping down their faces and cheeks. These washed his dead body like melting dew on withered leaves moisten the parent tree.

29. His body members ceased to befriend him, like strangers who decline to become friends for fear of future separation, or turning unfriendly ever afterwards in life.

30. The open lips leaving the teeth bare seemed to deride the vanity of human life, as the white and bony toothed ascetics and cynics do at unsteadiness of worldly events.

31. His mouth was speechless, like that of a devotee in meditation. His body was motionless, as if made of mud and clay. It slept to wake no more, like a sage absorbed in his meditation.

32. It remained quiet with lifted ears, as if to listen to the cries and wailings of the mourning friends in order to judge the degrees of their affection and grief for him.

33. Then the relatives raised their loud lamentations with sobbing and beating of breasts, swooning and rising and shedding floods of tears from their leaky eyes.

34. Afterwards the sorrowful relations removed the disgusting corpse with their bitter cries for its funeral, to never see it again in this passing world.

35. They bore the body to the funeral ground with its rotten flesh and entrails, daubed all over with mud and dust. They placed it on the ground strewn with unnumbered bones, skeletons, and dried and rotten carcasses.

36. Flights of flying vultures shaded the sunbeams on high and burning funeral pyres drove away the darkness below. The fearful glare of open mouthed jackals flashed on all sides like flames of living fire.

37. Ravens bathed in floods of blood and crows dipped their wings in it. Hungry birds tore at entrails and old vultures were trapped in the strings.

38. The friends of the dead burnt the corpse in the funeral flame and reduced it to ashes. The moisture of the body flew in fumes like the waters of the ocean evaporate from an undersea fire.

39. The burning wood of the funeral pyre consumed the dead body with load cracking noises. The dry fuel of the pile flashed in encompassing flames with curling smoke over them.

40. The devouring fire gnawed down the bones with crackling noise and filled the atmosphere with filthy stink and stench. It gorged up all that was soft or hard, like an elephant devouring reeds with the moisture contained in their cellular vessels.

✅
Chapter 5.45 — Gadhi Reborn as a Tribal, then Made Gavala, King of Kirapura

1. Vasishta said:— Then Gadhi, standing as he was in the water with his sorrowful heart, saw many other occurrences in the clarity of his mind.

2. He saw a village in the vicinity of Bhuta district full of inhabitants, and that he was reborn there in the womb of a tribal woman, in which he remained with great pain.

3. Confined in the cavity of the womb, he felt his body pressed by the pressure of her intestines while his senses were sorely annoyed by being forced to abide the stink of the ordure and filth in the intestinal parts of the tribal woman.

4. After the fetus matured, he was born in proper time with a black complexion like a dark cloud in rainy season and soiled with filth all over his body.

5. He grew up to childhood and then to boyhood in the tribal woman’s house, and moved about here and there like a pebble thrown up by a current of the Yamuna River.

6. He reached his twelfth, then his sixteenth year of age, and his body fully developed like a rain cloud increasing in size.

7. Then accompanied by a pack of hounds, the lad wandered from one forest to another, hunting and killing wild deer in his occupation of a hunter.

8. He was joined then with a tribal wife, as black as the leaf of a tamala plant and who with her budding breasts, swarthy hands and palms, resembled the newly sprouting stalks and leaves of trees.

9. She was black and swarthy in her whole complexion, except her two rows of milk-white teeth. All of her limbs were as lively and supple as the tender vines of the forest.

10. They played together at the edge of the forest in their youthful dalliance, and they wandered about the flowery meadows like a couple of black bees.

11. When tired they took their seats on beds of leaves and vines spread over the plains by driving winds, like those scattered over the environs of Vindhya Hills.

12. They rested in woodland gardens and slept in mountain caves. They sat on heaps of leaflets and lived under shrubberies and covered shelters of creeping plants.

13. They decorated their heads with kinkirata flowers and their necks and bosoms with blossoms of various kinds. They hung ketaka flowers from their ears and made necklaces of small amra flowers.

14. They rolled on beds of flowers and roved about the foot of the mountain. They knew all the trees where to play, and they were skilled in archery and hunting deer.

15. In the hilly region they produced many children as the descendants of their race. They were as rude and rough as the prickly thorns of the khadira plant.

16. After passing their youth in family life, they came gradually to their decay and decline until at last they were overtaken by decrepit old age, which was as dry of pleasure as a parched desert.

17. Then returning to their native village in Bhuta district, they built a poor hut of leaves and straws for themselves and lived there as hermits.

18. Gadhi (known as Katanja, the tribal) found his body worn out with age, grown as thin and lean as a dry leaf, and like a withered tamara tree growing in a mountain cave which, for lack of moisture, soon dwindles into decrepitude.

19. He saw his family of savages increasing in numbers and himself becoming reduced in means and irritated in speech in his extreme old age.

20. Gadhi found himself to be the oldest man alive among the savages. In his dotage, his comfort was in the members of his family,

21. but at last he saw all his family swept away by the cruel hand of death, as rainwater carries away fallen leaves of the forest.

22. He continued to lament over their loss, his heart rent with sorrow and his eyes drenched in tears, like those of a male deer separated from its companions.

23. Thus passing some days in that forest with his heart overcome with grief, at last he left the land of his birth, as aquatic fowls quit their native lake when its waters and the lotus plants are dried up.

24. He travelled through many countries with his sad and sick heart without finding a place to rest. He was driven to and fro, like a cloud carried by contrary winds.

25. At one time he entered the opulent city of Kira. He observed birds flying over it, like so many balloons hanging in the air.

26. There he saw rows of trees on both sides of the road, waving their variegated leaves and clusters of flowers like enameled cloths and gems. The road was strewn with beautiful flowers of various kinds up to the heels.

27. Then he came to the royal road that looked like the milky path of heaven. He found it filled with soldiers and citizens and their women without number.

28. There he saw the auspicious royal elephant decorated with shining and embroidered trappings, appearing like the golden mountain of the gods moving on the earth.

29. He learned that the elephant was rambling about in search of a new king to be elected in place of the last king who had recently died. The royal elephant was employed as a jeweler to select the best gem to be placed on the royal throne.

30. The savage gazed steadily at the elephant with a curious eye and found it to be no other than a hill in motion.

31. As he was looking on it with amazement, the elephant came to him and lifted him with his trunk and respectfully set him on his head, bearing him as Mount Meru bears the sun on its top.

32. Seeing him sitting on the animal’s head, the people sounded their trumpets. The noise was as loud as that of the ocean crashing to the roaring of the antediluvian clouds in the sky.

33. Then shouts of “Victory to the king!” rose from the assembled throng and filled the air. It seemed as if they were the united cries of morning birds all over the waking world.

34. Next rose the loud voices of eulogists that moved in the air like the dashing waves of the sea.

35. Then women joined to anoint him as their king, moving about him like waves of the sea surrounding Mandara Mountain after its labor of churning.

36. The respectable ladies adorned him with many ornaments of various gems, like the sea washes rocks on its shore with the many colored waves under the beams of the rising sun.

37. Youthful maidens poured cooling ointments on him, like rain clouds pour their waters on mountain tops.

38. Other women used their tender hands to decorate his body with garlands of fragrant flowers, just as spring season with her hands adorns the forest with a variety of tender stalks, branches and flowers.

39. They put a great many paints and pastes upon his body, which decorated it like the rays of the sun paint a mountain with the many colors of its minerals.

40. His body decorated with ornaments made of gems and gold attracted all hearts to him, just as the variegated clouds of evening shining upon Mount Meru is attractive to all hearts.

41. He was adorned by beautiful maids with shoots of creeping plants which gave him the appearance of the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree entwined by its vines.

42. Being thus anointed and decorated, all the royal family and subjects attended upon him like travelers resting under a shady and flowering tree.

43. They all assembled and installed him on the throne, just as the gods join together to place Indra on the throne after he is borne on the back of his elephant Airavata.

44. In this manner, the tribal was made a king in the city of Kira. He was much overjoyed at his unexpected good fortune, like a raven delighted to find a stout dead deer in the forest.

45. His feet were rubbed by the lotus-like hands of the Queen of Kira. His body daubed with scented powder of frankincense which gave it the bright appearance of evening with its crimson clouds.

46. He paraded in Kira city in the midst of their women like a lion strutting in the company of lionesses in a flowery forest.

47. Now he forgot his former pains and sorrows. His body was much cooled by wearing a necklace of pearls, as if dropped from the heads of elephants killed by lions. He took great delight at the enjoyment of the luxuries in company with these good people, like a sunburned elephant is refreshed in a lake full of water and forage.

48. He ruled for sometime in his self-gotten kingdom of Kirapura, having extended his power and mandates on all sides. He ruled the state through his ministers and became known by the name of Gavala throughout his dominions.

✅
Chapter 5.46 — Gadhi’s Loss of his Visionary Kingdom

1. Vasishta continued:— Thus was Gadhi surrounded by his courtiers and attended by his ministers. Chiefs paid their homage to him and the royal umbrella was raised above his head and the fan flapped about him.

2. He attained great dignity on seeing his mandates carried out on every side. He was delighted to learn of state affairs and to be informed that his subjects were happy and lived within his dominion without fear.

3. The paeans of the eulogists made him forget himself and his former state. The excesses of his delight made him as giddy as if intoxicated.

4. He ruled for full eight years over Kirapura kingdom and managed himself in an honorable manner throughout that time.

5. Once he was sitting in the open air at his pleasure and without his royal clothing. He was looking at the clear sky devoid of clouds and darkness and without the light of the sun, moon or stars.

6. His heart was full with the enjoyment of royal dignity, but he did not think much of the trinkets and ornaments that were loaded upon him.

7. One time he went abroad in this undressed state of his body and saw the setting sun bending his course below the horizon on his usual path of glory.

8. There he saw a band of tribals with black complexions and big bodies singing like melodious cuckoos at the approach of spring season.

9. They were plucking the strings of their lyres with trembling fingers, like a swarm of sweet sounding bees shaking the trembling leaves of trees with their fluttering and buzzing.

10. There stood an old man among them who seemed to be the leader of the band. With his grey head and ruby eyes, he appeared like Mount Meru with its snow covered top and shining caves.

11. He approached the king saying, “How is it, O Katanja, that you came to be here? Has the king of this place taken you for his associate on account of your skill in music?

12. Does he have a liking for sweet songsters, as they do for the musical kokila nightingales? Does he load his favors upon them with presents of household cloths and seats?”

13. “I am as glad to see you here today as men are pleased to see a mango tree filled with flowers and fruit in spring.

14. I am as glad in my heart as the budding lotus at the sight of the rising sun, and the medicinal plants at moonrise. As great men are pleased with all their best gains, so am I pleased at seeing you here because the highest limit of joys is the sight of a friend.”

15. As the tribal was addressing the king in this manner, the king explained how the wheel of time had turned to his favor.

16. At this instant the king’s consorts and servants who were standing at the window overheard their conversation. They were in deep sorrow to learn that he was a tribal by birth.

17. They were as sick at heart as lotus flowers under a shower of frost or a land under famine. Upon learning this, citizens were as cheerless as if they had seen the woods of the mountain on fire.

18. The king hurled his defiance at the words of the old tribal, like a lion lying on the ground shows his teeth at the sneering of a cat on the top of a tree.

19. He fled in haste to the inner apartment among its sorrowful residents with as much throbbing of his heart as a reluctant swan entering a lake of withering lotuses in dry season.

20. His limbs grew stiff and his face became pale with fear. His knees tottered with inner rage like tree trunks shaking with burning fire in their hollows.

21. He saw everyone there sitting in a melancholy mood with downcast looks and drooping heads, like the bending tops of plants eaten at the root by mice and rats.

22. The ministers, ladies of the harem, and all people of the city refrained from touching his body, just as they avoid touching a dead body lying in the house.

23. Servants ceased to minister to him and ladies, despite all their previous love and sorrow for him, loathed his company.

24. They looked upon his cheerless face and dark complexion with its departed brightness as if it was a corpse in a funeral ground which every one loathes to look upon.

25. Though the people sorrowed for his dark body, now smoking with fumes of his own grief, yet they dared not approach his body, which appeared to burn like a volcano amidst its smoke.

26. Courtiers left him with their hearts heaving. His orders were no longer obeyed any more than those of quenching the cool ashes with water.

27. People fled from him like from a horrible rakshasa demon who is the cause of only evil and danger.

28. Thus was he shunned by all and left alone in the populous city. He became like friendless traveler passing through a foreign country, without money or skill to support him.

29. Though he called and approached everybody, he got no answer from anyone, like a hollow sounding reed never receives a reply from any passerby.

30. They all said to one another that the guilt of their long association with the tribal could not be expiated by any penance other than burning themselves alive on the funeral pile.

31. Being so resolved, ministers and citizens all joined together and raised piles with heaps of dry wood.

32. These being lit, blazed all about the ground like stars in the sky. The city was filled with loud wailings of people.

33. Wailing wives shed showers of tears with loud and piteous cries. All about the burning furnaces, weeping people heaved heavy groans with choked voices.

34. The plaintive cries of the selfimmolating ministers’ dependents rose like the swell of whistling winds amidst forest trees.

35. The bodies of great brahmins burning on the pyres sent forth their fatted fumes in the air. The smoke scattered by winds hung over the landscape like a portentous mist.

36. The winds bore the stench of men’s burning fat and flesh far and wide in the open sky, inviting flocks of birds to the feast. The disc of the sun was hidden under the wide shadow of the winged tribe.

37. The flames of burning pyres, carried by the winds to the sky, burned like a conflagration on high. Flying sparks scattered in the air appeared like falling meteors blazing in the horizon.

38. Helpless children were crying for their ornaments being robbed by atrocious robbers. They had no guardians. Citizens were threatened with the loss of both their lives and properties by violent thieves.

39. On one side people lamented the loss of their relatives. On the other were bands of thieves, lurking and searching unobserved about houses for plunder and booty.

40. As adverse fate brought on this dire change on the devoted city, its horrified residents remained in mute amazement, like on the final doomsday of creation.

41. Gavala, the tribal prince whose mind was purified and whose manners were refined in the society of the great men of the palace, witnessed the sad catastrophe of the state and mourned with a pensive heart.

42. “It is all owing to me,” he thought, “that all this sorrow has befallen on this state, and that time has brought on the untimely dissolution of doomsday on this kingdom, the royal family, and its ministerial officers.

43. What is the good of this miserable life of mine? My death is a blessing to me rather than living in this wretched state. It is better for the mean and base to die than to live and be reviled by others.”

44. Thus resolved, Gavala prepared a funeral pyre for himself and made an offering of his body in the burning furnace without betraying a sigh, like a poor moth dropping on fire.

45. As Gavala cast his body into the flames and was pulling his limbs singed by the fire, their violent motion and his painful emotion roused the dreaming Gadhi from his reverie in the water.

46. Valmiki said:— As the sage was saying these things, the day departed with the setting sun to its evening devotion. The congregation broke with mutual salutations to perform of their evening ceremonial baths. They assembled again with the rising sun after dispersion of the gloom of night.

✅
Chapter 5.47 — A Traveler and a Journey Verify Gadhi’s Dream

1. Vasishta resumed:— Soon Gadhi was relieved from the disturbances of his mind at the delusions of the world. He was set to rest from his perturbed state, like the disturbed sea after its waves subside.

2. His mind, freed from its painful thoughts, regained its repose after the troublesome dream passed away. He resumed his calmness, like the god Brahma having his rest after the labor of his creation was over at the end of a kalpa.

3. He slowly regained his senses, like a man waking from sleep and like one gains sobriety after passing off his inebriation.

4. Then he thought to himself, “I am the same Gadhi doing the same thing I was doing (my sacred bath in the water). All that I have been seeing for so long is nothing. This I see as clearly as men see things after the shade of night is dispersed.”

5. Remembering what he was, he lifted his feet from the water like a lotus bud lifting its head above water in spring after the frost is over.

6. He thought again, “This is the same water, sky and earth (where I stood before). But what I was just seeing is quite astonishing to me.

7. What am I and what do I see now? What was I and what have I been doing all this time?” He remained a long time with these thoughts, knitted brows and staring eyes.

8. “It was my weakness,” he thought, “that showed me this delusion.” Knowing it for certain, he came out of the water like the rising sun appearing above the horizon.

9. Then rising on the bank, he thought, “Ah! Where is my mother and wife who attended on me at the moment of my death?

10. Or were my parents dead in the ignorant state of my boyhood, like the parent plant of a young shoot cut off by the sword of death?

11. I am not married and I do not know the form of a wife. I am as ignorant of married love as a brahmin is stranger to the destructive taste of forbidden liquor.

12. I am too far from my country and know no friend or relative to whom I can return to die.

13. Therefore all these scenes that I have seen are no more than the forms of a fairyland pictured in my fancy.

14. Be it as it may, all this is only delusion and dream. We are living dead among our friends. It is all magic and delusion, and nothing is true or real here.

15. Our minds are like wild beasts roaming furiously in the forest of errors which presents endless scenes of delusion to living beings.”

16. Reflecting on these delusions in his mind, Gadhi passed some days at his own house in the woods.

17. Then once he happened to entertain a brahmin as a guest at his house. He had stayed there to take rest from his travels.

18. The visitor was highly gratified feasting upon fruit and flower syrups. He was as refreshed supplied with water as a tree supplied by a plentiful spring that in time shoots forth with foliage and fruit.

19. Then they performed their evening service and turned their beads. Afterwards they took to their beds made of tender leaves and grass.

20. There they began to talk on divine subjects with which they were conversant. Words fell from lips like the sweets of spring season.

21. In the course of their conversation, Gadhi asked his guest, “Why is it sage, that you are so thin and lean and appear to lie so very weary?”

22. The guest replied, “Sage, hear me explain the cause of both my leanness and weariness. I will tell you the true facts, not like a travelling teller of tales, deals and lies.”

23. “In this land, in the forest tracts of the north, there is the great kingdom of Kirapura which is renowned for its riches.

24. I lived in the city there and was honored by its inhabitants. My soul and mind were mightily pleased with the variety of dainty foods that I used to get there.

25. There someone told me by way of gossip that a tribal had once been the king of that country for eight years.

26. I asked the village people whether this report was true, and they all told me with one voice that a tribal had really ruled there for full eight years.

27. But at last, being discovered as such, he immolated himself on a burning pyre, which was followed by the self-immolation of hundreds of brahmins on their funeral pyres.

28. “Hearing this news from their mouths, I departed from that district, intending, O brahmin, to do penance by making a pilgrimage to Prayaga [because the brahmin had polluted himself staying and eating in a city once ruled by a tribal].

29. I made my chandrayana fast for three days and nights and broke my fast only today. This is why I have become so thin and lean as you now find me.”

30. Vasishta said:— On hearing this, Gadhi asked a hundred questions of his guest about the matter, to which all his guest’s answers verified what had happened.

31. Gadhi was quite surprised at this story and passed the night till sunrise with his heart throbbing.

32. Waking in the morning, he made his sacred bath and discharged his morning prayers. Then he took leave of his guest and began to reflect with bewildered understanding.

33. He said to himself, “What I saw in my delusion is ratified as a fact by my brahmin guest. I am puzzled to think whether this is magic or a fascination of the conjurer Sambara.

34. What I saw about my death among my relatives was undoubtedly a delusion of my mind. But the latter part of my vision (of becoming a tribal) is verified by the brahmin’s observance of the chandrayana penance for having entered the tribal’s city.

35. Therefore I must fully learn the details about this tribal and proceed immediately to the land of Bhuta district with an undaunted mind.”

36. Thus determined, Gadhi arose to visit the distant district, just as the sun rises over the horizon to visit all sides of Mount Sumeru.

37. He travelled onward and at last reached sight of the country he had seen in his dream, like intelligent wayfaring men reach their desired destinations in distant regions.

38. Finding everything, however unattainable it may first appear, to be attained by perseverance, Gadhi resolved to test of the truth of his delusive dream.

39. He left his home with the swiftness of a stream flooded in rainy weather and traversed many unknown countries, like a cloud passing over distant kingdoms on the back of its airy steed.

40. At last he came to the country of the Bhutas, a people following their own debased customs. He thought he was among a savage people, like a camel searching for thorny thistles is confounded to find it has fallen in a karanja forest.

41. There he saw a city like he had seen in his delusion. In every respect it resembled a place where the gandharva race lived.

42. Proceeding onward, he saw on the other side the land of the tribals which resembled the hell pit of the underworld.

43. It was as spacious as the place he had seen in his vision. He saw his own likeness in the dream appearing in the figures of the tribals, just as one sees the shape of a gandharva or ghost in his dream or delirium.

44. In that dwelling place of tribals he saw with grief and coldness of his mind what he had seen before in his delusion.

45. He saw his own hut flooded by rainwater and overgrown with sprouts of barley and brambles. His hut was left roofless and his bedstead was almost indiscernible.

46. His hut presented the picture of poverty and wretchedness. Its compound was a scene of ruin and desolation.

47. Gadhi stood long gazing upon the dry white bones of bulls, cows, buffaloes and horses that lay strewn over the ground around his hut. He remembered they were the remains of the beasts of his prey and slaughter.

48. He saw the dry hollow skulls lying on the ground which had served as his eating and drinking vessels and which still lay unmoved on the spot, filled with rainwater.

49. He saw strings of dried entrails from the beasts he had slaughtered lying like parched plants on the ground and pining with thirst for rainwater.

50. Gadhi, who was conscious of himself as the brahmin, looked long at his former house and its environs, resembling the dry and dilapidated skeleton of a human body lying unburied on open ground.

51. He stood amazed at what he saw, then withdrew to an adjacent village, as when a traveler returns to the land of the Aryans after a journey in the land of barbarians.

52. There he asked a person, “Sage, do you remember anything concerning the former state of that village and the lives of its tribal inhabitants?

53. I have heard all good people say that knowledgeable men are familiar with the history of all places which they know like the backs of their hands.

54. If you know anything about a good old tribal that lived in that village, and if you remember his adventures, as every one does the past accidents of his own life,

55. and if you are acquainted with the details, then please relate them to me. For it is said there is great merit in directing a stranger and in dispelling the doubts of one hanging in suspense.”

56. The brahmin who was a stranger asked such questions of the village people one by one. They were as surprised at his odd questions as physicians are at a patient’s strange complaints.

57. The villagers said, “It is an undeniable truth, O brahmin, as you say, that a tribal of hideous shape named Katanja lived at that place.

58. He was burdened by a large family consisting of his sons, grandsons, friends and servants. He also had other relatives and kinsmen. His children were as many as fruit on a mango tree.

59. But cruel fate snatched all his family in course of time, like a fire burning down a mountain forest with all its fruits and flowers.”

60. “Then he left his native land and went to the city of Kira where he became king and reigned there for eight years.

61. Afterwards, the citizens came to know of his mean origin and drove him away, just as they remove a harmful and poisonous tree from a garden.

62. He, seeing others immolating themselves on funeral pyres, entered a burning pyre which he had prepared for himself, and thus was purified with others by the sacred fire Pavaka.”

63. “But tell us, O brahmin, why you are so curious about the tribal? Was he a friend of yours?”

64. Being approached in this manner, Gadhi made many more inquiries concerning the tribal, and passed a whole month in several of their houses asking questions.

65. He told the village people everything that he knew of the tribal in his dream, and they listened to him attentively relating the whole story from first to last.

66. Gadhi being informed of all the particulars regarding the tribal, both from the hearsay of the people as well as from his personal observations, returned home equally ashamed and astonished with the disgraceful memory of his past vileness, which was stamped like the black spot of the moon upon the tablet of his mind.

✅
Chapter 5.48 — Gadhi Verifies His Dream Again; Vishnu Explains the Wonderful Power of Illusion

1. Vasishta continued:— Gadhi was bewildered with all that he heard and saw about the tribal and his home. He felt uneasy and wanted to learn more.

2. He went back to the village and saw the huts that lay scattered upon the plain, as when the lotus-born Brahma looks over the ruins made by the great deluge at the end of a kalpa age.

3. He thought to himself, “Those bones lying scattered about the ruined huts in this forest look like little pisacha ghosts gathered round the trees standing on a burial ground.

4. These posts and pegs of elephant’s tusks fastened on the walls of ruined houses look like the crags of Mount Meru drowned under the waters of the kalpa deluge.

5. Here the tribal feasted on monkey flesh dressed with young bamboo sprouts. There he caroused with his country grog in company with his drunken friends.

6. Here he slept on his bed of lion’s skin in the embrace of his murky spouse, drunk with liquor mixed with ichor fluid from elephant noses.

7. There a pack of hounds used to be tied to the trunk of the withered bharaeda tree, fed with the rotten flesh of putrid carcasses.

8. Here I see three earthen vessels covered with buffalo hide resembling fragments of dark clouds and which had once contained precious pearls falling from the sculls of slain elephants.”

9. “I see the place I saw in my dream where tribal children played in the dust with as much glee and gaiety as cuckoos flitting on the tufts of mango leaves.

10. I see the place I saw in my vision where children sang to the tune of their bamboo pipes, drank the milk of bitches, and decorated themselves with flowers from funeral grounds.

11. Here the families of wedding parties met to celebrate their marriage festivity, dancing and singing as loudly as the noise of the dashing waves of the sea.

12. There I find bamboo cages, still suspended high, which used to be laid to catch flying birds for food.

13. Vasishta resumed:— Thus Gadhi remained for a long time in that place, seeing all what he remembered to have seen in his dream. He was lost in wonder to think on the miraculous disclosure of these things in his dream.

14. Then he left and for a long time travelled through many countries beyond the boundaries of Bhuta district.

15. He passed over many rivers and rocks and through many deserts and forests until he reached the snowy mountain and the lands of humankind beyond its borders.

16. He arrived at Kira, the city of a great monarch, its towers rising like hills upon the earth. There he stopped after his long journey, like when sage Narada rests in his heavenly dome after the fatigue of travelling through numerous worlds.

17. In that city he saw all the places that matched the romantic thoughts in his mind, the ones he had seen and enjoyed in his dream. He respectfully asked some residents,

18. “Good sirs, do you remember anything about the tribal king who reigned here for sometime? If you do, please tell me in its proper order.”

19. The locals replied, “Yes, O brahmin. There reigned here a tribal king for full eight years. He was elected to its government by kingdom’s auspicious elephant.

20. In the end, he was discovered to be of so vile a race that he committed self-immolation on a funeral pyre. It has been a dozen years since that dire event took place.”

21. In this way the inquisitive Gadhi continued asking questions of every man he met, and was satisfied to learn the same information from the mouths of everybody there.

22. Then he saw the king of that city in procession with his body guards and vehicles on their way going out of the city. Gadhi recognized them as none other than the god Vishnu and his attendants, just as he had seen in his tapas.

23. He saw the sky shadowed by the cloud of dust raised by the feet of the passing procession, then he remembered with sadness the similar state of his pomp under his own past reign.

24. He thought to himself, “Here are the same Kira ladies with their rosy skins resembling lotus petals, and those with their bodies blazing as liquid gold, their blue eyes trembling like blue lotuses.

25. The waving of fans flash with the light of bright moonbeams and resembles the falling waters of a cascade and clusters of kasa flowers.

26. Beautiful maidens waving snow-white fans in their beautiful hands resemble forest plants with pearly flowers on their branches.

27. Rows of furious elephants standing on both sides of the field are like thick lines of kalpa trees growing on ridges of Sumeru Mountain.”

28. “These chieftains resemble the gods Yama, Kubera and Varuna, the lord of waters. They are like the rulers of the different quarters of the sky accompanying Indra, the lord of heaven.

29. These long lines of good buildings, each full with a great variety of things and abounding in all sorts of comforts, resemble a grove of wish-fulfilling kalpa trees conferring all the objects of desire.

30. In this royal city of Kira, and in the manners of its assembled people, I see exactly the same customs and usages as those of the kingdom of Kirapura in my past life.”

31. “Truly this is only a vision in my dream which appears as a reality in my waking state. I cannot understand why this delusive magic show is spread out before me.

32. O yes, I am as fast bound by my ignorance and captivated by my memories like a captive bird in a net that has lost all power over itself.

33. O fie. My silly mind is so deluded by its desires that it is always mistakes shadow for substance, or people dwelling in their castles in the air.”

34. “This is extraordinary magic. I believe Vishnu, the holder of the discus, is showing me this. I remember I asked him for the favor of showing delusion (maya) to me.

35. Now I will undertake austere tapas in the cavern of a hill in order to learn the origin and existence of delusion.”

36. Having long thought in this manner, Gadhi left the city and came to a cave in a mountain where he rested after all his travels and mental exertions, like a lion tired with his roaming for food.

37. He remained there for a whole year, living only on water from waterfalls collected in the hollow of his palm. He devoted himself to the worship of Vishnu, the holder of the bow named Saringi.

38. Then the lotus-eyed god appeared to him in his pale blue form, which was clear and graceful to sight as a clear lake in autumn with blue lotuses in full bloom.

39. With this form, the god approached the hermit’s cell in the mountain and stood over it like a transparent, watery cloud rests on humid atmosphere.

40. The lord spoke to him saying, “Gadhi, you have fully seen the great spell of my magic and know the network of delusion which destiny spreads over all the affairs of this world.

41. Now you well understand the nature of delusion, which in your heart you did desire to know. What is it again that you want to know through these austerities in this mountain cave?”

42. Vasishta said:— Gadhi the best of brahmins, seeing Vishnu addressing him in this manner, honored him duly by scattering plentiful flowers at his divine feet.

43. After Gadhi had made his offering of flowers, with due obeisance and circumambulating the god, he addressed the god with words as sweet as the notes of a chataka cuckoo to a blooming lotus.

44. Gadhi said, “Lord! I have seen the dark delusion that you showed me in her form of gloom. Now I pray that you show her to me in her fair form, like the sun appearing after the gloom of night.

45. The mind weakened by the dirt of its desires sees a great many errors rising before it like false phantoms and visions in a dream. But my Lord, how is it that the same visions continue to be seen in the waking state?

46. When I stood in the waters I experienced a false dream that I thought lasted only a moment. How was it, O enlightener of the mind, that it became manifest to my outward sense and sight?

47. Why wasn’t the delusion of my birth and death as a tribal, which took place long ago, confined only to my memory like other idle creations of the brain? How could I have recently verified my delusions as tangible to my naked eyes by many visible signs?”

48. The Lord replied:— Gadhi, it is the nature of delirium, like one’s desires, to present many false appearances to view and to make one believe what he has never seen before to be present to his external sight, which in reality is only a vision of his mind.

49. There is nothing like the earth, sea, hills or sky on the outside of anybody. They are all contained in the mind like the fruit, flowers and leaves of trees are born in the seed and grow from its germ.

50. Like fruit and flowers growing out of the seed and its sprout, this earth and all other things are the productions of the mind alone. They are not distinct from it in their essences.

51. Know for certain that this earth and all other things are situated in the mind and not outside of it, just as fruit, flowers and leaves are all contained inside the seed and not outside.

52. The sight of things present and the thoughts of the absent past and unseen future are all only acts of the mind, just as the making and unmaking of pots are the doings of the potter.

53. Whatever notions exist in the minds of men from their youth to old age are the same as the phantoms of their dreams or the deliriums of their intoxication or some mental disease.

54. The established desires of the mind present a thousand appearances before its sight, just as the rooted plants on earth abound with fruit and flowers of various kinds.

55. But when plants are uprooted, there remains no trace of fruit or flower or leaf upon the ground. So desires having being driven out of the mind, there is no more any trace of anything left behind, nor is there any probability of future reincarnations when the memory of the past is utterly obliterated from the soul.

56. It is no wonder for the shifting stage of the mind to present you with a single scene of the tribal. It has in store and can with equal ease show you an infinity of appearances at its pleasure.

57. The impression in your mind made you think of yourself as the tribal, in the manner that many phantoms arise before the mind in the delirium of a sick person.

58. The same frenzy made you see the arrival of your brahmin guest and entertain him with board and bed. All your conversations with him were only the fantasies of your mind.

59. Then the thoughts of leaving home and arriving at Bhuta district, your sight of the Bhutas and their villages and homes, were only aberrations of your mind.

60. Next your sight of the ruins of the former huts of Katanja and the descriptions of the tribal that you got from the mouths of the people were all the fumes of your fancy.

61. Afterwards, your visit to the city of Kira and the tale told you of the tribal’s rule by the people were the reflections of your own mind.

62. Thus all that you heard and saw was the network of your imagination. What you believe as true is as false as a fantasy in your brain.

63. The mind infatuated by its hopes and desires sees everything before it, no matter how distant it may be. One dreams of objects as present before him which would take a whole year for him to reach.

64. There was no guest or city, no Bhuta district or Kirapura that you saw in reality. It was all a daydream that you saw with your mind’s eye.

65. The truth is that at one time, on your way to the country of the Bhutas, you did stay in a mountain cave, like a stag resting in a forest after his long wandering.

66. There being tired from your travel, you fell into a sound sleep and dreamed of the Bhuta city and the tribal, all in your reverie without seeing anything in reality.

67. It was there and in the same state of mind that you saw the city of Kira. It was the delusion of your mind that showed you those things when you were performing your devotion in the water.

68. In this manner you saw many other things whenever you went anytime, just like one flying high sees everything all about him.

69. Rise therefore and remain unshaken in the discharge of your duties without being misled by the changes of your mind. Because it is practice of one’s profession that leads him to success, and not the ideals or his mind.

70. Vasishta said:— So saying the lotus navel Vishnu, who is worshipped by saints and sages in all places, went to his abode in the sea where he was received by the hands of gods and holy sages who led him to his residence.

✅
Chapter 5.49 — Vishnu Instructs Gadhi to Do Ten Years of Tapas; He Attains Self Realization

1. Vasishta continued:— Vishnu being gone, Gadhi again began to wander about the Bhuta country like a cloud moving about in the air.

2. Having collected a great deal of information about himself in his life as a tribal, he again worshipped Vishnu in the cave of a mountain.

3. In course of a short time, Vishnu appeared to him again, as it is his nature to be pleased with a little devotion made with sincerity of heart.

4. The god spoke to Gadhi with as pleasing a disposition as a watery cloud addresses a peacock. He asked him what he wanted again by his repeated devotion.

5. Gadhi replied, “Lord, for these past six months I have again wandered about the countries of the Bhutas and Kiras. I have found no discrepancy between what they told me recently and what they told me the first time.

6. Lord, you told me that all this was mere delusion. I know the words of the great serve to dissipate and not increase the delusion.”

7. Lord Vishnu said:— It often happens that many things occur simultaneously, like a crow landing on a coconut tree and a coconut falling. The idea of the tribal was a contemporary growth in the minds of all the Bhutas and Kiras as of yourself.

8. This is why they corresponded with your thoughts and related your story as you did reflect it yourself. Because a reflection of something cannot be otherwise at the same time.

9. It is true that a tribal built a hut at the edge of the village which you saw reduced to ruins. But it was your false conception to think you were the same man who built that house.

10. Sometimes many perceive the same illusion. The multitude is led astray in many ways by simultaneous currents of the same opinions.

11. In this manner many men see the same dream at the same time, as the giddy heads of drunken men fall equally into the same kind of dizziness at the same time, seeing the earth and skies turning and rolling round them.

12. Many children are seen to join in the same sport at the same time, and a whole herd of male deer is observed to meet together in the same green field.

13. Many men are seen simultaneously pursuing the same employment for the purpose of gaining the same object of their pursuit.

14. It is commonly said that time is the giver and obstructer of the objects of human pursuits, as of all other events. But time is as quiescent as the Supreme Spirit. People’s desires and efforts cause their desired effects.

15. Time is a formless void. It is identical with the nature and form of the uncreated great Lord God himself. It neither gives or takes anything to or from anyone at anytime.

16. Time according to its common reckoning of years, kalpas and yuga ages is classed among the categories of substance. But time is far from being a substance. It is the source of all substances.

17. Men of deluded understanding are subject to the errors arising from the same cause of their fallacy. It was owing to this false conception that the Bhuta and Kira people fell into the very same error.

18. Therefore employ yourself to do your duty, and try to know your true self. Get rid of the error of your personality, and move about as freely as I do by myself. Vasishta speaking:—

19. Saying this, Lord Vishnu disappeared from his sight and Gadhi remained in his cave with great perplexity of his mind.

20. He passed some months on the same hill, then resumed his tapas to Vishnu with redoubled fervency.

21. He saw his god appearing again to his view, when he bowed down before him, and addressed him.

22. Gadhi said, “O Lord, I am quite bewildered with the thoughts of having been a tribal and my reflection on the delusions of this world.

23. Please free me from my errors and employ me to the only act of adoring the holy one.”

24. Lord Vishnu said:— O brahmin, this world is a delusion like the enchantment of the conjurer Sambara. All things here are the wonderful productions of imagination and proceed from forgetfulness of the self.

25. It was your error that made you see many things in your sleeping and waking dreams.

26. The Kiras were also led to see the same things as you, and to mistake those falsities as true owing to the same error laying hold of all of you at the same time.

27. Now hear me tell you the truth for your own good, whereby your error will fade away like a creeping plant in the chilly month of November.

28. The tribal Katanja, the one you thought you were, was a man who previously had really existed in that same locality.

29. He was bereaved of his family and left that place to wander about in foreign lands. Then he became king of the Kiras, and afterwards immersed himself in fire.

30. This life of Katanja entered your mind when you were standing in the water performing your devotion. The thoughts of the whole career of the tribal completely engrossed your mind.

31. Things which are seen or thought of even once cannot escape memory. Sometimes it happens that the mind comes to see many things in its imagination which it has never seen before with its eyes.

32. Like a man’s vision of a kingdom in his dream, and like the delirium caused by weakened humors of the body, the mind sees many daydreams and deliriums in its waking states also.

33. The past conduct of Katanja presented itself to your mind just as past and future world events are present before the mental vision of an oracle seer.

34. That this is ‘I’ and these things and those friends are ‘mine’ are the mistakes of those who are devoid of their self-knowledge.

35. But that ‘I am all in all’ is the belief of the truly wise, which prevents them from falling into such mistakes. The belief of the wise in the generality of all persons and things keeps them from wrong notions of individualities and particularities.

36. This general and universal view of all things preserves people from the mistaken notions of pleasure and pain, and makes a drowning wretch as buoyant as a floating gourd or bottle tied to a sinking net.

37. But you are entangled in the snare of your desires. You are lost to your good sense. You cannot be at your perfect ease as long as you suffer the symptoms of your sickness.

38. Because of your imperfect knowledge you are incapable of warding off the errors of your mind, just as it is impossible for a man to protect himself from rain without effort to build a shelter for himself.

39. You are easily susceptible of every impression of your untutored mind, just as a small tree is easily over-reached by a tall person.

40. The heart is the axis of the wheel of delusion (maya). If you can stop the motion of this central power, there is nothing to disturb you anymore.

41. Now rise and return to the sacred covered shelter on this mountain and there perform your austerities for a full ten years with a steady mind so that you may attain your perfect knowledge at the end of this period. Vasishta speaking:—

42. So saying, the lotus-eyed god disappeared from that place, as a flimsy cloud or candle-light or the wave of Jamuna is put out by a slight gust of wind.

43. Gadhi gradually gained dispassion by means of his discrimination, like trees fading away for lack of moisture at the end of autumn.

44. Getting rid of his mind’s wanderings, Gadhi reflected upon and blamed himself for fostering the false thoughts of the tribal and the like.

45. Then with his heart melting in pity and sorrow for himself, he returned to the Rishya-mukha mount to undertake his tapas. He sat there like a rainy cloud stopping on the top of a mountain.

46. He gave up all his desires and performed his austere penance. After completing ten years of tapas, he attained Self realization.

47. Having obtained knowledge of his self like the great soul Brahma, and getting rid of his fears and sorrows in this world of retribution, he wandered about with the joy of a living liberated being with perfect tranquility of his mind, resembling the serene light of the full moon revolving in the sphere of the sky.

✅
Chapter 5.50 — Live in the Present; Trust Consciousness; Control Mind, Heart & Greed

1. Vasishta continued:— Rama, know this delusion is as extensive in its form as it is inexplicable in its nature. It is filled with ignorance. It is a spiritual illusion and not any conscious deception.

2. Consider the brahmin’s false dream that lasted a couple of hours and his transformation into a tribal which lasted for many years.

3. Observe how the brahmin’s false conception appeared as real to his physical senses, and see how the false thought appeared true to him, his true knowledge of himself vanishing at last into untruth.

4. Therefore I say that this illusion is utterly inexplicable in its nature. How it leads the unguarded mind to a great many errors and difficulties and dangers!

5. Rama asked, “How sage, can we put a stop to the wheel of delusion? Its rapid rotation constantly grinds every part of our body.”

6. Vasishta said:— Know Rama, this revolving world is the wheel of delusion and the human heart is the axis of this great wheel which, by its continuous rotation, produces all this delusion within its circle.

7. If by your courageous efforts you can put a stop to the motion of your heart, as it were by fixing a peg to the loop-hole of the wheel, you immediately stop the rotation of the circle of delusion.

8. The mind is the center of the wheel of ignorance. If you can stop its motion by tying it tightly with the rope of your good sense, you escape the danger of falling into the dizzying rotation of errors.

9. Rama, you are well skilled in the martial art of hurling the discus. You cannot be ignorant of preventing its motion by stopping it at the central hole.

10. Therefore, O Rama, be diligent and stop the center of your mind. Thereby you will be able to preserve yourself, both from the revolution of the world and changeable difficulties of time.

11. The soul who rejects this counsel is exposed to interminable misery. By keeping this counsel always before the sight of the mind, you avoid all difficulties in this world.

12. There is no other medicine for anybody to heal the disease of his worldliness, except by restraining the mind at its own pivot.

13. Therefore, O Rama, give up your acts of holy pilgrimage and observances of austerity and charity. Keep the mind under your control to attain your supreme joy.

14. The world is situated in the mind, just as air is confined in a pot. But the mind being restricted to itself, the world is lost to it, just as when the pot just broken, the air inside escapes and mixes in endless emptiness.

15. You who are forever confined in the imaginary world of your mind, like a gnat trapped in the hollow of a pot, will get your release only by breaking out of this confinement, like the gnat flying into open air.

16. The way to rid the delusions of the mind is to fix your attention only to the present moment, and not employ your thoughts about past or future events.

17. Then you will arrive to the state of that spiritual detachment called indifference when you immediately cease to pursue any of the objects of your desires or imagination.

18. The mind is hidden as long as it has the mist of its desires and fancies flying over it, just as the sky is overcast as long as watery clouds spread over it.

19. As long as the intelligent soul is joined with the faculty of the mind, it is subject to its gross desires and thickening retinue of its fancies, just as the sky is filled with bright moonbeams as long as the moon shines in it.

20. When the intelligent soul is known without the medium of the mind, then the existence of the world is rooted out from the mind, like trees burnt down to their roots.

21. The intelligence that does not belong to the mind is called discernment. It has a nature unconnected with thoughts or desires and is free from the foulness of the fumes of fancy.

22. Discernment is truly the state of truth and of true joy. It is the true state of spirituality. It is an omniscience having all-clear vision of its own and seeing all things in itself. It is quite unconnected with any mental operation and it is enlightened by the light of the spirit.

23. Whenever the mind is active it invariably is accompanied by desires and the senses of pleasure and pain. Feelings and passions accompany the mind just as the ravens accompany a cremation ground.

24. The minds of the intelligent are not without action, but they are aloof from feelings of desire by their knowledge of the vanity of earthly things. Though these feelings are contained like plants in the seed vessel of their mind, yet they are not allowed to germinate in its sterile soil.

25. The wise have come to know the insubstantiality and uncertainty of all worldly things and events by their knowledge of the natures of things, by their acquaintance with the scriptures, by their association with holy men, and by their habitual observance of the practices of a pious and saintly life.

26. They have forcibly withdrawn their minds from ignorance by their determined efforts to gain the true knowledge of things. They have strenuously applied them to the study of scriptures and the good conduct of righteous people.

27. Only the pure soul has sight of the Supreme Spirit, just as a gem’s brilliance makes it discernable in the waters of the deep and allows it to be distinguished from darkness.

28. As the soul naturally desires to get rid of things which it comes to know is attended with pain, so the soul is the sole cause of knowing the Supreme.

29. Therefore be free of your thoughts of all other things, both in your waking and sleeping states, and when you talk or think of anybody, give or receive nothing. Rely and reflect only on your consciousness. Constantly watch the secret admonitions and intuitions of your consciousness.

30. Whether when you are born or going to die, or do anything or live in this world, be steadily attentive to your conscious self and you will perceive the clear light of the soul.

31. Leave off thinking that this is “I” and that is another because all are alike before the Lord of all. Give up wishing this for yourself and that for others, for all things belong to God. Rely solely on the one, and that is your internal consciousness alone.

32. Be of one mind in your present and future states of life and continue to investigate into its various phases in your own consciousness.

33. In all the changes of your life from boyhood to youth and old age, and amidst all its changing scenes of prosperity and adversity, and also in the states of your waking, dreaming and sound sleep, remain faithful to your consciousness.

34. Melt down your mind like a metal and purify it of its impurity of the impressions of external things. Break off the traps of your desires and depend on your awareness of yourself.

35. Get rid of the disease of your desire, of whatever is marked as good or bad for you, and turn your sight away from everything that may appear as favorable or unfavorable to you. Rely on your consciousness of pure intelligence.

36. Leave untouched whatever is tangible to touch and obtainable by your agency or instrumentality. Remain unchanged and unsupported by anything in the world and depend only upon your own consciousness.

37. Think yourself as sleeping when you are awake. Remain as calm and quiet as if you are unconscious of anything. Think yourself as all and alone and as instinctively identical with the Supreme Spirit.

38. Think yourself to be free from the changing and unchanging states of life. Though engaged in business, think of yourself as disengaged from all concerns.

39. Forsake the feelings of your egoism (mine) and non-egoism (others). Be undivided from the rest of the world by thinking yourself to be the macrocosm of the cosmos. Support yourself on the diamond hard rock of your consciousness by remaining unshaken at all events.

40. Continue to cut off the meshes of the net of your internal desires by the agency of your intellect and its helpmate patience. Be of the profession of belonging to no profession.

41. The sweet taste of trusting in the true faith of consciousness converts even the poison of false faiths to ambrosia.

42. The great error of taking the false world for true prevails only when the mind forgets to remember the pure and undivided self-consciousness.

43. Again, the great error of the substantiality of the world is put to an end when the mind places its trust in the immaculate and undivided consciousness.

44. One who has passed over the great gulf of his desires and known the true nature of his soul has his consciousness shining within himself with the full blaze of the bright sun.

45. One who knows the nature of his soul and is settled in the transcendental bliss of knowing the peerless one finds the most nectar-like food as a poison to him.

46. We revere those men who have known the nature of the soul, have reached their spiritual state, and know the rest bearing the name of men are no better than asses in human shape.

47. Behold devotees going from hill to hill and wandering like big bodied elephants to perform their devotions. They are far below the spiritual being who sits as high above them like on the top of the mountain.

48. The sight of consciousness reaching heavenward, beyond the limits of all regions to the unseen and invisible God, derives no help from the light of the sun or the moon.

49. The lights of the luminaries fade away like candlelight before the sight of consciousness which sees the great lights of the sun and moon and all within the compass of its knowledge.

50. He who has known the truth of God by means of his practice of yoga and self-sacrifice stands highest above the rest of men in the greatness of his soul. He is distinguished from others by the brightness of his body.

51. Like Him whose brightness shines on us in the light of the sun, moon, stars, gems and fire, the best of men shine among mankind in their knowledge of what is knowable and to be known.

52. Those who are ignorant of truth are viler than asses and other brute creatures that live on the land. They are meaner than the mean insects that dwell in holes in the ground.

53. As long as an embodied being is ignorant of spiritual knowledge, he is said to be a devil of darkness. But as soon as is he acquainted with his soul and united with his self in his reasoning, he is recognized as a spiritual being.

54. The unspiritual man is tossed about on earth like a carcass and is consumed with the fuel of his cares, like a dead body burned away by the flames of its funeral fire. But the spiritual being who knows the nature of his soul is aware of only his immortality.

55. Spiritual wisdom flies far away from a man whose heart is hardened in this world, just as the glory of sunshine is lost under the shadow of thickening clouds.

56. Therefore the mind is to be gradually curbed and contracted in itself by a dislike of all earthly enjoyments. The knower of his self, by long practice of abstinence, should try to deprive his spirit of its moisture to the dryness of a faded leaf.

57. The mind is thickened and fattened by consolidating itself with those of others and staining it with affections of wife, children, relations and friends.

58. Passions and feelings are often the causes of the denseness and impassivity of the mind: its egotism and selfishness, gaiety and impurity of thoughts, and its changing tempers and affections. But what feeds its gross density the most is the sense of meism and that “this is mine.”

59. The mind is swollen by coming to prosperity, by the deadly pains of old age and infirmity, and by the poisonous pangs of penury and miserliness.

60. The mind grows lusty in its expectation of some good and under the afflictions of disease and danger. It grows stronger with enduring what is intolerable and doing what ought not to be done.

61. The heart, too, becomes stronger with its affection for others and with its desire to gain riches and jewels. It becomes lusty with its craving for women and in having whatever is pleasant to it for the moment.

62. The heart, like a snake, is swollen huge by feeding on false hopes like air, and by breathing the empty air of passing delights and pleasures. It is pampered by drinking the liquor of fleeting hope, and moves about in the course of its endless expectations.

63. The heart is staunch in its enjoyment of pleasures, however injurious they are in their nature. Though situated inside the body, yet the heart is subject to brooding in disease and uneasiness and under a variety of pains and changes.

64. A multitude of thoughts grows in the heart of the body, like a clump of orchids in the hollow of a tree. These bear the budding blossoms of hope and desire and hang down with the flowers and fruit of death and disease.

65. Do not delay. Use the sharp saw of your reason to cut off the huge trunk of the poisonous tree of greed which has risen as high as a hill in the cavity of your heart. Do not to put off pruning the big branch of your hope and its leaves of desires.

66. The elephant-like heart sits with its infuriated eyes in the solitary recess of the body. It is equally fond of its ease and its carnal gratification. It longs to look at the lotus bed of the learned as it does to meet a field of sugarcanes composed of fools and dunces.

67. Rama, like a lion, the monarch of the forest, you should destroy your elephant-like heart seated in the wilderness of your body with the sharp saws of your understanding. Break the protruding tusks of its passions in the same manner as they break down all big bodies.

68. Drive away the crow-like hungry heart, from within the nest of your bosom. It is fond of frequenting filthy places, like ravens hovering over funeral grounds and crows squatting in dirty spots, fattening their bodies by feeding on the flesh of rotten carcasses. The heart is cunning in its craft and too cruel in its acts. It uses its lips like the bills of the crow, only to hurt others, and is as one-eyed as the crow, looking only to its own selfish interest. The mind is black all over its body for its black purposes and deeds.

69. Drive your raven-like heart far away. It sits heavy on the tree of your soul, intent on its wicked purposes and grating the ear with its jarring sound. It flutters everywhere at the scent of putrid bodies, to pollute its nest with foul putrescence of evil intents.

70. There is a destructive, hideous greed wandering at large like a demon, lurking in ambush in the dark cavity of the heart as in a dreary desert. It assumes a hundred forms and appears in a hundred shapes pursuing its habitual courses in darkness

71. unless and until you drive away this wicked demon of your heart from the abode of your intelligent soul. Unless you drive it away with your discrimination, dispassion, and power of mantras and tantras, you cannot expect to be successful in your endeavors.

72. Moreover there is the serpent-like mind hidden under the skin of the body. With its poisonous thoughts, frothing at the mouth like the destructive venom of mankind, it is continually breathing in and out like a pair of bellows, like a snake for the destruction of all other persons.

73. O Rama, you must subdue this great serpent of the mind that lies hidden in a cell of the cellular simal tree of your body. Use some mantra formula pronounced by the garuda of your intelligence, and thus be free from all fear and danger forever.

74. O Rama, repress your vulture-like heart that bears a greed for dead bodies that cannot be satisfied. It flies about everywhere annoyed by hungry crows and kites. It rests in desolate cemeteries.

75. It ransacks all quarters in quest of its meat of living and dead bodies, and lifts its neck to watch for its prey when it is sitting silently with patience. The vulture-like heart flies far away from its resting tree of the body and must be diligently restrained from its flight.

76. The monkey mind wanders through forests everywhere, and passing quickly beyond the area of its birth in search of fruit, it outruns the bounds of its native land and country. Thus being bound to nowhere, he derides the multitudes that are bound to the toils of their homes, confined to their native climate and soil.

77. The big monkey mind that plays on the tree of the body, its eyes and nose like the flowers of the tree and having arms for its branches and fingers for its leaves, ought to be checked for one’s success in anything.

78. The illusion of the mind rises like a cloud with the mists of error. It lays waste to the good harvest of spiritual knowledge. It flashes forth lightning from its mouth to burn down everything and not to give light on the way. Its showers damage upon ripened crops and it opens the door of desire.

79. Give up seeking the objects of your desire which are situated in the airy region of your mind. Exert your energy to drive off the cloud of your mind in order to obtain the great object of your aim.

80. The mind is as a long rope that binds mankind to their constant acts. It is impossible to break or burn its knots in any way except by one’s self knowledge. Its bond of reincarnation is painful to all until they obtain their final emancipation.

81. O Rama, use your lack of desire to boldly break the bondage of your mind that is bound fast in an infinite number of bodies to the chain of their reincarnation. Enjoy your freedom without any fear for evermore.

82. Know greed is like a venomous snake that destroys its devotees by the poison of its breath and never yields to the good counsel of anybody. This serpent has ruined mankind by its deceit and laying in wait for its prey. It emaciates the body to a stick.

83. Greed hidden in the body lurks unseen in its cells. It is like a dark cobra in form. It must be burnt to death by the fire of detachment for your safety and security from all evil.

84. Now put your heart to rest by the intelligence of your mind and gird yourself with the armor of purity for your defense. Forsake your unsteady mind forever and remain like a tree that is not infested by the apes of passion.

85. Purify both your body and mind with the sanctity of your soul. Be fearless and quiet by the aid of your intelligence and clam composure of your consciousness. Think yourself as lighter and meaner than a straw and thus enjoy the sweets of this world by going across it to the state of transcendent bliss in this life.

✅
Chapter 5.51 — The Story of Uddalaka: His Desire for Realization & the Cave

1. Vasishta said:— O Rama, have no reliance or confidence in the course of the mind, which is sometimes continuous and sometimes momentary, now even and flat and then sharp and acute, and often as treacherous as the edge of a razor.

2. As the germ of consciousness sprouts in the field of the mind, O Rama who is a moral man, grow it by sprinkling the cold water of reason over its tender blades.

3. As long as the body of this plant does not fade away in course of time or roll upon the ground as the decayed and dead body of man, so long should you hold it up upon the prop of reason

4. Knowing the truth of what I say and pondering on its deep meaning, you will get a delight in your innermost soul like a serpent-killing peacock is ravished at the deep roaring of rain clouds.

5. Like sage Uddalaka, shake off your knowledge of fivefold materiality as the cause of all creation and accustom yourself to think more deeply with patient inquiry and reasoning on the prime cause of causes.

6. Rama asked, “Tell me sage, how did sage Uddalaka get rid of his thoughts of fivefold creation? How did he penetrate deeper into the original cause of all by the force and process of his reasoning?”

7. Vasishta replied:— Rama, learn how sage Uddalaka of old rose higher from his investigation of fivefold matter to his inquiry into their cause, and how transcendent light dawned upon his mind.

8. In a spacious corner of this old house, the world, on the northwest side of this land, standing like a shed above surrounding rugged hills

9. there was the high tableland of Gandhamadana, full of camphor trees that continuously shed the odors of their flowers and pistils on the ground.

10. This place was frequented by birds of many colors and filled with plants at various kinds. Wild beasts lived in its banks and it was filled with flowers shining smilingly over the woodland scene.

11. Some parts had bright swelling gems, and others blooming lotuses. Some parts were veiled by tufts of snow and others had crystal streams gliding like glassy mirrors.

12. Here on the elevated top of a big cliff of this hill, studded with sarala trees and strewn with flowers up to the heels and shaded by the cooling shade of lofty trees,

13. there lived the silent sage named Uddalaka, a youth of a great mind with a great sense of honor. Uddalaka had not attained his maturity when he undertook his rigorous austerity.

14. When his intellect first developed, the light of reason dawned upon his mind and he awakened to noble aims and expectations instead of arriving at the state of rest and quietude.

15. In this manner he undertook austerities, religious studies and observed his holy rites and duties. The genius of right reason appeared before him, just as a new year presents itself before the face of the world.

16. Then he began to reflect in the following manner, sitting as he was in solitude, weary with thoughts and terrified at the ever-changing state of the world. Uddalaka thinking:—

17. What is that best of gains which once obtained leaves nothing else required for our rest? What can be had which will lead us no more to reincarnate in this world?

18. When shall I find my permanent rest in the state of holy and transcendent thoughtlessness and remain above all the rest, like a cloud resting over the top of Sumeru Mountain or the polar star standing above the pole without changing its place?

19. When will my tumultuous desires of worldly increase and advancement merge in peaceful tranquility, just as loose, loud and noisy waves subside in the sea?

20. When will the calm and unstirred composure of my mind secretly smile within to reflect on how mankind desires to do this thing after they have done the other, which leads them interminably in the circuit of their misery?

21. When will my mind be loosened from its noose of desire? When shall I remain unattached to everything, like a dew drop on a lotus-leaf?

22. When shall I get over the boisterous sea of my unsteady desires by the raft of my good understanding?

23. When shall I laugh to scorn the foolish actions of worldly people as the silly play of children?

24. When will my mind get rid of its desires and dislikes and cease swinging back and forth in the cradle of its choices and fancies? When will my mind return to its steadiness, as a madman is calmed after the fit of his delirium has passed away?

25. When shall I receive my bright spiritual body and deride the course of the world? When shall I have my internal satisfaction, like the all knowing and all sufficient spirit of Virat (the Cosmic Being)?

26. When shall I obtain calm stillness with internal equanimity, my soul serene and indifferent to external objects, like the sea after its release from churning?

27. When shall I see the fixed scene of the world before me as a dream and keep myself aloof from it?

28. When shall I see the inner and outer worlds as a fixed picture in my imagination? When shall I meditate on the whole in the light of an intellectual system?

29. When shall I have calmness of mind and soul and become a perfectly intellectual being myself? When shall I have that supernatural light in me which enlightens the internal eye of those who are born blind?

30. When will the sunshine of my meditation show me the pure light of my intellect, whereby I may see objects at a distance as I perceive the parts of time in me?

31. When shall I be free from my exertion and inertness towards the objects of my desires and dislikes? When shall I get selfsatisfaction in my state of self-illumination?

32. When will this long and dark night of my ignorance come to its end? It is infested by my faults fluttering like the foreboding birds of night and infected with frost withering the lotus of my heart.

33. When shall I become like a cold stone in a mountain cave and have the calm coolness of my mind in steady, unchanging samadhi?

34. When will the elephant of my pride, ever giddy with its greatness, become prey to the lion of right understanding?

35. When will the little forest birds build their nests of grass in my hair as I remain fixed in unalterable meditation, silence and samadhi?

36. When will the birds of the air rest fearlessly on my bosom, as they do on the tops of fixed rocks, upon finding me sitting transfixed in my meditation and as still as a rock?

37. Ah! When shall I pass over this lake of the world in which my desires and passions are like weeds and thorny brambles obstructing my passage to its borders of joy? Vasishta speaking:—

38. Immersed in these and similar reflections, twice-born Uddalaka sat in meditation in the forest.

39. But as his silly, unsteady mind turned towards sensible objects in different ways, he did not obtain the state of attention which could render him happy.

40. Sometimes his monkey-mind turned away from leaning to external objects and eagerly pursued the realities of the internal world or intellectual truths.

41. At other times his unsteady mind departed from the intangible things of the inner, intellectual world and fondly returned to outer objects mixed with poison.

42. He often saw the sunlight of spirituality rising within himself, and as often he turned his mind away from that golden prospect to the sight of gross objects.

43. Leaving the soul in the gloom of internal darkness, the unrestrained mind flies as fast as a bird to the objects of sense outside.

44. Thus turning from the inner to the outer world, and then from this to that again, his mind found its rest in the space lying between the light of the one and darkness of the other.

45. Being thus perplexed in his mind, the meditative brahmin remained in his exalted cavern like a lofty tree shaken to and fro by a storm.

46. He continued in his meditation like a man’s attention is fixed upon an impending danger. His body shook to and fro, as if moved forward and backward by tiny waves splashing on the bank.

47. Thus unsettled in his mind, the sage wandered about the hill like the god of day makes his daily rounds in his lonely course about Lokaloka Mountain.

48. Wandering in this manner, he once saw a cave beyond the reach of all living beings. It was quiet and still as the liberated state of an anchorite.

49. It was not disturbed by winds or frequented by birds or beasts. It was unseen by gods or gandharvas and it was as bright as heaven.

50. It was covered with heaps of flowers and tender green grass. Being overlaid by a layer of moonstones, the floor of the cave seemed to be made of emerald.

51. It afforded cool and congenial shade, brightened by the mild light of the bright gems in its bosom. It looked like a secret haunt of woodland goddesses who chanced to play there.

52. The light of the gems spread over the ground was not too hot or too cold, but resembled the golden rays of the rising sun in autumn.

53. This cave appeared like a new bride decorated with flowers holding a garland in her hand, her face fading under the light of lamps ornamented with gems and fanned by the soft whistling of winds.

54. It was the abode of tranquility and the resting place of the lord of creation. It was charming by the variety of its blooming blossoms, and it was as soft and mild as the inside of a lotus.

✅
Chapter 5.52 — Uddalaka Meditates and Reasons

1. Vasishta resumed:— The saintly Uddalaka entered that cave in Gandhamadana Mountain like a bee flying round and round enters the lotus-cell in the course of its romantic wandering.

2. To pursue his intense meditation, he entered the cave and sat inside, just as when the lotus-born creator retires and rests in seclusion after finishing his work of creation.

3. He made a seat for himself by spreading fresh tree leaves on the ground, like Indra spreading his carpet of many layers of clouds.

4. Over the leaves he spread his deerskin, as the bedding of stars is laid over by the blue clouds of heaven.

5. He sat upon it in his meditative mood, with the watchfulness of his mind, just as when an empty and light cloud alights on the top of Rishyasringa Mountain.

6. He sat firmly in lotus posture like Buddha, his face turned upwards, his two legs and feet covering his private parts, his palms and fingers counting the prayer of Brahma.

7. He restrained the fleet deer of his mind from the desires to which it ran by fits and starts. Then he reflected in the following manner in order to have unaltered steadiness of mind. Uddalaka thinking:—

8. O my senseless mind, why are you occupied in worldly acts to no purpose when the sensible never engage themselves in what proves to be their destruction afterwards?

9. He who forsakes his peaceful tranquility to pursue pleasure is like one who quits a grove of mandara flowers in order to enter a forest of poisonous plants.

10. You may hide yourself in some cave of the earth, or find a place in the highest abode of Brahma, yet you can not have your quiet without the stillness of your spirit.

11. Stop seeking the objects of your desire. They are beset by difficulties and produce your grief and anxiety. Fly from these to lay hold of your chief good, which you shall find only in your solitary retirement.

12. These different objects of your fancy or liking, so temporary in their nature, are all for your misery and of no real good at anytime.

13. Why do you follow, like a fool, the hollow sound of some fancied good which has nothing substantial in it? It is like the great glee of frogs at the noise of clouds that promise them nothing.

14. All this time you have been wandering with your unsteady heart in blind pursuit after profit and pleasure. But tell me, what great boon has booted you out to all your ramblings about the earth?

15. Why do you not fix your mind to that stillness which promises to give you your self-sufficiency, and in which you may find your rest as liberated in your lifetime?

16. O my foolish heart, why are you roused at the sound of some good that reaches your ears? Why are you led by your deluded mind towards that sound and fall victim to it, like a deer deceived by the hunter’s horn and trapped in the snare?

17. Beware, O foolish man! Do not allow carnal desire to take possession of your breast and lead you to your destruction, just as the male elephant, deceived by the artful female elephant, is made to fall into a pit.

18. Do not be misled by your desire of taste to stuff yourself with bitter poison as sweets, or bite the fatal bait that hooks the foolish fish to its destruction.

19. Do not let your fondness for bright and beautiful objects bewitch you to your ruin, like a bright light inviting a silly moth to its destruction.

20. Do not let your attraction to sweet smells tempt you to your ruin, or entice you like poor bees to the flavor of the elephant’s nose secretion only to be crushed by its trunk.

21. See how deer, bees, moths, elephants and fish are destroyed by their addiction to the gratification of a single sense. Consider the great danger to which a foolish man is exposed by his desire of satisfying all his unmanageable senses and organs.

22. O my heart, it is you yourself who stretches the snare of your desires for your own entanglement, just as the silk worm weaves its own cocoon with its own saliva for its own imprisonment.

23. Be cleansed of all your impure desires and become as pure and clear as a autumn cloud. When you are fully cleansed and lifted up like a cloud, you are free from all bondage.

24. You know the course of this world is pregnant with the rise and fall of mankind and in the end produces only the pangs of disease and death, yet you are still addicted to it for your destruction.

25. But why do I vainly admonish my heart? It is only by reasoning with the mind that men are able to govern their hearts.

26. As long as gross ignorance rules the mind, the heart remains in its state of dullness. As long as the earth is covered with mist and frost, the upper skies are shrouded in rain clouds.

27. But as soon as the mind is cleared of its ignorance, the heart becomes lighter, like frost covering the earth disappears when the rain clouds disperse.

28. As the heart becomes lighter and purer through the mind’s act of reasoning, so I expect its desires to grow weaker and thinner, like the light and fleeting clouds of autumn.

29. Admonition to the unrighteous proves to be as fruitless as blowing winds against falling rain.

30. Therefore, I shall try to rid myself of this false and vacant ignorance. The scriptures admonish to use all means to get rid of ignorance.

31. I find myself to be the inextinguishable lamp of consciousness without my egoism or any desire in myself. I have no relation with false ignorance which is the root of egoism.

32. That this is “I” and that is another are the false suggestions of our delusive ignorance. Like an epidemic disease, ignorance presents us with such fallacies for our destruction.

33. It is impossible for the slender and finite mind to comprehend the nature of the infinite soul, just as it is impossible for an elephant to be contained within the shell of a bilva fruit.

34. I cannot follow the dictate of my heart which is a wide and deep cave containing the desires that cause all our miseries.

35. What is this delusive ignorance which, like the mistakes of juvenile boys, creates the blunder of viewing the self-existent one in the different lights of “I”, “you”, “he” and other personalities.

36. I have analyzed my body at each atom from head to foot, but in no part of it have I found what we call the “I” and what makes my personality.

37. That which is the “I am” fills the whole universe and is the only one in all the three worlds. It is the unknowable consciousness, omnipresent and yet apart from all.

38. Its magnitude is not to be known, nor does it have any name of its own. It is neither the one nor the other, nor an immensity nor minuteness.

39. It is unknowable by the light of the Vedas. Ignorance of it causes misery and must be destroyed by the light of reason.

40. This is the flesh of my body and this is its blood. These are the bones and this is the whole body. These are my breaths, but where is that “I” situated?

41. Its pulsation is the effect of vital breath and its sensation is the action of the heart. Decay and death also accompany the body. But where is its “I” situated?

42. Flesh is one thing and blood another, and bones are different from them. But tell me, my heart, where is the “I” said to exist?

43. These are the organs of smell and this is the tongue. This is skin and these are my ears. These are the eyes and this is touch. But what is the soul and where is it situated?

44. I am none of the elements of the body, nor the mind nor its desires. I am only the pure intellectual soul, a manifestation of Divine Consciousness.

45. The only knowledge of the true reality that we can have is that I am everywhere, and yet nothing whatever that is anywhere. There is no other way to it.

46. For a long time I have been deceived by my ignorance and misled from the right path, just as the young of a beast is carried away by a fierce tiger to the woods.

47. Now by my good fortune I have come to detect this thievish ignorance. No longer shall I trust this robber of truth.

48. I am beyond the reach of affliction. I have no concern with misery, nor has it anything to do with me. This union of mine with these is as temporary as that of a cloud with a mountain.

49. Being subject to my individual ego, I say, I speak, I know, I stay, I go, and the like. But on looking at the soul, I lose my ego in the Universal Soul.

50. I truly believe my eyes and the other parts of my body to belong to me, but if they are something other than me, then let them remain or perish with the body, with which I have no concern.

51. Fie for shame! What is this word “I” and who first invented it? This is nothing but the childish blunder of some demonic child of earth.

52. For such a long time have I been groveling in this dusty den, wandering at large like a stray deer on a sterile rock without any grass or vegetation.

53. If we inquire into the true nature of things, we are at a loss to find the true meaning of the word “I” which is the cause of all our grief on earth.

54. If you want to feel your inner self by the sense of touch, then tell me how do you find what you call “I” other than it being a ghost of your own imagination.

55. You set your “I” on your tongue and utter it as an object of that organ. You have no taste whatever of that empty word which you so often utter.

56. You often hear that word ringing in your ears, though you feel it to be an empty sound like air, and you cannot account from where this rootless word had its rise.

57. Our sense of smell, which brings the fragrance of objects to the inner soul, conveys no scent of this word into our brain.

58. It is like a mirage, a false idea of something we know not what. What can it be other than an error of which we have no idea or sense whatever?

59. I also see that my will is not always the cause of my actions because I find my eyes and other sense organs are employed in their respective functions without the direction of my will.

60. The difference between our bodily and willful acts is this. The actions of the body done without the will of the mind are unattended with feelings of pain or pleasure.

61. Therefore let your sense organs perform their several actions without your will and by this means you will evade all pleasure and pain.

62. It is in vain that you blend your will with your actions when the act of your will is attended with a grief similar to that of children who break dolls while playing.

63. Your desires and their productions are the facsimiles of your minds and not different from them, just as waves are composed of the same water from which they rise. Such is the case with the acts of will.

64. Your own will guides your hand to construct a prison for your confinement, just as the silly silkworm is confined in the cocoon of its own making.

65. Because of your desires you are exposed to the perils of death and disease, just as the dim vision of a traveler over mountainous areas hurls him headlong into a deep cavern below.

66. Only your desires are the chief cause of you being attached to one another in one place, like a thread passing through the holes of pearls ties them together in a long strand around the neck.

67. What is this desire but the creation of your false imagination? Whatever you think is good for yourself, as soon as you cease to take a fancy for it, your desire is cut off like by a knife.

68. This desire, the creature of your imagination, is the cause of all your errors and your ruin, just as the breath of air causes both burning and extinction of lamps, lightening, and fiery furnaces.

69. Therefore, O my heart that is the source and spring of your senses, join with all your consciousness to look into the nature of your unreality, and feel in yourself the state of your utter annihilation (nirvana).

70. Give up your sense of ego and your desire of worldliness that are interminable and inherent to you in this life. Put on the amulet of the abandonment of your desires and earthliness and resign yourself to your God to be free from all fears on earth.

✅
Chapter 5.53 — Uddalaka’s Reasoning and Bliss

1. Uddalaka continued:— Consciousness is an unthinkable substance. It extends to the limits of endless space and is more minute than the smallest atom. It is quite aloof from all things and inaccessible to the reach of desires.

2. It is inaccessible to the mind, understanding, egoism and the gross senses. But our empty desires are extended as wide as the shadowy forms of huge and formidable demons.

3. From all my reasoning and repeated reflections, I perceive a consciousness within myself. I feel it to be the stainless intellect.

4. My body, which is of this world and the depository of my false and evil thoughts, may last or be lost without any gain or loss to me because I am untainted consciousness.

5. Consciousness is free from birth and death, because there is nothing perishable in the nature of all pervasive consciousness. Then what does the death of a living being mean? How and by whom can it be put to death?

6. What does the life and death of consciousness mean? It is the soul and life of all existence. What else can we expect of consciousness when it is extends through and gives life to all?

7. Life and death belong to the operative and imaginative powers of the mind and not to the pure soul.

8. The mind has the sense of its ego and the knowledge of its existence and nonexistence. But the soul is devoid of its ego and can have no sense of its birth or death.

9. Individual ego is a fallacy, the product of ignorance. The mind is nothing but an appearance, like water in a mirage. Visible objects are all gross bodies. Then what is this thing to which we apply the term ego?

10. The body is composed of flesh and blood and the mind is considered a nothingness of itself. The heart and other body parts are all dull objects. Then what contains the ego?

11. The sense organs are all employed in their respective functions to support the body. All external bodies remain as mere bodies. So to what do you apply the term ego?

12. The properties of things continue as properties, and substances always remain substances. The entity of Brahman is quite calm and quiet. So what among them is the ego?

13. There is only one Being which is all pervading and existing in all bodies. It exists at all times and is immensity in itself. It is only the Supreme Spirit that is the intelligent soul of all.

14. Now tell me which of these is the ego? What is it and what is its form? What is its genus and what are its attributes? What is its appearance and of what ingredients it is composed? What am I and what shall I take “I” to be and what to reject as not “I”?

15. Therefore there is nothing here which may be called individual ego, whether an entity or nonentity. There is nothing anywhere to which the ego may bear any relation or any resemblance whatever.

16. Therefore egoism is a perfect nonentity. It has no relation to anything at all. This non-relation of ego with all things being proved, the fiction of duality goes to nothing.

17. Everything in the world being full of the spirit of God, I am nothing other than that reality, and it is in vain that I think myself as otherwise and sorrow for it.

18. All things being situated in one pure and omnipresent spirit, from where could this meaningless word ego arise?

19. There is no reality of any object whatever except that of the supreme and allpervading spirit of God. Therefore it is useless for us to inquire about our relation with anything that has no reality in itself.

20. The senses are connected with the sense organs and the mind is familiar with mental operations, but the intellect is unconnected with the body and bears no relation with anybody in any manner.

21. As there is no relation between stones and iron nails, so the body, the senses, the mind and the intellect bear no relationship with one another, though they are found to reside together in the same person.

22. Once the great error of the unreal ego has obtained its footing among mankind, it has put the world to an uproar with the expressions of “mine” and “yours” and this is mine and that is yours, and that other is another’s and the like.

23. Lack of the light of reason has given rise to meaningless and marvelous expressions of ego which are made to vanish under the light of reason, just as ice dissolves under the heat of sunlight.

24. It is my firm belief that there is nothing in existence except the spirit of God. This makes me believe the whole universe is a manifestation of the great Brahman himself.

25. The error of personal ego presents itself before us as vividly and colorfully as the various colors that paint the sky. It is better to obliterate it from the mind rather than retain any trace of it.

26. I have completely rid myself of the error of my ego and now rest my tranquil soul in the Universal Spirit of God, like an autumn cloud resting in the infinite vacuum of the sky.

27. The idea of egoism produces the great variety of our selfish acts which create only misconduct and misery.

28. Egoism has taken a deep root in the moist soil of our hearts and sprouts forth in the field of our bodies with the germs of innumerable evils.

29. Here is death closely following the course of life. There is a new life hereafter waiting upon our death. Now there is a non-being state of being distinct from its deprivation. And again there is the opposite in our reincarnation, only to our great annoyance.

30. “This I have gained” and “this I will gain” are the thoughts that constantly employ the minds of men. The desire of a new gain is constantly lit in the minds of the senseless, like the ceaseless flame of the sun-stone is increased in summer heat.

31. That “this I want” and “this I must have” are thoughts ever attendant on egoism. The dull-headed pursue dull material objects with as much ardor as heavy clouds hastening to halt on high-headed hills.

32. Decay of egoism withers away the tree of worldliness, which then ceases to germinate, like a plant on sterile rocks.

33. Your desires are like black serpents creeping in the hole of your heart, but hiding their heads at the sight of the snake-eater garuda bird of reason.

34. The unreal world gives rise to the error of appearances. The unreal “I” and “you” seem to be realities, though they are caused by mere pulsations of the unreal mind.

35. This world rises at first without a cause and to no cause. How then do we call a reality that which is sprung from and to no cause at all?

36. As a pot made of earth long before continues in the same state at all times, so the body which has long ago come into existence still continues and will continue the same.

37. The beginning and end of waves is mere water and moisture, and the intermediate part only presents a figure to view. So the beginning and end of bodies are mere earth and water, and the intermediate state is one of bustle and commotion.

38. Only the ignorant trust this temporary and fluctuating state of the body which, like a wave, is hastening to subside in its original liquid and quiet state.

39. What reliance is there on anything that makes a figure in the middle and is an unreality both in its prior and latter states?

40. So the heart also is as quiet as consciousness, both at first and in the end. It remains immersed in itself, both when it exists in the body or not. What then if it heaves for a little while in between?

41. Marvelous things pass in our dreams and in our deluded sights, just as it happens in the giddiness of inebriation, journeying in boats,

42. in cases of weakened humors and delusion of senses, in cases of extreme joy and grief, and under some defect of the mind or body.

43. Some objects come to sight and others disappear. Some appear to be smaller or larger than they are, and others to be moving. So do all these objects of our vision appear and disappear from our sight in the course of time.

44. O my heart! All your conduct is of the same nature at the different times of your joy and grief. It makes the long of short and the short of long, just as the short space of a single night for separated lovers becomes as tedious as an age, and an age of joyful wealth as short as a moment.

45. My long habit of thinking makes untruth appear as truth to me. Like the mirage of the desert, our mirage of life presents its falsehoods as realities to us.

46. All things that we see in the phenomenal world are unrealities in their nature. As the mind comes to know the nothingness of things, it feels in itself its nothingness also.

47. As the mind becomes impressed with the certainty of the unsubstantially of external objects, its desire for worldly enjoyments fades away like the fading green of autumn.

48. When the mind comes to see the pure soul by means of its intellectual light, it rids itself of its temporal exertions. Being thereby freed from its passions and affections, it rests in itself with calm composure.

49. The heart attains its perfect purity when, by withdrawing attention from the sense organs, it casts itself into the flame of the Supreme Soul where all its impurity is burnt away.

50. As a hero boldly faces his death, fighting bravely in battle with the thought of ascending to heaven, so the mind conquers all impediments by casting off all worldly desires and attachments.

51. The mind is the enemy of the body and the body is the enemy of the mind, but each dies away without the other and both pass away without desire which supports them both.

52. Owing to the hostility between mind and body and their passions and affections towards each other, it is better to destroy both for our attainment of supreme bliss.

53. The existence of either of these after death is as incapable of heavenly joy as it is for an aerial fairy to live on earth.

54. When things that are naturally repugnant and opposed to one another meet together in any place or person, there is a continuous clashing of mutual mischief, like the crashing of conflicting arms.

55. The base man who has a liking for this world of conflicts is like one left to burn in a conflagration of showering flames.

56. The mind stout with its greedy desires loads the body with labor and feeds upon its precious life, like a yaksha ghost seizing the body of a boy.

57. The body being harassed and oppressed with toil attempts to stop and stay the mind like an impious son intends to kill his father who openly abuses him.

58. There is no one who in his nature is a foe or friend to another. One becomes a friend to the person who is friendly to him and a foe to he who harms him.

59. The body attempts to kill the mind and the mind is ever intent to make the body the receptacle of its afflictions.

60. What good can possibly accrue from the union of the body and mind? They are repugnant to one another. They are irreconcilable in their own natures.

61. The mind being weakened, the body has no pain to undergo, so the body is always striving to weaken the mind.

62. The body, whether alive or dead, is subject to all sorts of evils by its hostile mind unless it is brought under the subjugation of reason.

63. When both body and mind become resolute and strong, they join together to break all bonds, like a lake and rainwater join to overflow banks.

64. Though both are troublesome to us in their different natures, yet their union to one end is beneficial to us, just as the cooperation of fire and water for the purpose of cooking.

65. When the weak mind is wasted and worn out, the body also becomes weakened and weak. But the mind being full, the body is flushed like a flourishing tree shooting forth with verdure.

66. The body pines away with weakened desires and weakened mind. But the mind never grows weak at the weakness of the body. Therefore the mind must be curbed and weakened by all means.

67. Therefore I must cut down the woody weed of my mind with its trees of my desires and plants of my thirst and, having reclaimed a large tract of land, wander about at my pleasure.

68. After my egoism is lost and the net of my desires removed, my mind will regain its calm and clarity like the sky after clouds disperse at the end of rainy weather.

69. It is of no matter to me whether my body, which is a collection of my humors and a great enemy to me, should waste away or last after the dissolution of my mind.

70. The enjoyments my body craves are not mine, nor do I belong to them. Therefore, what is the good of bodily pleasure to me?

71. It is certain that I am not the body, nor is this body mine in any way, just as a corpse with all its parts intact is nobody at all.

72. Therefore I am something other than my body, and that is everlasting and never setting in its glory. It is by means of this that I have the light in me with which I perceive the bright sun in the sky.

73. I am not ignorant of myself or subject to misery, nor am I the dull unintelligent body which is subject to misery. My body may last or not, I am beyond all bodily accidents.

74. Where there is the soul or self, there is no mind, no senses, and no desire of any kind, just as vile commoners and idiots never associate with kings.

75. I have attained that state in which I have surpassed all things. It is the state of my singleness, my extinction, my indivisibility, and my want of desires.

76. Now I am loosened from the bonds of my mind, body and senses, like oil extracted from sesame is separated from sediments.

77. I walk about freely in this state of transcendence. My mind disconnected from the bonds of the body considers its body parts to be its dependent instruments and accompaniments.

78. Now I find myself situated in a state of transparency and buoyancy, of selfcontentment and intelligence, and of true reality. I feel my full joy and calmness and preserve my reserve in speech.

79. I find my fullness and magnanimity in my pleasantness and even temper. I see the unity of all things and feel my fearlessness and want of duality, choice and option.

80. I find these qualities to be ever attendant on me. They are constant and faithful, easy and graceful and always propitious to me. My unshaken attachment to them has made them like my heartily beloved consorts.

81. I find I am all and in all at all times and in every manner. Yet I am devoid of all desire or dislike for anyone. I am equally unconcerned with whatever is pleasant or unpleasant, agreeable or disagreeable to me.

82. Removed from the cloud of error and melancholy, and released from doubt and duplicity in my thoughts, I traverse like a flimsy cloud in the cooling atmosphere of the autumn sky.

✅
Chapter 5.54 — Uddalaka’s Meditation and Samadhi

1. Vasishta continued:— Thinking himself raised to this state of his transcendence, the saint sat in lotus posture with his eyelids half shut and began to meditate in his translucent mind.

2. Then he thought that the syllable Om is the true symbol of Brahman, and that he who utters this monosyllabic word rises to the highest state.

3. He uttered the word with a raised voice and high note which rang with a sound of a ringing bell.

4. His utterance of Om shook the seat of his intellect in the cranium and reached the seat of the pure soul in the topmost part of his head.

5. The pranava Om, consisting of three and half letters [“a for waking, “u” for dreaming, “m” for deep sleep, and bindu (dot) for super consciousness, see Mandukya Upanishad], fills the whole body with the breath of inspiration by having its first part or the letter “a” uttered with an acute accent.

6. He exhaled the breath from his body and it became as insubstantial as the sea after Agastya sucked it up.

7. His vital breath was filled with the vitality of the intellect and rested in the outer air by leaving his body, like a bird leaving its snug nest and floating in open air.

8. The burning fire of his heart burned away his whole body and left it as dry as a forest scorched by the hot wind of a fire.

9. He was in this state at the first step of his practice of pranava yoga by chanting Om. He did not practice hatha yoga at all because it was physical.

10. Then he attended to the other parts of the mystic syllable and remained unshaken by suppressing his breath by the kumbhaka breathing.

11. His vital breaths were not allowed to pass out of his body, nor were they allowed to circulate up and down in it, but were shut up in the nostrils, like water pent up in a drain.

12. The fire consumed his body and was blown out in a moment, like the flash of lightning. He left his whole frame consumed to ashes, lying cold and grey on the naked ground.

13. The white bones of his body seemed to be sleeping unmoved, lying in quiet rest on the bed of grey ashes looking like camphor powder strewn on the ground.

14. These ashes and bones were carried aloft by the winds and covered his body which looked like the body of Shiva smeared with ash and wearing a garland of bones.

15. Afterwards the high winds of the air, flying to the face of the upper sky, bore aloft and scattered about those ashes and bones, resembling an autumn mist in the air.

16. The saint attained this second or middle stage of his pranava yoga, and it was through kumbhaka breathing and not by hatha yoga.

17. He then came to the third stage of his pranava yoga, the inhalation which confers a quiet rest to the yogi, and is called puraka for its fulfillment of his object.

18. In the process of this practice, the vital breath is carried through the intellect to the region of emptiness where it is cooled by the coldness of its climate.

19. From the region of vacuum, the breath ascended to the lunar sphere. There it became as cold as when the rising smoke turns into a watery cloud in the upper sky.

20. Then the breath rested in the orb of the full moon, as in the ocean of ambrosial waters, and there became as cool as in the meritorious samadhi meditation.

21. The respiring breaths were then exhaled like cooling showers of rain and were brightened by the moonbeams into the form of fine wires of gold.

22. These fell like a dew drop on the remaining ashes, like the stream of the heavenly Ganges fell on Shiva’s head, and resuscitated the burnt body to its former form.

23. The body became as bright as the orb of the moon. It had the four arms of Vishnu. It glistened like a parijata tree on the shore after the sea was churned by Mandara Mountain.

24. The body of Uddalaka competed in beauty with that of Vishnu Narayana. His bright eyes and lotus-like face shone with a celestial light.

25. The vital breaths filled his body with a humid juice, like a lake filled with sweet water and trees supplied with moisture from a spring.

26. The internal airs filled the lungs and heart cavity like seawater flowing into a whirlpool.

27. His body was restored and regained its natural state, as when the earth regains its prior and pure state after it is washed by rain waters.

28. He sat in lotus posture and kept his body fixed and firm in a straight and erect position. The five organs of his sense were bound as tightly as strong chains on the feet of an elephant.

29. He strove to practice an unshaken samadhi, wanting to make himself appear as clear as the autumn sky.

30. He controlled his breath and restricted his heart from its inclinations, tying it tightly as if by a rope to the post of his bosom.

31. He forcibly stopped his heart from running madly into the pits of its affection, just as they stop the course of over-flowing waters with embankments.

32. His eyes were half hidden under his half-closed eyelids. His eyeballs remained as fixed and unmoved as the contracted petal of the lotus against buzzing bees fluttering about and seeking to suck their honey.

33. He practiced raja yoga, at first by remaining silent with a graceful countenance.

34. He abstracted his senses from their objects just like they separate oil from sesame seeds. He contracted the sense organs within himself like a tortoise contracting his limbs under his hard covering.

35. With his steady mind, he cast off the external sensations afar from him like a rich and brilliant gem casts off its outer coating and rubbish, then scatters its rays to a distance.

36. He compressed his external sensations without coming in contact with them, like trees contracting their sap in the cold season.

37. He stopped the circulation of his respiration to the nine openings of his body and their passing through the mouth and anus. By means of his breath control he compressed the winds in the internal cells of his body.

38. He held his neck erect like the peak of Mount Meru in order to receive the light of the soul which irradiated in the form of flowers before the vision of his mind.

39. He confined his subdued mind in the cavity of his heart just like they imprison a big elephant in a cave of the Vindhya Mountains after being captured by some artifice.

40. When his soul gained its clarity resembling the serenity of the autumn sky, it forsook its unsteadiness like the calm ocean when it is full and not agitated by wind.

41. The mist of doubts which sometimes gathered in his breast and hid the light of his reason and truth fled from before him, like a flight of gnats driven by the wind.

42. As crowds of doubt rose repeatedly in his breast of their own accord, he dispersed them boldly by the sword of his reason like a hero driving the enemy before him.

43. Upon the dispersion of the thick mists of doubts and all worldly desires from his mind, he saw the bright sun of reason rising in his breast from the parting gloom of ignorance.

44. He dispelled this darkness by the sunbeams of his full intelligence which rose in his mind like a blast of wind and dispersed the clouds of his doubts in the skies.

45. After this darkness was dispersed, he saw a beautiful collection of light shining upon him like morning twilight alighting upon his lotus bed.

46. But this clear light of his soul was soon after removed by the worldliness (rajas, the principle of action) of his mind which consumed the light like a young elephant feeds upon red lotuses, and like vetala demons lick up drops of blood.

47. After he lost this heavenly light, his mind turned flighty from the giddiness of his passions. He became as drowsy as sleeping lotuses at night, and as tipsy as a drunken sot over his drinks.

48. But his reason soon returned and made him shake off his sleepiness, like winds dispersing clouds, a snake inhaling air, an elephant devouring a lotus bush, and sunlight dispelling the darkness of night.

49. After his drowsiness was removed, his mind saw the broad expanse of the blue sky filled with fancied forms of animals and flights of peacocks and other birds.

50. As the rainwater washes blackness off tamara tree leaves, a gust of wind drives away the morning mist, and the light of a lamp disperses darkness, so his spiritual light returned to him and removed the blue emptiness of his mind by filling it with its benign radiance.

51. The idea of an empty void was replaced with that of his self consciousness. His idea of the mind was absorbed in it, just as the drunken frenzy of a man is drowned in his sleep.

52. Then his great soul rubbed out the impressions of error from his weakened mind, like the bright sun driving the darkness of night from the world.

53. In this way, his misty mind, free from its shades of light and dark and from the impurity of its drowsiness and error, obtained its rest in the state of samadhi which no language can describe.

54. In this state of calm and quiet repose, his limbs dropped down as in the drowsiness of sleep. Their powers were absorbed in the channel of his self consciousness, like a flood flows to its basin when blocked by an embankment.

55. Then by means of his constant inquiry he advanced from a state of consciousness of himself to the state of intellectuality, like gold molded into the form jewelry is reduced to the pure metal.

56. Then leaving his intellectuality, he thought of himself as the consciousness of his intellect. He became another form and figure, like clay made into a pot.

57. Then leaving his nature of a thinkable being (or objectivity), he became the subjective thinking intellect itself, and next to that, as identical with the pure universal consciousness, just as the waves of the sea create mist in the common air.

58. Losing the sight of particulars, he saw the great One as the container of all. He became as one with the sole empty consciousness.

59. He found his joy in this extra-phenomenal state of the ideal which, like the ocean, is the reservoir of all moistures.

60. He passed out of the confines of his body and went to a certain place where, leaving his ordinary form, he became like a sea of joy.

61. His intellect swam over that sea of joy like a floating swan, and remained there for many years with as serene a light as the moon shining in her fullness in the clear sky.

62. His intellect remained as still as a lamp in the still air and like the shadow in a painted picture. It was calm as a clear lake without waves, like the sea after a storm and as immovable as a cloud after it has poured out its waters.

63. As Uddalaka was sitting in this full blaze of light, he saw the aerial spiritual masters (siddhas) and a group of gods advancing towards him.

64. The groups of spiritual masters were eager to confer the positions of Sun god and Indra upon him. They assembled around him with groups of heavenly gandharvas and apsara nymphs from all sides of heaven.

65. But the saint took no notice of them, nor gave them their due honor. He remained in deep thought, continuing his steady meditation.

66. Without paying any regard to the assembled spiritual masters, he remained still in that blissful abode of his bliss, just like the sun remains in the northern hemisphere for half of the year.

67. While he continued in the enjoyment of his blessed state of living liberation, the gods Vishnu, Shiva and Brahma waited at his door, together with groups of spiritual masters, disciples and other gods.

68. Uddalaka remained in his state of detachment which lies between the two opposites of sorrow and joy, neither of which is of long continuance, except the middle state of detachment which endures forever.

69. When the mind is situated in its state of neutrality, and whether it is for a moment or a thousand years, it no longer has any taste for pleasure. It already sees its future joys of the next world as already begun in this.

70. When holy men have gained that blissful state in this life, they no longer look upon the outer world. They turn aside from it like men avoiding a thorny bush of brambles.

71. The saints who attain this state of transcendental bliss do not stoop to look upon the visible world, just like one who is sitting in the heavenly car of Chitraratha, the king of the gandharvas, never gets out to step on a thorny khadira bush.

72. They who enjoy this joy of the invisible in them take no account of the visible world, just like a self-sufficient rich man takes no account of the condition of the miserable poor.

73. The wise heart that has found its rest in that blissful state either keeps from the thoughts of this world or shrinks from it with disgust and hatred.

74. Uddalaka thus remained in his holy seat for six months, after which he awoke from his samadhi and moved to another place like the sun gets out of the mists of frost in spring season.

75. He saw before him an assembly of bright beings of enlightened minds who, their faces shining like the bright moon, hailed the hermit with great veneration.

76. They were fanned with fans flapping about them, like swarms of bees smeared with the white powder of mandara flowers, sitting on their heavenly cars decorated with flags waving in the sky.

77. Sitting in the aerial cars were great saints, like ourselves, decorated with ringlets of sacred grass on their fingers and accompanied by vidyadharas, gandharvas, and damsels ministering to them.

78. They addressed the great soul and saintly Uddalaka saying, “Consent, O venerable sage, to look upon us. We have been waiting here with our greetings for you.

79. Please mount on one of these heavenly cars and come to our celestial abode. Because heaven is the last home where you shall have the full gratification of your desires after this life.”

80. “Remain in heaven to enjoy your desired pleasures until the end of this kalpa age. Pure heavenly bliss is the inheritance of saints and the main aim and object of ascetic austerities on earth.

81. See the vidyadhara ladies waiting for you with fans and flower garlands in their hands. They have been hailing and inviting you to them, like a young elephant cow entices the big elephant towards her.

82. The main object of riches and good acts is only the desire for rewards, and the greatest of our enjoyments is the company of fairy ladies, just as flowers and fruit are the desired products of the spring season.”

83. The hermit heard his heavenly guests speaking in this manner. He honored them politely without being moved by anything they said unto him.

84. He neither complemented them with courtesy nor changed the even course of his even and unexcitable mind. He bid them to depart in peace and returned to his tapas.

85. The spiritual masters honored him for his devotion to his practice and for refusing the desires of carnal gratifications. Then they left to return to their paradise abode, after tarrying there in vain for some days hoping to entice the hermit to their romantic fields.

86. Afterwards the saint continued to wander about at pleasure in his character of a living liberated yogi. He frequented the hermitages of ascetics at the edges of woods and forests.

87. He roved about freely over the mountains of Meru, Mandara, and Kailash and on the table lands of the Vindhyan and Himalayan ranges. He travelled through woods and forests, gardens and deserts and to distant islands everywhere.

88. At last the saintly Uddalaka chose his home in a cave lying at the foot of a mountain. There he dedicated the rest of his life to secluded tapas and meditation.

89. It was then in the course of a day, then of a month, and sometimes after the lapse of a year or many years, that he rose once from his meditation.

90. After his yoga was over, he came out and mixed with the world. Though he sometimes was engaged in the affairs of life, yet he was quite reserved in his conduct and abstracted in his mind.

91. Being practiced in mental abstraction, he became one with the Divine Mind and shone resplendent in all places, like broad daylight.

92. He was habituated to ponder on the community of the mind until he became one with the universal Mind which spreads alike throughout the universe and neither rises nor sets anywhere like sunlight.

93. He gained the state of perfect tranquility and his even mindedness in all places, which released him from the snare of doubts and the pain of repeated births and deaths. His mind became as clear and quiet as the autumn sky, and his body shone like the sun everywhere.

✅
Chapter 5.55 — The Pure Consciousness and Being of Uddalaka

1. Rama said, “Venerable sage, you are the sun of the day of spiritual knowledge and the burning fire of the night of my doubts. You are the cooling moon to the heat of my ignorance. Please explain to me, what does the state of pure existence mean?”

2. Vasishta answered:— When the thinking principle, the mind, is wasted and weakened and appears to be extinct and null, the consciousness which remains in common in all beings is called the common consciousness of all, pure being.

3. This consciousness when devoid of its reasoning and absorbed in itself becomes transparent as it is nothing of itself. Then it is called pure consciousness.

4. Similarly, when the intellect ignores knowledge of all internal and external objects, it remains as pure consciousness and is unconscious of any personality.

5. When all phenomena are considered to have a common existence and to be of the same nature as one’s self, this is called pure consciousness.

6. When phenomena are all dissolved of themselves into the one common spirit and there remains nothing different from it, then it is the one consciousness, pure being.

7. This common view of all things as one and the same is called Self realization and it is the same for embodied and disembodied beings in both worlds. It places the liberated being above the fourth stage of consummation.

8. It is the enlightened soul exalted by ecstasy, and not the ignorant, who can have this consciousness of all as one.

9. This common view of all existence is known by all great and liberated beings, just like the same moisture and air is spread throughout the earth and emptiness.

10. Sages like ourselves, Narada and others, and the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva have this common view of all things in existence.

11. The saintly Uddalaka entertained this view of the community of all beings and things, and having thereby attained that state of perfection, free from fear or fall, he lived as long as he liked to live in this earthly sphere.

12. After a long time, he thought of enjoying the bliss of disembodied or spiritual liberation in the next world by quitting his frail mortal frame on earth.

13. With this intention, he went into the cave of a mountain where he made a seat for himself with dried tree leaves. He sat upon it in lotus posture, his eyes half closed under his eyelids.

14. He shut up the opening of the nine organs of sense, then having compressed their properties of the nine senses in the one single sense of consciousness, he confined them all within his intellect.

15. He compressed the vital airs in his body and kept his head erect on his neck. Then by fixing the tip of his tongue to the roof of his palate, he sat with his blooming face turned upwards to heaven.

16. He did not allow his breath to pass up or down or out or inside his body, or fly into the air. He did not let his mind or sight to be fixed on any object. He compressed them all within himself with his teeth joined together.

17. There was a complete stop of breathing his vital airs and his face was composed and clear. His body was erect with the consciousness of his intellect and his hairs stood on their ends like thorns.

18. His habitual consciousness of reasoning taught him the community of consciousness. It was by his constant communion with pure consciousness that he perceived a flood of internal bliss stirring in himself.

19. This feeling of internal bliss, resulting from his consciousness of intellectual community, led him to think himself as identical with the entity of the infinite soul and supporting the universal whole.

20. He remained in his state of stillness in pure being with an even composure. He enjoyed an even bliss in himself with a serene countenance.

21. Being unruffled by his spiritual bliss and having attained the state of divine holiness, he remained in his samadhi meditation for a long time by withdrawing his mind from all thoughts and errors of the world.

22. His great body remained as fixed as an image in painting, and shone as bright as the autumn sky illuminated by the beams of the full moon.

23. In course of some days, his soul gradually forgot its mortal state and found its rest in pure spiritual bliss, like the moisture of trees is dried by the sun at the end of autumn.

24. Being devoid of all desires, doubts and levity of his mind, and freed from all foul and pleasurable inclinations of his body, he attained that supreme bliss on the loss of his former joys, before which the prosperity of Indra appears like a straw floating on the vast expanse of the ocean.

25. The brahmin then attained that state of supreme good which is immeasurable and pervades through all space of the measureless vacuum, and which fills the universe and is felt only by the bliss of a yogi. It is called the supreme and infinite bliss, having neither beginning nor end and being a reality without any property assignable to itself.

26. While the brahmin first attained this state of samadhi and had the clearness of his understanding, during the first six months of his tapas, his body became emaciated by sunbeams and the winds of heaven whistled over his dry frame with the sound of lute strings.

27. After a long time elapsed in this manner, Parvati, the daughter of the mountain king, came to that place accompanied by other goddesses, shining like flames of fire with the grey locks of hair on their heads, as if to confer the boon to reward Uddalaka’s austere meditation.

28. Among them was the goddess Chaumundi who is adored by the gods. She took up the living skeleton of the brahmin and placed it on her crown, which added a new brightness to her body at night.

29. Thus the disgusting and dead-like body of Uddalaka was set over the many other ornaments on the goddesses’ body. She valued it as more precious than all her other jewels because of its intrinsic merit of spiritual knowledge.

30. Whoever plants this plant of life and the conduct of Uddalaka in the garden of his heart will find it always flourishing within himself with flowers of knowledge and fruit of divine bliss. Whoever walks under the shadow of this growing tree is never subject to death, but will reap the fruit of his higher progress in the path of liberation.

✅
Chapter 5.56 — Characteristics of Samadhi; Indifference to Surroundings

1. Vasishta continued:— Proceed in this manner to know the Universal Soul in your own soul and thereby obtain your rest in that holy state.

2. You must consider all things by the light of the scriptures and dive into their true meaning. You will also benefit from your teacher’s lectures, by pondering them in your own mind, and by your constant practice of ignoring phenomena until you come to know the invisible one.

3. You can attain that holy state and come to God through habitual dispassion, your acquaintance with the scriptures and their meanings, listening to the lectures of the spiritual teachers, and your own conviction.

4. You can also attain that everlasting state of joy without the medium of anything else by your enlightened understanding, when it is acute and unbiased.

5-6 Rama said, “Tell me sage, who is acquainted with past and future, which of these two has greater merit: one employed in the affairs of life and at the same time is enlightened and situated in his quietude, or another who remains alone immersed in samadhi apart from worldly connections?”

7. Vasishta replied:— He who does not associate his soul with phenomena enjoys a cool tranquility within himself called samadhi.

8. He who is certain that phenomena relate only to his mind and have no connection with his soul, and who remains calm and cool in himself, may either be engaged in business or sitting quietly in meditation.

9. Both of these are happy souls as long as they enjoy a cool calmness within themselves. This samadhi is the result of great and austere penance.

10. If the mind of a man who appears to be in samadhi is unsteady, he is a mad man.

11. On the other hand, when the mind of a man who appears to be mad is devoid of desires in his mind, he is in samadhi and his foolish frolics resemble the rapturous emotions and gestures of Buddhist mendicants.

12. The worldly man who is enlightened in his mind and the enlightened sage who is sitting in his hermitage are both alike in their samadhi and have undoubtedly reached the state of enlightenment.

13. The man who is unrelated with the actions he does, whose mind is free from desires, as if engrossed with other thoughts, senses what he hears and sees only with his sense organs without being affected by them.

14. A man becomes the agent of an act, even without actually doing it, who is fully intent upon the action, just as an unmoving man thinks himself to be moving about and falling down in a ditch.

15. Know the inaction of the mind is the best state of samadhi, and one-pointedness of the mind (samadhana) is the best means to your detachment.

16. Activity and inactivity of the mind are the sole causes of the restlessness and quietness of men, and also the causes of one-pointed meditation and lack of one-pointedness. Therefore destroy the germs of your rising desires.

17. Lack of desire is called neutrality of the mind and this constitutes its steadiness and meditation. This gives singleness to the soul and contributes to its everlasting tranquility.

18. Diminishing desires leads the man to the highest station of innocence and lack of desires.

19. Thickening desires serve to fill the mind with the vanity of its agency, which is the cause of all its sorrows. Therefore try to weaken your desires at all times.

20. Samadhi or enlightenment is when the mind is tranquil, freed from its fears, grief and desires, and the soul is at rest and quiet for lack of its passions.

21. Renounce the thoughts of all things from your mind. Wherever you live, whether on a mountain or in a forest, live as calmly as you do in your own home.

22. To householders with well governed minds and to those without personal ego, their houses are like solitary forests to them.

23. Cool-minded men see living in a house or in a forest in same light as they see all visible objects, only in the light of an empty vacuum.

24. Men of pacified minds see beautiful buildings of cities in the same indifferent light as they see the woods in the forest.

25. It is the nature of ungoverned minds to see even solitary woods as full of people like large towns and cities.

26. The restless mind falls asleep after it gets rid of its labor, but the quiet mind has its enlightenment after its nirvana. Therefore do as you like.

27. Whether one gets rid of worldly things or not, it is his sight of the infinite spirit that makes him meek and quiet.

28. He is called serious and detached, and cool and meek, whose mind is expanded by his indifference to both the objects of his desire and disgust, and to whom all things are alike insignificant everywhere.

29. He who in his innermost soul sees the world in God and never as without the Divine Spirit, and whose mind sees everything in waking as in his sleep, is truly the lord of mankind.

30. As people in a market, whether coming in or going out, are strangers unrelated to one another, so the wise man looks upon the concourse of men with unconcern and thinks his own town a wilderness.

31. The mind fixed to its inner vision and inattentive to external objects thinks a populous city is like a wilderness, both when awake or asleep, active or inactive.

32. Those who are attentive to the inner mind see the outer world as a empty space. They see the populous world like a desolate desert owing to its unworthiness of attention.

33. The world is all cool and calm to the cold hearted, just as the body is quiet cool to one without a fever.

34. Those who are parched with their internal thirst find the world is like a burning fire because everybody sees the same outside as he sees within himself.

35. The external world, with all its earthy, watery and airy bodies, and with all its rocks, rivers and quarters, is the counterpart of the inner mind and is situated outside the mind as it is contained within.

36. The big banyan tree and small barley plants are exact copies of their foreshadowed counterparts in the eternal mind. They are exhibited outside of it as they are within, like the fragrance of flowers diffused in the air.

37. There is nothing situated inside or outside this world other than casts and copies displayed by their patterns in the great mind of God.

38. The external world is a display of the essence contained in the Universal Soul. It appears outside from within its concealment, like the smell of camphor coming out of its casket.

39. The Divine Soul manifests itself in the form of ego and the world. Everything that we see externally or think internally is unreal, except the real images that are imprinted in the soul.

40. The soul is conscious of its innate images. It sees them in their intellectual appearances within the mind and in their external manifestations in visible creation.

41. He who has his internal and external tranquility, enjoys his peace of mind, and sees the world inseparable from the soul, enjoys his quiet samadhi everywhere. But he who perceives differences and differentiates his ego from all others is always subject to be tossed about like the rolling waves of the sea.

42. A soul harassed by the troubles of this world sees the earth, sky, air and water, together with the hills and all things in them, burning like the universal fire at the end of the world.

43. The dispassionate yogi performs his work with his organs of action, has his soul fixed in its internal meditation, and is not moved by any joy or grief.

44. The tranquil yogi beholds the all pervading soul in his own self and by remaining unruffled in his mind, never grieves or thinks about anything.

45. He who looks calmly into the course of the world as it has passed or is present before him, and who sits still smiling at its changing states of fortune, that man is named the dispassionate yogi.

46. Because these changing phenomena do not belong to unchanging spirit of God. They do not participate with my own egoism. They only resemble glittering atoms of gold in bright sunshine. They do not exist in the sky.

47. He is the one who truly exists who has no sense of “I” or “you” in himself and who makes no distinction of things in his mind, such as between conscious and unconscious things, and not the other who thinks otherwise.

48. The calm and quiet man conducts all his affairs with ease by remaining like the intangible and translucent air about him, and remaining as unconscious of his joy and sorrow as a block of wood or stone.

49. He who, of his own nature and not through fear, looks on all beings as himself and accounts the goods of others as worthless stones is the man who sees them in their true light.

50. No object whether great or small is slighted as a trifle by the polished or foolish. They value all things, but the foolish do not perceive in their hearts the Reality that abides in them, like the wise.

51. One possessed of such detachment and equality of his mind attains his highest perfection. He is quite unconcerned with regard to his rise and fall and about his life and death.

52. He is quite unconcerned with anything, whether he is situated amidst the luxuries of his home or the unnecessary things of the world, whether he is deprived of all his possessions and enjoyments or is exposed to a dreary and deep solitude.

53. He is indifferent whether indulging in sensual pleasure or drunken revelry, or remaining retired from society and observing silence,

54. whether he anoints his body with sandal paste or smears it with powdered camphor, or whether he rubs his body with ash or casts himself into the flames,

55. whether drowned in sinfulness or marked by his merits, or whether he dies this day or lives for a kalpa age.

56. The man of detachment is nothing in himself and therefore his doings are not his own acts. He is not polluted by impurity, just as pure gold is not sullied by dirt or dust.

57. The wrong application of the words “consciousness” and “soul” to “I” and “you” (or the subjective and objective) has led the ignorant to the blunder (of duality), just like the silvery shell of clams misleads men to the error of silver.

58. The knowledge of the extinction of all existence in the Supreme Spirit is the only cure for this blunder of one’s entity and the only means to peace of mind.

59. The error of “I” or “you” of the conscious soul, which is the source of its vain desires, causes the varieties of mankind’s happiness and sorrow in repeated births.

60. As the removal of the fallacy of the snake in the rope gives peace to the mind that there is no snake, so the subsidence of egoism in the soul brings peace and tranquility to the mind.

61. He who is conscious of his inner soul and unconscious of all he does, eats, drinks, and of his going to others and offering his sacrifice, is free from the results of his acts. It is the same to him whether he does them or not.

62. He who slides from outward nature and abides in his inner soul is released from all external actions and their resulting good and evil.

63. No wish stirs in such a calm soul, in the same manner as no germ sprouts from the bosom of a stone. Such desires as ever rise in it are like the waves of the sea, rising and falling in the same element.

64. All this is Himself and He is the whole of this universe without any partition or duality. He is one with the holy and Supreme Soul, and the only entity called the true reality (tat sat).

✅
Chapter 5.57 — Dualism Is Innate in the Soul

1. Vasishta continued:— Everyone feels consciousness residing in the soul, just like everyone feels the sharp smell inherent in pepper. It is this consciousness whereby we have reasoning of ego and non-ego and the distinctions of duration and space in what is undivided dimension and infinite.

2. The soul is like the universal ocean of salt, and consciousness is the salt in it. Consciousness gives us the knowledge of ego and non-ego and appears in the forms of infinite space and time.

3. The consciousness of which we have knowledge is inherent in the soul, like the sweetness of the sugarcane, and spreads itself in the different forms of ego and non-ego of worldly objects.

4. The intellect, the hardness inherent in the stone-like soul, diffuses itself in the shapes of the compact ego and the unsolid non-ego of the world.

5. The rock-like soul solidifies itself in the forms of “I” and “you” and the diversity of the world all about us.

6. The soul, like a great body of water, presents its fluidity in the form of the intellect and assumes the forms of the whirlpools of the ego, and the varieties of non-ego in the world.

7. The great tree of the soul stretches itself in the plentiful branches of consciousness producing the fruits of ego and the various forms of non-ego in the world.

8. The intellect, which is only a gap in the great vacuum of the soul, produces the ideas of “I” and “you” and of the universe beside.

9. The intellect is as vain as vanity itself in the emptiness of the soul. The intellect gives rise to the ideas of “I” and “you” and of the world beside.

10. The intellect situated within the environs of the soul has its egoism and non-egoism situated without it.

11. When the intellect is known to be of the same essence as the soul, then the difference between ego and non-ego proves to be only an act of reasoning and not reality.

12. The reflection of the inner soul is understood to be the ego, mind and animated soul.

13. When the bright and moonlike soul entertains and enjoys the ambrosial beams of consciousness within itself, it forgets its egoism, which rises no more in its bright sphere.

14. When the sweetness of consciousness is felt within the molasses of the soul, the mind tastes it with a zest and forgets its egoism in itself.

15. When the bright gem of the soul shines with the radiance of consciousness in itself, it finds its egoism to be completely lost under the brightness of its intellectual light.

16. The soul perceives nothing in itself because of the complete lack of phenomena in it. It does not taste anything in itself for want of anything to be tasted.

17. It thinks of nothing in itself for want of anything to be thought of, nor does it know anything in itself for want of anything to be known there.

18. The soul remains blank of all impressions of the subjective and objective, and also of the infinite fullness of space in itself. It remains by itself in the form of a firm and solid rock.

19. By way of common speech we use the words “I” and “you” and refer to an objective world. In reality, they are nothing whatever.

20. In the soul there is no seat or agent of thought, nor any error of the world. The soul remains like a mute and transparent cloud in the autumn sky.

21. As the fluidity of water causes it to form vortices in the sea, so the delusion of the knower and known in the intelligent soul assumes its errors of “I” and “you” in its undivided self.

22. As fluidity is inherent in water and motion in air, so egoism and the objective known world are innate in the subjective knower.

23. The more a man understands the truth, the more clearly he knows that objects are the display of Divine Omniscience, the living god or jiva Brahma. But if owing to his vitality and activity he comes to conceive the individual self or objectivity of all others, even a learned or knowing man is no better than an egoist.

24. To the extent the intelligent soul ( jiva) derives pleasure from its knowledge of objects, it identifies with the knowledge of its sameness with or difference from that object.

25. Living, knowing, and the knowledge of things are properties of the animated or concrete soul, but there is no difference of these in the distinct, or universal and intellectual soul.

26. As there is no difference between the intelligent and the living soul, so there is no diversity between the intelligent soul and Shiva, the lord of animated nature who is the undivided whole.

27. Know the all quiescent and the unborn one who is without beginning, middle or end, who is self manifest and joy itself, and who is inconceivable and beyond all assignable property or quality. He is all quiescent and all verbal and visual descriptions of him are entirely false. Yet for the sake of our comprehension, he is represented as the holy one, or Om.

✅
Chapter 5.58 — Legend of King Suraghu; His Doubt and Sage Mandavya’s Teaching

1. Vasishta said:— Rama, let me tell you an old legend to illustrate this subject. It is the story of the Kirata Chief Suraghu, which is marvelous in its nature.

2. There was a land in the north which was as white with its snowfalls as a heap of camphor, and which seemed to smile like the clear night under the moonbeams of the bright fortnight.

3. It was situated on the summit of Himalaya called Mount Kailash. It was free from mountain elephants and the chief of all other peaks.

4. It was milk-white like the bed of Vishnu in the Milky Ocean, and as bright as the paradise of Indra in heaven. It was fair as the seat of Brahma in the core of the lotus, and as snow-white as the snowy peak of Kedarnath, the favorite seat of Shiva.

5. It appeared like the surging sea owing to the waving of rudraksha trees over it, the parade of the apsara nymphs about it, and the reflections of its various gems.

6. The playful pramathas and other demigods merrily sported here as gaily as blossoms of asoka plants tossed by the feet of wanton damsels.

7. Here the god Shiva wanders about and sees waterfalls receding into the caves of the mountain diluting the moon-stones contained in them.

8. By Mount Kailash there was a place enclosed by trees, plants, creepers and shrubs of various kinds, intersected by lakes, hills and rivers, and interspersed by herds of deer and does of various species.

9. That was where a Kiratas people called Hemajatas (yellow-haired) lived. They were as numerous as ants living at the foot of a big banyan tree.

10. They lived like owls in the shades and hollows of trees and subsisted upon the fruits and flowers and herbage of the nearby forests and by felling and selling the rudraksha woods of Mount Kailash.

11. They had a chief among them who was noble-minded and brave to defeat his enemies. He was the arm of the goddess of victory and he stretched it to protect his people.

12. His name was Suraghu. He was mighty killing his brave and dreadful enemies. He was powerful like the sun and as strong as the god of wind in his figure.

13. In the extent of his kingdom, dignity and riches, he surpassed Kubera, the lord of the Guhyakas. He was greater in wisdom than the guru of the lord of gods, and he excelled the teacher of the asura demons in learning.

14. He discharged his royal duties by giving rewards and punishments as he saw men deserve them. He was firm in the acquittal of his duties as the sun in making the day and his daily course.

15. He began to think about the pain or pleasure that his punishments and rewards caused his people, and to which they were like birds caught in nets from their freedom of flight.

16. “Why do I forcibly pierce the hearts of my people,” he thought, “like they bruise sesame seeds for oil? It is plain that all persons are susceptible of pain and affliction like myself.

17. Yes, they are all capable of pain. Therefore I will cease to inflict them anymore, but give riches and please everyone.”

18. “But if I refrain from punishing those who torment the good, the wicked are sure to eliminate good, just as a river bed dries up for lack of rain.

19. I am in such a painful dilemma! My punishment and mercy to men are both grievous to me, or pleasing and unpleasing to me by turns.”

20. Being in this manner much troubled in his mind, his thoughts disturbed his spirit like waters in whirlpools.

21. It happened one time that sage Mandavya met him at his house, just like the divine sage Narada, in his journey through the regions of the sky, meets Indra in his celestial abode.

22. The king honored the sage with reverence and asked that he remove his doubt, as they cut down a poisonous tree in the garden with the stroke of the axe at its roots.

23. Suraghu said, “I am supremely blessed, O sage, at your call at my place, which has made me as joyful as the visit of spring on the surface of the earth and gives a fresh bloom to the fading forest.

24. Your visit, O sage, has made me more blessed than the blessed, and makes my heart bloom like the rising sun opens closed lotus petals.”

25. “O lord, you are acquainted with all truths and you are quite at rest in your spirit. Therefore please remove this doubt from my mind, as the sun displaces the darkness of night by his beams from the east.

26. A doubt festering in the heart is said to be the greatest pain of man, and this pain is healed only in the society of the good and wise.”

27. “The thoughts of my rewards and punishments to my subjects have been tormenting my heart, just as scratches inflicted by a lion’s claws afflict the bruised body of the elephant.

28. Therefore, O sage, remove my pain and cause the sunshine of peace and equanimity to brighten the gloom of my mind.”

29. Mandavya replied:— O prince, through one’s self-exertion, self-dependence and self-help the doubts of the mind are melted down like snow under sunshine.

30. It is also by self-discrimination that all mental anguish is quickly put to an end, just as thick mists and clouds are dispersed in autumn.

31. One must consider the nature and powers of one’s own internal and external organs, and the faculties of his body and mind.

32. Consider in your mind. What am I, and what are all these things and where do they come from? What does our life mean and what is this death that waits upon it?

33. As you come to know your true nature by your introspection into the state of your mind, you will remain unchanged by your joys and grief, like a firm rock.

34. As the mind is freed from its habitual unsteadiness and feverish heat, it regains its former tranquility, just like a rolling wave returns to the state of still water from which it arose.

35. As the mind remains aloof in living liberated men, all its imaginations are wiped off, just like its impressions and memories of past lives are lost and effaced upon its rebirth.

36. The dispassionate are honored as the most fortunate among mankind on earth. The man knowing this truth and remaining self-contented is regarded as venerable father by everybody.

37. When you come to see the greatness of your soul by the light of reason, you will find you are of greater magnitude than the extent of the sky and ocean put together. You see the rational comprehensiveness of the mind has more meaning in it than the irrational comprehension of the spheres.

38. When you attain such greatness, your mind will no longer dive into worldly affairs, just as a big elephant will not fall into a hole made by a bullock’s hoof.

39. But the base and debased mind will plunge itself in mean and vile matters of the world, just as the contemptible gnat drowns in a drop of water in a little hole.

40. Greed drives little minds to dive into dirty affairs, like insects moving about in dirt. Their miserliness makes them covet all outward things.

41. But great minds avoid taking notice of outward things in order to behold the pure light of Supreme Soul shining in themselves.

42. Ore is cleared and washed until pure gold is obtained. Spiritual knowledge is to be cultivated by men until spiritual light fills their souls.

43. Always see all things with a universal view in all places, with utter indifference to the varieties of their outward forms and figures. See all with the eye of your soul fixed to one Universal Soul pervading the whole.

44. Until you are free from seeing particular specialties, you can have no sight of the Universal Spirit. After all particulars disappear, there remains the universal, transcendental spirit.

45. Until you get rid of all individuality, it is impossible for you to come to the knowledge of universality, much less comprehend the all-comprehending soul of all.

46. When one endeavors to know the Supreme Soul with all his heart and soul and sacrifices all other objects to that end, then only is it possible for him to know the Divine Soul in its fullness.

47. Therefore forsake seeking anything for your own soul. Only by leaving all other things can you come to the sight of the best of things.

48. All these visible objects which appear to be linked together by the concatenation of causes and their effects are the creation of the mind. The mind combines them together like a string ties together a necklace of pearls. That which remains after expunging the mind and its created bodies is the sole soul, and this is that Supreme Soul.

✅
Chapter 5.59 — King Suraghu’s Self Inquiry and Realization

1. Vasishta continued:— O progeny of Raghu, after sage Mandavya advised the Kirata king in this manner, he retired to his solitary abode suited for holy saints and sages.

2. After the sage left, the king also retired to a lonely place where he began to reflect upon the nature of his soul and the manner of his existence.

3. Suraghu thought:— I am not in this mountain nor is it mine. I am not the cosmos nor is this world me.

4. This land of the Kiratas does not belong to me nor do I belong to it. It is the consent of the people that has made me the ruler of this place.

5. Without this election I am nobody here, nor is this place anything to me, even though this city and this land may last forever.

6. The city, so magnificent with its high flying flags, its gardens and my servants, and the long retinue of horse, elephants and soldiers, is, alas, nothing to me.

7. All this was nothing to me before my election and will not be mine after I am gone. All these possessions, enjoyments and consorts neither belong to me nor I to them.

8. Thus this government with all its force and officers in the city is nothing to me, nor am I aught to it in reality except mere governmental compliments to one another.

9. I think I am my body composed of my legs, hands, and feet. I believe I am placed in the midst of these.

10. But I perceive my body to be composed of flesh and bones and not my reasoning self which, like the lotus flower rising in the water, bears no relation to that element.

11. I find the flesh of my body to be dull and gross matter which does not make my soul. I find my rational part to be not this gross flesh at all. I find my bones likewise to be unconscious substances, consequently forming no part of my sentient soul.

12. I am none of the organs of action, nor do these organs compose me. All organic bodies are composed of gross matter and consequently do not constitute the animated soul.

13. I am not the nourishment which nourishes the body, and not the soul which makes me. I am not any of the organs of sense which perceive material impressions and have no consciousness without the intellect.

14. I am not the mind which is a passive agent and minds whatever it feels. It is called understanding because it stands under all its external and internal perceptions and conceptions, and it is the root of all worldly evils caused by its egoistic feelings.

15. Thus I am not the mind or understanding or the internal senses or the external organs of action. I am not the inner subtle body or its outer material and self locomotive form, but I am something beside all of these which I want to know.

16. I see at last my intelligent living soul reflecting on what is perceptible, thence called its intelligence. But this intelligent principle being roused by others does not come under the category of the soul.

17. Thus I renounce the knowable (living soul) and do not acknowledge the intelligible intelligence as myself. It is at the end of all the immutable and pure Consciousness which remains to be owned as myself.

18. Ah, it is wonderful at last to come to know the soul and find it to be me, the infinite soul, and the Supreme Spirit which has no end.

19. As Indra and the gods reside and are resolved in Brahman, so the spirit of God pervades through all material bodies, like the string of a necklace passing through the holes of all the pearls of which it is composed.

20. The power of the soul known as consciousness is pure and unstained in its nature. It is devoid of the dirt of thinkable objects and fills infinite space with its immense and stupendous figure.

21. Consciousness is devoid of all attributes and pervades all existence in its subtle form. It stretches itself from the highest heaven to the lowest depths. It is the reservoir of all power.

22. It is full with all beauty and it is the light that enlightens all objects to us. It is the connecting chain to which all the worlds are linked together like pearls in a necklace.

23. It is formless but capable of all forms and mutations, being connected with all matters and conversant with all subjects at all times. It has no particular name or form, but is taken as varied in different forms according to the operations of the intellect.

24. It assumes fourteen forms in its awareness of so many sorts of beings contained in the two wombs of the world. It is varied in all these forms in order to be aware of all things composing the whole body of the natural world.

25. The course of human happiness and misery is a false representation of understanding. The varieties of representations in the mind are mere operations of the soul and its attribute of the intellect.

26. My soul is the same with the all pervading spirit, and this understanding in me is no other than that all knowing consciousness. The same mind represents these imaginary images in the senses of my mind and causes the error of my kingship in me.

27. It is by good grace of Consciousness that the mind is seated in the vehicle of the body and ranges with joy amidst the play and diversions of the diverse scenes of this world.

28. But this mind and this body and all diversities are nothing in reality. They are all destroyed by the cruel hand of death and not a trace of them remains behind.

29. This world is a stage stretched out by the mind, its chief actor. The soul sits silently as a spectator of this scene, under the light of consciousness.

30. Alas, I find my painful thoughts of punishment, retribution and well being of my people to be all for nothing because whatever is done for the body also perishes with the body.

31. O, that I am awakened to truth at present and released from the mirage of my long held false views. I have come to see what is worth seeing and have found everything that is worth having.

32. All these appearances seen throughout this universe are nothing more than false phantoms presented or produced by the vibrations of consciousness. They do not last long.

33. Then what is the good of these my punishments and rewards to my people, which produce their pain and pleasure for a short time and do not lead to the lasting welfare of their souls?

34. What do these pains and pleasures mean to us when they both proceed from ourselves and are alike in the sight of God? All along I have been ignorant of this truth which, fortunately, has now dawned upon me.

35. What shall I now do under the influence of this light? Shall I now be sorry or joyous for it? What have I to look at and do now? Shall I remain in this place or go away from here?

36. I behold this wonderful sphere of consciousness shining upon me in its full splendor. I hail you, O holy light which I see blazing before me, but of which I can describe nothing.

37. I am now so awakened and enlightened and come to know the whole truth in me. Therefore I hail myself now knowing infinity and omniscience.

38. Being freed from the paintings of my mind, cleared from the loss of the sensible objects, and released from the errors of this world, I rest myself in the lap of my tranquil soul as in a state of sound sleep, in utter oblivion of all my internal and external impressions.

✅
Chapter 5.60 — King Suraghu’s Realization During and After Life

1. Vasishta continued:— Thus the lord of Hemajata attained the state of his perfect joy. It was by means of his self inquiry that he found his liberation in Brahman, like the son of Gadhi.

2. He was no longer employed in the discharge of his painful daily rituals, which are attended with repeated misery to those practicing them, but remained like the unchanging sun in its rotation of ever changing days and nights.

3. From then on he remained without any care or anxiety. He continued as firm and unmoved amid the righteous and wrongful acts of his subjects as a rock stands in the midst of boisterous waves playing about and dashing against it.

4. He was not susceptible to gladness or anger at others’ conduct in the discharge of their daily duties. He remained as grave as the deep ocean under the heaving waves of his clamorous people.

5. He subdued his mental actions and passions like a man does in his sound sleep. He shone with an unshaken luster like the flame of a lamp in still air.

6. He was neither unkind nor always kind to anybody, nor of was he envious or inimical to anyone. He was neither too wise nor unwise, nor was he a seeker or despiser of fortune.

7. He looked upon all with an even eye and in an equal light. He conducted himself with unwavering steadiness and was as cool and gentle in his mind as the calm ocean and gentle moonlight.

8. Knowing all things in the world to be only workings of the mind, he remained quiet in every state of pleasure and pain with the soundness of his understanding.

9. His mind was enlightened. His entranced soul enjoyed its trance in every state of his life and was full in itself both when he sat and slept as when he moved about or did anything.

10. He continued for a full hundred years to rule over his kingdom with his mind unattached to state affairs and with his unimpaired body and intellect.

11. At last he left his home of the frail body of his own accord, like dew dropping itself down impregnated with sunbeams.

12. Then his soul fled on the wings of his intelligence to the primary and final cause of causes, like the current of a stream runs to the main ocean by breaking down the bounds of its banks on its way.

13. His intelligent soul, being freed from its remorse (of leaving the body) and released from the conditions of its reincarnation, became one with the immaculate spirit and was absorbed in the Supreme One, just as the air contained in a pot mixes with the all-encompassing sky after the pot is broken.

✅
Chapter 5.61 — King Parigha’s Tapas; His Meeting with King Suraghu

1. Vasishta said:— O lotus-eyed Raghava, you also act in the manner as Suraghu and rely on the sole existence of the Supreme One to cleanse your iniquities and to get rid of all sorrow in this world.

2. The mind will no longer pant or sorrow when it has this universal sight in itself, just as a child is no longer afraid of dark when it gets the light of a lamp in the room.

3. The discriminating mind of Suraghu found its rest in perfect tranquility, just as a fool finds his security by laying hold of a big bundle of straw.

4. Having this holy sight in your view and by your preaching this light to others, continue to enjoy this uniform detachment of samadhi in yourself and shine forth as a bright-gem before the world.

5. Rama said, “Tell me, O chief of sages, what is this uniform detachment? Set my mind to rest, which is now fluttering like peacock plumes ruffled by winds.”

6. Vasishta replied:— O Rama, listen to the marvelous story of enlightened and sagely King Parigha, and how he conducted himself by subsisting on tree leaves.

7. I will also tell you about the conversation between two princes, both of whom were equally enlightened in their souls and situated in the same sort of uniform quietism.

8. There was a mighty king of the Persians known by the name of Parigha. He was a victor over his enemies and the support of his kingdom, just as the axle is the support of a carriage.

9. He was joined in true friendship with Suraghu and was as closely allied to him as the god of love is to spring.

10. It happened at one time that a great drought occurred in the land of Parigha. It caused a great famine that resembled the final desolation of the earth brought on by the sins of men.

11. It destroyed a great number of Parigha’s people who were exhausted by hunger and weakness like a fire destroys unnumbered living animals of the forest.

12. Seeing this great disaster of his people, Parigha was overwhelmed in grief. He left his capital in despair like a traveler leaving a city burned down to the ground.

13. He was so sorely soul-sick at his inability to remove this unavoidable calamity of his subjects that he went to a forest to devote himself to penance like Jiva, the chief of the devout.

14. He entered a deep wood unseen and unknown to his people, far away from mankind. There he passed his time in his disgust with the world.

15. He employed himself in austere penance in a mountain cave and remained sober-minded, living upon dry and withered tree leaves.

16. By subsisting on dry leaves for a long time, as fire devours them always, he earned the surname of Parnada (Leaf-Eater) among the devotees of that place.

17. From then on, the good and royal sage was known as Parnada to holy sages in all parts of Asia.

18. Having undergone the most rigid austerities for many years, he attained divine knowledge by his long practice of self-purification and by grace of the Supreme Soul.

19. He obtained his self-liberation by avoiding hatred and the passions and affections of anger, pity and other feelings and desires, and by his attainment of mental calmness and an enlightened understanding.

20. He wandered at his pleasure all around the temple of the triple world. He mixed with the company of spiritual masters and disciples like bees mixing with the company of swans in lotus beds.

21. At one time, his wanderings led him to visit the city of Hemajata, built with shining stones and shining as brightly as a peak of Mount Meru.

22. There he met his old friend, Suraghu, the king of that city. They saluted each other with mutual fondness. They were both delivered from the darkness of ignorance and perfect in their knowledge of the knowable.

23. They approached each other saying, “O! It is by virtue of our good fortune that we come to meet one another.”

24. They embraced each other with joyful faces and sat on the one and same seat, as when the sun and moon are in conjunction.

25. Parigha (Parnada) said:— My heart rejoices to see you with full satisfaction, and my mind receives a coolness as if it immersed in the cooling orb of the moon.

26. Sincere friendship, like true love, shoots forth in a hundred branches in our separation from each other, just as a tree growing by the side of a pool stretches its boughs all around until the currents wash it and its roots away.

27. O my good friend, the memories of our private talks, merry sports and idle plays of our early days awaken those innocent joys in me.

28. I know well, O sinless friend, that the divine knowledge which I have gained by my long and painful tapas and by the grace of God is already known to you from the preaching of the wise sage Mandavya.

29. But let me ask, are you placed beyond the reach of sorrow and set in your rest and tranquility? Are you situated in the supreme cause of all as firmly as if you were seated upon the unshaken rock of Meru?

30. Do you ever feel that auspicious self-gratifying grace in your soul which purifies the fountain of your mind, like the autumn sky clears the springs of water on earth?

31. Do you, O ruler of your people, perform all your acts with a complacent air and steady mind discharging your duties for the good of mankind?

32. Do the people in your kingdom live in safety to enjoy their prosperity and competence. Are they all free from disease, danger and anxieties of life?

33. Is this land plentiful in its harvests and are the trees here bending down with their fruits? Do the people here enjoy the fruit of their labor and the objects of their desire?

34. Is your good fame spread about in all quarters, like the clear and cooling beams of the full moon? Does your fame cover the face of this land like a sheet of snowfall on the ground?

35. Are all quarters of the sky filled with the renown of your virtues as to leave no gap in it, and as the roots and stalks of lotus bushes spread throughout a reservoir and choke the course of its waters?

36. Do the young minds and virgins of your villages walk about pleasantly over plains and fields loudly singing your praises in their merry songs?

37. Does all welfare attend you with respect to prosperity, wealth and possessions and the produce of your fields? Do your family, children and dependents fare well in this city?

38. Do you enjoy your health free from all disease and complaint? Do you reap the reward of your meritorious acts done for this life and the next?

39. Are you indifferent in your mind with regard to temporary enjoyments, which appear pleasant for a moment but prove to be our deadly enemies at last?

40. It is after a very long separation that we come to meet again. It is my good fortune that rejoins me to you, as spring revisits valleys with verdure.

41. There are no joys or sorrows in this world which do not happen to the living in their union with and separation from one another.

42. During our long separation we have become quite altered in our circumstances, yet we happened to meet each other in the same unchanged state of our minds by a wonderful accident of destiny.

43. Suraghu replied:— Yes, sage, the course of destiny is as crooked as that of a serpent. There is no man who can penetrate the depth of the mysterious nature of destiny.

44. There is nothing impossible for destiny, which has after the lapse of so long a time reunited us in one place from the vast distance between our two countries.

45. O great sage, we are all in good health and prosperity in this place. We have been supremely blessed by your graciousness to us.

46. Behold us purified and cleansed of our sins by your holy presence among us. The tree of our merits has borne the fruit of our peace and satisfaction at your sight.

47. O royal sage, we enjoy all prosperity in this our native city. Your presence here this day has made it shoot forth in a hundred branches of joy and happiness.

48. O noble minded sage, your appearance and speech have sprinkled this place with sweet nectar drops, joy and holiness. The company of the virtuous is reckoned to equal the supreme joy of man.

✅
Chapter 5.62 — King Suraghu Describes His Samadhi

1. Vasishta related:— King Parigha then resumed his personal speech, expressive of the affection he formerly bore to Suraghu.

2. Parigha said, “Whatever acts of goodness are done in this earth of strife by men of well governed minds, they all redound to their happiness. But not so the evil deeds of ungoverned minds. They lead to their misery.”

3. “Sage, do you rely on that state of perfect rest which is free from desire? Do you rest in that state of subtle samadhi that is described as transcendental coma or trance?”

4. Suraghu replied:— Tell me sage, what do you mean by the abandonment of all desires? What is meant by that perfect lethargy which they call transcendental coma or trance?

5. Tell me, O high minded sage, how can a man be called not entranced who is enrapt in his supreme intelligence and at the same time attends to his worldly concerns?

6. Men of enlightened understandings, however they are employed observing their usual worldly affairs, are said to be in bliss with their knowledge of the unity of the Supreme Soul.

7. Simply sitting in lotus posture with palms folded cannot endow supreme bliss if the mind is not subdued and one’s nature is unconquerable.

8. The knowledge of truth which burns away all worldly desires like straw is called samadhi, the true trance of the soul. Samadhi is not secluded devotees staying in one place and observing silence.

9. The wise describe samadhi as the repose of the soul, always gathered in knowledge attended with continued rest and self-content, which gives an insight into the nature of things.

10. The wise say samadhi or stillness is the mind unaffected by pride or hatred. The mind is as unmoved as a fixed rock against the howling winds of the passions.

11. The mind is also said to have its stillness in samadhi when it is devoid of anxious thoughts and cares, when it is acquainted with the natures of its wished for objects, and yet remains free from its choice of and aversion to the objects of its liking or dislike. This is also said to be the fullness or perfection of the mind.

12. The mind of the magnanimous, joined and acting with its understanding, is said to stand in its stillness of samadhi or quietism.

13. But this pause of samadhi, if stretched too far to become a standstill, is liable to break down by itself, just as a boy’s hand pulls the fiber of a lotus-stalk too long. Dead and dormant quiescence is the opposite extreme of conscious quietism.

14. As the sun does not cease giving his light to the other side of the world after he sets from this part, so our consciousness continues to glow even after it has run its course in this life.

15. As the course of a stream never stops in spite of its constant currents, so the course of our thoughts does not suspend from knowing further truths.

16. As the ever continuous time never loses the sight of fleeting moments, so the everlasting soul is never in abeyance to mark the fitting thoughts of its mind.

17. As the ever current time never forgets to run its habitual course, so intelligent understanding is never remiss to scan the nature of the mysterious Consciousness which guides its course.

18. When the mind wanders at random and is not settled in the sole object of its meditation, its thoughts run as quickly in succession as the continued rotation of the parts of time.

19. As the lifeless soul has no perception of any external object, so the soul unconscious of itself has no knowledge of the course of time, as in the state of sleep, delirium and unconsciousness.

20. As there is no skillful man without some skill or other in the world, so there is no intelligent being without the knowledge of his soul and self-consciousness.

21. I find myself to be enlightened and wakeful and pure and holy at all times. My mind is tranquil and my soul at its rest on all occasions.

22. I find nothing intercepts the sweet repose of my soul which has found its anchorage in my uninterrupted communion with the divine spirit.

23. Hence my mind is never without its quiescence at anytime, nor is it unquiet at any moment, it being solely resigned to spiritual meditation.

24. I see the all pervading and everlasting soul in everything and in every manner. I know not whether it be the rest or unrest in my soul which has found both its quiet and employment in its perpetual meditation of the Divine Spirit.

25. Great men of quiescent spirits always continue in an even and uniform tone and even course of their minds with themselves. Therefore the difference between the rest and restlessness of the soul is a mere verbal distinction and bears no shade of difference in their meanings.

✅
Chapter 5.63 — Conclusion of Parigha’s and Suraghu’s Conversation

1. Parigha said:— Sage, I find you to be truly wise and enlightened in your beatitude. You shine like the full moon with your inner coolness.

2. I see the fullness of sweet delight in you. The shadow of prosperity rests upon you and you appear as graceful as a water lily with your pleasing and cooling face.

3. The clarity, extent, fullness and depth of your understanding give you the appearance of the deep, clear and extensive ocean when it ceases to be disturbed by loud winds and waves.

4. The pure and full delight of your inner soul, free from the cloud of egotism, gives it the grace of the clear expanse of the autumn sky.

5. I see you composed in your mind in all places and find you content at all times. Moreover you are devoid of passions, and all these combine to add to you an unutterable grace.

6. You have overcome the bounds of knowing whatever is good and evil in this world. Your great understanding has acquainted you with everything in its entirety.

7. Your mind is cheered with the knowledge of all existence and non-existence and your body is free from the evil of repeated birth and death, the common lot of all beings.

8. You have gleaned the truth from whatever is untrue. You are as satisfied with your true knowledge as the gods were satisfied with drinking the water of immortality which they churned out of the brackish water of the ocean.

9. Suraghu replied:— There is nothing in this world, O royal sage, which we may consider valuable, for all that shines and glitters here is nothing in reality and has no intrinsic value.

10. There being nothing desirable here to us, there is also nothing disgusting to us, because the lack of a thing implies the lack of its opposite also.

11. The ideas are weakened and obliterated from my mind that most worldly things are mean and that on particular occasions some are great.

12. Time and place give importance to the object and lower the best ones in our estimation. Therefore it behooves the intelligent neither to be lavish in the praise or disapproval of the one or the other.

13. According to our evaluations we praise or disapprove of something. We esteem whatever is desirable to us. But they are the most intelligent who give their preference to what is the best and of the greatest good to us.

14. The world abounding in its woods, seas, mountains and living animals presents us nothing that is to be desired for our lasting and substantial good.

15. What is there that we should desire when there is nothing worth desiring in this world except bodies composed of flesh and bones, and wood and stones, all of which are worthless and frail?

16. As we cease to desire, so we get rid of our attachments and dislikes also, just as sunset is attended with the loss of both light and heat.

17. It is useless talk to elaborate on the subject. It is enough to know this truth for our happiness here. Have our desires under control and maintain an evenness of our minds under all conditions with inner serenity and universal regard for all.

✅
Chapter 5.64 — Ignorance, the Life of a Bullock; Samadhi

1. Vasishta resumed:— After Suraghu and Perigha ended their discussion on the errors of this world, they honored one another with due respect and retired gladly to their respective duties of the day.

2. Now Rama, you have heard the whole of this instructive dialogue between them. Try to profit by maturely considering its meaning.

3. By reasoning with the learned, wits are sharpened with intelligence and the egotism of men melts down in their minds, like rain from a thick black cloud in the sky.

4. It spreads a clear and calm composure over the mind, as the return of cloudless autumn over the spacious sky to the delight of mankind, and by its diffusion of bounteous plenty on earth.

5. After the region of the intellect is cleared of its darkness, the light of the Supreme Soul, which is the object of meditation and our sole refuge, becomes visible in it.

6. A man who is always spiritually minded with insight within himself and who is always delighted with his intellectual investigations always has his mind free from sorrow and regret.

7. Though a spiritual man is engaged in worldly affairs and is subject to passions and affections, yet he is unstained by them in his heart, like a lotus bud that is not stained by the water in which it is submerged.

8. A silent sage who is all-knowing, holy and calm and quiet in himself is never disturbed by his ungoverned mind. He remains as firm as the dauntless lion against the rage of an unruly elephant.

9. The heart of a wise man is never affected by the mean pleasures of the world. It stands like the lofty tree of paradise above the surrounding bushes of thorny brambles and poisonous plants.

10. A religious recluse who is disgusted with the world has no care for his life or fear of death. In the same way, a man whose mind is filled with full knowledge is never elated or depressed by his good or bad fortune.

11. A man who knows the falseness of the mind and the panorama of the world in the soul is never soiled by the stain of sin, just as the clear sky is nowhere smudged by any dirt or dust.

12. The knowledge of one’s ignorance is the best safeguard against falling into greater ignorance, and it is the only remedy for the disease of ignorance, just as the light of the lamp is the only remedy to cure the darkness of night.

13. The knowledge of our ignorance is the best healer of ignorance, just as the knowledge of one’s dreaming removes his trust in the objects of his dream.

14. A wise man engaged in business, his mind disengaged from it and fixed on one object, is not obstructed by his business in his view of spiritual light, just as the eyesight of fish is not hindered by surrounding water.

15. As the light of intellectual day appears over the horizon of the mind, the darkness of the night of ignorance is put to flight. Then the mind enjoys its supreme bliss of knowledge like the full blaze of day.

16. After the sleep of ignorance is over, the mind is awakened by its intelligence to the bright rising sunbeams of knowledge. Then the mind is ever awake to reason, which no dullness can overpower.

17. A man is said to live until he sees the moon of his soul and the moonbeams of his intellect shining in the sphere of his mind. He is said to have lived only for those few days when he has discharged his duties with joy.

18. A man passing over the pool of his ignorance and taking himself to contemplation of his soul enjoys a coolness within him, just as the cooling moon enjoys the cold nectar juice contained in her orb.

19. Our true friends are the best scriptures. Those days are best spent with the scriptures, in discourse on dispassion, and when we feel the rise of the intellect within us.

20. How lamentable are those born to perish like ferns in their native forests, who are immersed in their sinfulness by their neglect to look into their souls.

21. Our lives are interwoven with a hundred threads of hopes and fears. We are as greedy as bulls for their fodder of straw. At last we are overtaken by old age and decrepitude and carried away with sorrow and sighs.

22. Like heavy laden bullocks, the dull headed are made to bear great loads of distress on their backs in their native soil.

23. They are bitten and disturbed by the gnats of their passions. They are made to plough the ground under the halter of their greed. They are shut in the cages of their masters and bound by the bonds of their kindred.

24. Thus we are harassed to support our wives and children. We are weakened by age and infirmity. Like beasts of burden we must wade in dirt and mire, be dragged to long journeys, and be broken under heavy loads without pause from toil and fatigue.

25. Bending under our heavy loads, we are tired from long journeys across deserts and burned under scathing sunbeams, without cool shade to shelter our heads even for a little while.

26. We are like big bodied bulls with poor souls inside. We are oppressed at every limb and labor under our destiny tied around our necks like ringing bells on bullocks, the scourge of our sins lashing us on both sides.

27. We toil like bulls laboring under the poles of the carts they pull, crossing dreary deserts without a moment’s rest.

28. We are always prone to and plunged in our own evils. We move like heavily laden bullocks, trolling and groaning all the way long.

29. Rama, try your best to understand this bullock of your living soul and take your best measures to restore it to its pristine purity.

30. The animal soul released from the ocean of this world, purified in its mind by the light of truth, is no more liable to roll in the mud like some beasts.

31. In the society of high-minded men, the living soul receives instruction for its salvation in this ocean of the world, just as a passenger easily gets a boat from the ferryman to cross a river.

32. A country is a desert without learned good people who resemble the green trees of the land. The wise must not dwell in a land where trees do not yield fruit or afford cooling shade.

33. Good men are the flowering plumeria trees of the land. Their cooling words resemble the shady leaves of the tree, and their gentle smiles its blooming flowers. Let men resort to the shade of such plumeria covered shelters.

34. For want of such men, the world is a desert burning under the darkening heat of ignorance where no wise man should allow himself to rest in peace and quiet.

35. The self is one’s true friend. Therefore support yourself by only your self. Do not obscure the brightness of your soul under darkness of bodily pride or bury your life in the skin of ignorance.

36. Let the learned ponder in themselves, “What is this body and how did it come into existence? What is its origin and what is its essence?” Thus let the wise diligently consider the miseries to which this body is subject.

37. No riches, friends, learning or relative serves to save the drowning soul. It must be one’s own mind that buys its own redemption by resigning itself to its source and cause.

38. The mind is the constant companion and true friend of the soul. Therefore one should inquire within by consultation with the mind.

39. By a constant habit of dispassion and deliberation one can cross the ocean of this world riding on the raft of true knowledge.

40. It is pitiful to see the inner torments of the evil minded who neglect to release their souls from all worldly vexations,

41. Release the elephant of your living soul (jiva) from the chains of its egoism, its bonds of greed, and the inebriation of its mind. Deliver the soul from the muddy pit of its birth place and retire to your solitude.

42. By these means, O Rama, the soul has its salvation. Therefore cast away your ignorance and wipe off your egoism.

43. This is the best way to leave the soul to its purity, making you disentangle yourself from the snare of your mind and disengaging your soul from the trap of egoism.

44. By this means we see the lord of gods, the Supreme Soul, and the physical body is regarded as no better than a clod of earth or a block of wood.

45. The sunlight of intellect comes to view after dispersion of the cloud of egoism by which it is hidden. After this you attain the state of supreme joy.

46. As the light of day is seen after the dark veil of night withdraws, so you come to see the light of the soul after removal of the curtain of your egoism.

47. That blissful state of the soul which remains after the darkness of egoism is dispersed is the state of divine fullness. It is to be adored with all diligence.

48. This state of the vast ocean-like and perfect fullness of soul, which no words can express and no eye can behold, is beyond all comparison and every color of human attribution.

49. It is only a particle of the pure intellectual light which gains its stability in the devout spirit. Then it is comparable with nothing but the light of divinity which shines before the internal sight of the holy.

50. Though it is beyond all comparison, yet we see it in our state of sound sleep (susupta). It is the state of immensity. It is as extended as the vast extent of the sky.

51. After egoism and mental powers are extinguished and all feelings in oneself subside, a transcendent ecstasy arises in the soul called divine or perfect joy and bliss.

52. This bliss is attainable only by yoga meditation and in some ways can be compared to sound sleep. But it cannot be described with words, O Rama. It must be perceived in the heart.

53. The totality of divinity is perceived only by the perception of the mind and not by any categorical distinction made about the divine essence. Without this intuitive perception, we can have no conception of the soul.

54. The knowledge of the soul comprehends in itself the whole totality and infinity together. It resides in the unchanging steadiness of the mind. By shutting out the internal and external from the senses and the mind, the lord of lords, the Divine Soul appears to our consciousness.

55. Therefore, after our desire of sensible objects is extinguished we derive the light of our supreme joy and we have an even minded composure in all circumstances which leads the souls of the great to revert to that indescribable identity.

✅
Chapter 5.65 — The Story of Bhasa and Vilasa

1. Vasishta continued:— As long as one does not come to perceive his soul by his effort to break down his own mind, lotuseyed Rama, one does not get rid of his egoism and selfishness.

2. There is no end to his worldly misery just as there is no setting of a sun in a painting. His adversity becomes as extended as the vast ocean itself.

3. His misfortunes are as interminable as the succession of waves in the sea. The appearance of the world is as gloomy to him as the face of the sky covered by the dark clouds of rainy season.

4. Here will I recite an old story containing a discourse between two friends Bhasa and Vilasa in a region of Sahya Mountain.

5. Now Sahya is a mountain mightier than the three worlds in its superior strength. In its height it surmounted the sky, in its extent it got the better of the ground, and with its foot it reached the infernal region.

6. It was filled with various flowers and furnished with innumerable waterfalls. Its precious stones were watched ever by Guhya mountaineers. It was named Sahya or moderate being situated in the temperate zone, yet it was intolerable as a tropic mountain.

7. Its girdle of sun-stones seemed studded with pearls from the sloping sunbeams falling upon them. Its base with its pavement of gold looked like the golden Lanka island.

8. Here a hill was full of flowers and there another filled with minerals. There were lakes with flowering water plants on one side and shining stones lying on another with nothing beside the light of the divinity, which shines before the internal sight of the holy.

9. Here cascades were hurling and gurgling in foaming froths. There old bamboos were blowing through their hollow pipes. On one side winds were howling in mountain caves, and on another bees were buzzing on clusters of flowers.

10. Apsara nymphs were singing in concert on mountain tops and wild beasts were growling in the forests. Birds were chirping in the gardens, clouds roared over mountain peaks, and birds of the air were crying and flying about the sky.

11. Vidyadharas rested in mountain caves and black bees hummed on the lotus beds. Foothills resounded with the chorus of keratas and woodlands were resonant with the melodies of singing birds.

12. The mountain appeared as if it was the home of the triple world. It had the seats of the gods on its top, the homes of men at its foot, and the holes of snakes under its bottom.

13. Spiritual masters lived in its caves and precious metals lay hidden in its bosom. Its sandalwoods were the home of snakes and its peaks were the haunts of lions.

14. It was crowned with wreaths of flowers hanging on high over its head. Its body was smeared with the dust and pollen of flowers. It was fanned by fragrant breeze of flowers and was all flowery with the fallen flowers.

15. It was daubed with the grey dust of its metallic ores and stood on its footstool of precious stones. It was often the playground of heavenly damsels who frequented its covered shelters to pick mandara flowers.

16. Its peaks were veiled by the blue covering of clouds and decorated with gems hidden under them. They appeared as beauties beaming with the golden sunbeams and rising to meet their loving gods in heaven.

17. On the northern edge of that mountain there was a tableland overhung by trees loaded with bunches of fruits, and also a shining lake formed by the waters of cataracts falling from high.

18. Small flowers from the waving stalks of amra trees lay scattered on the ground, and its sides were decorated with blossoming kolkara and punnaga plants, shining like blue lotuses around a lake.

19. Sunbeams were shut out by the cover of sheltering alcoves of vines, and the ground sparkled with its gems like the floor of heaven. Jambu fruits distilled their juice like cooling moonbeams, and all these made this spot as delightful as the moon light sky.

20. It was delightful as the heaven of Brahma and the celestial seat of Shiva. Here sage Atri held his hermitage which blotted away the austerities of spiritual masters.

21. In this hermitage there dwelt two hermits, both of whom were as wise and knowing as Brihaspati and Shukra, the teachers of gods and demigods.

22. The two were of one flesh and soul and in time brought forth two children, like two buds of lotuses growing in the same bed, their bodies as pure as the clear lake from which they sprang.

23. They were named Bhasa and Vilasa. They grew up in time like two orchids upon the branching arms of their parents.

24. They had one soul and mind in two bodies, united to one another as those of two loving brothers and intimate friends. They remained inseparable like oil in sesame seeds and like a flower and its fragrance.

25. The fond parents became even more attached to each other in their hearts and minds from their affection and taking care of their sons who seemed to be one and the same person in two different bodies.

26. The two children of graceful forms also enjoyed each other in the same hermitage. They moved about like two bees over the same bed of lotuses in the same lake.

27. They passed their boyhood and attained their youth, shining forth in a short time as the two luminaries of the sun and moon rising together.

28. Then the aged parents left their infirm bodies and went to heaven like a pair of birds quitting their broken nest.

29. The death of the parents made the youths as dejected as a drooping lotus in a dried-up channel. The vigor of their bodies gave way to a lack of energy.

30. They discharged the funeral rites and remained long in their mourning. The sad accidents of life cannot be avoided even by the good and great.

31. After they completed the funeral rites, they were overpowered by grief and sorrow. They continued to wail over their memory with piteous cries and tears. They sat silently and inactive like pictures in a painting, their melancholy faces and hearts heavy with sobs and sighs.

✅
Chapter 5.66 — The Two Hermits Wander & Meet in Old Age

1. Vasishta continued:— The two sorrowful hermits continued observing their rigorous austerities until their bodies became emaciated like two withered trees in the forest.

2. They passed their time in the solitary forest with cool apathy in their minds. They were as helpless as a stray, separated male deer. They wandered separately far away from their home and possessions.

3. They passed their days and nights, then months and years in this manner, until both were worn out by age, like two withered trees in a valley.

4. Not attaining true knowledge, their austerities served only to shatter their frames and reduce their strength. Finally at last they happened to meet one another, and took to their conversation in the following manner.

5. Vilasa said, “O Bhasa, who is the best fruit of the tree of my life, who has his seat in the recess of my heart and is a sea of ambrosia to me, I welcome you, O my best friend in this world.

6. Tell me my good friend, after you separated from me, how and where have you passed such long a time? Have your austerities been successful and rewarded with their fruit?

7. Tell me whether your mind is free from anxieties and whether you are in possession of your self. Say, have you obtained the reward of your learning and after all, have you gotten your peace and quiet?”

8. Being addressed and asked in this way by Vilasa, whose mind was troubled with the vexations of this world, Bhasa, who had attained complete knowledge, replied to him as respectfully as a friend does to his dearest friend.

9. Bhasa replied:— O good friend! You are fortunately and happily met here this day. But how can we expect to have our peace and rest as long as we have to remain in this world of strife and valley of misery?

10. How can I have my rest while turbulent passions are not subdued in my breast, until I know the knowable, and until I can get across this sea of the world?

11. How can we have our quiet while our desires and hopes and fears continue to infest our minds, and until we can weed them out like thorns and brambles with the spade of our reason?

12. Until we gain true knowledge and have even minds, and until we have a full knowledge of things, we can have no rest.

13. Without knowledge of the soul and acquisition of true knowledge, which is the greatest remedy against all diseases of the mind, it is impossible to escape from the pestilence of the world.

14. The poisonous plant of worldliness sprouts forth in our childhood. It shoots out in leaves in our youth, flowers in our old age, and never bears fruit before our death.

15. The body decays like a withered tree and our relatives flutter over it like bees. Old age overtakes us with blossoming grey hairs and produces the fruit of death.

16. We have to reap the bitter fruits of our actions of bygone times. They are laid up in store and bear fruit in their seasons. Thus years upon years glide upon us in the same monotonous rotation of business and in the sad course of thought of our minds.

17. The tall body, rising like a thief on the ground, has all its inner cells and cavities filled with the thorns of our cravings. It is the abode of the serpentine retinue of our actions, emitting the poison of continuous sorrow in our repeated reincarnations in new bodies.

18. See how our days and nights roll on in their circuit of continued misery and misfortune, misconstrued by men for transient joy and good fortune.

19. See how our lives are spent in useless pursuits after objects of our vain wishes, and how we misspend our time with trifles that are of no good to us.

20. The furious elephant of the ungoverned mind breaks loose from its chains of good sense, then joining with the elephants of wild desire, ranges at large without rest or sleep.

21. The bawling tongue screams like a vulture in the hollow of the tree of the human body, fostering itself by feeding on the gems of thought lying hidden inside.

22. The slackened limbs of the old and withered body drop down like dry tree leaves. There is nothing to prop up the drooping spirit from its decay and decline day by day.

23. The brightness of the body flies away in old age, and the mind dejected at others’ disregard becomes as pale and withered as a lotus flower fading away under frost.

24. As the channel of the body dries up in old age and the water of youth is drained out of it, so the swan of life flies far away and there is nothing to retard its flight.

25. The old, time worn tree of the aged body is overpowered by the force of the blasts of time, blowing its leaves and flowers below, then burying them in the ground.

26. The serpent of desire lying dormant in the heart is content, like a croaking frog, to hold its complaints in the mouth. The mind, like a monster, hides itself in a pool of dark despondence.

27. Our desires with their various wishes are like the multicolored flags of a temple, furling and fluttering in all directions until they are hurled down by the hurricane of old age.

28. The world is a long linked chain lying in the depth of eternity in which the rat of death is always busy gnawing the knot of life at the root.

29. The stream of life glides muddily on with the foam and froth of cares and anxieties. There are whirlpools of repeated reincarnations and waves of youthful frivolities that are as noisy as they are dangerous.

30. The stream of our actions on earth flows on interminably with the waves of our worldly duties and the various arts of life all leading to the abyss of destruction.

31. The current of our friends and relations and the concourse of people glide on constantly to the deep and boundless ocean of eternity from whose boundary nobody ever returns to life.

32. The body is a valuable instrument for the discharge of our worldly duties, but it is soon lost under the mud of this ocean of the world. Nobody knows where it is buried in its repeated births.

33. The mind is bound to the wheel of its anxieties and put to the rack for its deceptions. It turns about constantly like a piece of straw in the whirling currents of this ocean of the world.

34. The mind dances and floats over waves of endless duties of life. It does not have even a moment’s respite from its thoughts, but continues to oscillate with the action of the body, rising and falling according to the course of events.

35. The mind, like a bewildered bird, flutters between various thoughts of what it has done, what it is doing, and what it is about to do. Thus it is caught in the trap of its own fancies for evermore.

36. The thoughts that “this one is my friend” and “the other one is my foe” are our greatest enemies in this world. These tear my heart strings like the rough wind that tears tender lotus leaves and fibers.

37. The mind is overwhelmed in the whirlpool of its cares. Sometimes it is hurled down to the bottom, and at others floating and loosened from it like a living fish caught by angling hook.

38. The mistaken belief that the external body is the internal self is the cause of all our grief here. Taking others as our own is equally for our misery.

39. All mankind placed between their happiness and sorrow in life are swept away to age and death, just as the leaves of trees growing on high hills are scattered by the high winds of heaven.

✅
Chapter 5.67 — Soul & Mind Are Unrelated to Phenomena; Abandonment of Intrinsic Relations

1. Vasishta continued:— Having thus approached and welcomed each other, the two brothers applied themselves to the acquisition of divine knowledge and thereby gained their liberation in the living state.

2. O strong armed Rama, I will now tell you that without true knowledge of God, there is no salvation for the enslaved mind.

3. Know, O Rama of polished understanding, that this world of endless sorrows is as easily traversed by the intelligent as a wide ocean is crossed over by Vishnu’s garuda bird, though it be impossible for any other bird to do so.

4. The great soul is without and lies beyond the body. It is situated in its own intellect and it looks on the body from a distance, just as a spectator beholds a concourse of people.

5. The body pulled down by decay and disease does not affect us anymore, like a broken coach that causes no injury to the rider.

6. The mind’s depressions and dejections do not affect understanding, just as the moving waves that ruffle the surface of the sea do not disturb the waters of the deep.

7. What relation do swans bear to the waters of a lake? What is the relation between the pebbles and stones of the sea and its waters? The pieces of wood carried by currents are unrelated to the waters of the stream. In like manner, no object of sense has any relationship to the Supreme Soul.

8. Tell me, O fortunate Rama, what is the correlation between a rock and the sea? The rock truly is not an obstruction to the internal current of the sea, so none of these worlds can stop the course of the Divine Mind.

9. What relation do lotuses bear to the waters of a stream, other than their being contained in the bosom of their containing waters? So all solid bodies are related as contents with the all containing Divine Soul.

10. When a log hits a body of water there is spray all around. In the same way, when the body contacts the soul it produces the various affections of the mind.

11. As the association of a tree on a bank produces its shadow in the waters below, so the proximity of all objects to the soul reflects their images in the mind.

12. As the reflections of things in a mirror, still waters, or the swelling waves of the sea are neither real nor unreal, so the reflections in the soul are neither substantial nor unsubstantial.

13. As the breaking of a tree or rock by howling winds does not affect the wind at all, so the union or separation of the elemental component parts of a body makes no alteration in the soul.

14. As a tree falling in water produces a vibration and sound, so the contact of the body and soul produces a vibration in the intellectual organs.

15. But these impressions have no relation either with the pure and simple soul or with the gross body. All these are only delusions of our false knowledge. When these delusions are gone, we are left with only transparent consciousness.

16. As no one has any notion how wood and water are connected, so nobody has any knowledge of how the body is united with the soul.

17. The world appears a reality to the unintelligent and as a substantial entity to those ignorant of truth.

18. Those without an internal perception of moisture in wood and stone are like worldly minded materialists who have knowledge of only external objects.

19. Those without intuitive knowledge find no difference between wood and water, so they believe the body and the soul to be the same thing. They do not know their lack of relation or connection with one another.

20. As the relationship between wood and water is imperceptible without reasoning, so such people are unacquainted with the lack of any relationship between soul and body because they lack intuition.

21. The soul is purely conscious of itself in all places and without any objective knowledge of anything at all. It is not liable to the false knowledge of a duality.

22. The soul’s false apprehension of unrealities coverts its bliss to misery, just as one’s false imagination of a ghost makes him see an apparition.

23. Our internal conviction of relevancy makes things quite irrelevant become relevant, like seeing and catching thieves in our dreams or the appearance of a demonic apparition in a block of wood.

24. As the relationship between wood and water is altogether unreal, so the correlation between soul and body is wholly false and unsubstantial.

25. As the water is not troubled if a tree does not fall into it, so the soul is not disturbed without its thoughts of the body. The soul freed from its connection with the body is free from all the maladies and miseries which flesh is heir to.

26. The misconception of the body being the soul makes the soul subject to all the imperfections and infirmities of the body, just as the clear waters of the lake are soiled by the leaves and twigs that float upon it.

27. Absence of any intrinsic relationship between external and the internal soul liberates the soul from all the casualties in the course of things. But the presence of extraneous associations makes the internal soul like turbid water by reason of the mess of leaves, foul things, fruit and flowers continually falling upon it.

28. The soul free of its innate knowledge of the objective is wholly absolved from misery, while the knowledge of its connection with the body, senses and mind is the mainspring of all it sorrows.

29. The internal connection of externals is the seed of all the evils of men in this world, bringing forth all of mankind’s pain, sorrow and errors.

30. A man who is internally connected with the externals sinks deep under the load of his connections in the depth of this earth, but he who is aloof from his internal relations floats above the surface of this sea and rises up in the air like an aerial being.

31. A mind with its internal bearings is like an tree with a hundred branches, but the mind lacking internal relation is said to have faded and grown extinct.

32. A mind unattached to the world is like a pure crystal without any shade of color in it. But a mind attached to the world is like a prismatic glass with all the colors of the rainbow.

33. An unattached and untainted mind is said to be set at liberty, even though it is working in the world. A mind is said to be unattached if it is thoughtless of the world through the practice of austerities.

34. A mind attached to the world is said to be bound to it, but that which is detached from the world is said to be set free from it. The internal attachment and detachment of the mind cause its bondage and liberation.

35. Unworldly minded persons are not tied to the earth by their worldly actions. They remain aloof from all their actions, like a floating vessel remains above the sweet or salty waters beneath it.

36. The tendency of the mind makes a man master of an action which he actually has not done, just as the delusion of the dreaming mind makes one feel the pleasure and pain of his pleasing and unpleasing dreams.

37. The activity of the mind also gives activity to the body, just as the action of the mind in dreaming gives motion to the inert body of the sleeping man.

38. Inactivity of the mind causes the inaction of the body, and though the body should act by its physical force, yet the detached mind is not enmeshed in the action.

39. Man gets the retribution of the actions he has done with his mind and not those that pass without his knowledge. The inert body is never the cause of an action. The mind is never joined with the living body like an automaton or self moving machine, or like a clock whose spring lies in itself. The body requires the action of the mind to put that animal force into motion.

40. The mind which does not pay attention to an action of the body is never considered to be the agent of that action. No reward of any action ever accrues to one who is not engaged in doing that action.

41. The man who is not intentionally employed in the sacrifice of a horse or the slaughter of a brahmin neither reaps the good of the one nor incurs the guilt of the other, just as the minds of distracted lovers are never aware of the results of their own deeds.

42. One free from any intrinsic relationship with anything is most agreeable to all by his elevated behavior. Whether he acts or neglects his part, he remains indifferent to both.

43. No agency is attached to the man whose action is involuntary and whose mind is released from its internal attachment to anything. The unconcerned detachment of the mind is attended with composure. The mind’s careful concern for anything whatsoever is filled only with vexation.

44. Therefore, avoid your internal concern for anything that you know to be related to you only externally. Release yourself from the mortification of the loss to all external relations.

45. The mind cleared of the foulness of its internal relationship with external phenomena acquires the transparency of the cloudless sky. After all dirt and waste are cleared within, the mind becomes one with the soul like a bright gem shining with double brightness of a luminary, or like a blue streamlet receiving the blue color of the azure sky.

✅
Chapter 5.68 — The Pain of Attachment; the Liberation of Non-Attachment

1. Rama said, “Tell me, sage, what are the connections that become the bondages of men? How are they to be avoided? What is that connection that leads to their emancipation in this life?”

2. Vasishta answered:— The division of unity into the duality of the body and soul, and the rejection of the latter part, the soul, produce the mistaken belief in only the body. This is called the association of bondage.

3. Again, taking the infinite soul to be a finite being confined to the body leads to the bondage of the soul.

4. But the conviction that, “this whole cosmos is the identical soul, therefore we have nothing to choose or reject in it other than the soul” is termed the unrelated condition of the mind settled only in the Supreme Self. This state is known as living liberation.

5. The unattached and self-liberated man thinks, “Neither do I exist nor do these others exist. Let any good or evil, pleasure or pain befall me. I am not to be changed in any condition of life.”

6. He is undistracted and self-devoted who does not foster his desires, or hanker after things, or continues thinking he is doing actions.

7. The self-devoted man whose mind is not subject to feelings of joy or sorrow and who is indifferent to worldly matters is truly said to be liberated in his lifetime.

8. He whose mind is not concerned about the results of his actions, but takes them lightly as they come to pass upon him, such a man is said to be lacking vigor and is lukewarm in his mind.

9. All our efforts impelled by various motives are avoided by our indifference to those pursuits. This lack of concern about worldly matters produces our greatest good.

10. We load innumerable distresses upon ourselves because of our concerns with many things. All worldly cares serve only to multiply the growing ills of life, like branching thorny bushes in caves.

11. The effect of worldly attachment drives silly men to labor under their heavy burdens, just as the dastardly donkeys are dragged by their nose-strings to trudge and drudge under their loads in long and lonesome journeys.

12. One’s attachment to home and country makes him stand in one place like an immovable tree and endure all the rigors of heat, cold, winds and rains without shrinking.

13. See the reptiles confined in the caves of earth with their weak bodies and tortuous movements. They are examples of earthly attachment, passing their time in pain and agony and in continuous helplessness.

14. See the poor birds resting on the tops of trees, whining their while with cries of their empty stomachs and constant fear of predators, as examples of worldly attachment.

15. Observe the frightened fawn, grazing on tender blades of grass and dreading the darts of hunters, to serve as another example of earthly inclination.

16. The transformation of men into worms and insects in their repeated reincarnations, and the congregation of all these animals of all kinds in all places, are only examples of their earthly fondness.

17. The multitudes of animal beings that you see rising and falling like the waves of the sea are all the effects of their worldly attachment.

18. The self-moving man becomes immovable and turns into the state of fixed trees and plants growing and dying by turns because of his worldly propensities.

19. Grass, shrubs and vines that grow on earth from its moisture are all products of the cause of their addiction to the world.

20. These endless processions of beings carried away in this running stream of the world and buffeted by their everincreasing difficulties are all the play of their earthly inclinations.

21. Worldly affections are of two kinds: the praiseworthy and the fruitless. Those of the wise and learned men belong to the former praiseworthy kind, but the tendencies of the ignorant are of the latter unfruitful kind.

22. Any tendency towards this world which springs from base bodily or mental affection, and which does not proceed from or bears any relation to spiritual motives and purposes, is said to be quite fruitless of any good result.

23. But that tendency which has its origin in spiritual knowledge and in true and right discrimination and bears no relation to anything that is of this world, but leads to one’s future and spiritual welfare, is the truly praiseworthy one.

24. The god Vishnu, holding the symbols of the conch shell, his discus and the club, had various inclinations of this better kind whereby he became the support of the three worlds.

25. By means of this good tendency, the glorious sun makes its daily course in the unsupported path of heaven for ever more.

26. The god Brahma, who now shines in his fiery form, had to foster his project of creation for an entire kalpa age. Owing to this praiseworthy purpose, be became the creator of the world.

27. It was because of this kind of praiseworthy purpose that the god Shiva acquired his half-man, half-woman body, graced by the female form of Uma linked with his as its other half.

28. The spiritual masters and other heavenly and aerial beings, and the rulers of the skies who move in their spiritual spheres of intelligence, have all attained their high positions by means of their praiseworthy tendencies.

29. They bear their bodies of heavenly growth and have set themselves beyond the reach of disease, decay and death by means of their praiseworthy inclinations.

30. Fruitless desire expects to derive pleasure from unworthy objects and causes the mind to pounce like a vulture on a bit of flesh.

31. Force of habit makes the winds to blow in their habitual course and causes the five elements to continue in their usual states in support of the order of nature.

32. This force of habit constitutes the constitution of the system of nature composed of the heavens, earth and infernal regions and peopled by gods, men, demons and other beings, all of whom are like gnats fluttering about the fruit of the mundane fig tree.

33. Numberless orders of beings are born, grow and fall and die away, like the ceaseless waves of the sea.

34. The results of worldly inclinations rise and fall by turns until they disappear all at once. They are as bitter to taste as the drops of waterfalls.

35. Mere worldliness makes these crowds of men devour one another like sharks and fishes. They are so infatuated by their ignorance that they have been flying about like stray tree leaves in the wind.

36. Worldly leanings make men wander about like revolving stars in their courses in the sky, or flutter about like flights of gnats on fig trees, or lie low like the swirling waters of whirling currents underneath the ground.

37. The hands of fate and death toss men around like a child’s play ball and wears men out like these toys by their constant rise and fall and rolling upon the ground. Yet these worrying wanderings do not abate the force of their habitual motions, like the repeated waxing and waning of the ever changing moon make no change in the blackish spot marked upon her disc.

38. The mind is hardened by seeing the miseries of repeated revolutions of ages resembling the rotations of fragments of wood in whirlpools. Yet the gods will not consent to heal the strong boiling of the mind by any operation in their power.

39. O Rama, this wonderful frame of the universe is only the product of the desire of the Divine Mind.

40. The pleasure of association presents this sight of the triple world in the empty sphere of the mind. Know this wonderful world is only a creation of the mind and nothing in reality.

41. The greed of worldly men eats up their bodies like fire feeding upon dry fuel.

42. Yet the bodies of worldly minded men are as countless as the sands of the sea, and these again are as unnumbered as the atoms of earth which nobody can count.

43. It may be possible to count the white foams of the Ganges River and the pearly froths of sea waves. It is likewise possible to measure the height of Mount Meru from its foot to the top and its peaks. But it is impossible to number the desires in the minds of worldly minded men.

44. These rows of inner apartments, built for the home of the worldly minded, are like the lines of Kala Sutra and the spires of hellfire.

45. Know these worldly men are like dry fuel heaped up to light the piles of hell-fire.

46. Know all things in this world are full of pain and misery, stored up not for enjoyment but to torment the worldly minded.

47. The minds of all worldly men are the receptacles of all sorrow and misery, just as the great sea is the recess of the outpourings of all rivers.

48. The mind attached to the world and the body bent down under its laborious loads are both fields for the exercise of ignorance which elevates and depresses them by turns.

49. Want of attachment to worldly enjoyments produces ease and prosperity. It expands the capacity of the mind like rain increases the extent of rivers.

50. Inner attachment of the mind to worldly objects is the burning flame of the outer body, but the absence of this internal attachment is the healing balm for the entire being.

51. Inner attachment burns the outer body like a hidden poisonous plant infects the vines that grow on it for support.

52. The mind unattached to everything in all places is like the lofty sky aloof from all things. By having no desire in the mind, it is always clear and bright and enjoys its joy forever.

53. As the light of knowledge rises before the sight of the mind, the darkness of ignorance which veiled all objects wastes away of itself and is put to flight. The man who is devoid of all sorts of worldly attachments and lives in communion with his own mind is truly liberated in his life.

✅
Chapter 5.69 — Living without Attachment

1. Vasishta continued:— Though remaining in all company and doing all the duties of life, and although employed in all the acts, yet a wise man watches the movements of his mind.

2. The mind is not to be engaged in cares of this world or employed in thoughts relating to this life. It is not to be fixed in the sky above or on the earth below or let to wander about over objects on all sides.

3. It must not roam over the extensive field of outward enjoyments or dwell on the objects and actions of the senses. It must not look internally or be fixed upon breathing, the palate or the crown of the head.

4. It must not be attached to the eyebrows, the tip of the nose, the mouth, or the pupil of the eye, nor should it look into the light or darkness or into the cavity of the heart.

5. It must not think of its waking or dreaming states, nor those of its sound sleep or internal clearness of sight, nor should it take any color as white, red, black or yellow for the object of its thought or sight.

6. It must not be fixed on any moving or unmoving substance or set in the beginning, middle or end of any object. It must not take a distant or adjacent object either before or inside itself.

7. It must not reflect on any tangible or audible object or on the states of joy and unconsciousness. It must not think of the fleetness or the measurement of time by the measure or number of its thoughts.

8. Let it rest in consciousness only with a slight intelligence of itself, tasting no joy except that of its self-delight.

9. Being in this state of mind and devoid at all attachment to anything, the living man becomes like a dead body. He is at liberty to pursue his worldly callings or not.

10. The living being who is attached to the thought of himself is said to be doing and acting though he refrains from doing anything. He is as free from the consequence of acts as the sky is free from the shade of the clouds that hang below it.

11. Or he may forsake his intelligential part and become one with the mass of Consciousness itself. The living soul thus becomes calm and quiet in itself and shines with a light as serene as a bright gem in a mine.

12. The soul being thus extinct in itself, is said to rise in the sphere of Consciousness. The animal soul continuing in its acts with an unwilling mind is not subject to results of the actions in its embodied state.

✅
Chapter 5.70 — Perfect Bliss of Living Liberation

1. Vasishta continued:— Men whose souls are expanded and content with the delight of their habitual un-attachment to worldliness have set themselves above the reach of internal sorrow and fear, even though they may be engaged in worldly affairs.

2. Though overtaken by inner sorrow, yet their countenances are unchanged owing to their uninterrupted meditation. The fullness of their hearts with holy delight is manifest in the moonlike brightness of their faces.

3. He whose mind relies on the intellect to be free of the feverishness of the world, and who remains apart from the objects of reasoning, throws a luster over those around him, just as the clearing kata fruit purifies water.

4. The wise man, though he may be moving about in busy affairs, is always quiet having withdrawn his soul from them. He may be attacked by outward sorrow, yet his inner soul shines like an image of the sun.

5. Men of great souls, awakened and enlightened by knowledge and raised high above the rest of mankind, waver on their outside like a peacock’s feather, but inwardly they are as firm as a mountain of rock.

6. The mind controlled by the soul is no longer susceptible to the feelings of pain and pleasure, any more than a piece of painted glass receives the shadow of any other color.

7. The man of elevated mind who has known the nature of superior and inferior souls is not affected by the sight of phenomena any more than a lotus leaf is affected by the color of its surrounding waters.

8. It is impossible to evade the impressions of the outer world until and unless the mind is strengthened in itself. The mind becomes strong by its knowledge of the Supreme Spirit, by removing the foulness of its fancied objects, and by meditation and enjoyment of the light of the soul, even when the mind is not in its meditative mood.

9. The mind loses its attachments through spiritual communion and internal bliss. Our worldly associations wear out of themselves only by knowledge of the soul. There is no other way.

10. The waking soul may consider itself to be in sound sleep by its unconsciousness of the outer world. Likewise it may consider itself to be ever awake and never asleep by its sight of the unfading light of the soul, by preservation of its equanimity and equality in all circumstances, and its lack of duality and differentiation of the objects of its love and hatred.

11. Being ripe in its practice of yoga meditation, the soul sees the pure light of the sun in itself until at last it finds its own and the Supreme Soul shining like the sun and moon in conjunction.

12. When the mind loses its mental powers and remains vacant, as if distracted or demented, and its faculty to imagine is at an utter stop, it is said to be in its deep sleep in wakefulness (susupta) .

13. The man having attained this state may live to discharge the duties of his life, but he will be dragged to one side or the other by the rope of his happiness or sorrow.

14. Whatever actions are done in this world by a man in his state of deep sleep in wakefulness, they do not inflict him with their good or evil results, any more than a dancing puppet has any sense of pleasure or pain in its actions.

15. The mind possesses the power of giving us the perception of our pains and pleasures, and the sense of our want and bitter sorrow, but when the mind is assimilated with the soul, how can it have the power of annoying us anymore?

16. The man in the hypnotic state of his mind does his works as insensibly as he did them in his sleep, because he does them with no effort on his part and not because of his former habitual practice. The living soul that is unconscious of its actions is said to rest in its state of living liberation.

17. Rely upon this state of deep sleep while awake and either perform or refrain from your actions as you may like. Our actions are only what arise of our nature. They pass for the results of the deeds of our past lives and they are enacted by ordinances of eternal laws.

18. A wise man is not pleased with the acts of charity or penury. He is delighted with his knowledge of the soul and lives content with whatever may fall to his lot.

19. All that you do with your mind by remaining as still as in your sleep is reckoned as no doing of yours. Though doing nothing with your body, you are the doer if you do it with your mind. Therefore do your acts with your body or mind as you may like.

20. As a baby lying in the cradle moves its limbs to no other purpose than its mere pleasure, so Rama, do your duties for pleasure’s sake and not for reward.

21. Whoever has his mind fixed in his consciousness and not in any object of reasoning, and remains dormant in his waking state, is said to be master of his soul. All he does is reckoned as no deed of his doing.

22. The wise man who obtains the state of deep sleep while awake and has freed his mind from desires gets a calm coolness within himself which is equal to the cooling moisture of the humid moon.

23. The man of great valor remains coolly dormant in himself and is as full as the orb of the moon in the fullness of her digits. He has the evenness of his mind at all times and seasons like the steadiness of a hill.

24. The man with a calm soul is pliable in his outer conduct, though he is inflexible in his mind. He resembles a mountain whose trees wave with the breeze without being shaken.

25. Samadhi purifies the body of all its impurity. It is the same whether a person in samadhi perishes sooner or later, or lasts forever as a rock.

26. This state of samadhi, which is acquired by constant practice of yoga, becomes mature and perfect with time until it becomes what is called the fourth stage (turiya) by the spiritual masters and those learned in divine knowledge.

27. He becomes the most exalted yogi whose mind is cleared of all its impurity and whose inner soul is full of joy, its mental powers all quiet and at rest.

28. In this state, the yogi is in full bliss and quite giddy with inner delight. He looks upon the whole of creation as an exhibition of play and a cosmic dance.

29. Once a man has attained his fourth stage, when he is free from sorrow and fear and has passed beyond the errors and troubles of this world, he has no fear of falling from this state.

30. The man of calm understanding who has attained this holy state laughs to scorn and spurn at the whirling orb of the earth, just as one sitting on a high hill looks down upon objects lying below it.

31. After one has obtained his everlasting position in this firmly fixed fourth state of blissfulness, he becomes joyless for lack of a higher state of joy to desire.

32. The yogi, having past his fourth stage, reaches a state of indescribable joy which has no part or degree in it and is absolute liberation in itself.

33. The man of great soul is released from the snare of the reincarnation of his soul and of his repeated birth and death, and is freed from the darkness of his pride and egoism. He is transformed into an essence of supreme ecstasy and pure flavor and becomes like a mass of sea salt in the waters of the deep.

✅
Chapter 5.71 — Samadhi and Beyond; Body Unrelated to Soul; Various Names for Jiva

1. Vasishta continued:— The fourth stage (turiya) is attended with the knowledge of the oneness of all and, according to statements in the Vedas, this is the characteristic of the living liberated man.

2. Beyond this is a state in which one sees nothing but an empty void. This is the state of disembodied spirits who are lost in infinity and of whom the scriptures can say nothing.

3. This state of quiet rest lies far away from the farthest objects and is attained by those who are liberated of their bodies, just as the aerial path is found only by aerial beings.

4. After a man has been in his state of sound sleep for sometime, he forgets the existence of the world and gains the fourth state of turiya which is full of joy and bliss.

5. The manner in which yogis have come to know the non-dual state (turiya) should also be followed by you, O Rama, in order to understand that unparalleled state of joy which attends upon it.

6. Remain, O Rama, in your state of trance (susupta) and continue in your course of worldly duties even in that state. Your mind, like the moon in a painting, will not be subject to its waning phases or be seized by any alarm.

7. Do not think that the waste or stability of your body can affect the state of your consciousness. The body is not related to the mind. That is only a false conception of the brain.

8. Although the body is nothing, yet it must not be destroyed by any means. You gain nothing by destroying it and you lose nothing by its firmness. Continue with your duties and leave the body to go on in its own habitual course.

9. You have known the truth that God presides over the world. You have understood the divine nature in all its threefold states. You have attained your true state of spirituality. You are freed from your worldly sorrows.

10. You have rid yourself of your liking and disliking for what you desire or despise. You are graced with the cooling light of your reason. You have removed the dark cloud of prejudice. You have become as graceful as the autumn sky with the brightness of the full moon (of your intellect) shining over it.

11. Your mind has its self possession and does not lower itself to meaner things. It has become as perfect as those who are accomplished in their meditation, so that you would not want to stoop to earth from that higher sphere.

12. This is the region of the pure and uniform consciousness that has no bounds. There are no false landmarks of “I” and “you,” “this” and “that,” “mine” and “yours” and similar errors.

13. In common speech this Divine Consciousness is labeled with the imaginary title of Atma (Soul or self), but there is no occasion to distinguish any name or form in that being who is quite distinct from all.

14. The sea is a vast body of water with its waves of the same element and in no way different from the sea itself. In the same way all this fullness composed of pure soul and this earth and water are nothing other than itself.

15. As you see nothing in the ocean except the vast body of water, so you find nothing in the universe except the one Universal Soul.

16. Say O intelligent man, what do you want to call yourself, itself and the like? What do you call yourself and what belongs to you? What is not yourself or does not belongs to you?

17. There being no duality beside the only soul, there can be no material body at all. There is no relation between this and that, any more than there is between the light of the sun and the gloom of night.

18. Even supposing the existence of a duality, yet I will tell you, O Rama, that the existence of material bodies bears no relationship with the spiritual soul.

19. As light and shade and darkness and sunshine bear no relation to one another, so the embodied soul has no connection with the body.

20. As the two opposites of cold and hot can never combine, so the body and soul can never join with one another.

21. As two opposites can have no relation between them, so is it with the body and soul. One is dull matter and the other an intelligent principle.

22. A connection between the body and the pure intellect of the soul is as improbable as the existence of a sea in a fire.

23. The sight of truth removes every false appearance, just as understanding light in the sandy desert removes the mirage of water.

24. The intellectual soul is immortal and without decay, perfectly pure and shining by itself. The body is perishable and impure. Therefore the body cannot be related to the spirit.

25. The body is moved by vital breath and is fattened by solid food. Therefore it cannot be related with the self-moving soul which is without increase or decrease.

26. So even if we acknowledge the duality of the body, that does not prove its relation with the soul. The duality of material bodies being disproved, the theory of its relativity falls at once to the ground.

27. Knowing the essence of the soul, you must rely on its subjective being within yourself. Then you will be free from both your bondage and liberation in all places and at all times.

28. Believe all nature to be quiet and full of its quiescent soul. Let this be your firm belief whatever you see inside or outside yourself.

29. The thoughts that “I am happy or miserable” or “wise or ignorant” proceed from our false, comparative view of things. You will always remain miserable as long as you continue to believe in the substance of outward things.

30. As there is a huge difference between a rock and a heap of hay, and between a silk-pod and a stone, the same applies to the comparison of the pure soul with the gross body.

31. As light and darkness bear no relation or comparison between themselves, such also is the case, O Rama, between the body and soul, which are quite different from one another.

32. We never hear of the union of cold and hot, even in story, or of the union of light and darkness in any place. In the same way, there is no union between the soul and body. They are never joined together.

33. All bodies are moved by the air, and the human body moves to and fro by its breath. It makes sound by means of its breath and the machinery of its wind pipes.

34. The human body utters its sounds combined with the letters of the alphabet by means of its internal breathings. Its mechanism is the same as that of a hollow bamboo pipe.

35. The internal air moves the pupils and the eyelids. It is the same air that gives motion to the limbs of the body. But consciousness moves the soul and gives movement to its intellect.

36. The soul is present in all places, whether in heaven above or in the worlds beneath, and its image is seen in the mind as its mirror.

37. You will have some notion of the soul in your mind by thinking that it flies like a bird from the cage of its body and wanders about at random being led by its desires and fancies.

38. As knowledge of a flower is accompanied by its fragrance, so the knowledge of the soul is inseparable from that of the mind.

39. As the all pervading sky is partly seen in a mirror, so the omnipresent soul is partially seen in the mirror of the mind.

40. As water seeks the lowest level in a reservoir, so the soul makes the mind the receptacle of its knowledge.

41. The knowledge of the reality or unreality of the world reflected upon the internal organ of the mind is all the working of the conscious soul, just as light produces solar rays.

42. This internal organ of the mind is regarded as the actual cause of all, the cosmic egg. The soul, which is the prime cause of causes, is regarded as no cause at all owing to its transcendent nature.

43. Men of great minds have given the name of fallacy, misjudgment and ignorance to this internal or causal mind which is the source of the creation of worlds.

44. It is error and lack of full investigation that make us mistake the mind for a distinct entity. It is the seed of all our ignorance which casts us in darkness from the sunlight of reason.

45. Rama, the mind becomes a nothing through true knowledge of the soul, just as darkness becomes nothing before the light of the lamp.

46. Ignorance mistakes the mind for the cause of creation and recognizes it under its various names, whether jiva or the living soul, the internal organ, the mind, the thinking principle or thought.

47. Rama said, “Tell me sage, why are there so many different names heaped upon the only one thing of the mind? Deliver me from the confusion they cause in my mind.”

48. Vasishta answered:— All these are only various modes of the single substance of the soul whose intellect displays these modalities, just as the same substance of water displays itself in the variety of its waves.

49. The soul is a fluctuating principle which inheres in all its modifications, just as the fluidity of water is inherent in the moving waves of the sea.

50. The Supreme Soul is sometimes without its vibration and remains stationary in all immovable things, just as water which presents its fluidity in moving waves shows its inelasticity in liquids at rest.

51. Hence stones and other immovable substances remain at rest with their inherent spirit, but men and all animated nature are like the foaming froths of the distilled liquor of the Universal Soul.

52. The almighty power resides in all bodies with the inertia of his spirit, known as the unconsciousness, dullness or ignorance of inert bodies.

53. The infinite soul involved in that ignorance takes the name of the living or animal soul that is confined like an elephant in the prison house of the delusion of this world.

54. It is called jiva or living because of its animation, and also ego from its egoism. It is termed understanding from its power of discernment, and the mind from its will or volition.

55. It is called dull nature from its natural dullness, and also body from being embodied with many elementary principles. It is inert in its natural state, and conscious also from the essence of the soul inborn in it.

56. The spiritual substance that lies between the inert and active principles is called the mind. It passes under various names according to its different faculties and functions.

57. This is the essential nature of the animating soul (jiva), as given in the Brihadaranyaka and other Upanishads. There are many other definitions of it to be found in the other works of Vedanta.

58. But over and above these, fools using false logic have invented many other words to designate the animal soul, and thereby they have bewildered and misled the ignorant to false beliefs.

59. Know thus, O long armed Rama, that this animating soul is the cause of creation, and not the dull and dumb body which does not even have the power to move itself without being moved by some spiritual force.

60. Many times it happens that the destruction of either the container or contained causes the destruction of both. So it is with the receptacle of the body and its content the soul. The removal of the one leads to the dissolution of both.

61. The moisture of a leaf when dried is neither wasted nor lost in air, but extracted from it to reside in the rays of the all sucking sun.

62. So the body being wasted, there is no waste of the embodied soul. It is carried to live in banishment from its former abode and to reside in the region of empty air or in the reservoir of the Universal Spirit.

63. He who falls into the error of thinking himself as lost at the loss of his body is like a baby who is snatched away from the breast of its mother by a fairy.

64. He who is thought to have his utter extinction is said to rise again (by the reincarnation of his soul). Cessation of the mind is called utter extinction and liberation of the soul.

65. A dead person is said to be lost, but this is entirely false. Just as one who has been long absent from his country returns, so the dead man revisits the earth in his repeated reincarnations.

66. The current of death carries away men like sticks and straw to the vast ocean of eternity. Having disappeared, they appear in other scenes according to the fruits of their nature, soil and season.

67. Living beings bound to their desires are led from one body to another in endless succession, like monkeys quitting decayed trees to search for others elsewhere.

68. They leave them again when they are worn out and go to others at distant times and climates.

69. Each hour living beings are seen moving about and led away from place to place by their unsatisfied desires, just as restless infants are rocked and carried by their cunning wet-nurses.

70. Bound by the rope of desire to the decayed trees of their infirm bodies, men drag their lives of labor in search of their living in this valley of misery.

71. Even when men have grown old and decrepit and loaded with misery, shattered in their bodies at the last stage of their lives, they are still dragged about by the inborn desires of their hearts to be cast into hell pits.

72. Valmiki said:— As the sage had said thus far, the sun sank down and bade the day to observe its evening rites. The assembly broke with mutual salutations and all of them proceeded to their evening cleasning rituals until they met again after dispersion of the gloom of night by the rising rays of the eastern sun.

✅
Chapter 5.72 — A Lecture on the Nature of Liberation

1. Vasishta continued:— You are not born with the birth of your body and you are not dead with its death. You are the immaculate spirit in your soul and your body is nobody to you.

2. The metaphors of the plum on a plate and of vacuum in a pot which are offered to prove that the loss of the one means the loss of the other are false reasoning. Neither the plum nor the vacuum is lost by breaking the plate or the pot.

3. Whoever thinks that he will perish with his perishable body and is sorry for it is truly blinded in his mind. He is to be pitied for his mental blindness.

4. As there is no relationship between the reins of a horse and the chariot, so there is no relationship between the organs of the body and the intellect.

5. As there is no relationship between the mud and clear water of a reservoir, so O Raghava, there is no correlation between the body parts and the soul.

6. As the traveler retains no love or sorrow for the path he has passed and the journey he has already made, so the soul bears no affection or dislike towards the body with which it sojourned and which it has left behind.

7. As imaginary ghosts and fairies strike fear and love in some persons, so the ideal world inspires pleasure and pain in the mind of the idealist.

8. The assemblage of the five elements has framed all these different forms of beings in the world, just as various images are carved from the same wood.

9. You see nothing but woody substance in all timber, so you find nothing except a collection of the five elements in all tangible bodies.

10. Therefore, O Rama, why should you rejoice or regret at anything, seeing that the five elements have their own course, joining and disjoining themselves, in the formation and dissolution of bodies?

11. Why should one be so fond of female forms, or the forms of other beautiful things on earth? Men run after them like flies, falling in fire only to consume themselves.

12. Good features and good shapes are delightful to the ignorant, but to the wise they present their real figures of combinations of the five elements and no more.

13. Two statues cut from the same stone and two figures carved of the same wood bear no affection or relationship to one another, however close they may be placed to each other. It is the same with the body and mind.

14. Dolls made of clay and placed together in a basket do not form any friendship by their long association with one another, so understanding, the organs of sense, the soul and mind, though so closely united in the same body, bear no relation with one another.

15. Marble statues, though so fair and closely kept in the sculptor’s house, contract no acquaintance or friendship with one another. In the same way the organs of sense, life, the soul and the mind, though they reside in the same body, have no alliance with one another.

16. As things growing apart from one another come to be joined together for an instant by some accident, like reeds and rushes carried by the waves of the sea. So all beings, such as men and their bodily senses and mind and the soul, are brought to meet together only for a time in order to be separated forever.

17. As reeds and rushes are joined in heaps, and again separated from one another by the current of the river, so the course of time joins the elements, the mind and soul in gross bodies only for their separation.

18. The soul in the form of the mind unites the component parts of the body like the whirling currents of the sea swirls reeds and rushes.

19. The soul, awakened to its knowledge of itself, relinquishes its knowledge of objects and becomes purely subjective in itself, like water by its own motion throws away its dirt and becomes as pure as crystal.

20. The soul, released of its objective knowledge of the world, looks upon its own body like the gods look upon this speck of earth below the region of air.

21. The soul, seeing itself quite unconnected to the elemental particles quite, becomes disembodied as a pure spirit, then shines forth in full brightness like the blazing sun at midday.

22. Then it comes to itself by itself, as it were without any check or bounds set to it. Then being set free from the giddiness of the objective, it sees itself subjectively in its own consciousness.

23. It is the soul which agitates the world rising of its own essence, just as the agitation of water particles raises the waves all over the wide extent of the sea.

24. Thus dispassionate and sinless men of great understanding who have obtained their self-liberation in this life move about as freely as the waves in the great ocean of the all-comprehending soul.

25. As the waves move freely in the sea and pour the gems and pearls which they bear over distant shores, so the best of men wander everywhere free of all desire, enriching mankind with the treasure of their knowledge.

26. As the sea is not soiled by the floating wood it carries from the shore, and the face of the sky is not soiled by the flying dust of the earth, so men of great minds and souls are not perverted by their conduct with the world.

27. Those who are masters of themselves are not moved to love or hatred in their behavior with others, or with those who are steady or unsteady in their friendship, or with those who are vicious and ignorant,

28. because they know that whatever passes in the mind relating to worldly matters are all its vagaries and reveries of thought, which are only airy nothings.

29. The knowledge of one’s self and of other things belonging to the past, present and future, and the relation of visible phenomena with the sense of vision, are all workings of the mind.

30. Phenomena depending only upon sight may be false from the deception of our vision, like an apparition in darkness. In vain we are glad or sorry at their sight or disappearance.

31. What is unreal is always unreal and what is real is ever the same. But that which is real and unreal at the same or different times must be a false appearance and does not merit our rejoicing or sorrow at their presence or absence.

32. Refrain from a partial view of things and employ yourself to the full knowledge of objects. Know that a learned man of vast knowledge never falls into the false conceptions of things.

33. I have fully expounded the relation of visible phenomena and their vision, and shown the spiritual pleasure which is derivable from contemplation of the abstract relation existing between them.

34. The abstract meditation of things is said to be a divine attribute, and our consciousness of the relations of vision and visible phenomena afford the highest delight to the soul.

35. The consideration of the relationship between visible phenomena and vision affords the physical delight of knowing the material world to the ignorant. It gives the spiritual joy of liberation to the wise.

36. Hence the attachment of our mind to visible phenomena is called its bondage. Its detachment from them is said to be its freedom. The former is pleasant to the sensuous body and the latter is delightful to the conscious soul.

37. The mind understanding the relationships among things before it and freed from thoughts of its loss or gain in this world is said to enjoy its freedom.

38. Abstaining from the sight of visible phenomena constitutes the trance (deep sleep perception) vision of the soul, which is enlarged and illuminated by its inner vision within itself.

39. Release from the bondage of phenomena and restraining the mind to its inner workings constitute fourth stage of perfection (turiya) which is also called its liberation.

40. Knowledge in the conscious soul of the relationships of phenomena does not make it stout or lean, or more manifest or obscure in its nature.

41. The soul is not intelligent or inert, not a being or a not being. It is not the ego or non-ego, not a unit or many in one.

42. It is not near or far away from us, nor is it an entity or nonentity either. It is not within or beyond our reach. It is in all yet not the all and nothing at all.

43. It is none of the categories or no category. It is not the fivefold elements or composed of any of them. It is not the well known mind which is reckoned as the sixth organ of sense.

44. That which is beyond all things is nothing at all of this world, but it is something known and seen in the hearts of the wise.

45. All the world is full of the soul and there is nothing beyond it. It is in all that is solid or soft or liquid, and in all motions that proceed from it.

46. The soul is all in all things composed of the five elements of earth, water, air, fire and ether. There is nothing, O Rama, that has its existence without the essence of the soul.

47. This single soul is diffused in all the worlds and throughout all space and time. There is no fragment of anything without the soul. Therefore, if you will have a great soul in you, keep your mind fixed in the Universal Soul.

✅
Chapter 5.73 — Visualizations of the Soul; Its Experience More Manifest in Living Beings; — Knowledge, not Liberation

1. Vasishta continued:— By reasoning in this manner and by renouncing the knowledge of duality, the yogi comes to know the nature of his soul, just as the gods know the divine nature which is the gem of their meditation.

2. Now hear about this unsurpassed sight which is the soul or in-being of all visible beings. By this attitude, you will have the keen clear vision of the gods and get sight of God.

3. Think of yourself as the light of sun and the endless sky with all its ten sides and the upper and lower regions of space, and that your soul is the soul of gods and demigods and the light of all luminous bodies.

4. Know yourself as darkness, the clouds, the earth and seas, the air and fire and dust of the earth, and that the entire world is combined in you.

5. Know that you are everywhere in all the three worlds together with the soul abiding in them, and that you are nothing other than the unity itself. There is no duality of anybody, only the unity which pervades the whole.

6. Being certain of this truth, you will see innumerable worlds situated in your internal soul. By adopting this attitude, you will escape from being subjected to or overcome by the joys and sorrows of life.

7. Tell me, O lotus-eyed Rama. How can you call one as connected or separate from you when you know that the entire creation including yourself is contained in the all-containing Universal Soul?

8. Tell me, do the wise live outside that Being that they should give way to joy or grief, which are the two phases of the Universal Soul?

9. There are two kinds of individual egos growing out of the knowledge of truth. Both of these are good and pure in their natures and produce spirituality and liberation of men.

10. One ego is the form of a minute particle, transcending all things in its minuteness. The other is the ego of one’s self. The first is that the one ego is all. (“I am the extremely subtle and transcendental self.”) The second is the knowledge that my or your ego is the same one. (“I am all and everything.”)

11. There is a third sort of ego amounting to the non-ego which takes the body for the ego and thus becomes subject to misery and finds no rest in this life or in the next.

12. Now leaving all these three kinds of subjective, objective and non-egos, he who holds fast to the fourth sort of non-ego sees the sole intellect beyond these three.

13. This Essence, being above all and beyond the reach of all existence, is the manifesting soul of the unreal world.

14. Look into your notion of it and you shall find yourself assimilated with it. Then get rid of all your desires and ties of your heart and become full of divine knowledge.

15. The soul is not known by any logical inference or from the light the revelations of the Vedas. It is always best and most fully known to be present with us by our direct experience of it.

16. All the sensations and vibrations that we have in our bodies, and all the thoughts of which we are conscious in our minds, are all attributes of the sovereign Soul which is beyond our vision and visible phenomena.

17. This Lord is no real substance, nor an unreal non-entity. He is not a minutiae or a vast massiveness either. He is not in the midst of these dimensions, nor is he this or that, but is always as he is.

18. It is improper to describe him as such and such, or that he is otherwise than this or that. Know him therefore as the inexpressible and indefinable one.

19. To say that this is the soul and that is not the soul are only verbal differences of something that words cannot express or differentiate. The soul is an attribute of the omnipresent Power.

20. It is present in all places and comprehends the three times of the past, present and future in itself. Yet it is invisible and incomprehensible to us, owing to its extreme rarity and immensity.

21. The soul resides in the infinity of substances. It reflects itself as the living soul in animated bodies, just as sunlight reflects its rays through a glass prism.

22. Owing to the animating power of the soul, we have some experience of the soul. Although the soul pervades all things, it is most manifest in living bodies, as the air which surrounds all bodies everywhere circulates only in the open ethereal space.

23. The intellectual soul is all pervading and everywhere and never stationary in any place. The spirit of the Lord has the same boundaries as the vast range of his creation.

24. But the animating soul of living beings does not breathe in minerals but only in animals, just as the light enlightens the eye only and the dust flies with the winds.

25. When the animating principle resides in the soul, it bursts forth with all its desires, just as people pursue their callings when the sun has risen above the horizon.

26. But just as the sun is unaffected if people should cease their activities when he is shining above their heads, so it is nothing to consciousness whether men be without their desires and actions while it resides in the soul.

27. If the soul exists by the inherence of the Lord (Consciousness) in it, it suffers no loss by the absence of the frail body.

28. The soul is not born nor does it die. It does not receive or desire anything. It is not restrained or liberated, but it is the soul of all at all times.

29. The soul is awakened by its enlightenment, or else the soul is supposed to be what is no soul only for our misery, just as the snake is supposed to be in a rope only for our error and fear.

30. The soul being without its beginning, it is never born. Being unborn, it is never destroyed. It seeks nothing except itself for lack of anything beside.

31. The soul is unbounded by time or space. It is never confined in any place. Being always unconfined, it requires no liberation.

32. Such, O Rama! are the qualities of the souls of all persons. Yet the ignorant deplore its loss from their want of reason.

33. Look thoroughly, O Rama! into the course of all things in the world and do not lament for anything like senseless men.

34. Abandon thoughts of both your imaginary confinement and liberation. Behave like wise men: like a dumb self-moving machine.

35. Liberation is not something confined in this earth or in heaven above or the seven lower regions (Patala), but resides in the hearts of the wise, in their pure souls and enlightened understandings.

36. The minute subtlety of the mind, by extinguishing its gross desires, is said to be its liberation by those who know the truth and look into the workings of their souls.

37. As long as the pure light of consciousness does not shine forth in the sphere of the mind, it longs for liberation as its chief good. Liberation, or freedom from all feelings, is less meritorious than the knowledge of all things. The sage gives preference to knowledge above liberation.

38. After the mind has the fullness of its intellectual powers and consciousness has been fully enlightened, it would not care for all the tenfold blessings of liberation, much less desire its salvation.

39. O Rama, stop thinking about the distinctions of the bondage and liberation of the soul. Believe its essence to be exempted from both.

40. Be free of your thoughts of the duality and remain steadfast in your duty of ruling the earth to its utmost limits of the sea dug by the sons of Sagara.

✅
Chapter 5.74 — Qualities of One Who Abides in the Truth

1. Vasishta continued:— It is easy to take pleasure looking at the outer world, and difficult to turn the sight to the inner soul, just as it is pleasant to see delightful prospects abroad and be bitter in the heart to be without them.

2. Fascinated with these delightful objects, we become subject to all our errors and blunders, just as the taste of alcohol fills the brain with giddiness.

3. This intoxication drives the knowledge of sober truth from our minds and introduces the delirium of the phenomenal world instead, like the sun’s heat producing a false mirage in the desert.

4. Then the deep ocean of the soul boils in its various aspects of the mind, understanding, egoism, sensation and volition like the sea, moved by hot winds, bursts into the forms of foaming froths, waves and surges.

5. The duality of the mind and its egoism is a verbal distinction without reality, for egoism is only a thought (chitta) and thought is only the mind (manas).

6. It is in vain to think of snow apart from its whiteness, so it is false to suppose the mind as distinct from egoism.

7. There is no difference between ego and mind. The destruction of one means the loss of the other, just as the removal of cloth is accompanied by the absence of its color.

8. Avoid both your desire of liberation and your eagerness for worldly bondage. Instead, strive to enfeeble your mind by lessening its egoism by the two means of your detachment and discrimination of worldly objects.

9. The thought of getting liberation growing big in the mind disturbs its peace and rest, and it also injures the body (by austerities).

10. Whether we visualize the soul as apart from all things or intimately connected with all, it can neither have its liberation nor its bondage.

11. When the air circulates in the body by its natural property of motion, it gives movement to the members of the body and moves the rolling tongue like the flitting leaf of a tree.

12. As the restless wind gives motion to the leaves and twigs of trees, so the vital airs add their force to the movement of the body parts.

13. But the soul which pervades the whole never moves like the wind, nor is it moved as any part of the body. It does not move of itself but remains unshaken like a rock at the motion of the winds. Like the Lord of all, it is unmoved by the breeze.

14. The soul by its reflection shows all things hidden in it, just as a lamp by its light shows whatever lay concealed in the darkness of a room.

15. Why should you fall into the painful error of thinking like ignorant and senseless men that these members of your body and these things belong to you?

16. Infatuated by this ignorance, men think the frail body as lasting and attribute knowledge and agency of action to it.

17. Only gross error makes us believe the body is a self acting machine of its motions, actions and passion. Only our sanguine wishes present so many false views before us, like the sun’s heat raises mirages of water in a sandy desert.

18. The ignorance of truth makes the mind seek the pleasures of senses. Ignorance drags the mind along like a thirsty doe to perish in the watery mirage of the parching shore.

19. But when untruth is distinguished from truth, untruth flies from the mind like a tribal woman fleeing from the company of brahmins.

20. When error is found out, it can no more deceive the mind than the mirage, when discovered, fails to attract the thirsty.

21. Rama, as truth is known and rooted in the mind, the seeds of earthly desires are uprooted from it, just as thick darkness is dispelled by the light of a lamp.

22. The mind arrives at certain truths by the light of scriptures and reason, so its errors quickly fade away like icicles melting under the heat of the sun.

23. The certainty of the moral truth that “it is useless to foster and fatten this frail frame of the body” is as powerful to break down the net of worldly desires as the robust lion is capable of breaking down the iron bars of his prison.

24. The mind of man fee from the bonds of its desires becomes as brilliant as a moonlit night with pure beams of disinterested delight.

25. The contented mind gets a coolness like that of a heated rock after it is washed by a shower of rain. It finds a satisfaction equal to that of a pauper who obtains the riches of a king and his whole kingdom.

26. The face of a contented man shines as clear as the face of the autumn sky. His soul overflows with delight like the flood waters at the end of a kalpa age.

27. A contented man is silent like a mute cloud after rain. His soul remains composed with its consciousness, just as the profound sea is tranquil with its fullness.

28. He has patience and steadiness like a rock and glistens as quietly in himself as a fire glowing after its fuel is burnt out.

29. He is extinct in himself like a lamp that has been extinguished. His inner satisfaction is like one who has feasted on ambrosia.

30. He shines with his inner light like a lantern with its lighted lamp, and like fire with a brightness that can never be put out.

31. He sees his soul as identical with the universal and all pervading soul which is the lord and master of all and which abides in all forms in its formless state.

32. He smiles at everything by setting himself above and beyond all mortal and frail things. His days glide away sweetly and softly with him, and he laughs at those men whose unsteady minds are made the marks of the arrows of Kama, the god of desire.

33. His holy mind is isolated from the society of men and from all their amusements and rests secluded from all company and concern with the fullness of its spiritual bliss within itself.

34. His mind is clear of the muddy and turbulent ocean of this world and of the dirt of worldly desires. It is loosened from the chains of its error and set free from the fear of dualism.

35. A man being thus released attains the highest state of humanity and rests in that supreme joy which is desired by all and found by few, and from which nobody returns to revisit the earth.

36. This height of human ambition being arrived at, there is nothing else to wish for. This great gratification being once gained, there is no other joy which can delight us more.

37. The self contented man neither gives or receives anything from anybody. He does not praise or criticize anyone, he does not rejoice or grieve at anything, and he is never elated or depressed at any occurrence.

38. He is said to be liberated in his lifetime because he takes no title on himself, withholds from all business, and is free from desires.

39. Abstaining from wishing anything in his heart and holding his tongue in unspoken silence, he remains as dumb as a cloud after it has poured down all its waters.

40. Even the embrace of a fairy fails to afford such delight to the body as the cooling beams of contentment gladdens the mind.

41. Even though he may wear the disc of the moon dangling like a breast plate from his neck, a man does not derive such coolness as he feels in himself from the frigidity of contentment.

42. A flowery shrub decorated with blooming small flowers of the spring is not as refreshing a sight as the smiling face of one filled with the magnanimity of his soul and lacking strong desires in his mind.

43. Neither the frost of the snowy mountain nor the coldness of a string of pearls, not even the frigidness of the forest of the plantain trees or sandal paste or refreshing moonbeams can afford that internal coolness as the lack of desire produces in the mind.

44. Content with everything is more charming than the pleasure of royal dignity, heavenly joy, the pleasantness of moonlight, or the delights of spring. It is more charming than the enchanting graces of a beauty.

45. Renunciation of desire is the source of complete self-sufficiency to which the riches of the three worlds can make no addition.

46. Self-complacency strikes the axe at the root of the thorny difficulties of the world and decorates its possessor with blessings like the blossoms of a flowery tree.

47. A man decorated with a lack of desire has all in himself though possessed of nothing. He spurns the deep earth like a cave, and the big mountain as the trifling trunk of a tree. He looks on all the sides of air as mere caskets, and regards the worlds as straws.

48. The best of men who are devoid of desire laugh with scorn at the busy affairs of the world, and at men taking from one and giving to another, or storing or squandering their riches.

49. That man is beyond all comparison who allows no desire to take root in his heart and who does not care a fig or a straw for the world.

50. With what shall we compare a man whose mind is never employed in the thoughts of craving something and avoiding another, and who is ever master of himself?

51. O you wise and intelligent men, rely on the lack of cravings of your heart, which is your greatest good fortune, by setting yourself in the bliss of safety and security beyond the reach of the dangers and difficulties of the world.

52. Rama, you have nothing to desire in this world. You are not led away by worldly desires like one who is moving in a car, looks sideways, and thinks he is seeing things receding back from him.

53. O intelligent Rama, why do you fall into the error of ignorant men by taking this thing to be yours and that as another’s by the delusion of your mind?

54. All the world is the same identical spirit, and all its variety is in perfect uniformity with the Supreme Soul. The learned know that the world is eternally the same and unvaried in itself. They do not grieve at the apparent changes of things and changing fortunes of times.

55. Seeing all things in their true light, a manifestation of the divine essence, all intelligent men place their dependence in Him and do not desire anything else.

56. Rely therefore on that unchanging state of things which is free from the conditions of existence and nonexistence and of beginning and end.

57. This illusive enchantment of the world flies far away before the detachment of strong minded men, like a timid fawn running at the sight of a ferocious lion.

58. Men of subdued passions and calm minds regard the graces of fairy forms to be no more than the loveliness of wild vines, or the faded beauty of dilapidated statues of stone.

59. No pleasures gladden their hearts and no dangers depress their spirits. No outward good or bad can make any effect on their minds which are as inflexible as firm rocks against the violence of winds.

60. The mind of the magnanimous sage is as impregnable as a rock. His mind baffles the allurements of youthful damsels and breaks the arrows of love to pieces, falling down like pulverized atoms of dust and ashes.

61. One knowing his self is not carried away by his fondness or aversion of any person or thing. A heart without any vibration is unconscious of all feelings.

62. A dispassionate man who looks on all things with an equal eye is as unconscious as a stone to the charms of blooming maids and is adverse to destructive pleasures like a traveler is to a sandy desert.

63. All things necessary for life are obtained with little labor by those who are indifferently minded about their gain. The wise get free gifts of nature with as much ease as eyesight gets sunlight.

64. The gifts of nature, allotted by fortune to the share of every one, are tasted by the wise without rejoicing or murmur.

65. Neither rejoicing nor bewilderment can overtake the mind of the wayfarer who well knows his way. He stands firmly as Mandara Mountain amidst the turbulent waves of the sea.

66. He looks indifferently on the pains and pleasures of the world with his usual patience, silence and lack of anxiety. He places his trust in that spirit which resides inside everyone.

67. Though beset by anxious cares, he remains without anxiety in his mind and stands steadfast with confidence in the Supreme Soul, like Brahma in his rush to create the world.

68. Though overtaken by the accidents of the times, places and circumstances of life, yet he is not overpowered by the influence of their pain or pleasure but stands erect like a sturdy oak against the influence of the seasons.

69. The wise may fail in the action of their bodily organs and falter in their speech also, but their strong and unconcerned minds never fail in their operations or despond under the pressure of outward circumstances.

70. Gold becomes impure from its inner alloy and not by its outward soil. So a man becomes unholy by the impurity of heart and foulness of his mind, and not on account of the dust or dirt on his body.

71. The learned understand the wise man apart from his body because the mutilated body does not take anything away from the wisdom of a man.

72. Once the pure and luminous soul is known, it is never to be lost sight of, like a friend once known is never thought to be a foe.

73. The fallacy of the snake in the rope being removed, it is no more looked upon as a snake, just as a river receiving its torrents from the waterfall of a hill in rainy season does not retain its current after the rains have passed.

74. Gold purified by fire retains its purity forever even though it becomes dirty by being thrown into the mud and mire.

75. After the heart string has been broken, it can never be joined anymore, just as a flower fallen from its stalk cannot be stuck back to it again.

76. No analysis can distinguish the gem from the ore when they are both broken to pieces, so there is no reasoning to show the soul is lost with the body.

77. Who, having understood what error is, will be so great a fool as to fall to it again? No brahmin who has recognized another to be a tribal will ever like to mix in his company.

78. As the mistake of milk in water passes away upon examination of the liquid, so the error of worldly desires vanishes upon knowledge of their vanity.

79. Even learned brahmins may fall into the error of drinking some liquor for pure water, until they come to realize their mistake.

80. Those acquainted with truth look upon the outer forms of fairies like paintings or pictures.

81. The dark hair and crimson lips of a fairy are portrayed in black and red in a picture, so there is no difference between the figure in its living form or in a painting.

82. The idea of sweetness is inseparable from sugar. In the same manner, the idea of bliss is inseparable from the soul, which is indestructible by the destruction of the body.

83. Spiritual joy may be enjoyed in this physical body in the same manner as one enjoys the pleasure of imagination.

84. Thus a man who is steadfast in his spiritual meditation and intent upon the Supreme Soul is not to be turned away from it by the power of the gods or by the jealousy of Indra.

85. There is no lover of a woman who can turn her heart away from the dearest object of her love, so there is nothing in the world that can alienate the unsteady mind from its love of spiritual joy.

86. There is no joy in the whole world that is able to divert the mind of the magnanimous philosopher from its reliance on the delight of intellectual light.

87. A married woman who is subject to all domestic toils and privations and is constantly employed in her household drudgeries, subjected to maltreatment and subjugated by her husband and father-in-law,

88. still has the comfort of thinking upon her sweetheart and dissipates her sorrows with the thought of her favorite lover. Such is the mystic love of spiritualists.

89. A man bound to the cares of worldly affairs has the consolation of his soul and spiritual bliss by freeing his mind from ignorance and conducting himself in the right way by his comprehensive spiritual view of all things.

90. He does not break under bodily torture nor does he wail with bleeding heart and weeping eyes. He is not burnt by the flame of his martyrdom, nor does he die when perishing under the scourge of the stake and stock of persecution.

91. His mind is free from the pain and pleasures that are the lot of humanity. He is unmoved amidst all the mishaps of fortune. The devotee rejoices in the region of his spiritual bliss whether he remains in his hermitage in the forest or wanders about in deserts or over mountains.

✅
Chapter 5.75 — Examples of the Living Liberated

1. Vasishta continued:— See Janaka, the king employed in the government of his kingdom, yet liberated in his lifetime from his bondage in the world because of his mental release from all its cares and anxieties.

2. Remember your grandfather Dilipa who, though deeply engaged in his state affairs, yet enjoyed his long and peaceful rule owing to the dispassion of his disposition.

3. Think of Buddha who ruled over his people free of all passions and affections. Bring to your mind how Manu ruled his kingdom in peace and who was an example of liberation in his lifetime.

4. Remember how the monarch Mandhata obtained the blessed state of liberation even though he was constantly engaged in various wars and state affairs.

5. Think of Bali who, while he was confined in the infernal region, conducted himself with virtue and became liberated in his lifetime by his unbounded generosity and lack of attachment to the world.

6. Namuchi, the lord of Danava demons, waged continuous wars against the gods yet was of cool and quiet in his mind.

7. Vritra, the asura demon who fell in battle with the god Indra, was of a great, calm and quiet mind as long as he fought with him.

8. Prahlada, the prince of the Daitya demons, dwelling in the demon world underneath the ground, dispensed his administration with an unruffled and glad mind.

9. Sambara, the demon who was a sorcerer in warfare, was cool blooded like water in his heart, whereby he was delivered from the sorcery of the world, like a fleet deer flying from an arrow.

10. The demon Kusala also, whose mind was not bound to the world, waged an unprofitable war against Vishnu from whom he obtained his spiritual knowledge and his deliverance from this temporary scene.

11. Look at fire, how free and uncompressed it is as it serves as the mouth of gods, permitting the offerings to reach the gods and perform endless works of melting for them.

12. See the gods drinking the juice of soma plants and presiding over the endless functions of the world. They are ever as free as air.

13. Brihaspati (Jupiter) the guru of the gods, and Moon, the pursuer of his wife Rohini, have been continually performing their revolutions without changing their places in heaven. So have the other planets also.

14. Shukra (Venus), the learned teacher of the asura demons, shines in the same manner in the heavenly sphere and runs in his unvaried course while protecting the interests of the asuras.

15. See also the winds, flying freely at all times throughout all the worlds with their charge of enlivening and giving motion to all bodies.

16. See Brahma continuing in the same unchangeable state of his mind, giving life and velocity to all beings which thereby have been continually moving about in the world.

17. Lord Vishnu, though ever liberated from every bond, has been continually employed in his contests and combats with the asura demons as if in sport.

18. The three-eyed god Shiva, though ever free from all concerns, is joined in one body with his dearer half, the beautiful Gauri, in the manner of a lover enamored of his beloved one.

19. The fair Hara (Shiva), though ever free, is bound in the embrace of his fair Gauri and wears a crescent of the fair moon and Gauri as a lace of pure pearls about her neck.

20. The heroic Skanda, vast in understanding and like a sea with all the gems of his learning and perfectly free, made war with Taraka of his free will.

21. Mark how Bhringi, Shiva’s attendant, was absorbed in his meditation and, thinking himself to be freed from the burden of his body, made a free offering of his blood and flesh to his goddess Gauri.

22. Sage Narada, who was of a liberated nature from his very birth and resigned the world and all its concerns altogether, was still engaged in many affairs with his cool understanding.

23. The honorable Vishwamitra, who is now present here, is liberated in his lifetime and yet he does not neglect to preside at sacrifices, solemnized according to the ritual of the sacred Veda.

24. The infernal snake bears the earth on its head and the sun makes the day by turns. The god of death is ever employed in his act of destruction, and still they are all free agents of their acts.

25. There are many others among the yakshas, suras and asuras of the world who are all liberated in their lifetime and still are employed in their respective duties.

26. There are many employed in worldly affairs and many more engaged in different courses of life who remain cold blooded and cool headed within themselves, and as still and quiet as cold stones without.

27. Some attain the acme of their understanding and retire to solitude to pass their lives in abstract meditation. Among these are the venerable Bhrigu, Bharadvaja, Shukra and Vishwamitra.

28. Many among mankind were rulers of their kingdoms and held the exalted canopy and flapper-fans and other emblems of royalty on their heads, and were not less distinguished for the piety and spirituality at the same time. Among these, the conduct of the royal Janaka, Saryali and Mandhatri stand preeminent above the rest.

29. Some among the living liberated are situated in the planetary spheres and therefore are adored by their devotees for their blessings on the world. Of these Brihaspati (Jupiter), Shukra (Venus), Surya (Sun) and Chandra (Moon) are the deities for gods, demons and humans.

30. Some among the gods are seated in their heavenly vehicles and continually minister to the needs of all created beings, as the rulers of fire, air, water and death, and Tumbura and Narada.

31. Some situated in the secluded regions of Patala (the netherworld) are equally distinguished for their holiness and piety, such as Bali, Subotra, Andha, Prahlada and others.

32. Among beasts of the field, fowls of the air, and inferior animals you will find many intelligent beings, such as the bird Garuda, the monkey Hanuman, the bear Jambavan, and others. Among the demigods there are some who are wise and others who are as muddle headed as beasts.

33. Thus it is possible for the Universal Soul, residing everywhere and at all times the same, to show itself in any form in any being according to its will.

34. It is the multiform law of His eternal decree and the manifold display of His infinite power that invest all things with multiple shapes and diverse capacities, as they appear to us.

35. This law of divine decree is the lord of all and embodies in itself the creative, preservative and destructive powers under the titles of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. These names are indicative of the intelligent faculties of the Universal Soul.

36. It is possible for the Supreme Soul to reside in all bodies in any manner it likes. It presides sometimes in the manner of grains of pure gold amidst worthless sands and dust, and at others as the mixture of some base metal in pure gold.

37. Seeing some good connected or resulting from evil, our inclinations would lead us to the evil were we not deterred by fear of the sinfulness of the act and its consequent punishment.

38. Sometimes we see something substantial arising from the unsubstantial, such as when we attain the substantial good of divine presence through the unsubstantial meditation on his negative attributes.

39. What never existed before comes to existence at sometime or place unknown to us, just as the horns of a rabbit, never before seen in nature, are shown to us in magic play by the black art of sorcery.

40. Those seen to exist as firm and solid as a diamond become null and void and disperse in air, like the sun, moon, earth, mountains, and the godlike people of the world before the great flood.

41. Seeing these changes in the state of things, you, O mighty armed Rama, must give up your joy and grief on any occasion and preserve the equanimity of your mind at all times.

42. The unreal (material existence) seems as real and the sober reality (of spiritual essence) appears as a nonentity in nature. Therefore give up your reliance upon this deceitful world and preserve the equanimity of your mind under all circumstances.

43. It is true that you gain nothing by your resignation of the world. On the other hand, it is equally true that you lose nothing by your getting rid of its unrealities.

44. But it is true, O Rama, that you gain a certain good by getting rid of this world, and that is your riddance from the manifold evils and misfortunes which are the unavoidable accompaniments with this life.

45. You obtain the certain gain of your salvation by your resignation of the world, which you can never earn by your attachment to it. Therefore strive for your liberation by purging your mind from its attachments to the world.

46. He who wishes for his liberation must take the pains to have an insight of his soul. A single glimpse of the soul is sure to cut off all the pains and pangs of the world at their roots.

47. There are many dispassionate and disconnected men, even in the present age, who are liberated in their lifetimes, like King Janaka and others.

48. So you too are liberated in this life to the extent you have a dispassionate and unprejudiced mind, and may manage to conduct yourself with your tolerant spirit, like the patient earth, stone and motionless metals.

49. There are two kinds of liberation for living beings. One is in their present life and body and the other after separation of life from the body, both of which admit of some varieties as you will hear afterwards.

50. First of all, the peace of mind that comes from its unconcern with everything is termed its liberation. This peace is possible for the sinless man either in this life or in the next.

51. Lessening of affections is filled with the bliss of singleness, and it is possible both in the embodied as well as disembodied states of life.

52. He who lives in perfect apathy and without his affection for anybody is called the living liberated man, but the life which is bound by its affections is said to be in bondage, or else it is free as air.

53. It is possible to obtain liberation by means of diligent inquiry and reasoning. Otherwise, it is as difficult to attain as it is hard for a lame man to leap over a hole, though as small as the footprint of a cow.

54. For know, O Rama of great soul, that the soul should not be cast into misery by your neglect of it, or by subjecting it through ignorance to its affection for others.

55. He who relies on his patience, employs his mind, and meditates upon the Supreme Soul in his own soul to attain his consummation finds the deep abyss of the world like a small chink in his vast comprehension.

56. The high station to which Buddha had attained by his patience, and from which the Arhata prince fell to skepticism by his impatience, and that supreme good which great minds reach, is the fruit of the tree of diligent inquiry, which like the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree, yields all what is desired of it.

✅
Chapter 5.76 — The World Compared with the Ocean

1. Vasishta continued:— These worlds sprung from Brahma the creator are upheld by ignorance and become extinct before right reason.

2. The worlds are like revolving circles of water, whirlpools in the ocean of Brahman. They are as numerous as particles of light and as innumerable as the small particles that fly in sunbeams.

3. Imperfect knowledge of the world causes its existence. Full knowledge makes it vanish into nothing.

4. The world is a dreadful, unbounded ocean that cannot be forded. There is no way to cross it except by the raft of right investigation and diligent scrutiny.

5. This ocean is full with the water of ignorance. Its vast basin is filled with fatal whirlpools and overwhelming waves of discord and dangers.

6. Here goodness and good actions float on the surface as its froth and foams. But they hide the deadly latent heat of hellfire underneath. Here roll the constant waves of greed, and there snores the huge whale, the great leviathan of the mind.

7. It is the reservoir of the endless channels and streams of life running as its streams and currents. It is the depository of innumerable treasures of brilliant gems hidden under its depth. It is infested with the serpents of diseases and the horrid sharks of the senses.

8. See Rama! Playful women, resembling the shaking waves of this ocean, are able to attract and pierce the hearts of the wise with the hooks and horns of their looks.

9. Their lips are as red as rubies and their eyes are as black as blue lotuses. Their teeth are like blossoms of fruits and flowers and their sweet smiles are like the white froth of the sea.

10. The curled locks of their hairs are like the curled vines of blue lotuses and their twisted eyebrows are like the slanting of little waves. Their backsides are like protruded little islands and their throats and necks are lined like conch shells.

11. Their foreheads are like plates of gold and their graces are like the sharks of the sea. Their loose glances are like splashing waves and their complexions are gold colored like the sands on the seashore.

12. Such is this ocean-like world with its tremendous surges and rolling waves. The role of a mahatma is to cross it by heroic exertions in order to save one’s self from sinking under them.

13. Shame on that man who having good sense for his vessel and reason for his helmsman does not conduct himself across the wide expanse of this worldly ocean.

14. He is reckoned the most valiant man who measures the immeasurable expanse of this ocean (by his knowledge of the infinite soul).

15. He who well considers this world with the learned, who looks into all its hazards with the eye of the mind, and who places his trust in the Lord becomes blessed forever.

16. You are truly blessed, O Rama, having been employed from your early youth to scrutinize this world.

17. Men who consider the world and take it as you do in the same light of a dangerous ocean, are not likely to be drowned in it when they steer their ship in it after due consideration.

18. The enjoyments of the world are to be duly considered by self inquiry before one dares to enjoy them, like ambrosia, before they feed on any other fare like Garuda enjoying snakes as food.

19. He who considers beforehand the employment in which he should be engaged and the enjoyments he ought to share in this world fares well in his present and future life. Otherwise, he falls in danger like an inconsiderate man.

20. The judicious and forewarned man prospers in his fame and fortune and rises in his power and understanding in his life, like trees flowering and bearing fruit in spring.

21. Rama, you will shine with the elegance of bright and cooling moonbeams and with the beauty of perpetual prosperity if you will only begin your worldly career with full knowledge of all that is to be known respecting the world.

✅
Chapter 5.77 — Description of Living Liberation

1. Rama replied, “O sage! nobody is fully satisfied with all that you say, but must learn more and more from you. Therefore, tell me in short the substance of the present subject, which is as grand as it is wonderful to hear.”

2. Vasishta replied:— I have already given you many interpretations of living liberation. Here are some more for your satisfaction and close attention.

3. The living liberated see this world with their visual organs and their state of sound sleep as a hazy maze. In their spiritual light, their minds fixed solely on the Supreme Soul, they consider the world to be an unreality.

4. He who is disengaged has his mind as still as in sleep. He who sees the soul is seized with joy at the sight.

5. He takes nothing that is within his reach and does not retain what is within his grasp, but keeps his mind looking within himself as having everything there.

6. He sees the bustle of the tumultuous crowd with the eye of his mind, and smiles in himself at the hurry and commotion of the world.

7. He does not live in future expectation, nor does he rely on his present possessions. He does not live on the pleasure of his past memory, but lives without any inclination.

8. Sleeping, he is awake in his vision of heavenly light. Waking, he is plunged into the deep sleep of his mental reveries. He does all his works with his external body, but he does nothing with his inner mind (which is fixed in his God).

9. In his mind he has renounced the thoughts of all things and his care for anything. He does his outward actions and remains as even as if he is doing nothing.

10. He pursues the course of duties of his caste and family as they have descended to him from the custom of his forefathers.

11. He does all that is required and expected of him with a willing mind and without the error of believing himself as their actor.

12. He remains indifferent and unconcerned of all that he does by routine and habit. He does not long for or dislike or rejoice or grieve at anything.

13. He takes no notice of others’ friendship or hatred towards him. He is devoted to those who are devoted to him, but cunning with those who deal in craftiness with him.

14. He deals as a boy with children and as a veteran with old people. He is youthful in the society of young men and is grave in the company of the aged and wise. He is not without sympathy with the sorrows of others.

15. He opens his mouth in uplifting speeches and never betrays his privation in any way. He is always calm in his mind and ever of a cheerful complexion.

16. He is wise and deep, yet open and sweet. He is ever free from pain and misery.

17. He is magnanimous in his disposition and as sweet as a sea of delight. He is cool and cools the pains of others and is as refreshing to mankind as the beams of the full moon.

18. His objects are praiseworthy deeds. No action or worldly good is of any purpose to him, nor does he gain anything by his abandonment of pleasures or riches or friends.

19. No action or inaction, no labor or ease, no bondage or release, and no heaven or hell can add or take away anything from his inner contentment.

20. He sees everything everywhere in the same uniform light. His mind is neither afraid of bondage nor eager for its release.

21. His doubts are wholly removed by the light of his knowledge. His mind towers upwards like the fearless eagle of the sky.

22. His mind, free from error and settled in its equanimity, does not rise or fall like any heavenly body, but remains unaltered as the high heaven itself.

23. The living liberated does his outward actions by the mere movements of the outer members of his body and without applying his mind to them, just as a baby sleeping in a cradle spontaneously moves his limbs without any purpose of his mind.

24. A drunk or delirious man does many acts in his state of unsound mind. He never does them with the attention of his mind, so he retains no trace of them in his memory.

25. Children grab or throw away everything without knowing whether it is good or bad for them. So do men act or refrain without deliberate choice or aversion.

26. A man doing his duty by habit or compulsion is not aware of any pain or pleasure derived from it.

27. An act done by the outer body without the person’s intention in the inner mind is reckoned as no act of the actor. It does not confer any good or bad result on the person.

28. He does not shrink from misery or rejoice at his good fortune. He is not elated at his success or depressed by his failure.

29. He is not dismayed at seeing the sun growing cool and the moon shining warmly over his head. He is not disconcerted by the flame of fire bending downwards or at the course of waters rising upwards.

30. He is neither frightened nor astonished at any wonderful occurrence in nature because he knows all phenomena of nature are the wonderful appearances of the omnipotent and all-intelligent soul.

31. He expresses no need or want and he has no need of others’ favor or kindness. He has no need to recourse to wiliness or cunning. He undertakes no shameful act like begging or the like, nor does he betray his shamelessness by doing an unworthy action.

32. He is never mean-spirited or arrogant in his spirit. He is not elated or depressed in his mind, nor is he sad or sorry or joyful at anytime.

33. No passions arise in his pure heart, which is as clear as the autumn sky and like the clear sky which gives no growth to thorns or thistles.

34. Seeing constant births and deaths of living beings in the course of this world, who would you say is always happy or unhappy?

35. Froth and foaming bubbles burst in the water, so our lives flash and fly out into eternity. Therefore, who can be called happy anywhere? What is that state of permanent pleasure or pain?

36. In this world of endless entrances and exits, what being lasts or is lost forever? Our sight produces the view, just as our failing sight takes it out of view.

37. The sights of these worlds are no more than the passing scenes in our nightly dreams, unforeseen of momentary duration and sudden disappearance.

38. What cause for joy or sorrow can there be in this wretched world which is the scene of constant advents and departures?

39. The loss of some good brings sorrow to the sufferer, but what sorrow can assail the self-liberated man who sees nothing as positive good in the ever-changing state of things in this world?

40. Of what use is prosperity or the enjoyment of any pleasure when in the next moment it is succeeded by adversity and pain, embittering life by its harmful effects.

41. Deliverance from pleasure and pain, choice and dislike, desirable and displeasing, and prosperity and adversity contributes to the true joy of man.

42. After you abandon pleasing and unpleasing objects and renounce your desire for enjoyments, you get a cold renunciation which will melt your mind like frost.

43. The mind being weakened, its desires also will be wasted, just as burnt sesame seeds leave no oil behind.

44. By thinking existence as non-existent, the man of great soul gets rid of all his desires and sets himself aloof as in the air. With joyful spirits that know no change, the wise man sits and sleeps and lives always content with himself.

✅
Chapter 5.78 — Techniques of Meditation, Pranayama and Inquiry

1. Vasishta continued:— Like a swirling firebrand describing a circle of sparkling fires, so the revolving mind depicts the apparent circumference to the sky as the real circle of the universe.

2. Similarly, rolling waters make curves in the sea that appear to be something other than water. The turning of the mind forms many ideal worlds seeming to be bodies other than itself.

3. As you see strings of pearls in the sky by the twinkling of your eyes fixed upon it, so these false worlds present themselves to view by the pulsation of your mind.

4. Rama said, “Tell me sage, how does the mind have its vibration and how it is repressed, so that I may learn how to control it?”

5. Vasishta answered:— Know Rama, as snow is accompanied by whiteness, sesame seeds are associated with oil, fragrance is attendant upon flowers, and flame is inherent with fire,

6. so the mind is accompanied by its fluctuations hand in hand. They are virtually the one and same thing, though passing under different names by fiction.

7. Of the two categories of mind and its pulsation, if either is extinct, the other is also extinguished. The properties of a thing being lost, their subject likewise ceases to exist. There is no doubt of this.

8. There are two ways of extinguishing the mind: yoga and spiritual knowledge. Yoga is the suppression of mental powers. Knowledge is the thorough investigation of all things.

9. Rama asked, “How is it possible, sage, to suppress the vital airs and thereby attain that state of tranquility which is filled with endless joy?”

10. Vasishta replied:— There is an energy circulating and breathing through the lungs and arteries of the body called the vital breath (prana) or life, just as water flows through the veins and pores of the earth.

11. The fluctuation of this energy impels and gives force to the internal organs of the body. This energy has various names such as prana and apana depending on its position and motion.

12. As fragrance resides in flowers and whiteness in frost, so motion is inherent in the mind. Mind and motion are one and the same.

13. Now the vibration of this vital breath excites the perception of certain desires and feelings in the heart. The cognitive principle of these perceptions is called the mind.

14. The vibration of vital air gives pulsation to the heart strings which causes their awareness in the mind. It is similar to the motion of waters giving rise to the waves rolling and beating on the shore.

15. In the Vedas, the learned say that the mind (chitta) is the movement of the vital breath (prana), and this prana being suppressed or controlled quiets the mind.

16. The action of the mind being stopped, the perception of the existence of the world becomes extinct. It is like the extinction of worldly affairs at sunset.

17. Rama asked, “How is it possible to stop the course of the energy (prana) perpetually circulating through the cells of the body, like the unnumbered birds flying in the air to their nests?”

18. Vasishta replied:— It is possible by study of the scriptures and association with the good and wise, by habitual dispassion, by the practice of yoga, and by removal of reliance in every transaction of the world.

19. The best way to suppress the vital energy is meditation on the desired object, keeping that single object in view, and firm reliance on that one particular object.

20. Next is by suppression of breath in the acts of inspiration and respiration in such a way as to not cause pain. This together with fixed meditation makes it possible to suppress the vital energy.

21. Uttering the syllable Om, reflecting upon its meaning, and dormancy of the perceptive senses, are also ways to suppress the breath.

22. The practice of breathing out (rechaka) serves to purge the body of impurities. By leaving the nostrils untouched, the vital energy is suppressed altogether.

23. The practice of breathing in (puraka) tends to fill the insides like clouds fill the sky. Then when breathing is stopped, its vibrations are also stopped.

24. With the practice of holding of the breath (kumbhaka), the vital air is shut up in a closed vessel and this serves to stop the course of breathing.

25. The tongue carried to the opening of the roof of the mouth, and the tip of the tongue attached to the guttural bulb at the beginning of the throat, prevents the vibration of the breathing.

26. Again, the mind rid of its flights of fancy and becoming as vacant as empty air prevents the course of breathing by its fixed meditation of itself, samadhi.

27. Again, as the vital energy ranges within twelve inches from the tip of the nose, this region should be closely watched by the eyesight in order to prevent the going out and coming in of breath.

28. Moreover, the practice of stretching the tongue twelve inches above the roof of the mouth and sticking the tip of the tongue to the cavity called brahmarandhra serves to make one unconscious of himself and stop his breathing.

29. The eyesight being lifted upwards and fixed in the cavity between the eyebrows exhibits the light of the intellect and stops the vibrations of breath.

30. As soon as the spiritual light dawns over the soul and the mind is steadfastly fixed to it, without any mixture of dualism, there is an utter stop of breathing.

31. The lifelong practice of seeing a simple emptiness within one’s self and freeing the mind from all its thoughts and desired objects, serves to stop the fluctuation of breath.

32. Rama asked, “Sage, what is this thing called the human heart which receives the reflections of all things like a large mirror?”

33. Vasishta replied:— Listen, my good Rama. The hearts of all animals in this world are of two kinds: the superior and inferior. Learn their difference.

34. The inferior heart forms a part of the body. It has a certain dimension and is a piece of flesh inside the breast.

35. The other is of the nature of consciousness. It is called the superior mind because it is both inside and outside the body, yet it is situated in no part of it.

36. The superior part is where all this world is situated. It is the great reflector of all things and the receptacle of all good.

37. The consciousness of all living creatures is also called their heart, though it is not any part of the animal body, nor is it a dull inert substance such as a pebble or stone.

38. Now the vibrations of vital energy of this conscious or sensitive heart, which necessarily is the same as the thinking mind (chitta), cease when it is purified of its internal desires.

39. These methods, as well as many others adopted by others and taught by many sages, equally serve to suppress the breathing.

40. These methods of yoga meditation are to be slowly adopted by continued practice for the redemption of the good from this world. Otherwise, their hasty adoption may prove detrimental to life.

41. Long practice perfects a man to the rank of a monastic and hermit, so the gradual suppression of breath is attended with equal success, and the repression of desires is accompanied by many happy results.

42. By continued practice the vital breath is compressed within the confines of twelve inches about the cavities of the brows, nostrils and palate, like a floodgate confining a body of water.

43. Through repeated practice, the tip of the tongue should be brought to contact the gullet of the throat, through which the breath passes both in and out.

44. These are the various modes which, by constant practice, lead to samadhi when the mind has its fullest tranquility and its union with the Supreme Soul.

45. By practice of these methods a man is freed from sorrow and filled with internal bliss becoming enrapt in the Supreme Soul.

46. The vibration of vital energy, being suppressed by continued practice, brings a tranquility to the mind which is like its extinction.

47. Human life is wrapped in desires. Release of the mind from these is liberation. Breathing is the operation of life and its suppression is the path to its extinction or nirvana.

48. The vibration of breath is the action of the mind that produces the error of the existence of the world. The breath and mind being brought under control dispels this error.

49. Removing the knowledge of duality shows the existence of only unity, an experience that no words can describe except by attributes that are ascribed to it.

50. In whom and from whom is all, and who is all in every place. Yet who is not this world, nor does such a world as this abide in him, nor has the world come out from him.

51. Owing to its perishable nature, its situation in time and space, and its limitation by them, this material world cannot be a part of or identical with that immaterial spirit which has no attribute or likeness.

52. It is the moisture of all vegetables and the flavor of everything that can be eaten. It is the light of lights and the source of all desires rising in the heart, like moonbeams coming from the lunar disc.

53. It is the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree yielding all earthly delights as its fruits which are constantly carried aloft only to fall down with their juicy flavors of various tastes.

54. The high minded man who depends on that boundless spirit and rests secure in its bosom is truly called wise and liberated in his lifetime.

55. He is the best of men whose mind is free from all desires and cravings and who has found his rest from the thoughts of his fancied good and evil. He remains without any inclination amidst all the cares and concerns of this life.

✅
Chapter 5.79 — Spiritual Knowledge: All Is Subjective

1. Rama said, “Sage, you have described the methods of suspending the mind by means of yoga practices. Now I hope you will kindly tell me how it is brought to stand still by means of perfect knowledge.

2. Vasishta replied:— Perfect knowledge means a man’s firm belief in the existence of one self manifest or Supreme Soul that is without beginning or end. This is what the wise mean by full or perfect knowledge.

3. Its fullness consists in viewing all visible forms, such as these pots, those pictures, and all these hundreds of types of beings, to be manifest in the fullness of that Spirit and not distinct from it.

4. Imperfect knowledge causes our birth and pain. Perfect knowledge liberates us from these. Our defective sight shows us the snake in the rope. Our complete view of it removes the error.

5. Only knowledge free from imagination and free from any belief in the objective and complete reliance on conscious subjectivity lead to the liberation of men. Nothing else can do.

6. Knowledge of the purely subjective is identical with that of the Supreme Spirit. This purity intermingled with the impure objective matter is termed ignorance (avidya).

7. Consciousness itself is the thing which it is conscious of. Knowledge is identical with the known. There is no difference between them. The soul knows only itself as there is no other beside itself.

8. “Seeing the soul alone in its true light in all the three worlds,” is equivalent to the expression “all this world is the soul itself” in the Sruti scriptures. Knowledge of this truth constitutes the perfection of man.

9. The whole being the soul, why talk of an entity or a non-being? What meaning can there be in bondage or liberation?

10. The mind is nothing other than its perceptions which are manifested by God himself. The whole is an infinite vacuum. There is no bondage or liberation of anyone.

11. All this is the immense Brahman extending in the form of this vast immensity. Therefore, you may enlarge your invisible soul by yourself and by means of your knowledge of yourself.

12. By this comprehensive view of Brahman, as all in all, you can find no difference between a piece of wood or a rock and your cloth. Why then are you so fond of making these distinctions?

13. Know the soul as the only indestructible substance. It remains quiescent from first to the last, and know this also to be the nature of your soul.

14. Know that this boundless universe, with all the fixed and moving bodies it contains, is a transcendent void where there is no room for your joy or sorrow whatever.

15. The shapes of death, disease, unity and duality arise constantly in the soul like endless waves in the sea.

16. He who remains in the close embrace of his soul with his inner understanding is never tempted to fall a prey to the trap of worldly enjoyments.

17. He who has a clear head for right judgment is never moved by the force of earthly delights, but remains as unshaken as a rock against the gentle winds of the air.

18. Ignorant, unreasonable and stupid men, guided only by their desires, are preyed upon by continued misery like fish in a dried pond are eaten mercilessly by cranes.

19. Knowing the world to be full of spirit and without the matter of ignorance, close your eyes against its visible phenomena and remain firm with your spiritual essence.

20. Plurality of things is the creation of imagination. They have no existence in reality. It is like the many forms of waves in the sea, which in reality are only its water. Therefore, the man who relies on his firm faith in unity is said to be truly liberated and perfect in his knowledge.

✅
Chapter 5.80 — Investigation of Visible Phenomena; Ode to the Death of the Mind

1. Vasishta continued:— I will now describe to you the thoughtful mental examination that keeps the reasoning mind from attending to objects placed in its presence.

2. The eyes are only for seeing and the living soul is only for bearing the burden of pain and pleasure. They are like the eyes and bodies of beasts of burden which see and carry loads of food without being able to taste it.

3. The eyes, being confined to visible phenomena, can do no harm to the soul residing in the body, just as an ass that has fallen in a pit is but a slight loss to its owner.

4. Do not, O base man, entertain your eyes with the dirty sight of visible phenomena that perish of themselves in the twinkling of an eye and put you to peril.

5. An acutely intelligent man thinks he is living and counts the duration of his lifetime by the acts judged as one’s own deeds and beings. At last, these very acts turn against him and make him accountable for them.

6. Do not have your eyes rely upon visible objects that are unreal in their nature and are produced to perish soon after. They please your sight only for a moment. Know visible phenomena to be destroyers of your otherwise indestructible soul.

7. O my eyes that are only witnesses of forms situated in the soul! It is in vain that sights flash only to consume yourselves after a short while, like burning lamps.

8. What our eyes see is like the fluctuation of waters. Its objects are like the small particles that fill sunbeams in the sky. Whether these sights be good or bad, they are of no matter to our minds.

9. Again there is that little bit of egoism beating in our minds, like a small shrimp stirring in the waters. Let it stir as it may, but why should we give it titles of “I” or “you” or “he” or “this” or “that”?

10. All inert bodies and their light appear together to the eye. One is the container of the other. But they do not affect the mind and therefore do not deserve our notice.

11. The sight of objects and the thoughts of the mind have no connection with one another. And yet they seem to be related to each other, as our faces and their reflections in mirrors.

12. Such is their inseparably reciprocal relation in the minds of the ignorant. But the wise who are freed from their ignorance remain aloof from the visible with their mental meditations alone.

13. The minds of the vulgar are as closely connected with the visible as sacrificial wood is with the flammable lac.

14. Through diligent study, the chain of mental thoughts is severed from the visible in the same way as right reasoning removes our wrong notions.

15. After ignorance and the connection between visible and the mind are dispersed, there is no more blending of forms and figures and the reflections and thoughts of them.

16. The sense impressions that have taken possession of the inner mind are to be rooted out, just as they drive a demon out from the house.

17. “O my mind!” says the intelligent man. “It is in vain that you delude me. I have known your first and last as nothing. If you are so mean in your nature, you must be so and a nothing even now.”

18. “Why do you display yourself to me in your five-fold form of the five senses? Go make your display before him who acknowledges and owns you as his.

19. Your grand display of the universe yields me no satisfaction because I am convinced, O vile mind, that all this is no better than a magic play.

20. Whether you abide in me or not is of no matter to me because I consider you as dead to me as you are dead to reason.

21. You are a dull unessential thing, false and deceitful and always reckoned as dead. You mislead only the ignorant, not the reasonable.”

22. “For so long our ignorance made us ignorant of you, but now by the light of reason we find you as dead as the darkness under the light of a lamp. There is always an impenetrable darkness under the lighted lamp.

23. You have long taken possession of this house of my body and prevented me, O tricky mind, from associating with the good and wise.

24. You lie as dull as a dead body at the door of this bodily house, blocking the entrance of my worshipped guests (of good virtues).”

25. “O my mind, gigantic monster of the world which has its existence in no time, are you not ashamed to assume this deceitful form of the world and appear before me in this hideous shape?

26. Leave my body, O demonic mind, and take your retinue of female fiends of greed and her companions, and the whole host of your devilish comrades of rage, wrath and the like.

27. Seeing the advance of reason in the temple of the body, the demon mind flies from it like a savage wolf leaving its den at the approach of a hunter.”

28. “O pity those foolish folks who are so subdued by this dull and deceitful mind like unwary people are spellbound by a magic wand.

29. What is your boast and might in subduing the ignorant rabble? Try your power upon me who defies your power to prevail over the unity of my belief!

30. I have already frustrated your attempts against me and laid you to dust. I need not try to defeat the power of my foolish mind.”

31. “Long before I had taken you for a living thing and passed many a whole life and day and night with your company in this dreary world.

32. Now I have come to know the nothingness of the mind and that it is put to death by my power. Hence I have given up my concern with you and rely only upon my ever existent soul.

33. By good luck, living liberated men come to know the death of their minds and cease to spend their lives under the illusion of its existence.

34. Having driven away the deceitful demon of the mind from the house of my body, I am situated at rest without any troublesome thought or turbulent passion in me.

35. I smile to think of the many follies to which I was led for so long under the influence of my demonic mind.

36. By my good fortune the gigantic demon of my mind is at last defeated by the sword of my reason and driven out of the house of my body.

37. It is also my good fortune that my heart is purified of its evil inclinations by suppression of my demonic mind. Now my soul rests alone in peace in the abode of my body.

38. With the death of my mind there is an end to my egoism and all my troublesome thoughts and cares. Through breath or mantra of reason, the expulsion of the monsters of evil passions from my heart has made it a place of rest for my soul.

39. What is this mind with its egoism and eager expectations to me? It is only a family of intractable inmates of whom I fortunately have rid by their wholesale deaths.”

40. “I hail that pure and ever prosperous soul which is identical to my inner soul and identical with the immutable intellect.

41. I hail that Ego in me which is yet not myself nor I nor any other person, nor is it subject to sorrow or error.

42. I hail that Ego in me which has no action nor agency and no desire or worldly affair of its own. It has nobody and it does not eat or sleep.

43. This Ego is not myself or any other, and there is nothing as I or anybody else. The Ego is all in all and I bow down to that being.”

44. “The Ego is the first cause and support of all. It is the intellect and the soul of all worlds. It is the whole without parts. I therefore bow down to that Ego.

45. I prostrate to the identical Ego of all, which is eternal and immutable and which is the sole immense Soul without any parts. It is all, in all and abides at all times.

46. It is without any form or name and is manifest as the immense spirit. It abides in itself and I bow down to that Ego.

47. It is the same in all things in its extremely minute form or as the manifestation of the universe. It is the essence of my existence and abides in me, and it is in that state to which I bow down.”

48. “It is the earth and ocean with all their hills and rivers, which are not the ego, nor are they the Ego itself. I bow to the same Ego which comprises the world with all its contents.

49. I bow to that indestructible Lord without decay which is beyond thought and is ever charming and ever the same, who manifests the endless universe with all its worlds and many more yet invisible and unformed bodies. He is unborn and without decay, and his body is beyond all attributes and dimensions.”

✅
Chapter 5.81 — The Mind Is Unknowable, Only the Soul

1. Vasishta resumed:— Having thus considered and known the mind in this way, O mighty Rama, it is the business of the wise who know the truth to inquire into the nature of the soul to the extent it is knowable.

2. Knowing the world to be purely the soul, it is to be asked, from where did the phantom of mind arise? It is nothing in reality.

3. It is ignorance, error and illusion which exhibit the vacant and visionary mind to view, just as it is our false imagination which forms an illusionary tree in the sky.

4. As the objects standing on the shore seem to be moving to ignorant children passing in a boat, so the calm soul appears to be in motion (like the mind) to the unintelligent.

5. After our ignorance and error are removed, we have no perception of the fluctuation of our minds, just as we do not think mountains to be in motion after a speedy air car is stopped.

6. I have given up thoughts of all internal and external things, knowing them to be only the creation of my airy mind. Thus the mind and its actions being null and void, I see all things exist in the spirit of Brahman alone.

7. I am free from my doubts and sit quietly devoid of all care. I sit as Shiva without a desire stirring in me.

8. The mind lacking, there is an end of its youthful desires and other properties also. My soul being in the light of the Supreme Spirit, it has lost its sight of all other colors and forms the present themselves to the eyes.

9. The mind being dead, its desires also die with it, and its cage of the body is broken down without it. The enlightened man is no longer subject to his mind so he is also liberated from the bondage of his egoism. Such is the state of the soul after it is separated from the body and mind, when it remains in its spiritual state in this and the next world.

10. The world is one calm and quiescent unity of Brahman. Its diversity is as false as a dream. What then shall we think or talk about the world when in reality it is nothing?

11. My soul has advanced to the state of divine holiness, so it has become as rarefied and all-pervasive as the eternal spirit of God in which it is situated forever.

12. That which is the soul and the mind, the substantial and the unsubstantial, and what is not, are all the counterpart of the something which is rarer than air, calm and quiet, eternal and intangible, and yet all pervading and extended through all.

13. Let there be a mind in us or let it remain or perish forever. I have nothing to discuss about it when I see everything is situated in the soul.

14. I considered myself to be a limited and embodied being as long as I was unable to reason about these abstruse subjects. Now I have come to know my unlimited form of spirit. But what is “myself” is something I have not yet been able to know because the whole is full with the one Supreme Spirit.

15. But the mind being granted as dead, it is useless to doubt about it. We gain nothing by bringing the demon of the mind to life again.

16. I immediately repudiate the mind, the source of false desires and fancies. I meditate on the mystic syllable “Om” with the quietness of my soul resting in the stillness of the Divine Spirit.

17. With my best intelligence, I always inquire of my God when I am eating or sleeping or sitting or walking about.

18. Saints conduct their temporal affairs with a calm and careless mind, meditating all along on the Divine Soul in their calmed spirits.

19. So do all great minded men gladly pass their lives discharging their respective duties without being elated by pride or the giddiness of vanity. They manage themselves with a cheerfulness resembling the gentle beams of the autumn moon.

✅
Chapter 5.82 — Sage Vitahavya’s Self Inquiry into the Nature of His Mind

1. Vasishta continued:— It was in this manner that the learned Samvarta, who had knowledge of the soul, reasoned with himself. He communicated this to me in the Vindhya Mountains.

2. He said, “Shut out the world from your sight and employ your understanding to abstract reasoning in order to cross the vast ocean of this world.”

3. Rama, hear me tell you of another view of things, whereby the great sage Vitahavya gave up the practice of making offerings to fire and remained firmly established in his spiritualistic faith.

4. The illustrious Vitahavya wandered about the forests in former times, then resided in a cave of the Vindhya Mountains which was spacious as a cave of Meru under the sun’s passage.

5. In course of time, he grew dissatisfied with the ritual acts which serve only to bewilder men and cause diseases and difficulties to man.

6. He fixed his aim on the highest object of unalterable ecstasy and abandoned his cares for the rotten world in the course of his conduct in life.

7. He built a hut of leaves with the branches of plantain trees. The floor was strewn with black stones, and he perfumed it with fragrant earth.

8. He spread a seat of deer’s skin, which serves as a pure mattress for holy saints. He sat still upon it as a rainless cloud in the clear sky.

9. He sat there in the lotus posture, his legs crossed upon one another. He held his heels with the fingers of both his hands and remained with his head uplifted, like the fast and fixed peak of a mountain summit.

10. He closed his eyes from looking upon surrounding objects, and confined his mind to his heart, as the descending sun confines his beams in the hollow caves of Meru.

11. Then, having stopped the course of his internal and external senses, he reasoned in his mind which was free from sin and deceit. Vitahavya reasoning:—

12. How is it that although I have restrained my outer organs, I cannot stop the course of my mind, even with all my force. It is always as unsteady as a leaflet floating and dancing over the waves.

13. My mind impels my external organs and in turn is propelled by them to their different objects, like a juggler tosses about and flings his play balls up and down.

14. Though I refrain from exercising my external faculties, yet my mind pursues them eagerly and runs towards the objects from which I try to stop its course.

15. It turns from this object to that, as they say from the pot to the picture and from that to the chariot. And in this manner my mind wanders about the objects of sense like a monkey leaping from branch to branch.

16. Let me now consider the courses of the five external senses and their organs, which serve as so many passages for the mind.

17. My senses are wicked and wretched. How shall I bring you to your good senses when you are so senseless as to roll on restlessly like the waves of waters in the sea?

18. Do not disturb me anymore with your unsteadiness, for I well remember to what parades of difficulties I have suffered because of your inconstancy.

19. What are my organs but passages to the inner mind? My organs are dull and base of themselves, no better than the waves of the sea and water in a mirage.

20. My senses are unsubstantial in their forms and without any spiritual light. Senses, your efforts are like those of blind men only to fall into the pit.

21. It is only the intellectual soul that witnesses the objects of sense. It is in vain that mind and senses are busy without the soul.

22. It is in vain for the organs of sense to display themselves. It is like the twirling of a firebrand or the appearance of a snake in the rope. They have no essence of their own and are of no use without the soul.

23. The all knowing soul knows the eyes and ears well, though none of these organs knows the internal soul. They are as far from the soul as hell is from heaven.

24. As a traveler is afraid of snakes and twice born brahmins dread demonic savages, so consciousness fears for its safety and avoids the company of the senses.

25. Yet from a distance, unseen consciousness directs the organs of sense to their various duties like the distant sun, from his situation in heaven, directs the daily duties of men on earth.

26. My mind is wandering all about like a beggar in search of food to fill his belly. My mind acts like a Charvaka materialist making a god of my body to enslave itself to its service. Do not wander about the world like this in vain search of your harmony.

27. My mind falsely alleges that it is intelligent, an intelligence, or as consciousness itself. You two are too different in your natures and cannot agree together.

28. It is my mind’s vain boast to think itself to be living and to be life or ego. All these things belong to the soul, and my mind is entirely devoid of them.

29. Egoism produces the knowledge of “I am the Ego” which you are not. Neither are you anything except a creature of false imagination. It would be good for you to give up this imagination at once.

30. Conscious intellect exists without beginning or end. Nothing else exists. So then, what are you in this body that takes the name of the mind?

31. The impression of the activity and passivity of the mind is as wrong as the belief that poison and nectar are the one and same thing, because two opposites can never meet together.

32. Therefore, my fool mind, do not expose yourself to ridicule by thinking you are both active and passive agent, which you are not. You are only a mere dull thing, as everyone knows.

33. What is your relationship with enjoyments, or theirs with you, that you wish to have them come to you? You are a dull thing. Without your soul you can have no friend or enemy.

34. The unreal has no existence. The existence of the mind is as unreal as the redness of a crystal. Knowledge, action and passion belong only to the soul. They are not attributable to the mind.

35. If you are the Eternal Mind, then you are identical with the Eternal Soul. But the painful mutability of my mind’s nature tells me that it is not the same as the imperishable soul.

36. Now that you, my mind, have become acquainted with the falsity of your actions and passions, listen to how I am cleansed of these impressions by my own reasoning, as follows.

37. You, my mind, are an inert unreality. This is a truth beyond all doubt. The activity of an inactive nothing is as false as the dancing of imaginary demons or inert stones.

38. Therefore, you are dependent on the Supreme Spirit for your movement. You only vainly think of yourself as living or doing anything by yourself.

39. Whatever is done by the power of another is ascribed to that other, just as the harvest reaped by a farmer’s sickle is said to be the act of the farmer and not his instrument.

40. He who kills with an instrument is considered the slayer, and not the intermediate instrument of slaughter. Nobody censures the passive sword with guilt or pardons the perpetrator.

41. He who eats and drinks is said to be the eater and drinker and not the plate or cup which holds the food and drink.

42. My mind, you are entirely inactive in your nature. You are moved by the all wise Consciousness. Therefore only the soul perceives everything by itself, and not you, my ignorant mind.

43. The Supreme Soul awakens and informs the mind without intermission, just as ignorant people require to be constantly guided and admonished by their superiors.

44. The essence of the soul in its form of consciousness is obvious to everyone. It is from this consciousness that the mind derives its power, its name, and its existence.

45. Thus the ignorant mind is produced by some power of the soul and remains all along with its ignorance until it comes to melt away like snow under the sunshine of its spiritual knowledge.

46. Therefore, my ignorant mind, you are now dead under the influence of my knowledge of the soul. Do not boast anymore of being a particle of spiritual origin. Such is only for your sorrow.

47. The concept that the unreal mind is an entity is as false as the production of a plant by the light of a magic lantern. There is only that true knowledge which proceeds directly from the Great God.

48. Rama, these worlds are not manifestations of divine power. They are only illusive representations of His consciousness, like the glittering waves of waters in the sea.

49. My ignorant mind, if you are full of consciousness as Consciousness, then there would be no difference between you and the Supreme One, nor would you have any cause of sorrow.

50. The Divine Mind is all knowing, omnipresent and all forms at all times. By attaining the Divine Mind, one obtains everything.

51. There is no such thing as “you” or “he” except the great Brahman who is always manifest everywhere. we have conceptions of ourselves without any exertion on our part.

52. My ignorant mind, if you are the soul, then it is the soul that is everywhere here and nothing beside. If you are anything other than the soul, then you are nothing. All nature is the body of the Universal Soul.

53. The triple world is composed of the Divine Soul, beside which there is no existence. Therefore, if you are anything you must be the soul. Otherwise, you are nothing.

54. I am now this (as a boy) and then another (as an old man). These things are mine and those belong to someone else. These are all your vain thoughts, my mind, for you are nothing positive. Positivism is as false a theory as the horns of a rabbit.

55. We have no idea of a third thing between consciousness and body which we can refer to as the mind, just as we have no idea of an intermediate state between sunlight and shade.

56. We get something by our sight of truth after the veil of darkness has been removed from our eyes. It is our consciousness which we call the mind.

57. Hence, my foolish mind, you are no active or passive agent of action, only the calm self-consciousness of Brahman. Now therefore cast off your ignorance and know yourself to be a condition of the very soul.

58. The mind is described as an organ of the sense of perception and action, the internal instrument of knowing the soul, and not the soul itself. But this is only by way of explaining the knowable by something familiar and better known to us. It is a metaphor.

59. The mind is an unreal instrumentality. It can have no existence without support, nor can it have any action of its own without the agency of an actor. Hence it is false to attribute activity or consciousness to the mind.

60. Without the agency of an actor, the instrument of the mind has no power or activity of its own, just as the passive sickle has no power to cut the harvest without the agency of the reaper.

61. The sword has the power to slay men, but only with the agency of a swordsman. Otherwise, the dull instrument has no power in any part of its body to inflict a wound on another.

62. So my friend the mind, you have no power or agency of your own to do your actions. You trouble yourself in vain. It is unworthy of you to toil for your worldliness like the base, unless it were for your spiritual welfare.

63. The Lord is not to be pitied like you who is subject to labor, because His works are all as unaccountable as those he has not yet done.

64. Your boast that you serve the soul proceeds only from your ignorance and your friendship with the unconscious organs of sense. It is all quite unworthy of you.

65. You are wrong to pursue the objects of sense for the sake of your maker and master. The Lord is independent of all desire, being full and satisfied in himself forever.

66. It is by His self-manifestation, and not by his effort to create, that the omnipresent and omniscient God fills the whole with his unity, which admits of no duality even in imagination.

67. The one God manifests himself as many, and that is all by himself. He comprises the whole within himself. He has nothing to want or seek apart from himself.

68. All this is the magnificence of God, and yet the foolish mind craves after them in vain, just as a miserable man longs to have another’s princely pomp that is displayed before him.

69. You may try to obtain divine blessings by being intimate with the Divine Soul, but there can be no more intimacy between soul and mind than there is between a flower and its fruit.

70. An intimate relation between two things is when one agrees in all its properties with the other. This identity is lacking between soul and mind. The first is immortal, calm and quiet. The second is a mortal and restless thing.

71. My mind, you are not the same as the soul because of your changing appearances, ever changing occupations, and your promptness for various inventions. Moreover, your alternating states of happiness and misery speak plainly to be of a different nature.

72. The relationships of the homogeneous (as of the liquid and curdled milk) and the heterogeneous (as between the milk and water) are quite apparent to sight. But there is no relationship between opposites.

73. It is true that many things have the qualities of other things or a collection of properties common to others. Yet everything has a special identity of its own. Therefore I ask you, my mind, not to lose consciousness of your identity with that of the soul or you expose yourself to misery.

74. Therefore, employ yourself with intense application to the meditation of the soul. Otherwise you are doomed to misery ruminating in your internal recesses on the objects of the visible world.

75. Sliding from consciousness of yourself and running after the imaginary objects of your desire are calculated only for your misery. Therefore man must forget associating with the mind and the bodily organs in order to find rest in the soul or samadhi.

76. From where does the mind’s activity come from? It is proved to be a nothing, like a sky-flower. The extinction of its thoughts and desires extinguishes the mind.

77. The soul also is as void of activity as the sky is devoid of its parts. It is only the Divine Spirit that exhibits itself in various shapes within itself.

78. It bursts forth in the form of oceans with its own waters and foams in froths by the waves of its own breathing. It shines in the brightness at all things by its own light in itself.

79. There is no other active principle anywhere else, just as there is no burning firebrand to be found in the sea. None of the inert body, mind and soul has any active force.

80. There is nothing essential or more obvious than what we are aware of in our consciousness. There is no such thing as “this is another” or “this no other” or “this is good or bad” besides the self-evident One.

81. The One is no unreal ideal, such as that of the Nandana pleasure gardens in the sky. It is the subjective, true consciousness (samvid) and not an objective object of consciousness (samvedya) that extends all around us.

82. Then why entertain the suppositions of “this is I and that is another” in this existence? There can be no distinction whatever of this or that in one unlimited, all extending and indefinable expanse of the soul. The ascription of any attribute to it is like the assumption of water in a mirage or a writing in the sky.

83. My honest mind, if by the purity of your nature you can free yourself from the unrealities of the world and become enlightened with the light of the soul that fills the whole with its essence and is the inbeing of all beings, then you shall truly set me at rest from the uneasiness of my ignorance and the miseries of this world and this miserable life.

✅
Chapter 5.83 — Sage Vitahavya Continues His Self Inquiry, Admonishes Mind, Arrives at Soul

1. Vasishta continued:— Hear now, Rama, how Vitahavya, that great sage of enlightened understanding, silently reasoned with his unmanageable senses.

2. I will tell you openly what he secretly admonished to his senses. By hearing his exhortations, you will be set above the reach of misery. Vitahavya reasoning:—

3. O my senses, I know your inherent qualities work only to create our misery. Therefore I pray, give up your intrinsic natures for the sake of my happiness.

4. My admonitions will annihilate your false actualities which are no more than creatures of ignorance.

5. The mind’s amusement with the springing up of its senses causes its fury and fever heat, just as lighting a fire burns one’s self or others in its flame.

6. The mind being disturbed and bewildered makes restless feelings and sensations flow and fall to it with the fierceness of turbulent rivers falling into the sea, which it breaks out and runs in the form of foam and froth onto the shore.

7. Sensing minds burst forth in passions of their pride and egoism, clashing against one another like conflicting clouds and falling in showers of hailstorms on others’ heads.

8. The anxieties of prosperity and adversity are the tormenting sores in the minds’ breasts. They pierce and perforate hearts to such a degree as if intent upon uprooting hearts from their innermost recesses.

9. They are attended with hiccups and labored breathing in the chest, with groaning and sobbing in the lungs, like hooting owls in the hollow of withered trees, whether covered with tufts of moss on their tops or resembling white haired heads on the dried trunks of old and decayed bodies.

10. The cavities of the heart inside the body are perplexed with crooked cares resembling the folds of snakes, white hairs like hoar frost hanging over the head, and apish wishes lurk about in the caves within the heart.

11. Greed is like a dancing stork clattering her pair of sharp bills (to entice men towards her), then pulling off their eyes from their decayed frames, as also the intestinal cords of the body.

12. Impure lust and lawless desire, symbolized as the filthy cock, scratches the heart as his dunghill and sounds shrill on this side and that.

13. During the long and gloomy nights of our ignorance we are disturbed by fits of frenzy bursting like a hooting owl from the hollow of our hearts. We are infested by passions barking in our bosoms like vetala demons in charnel domes and funeral grounds.

14. These and many other anxieties and sensual desires disturb our rest at nights, like horrible pisacha monsters appearing in the dark.

15. But the virtuous man who has rid himself of the gloom of ignorance beholds everything in its clear light. He exults like a blooming lotus at the dawning light of the day.

16. His heart is cleared of the cloud of ignorance and glows as the clear sky unclogged by fogs or mists. A pure light envelops the heart after the flying dust of doubts has been driven from it.

17. When doubts cease to disturb the mind with gusts of uncertainty, it becomes as calm and still as the dome of the sky and the face of a city after swirling winds have stopped blowing.

18. Mutual friendship and brotherly love purify and cheer the heart of everybody. They grow the graceful trees of concord and cordiality, just as plants bring forth their beautiful blossoms and stamens in spring.

19. The minds of ignorant and unskillful men are as insubstantial as a barren waste. They are shriveled with cares and anxieties, just as a lotus bed is withered under shivering cold and ice.

20. After the fog and frost of ignorance are dissipated from the atmosphere of the mind, it gains its glaring luster, as the sky gets sunshine after the clouds disperse in autumn.

21. The soul having its calmness is as clear and cheerful and as deep and undisturbed as the deep and wide ocean which regains its calm and serenity after the fury of a storm has passed over it.

22. The mind is full with the ambrosial nectar of everlasting happiness, just as the roof of heaven is filled with the nectarous moonbeams at night.

23. After the dispersion of its ignorance, the mind becomes conscious of the soul. Then it views the whole world in its consciousness as if it were situated in itself.

24. The contented mind finds its body to be full of heavenly delight, which is never perceived by those living souls who are ensnared by their desires of worldly enjoyments.

25. As trees burnt by a wildfire regain their green foliage with the return of spring, so people tormented by the troubles of the world and wasted by age and burden of life find their freshness in holy asceticism.

26. Hermits resorting to the woods are freed from their fear of reincarnation and have many joys which are beyond all description.

27. Think, O man who cannot be satisfied! Either your soul is dead to your carnal desires or your desires are dead in your soul. In both cases, you are happy, whether in possession or extinction of your mind.

28. Do not delay choosing whatever you think is more blissful for yourself, but it is better to possess your mind and kill your cares and desires than to kill your mind with troublesome desires and anxieties.

29. Know that what is painful to you is really nothingness, because it is foolish to part with something pleasant to yourself. If you have your inner understanding at all, remain true to yourself by avoiding the false cares of the world.

30. Life is a precious treasure and its loss is liked by nobody, but I tell you in truth that this life is a dream and you are nothing in reality.

31. Yet be not sorry that you live in vain, because you have lived such a nothingness before and your existence is only a delusion.

32. It is unreasonable to think yourself as being so and so because the delusion of individual self-existence is now exploded by right reason.

33. Reason points towards the uniform entity of the identical Being at all times. It is sheer irrationality that tells you of your existence, at it is the lack of true light that exhibits this darkness to you.

34. Reason will disprove your entity as light removes darkness. It was in your irrationality, my friend, that you have passed all this time with the vain idea of your separate existence.

35. It is only because of this irrationality of yours that your gross ignorance has grown so great as to be sad because of your disasters. Your delusive desires have subjected you to the devil, like children caught by their imagined demons and ghosts.

36. After one rids himself of his former states of pain and pleasure and his transitory desires in this temporary world, he comes to feel the delight of his soul under the province of his right reason.

37. Your reason has wakened you from your dullness and enlightened your soul and mind with the light of truth. Therefore we should bow down to reason above all others as the only enlightener of our hearts and souls.

38. After desires are cleared from your heart, you shall find yourself as the great lord of all. You shall rejoice in yourself under the pure and pristine light of your soul.

39. Being freed from your desires, you are set on the footing of the sovereign lord of all. The unreasonableness of desires growing in your ignorance will go away under the domain of reason.

40. Whether you like it or not, your desires will fly from your mind under the dominion of your reason, just as the deep darkness of night flies at the advance of daylight.

41. The thorough extinction of your desires is attended with your perfect bliss. Therefore rely on the conclusion of your nothingness by every mode of reasoning.

42. When you have lorded over your mind and your organs and think yourself extinct at all times, you have secured every joy to your spirit forever.

43. If your mind is freed from its disquiet and is set at rest and becomes extinct in your present state, it will not come back to life in the future when you shall have your spiritual trance forever.

44. When I remain in my spiritual state, I seem to be in the fourth (turiya) or highest heaven in myself. Hence I forever discard my mind with its creation of the mental world.

45. Only the soul is the self-existent being, beside which there is nothing else in existence. I feel myself to be this very soul and that there is nothing else beside myself.

46. I find myself to be ever present everywhere with my intelligent soul and beaming forth with its light of consciousness. This we regard as the Supreme Soul which is situated in the translucent sphere of our inner hearts.

47. This soul which is without its counterpart is beyond our imagination and description. Therefore I think of myself as this soul, not in the form of an image of it, but as a wave of the water of that profound and unlimited ocean of the Divine Soul.

48. When I rest in silence in that soul within myself, which is beyond what can be known and is identical with my consciousness itself, I find all my desires and passions, together with my vitality and consciousness, to be quite defunct in me.

✅
Chapter 5.84 — Vitahavya’s Tapas; His Mental or Imaginary Worlds

1. Vasishta continued:— Sage Vitahavya, having thus reflected in his mind, renounced all his worldly desires and sat in his hypnotic trance in a cave of the Vindhya Mountains.

2. His body became motionless and devoid of its pulsations. His soul shot forth with its intellectual delight. Then with his calm and quiet mind, he sat in his penance (tapas) like the still ocean in its calmness.

3. His heart was cold and his breathings were stopped. He remained like a fire that has gone out after consuming its fuel.

4. His mind withdrew from all objects of the physical senses and intensely fixed upon the object of his meditation. His eyes were almost closed under the slight pulsations of his eyelids.

5. His slight and acute eyesight was fixed upon the top of his nose. His eyelids had the appearance of half opened lotus buds.

6. The erect head and neck and body of the meditating sage gave him the appearance of a bas relief carved upon rock.

7. Sitting in this posture in the Vindhya cave with his close attention on the Supreme Soul, he passed a period of three hundred years as if only half a moment.

8. The sage did not perceive the flight of this length of time owing to the fixedness of his mind in his soul. Having obtained his liberation in his listless state, he did not lose his life in his extreme tapas.

9. All that time, nothing could rouse him from his profound samadhi trance. Not even the loud roar of rainy clouds could break his entranced yogic sleep (yoga nidra) meditation.

10. Loud shouts and shots of soldiers and hunters, the cries and shrieks of beasts and birds, and the growling and snarling of tigers and elephants on the hills could not break his profound samadhi.

11. The loud roars of lions, the tremendous roars of waterfalls, the dreadful noise of thunder, and the swelling clamor of the people about him could not shake his firmness.

12. The deep howling of furious fantastic sarabha animals, the violent crackling of earthquakes, the harsh cracking of the woods on fire, and the dashing of waves and splashing of torrents upon the shore could not move him from his seat.

13. The rush of waters falling on rocky shores, the clashing off the torrents dashing on each other, and the noise and heat of wild fires did not disturb his samadhi.

14. He continued only to breathe at his will to no purpose, just as the course of time flows forever to no good to itself. All sides of his cave were washed over by currents of rainwater resembling ocean waves.

15. Soon he was submerged under mud carried by floods of rainwater in the mountain cave of his tapas penance.

16. Yet he continued to keep his seat in that dreary cell, buried as he was by mud up to his shoulders.

17. The long period of three hundred years had passed over him in this way when his soul was awakened to light under the pain of the rains of his mountain cell.

18. His oppressed body then assumed its intellectual or spiritual form, the astral body (linga deha), which is a living, subtle body like air or light, but without its acts of breathing vital energy.

19. This subtle body grew by degrees to its rarefied form by its imagination. It became of the form of the inner mind which was felt to reside within the heart.

20. It thought in itself of having become a pure and living liberated sage, in which state it seemed to pass a hundred years under the shade of a kadamba tree in a romantic grove of Kailash Mountain.

21. It seemed to take the form of a vidyadhara spirit for a century of years, in which state it was quite free from the diseases of humanity. It next thought of becoming the great Indra who is served by the celestials, and its passed full five yuga ages in that form.

22. Rama said, “Let me ask you, sage. How could the mind of the sage conceive itself as Indra or a vidyadhara, whom it had never seen? How could it have any idea of extensive Mount Kailash or pass many ages in its small space in the cave? This is impossible in nature.”

23. Vasishta replied:— Consciousness is all comprehending and all pervading. Wherever it exerts its power in any form, it immediately assumes that form by its own nature. Thus undivided consciousness exhibits itself in various forms throughout the whole creation.

24. It is the nature of consciousness to exhibit itself in any form as it represents itself in understanding. Its nature is to become whatever it pleases at any place or time.

25. So the impersonal sage saw himself in various forms and personalities in all the worlds in the ample sphere of his consciousness within the narrow space of his heart.

26. The man of perfect understanding has transformed his desires to detachment. The desires of men, like seeds of trees burned by the fire of intelligence, produce no germ of acts.

27. He thought to be an attendant on the god Shiva who bears the crescent moon on his forehead. He became acquainted with all sciences and the knowledge of all things past, present and future.

28. Everyone sees everything in the same manner on his outside as it is firmly impressed in his inner mind. But this sage, being freed from the impression of his personality in his lifetime, was at liberty to take upon himself whatever personality he chose.

29. Rama said, “I believe, O chief of sages, that the living liberated man who sits in this manner obtains the emancipation of his soul, even though he is confined in the prison house of his body. Such was the case of the self-liberated sage Vitahavya.”

30. Vasishta answered:— Ram, how can living liberated souls be confined to the body? They remain in the form of Brahma in the outward temple of his creation, which is pure and tranquil as air.

31. Wherever the empty and airy consciousness represents itself in any form, it finds itself to be spread out there in that form.

32. So many ideal worlds appear to be present before us. They are full with the presence of the all pervading spirit of God.

33. Thus Vitahavya, confined in the cave and submerged under mud, saw multitudes of worlds and countless unformed and ideal creations in the intellect of his great soul.

34. First he thought of himself as celestial Indra. Then he conceived himself to be an earthly ruler preparing to go hunting in some forest.

35. At one time this sage supposed himself to be the swan of Brahma. At another he became a chief among the Dasa hunters in the forests of Kailash.

36. He who once thought himself to be a prince in the land of Surastra became as a forester in a village of the Andhras in Madras.

37. Rama said, “If the sage enjoyed heavenly bliss in his mind, what need did he have of assuming these ideal forms?”

38. Vasishta replied:— Why do you ask this question, Rama, when you have been repeatedly told that this world is a false creation of the Divine Mind? The creations of the sage’s mind were also false creations.

39. The universe is the creation of Divine Consciousness. It is as unsubstantial as empty air. The ideal world of the human mind, being only a delusion, is the same.

40. In truth, O Rama, neither is that world nor is this other anything in reality. Neither you nor I have any essentiality in this nonessential world which is filled only with the essence of God.

41. The one is as the other at all times, whether past, present or future. All this visible world is the fabric of the mind which is only a copy of Consciousness.

42. Such is the whole creation, although it appears otherwise. Creation is only a transcendental vacuum, although it seems to be as firm as a diamond.

43. It is its ignorance that the mind exhibits itself in the forms of the production, growth and extinction of things, all of which are like the rise and swinging and sinking of waves in the ocean of eternal emptiness.

44. All things are situated in the empty sphere of consciousness and are perceived by its representative of the mind in the form of the firm and extended cosmos, though it has no extension in reality.

✅
Chapter 5.85 — Vitahavya’s Samadhi; the Sun God Restores His Body

1. Rama said, “Now tell me sage. What became of this sage in his house in the cave? How did he lift his body from it? What did he accomplish by his austere and intense tapas?”

2. Vasishta said:— At last the mind of the sage was extended as the Divine Mind and he saw the Divine Soul in its full glory in his own soul.

3. He saw the primeval, dawning light of consciousness in his meditation, which displayed to his memory the scenes of his former states of existence.

4. He saw the various forms of the bodies through which he had passed in his former lives, and also those things which had passed and gone and those living with his present body in the cave.

5. He found his living body lying in the cave like an insect, and he had a mind to raise it above the surrounding mud and mire.

6. This body of Vitahavya confined in the cave was covered with the mud carried by the rain waters.

7. He saw his body pent up in the prison house of the cave with loads of clay on its back and fettered in its limbs by the shrubs carried in by the torrents of rain.

8. In his clear understanding, he thought of raising his incarcerated body out of the cave and he made repeated efforts by force of his breathing to extricate it from its confinement.

9. With all his efforts, be found it impossible for his bodily powers to extricate himself and walk upon the ground. So he exerted his spiritual power to raise his spirit to the orb of the sun.

10. He thought either of being raised upward by the golden rays of the sun, or of obtaining his disembodied liberation by the disengaging his soul from the bondage of his body.

11. He thought in his elevated mind, “I lose nothing by the loss of my bodily exertions and exercise, but rather I would loosen myself from my bonds and return to my state of blessedness.”

12. Remaining for some time in his thoughtful mood on earth, he thought, “Neither leaving nor having this body is of any good or loss to me.

13. For as we forsake one body, so we take another. The difference is the size and bulk of the one and the minuteness and lightness of the other.

14. So let me mount this golden ray (pingala) of the sun and fly in the open air. Carried by the vehicle of light, I will enter into the body of the sun.

15. I will enter in the form of my shadow in the ethereal mirror of the sun. My aerial breath will conduct me to that orb.”

16. He ascended with his subtle, spiritual body upon the air, just as the heat of fire passes out through the hollow of a pair of bellows. The mindful sun god saw the great sage in this state within his heart.

17. On seeing the sage in this state, the high minded sun god called to his mind the former acts of his tapas penance, and remembered his body lying in the cell of the Vindhya region.

18. The sun god, traversing amidst the ethereal regions, came to know the actions of the sage and saw his body lying unconscious in the cave covered under the grass and stones.

19. He ordered his chief attendant to lift up the body of the sage, whose soul had now assumed its spiritual form.

20. The aerial form of the sage now saluted the adorable sun god with his reverent mind and was then recognized and received by the sun god with due honor.

21. He entered into the body of the solar attendant, Pingala, who proceeded from heaven to the cave amidst the delightful gardens of the Vindhya range.

22. Pingala entered the Vindhya grove in the form of a cloud, which assuming the shape of a big elephant, removed the earth from the surface of the cave with the long nails of his toes.

23. Then with his trunk, he brought out the body of the sage, just as a stork pulls up a lotus stalk from amidst the mud. Then the spiritual body of the sage fled from the form of Pingala to his own.

24. After his long wanderings in the regions of ether, like a bird in the sky, the sage at last found his own body, into which it entered as its nest. He took leave of Pingala with mutual salutations,

25. and each hurried to their respective callings with their brilliantly shining forms. One fled into the air, and the other went to a lake to cleanse his body.

26. It shone like a star in the clear lake and like sunbeams under the water. Then it appeared above it like a full blown lotus on the surface of waters.

27. He rose out of the water like a young elephant after its sport in some dirty pool. Then he offered his adoration to the sun god who had restored his body and mind to their luminous states.

28. Afterwards the sage passed sometime on the bank of the Vindhya lake, filled with the virtues of universal benevolence, fellow feeling and kindness, joined with the qualities of his peace and tranquility, his wisdom and internal bliss, and above all his seclusion and retirement from society, and unconcern with the concerns of the world.

✅
Chapter 5.86 — Vitahavya Bids Farewell to His Mind, Bodily Organs

1. Vasishta resumed:— The muni thought to resume his accustomed meditation again, and at the end of the day he entered a spacious cave in the Vindhya.

2. He continued his investigation of the soul with his command over the sensible organs. He reflected on the reality and unreality of things in his mind.

3. “I find,” thought he, “these organs of sense which before were under my control are now set at liberty in the exercise of their various functions.

4. I will now cease to think concerning the existence and nonexistence of substances. I will recline solely with my steady posture on that Being.

5. I will remain wakeful inwardly, appearing outwardly as if I were dead or asleep. Yet I am conscious in my unconsciousness as the quiet and living soul. Thus I will continue both with the vigilance and inactiveness of my spirit in the state of my quietism.”

6. “Waking as if asleep and sleeping as if awake, I will remain in my mental inactivity state of turiya, which is neither dead nor living.

7. I will remain retired like a rock from all things, even apart from my mind, and dwell in the embrace of the all pervading soul. I will abide with the Universal Spirit in my tranquility, having ease from all disease.”

8. Having mused in this manner, he sat in meditation for six days and nights, after which he was roused like a passenger wakes after his short nap on the way.

9. Then this great tapas yogi, having obtained the consummation of his tapas, passed his long life in the state of his living liberation.

10. He took delight in nothing and hated nothing. He felt no sorrow for anything and no pleasure in anything.

11. Whether walking or sitting, he was thoughtless of everything. His heart was void of cares and he conversed with his mind alone at pleasure.

12. He said to his mind, “O lord of my senses, see the unstained joy without decay that you enjoy in tranquility! Tell me if there is any greater joy than this to be found on earth.

13. Therefore O my mind who is the fleetest of all things, repress your flight and excitability. Rely on your cool composure for your lasting happiness.

14. O my mischievous senses and O you my perverted organs, you have nothing to do with me.

15. The stiffness of the outer organs is the cause of their failure. The will of the mind is the cause of its disappointment. Neither of these has the power to protect me from evil.”

16. “Those who believe the senses are the same as the soul are as deluded as mistaking the rope for a snake.

17. To take what is not the self for the self is the same as taking an unreality for reality. Lack of reason produces this mistake, but right reason removes the fallacy.

18. You my senses and you my mind, and my living soul are different things quite separate from the unity of Brahma. The mind is the active principle and consciousness is passive, so neither is related to the other.

19. Their union serves to produce the same effect, just as the wood that grows in the forest, the rope made of flax or hide, the axe made of iron, and the carpenter who works for wages all combine to build a house.

20. Such is the accidental conjunction of different things that becomes the efficient cause of producing certain effects, which could never result alone, as in the case of house building just mentioned.

21. So also the various acts of the body, such as speech and all other works, are affected by the accidental and simultaneous union of the different organs of the body and mind, without the waste or impairing of any of them.

22. Thus when the forgetfulness of death and sleep are buried in oblivion, and memory is awakened upon renewal and waking, that which is not in actuality is again brought to the position of actuality.”

23. In this manner that great devotee continued his reflections for many years in that solitary cave of the Vindhya Hills.

24. Freed from ignorance and far from temptation, he remained there in perfect joy, ever contemplating on the means to prevent the transmigration of his soul.

25. Seeing the natures of things in their true light, he avoided all that presented a false appearance. For fear of being misled by appearances, he resorted to the shelter of meditation.

26. Having his option of choosing what he liked from whatever he disliked, he was indifferent to both. His impassive mind was elevated from all that is desirable or detestable in life.

27. Having renounced the world and all its connections and the society of mankind, and setting himself beyond the bonds of repeated births and actions of life, he became one with the incorporeal unity and drank the ambrosial nectar of spiritual delight.

28. In his lonely abstraction, he seemed to be sitting in the golden cave of Sahya Mountain. He looked upon the entangled paths of the world below without any desire of walking in it or mixing in its treacherous society.

29. Then sitting in his erect posture, he thought to himself. Vitahavya thinking:— Be passionless, O my impassioned heart, and rest at peace my intolerant spirit.

30. I bid you farewell, O you enjoyments of the world that have tempted me to taste your bitter pleasures in innumerable births and transmigrations.

31. Your pleasures have deluded me so long, like the indulgences of children. Now I see them placed above your reach by the absence of desire in my state of holy and heaven-born nirvana trance.

32. I hail you, O spiritual delight that made me forget my past pleasures. I thank you pains that have led me to the inquiry of the soul with so much intense enthusiasm!

33. It is by you, O sour misery, that this blissful state is revealed to me. You are to be thanked for bringing me under the cooling shade of heavenly delight.

34. I thank you, O adversity, for you have revealed the joy of my soul to me. I bless you, my friend, for your making the vanity of worldly life known to me.

35. O my body that is so intimately united with me, I see your union to be only a temporary one, like the short lived amity of interested men who forsake their beneficent friends in a moment.

36. Thus am I forsaken by all my bodies in my various bygone births. So my soul has forsaken them all in its repeated transmigrations in different forms of living bodies.

37. Even in my present state, my body brings its own ruin on itself by being slighted by the soul’s advancement in spiritual knowledge.

38. It is not my fault that the body is discontented at my contentment, or that it should be impaired by my abstinence and broken down by my poverty.

39. Grieve not, my mean greed, that I have grown adverse to gain. You must pardon me, O my fond desires, that I have become so devoid of wishes and adopted the virtue of renunciation (vairagya).

40. I have now taken myself to my detachment and want to thrive therein. I pray of you, O you restless desire, to have no more any concern with me.

41. And I bid my last farewell to you, O you god of piety and pious deeds, that I may no more engage myself in the performance of acts.

42. I am lifted from the pit of hell and placed in heaven. I bid farewell to the tree of pleasures growing in the soil of wicked acts and bearing the torments of hell as its fruits.

43. I bid farewell to the tree of sin that bears the flowers of our punishment, whereby I was doomed to repeated reincarnations in lower births.

44. I bow down to that unseen form of delusion which uttered the sweet voice of a sounding bamboo and covered itself with a garment of leaves.

45. I bow to you, my holy cave that is my associate in this devout tapas. You are the only refuge for this weak body of mine after its weary journey in the rugged paths of the world.

46. You were my kind companion and the remover of all my desires. You have been my only shelter after I fled from all the dangers and difficulties of the world.

47. You are my pilgrim’s staff that was the support of my aged body and arm. I have found my best friend in you for relieving my fatigue and guiding my footsteps in this dangerous and cavernous retreat.

48. I also thank you, O my aged body that is the support of my life, even in this old age of yours when you are reduced to your ribs covering your bloodless entrails and shriveled veins and arteries.

49. Depart now, my dilapidated body, with the core and foundation that there yet remain in you. Away with your excrements that required my repeated ablutions and purifications.

50. I bid farewell to all my acts and dealings in the world that have been the destined causes and my connate companions in all my reincarnations in this world.

51. I next bid you farewell, O my vital airs, who kept company with me through all my various births and from whom my soul will soon fly away.

52. How often have I passed with you to foreign parts and rested in the valleys and gardens of mountain meadows. How long have we played about in cities and dwelt in mountain retreats.

53. How many times we have run in different directions, engaged in various works of life. In fact there was no time or place in the universe when and where we did not live together.

54. In truth I have never done or seen or given or taken anything apart from you. Now I bid you farewell my friend, as soon I must part from you.

55. All things in the world have their growth and decay and are destined to rise and fall by turns. So also are the union and separation of things, the unavoidable course of nature.

56. Let this light which is visible to sight reenter the sun from where it proceeds. Let these sweet scents which come to my smell mix with the flowers from which they are breathed and blown.

57. Let my vital breath and vibration join with the ethereal air. Let all the sounds I hear return from my ears to the empty sphere.

58. Let my taste revert to the orb of the moon from where it has sprung. Let me be as quiet as the sea after its churning by Mount Mandara, and like the cool hour of the evening after the sun has set.

59. Let me be as silent as the dumb cloud in autumn and as still as creation after the great deluge at the end of a kalpa age. Let me remain thoughtless, as when the mind is concentrated on the syllable of Om, and when my soul rests in the Supreme Soul. Let me be as cold as when fire is reduced to ashes and as extinct as the extinguished lamp without oil.

60. Here I sit devoid of all actions and removed from the sight of all living beings. I am freed from the thoughts of worldly things. I am resting in the peace of my soul which is seated in my crown (brahmarandhra hole at the top of the head).

✅
Chapter 5.87 — Vitahavya’s Samadhi, Union with All

1. Vasishta continued:— Then repeating aloud the sacred syllable Om and reflecting on the Universe contained in it, having rid himself of thoughts and free from his desires, Sage Vitahavya obtained his internal peace.

2. He meditated on the several parts that compose the utterance of that mystic Om syllable. Then leaving aside all its attributes, he meditated only on the reality of the pure and imperishable one.

3. He withdrew his mind from his internal and external organs, and also from the grosser and finer feelings and sensibilities of his heart and body. He dismissed whatever there is in the three worlds and converted all his desires to detachment.

4. He remained unmoved in his body, and like the thoughtful touchstone, rapt in his abstraction. He was full in himself like the full moon and as still as Mount Mandara after its churning was over.

5. He was the motionless wheel of the potter’s mill, like the calm ocean undisturbed by waves and winds.

6. His mind was the clear sky without sunshine or darkness. His heart was bright without the light of the sun, moon or stars. His consciousness was unclouded by the fumes, dust and cloud of ignorance. His soul was clear as the autumn sky.

7. Then raising his voice from the heart center (anahata) to the topmost crown (brahmarandhra) of his head, his mind transcended the region of the sensations, like the wind blowing a fragrance over an area.

8. His mental darkness fled from his mind, like the gloom of night dispelled by the light of the dawning morning, and like the perception of wisdom puts down and extinguishes the sparks of anger in the heart.

9. Then he saw the reflection of a flood of light within himself, which he found to be ceaseless in its brightness and unlike the light of the luminaries which is repeatedly succeeded by darkness.

10. Having attained that state of indescribable light and inextinguishable brightness, he found his mental powers to be quickly burnt down by its glare, like straw consumed by fire.

11. In a short time he lost his consciousness of that light, just as in no time, a new born child loses its knowledge of whatever it perceives through any of its sense organs.

12. It was in a twinkling or half of that time that this calm sage stopped the course of his thought, just as the wind stops its motion in a moment.

13. Then he remained as fixed as a rock, his inattentive and mute gaze on what passed before him. He retained his vitality like a motionless dreamer in his sleep.

14. He was next lost in his deep sleep (susupta) trance, like in the unconsciousness of his profound sleep, and thereby he attained his ultimate joy of turiya, the retention of only absolute joy.

15. He was joyful in his joylessness. He was alive without his liveliness. He remained as something in his nothingness and was blazing amidst obscurity.

16. He was conscious in his spirit without consciousness of the senses. He was the Sruti scriptures say, neither this nor that nor the one or the other. He therefore became that which no words can express.

17. He became that transparent substance which is transcendentally pure and purifying. He was that all pervasive something which is corporate with nothing.

18. He was the vacuum of vacuists, and the Brahman of the brahmists. He was the Knowledge of gnostics, and omniscience of scientists.

19. He became like the Purusha spirit of the Sankhya materialists, and the Ishwara of yoga philosophers. He was the Shiva of the Saivites, bearing the mark of the crescent moon on their foreheads. He was the Time of Timeists.

20. He was the same with the soul of souls of the psychologists, and as the no soul of physicists. He was similar to the Middle Way of the Madhyamikas, and the All of the even-minded pantheists.

21. He was identified with the main truth of every religion and the essence of all creeds. He was identical with the all essential and Universal Reality.

22. He was identical with the supreme and unimpaired light which is seen in all luminous bodies. He was one with the inner light which he perceived to be glowing within himself.

23. He became the very thing which is one and many, which is all and yet nothing, which is simple and combined with all, and which is that which is (tat sat).

24. In short he remained as the one without decay or beginning, which is one and many, simple without parts, purer than the pure ether, the Lord God of all.

✅
Chapter 5.88 — Lessons to Be Drawn from Vitahavya’s Tapas

1. Vasishta continued:— After Vitahavya had passed beyond the bounds of nature and crossed this ocean of misery, he also pacified the fluctuations of his mind.

2. Being thus calmed and brought to the state of perfect inertness, he was absorbed in his ultimate mental impassiveness, like a drop of rainwater and the particles of waves mix in the ocean.

3. Sitting continually in his mentally inactive state, his body became thin and lean, without food or its functions. Without water or nourishment, it quickly decayed like a fading lotus in winter.

4. His vital breaths fled from the tree of his body and entered into the cavity of the heart, like birds let loose from the net fly to their nests.

5. His physical body composed of flesh, bones and the organs of sense remained beneath the shady branches of the woodland retreat, but his spirit roved beyond the bounds of the elemental worlds above.

6. His individual consciousness was absorbed in the ocean of Universal Consciousness, just as particles of metallic substances are fused together in the same metal. So the soul of the sage found its rest in its intrinsic nature of the Supreme Soul.

7. Thus have I told you, O Rama, about the rest of the sage in his torpid quietism. All this is full of instruction, and you must consider well its hidden meaning.

8. O Rama, know that by your good gifts of these things and perfections, you will be able to attain that state of beatitude.

9. O Rama, consider well all that I have already told you and what I will expound to you now and in future.

10. As I myself have known and well considered all these things in my long life, and by my experience of the past and my knowledge of present and future events, so will you be also.

11. Therefore have the clear sight and clairvoyance of the sage, as I have shown you, and know that only through your transcendental knowledge can you have your emancipation in both worlds.

12. The light of knowledge dispels the darkness of ignorance and destroys the mist of false fears and sorrows. Knowledge alone is the cause of that result which nothing else can bring about.

13. See how sage Vitahavya destroyed all his desires by means of his knowledge, and how he cleared the mountain of his mind from all its poisonous plants of worldliness.

14. His conscious, clairvoyant knowledge of other spheres led the sage to penetrate the solar orb of his desire on the wings of his rays, and from there return (by his memory) to restore his buried body from the cave of earth.

15. This sage was the personification of the mind, and it is the mind which is personified in the conscious or visible forms of “I”, “you”, “he” and this other. The mind is also this world which consists in it, and without which it is not known to exist.

16. By knowing this transcendent truth, and being freed from the faults of passions and feelings, and far removed from the faults and frailties of the world, the silent sage followed the dictates of his mind and thereby attained the endless bliss of his soul, the supreme good of human life.

✅
Chapter 5.89 — Acquiring Powers; How Yogis’ Bodies Survive During Tapas; Yogis’ Thoughts Actualize

1. Vasishta said:— Rama, you must imitate this sage in order to know the nature of the soul and all that is knowable and worth knowing. In order to know these things, you must be without passion and without the emotions of fear and disturbance of your spirit at all times.

2. As this sage seemed to pass the course of many millions of years in cheerful meditation, so you shall have to habituate yourself to silent contemplation without any discontent in your mind.

3. There have been many more sages of great minds in their times and places who have had their perfection in the same way and who are worthy of your imitation to attain your object.

4. Knowing that pain or pleasure never affects the soul and that it is everlasting and everywhere in all places, no one, O mighty prince, has any cause to be sorry for it.

5. There are many persons living in this world who are well acquainted with the nature of the soul. But nobody is so sorry for the misery of human souls as yourself.

6. Remain quiet and in good cheer, with the magnanimity and composure of your mind. Know yourself to be imperishable, without any change or regeneration.

7. No living liberated man like yourself is ever subject to sorrow or joy at the changing fortunes of life, just as the brave lion is never moved from his calmness like the changeful peacock.

8. Rama said, “Sage, your discourse raises a question in me, which I want you to disperse like an autumn cloud.

9. Tell me sage, who is best acquainted with spiritual knowledge, why are the bodies of living liberated persons not seen mounting the skies?”

10. Vasishta replied:— Rama, know the powers of mounting the sky and flying in the air naturally belong to winged creatures.

11. All the various motions seen to act in different directions are according to the natural tendencies of bodies. They are never desired by the spiritually minded person.

12. The ability to fly is not desirable for the living liberated soul. The power to fly is easily acquired by unspiritual and ignorant people, by many physical and artificial powers derived by application of proper means, mantras and other practices.

13. The power of flying is no business for the knower of the Self who is only concerned with his knowledge of the soul. He is content with spiritual knowledge and union with the Supreme Soul and does not meddle with the practices of the ignorant practitioners of false yoga.

14. Know all earthly contrivances to be the offspring of worldliness and the progeny of spiritual ignorance. Say then, what wise knower of the Self is there who would be so foolish as to plunge himself in this gross ignorance?

15. He who pursues the path of spiritual ignorance by his meditation and contrivances for his temporal welfare must be blind to the future welfare of his soul and lives against the course of the holy sage and saint.

16. By the continued practice of yoga, or some other arts and expedients of mantras and the like, it is possible for the wise as well as the unwise to acquire the power of flying in the air.

17. But the spiritual man remains quite aloof and afar from these. He has no desire for any such thing. He is content with himself and finds his rest in the Supreme Soul, beside which he has nothing in view.

18. He has neither aerial journey nor any supernatural power or worldly enjoyment for his object. His view is neither earthly glory nor honor, nor does he desire to live or fear to die.

19. He is ever content and quiet in his soul, devoid of desires and affections in his mind. He is of the form of empty air and remains with his spiritual knowledge as the idol of his soul.

20. He is not apprehensive of adversity or calamity. He is unaffected by feelings of pleasure and pain. He is fully satisfied in his privation of everything, and is unconcerned about his life and death by remaining like the living dead.

21. He remains unmoved at all evens and odds, just as the ocean is at a standstill with all the outpourings of the rivers. He continues to meditate on and adore the Divine Spirit in his own spirit.

22. He has no need of acquiring or amassing any wealth for himself, nor is he in need of asking anything of anybody for his support.

23. The unspiritual man who aims at the acquisition of supernatural powers must sacrifice the means of his perfection in order to acquire such powers.

24. All things are accomplished by application of their proper means, and what is thus ordained to take place cannot be undone even by the three-eyed god Shiva himself.

25. The power of flying depends on the application of proper means, and not on one’s act of willing only. Nothing can alter the nature of things, as that of the coolness of moonbeams.

26. Whether one is all-knowing or much-knowing, or all-powerful or much powerful as a Vishnu or Shiva, yet there is nobody who has the power to set aside the destined law of nature.

27. Thus it depends on the nature of things, Rama, the combination of times and circumstances, and the application at proper means and mantras that cause a mortal to fly in the air and an immortal to descend on earth.

28. Similarly, it is the property of some drugs, gems and mantras to destroy the destructive power of poison, and of wine to intoxicate the wine-drinker, and of vomiting agents to cause vomiting.

29. All things naturally have the power of producing some effect according to its proper application and the mode and manner of it.

30. Hence no one who is unacquainted with these things is able to fly in the air, and he who is filled with spiritual knowledge has no need of such practices.

31. All knowledge relating to the properties of things and their application in proper mode and manner to bring about certain ends is of no good to the knower of the Self for his attainment of spiritual wisdom.

32. He who wishes to have supernatural powers may gain them by long practice. But what need has a yogi of these practices or powers for himself?

33. After his freedom from the net of his desires the yogi attains his spiritual state. Then how can he entertain any desire which is opposed to it?

34. Everyone endeavors to remain in the course to which he is led by the desires rising in his heart. Whether he is learned or not, in due time he reaps the reward of his endeavors.

35. Vitahavya never endeavored to acquire any supernatural power. All his endeavors were directed towards gaining spiritual perfection, which he obtained by his tapas in the forest.

36. Should one persist practicing and applying the proper means, it is not impossible or hard to acquire supernatural powers.

37. One’s success attaining perfection in any object depends entirely on his personal efforts, and may be called the fruit of the tree of his own labor.

38. But these successes and perfections are of no use to those great minded men who have known the Knowable One in himself, and who have made an end of their worldly desires.

39. Rama said, “Sage I have yet another question for your explanation and it is this. Why didn’t the hungry beasts of the desert devour the dead-like body of the devoted sage, and why did it not spoil under the earth that covered it?

40. How was it that the bodiless and liberated soul of the sage, which was absorbed in the sunlight, returned to resume its dilapidated body buried in the mountain cave?”

41. Vasishta replied:— The conscious soul that believes itself to be embodied with its mortal body and bound by the ropes of its desires and the bonds of its affections is subject to both the feeling of pleasure and the pangs of pain.

42. But the intelligent soul which relies on its pure consciousness and is freed from the net of its desires remains only with its subtle spiritual body.

43. Hear now, Rama, the reason why the body of the yogi is not subject to the accidents of disjunction or corruption for many hundreds of years.

44. Whenever the mind is occupied with the thought of anything, it is immediately assimilated into the nature of that object and assumes the same form on itself.

45. Thus, upon seeing or thinking of an enemy, the mind turns to hatred at the very sight or thought of its foe. The mind assumes the nature of friendliness upon the visit and memory of a friend.

46. So on seeing a hill or tree or passenger that bears no hatred or friendship to it, the mind remains equally indifferent, without any change in its disposition as it is perceived by us.

47. Again the mind is sweetened tasting sweets, and embittered by tasting the bitter. It becomes fond of the sweet and averse to whatever is sour and bitter and unpalatable.

48. So when a hungry beast comes in the sight of a calm yogi, its envious nature is changed to dispassion and it desists from doing him any injury.

49. The malicious, being freed from his malice in the company of an even minded sage, desists from the doing any harm to anyone, just as the indifferent traveler has no business breaking straggling branches and trees growing on the wayside, which the rude rustics are likely to chop off and cut down (for fuel).

50. But the savage beast, removed from the side of the yogi, resumes its hungry nature again in the company of devouring and wild beasts of the forest.

51. Hence it was that the envious beasts of the forest, the tigers, lions and bears, and also the reptiles and creeping insects of earth, did not molest the calm body of the sage so long as they lurked and crept about it.

52. The reason why the body was not reduced to the dust of the earth is because the silent conscience that dwells in common in all bodies of animals, vegetables and minerals and abides in them as in the person of a dumb creature would not allow them to injure the innocent body of the sage lying flat on the ground.

53. The spiritualized body of the yogi is seen to move about on earth, like the shadow of something floating on the water.

54. Therefore the spiritual body of the sage, which was rarefied above the elemental bodies by virtue of his spiritual knowledge, became quite incorruptible in its nature.

55. Hear me tell you another reason, Rama! It is the lack of vibration which causes destruction, as it is vibration or breathing of the heart that is the cause of life.

56. The breathing of vital breaths causes the vibration of the arteries, and this being stopped, the body becomes as still as a stone.

57. He who has lost the pulsations of his heart and vital breaths, has also lost both his vitality and mortality, and becomes like a stone.

58. When the internal and external pulsations of the body are at a stop, know, O well-informed Rama, the intestinal parts are not liable to any change.

59. The motion of the body being stopped, and the action of the heart having ceased, the humors of the body become as stiff and inert as the solid mountain of Meru.

60. So the lack of fluctuation causes the steadiness of all things in the world. Hence the bodies of sages are known to be as quiet as the blocks wood or stone.

61. Therefore, the bodies of yogis remain entire for thousands of years. Like clouds in the sky and stones underneath the water, they are neither soiled nor rotten at anytime.

62. It was in this manner that this sage who knew the truth and was best acquainted with the knowledge of the knowable left his earthly body in order to find the rest of his soul in the Supreme Spirit.

63. Those men of great minds who are dispassionate and know what is chiefly to be known above all others pass beyond the bounds of this earth and even of their bodies to assume an independent form of their own.

64. They are perfect masters of themselves whose minds are well governed by their right understanding. They are not affected by the influence of their destiny or the acts of their past lives, nor moved by their desires of any kind.

65. The minds of complete yogis are of the nature of destiny because they can easily effect whatever they think upon, as if they were the acts of chance as in Kakataliya Sanyoga.

66. So it was with sage Vitahavya, who no sooner thought of the renovation of his body than he found it presented before his sight, as if it were an act of chance.

67. When the soul forsakes its earthly frame after the fruition of the fruits of its past actions is over, it assumes a spiritual form which is the state of its disembodied liberation and when it enjoys its perfect liberty in its independent state.

68. The mind free from its desires is released from all its bonds and assumes the spiritual form of the pure soul. Then it effects instantly all that it wishes to do and becomes all powerful as the great Lord of all.

✅
Chapter 5.90 — Two Forms of Mind Extinction: with and without Form

1. Vasishta said:— After sage Vitahavya had subdued his heart and mind by his self inquiry and reasoning, there arose in him the qualities of universal benevolence and generosity.

2. Rama asked, “How do you say, sage, that the quality of benevolence sprang in the mind of the sage after it had been wholly absorbed in itself by its rationality?

3. Tell me sage who is the best of speakers, how can the feelings of universal love and friendliness arise in the heart which is wholly cold and quiet, or in the mind which is entranced in the Divine Spirit?”

4. Vasishta replied:— There are two kinds of mental numbness. One is coma in the living body and the other its deadness after the material body is dead and gone. (One is where the form of the mind remains and the other is where even the form ceases to be.)

5. Possession of the mind is the cause of grief and its extinction is the spring of happiness. Therefore one should practice grinding the essence of his mind (or personality) in order to arrive to its utter extinction.

6. The mind beset by the net of the vain desires of the world is subject to repeated births which are the sources of endless grief.

7. He is considered a miserable being who thinks much of his person and esteems his body as the product of the good rewards of his past lives, and who accounts his foolish and blinded mind as a great gift to him.

8. How can we expect the decrease of our distress as long as the mind is the mistress of the body? Upon setting down the mind the world appears to disappear before us.

9. Know the mind is the root of all the miseries of life, and its desires are the sprouts of the forest of our disasters.

10. Rama asked, “Who is it, sage, whose mind is extinct? What is the manner of this extinction? How is its extinction brought on and what is the nature of its annihilation?

11. Vasishta replied:— O support of Raghu’s race, I have told you before of the nature of the mind. Now you will hear, O best of inquirers, the manner of extinguishing its impulses.

12. When the mind is unmoved and remains steady in pleasure or pain, unshaken like a rock at the gentle breath of our breathing, then it is paralyzed and dead.

13. Know that the mind is also dull as dead when it is devoid of the sense of its separateness from others, and when it is not degraded from the loftiness of its universality to the meanness of its personality.

14. Know also that the mind is dead and cold when it is not moved by difficulties or dangers, or excited by pride or giddiness, or elated by festivity or depressed by poverty; in short, when it does not lose its serene temperament at any reverse of fortune.

15. Know, gentle Rama, that this is what is meant by the death of the mind and numbness of the heart. This is the inseparable property of living liberation.

16. Know mindfulness to be foolishness, and un-mindedness is true wisdom. Upon extinction of mental affections, the pure essence of the mind appears to light.

17. The true, intrinsic nature of the mind is revealed after its emotions are extinguished, and this temperament of the mind is what living liberated persons have.

18. The mind is filled with benevolent qualities has best wishes for all living beings. It is freed from the pains of repeated births in this world of grief. It is called the living liberated mind.

19. The nature of the living liberated mind is said to be its intrinsic essence, which is full with its holy wishes and exempt from the doom of reincarnation.

20. The personal mind (swarupa) has a notion of its personality as distinct from its body. This is the nature of the mind of those who are liberated in their lifetime.

21. When the living liberated person loses the individuality of his mind and becomes as pleasing as moonbeams by virtue of his universal benevolence, then the mind becomes expanded and extended, present everywhere at all times.

22. The living liberated person being mindless of himself becomes as cold hearted as a plant growing in a frigid climate, where it blooms with its mild virtues like blossoms of a winter plant.

23. The impersonal mind (arupa, without form) that I described earlier is the coolness of the disembodied soul that is altogether liberated from the consciousness of its personality.

24. All the excellent virtues and qualities that reside in the embodied soul are utterly lost and drowned in the disembodied soul upon its liberation from the knowledge of its personality.

25. In the case of disembodied liberation, the consciousness of self personality being lost, the mind also loses its formal existence in formlessness (virupa) when there remains nothing of it.

26. There remains no more merit or demerit, or any beauty or deformity. It neither shines nor sets anymore, nor is there any consciousness of pain or pleasure in it.

27. It has no sense of light or darkness, or the perception of day or night. It has no knowledge of space and sky, or of the sides, altitude or depth of the firmament.

28. Its desires and efforts are lost with its essence and there remains no trace of its entity or nothingness whatever.

29. It is neither dark nor light, nor transparent as the sky. It does not twinkle like a star or shine forth as solar and lunar lights. There is nothing to which it may resemble in its transparency.

30. Those minds that have freed themselves from all worldly cares and are rid of their thoughts are the minds that rove in this state of freedom, as the winds wander freely in the region of vacuum.

31. Intelligent souls that are numb and sleepy are set in perfect bliss beyond the trouble of activity (rajas) and lethargy (tamas). They have assumed the forms of empty bodies and find their rest in the supreme joy in which they are dissolved in the unity of the deity.

✅
Chapter 5.91 — Seeds for the Mind: Breathing Vital Breath, Thinking Thoughts, Desires; Thoughts Create Form

1. Rama said, “I see the stupendous rock (Brahma) filling the infinite dome of vacuum and bearing countless worlds as its vast forests, with the starry frame for its flowers and the gods and demigods for its birds and fowls.

2. Flashes of lightning are its blooming blossoms and blue clouds are the leaves of the forest trees. The seasons and the sun and moon fructify these trees with good looking fruits.

3. The seven seas are the aqueducts at the foot of this forest, and flowing rivers are its channels. Fourteen worlds are so many regions of it, peopled with various kinds of beings.”

4. “This wilderness of the world is beset by the wide spreading net of desire which has spread over the minds of people like a creeping vine filling a vineyard.

5. Disease and death form the two branches of the tree of the world yielding plentifully the fruits of our happiness and grief. Our ignorance serves to water and nourish this tree to its full growth.”

6. “Now tell me, sage, what is the seed that produced this tree and what is the seed of that seed? Tell me what is the original seed of the production of the mundane tree of the world (samsara)?

7. Briefly explain this to me for the edification of my understanding, and so I may acquire the true knowledge with which you are best acquainted.”

8. Vasishta answered:— Know Rama that the physical body is the seed or cause of this tree of the world (samsara). This seed is the desire concealed in the heart of the body. It shoots forth luxuriantly in the sprouts of good and bad acts and deeds.

9. It is full of boughs and branches and luxuriant with the growth of its fruits and flowers. It thrives as thickly and quickly as the paddy fields flourish in autumn.

10. The mind is the seed of the body and is subject to and the slave of all its desires. Its treasure house consists of alternate plenty and poverty, and its casket contains the gems of pleasure and pain.

11. The mind spreads this network of reality and unreality as it projects the ornaments of truth and falsehood in dreams and visions.

12. As a dying man imagines he sees the messengers of death appearing before him, so the mind presents the figure of the unreal body as a reality.

13. All these forms and figures that appear to our view in these worlds are the creatures of the mind, just like pots and toys are the works of clay.

14. There are two kinds of seeds that give rise to the tree of the mind entwined by the creepers of its faculties. One kind of seed is the breathing of the vital breath. The other is thinking thoughts.

15. When the vital energy vibrates through the lungs and arteries, then the mind has consciousness of its existence.

16. When the vital energy ceases to circulate through the lungs and wind pipes, there ensues the unconsciousness of the mind and the circulation of the heart-blood is put to a stop.

17. It is by means of the vibrations of breath and the action of the heart that the mind perceives the existence of the world which is as false as the appearance of the blue sky in the empty space of vacuum.

18. But when these vibrations and actions fail to rouse the sleeping mind, then it is said to enjoy its peace and quiet. Otherwise they move the body and mind, just like wires move dolls in a puppet show.

19. When the body has its consciousness caused by the breathing of the vital energy, it begins to move about like a doll dancing in its giddy circle in the courtyard by the puppet player’s skill.

20. The vibrations of breath awaken our self-consciousness, which is more minute than the minutest atom and yet all pervasive in its nature, just as the fragrance of flowers is blown afar in the air by the breath of the wind.

21. It is of great good, O Rama, to confine one’s consciousness in one’s self. This is accomplished by stopping the breath by means of the practice of pranayama (breath control).

22. By restraining our selfconsciousness we refrain from our consciousness of other things because the knowledge of endless objects is attended with infinite trouble to the mind.

23. When the mind comes to understand itself after it is roused from its dormancy of self-forgetfulness (addiction to thoughts of external objects), it gains what is known to be the best of gains and the purest and the holiest state of life.

24. If with the vacillation of your vital breaths and the fluctuation of your wishes you do not disturb the even course your consciousness, like the giddy part of mankind, then you are like the great Brahma himself.

25. The mind without its self-consciousness is a barren waste, and the life of man without knowledge of truth is like a maze troubled with traps and snares of errors and dangers.

26. Meditation and yoga are practiced to suppress the breath for the peace of mind. Practice breath control (pranayama) and single-pointed meditation (dhyana) according to the directions of the spiritual guide and the precepts of the scriptures.

27. Restraint of breath is accompanied by peace of mind and causes the evenness of its temperament. It is attended with health and prosperity and gives its practitioner the capacity of reflection.

28. Rama, learn another cause of the activity of the mind which the wise consider to be the source of its perpetual restlessness. This is its restless desires which cannot be satisfied.

29. Now this desire is defined as the fixed desire of the mind to possess something without consideration of its prior and ultimate conditions.

30. The intensity of one’s thought of getting something produces it before him in utter disregard of the other objects of its memory.

31. The man infatuated by his present desire believes himself as his desire depicts him to be. He takes his present form for real by forgetting the past and absent reality.

32. The current of our desires carries us away from reality, just as the drunkard sees everything whirling about him in his intoxication.

33. Men of imperfect knowledge are led to errors by their desires like a man driven to madness by the impulse of passions.

34. Such is the nature of the mind that leads to the imperfect knowledge of things, seeing the unreal as real and the unspiritual as spiritual.

35. The eager expectation of getting a thing, fixed and rooted in the heart, impels the restless mind to seek its desired object in repeated births and transmigrations.

36. When the mind has nothing desirable or disgusting to seek or shun and remains apart from both, it is no more bound to reincarnation in any form of existence.

37. When the mind is thoughtless about anything, owing to its lack of desire, it enjoys its perfect composure owing to it being unmindful of desires and all other things.

38. When there is no shadow of anything covering the clear face of consciousness, like a cloud obscuring the face of the sky, the mind is said to be extinct in a person. It is lost like a lotus flower which is never seen to grow in the expanse of the sky.

39. The mind can have no field for its action when the sphere of consciousness is drained and emptied of all its notions of worldly objects.

40. Thus far have I related to you, Rama, about the form and features of the mind that entertains thoughts of something with the fond desires of the heart.

41. There can be no action of the mind when the sphere of consciousness is as clear as the empty sky, without the thought of any imaginary or visible object moving before it like the speck of a cloud.

42. It is also called un-mindedness when the mind is practiced in the yoga of thoughtlessness of all external objects and remains transfixed in its vision of the sole essence of God.

43. When the mind has renounced the thought of everything within itself and remains in the perfect coolness of coldheartedness of yogis, such a mind, though exercising its powers and faculties, it is said to be nil and extinct.

44. He whose lack of desires has chilled his intense desire for anything and made him impassionate is said to have become extinct and reduced like a rag to ashes.

45. He who has no desire of gain to cause his repeated birth and death is called the living liberated, though he may move about in his busy career like an unconscious potter’s wheel.

46. They are called the living liberated who do not taste the pleasure of desire but remain like fried seeds, without germinating into the sprouts of new and repeated births.

47. Men who attain spiritual knowledge in their earthly lives are said to have become mindless in this world and to be reduced to emptiness in the next.

48. There are, O Rama, two seeds or sources of the mind, namely, vital breath and desire. Though they are of different natures, yet the death of either occasions the extinction of both.

49. Both of these are causes of the regeneration of the mind, just as a pond and a pot are the joint causes of water supply.

50. Men’s gross desires cause their repeated births like seeds causing the repeated growth of trees. The germ of regeneration is contained in the desire like a future plant is contained in the seed and oil is innate in the sesame seed.

51. The conscious mind is the cause of all things in the course of time and the source of all its pleasure and pain which rise and fall in itself and never grow without it.

52. As the union of the breath of life with the organs produces sensations, so these being united with desire are productive of the mind.

53. As the flower and its fragrance and the sesame seed and its oil are united together, so is animal life inseparably connected with its desire.

54. Desire, being the active principle of man and subversive of his passive consciousness, tends to unfold the seed of the mind as moisture serves to expand the sprouts of vegetable seeds.

55. The pulsation of vital energy awakens the senses to their action and the vibrations of sensation touching the heart strings move the mind to its perception of them.

56. The infant mind, being produced by fluctuating desires and the fluctuations of vital breaths, becomes conscious of itself as separate and independent of its causes.

57. But the extinction of either of these two sources of the mind dissolves the mind and its pains and pleasures, which resemble the two fruits of the tree of the mind.

58. The body resembles a branching tree attacked by the creepers of its acts. Our greed is like a huge serpent coiling about it, and our passions and diseases are like birds nestling in it.

59. It is beset by our false senses, resembling ignorant birds setting upon it. Our desires are the sores that continually corrode our hearts and minds.

60. The shafts of death cut down the trees of our minds and bodies, just as the blasts of wind toss the fruits of trees upon the ground. The flying dusts of our desires have filled all sides and hidden the sights of things from our view.

61. Loose and thick clouds of ignorance hang over our heads. The pillars of our bodies are covered by the flying straws of our loose desires.

62. The small ship of our body, gliding slowly along in quest of pleasure, falls into the whirling current of despair. So everybody falls into utter gloom without looking to the bright light that shines within himself.

63. Just as flying dust settles when the winds die down, so does the dust of the mind settle by extinguishing the force of our vital airs and desires.

64. Again, intelligence is the seed or root of both of these, and there being this intelligence within us, we have both our vitality and our desires also.

65. This intelligence, by forsaking its universality and retaining its individuality, springs from consciousness. Then it becomes the seed both of vitality and slight wish.

66. Know that your intelligence is the same as your consciousness. It resembles the seed of the mind and its desires, both of which quickly die with their root, like an uprooted tree.

67. Intelligence never exists without consciousness. It is always accompanied with it, like mustard seed and its oil.

68. Wakeful consciousness gets its intelligence from its desire, just as the waking consciousness of men views their death or departure to distant lands in dreams from their thoughts of the same.

69. Only our curiosity makes our consciousness have its intelligence of what can be understood only by the intellect (God), just as the desire of knowing anything leads the conscious soul to its knowledge.

70. This world is no more than a network of our imagination, as children imagine a demon hidden in the dark.

71. It is like a tree stump that looks like a man in the dark. The world is like the streaks and particles of sunbeams and moonlight beaming through a chink in a wall that look like fire. So is everything that can be known by our thinking.

72. The objects of our knowledge are as deceptive as the appearance of a moving mountain to a passenger in a boat. All appearances are the presentations of our error or ignorance and disappear at the sight of right knowledge.

73. As the fallacy of a snake in a rope and the appearance of two moons in the sky vanish before the keen clear vision of the observer, so the representation of the triple world disappears before penetrating understanding.

74. The inner certainty that the world is an illusion is called the perfection of knowledge by the wise. The knowledge of all things, whether seen before or not, is equally a delusion of the mind.

75. Therefore it is right to rub out the impressions of consciousness with diligence, because the preservation of those visible signs is the cause of our bondage in the world.

76. The erasure of these marks from the mind is equivalent to our liberation because the consciousness of these impressions is the painful cause of repeated reincarnations in this world of grief.

77. Consciousness which is unconscious of the outward world but preserves consciousness of the self is attended both with present joy and the lack of future regeneration. Therefore be unconscious of the externals and conscious of the internal bliss of your soul. The wakeful soul that is unconscious of the externals is blessed with the consciousness of its inward blissfulness.

78. Rama asked, “Sage, how is it possible to be both unconscious and yet active? How can unconsciousness be freed from its unavoidable mental inactivity?”

79. Vasishta replied:— Sensible unconsciousness, having its existence, dwells on nothing beside itself. Though it is living, it is unconscious of everything else.

80. He is both unconscious and yet not inactive who has no visible object in his consciousness, and who discharges his duties and all the affairs of his life without attaching his mind to them.

81. He is not sleeping and yet unconscious whose mind is unconscious of the sensible objects of perception, but yet clear with the impressions of the knowable objects of intellectuality. Such a person is said to be the living liberated.

82. When the indifferent soul thinks of nothing in itself, but remains with its calm and quiet composure in possession of his internal consciousness, like a young child or a deaf and dumb person,

83. it becomes possessed of its wisdom and rests in full knowledge of itself without its dullness. Such a soul is no more liable to the troubles of this life or to the doom of future births.

84. When the yogi rests in his state of calm mental tranquility by forsaking all his desires, he perceives a calm delight pervading his innermost soul like blue spreading over the sky.

85. The unconscious yogi remains with the consciousness of his unity with that Spirit which has no beginning or end and in which he finds himself to be utterly absorbed and lost.

86. Whether moving or sitting or feeling or smelling, he always seems to abide and do everything in the Holy Spirit. With his self-consciousness and unconsciousness of anything beside, he is dissolved in his internal delight.

87. Shut out these worldly sights from your mind with your utmost, painstaking endeavors. Cross this world of grief, resembling a perilous ocean, on the firm bark of your virtues.

88. As a small seed produces a large tree stretching wide in the sky, so does the minute mind produce these ideal worlds which fill the empty space of the universe and appear to sight as real.

89. When the conscious soul entertains the idea of some figure in its imagination, memory or hope, that becomes the seed of its production in the very form which the soul had in its view.

90. So the soul brings forth itself and falls into its deception by its own choice. Thus it loses the consciousness of its freedom and is subjected to the bondage of life.

91. Whatever form it dotes upon with affection, the same form it assumes to itself. The soul cannot get rid of it as long it cherishes its affection for it. The soul cannot return to its original purity until it is freed from its impure passions.

92. The soul is no god or demigod or any yaksha or raksha, and not even any man or kinnara. It is by reason of its original illusion (maya) that it plays the part of a player on the stage of the world.

93. An actor represents himself in various shapes, then resumes and returns to his original form. A silkworm binds itself in the cocoon of its own making, then breaks out of it by itself. Similarly, the soul resumes its primal purity by virtue of its self-consciousness.

94. Our consciousness is like the water in the great deep of the universe, encompassing all the four quarters of the world and the huge mountains within it.

95. The universal ocean of consciousness teems with heaven and earth, air, sky, hills, mountains, seas and rivers and everything else as its surges, waves and whirling currents.

96. Our consciousness comprises the world. There is nothing other than consciousness because the all comprehensive consciousness comprehends all things in itself.

97. When our consciousness has its slight pulsation and not its quick vibration, then it is said to rest in itself and is not moved by the action of outward objects upon it.

98. The seed or source of our consciousness is the Divine Spirit, which is the essence of all beings and which produces our consciousness like the solar heat produces light and like fire emits sparks.

99. This Essence (Pure Existence) in us exhibits itself in two forms within ourselves. One is our selfconsciousness and the other is our consciousness of many things lying without us. The former is uniform and the latter is of mutable form.

100. This twofold division of the one and same soul is like the difference between a pot and its painting, and like that of I and you, which are essentially the same thing and have no difference in their in-being.

101. Now do away with this difference and know the true entity to be a pure unity, which is the positive reality in common with all objects.

102. Forsake the particulars and seek the universal which is the same and in common with all existence. Know this unity as the totality of beings and the only adorable One.

103. The variety of external forms does not indicate any variation in the internal substance. Change in outer form makes a thing unknowable to us as to its former state, but outer differences of form make no difference in the real essence.

104. Whatever preserves its uniform and unchanging appearance at all times, know that to be the true and everlasting inner essence of the thing.

105. Rama, renounce the doctrines that maintain the eternal existence of time and space, of atoms and generalities and the like categories. Rely on the universal category of the one Being into which all others are reduced.

106. Though the endless duration of time approximates the nature of the Infinite Existence, yet its divisions into present, past and future make it not uniform and an unreal entity.

107. That which admits of divisibility and presents its various divisions and what is seen to diverge into many cannot be the uniform cause of all.

108. Think all bodies as belonging to one common essence and enjoy your full bliss by thinking yourself as the same, filling all space.

109. Know, O wise Rama, that the Being who is the ultimate end of all existence in common is the source and seed of the whole universe.

110. He who is the utmost limit of all things in common and who is beyond description and imagination is the first and beginning of all, without any beginning of his own and having no source or seed of himself.

111. No man is subject to trouble, but enjoys his full bliss in He in whom all finite existences are dissolved and who remains without any change in himself.

112. He is the cause of all without any cause of his own. He is the best of all without having anything better than himself.

113. All things are seen in the mirror of his Intellect, just as the shadow of trees by a river reflects in the clear stream below.

114. All beings taste their delight in Him like in a reservoir of sweet water. Anything delicious the tongue tastes is supplied from that pure fountain.

115. The intellectual sphere of the mind, which is clearer than the mundane sphere, has its existence from His essence which abounds with more pure delight than all sweet things in the world can offer.

116. All creatures in the world rise and live in Him. They are nourished and supported by Him and they die and are dissolved in Him.

117. He is the heaviest of the heavy and the lightest of all light bodies. He is the most ponderous of all bulky things and the minutest of the very minute.

118. He is the remotest of the most remote and the nearest of whatever is near to us. He is the eldest of the oldest and the youngest of the very young.

119. He is far brighter than the brightest and more obscure than the darkest. He is the substratum of all substances and the farthest from all the sides of the compass.

120. That Being is some as nothing, and exists as if He were non-existent. He is manifest in all, yet invisible to view. That is what I am and yet I am not the same.

121. Rama, try your best to rest in that supreme state of joy which is the highest state for man to desire.

122. Knowledge of that holy and unchangeable Spirit brings rest and peace to the mind. Know that allpervasive Soul and identify with the pure Consciousness for your liberation from all restraint.

✅
Chapter 5.92 — Means to Obtain Divine Presence: Knowledge of Truth, Subjection of the Mind, and Abandonment of Desires

1. Rama said, “Of all of the seeds that you have described, tell me sage, which is the most essential to lead us to the attainment of the supreme Brahman?”

2. Vasishta replied:— One can attain his consummation in a short time by the gradual demolition of the seeds and sources of grief, which I have described one after the other.

3. By your courageous fortitude, you can renounce your desire for temporal objects. Seek that which is the first and best of beings.

4. If you remain in your exclusive and intense meditation on the Supreme Being, then in that very moment you are sure to see the divine light shining in full blaze in and before you.

5. If it is possible for you to think of all things in general in your well developed understanding, then you can have no difficulty elevating your mind a little higher and think of the Universal Soul of all.

6. O sinless Rama, if you can remain quietly meditating on your conscious soul, then by a little more exertion of your intellect, you can find no difficulty contemplating the Supreme Soul.

7. It is not possible, O Rama, to know the knowable Spirit at once in your understanding unless you think of it continually in your consciousness.

8. Whatever you think and wherever you go and do are all known to you in your consciousness. So the conscious soul is the seat of God where He is to be sought and seen.

9. Rama, if you will only strive to renounce your earthly desires, you will loosen yourself from all its bonds and diseases and dangers.

10. Of everything I have said before, the most difficult task is to rid oneself earthly desires. It is as impossible to root them out of the mind as it is to uproot Mount Meru.

11. As long as you do not subdue the mind, you cannot get rid of your desires. Unless you suppress your desires, you can not control your restless mind.

12. Until you know the truth, you cannot have peace of mind. As long as you are a stranger to your mental tranquility, you are barred from knowing the truth.

13. As long as you do not shun your desires, you cannot come to the light of truth. You cannot know the truth unless you disown your earthly desires.

14. Hence the knowledge of truth, subjection of the mind, and abandonment of desires are the joint causes of spiritual bliss, which is otherwise unattainable by the practice of any one of them singly.

15. Therefore, O Rama, the wise man practices of all these triple virtues at once and abandons his desire of worldly enjoyments with the utmost of his courageous efforts.

16. Unless you become a complete yogi in the practice of this triple morality, it is impossible for you to attain the state of divine perfection, even if you were to practice tapas for a whole century.

17. Know you, O high-minded muni, that simultaneous attainment of divine knowledge and the subjection of the mind and its desires brings about realization of the divine presence.

18. The practice of anyone of these separately from the others is as fruitless as curses of one’s death or derangement of understanding.

19. Though a yogi may be long accustomed in the practice of these virtues, yet none of them by itself will help him approach the Supreme, just as no single soldier or regiment can dare advance before an enemy host.

20. These virtues practiced by the undivided attention and vigilance of a wise man will break down every obstacle in his way, like the current of a confluence of three streams carrying away a rock from the banks.

21. Accustom yourself with diligence to destroy the force of your mind and its desires and feelings. Habituate your intellect to the acquisition of knowledge with equal ardor, and you will escape from every evil and error of the world.

22. Having mastered these triple virtues, you will cut asunder your heartstrings of worldly affections, just as the breaking of the lotus-stalk severs its interior fibers.

23. Even with the constant practice of these triple virtues, it is hard to remove the memories of worldliness inherited and strengthened over the long course of hundreds of lives.

24. Continue to practice these at all times, whether sitting quietly or moving about, talking or listening, or awake or asleep, and it will contribute to your greatest good.

25. Also, controlling breathing is equivalent to controlling desires. You must practice this likewise, according to the directions of the wise.

26. By renunciation of desire, the mind is reduced to an unconscious and dead block. By restraining your breathing, you can do whatever you like. By the practice of breath control (pranayama), the yogi identifies himself with the Supreme, and can do all things as God.

27. By the protracted practice of restraining the breathing, according to the directions given by the guru, and by keeping an erect posture, and observing the rules of diet and the like, one restrains his respiration.

28. By right observation of the nature of things, we can have no desires for anything. There is nothing which is the same or remains unchanged from first to last except the unchangeable nature of God, which must be the only desirable object.

29. The sight and knowledge of God serve to weaken our worldly desires. So will our avoidance of society and worldly thoughts.

30. Seeing the dissolution of human bodies, we cease to desire our worldly goods. Seeing the loss of desired objects puts a check to our desiring them anymore.

31. As flying dust sets on the ground after a gust of wind passes, so the flying thoughts of the mind are stopped when our breathings are put to a stop, they being the one and the same thing.

32. From this correspondence of the motion of thoughts with the vibrations of breath, there is thrown up a large mass of worldly thoughts resembling heaps of dust on earth. Therefore let intelligent men try their utmost to suppress their breath.

33. Or do away with this process of hatha yoga (if it be hard for you) and sit quietly to suppress your fleeting thoughts at all times.

34. If you want to keep control over the mind, you will be able to do so in the course of a long time, because it is not possible to subdue the mind without the discipline of strict reason.

35. As it is impossible to restrain an infuriated elephant without goading it, so it is not possible for you to curb your unmanageable mind without the help of spiritual knowledge and association with the wise and good.

36. The abandonment of desires and the suppression of breathing, in the manner as will later be taught, are the most efficient means to subdue the mind.

37. There are milder means of pacifying the mind, as the cooling rain showers can also settle the dust of the earth, yet hatha yoga (pranayama) attempts to restrain the mind by stopping the breath, as it were to prevent the rising of dust by means of a breathless calm.

38. Ignorant men who want to subdue the mind by hatha yoga (physical exercises) or bodily restraints are like those silly folks who want to dispel darkness by black ink instead of a lighted lamp.

39. Those who attempt to subdue the mind by bodily contortions strive as vainly as those who wish to bind a mad elephant with a rope of grass or straw.

40. Those rules which prescribe bodily practices instead of mental reasoning and precepts are known as the methods of hatha yoga. They mislead men to dangers and difficulties.

41. Wretched men like beasts have no rest from their labor, but wander in valleys and woods in quest of herbs and fruits for their food.

42. Ignorant men, infatuated in their understandings, are timid cowards like frightened male deer. They are both dull-headed and weak-bodied and weak in their limbs.

43. They have no place of confidence anywhere, but stagger like a distrustful deer in the village. Their minds are ever wavering between hopes and fears, like seawater rising and falling in waves.

44. They are carried away like leaves falling from a tree and like the current of the cascade gliding below a waterfall. They pass their time in the errors of sacrificial rites and religious gifts and austerities and in pilgrimages and adoration of idols.

45. They are subject to continued fears, like timid deer in the forest, and there are few among them who happen by chance to come to the knowledge of the soul.

46. Being scorched by outward misery and internal passions, they are rarely conscious of their real state. They are subjected to repeated births and deaths and their temporary lives in heaven or hell.

47. They are tossed up and down in this world like play balls, some rising up to heaven and others falling to hellish torments even while they are here.

48. These men roll on like the constant waves of the sea. Therefore leave off the exterior view of the exoteric and sink deep into the spiritual knowledge for your everlasting rest.

49. Remain quiet and calm with your firm faith in your inward consciousness and know that knowledge is power. The knowing man is the strongest being on earth. Therefore be wise in all respects.

50. Rama, renounce the perception of the knowable objects and depend upon the abstract knowledge of all things in your subjective consciousness. Remain firm in full possession of your inner soul and think yourself as no actor of your acts. Then forsaking all inventions of men as falsehoods (kalana and kalpana), shine with the brightness of your spiritual light.

✅
Chapter 5.93 — Universal Detachment

1. Vasishta continued:— Rama! He who is possessed of little reason and tries to subdue his mind as well as he can succeeds to reap the fruit (object) of his life (salvation).

2. The small particle of reason implanted in the mind, by culture and in time, becomes a big tree projecting into a hundred branches in all departments of knowledge.

3. A little development of reason serves to destroy the unruly passions of the human breast, then fill it with good and pure virtues, just as the roes of a fish fill a tank with fishes.

4. A rational man who becomes wise by his vast observation of past and present is never tempted by the influence of the ignorant who value their wealth above their knowledge.

5. Of what good are great possessions and worldly honors to him, and of what evil are the diseases and difficulties onto the man who looks upon them with an indifferent eye?

6. It is impossible to stop an impetuous hurricane, or to grasp flashing lightning, or to hold rolling clouds in the hand.

7. It is impossible to put the moon in a jewelry box like a brilliant moonstone. It is not possible for a beautiful lady to wear the crescent moon like a flower on her forehead.

8. It is impossible for buzzing gnats to put an angry elephant to flight with a swarm of bees sucking his frontal ichor and lotus bushes gracing his forehead.

9. It is impossible for a herd of timid male deer to withstand fighting a brave lion, bloodstained with the slaughtered elephant’s head in his bloody chase.

10. It is impossible for a young frog to devour a huge and hungry snake which, like a poisonous tree, attracts other animals by its poison and then swallows them whole.

11. So it is impossible for the robbers of outward senses to overpower the man of reason who is acquainted with the grounds of knowledge and knows the knowable Brahman.

12. But the objects and organs of sense destroy imperfect reason, just as the violence of wind breaks off the stalks of tender plants.

13. Yet wicked passions and desires have no power to destroy perfected understanding, just the lesser gales of minor deluges are not strong enough to move a mountain.

14. Unless the flowery tree of reason takes deep root in the ground of the human mind, it is liable to be shaken at every blast of conflicting thoughts. An unstable soul can have no stability. An uncertain mind can have no certainty.

15. He whose mind does not stick to strict reasoning, either when he is sitting or walking or waking or sleeping, is said to be dead to reason.

16. Therefore always contemplate, in a spiritual light and in the society of good people, what is all this, what is this world, and what is this body.

17. Reason displays the darkness of ignorance and shows the state of the Supreme as clearly as when the light of a lamp shows everything clearly in the room.

18. The light of knowledge dispels the gloom of sorrow like sunlight putting the shadow of night to flight.

19. Upon appearance of the light of knowledge, the knowable comes to appear of itself, just as the appearance of sunlight in the sky shows every object on earth below.

20. The science that brings the knowledge of Divine Truth is identical with the knowable truth itself.

21. Spiritual knowledge is the result of reason and is reckoned as the only true knowledge by the wise. It includes the knowledge of the knowable soul, just as water contains its sweetness within itself.

22. The man knowing all knowledge becomes full of knowledge, just as a heavy drinker is constantly intoxicated.

23. The wise come to know the knowable Supreme Spirit as immaculate as their own souls. Only through the knowledge of the Supreme Spirit does this bliss impart its grace to the soul.

24. The man filled with perfect knowledge is full of unfailing bliss within himself. He is liberated in his life. Being freed from all connections, he rules supreme in the empire of his mind.

25. The wise man remains indifferent to the sweet sound of songs and to the music of the lute and flute. He is not humored by songstresses or the allure of their bodies or the enticement of their foul association.

26. He sits unaffected amidst the hum of buzzing bees fluttering joyfully over spring flowers, and amidst blooming blossoms of rainy weather under the growling noise of roaring clouds.

27. He remains unexcited by the loud screams of peacocks, the joyous shrill of storks at the sight of fragments of dark clouds, or the rolling and rumbling of gloomy clouds in humid sky.

28. He is not elated by the sound of musical instruments such as the jarring cymbal or ringing hand bells. No deep bellowing drums beaten by sticks or any wind, string or skinned instruments can act upon his mind.

29. He turns his mind to nothing that is sweet or bitter to taste, but delights in his own thoughts, just as the moon sheds her light upon the spreading lotus bud in the lake.

30. The wise man is indifferent to the attractions of beauties and celestial nymphs who are as graceful in their stature and attire as the young shoot of a plantain tree with its spreading foliage.

31. His mind is attached to nothing that is his own, but remains indifferent to everything, like a swan exposed to a barren spot.

32. The wise have no taste for delicious fruits nor do they hunger after dainty food of any kind.

33. He does not thirst after delicious drinks such as milk, curd, butter, ghee and honey. He does not like to taste sweet liquors at all. He is not fond of wines or liquors of any kind, or of beverages and drinks of any sort for his sensual delight.

34. He is not fond of the four kinds of food that are either chewed or licked or sucked or drunk, nor is he fond of the six flavors of sweet, sour, bitter, pungent and the like to sharpen his appetite. He longs for no sort of vegetable or meat food.

35. Quite content in his countenance and unattached to everything in his mind, the wise brahmin does not bind his heart either to the pleasures of taste or tending to the gracefulness of his body.

36. The wise man does not observe the adoration paid to Yama, Sun, Moon, Indra, and the Rudras and Marutas (in the Vedas), nor does he observe the sanctity of Meru, Mandara and Kailasa Mountains, or of the table lands of the Sahya and Dardura hills.

37. He takes no delight in bright moonbeams that cover the earth like a silken garment. He does not like to wander about the gardens of wish-fulfilling kalpa trees to refresh his body and mind.

38. He does not resort to houses rich with jewels and gold, and with the splendor of gems and pearls, nor does he show fondness upon apsara beauties with their fairy forms of celestials nymphs, as an Urvasi, Menaka, Rambha or a Tilottama.

39. His graceful body and mind that is not enticed do not yearn for whatever is pleasant to sight, but remain indifferent about everything with his satisfaction and fullness of mind and with his stern silence and inflexibility even among his enemies.

40. His cold mind is not attracted by the beauty and fragrance of the fine flowers such as lotuses, lilies, roses and jasmine.

41. He is not tempted by the taste of luscious fruits such as apples, mango, jamb and the like, nor by the sight of asoka or kinsuka flowers.

42. He is not drawn over by the fragrance of the sweet scenting sandalwood, agulochum, camphor, clove or cardamom trees.

43. Preserving an even course of action in his mind, he does not incline his heart to anything. He holds the perfumes in loathing like a brahmin holds wine in abhorrence. His even mindedness is neither moved by pleasure nor shaken by any fear or pain.

44. His mind is not agitated by fear at hearing the hoarse sound of the ocean, a tremendous thunderclap in the sky, or roaring clouds on mountain tops. The roaring lions below does not intimidate his dauntless soul.

45. He is not terrified at the loud trumpet of warfare or the deep drum of the battlefield. Clattering arms of warriors and cracking clubs of combatants bring no terror to his mind. The most terrific of all (God) that is terrible is familiar to his soul.

46. He does not tremble at the stride of an infuriated elephant or at the loud uproar of vetala demons. His heart does not thrill at the color and cry of pisacha cannibals or at the alarm of yaksha and raksha demons.

47. The meditative mind is not moved by loud thunder or cracking rocks and mountains. The loud clanging sound of Indra and Airavana cannot stir the yogi from his intense reverie.

48. The rigid sage does not slide from his self-possession at the harsh sound of a crashing saw and or the clanking of a burnished sword striking another. He is not shaken by the twanging of a bow or deadly arrows flying and falling around him.

49. He does not rejoice in pleasant gardens or suffer in parched deserts because the fleeting joys and sorrows of life find no place in his inevitable mind.

50. He is neither intolerant of a desert’s burning sands, resembling the cinders of living fire, or charmed in shady woodlands filled with flowery and cooling trees.

51. His mind is unchanged whether when he is exposed on a bed of thorns or lying on a bed of flowers, whether he is lifted on the height of a mountain or flung to the bottom of a fountain. His mind is always meek.

52. It is all the same with him whether he wanders on rough and rugged rocks, moves under the hot sunbeams of the south, or walks in a temperate climate. He remains unchanged in prosperity and adversity and is alike under the favor or frown of fortune.

53. He is not sad in his wanderings over the world or joyous and of good cheer in his rest and quiet. He enjoys doing his duty with the lightness of his heart, like a porter bearing his light burden with an unburdened mind.

54. Whether his body is cut upon a guillotine or broken under the wheel, whether impaled in a charnel ground or exiled in a desert land, whether pierced by a spear or battered by a cudgel, the believer in the true God remain inflexible.

55. He is not afraid at any fright and does not humiliate himself or lose his usual composure in any way, but remains with his even temper and well composed mind as firm as a fixed rock.

56. He has no aversion to impure food, but takes the unpalatable, dirty and rotten food with zest. He digests poisonous substances at they were his pure and clean diet.

57. A deadly poisonous herb is tasted with as good a zest by the impassive yogi as any milky and sweet food. Hemlock juice is as harmless to him as the juice of the sugarcane.

58. Whether you give him a sparkling cup of liquor or a red hot bowl of blood, or whether you serve him a dish of flesh or dry bones, he is neither pleased with the one nor annoyed at the other.

59. He is equally complacent at the sight of his deadly enemy as his benevolent benefactor.

60. He is neither gladdened nor saddened at the sight of any lasting or perishable thing. He is neither pleased or displeased at any pleasant or unpleasant thing that is offered to his impassive nature.

61. By his knowledge of the knowable, by the dispassion of his mind, by the unconcerned nature of his soul, and by his knowledge of the unreliability of mortal things, he does not have faith in the stability of the world.

62. The wise man never fixes his eye on any object of his sight, seeing them to be momentary sights and perishable in their nature.

63. But restless people who are blind to truth and ignorant of their souls are constantly pressed upon by their sensual desires, like leaves of trees eaten by deer.

64. They are tossed about in the ocean of the world by the dashing waves of their desires. They are swallowed by the sharks of their sense, with the loss of their lives and souls.

65. The growing desires and fleeting fancies of the mind cannot overpower the reasonable soul or the orderly and mannerly man who has found his security in peace and tranquility, just as a great torrent of water has no power to flow over a mountain.

66. Those who have passed the circuit of their longings and found their rest in the Supreme Being have really come to the knowledge of their true selves. They look upon a mountain as it were a speck.

67. The vast world seems like a bit of straw to the wise. Deadly poison is taken for ambrosia and a millennium passes a moment for the man of even and expanded mind.

68. Knowing the world to consist in consciousness, the mind of the wise is enraptured with the thought of his universality. The wise man wanders freely everywhere with the consciousness of the great cosmos in himself.

69. The whole world appears in its full light in the cosmic consciousness within one’s self. There is nothing which a man may choose for or reject from his all including mind.

70. Know your consciousness to be all in all. Reject everything as false which appears to be otherwise. As everything is embodied in your consciousness, there is nothing for you to own or disown; no “us”, “yours” or “not yours”.

71. Just as the ground grows the shoots of plants and their leaves and branches, so our consciousness brings forth the shoots of all things that can be affirmed (tatwas) which are inherent in it.

72. That which is a nonentity at first and last is so even at present. By an error of our consciousness, we become conscious of existence at anytime.

73. Knowing this for certain, abandon your knowledge of reality and unreality. Transcend the knowledge of existence and transform yourself to the nature of your consciousness. Remain unconcerned with everything beside.

74. The man employed in his business with body and mind or sitting idle with himself and his limbs is not stained by anything if his soul is unattached to any object.

75. He is not stained by the action which he does with an unconcerned mind, nor is he who is neither elated nor dejected at the changing fortunes of his fortune or the success or failure of his undertakings.

76. He whose mind is heedless of the actions of his body is never stained with the taint of joy or grief at the changes of his fortune, or the speed or defeat of his attempts.

77. The heedless mind takes no notice of a thing that is set before it, but being intent on some other object within itself, is absent from the object present before its sight. This case of the absence of mind is known even to children.

78. The absent minded man does not see the objects he actually sees or hear what he hears or feel what he touches.

79. His soul and mind are quite aloof from whatever he watches as if he winks at it whatever he smells as if he has no smell of it, and while his senses are engaged with their respective objects.

80. This absence of mind is well known to persons sitting at their homes and thinking of living in another land. Such wandering attention is known even to children and ignorant people.

81. Attention causes the perception of sensible objects. Attachment of the mind causes human society. Mental concern causes our desires. This concern of ours about other things causes all our grief.

82. Abandonment of connections, which is called liberation, and forsaking earthly attachments release us from being reborn in it, but it is freedom from worldly thoughts that makes us emancipate in this life.

83. Rama said, “My lord, who like a gale blows away the mist of my doubts, tell me briefly, what are these connections that we are to get rid of in order to be freed both in this life and in the next?”

84. Vasishta answered:— Impure desire of the pure soul for the presence or absence of something which tends to our pleasure or pain is called our attachment.

85. Those who are liberated in their lifetime foster pure desire unattended by joy or grief which is not followed by future regeneration.

86. Thus the pure desire, unconnected with any worldly object, is called unworldly and is apart from the world. It continues through life, and whatever actions it does do not tend to the bondage of the soul or lead to its future reincarnations.

87. Ignorant men who are not liberated in their present state of existence in this world entertain impure desires causing their pleasure and pain in this life, leading to their bondage to repeated reincarnations in future.

88. Impure desire is also expressed by the word attachment, which leads its captive soul to repeated births, and whatsoever actions are done by it, they tend to the faster bondage of the miserable soul.

89. Therefore abandon your desire and attachment for anything of this kind, which at best serve only to trouble the soul. Your freedom will keep your mind pure, although you may continue to discharge your duties of life with a willing mind and un-enslaved soul.

90. If you can remain unaffected by joy, grief, pleasure, pain, or passions, and not subdued by fear or anger, you become impassible and indifferent.

91. If you do not suffer in your pain or exult in your joy, and if you are not elated by hope or depressed by despair, you are truly unconcerned about them.

92. If you conduct your affairs with equanimity, both in your prosperity and adversity, and do not lose your temper in any circumstance of life, you are truly unconscious and regardless of them.

93. When you can know the soul, and by knowing it you can see it in yourself, and if you manage yourself with evenness under any circumstance that may happen, then you are unconscious of them.

94. Rama, rely on your easily obtainable detachment and stick firmly to your liberation in this life. Be passionless and even tempered and rest in your peace forever.

95. The honorable man is free from the feverish passions of pride, giddiness and envy in his mind. Possessing his liberation, he has silence and full mastery over his organs of sense.

96. So is he who retains his equanimity and meekness of mind regardless of what is presented before him. He never deviates from the duties of his caste to deal with others who bear no relation to him.

97. One who attends to his hereditary duties which are natural with him, and discharges them with a mind free from all concern and expectation, is truly happy in himself.

98. Whether under the trial of troubles and tribulations or under the temptations of rank and prosperity, the great minded man does not transgress his intrinsic nature, just as the Milky Ocean does not tarnish its whiteness though perturbed under charming Mandara Mountain.

99. Whether gaining sovereignty over the earth, elevated to the dignity of the lord of gods, degraded to grovel upon the earth, or lowered to the state of a creeping worm under the ground, the great minded man remains unchanged at his rise and fall, as the bright sun remains the same in his elevation and setting.

100. Freed from turmoil and differences of faith and exempted from pursuits for different results, employ your great mind, O Rama, to the highest duty of investigation into the nature of the soul. Secure your ultimate liberation by it.

101. Live by the clear stream of your investigation and you will come to rely on the undecaying and unstained state of the pure soul. Then by coming to the knowledge and sight of the Supreme Spirit by the light of your understanding, you will no longer be bound to future births on this earth.

BOOK VI, Part 1. On Liberation (Nirvana Khanda Purvadha)
This section explains that the atman is the true form (swarupa) of the individual being (jiva). The seeker is instructed to give up all ideas of diversity and to still the movement of the mind. Once the mind is quiescent one should persist in remaining absorbed in the atman in the form of pure consciousness (chit). From this practice, a stage comes when the person perceives the identity of his or her own atma with Brahman (God). The manifest universe is perceived as no different from Brahman and, like the subtle tree that lies embedded in the seed, this whole universe in the form of created and uncreated beings is seen as a subtle seed-form lying within each persons own heart. This sub-section also includes the highly instructive teachings that Lord Shiva gave to Sage Vasishta. At this stage of the discourse Rama becomes absorbed in deep dhyana meditation.

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 Ch 34 Ch 35 Ch 36 Ch 37 Ch 38 Ch 39

Ch 40 Ch 41 Ch 42 Ch 43 Ch 44 Ch 45 Ch 46 Ch 47 Ch 48 Ch 49

Ch 50 Ch 51 Ch 52 Ch 53 Ch 54 Ch 55 Ch 56 Ch 57 Ch 58 Ch 59

Ch 60 Ch 61 Ch 62 Ch 63 Ch 64 Ch 65 Ch 66 Ch 67 Ch 68 Ch 69

Ch 70 Ch 71 Ch 72 Ch 73 Ch 74 Ch 75 Ch 76 Ch 77 Ch 78 Ch 79

Ch 80 Ch 81 Ch 82 Ch 83 Ch 84 Ch 85 Ch 86 Ch 87 Ch 88 Ch 89

Ch 90 Ch 91 Ch 92 Ch 93 Ch 94 Ch 95 Ch 96 Ch 97 Ch 98 Ch 99

Ch 100 Ch 101 Ch 102 Ch 103 Ch 104 Ch 105 Ch 106 Ch 107 Ch 108 Ch 109

Ch 110 Ch 111 Ch 112 Ch 113 Ch 114 Ch 115 Ch 116 Ch 117 Ch 118 Ch 119

Ch 120 Ch 121 Ch 122 Ch 123 Ch 124 Ch 125 Ch 126 Ch 127 Ch 128

✅
Chapter 6a.1 — Description of Evening and the Assembly Breaks

1. Valmiki said:— You have heard the discussion of the subject of detachment or composure of the soul. Attend now to that of nirvana, which will teach you how to attain your final liberation.

2. As the chief of sages was giving his grand speech in this manner and the princes remained mute with intense attention to the sage’s captivating oration,

3. the assembled chiefs remained like silent and motionless portraits. They forgot their devotions and duties, so impressed on their minds were the sense and words of the sage’s speech.

4. The assembly of saints reverently reflecting upon the deep sense of the words of the sage, with their curled brows and signs of their index fingers (indicating their wonder).

5. The ladies in the harem were lost in wonder, and turned their wondering eyes upward, resembling a cluster of black bees intently sucking the nectar honey of the new blown flowers (of the sage’s speech).

6. The glorious sun sank down in the sky at the fourth and last watch of the day and was divested of his radiant beams as he set in the west.

7. The winds blew softly at the eve of the day, as if to listen to the sage’s sermon, and blew about the sweets of his moving speech like the fragrance of gently shaking mandara flowers.

8. All other sounds drowned in the deep meditation of the audience, as when the humming of the bumble bees is paused when they rest in the cells of blooming flowers at night.

9. Bubbling waters of pearly lakes sparkled unmoved amidst their enclosed beds, as if they were intently listening to the sage’s words which dropped like strings of pearls from his fluent lips.

10. Beams from the declining sun penetrating the windows of the palace indicated the halting of the departing sun under the cooling shade of the royal canopy after his weary journey throughout the day.

11. The pearly rays of the parting day, covered by the dust and mist of dusk, seemed to be smeared like the body of an ascetic with dust and ashes. The day gained its coolness after its journey under the burning sun.

12. The chiefs of men, their heads and hands decorated with flowers, were so entertained with the sweet speech of the sage that their senses and minds remained in bliss.

13. Ladies listening to the sage were now roused by the cries of their infants and the birds in their cages to get up and to give them their food.

14. Now the dust flung by the wings of fluttering bees covered the petals of the night blooming kumuda flowers. Flapping chowrie fans were now at rest with the trembling eyelids of the princes.

15. The rays of the sun, fearing to be attacked by the shade of dark night loosened from dark mountain caves, fled through windows to the inner apartment of the palace.

16. The time watches of the royal palace, knowing it had passed the fourth watch of the day, sounded their drums and trumpets mixed with the sound of conch shells loudly resounding on all sides.

17. The high-sounding speech of the sage was drowned under the loud sound of the jarring instruments, just as the sonorous sound of the peacock is hushed under the sound of roaring clouds.

18. Birds in cages began to quake and shake their wings with fear. The leaves and branches of lofty palm trees shook in the gardens, as if by a tremendous earthquake.

19. Babies sleeping on their nurses’ breasts trembled with fear at the loud uproar. They cried like smoking clouds of the rainy season resounding between two mountain crags resembling the breasts.

20. This noise made the chieftains’ helmets shed the dust of their decorating flowers all about the hall, just as the moving waves of the lake sprinkle the drops of water upon the land.

21. Thus Dasharata’s palace, full of apprehension at the close of the day, regained its quiet at the gradual fall of the fanfare of conch shells and the noisy confusion of drum beatings heralding the advance of night.

22. The sage put a stop to his discourse and in a sweet voice and graceful language he addressed Rama sitting in the midst of the assembly.

23. Vasishta said:— O Raghava! I have already spread before you the long net of my words. Trap your flying mind in the same way and bring it to your heart and under your subjection.

24. Take the meaning of my discourse in such a way as to leave out what is unintelligible and lay hold of its substance, just as the swan separates and sucks the milk from water.

25. Reflect upon it repeatedly, consider it well in your mind, and go on in this way to conduct yourself in life.

26. By going on in this manner, you are sure to evade all dangers. Otherwise you must soon fall like a heavy elephant in some pit of Vindhya Mountain.

27. If you do not receive my words with attention, and act accordingly, you are sure to fall into the pit like a blind man left alone in the dark and be blown away like a lit lamp exposed in the open air.

28. In order to derive the benefit of my lectures, you must continue in the discharge of your usual duties with indifference, knowing detachment to be the correct teaching of the scriptures, and regardless of everything besides.

29. Now I bid you, O mighty monarch, and you princes and chiefs, and all you present in this place, to get up and attend to the evening services of your daily ritual.

30. Let all attend to this much at present, as the day is drawing to its close. We shall consider the rest when we meet in the morning.

31. Valmiki related:— After the sage said this, the assembled chiefs and princes rose up, their faces blooming like full blown lotuses at the end of the day.

32. The chiefs paid their obeisance to the monarch, made their salutation to Rama, offered their reverence to the sage, and departed to their respective homes.

33. Vasishta rose up from his seat with the royal sage Vishwamitra. They were saluted on their departure by the aerial spirits who had attended the audience all along.

34. The sages were followed closely for a long way by the king and chieftains. They parted after approaching them on the way, according to their rank and dignity.

35. Celestials took their leave of the sage and took to their heavenward journey. Munis returned to their hermitages in the woods. Some of the saints turned about the palace, like bees flying about a lotus bush.

36. The king offered handfuls of fresh flowers at the feet of Vasishta, then entered the royal seraglio with his royal consorts.

37. But Rama and his brother princes kept company with the sage until they his hermitage. Then, having prostrated themselves at his feet, they returned to their princely houses.

38. Those who had heard the sage speak, having arrived at their houses, made their ablutions. Then they worshipped the gods and offered their offerings to their ancestors. They treated their guests and gave alms to beggars.

39. Then they took their meals with their brahmin guests and family members. Their dependants and servants were fed one after the other according to the rules and customs of their order and caste.

40. After the sun had set down with the daily duties of men, the bright moon rose on high, imposing many nightly duties on mankind.

41. At last the great king and princes, chiefs of men and munis, together with the sages and saints and all other terrestrial beings took themselves to their several beds, with silken bedspreads and bed cloths of various kinds.

42. They lay thinking intensely about the teachings of sage Vasishta, and on the mode of their passing over the boisterous gulf of this world by means of this spiritual knowledge.

43. Then they slept and lay with closed eyelids for only one watch of the night, then opened their eyes like the opening buds of lotuses to see the light of the day.

44. Rama and his brother princes passed three full watches of the night in waking and pondering over the deep sense of the lectures of their spiritual guide.

45. They slept with closed eyelids for only one and a half watches that night. Then they shook off the dullness of their sleep, after driving the fatigue of their bodies by a short nap.

46. Now minds being full of goodwill raised by the rising reason in their souls and knowledge of truth, they felt the crescent of spiritual light lightening their dark bosoms, just as the crescent of the moon illuminates the gloom of night, which afterwards disappeared at the approach of daylight and the gathering heat of daytime.

✅
Chapter 6a.2 — On the Perfect Calm and Composure of the Mind

1. Valmiki related:— Then the shade of night, her face as dark as the darkened moon, began to waste and wane away, just as the darkness of ignorance and the mists of human wishes vanish before the light of reason.

2. Now the rising sun showed his crown of golden rays on the top of the eastern mountain by leaving his rival darkness to take its rest west beyond the setting Mount Astachala.

3. Now the morning breeze began to blow, moistened by moonbeams and bearing particles of ice, as if to wash the face and eyes of the rising sun.

4. Now rose Rama, Lakshman and their attendants from their beds and couches. After discharging their morning services, they returned to Vasishta’s holy hermitage.

5. There they saw the sage coming out of his closet, having completed his morning devotion. They worshipped his feet with offerings of arghya.

6. In a moment, the sage’s hermitage was crowded with munis and brahmins and the other princes and chiefs, whose vehicles, chariots, horses and elephants completely blocked the pathways.

7. Then the sage, accompanied by these and attended by their suite and armies, followed by Rama and his brothers, was escorted to the palace of King Dasharata.

8. The king, who had completed his morning service, hastened to receive the sage and walked a great way to welcome, do him honor, and pay homage.

9. They entered the court hall which was adorned with flowers and strings of gems and pearls. There they seated themselves on rich sofas and seats set in rows for their reception.

10. In a short time the entire audience from the previous day, composed of both earthly men and celestial spirits, assembled at that place seated in their respective seats of honor.

11. All who entered that graceful hall respectfully saluted one another. Then the royal court shone as brilliantly as a bed of blooming lotuses gently moved by a fanning breeze.

12. The mixed assembly of munis, rishis, saints and sages, Vipra and Raja brahmin priests, and kshatriya caste warriors sat in proper order on seats set for each.

13. The soft sounds of their mutual greetings and welcomes gradually faded away. The sweet voices of eulogists sitting in a corner of the hall were all hushed and lulled to silence.

14. Sunbeams appearing through cracks in the windows seemed to be waiting to join the audience and listen to the sage’s lectures.

15. The jingling sound of bracelets on the shaking of hands of visitors in the hall was likely to lull those hearing the sage to sleep.

16. Then, just as Kumara looks reverently on the face of his father Shiva and as Kacha looks with veneration upon the face of Brihaspati (Jupiter), the teacher of the gods, and as Prahlada gazes upon the face of Shukra (Venus), the teacher of demons, and as Garuda views the face of Vishnu,

17. so did Rama gaze upon the face of Vasishta, his eyes gazing upon it like black bees fluttering about a full blown lotus.

18. The sage resumed where he left off from his last lecture. He delivered his eloquent speech to Rama, who was also well versed in eloquence.

19. Vasishta said:— Rama, do you remember the lecture I gave yesterday, which was filled with deep sense and knowledge of transcendental truth?

20. Now I will tell you some other things for your instruction, and you shall have to hear it with attention to complete your spiritual wisdom.

21. A habit of dispassion and the knowledge of truth enable us to cross the boisterous ocean of the world. Therefore, you must learn, O Rama, to practice and gain these in good time.

22. Your full knowledge of all truth will drive away your bias towards untruth. Riddance of all your desires will save you from all sorrow.

23. There exists only one Brahman unbounded by space and time. He is never limited by either. He is the world himself, though it appears to be a distinct duality beside Him.

24. Brahman abides in all infinity and eternity and is not limited in anything. He is tranquil and shines with equal brilliance on all bodies. He cannot be any particular thing other than his nature of universality.

25. Knowing the nature of Brahman as such, be free from the knowledge of your personal egoism. Knowing yourself to be the same with Him, think of yourself as bodiless and as great as He and thus enjoy the tranquility and joy of your soul.

26. There is neither mind nor ignorance, nor any living principle which is a distinct thing in reality. They are all words describing a fiction.

27. The same Brahman exhibits Himself in the forms of our enjoyments, in the faculties of enjoying them, in our desires and desires for the same, and also in the mind for their perception. The great Brahman that is without beginning or end underlies them all, just as the great ocean surrounds the earth.

28. The same Brahma is seen in the form of his intellect or wisdom in the heavens, on earth, in the infernal regions, and in the plant and animal creations. There is nothing else beside Him.

29. The same Brahma, who has no beginning or end, spreads himself like a boundless and unfathomable ocean under all bodies and things and in whatever we consider as favorable or unfavorable to us, such as our friends and our enemies.

30. The fiction of the mind, like that of a serpent in a rope, continues as long as we are subject to the error and ignorance of taking these words for real things and remain unacquainted with the knowledge of Brahman.

31. The error of the mind and what it perceives continue as long as one believes his personality is associated with his body, understands the world of phenomena to be a reality, and has the selfishness to think such and such a thing to be his own.

32. So long as you do not raise yourself by the counsel and company of the wise and good, and as long as you do not get rid of your ignorance, you cannot escape from the meanness of your belief in the mind.

33. So long as you do not lose your worldly thoughts and have the light of the Universal Spirit before your view, you cannot get rid of the contracted thoughts of your mind, yourself and the world.

34. As long as there is the blindness of ignorance and one remains subject to worldly desires, there is the delusion of falsehood and the fictions of the delusive mind.

35. As long as the exhalation of yearnings infest the forest of the heart, the chakora parrot of reason will never live with you but will fly far away from the infected air.

36. The errors of thought disappear from the mind that is unattached to sensual enjoyments, that is cool with its pure lack of desire, and which has broken loose from its net of greed.

37. He who has gotten rid of his thirst and delusion of wealth, who is conscious of the inner coolness of his soul, and who possesses the tranquility of his mind is said to have fled from the province of his anxious thoughts.

38. He who looks upon unsubstantial things as unworthy of his regard and reliance, and who looks upon his body as extraneous to himself, is never misled by the thoughts of his mind.

39. He who meditates on the Infinite Mind and sees all forms of things as copies of the Universal Soul, and who views the world absorbed in himself, is never misled by the false conception of the living principle.

40. The incomplete understanding of a distinct mind and a living principle serves only to mislead men. All such conceptions vanish at the sight of the rising sun of the one Universal Soul.

41. A complete understanding gives the full view of one undivided soul, a view which consumes the particulars, just as a bright fire burns the dry leaves of trees and a sacrificial fire consumes the offerings of butter.

42. Men of great souls who have known the supreme one and who are self-liberated in their lifetime have their minds without their essences, which therefore are called nonentities (asatwas).

43. The body of a living liberated man has a mind employed in its duties but free from its desires. Such minds are not active agents but merely passive objects. They are no longer self-willing free agents but are acted upon by their paramount duties.

44. They who know the truth are mindless and unmindful of everything except their duty. They wander about at pleasure and discharge their duties by memory and practice in order to gain any object.

45. They are calm and cold with all their actions and in all their dealings. They have the members of their bodies and their senses under full control, and know no desire or duality.

46. The saint has his sight fixed upon his inner soul and sees the world burnt down like straw by the fire of his intellect. His false conceptions of the mind fly far away, like flies from a fire.

47. The mind purified by reason is called the sattwa, as said before, and does not give rise to error, just as fried paddy seed cannot produce a plant.

48. The meaning of sattwa is the opposite of chitta, which latter is used in lexicons to mean the mind that has the quality of being reborn on account of its actions and desires.

49. You have to attain the attainable sattwa or true calm state of your mind, and to have the seed of your active mind, chitta, singed by the blaze of your spiritual mind, sattwa.

50. The minds of the learned, lighted by reason, immediately melt down to liquidity. Those of the ignorant, hardened by their worldly desires, will not yield to the force of fire and steel but continue to sprout like grass the more they are mowed and put on fire.

51. Brahman is vast expanse, and such being the vastness of the universe, there is no difference between them. The consciousness of Brahman is as full as the fullness of his essence.

52. Divine Consciousness contains the three worlds, as pepper has its pungency within itself. Therefore the triple world is not a distinct thing from Brahman and its existence and nonexistence.

53. Popular language speaks of existence and non-existence as different things, but they are never so in reality to right understanding because whatever is or is not in being is ever present in the Divine Mind. This emptiness contains all things in their empty state. God as the absolute, eternal, and spiritual substance is as empty as thought.

54. If you do not believe in the intellectual, then you can have no belief in your spirituality. Then why fear death or future punishment when you leave your body turning into dust? Tell me Rama. How can you imagine the existence of the world without the intellectual principle?

55. But if you find by the reasoning of your mind that all things are always merely reasoning of consciousness, then tell me. Why do you rely on the substantiality of your body?

56. Rama, remember your transparent intellectual and spiritual form which has no limit or division to it, but is an unlimited and undivided whole. Do not mistake yourself to be a limited being by forgetting your true nature.

57. Thinking yourself as such, take all the discrete parts of the universe as forming one concrete whole, and this is the substantial intellect of Brahman.

58. You abide in the womb of your consciousness. You are neither this nor that nor any of the many discrete things interspersed in the universe. You are as you are and last as the end in your obvious and yet hidden appearances.

59. You are contained within no particular category, nor is there any predicate which may be predicated of you. Yet you are the substance of every predicate in your form of the solid, heavy and calm consciousness. I salute you in that form of yours.

60. You are without beginning or end and abide with your body of solid intellect amidst the crystal sphere of your creation, shining as the pure and transparent sky. You are calm and quiet, and yet display the wonderful world as the seed vessel shows the wood of vegetation.

✅
Chapter 6a.3 — The Unity and Universality of Brahman: Intellect Is the Soul and Is Brahman

1. Vasishta continued:— As the countless waves continually rising and falling in the sea are no other than its water assuming temporary forms to view, so consciousness exhibits the forms of endless worlds heaving in itself. Know, O sinless Rama, this intellect (chidatma, the intellectual soul) is your very self or soul.

2. Tell me, O Rama who has the intellectual soul, what relation does your immaterial soul bear to the material world? Being freed from your earthly cares, how can you entertain any earthly desire or affection?

3. It is Consciousness that manifests itself in the forms of living soul (jiva), mind and its desires, and the world and all things. Say then what else can it be to which all these properties are to be attributed?

4. The consciousness of the Supreme Spirit is like a profound sea with its huge surges, and yet, O Rama, it is as calm and cool as your soul and as bright and clear as the transparent sky.

5. As heat is not separate from fire, and fragrance not apart from the flower, and as blackness is inseparable from collyrium, and whiteness from ice, and as sweet is inborn in sugarcane, so is reasoning inherent in and not separate from consciousness.

6. As light is nothing distinct from sunbeams, so reasoning is no other than consciousness itself. As waves are no way distinct from the water, so the universe is in no way different or separate from the nature of consciousness which contains the universe.

7. Ideas are not apart from the intellect, nor is the ego distinct from the idea of it. The mind is not different from the ego, nor is the living soul anything other than the mind.

8. The senses are not separate from the mind and the body is connected with the senses. The world is the same as the body and there is nothing apart from the world.

9. Thus the great sphere of the universe is nothing other than the unbounded sphere of consciousness. There is nothing now done or made or ever created before.

10. Our knowledge of everything is only our memory of it. This is to continue for evermore, in the manner of all partial spaces being contained in infinity without distinction of their particular localities.

11. As all spaces are contained in endless emptiness, so the vastness of Brahman is contained in the immensity of Brahman. As truth resides in verity, so this fullness of space is the fullness of the Divine Mind.

12. Seeing the forms of outward things, the intelligent man never takes them to his mind. Only the ignorant set their minds to the worthless things of this world.

13. They are glad to long after what they like, but for their trouble only in this world. But he who takes these things as nothing remains free from the pleasure and pain of having or not having them.

14. The apparent difference between the world and the soul of the world is as false in reality as the meaning of the words sky and skies, which though taken in their singular and plural senses, still denote the same uniform emptiness.

15. He who remains with the internal purity of his vacant mind, although he observes the customary differences of external things, remains as unaffected by the feelings of pain and pleasure as an unconscious block of wood or stone.

16. He who sees his bloodthirsty enemy in the light of a true friend is the person who rightly sees into the nature of things.

17. As the rapid currents and flood of a river uproot big trees on both sides, so does the dispassionate man destroy the feelings of his joy and grief to their very roots.

18. The sage who does not know the nature of passions and affections, and does not guard himself from their impulse and emotions, is unworthy of the respect which awaits saints and sages.

19. He who has no sense of his egoism and whose mind is not attached to this world saves his soul from death and confinement after his departure from this world.

20. The belief in one’s personality is as false as one’s faith in an unreality which does not exist. This wrong notion of its existence is removed only by one’s knowledge of the error and his riddance from it.

21. He who has extinguished the ardent desire of his mind, like the flame of an lamp without oil, and who remains unshaken under all circumstances, stands as the image of a mighty conqueror of his enemies in a painting or a statue.

22. O Rama, that man is said to be truly liberated who is unmoved under all circumstances and has nothing to gain or lose in his prosperity or adversity, nor anything to elate or depress him in either state.

✅
Chapter 6a.4 — The Unity and Universality of Brahman: All Derives from Consciousness

1. Vasishta continued:— Rama, knowing your mind, understanding, egoism and all your senses to be unconscious of themselves and deriving their consciousness from the intellect, tell me. How can your living soul and vital breaths have any sensation of their own?

2. The one great soul infuses its power to those different organs, just as the one bright sun dispenses his light to all the various objects in their diverse colors.

3. As the pangs of poisonous thirst after worldly enjoyments come to an end, so the unconsciousness of ignorance flies away like darkness at the end of the night.

4. Only spiritual knowledge is able to heal the pain of harmful greed, just as only the power of autumn can dispel the clouds of the rainy season.

5. The dissipation of ignorance washes the mind of its desires, just as the disappearance of rainy weather scatters clouds in the sky.

6. The mind being weakened by un-mindfulness loses the chain of its desires, just as a necklace of pearls loosened from its broken string tosses the precious gems all about the ground.

7. Rama, they who are unmindful of the scriptures and wish to undermine them resemble worms and insects that mine the ground where they remain.

8. The unsteady eyesight of the idle and curious gazer on all things becomes motionless after their ignorant curiosity is over and has ceased to stir, just as the shaking lotus of the lake becomes steady after the gusts of wind have passed and stopped.

9. O Rama, you have rid yourself of your thoughts of entities and non-entities and found your steadiness in the ever-steady unity of God, just as restless winds at last mix with calm emptiness.

10. I believe you have been awakened to sense by my series of sermons, like kings awakened from their nightly sleep by the sound of their eulogists and the music of tambourines.

11. Seeing that common people of low understanding are impressed by the preaching of their family teacher, I have every reason to believe that my sermons must have made their impression upon the good understanding of Rama.

12. As you are in the habit of well considering the good counsel of others, so I do not doubt that my counsel will penetrate your mind as cool rainwater enters parched earth.

13. Knowing me as your family priest and my family as the spiritual guides of the Raghu race forever, you must receive my good advice to you with regard and set my words like a precious garland in your heart.

✅
Chapter 6a.5 — Rama Acknowledges the Effect of Vasishta’s Preaching

1. Rama said:— O my venerable guide! My contemplation and memory of your sermons have set my mind to perfect rest. I flee the traps and turmoil of this world before me with a quite indifferent and calmed mind.

2. My soul has found its perfect tranquility in the Supreme Spirit. It is like after a long and painful dryness when parched ground is cooled by snow or rainfall.

3. I am as cool as coldness itself. I feel the joy of an entire unity in myself. My mind has become as tranquil and transparent as a clear lake undisturbed by elephants.

4. O sage, I see Brahman as the whole fullness of the universe in its pristine pure light and as clear as the face of the wide extended sky without the dimness of frost or mist.

5. I am now freed from my doubts and exempted from the mirage of the world. I am equally aloof from affections and have become as pure and serene as the lake and sky in autumn.

6. I have found that boundless bliss in my innermost soul which knows no bounds or decay. I have enjoyment of that taste which defies the taste of the ambrosial nectar of the gods.

7. I am now set in the truth of actual existence. My repose is in the joyous rest of my soul. I have become the delight of mankind and my own joy in myself, which makes me thank my blissful self, and you also, for giving me this blessing.

8. My heart has become as expanded and pure as the expanse of clear lakes in autumn. My mind has become as cold and serene as the clear and humid sky in autumn season.

9. Doubts and creations of imagination which mislead the blind have now fled afar from me, just as the fear of ghosts appearing in the dark disappear at the light of daybreak.

10. How can there be the spot of impurity in the pure and enlightened soul? How can the doubts of the objective nature arise in the subjective mind? All these errors vanish to nothing, like darkness before moonlight.

11. All these appearances appearing in various forms are only the diverse manifestations of the identical soul. It is therefore a fallacy to suppose this is one thing and that another, by our misjudgment of them.

12. I smile to think how I had been the miserable slave of my desires and how now I am so well satisfied without them.

13. Since I received my bath with the ambrosial shower of your words, I remember how my single and solitary self is one and all with the Universal Soul of the world.

14. O the highest and holiest station to which I have now attained, from where I behold the sphere of the sun to be situated as low as the infernal region.

15. I have arrived from unreality and seeming existence to the world of sober reality and existence. Therefore I thank my soul that has become so elevated and adorable with its fullness of the divine.

16. O venerable sage, I am now situated in everlasting joy, far removed from the region of sorrow, by the sweet sound of the honeyed words which have crept like humming bees into the core of my lotuslike heart.

✅
Chapter 6a.6 — Excellent Sayings to Edify the Audience: Disparagement of the Ignorant

1. Vasishta continued:— My dear Rama, let me tell you some excellent sayings for your good, and also for the benefit of everyone here in my audience.

2. Though you are unlike others in the greater enlightenment of your understanding, yet my lecture will equally edify your knowledge and that of less enlightened men.

3. He who is so senseless as to take his body for the soul is soon found to be upset by his unruly senses, like a charioteer thrown down by headstrong and restless horses.

4. But the wise man who knows and relies on the soul without body has all his senses subject to his soul. They do not overthrow him, as obstinate horses do their riders.

5. He who praises no object of enjoyment, but rather finds fault with all of them and discerns well their evils, enjoys the health of his body without any complaint.

6. The soul has no relationship to the body, nor is the body related to the soul. They are as unrelated to each other as the light and shade.

7. The distinct soul is different from concrete matter and free from material properties. The soul is ever shining and does not rise or set like the physical sun and moon.

8. The body is a dull mass of vile matter. It is ignorant of itself and its own welfare. It is quite ungrateful to the soul that makes it conscious. Therefore it well deserves its fate of diseases and final dissolution.

9. How can the body be considered an intelligent thing when the knowledge of the one (soul) as consciousness proves the other (body) to be only dull mass?

10. But then, how is it that they reciprocate their feelings of pain and pleasure to one another, unless they are the one and the same thing and have same properties?

11. Rama, it is impossible for feelings that never agree in their natures to reciprocate. The gross body has no connection with the subtle soul, nor has the rarefied soul any relationship to the solid body.

12. The presence of one nullifies the existence of the other, as in the cases of day and night, of darkness and light, and of knowledge and ignorance.

13. The soul without body presides over all bodies without its adherence to any, just as the omnipresent spirit of Brahman pervades throughout all nature without uniting with any visible object.

14. The embodied soul is as unattached to the body as a dew drop on a lotus leaf remains separate from the leaf. The Divine Spirit is quite unconnected with everything it fills and supports.

15. The Soul residing in the body is as unaffected by the body’s affections as the sky remains unmoved by the motion of winds raging in its bosom.

16. Knowing that your soul is no part of your body, rest quietly in your soul to eternity. But if you believe you are the body, be subject to repeated reincarnations of it in endless forms.

17. All that is visible is seen like rising and falling waves in the boundless ocean of the Divine Soul. Reliance on the Supreme Soul will show only the light of the soul.

18. This bodily frame is the product of the Divine Soul, just as the wave is produced of the water of the sea. Though bodies are seen to move about like waves, yet their receptacle the soul is ever as steady as the sea, the reservoir of all moving waves.

19. The body is the image of the soul, just as the sun seen in the waves is a reflection of that luminary. Though the body, like the reflected sun, is seen to be moving and waving, yet its archetype the soul is ever as steady as the fixed and un-fluctuating sun in the sky.

20. The error of the substantiality and stability of the body is put to flight as soon as the light of the permanent and spiritual substratum of the soul comes to shine over our inner sight.

21. To the partial and unspiritual observers of materialism, the body appears to be in constant motion like a wheel. They believe it is perpetually subject to birth and death, like the succession of light and darkness.

22. These unspiritual men who are unconscious of their souls are as shallow and empty minded as arjuna trees that grow without any pulp or core inside.

23. Dull headed men devoid of intelligence are as contemptible as grass on the ground. They move their limbs like blades of grass moved by the force of passing winds. Those unacquainted with the conscious soul resemble senseless and hollow bamboos that shake and whistle by breath of the winds.

24. The unconscious body and its limbs are actuated to perform their acts by the vital breath, just as the movement of trees and leaves is caused by the breeze. Both bodies and trees cease to move when the currents of airs cease agitating them.

25. Dull bodies are like the boisterous waves of the sea, heaving with huge shapes and tremendous noise. They look like drunken men staggering with drinks of luscious juice of the vine.

26. Foolish men resemble the rapid currents of rivers which, without a jot of sense in them, keep up their continual motion to no good to themselves or others.

27. Their lack of wit reduces them to the utmost meanness and misery, which make them groan and sigh like a blacksmith’s blowing bellows.

28. Their continuous motion is of no real good to themselves, but brings on their death like the calm after a storm. They clash and clang like the twang of a bowstring without an arrow to hit the mark.

29. The life of an unintelligent man serves only for his death. His desires of fruition are as false as the fruit of an unfruitful tree in a woody forest.

30. Seeking friendliness in men is like wishing to sleep on a burning mountain. The society of the unintelligent is like associating with the headless trunks of trees in a forest.

31. Doing any service for ignorant and foolish men goes for nothing, as worthless as beating a bush or empty air with a stick. Anything given to the senseless is like throwing it in the mud.

32. Talking with the ignorant is like calling dogs from a distance. Ignorance is the seat of evils which never befall the conscious and the wise.

33. The wise pass over all errors in their course amidst the world, but the ignorant are exposed to constant troubles in their ceaseless intense efforts to thrive in the pleasures of life.

34. As the carriage wheel revolves constantly about the axle to which it is fixed, so the body of man turns continually about the wealthy family to which the foolish mind is fixed for gain.

35. The ignorant fool can never get rid of his misery as long as he is bound to the belief that his body is his soul, and knowing no spiritual soul besides.

36. How is it possible for the infatuated to be freed from their delusion when their minds are darkened by illusion and their eyes are blind-folded by unreal appearance?

37. The man who sees things that entertain his eyes with unrealities is finally deluded by them, like a man moonstruck by fixing his eyes on the moon, or becoming giddy with the profuse fragrance of flowers.

38. As watering the ground favors the growth of grass, thorns and thistles, so fostering the body breeds desires in the heart as thick as reptiles growing in the hollow of trees. They strengthen the mind in the form of a rampant lion or elephant.

39. The ignorant nourish their hopes of heaven on the death of their bodies, just as the farmer expects a bountiful harvest from his well cultivated fields.

40. Greedy hellhounds are glad to look upon the ignorant who are bound in the coils of their serpentine desires, just as thirsty peacocks are pleased to gaze on the black clouds that form in the rainy season.

41. Beautiful women with their glancing eyes resembling the fluttering bees of summer, lips blooming like new leaves of flowers, make a showy appearance to catch hold of ignorant men, like poisonous plants displaying themselves to catch ignorant flies.

42. The plant of desire which shoots out of the good soil of ignorant minds shelters flying passions under its shady foliage, just as coral plants shelter the coral animals in them.

43. Hatred is like a wildfire. It consumes the tree of the body and lets out the smoke through the orifice of the mouth in the desert land of the heart, exhibits the flower of heat like burning cinders.

44. The mind of the ignorant is like a lake of envy covered with the leaves of spite and calumny. Jealousy is its lotus-bed and anxious thoughts are like bees continually fluttering over the lotuses.

45. The ignorant man who is subject to repeated births, rising and falling like waves in the tumultuous ocean of this world, is also exposed to repeated deaths. The burning fire that engulfs his dead body is like an undersea fire.

46. The ignorant are exposed to repeated births accompanied by the changing fortunes of childhood, youth, manhood and old age, and followed at last by a painful death and cremation of the beloved body on the funeral pyre.

47. The ignorant body is like a bucket in a well tied by the rope of reincarnation to the winch of acts, to be plunged and lifted over again in and over the dirty pool of this world.

48. This world is a plain pavement or a narrow hole to the wise because they are unconsciousness of it. However, this world appears like a boundless and unfathomable sea to the ignorant owing to their great concern about it.

49. The ignorant are unable to see beyond their limited circle, just as birds long confined in their cages have no mind to fly out.

50. The revolution of repeated births is like the constant rotation of a chariot wheel. There is nobody able to stop the motion of rebirths by restraining his earthly desires, ever turning like spokes affixed to the center of the heart.

51. The ignorant wander at large about the wide extended earth like hunters roving the forest in search of their prey, until they become a prey at the hand of death and make their bodies as morsels for the vultures of their sensual desires.

52. The ignorant mistake the sights of these mountainous bodies, these material forms made of earthly flesh, for realities, just as they mistake figures in painting for real persons.

53. How flourishing is the tree of this delusion, filled with the endless objects of our false imagination, which has stretched out these innumerable worlds because of our ignorance of them.

54. How flourishing is the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree, the all fruitful tree of delusion, which is ever filled with endless objects of our imaginary desires and stretches out infinite worlds as its leaves for our false conception.

55. Here our restless craving minds, like birds of variegated colors, rest and remain and sit and sport in and all about this tree.

56. Our acts are the roots of our repeated births, just as the trunk of the tree is of its shoots. Our posterity and properties are the flowers of this tree, and our virtues and vices are its fruits of good and evil.

57. Our wives are like tender plants that thrive best under the moonlight of delusion and are the most beautiful things to behold in this desert land of the earth.

58. As the darkness of ignorance prevails over the mind soon after the setting of the sunlight of reason, there rises the full moon of errors in the empty mind, with all her changing phases of repeated births.

59. Under the influence of the cooling moonlight of ignorance, our minds foster fond desires of worldly enjoyments and, like the chakora birds of night, drink their fill of delight as ambrosial moonbeams.

60. Under this delusion men view their beloved ones as buds of roses and lotuses, and their loose glancing eyes as the black bees fluttering at random. They see black clouds in the braids and locks of their hair, and a glistening fire in their glowing bosoms and breasts.

61. It is delusion, O Rama, that depicts damsels with the beams of fair moonlight nights. The wise view them in their true light as being as foul as the darkest midnight.

62. Rama, know the pleasures of the world are like the destructive fruits of ignorance: at first pleasant to taste, but prove to be full of bitter gall at last. It is therefore better to destroy this harmful tree than to lose life and soul by the mortal taste of its fruits.

✅
Chapter 6a.7 — Condemnation of the Ignorant View of Creation

1. Vasishta continued:— These young ladies, so decorated with precious gems and jewels and embellished with strings of brilliant pearls, are like the playful waves of the moonbeams of our fond desires in the Milky Ocean.

2. The side looks of their beautiful eyes look like a cluster of black bees setting on the center of a full blown lotus.

3. To the enslaved minds of deluded men, these beauties appear as charming as spring flowers scattered on the ground in forest lands.

4. Their attractive bodies, which fascinated minds compare with the moon, the lotus flower, and sandal paste for their coolness, are viewed indifferently by the wise as by the unconscious beasts which make prey of them.

5. The wise view ladies’ swollen breasts, often compared to lotus-buds, ripe pomegranates and cups of gold, as a lump of flesh, blood and nauseous liquor.

6. Their fleshy lips, distilling impure saliva and spittle, are said to exude with ambrosial honey and to bear resemblance to ruby and coral and bimba fruits.

7. Their arms with crooked joints of wrists and loins, composed of hard bones inside, are compared with creeping vines by their infatuated admirers and erotic poets.

8. Their thick thighs are like the stems of thick plantain trees, and the decorations of their protuberant breasts are compared to strings of flowers hung upon the towers of temples.

9. Women are pleasant at first, but become quarrelsome afterwards, then fly away in haste, like Lakshmi the goddess of fortune. Yet they are desired by the ignorant.

10. Ignorant minds are subject to many pains and pleasures in this life. The forest of their misdeeds shoots forth in a thousand branches, bearing only sorrowful fruits of misery.

11. The ignorant are bound in the net of their folly. Their ritual functions are the ropes that lead them to the prison-house of the world. The words from their lips, like the mantras and musical words of their mouths, are more for their bewilderment.

12. The covering mist of ignorance stretches out a maze of ceremonial rites and envelopes the minds of common people in utter darkness, just as the River Yamuna overflows its banks with its dark waters.

13. The lives of the ignorant, so pleasant with their tender affections, turn out to be as bitter as hemlock juice when the affections are cut off by the strong hand of death.

14. The senseless mob is driven and carried away like withered and shattered tree leaves by the ever blowing winds of their pursuits. They scatter them all about like the sediments of earth, and splash them with the dirt and dust of their sins.

15. All the world is like a ripe fruit in the mouth of death, whose hungry belly is never filled with all its devastations, for millions and millions of kalpa ages.

16. Men are like the cold bodies of creeping reptiles of the earth. They crawl and creep continually in their crooked course by breathing the vital air, like snakes living upon the currents of air.

17. The time of youth passes like a dark night without the moonlight of reason. It is infested by the ghosts of wicked thoughts and evil desires.

18. The talkative tongue in the mouth becomes faint with cringing flattery, just as the pistil rising from the seed vessel becomes weak under freezing frost.

19. Like the thorny salmali tree, poverty branches out in a thousand branches of misery, distress, sorrow, sickness and all kinds of grief to human beings.

20. Concealed covetousness, like the unseen owl of night, is hidden within the hollow cavity of the human heart resembling the stunted chaitya trees of mendicants. Then it shrieks and hoots out during the dark night of delusion which has spread over the sphere of the mind.

21. Old age lays hold on youth by the ears like an old cat seizing and devouring a mouse after playing with it for a long while.

22. The accumulation of unsubstantial materials, which causes the formation of the stupendous world, is taken for real substantiality by the unwise, just as foaming froths and icebergs in the sea are thought to be solid rocks by an ignorant sailor.

23. The world appears like a beautiful tree glowing with blooming blossoms of divine light displayed over it. The belief of its reality is the plant filled with the fruit of all our actions and duties.

24. The great building of the world is supported by the great pillar called Mount Meru under the great dome of heaven. The sun and moon are the great gateways to this pavilion.

25. The world resembles a large lake over which vital breaths are flying like swarms of bees on the lotus-beds of the living body, exhaling the sweets that are stored in the cell of the heart.

26. The blue roof of heaven appears as a spacious and elevated dome to the ignorant who think it contains all the worlds enlightened by the light of the sun situated in the midst. But it is an empty sphere, and so are the other worlds beyond the solar system to which sunlight never reaches.

27. All worldly minded men are like old birds tied down on earth by the strong ropes of their desires (vasanas). Their hearts move about the confines of their bodies, and their heart strings throb with hopes in the confines of their bodies, like birds in cages hoping to gain their release.

28. The lives of living beings are continually dropping down, like withered leaves of trees, from the fading trees of their decayed bodies, by the constant breathing of their breath of life.

29. Respectable men, happy with their worldly grandeur for a short time, are entirely forgetful of the severe torments of hell awaiting them afterwards.

30. But godly people enjoy their heavenly delights like gods in the cooling orb of the moon, or range freely under the blue sky like heavenly cranes about clear lakes.

31. There they taste the sweet fruits of their virtuous deeds on earth and inhale the fragrance of their various desires like bees sipping the sweets of an opening lotus.

32. All worldly men are like little fishes swimming on the surface of this pool of the earth, while sly and decrepit death pounces upon them like a kite and bears them away as his prey without any delay or remorse.

33. The changing events of the world pass by every day like the gliding waves and foaming froths of the sea, and the ever changing digits of the moon.

34. Time, like a potter, continually turns his wheel and makes an immense number of living beings as his pots, breaking them every moment like the fragile playthings of his own whim.

35. Innumerable kalpa ages have been constantly rolling over the shady stillness of eternity. Multitudes of created worlds have been burnt down like thick woods and forests by the all desolating conflagrations of desolation.

36. All worldly things are undergoing constant change, appearing and disappearing in turns. The changing fortunes of our circumstances, from pleasure and prosperity to pain and misery and vice versa, proceed in endless succession.

37. In spite of the instability of nature, the ignorant are bound by the chains of their desires (vasanas) which are not to be broken even by a thunderbolt from heaven.

38. Human desires are like the invulnerable body of the god Indra which, being wounded on all sides by the demons of disappointment, resumes fresh vigor at every stroke.

39. All created beings are like dust particles in the air flying with the currents of wind into the mouth of serpent-like death who draws all things to his bowels by the breath of his mouth.

40. As all the impure matter of the earth, its raw fruits and vegetables, and the froth of the sea and other marine productions, are carried by currents to be consumed by undersea heat, so all existence is carried to the devouring fire of death to be dissolved into nothing.

41. It is by a fortuitous combination of qualities that all things present themselves to us with their various properties. It is the nature of these which exhibits them with those forms as they present to us. She gives the property of vibration to the elementary bodies which show themselves in the forms of water and air unto us.

42. Death like a ferocious lion devours mighty and opulent men, just as a lion kills a big elephant with his fangs.

43. Ambitious men upon earth are like greedy, hungry vultures on the tops of high hills, born to live and die in their aerial exploits on the wings of clouds in search of their prey.

44. Their minds are like painter’s paintings on the canvas of their intellects, showing all the variegated scenes of the world with various pictures of things perceptible by the five senses.

45. But all these moving and changing scenes are breaking up and falling to pieces at every moment, producing our vain sorrow and grief upon their loss in this passing and aerial city of the world.

46. Animal creations and the plant world stand like passive spectators witnessing and meditating upon the marvelous acts of time, sparing them from time’s destruction of others.

47. Every moment moving creatures are subject to the recurrent emotions of passions and affections, and to the alterations of affluence and want. They are constantly decaying under age and infirmity, disease and death from which their souls are entirely free.

48. Reptiles and insects on the surface of the earth are continually subjected to their tortuous motions by their fate of which they are capable in their underground cells, owing to their want of quiet inaction.

49. But all these living bodies are eaten every moment by all destructive time in the form of death, which like the deadly and hungry serpent lies hidden in his dark den.

50. Trees, however, are not affected by any of these accidents because they stand firm on their roots. Though suffering under heat and cold and the blasts of heaven, yet they yield their sweet fruits and flowers to support and delight all living creatures.

51. Meek yogis who dwell in their secluded and humble cells are also seen to move about the earth, imparting the fruits of their knowledge to others, just as bees living in lotuses distribute their stores of honey after the rains are over.

52. They preach lectures, like bees chanting their buzzing sounds all about, saying that the earth is like a big warehouse that supplies the wants of the needy in order to make them a morsel in the mouth of the goddess of death.

53. The dreaded goddess Kali, wearing the veil of darkness over her face and eying all, as bright as the orbs of the sun and moon, gives all beings all that they want in order to grasp and gorge them in herself.

54. Her protuberant and exuberant breasts, bountiful as the bounty of God, suckle the gods and men and all beings on earth and hills and in the waters below.

55. The energy of Divine Consciousness is the mother of all and assumes the forms of density and thinness and also of motion and mobility. The clusters of stars are the rows of her teeth, and the morning and evening twilights are the redness of her two lips.

56. Her palms are red like lotus petals and her face is as bright as the paradise of Indra. She is decorated with the pearls of all the seas and clad with a blue covering all over her body.

57. Asia forms her middle and the woods and forests form the hairs of her body. She appears in many shapes and again disappears from view. She plays her part in all three worlds as the most veteran sorceress.

58. She dies repeatedly and is reborn again, then passes into endless transformations. She is now immersed in the great ocean or bosom of Kala or Time (Death) her consort, and rises up to assume other shapes and forms again.

59. The great kalpa ages are like passing moments in the infinite duration of eternity, and cosmic eggs are like passing bubbles upon the unfathomable ocean of infinity. They rise and last and are lost by turns.

60. Creative powers rise and fly about at the will of God like birds in the air. It is also by his will that risen creation becomes extinct like the burning flash of lightning.

61. In the sunshine of the Divine Consciousness and under the canopy of everlasting time, creations are continually rising and falling like the fog owls of forestlands, flying up and down under the mist of an all encompassing cloud of ignorance.

62. As a tall palm tree lets its ripened fruits fall constantly upon the ground, so the towering tree of time perpetually drops down created worlds and the lords of gods into the abyss of destruction.

63. The gods also are dying away like the twinkling of their eyes. Old time is wearing away all its ages by its perpetual ticking.

64. There are many Rudras existing in the essence of Brahman and they depend on the twinkling of that god for their existence.

65. Such is Brahman, the lord of gods, under whom these endless acts of evolutions and involutions are forever taking place in the infinite space of his eternal Consciousness and omnipotent will.

66. What wonderful powers are there that cannot possibly reside in the Supreme Spirit? His unchanging will gives rise to all positive and possible existences. Therefore it is ignorance to imagine the world as a reality of itself.

67. Therefore all that appears to you as the changing fortunes of prosperity and adversity, and as the changes of childhood, youth, old-age and death, and also the occurrences of pain and pleasure and of sorrow and grief is the display of the deep darkness of ignorance.

✅
Chapter 6a.8 — Allegory of the Spreading Tree of Ignorance

1. Vasishta continued:— Rama, listen to me explain how this poisonous tree of ignorance has come to grow in this forest of the world and be situated by the side of consciousness, and how and when it came to blossom and bloom.

2. This plant encompasses all the three worlds and has all of creation for its rind and mountains for its joints

3. It is filled with its leaves, roots, flowers and fruit by the continuous births, lives, pleasures, pains, knowledge and errors of mankind.

4. Prosperity gives rise to our ignorance of desiring to be more prosperous in this or our next lives, which produce future welfare also. So adversity leads us to greater error of practicing many bad deeds to get rid of it, but which on the contrary expose us to greater misfortunes.

5. One birth gives rise to another and that leads to others without end. Hence it is foolish to wish to be reborn again.

6. Ignorance produces greater ignorance and brings on unconsciousness as its effect. So knowledge leads to higher knowledge and produces self-consciousness as its result.

7. The creeping vine of ignorance has passion for its leaves and desires for its fragrance. It is continually shaking and shuffling the leafy garment on its body.

8. Sometimes this plant grows in the way of the elephant of reason. Then it shakes with fear and the dust that covers its body is blown away by the breath of the elephant’s trunk. Yet the vine continues to creep on byways according to its accustomed habit.

9. Days are its blossoms and nights are the swarms of black bees that cast shadows over its flowers. The continuous shaking of its boughs throws down the dust of living bodies from it, both by day and night.

10. It is overgrown with its leaves of relatives and overloaded with the shooting buds of its children. It bears the blossoms of all seasons and yields the fruits of all kinds of flowers.

11. All its joints are full of the reptiles of diseases and its stem is perforated by the seabirds of destruction, yet it yields the luscious juice of delight to those who are deprived of their reason and good sense.

12. Its flowers are the radiant planets that shine with the sun and moon every day in the sky. Space is the medium of their light and rapid winds are vehicles that bear their rays to us like odors.

12a Ignorance blossoms every day in the clusters of bright planetary bodies that shine with the sun and moon by day and night. Winds playing in the air bear their light to us like perfume.

12b Ignorance blossoms in clusters of stars and planets shining about the sun and moon every day, and breathes in the breezes blowing at random amidst the empty firmament.

13. O son of Raghu’s race, the innumerable stars that you see scattered in the dome of heaven are the blooming blossoms of this tree of ignorance.

14. The beams of the sun and moon and the flames of fire that are scattered about us like the crimson dust of flowers resemble red paint on the fair body of ignorance with which this delusive lady attracts our minds to her.

15. The wild elephant of the mind ranges at large under the tree of ignorance, and the birds of our desires are continually hovering and warbling upon it, while the serpents of sensual desires are infesting its stem and greed settles like a huge snake at the root.

16. It stretches its head to the blue dome of the sky, forming a canopy over it like black tamara trees. The earth supports its trunk and the sky covers its top, making it a garden of the universe.

17. It is deeply rooted underneath the ground and is watered with milk and curds in the canals of the milky and other oceans dug around its trunk.

18. The rituals of the three Vedas flutter like bees over the tree blooming with the blossoms of beautiful women and shaking with the turnings of the mind while it is corroded inside by sore-making worms of cares and actions.

19. The tree of ignorance, blossoming like the flowers of the garden of paradise, exhales the sweet odors of pleasure around. The serpent of vice twining round it perpetually leads living souls to evil deeds to support their lives.

20. It blooms with various flowers to attract the hearts of wise. It is filled with various fruits distilling their sweets all around.

21. With water about, it invites the birds of the air to drink. Being smeared with the dust of its flowers, it appears to stand like a rock of red earth or granite.

22. It shoots out with buds of mistakes and is beset by the briars of error. It grows luxuriant in hilly districts with the exuberance of its leafy branches.

23. It grows and dies and grows again, and being cut down it springs out again. So there is no end of it.

24. Though past and gone, yet it is present before us. Though it is all hollow within, it appears as thick and sound to sight. It is an ever fading and an evergreen tree. The more it is lopped and cropped, the more it grows and expands itself.

25. It is a poisonous tree whose very touch benumbs the senses in a moment. But being pressed down by reasoning, it dies away in an instant.

26. All distinctions of different objects are dissolved in the crucible of the reasoning mind. But they remain undissolved in their crude forms in the minds of the ignorant, who are employed in differentiating the various natures of men and brutes, and of land and sea animals.

27. They distinguish one world as the nether world and the other as the upper sky. They make distinctions between the solar and lunar planets, and the fixed starry bodies.

28. Here there is light and there is darkness on the other side. This is empty space and that is the solid ground. These are the scriptures and those are the Vedas. All such distinctions are unknown to the wise.

29. The same spirit flies upward in the bodies of birds or remains above in the form of gods. The same spirit remains fixed in the forms of fixed rocks or moves in continuous motion with flying winds.

30. Sometimes it resides in the infernal regions, and at others it dwells in the heavens above. Sometimes it is exalted to the dignity of gods, and somewhere it remains in the state of mean insects and worms.

31. In one place it appears as glorious as the god Vishnu, and in another it shows itself in the forms of Brahma and Shiva. Now it shines in the sun and then it brightens in the moon. Here it blows in winds, and there it sways in the all-subduing Yama.

32. Whatever appears as great and glorious and all that is seen as mean and ignoble in their form, from the biggest and bright sun down to the most contemptible grass and straw, are all pervaded by the Universal Spirit. Ignorance dwells upon the external forms, but knowledge that looks into the inner soul sees the reality.

✅
Chapter 6a.9 — Three Gunas; Gods are Pure Sattvic; No Such Thing as Ignorance

1. Rama said, “Sage, you said that all forms are representations of illusion or ignorance. How do you account for the pure bodies of Vishnu, Shiva and other gods who are of pure essence in their embodied forms, and which cannot be the creation of our error or delusion? Please, sage, explain these clearly to me and remove my doubts and difficulties on the subject.”

2. Vasishta replied:— The perceptible world represents the manifestation of the one quiescent and all inherent soul, and exhibits the glory of being-consciousness-bliss (sat-chit-ananda) which is beyond conception or thought.

3. This gives rise to the shape of a partial aspect or essence, or there arises of itself principles resembling the rolling fragment of a cloud appearing as a watery substance or filled with water.

4. This fragment is also conceived in its three different lights or phases of rarity, density and rigidity or grossness, resembling the twilight, midday light, and darkness of sunlight. The first of these is called the mind or creative will, the second the Brahma Hiranyagarbha or the creative power, and the third is known as Virat, the framer of the material frame, and is identical with creation itself.

5. These are also called the three qualities (gunas) of reality, brightness and darkness (sattva, rajas and tamas, the qualities of preservation, creation, and destruction) which are also called the triple nature of things or their swabhavas or prakriti.

6. All nature is characterized by ignorance of the triple qualities of creation, preservation and destruction which are inbred in all living beings, except the Being that is beyond them and which is the supreme one.

7. Each of the three qualities of balance, activity and passivity (sattva, rajas and tamas) has its three subdivisions of the same names.

8. Thus original Ignorance becomes nine kinds by the differences of its several qualities. Whatever is seen or known here below is included under one or the other in various degrees.

9. Now Rama, know the positive (sattvic) quality of ignorance includes several classes of living beings known as the rishis, munis, spiritual masters, naagas, vidyadharas and suras.

10. Again this quality of positive goodness comprises the Suras or gods Shiva and others of the first class who are purely and truly good. The sages and spiritual masters forming the second or intermediate class are endued with a less share of goodness in them, while naagas or vidyadharas making the last class possess it in the least degree.

11. The gods born with the pure essence of goodness and remaining unmixed with the properties of other natures have attained the state of purity like the divine Vishnu, Shiva and others.

12. Rama, whoever is filled with the quality of goodness (sattva) in his nature and is acquainted with divine knowledge in his mind is said to be liberated in this life and free from further reincarnation.

13. For this reason, O high minded Rama, the gods Shiva and others who possess the properties of goodness in them are said to continue in their liberated state to the final end of the world.

14. Great souls remain liberated as long as they continue to live in their mortal bodies. After they drop their frail bodies, they become free as their disembodied spirits and they reside in the Supreme Spirit.

15. The part of ignorance is to lead men to perform acts which, after their death, become the roots of producing other acts in all successive states of reincarnation.

16. Ignorance rises from knowledge like a hollow bubble bursting out of water, and ignorance likewise sets and sinks in knowledge like the bubble subsiding to rest in the same water.

17. As there is no such thing as a wave, only a word coined to denote the heaving of water, so there is nothing as ignorance but a word fabricated to express the lack of knowledge.

18. As water and waves are identical in their true sense, and there being no material difference between them, so both knowledge and ignorance relate to the same thing, expressing either its presence or absence. There can be no essential difference in their meaning.

19. Leaving aside the sights of knowledge and ignorance, there remains that which always exists of itself. Only the contradiction of adverse parties has introduced these words.

20. The sights of knowledge and ignorance are nothing. Therefore be firm in what is beyond these, and which can neither be known nor ignored by imagination of it.

21. There is something which is not anything, except that it exists in the manner of the intellect and consciousness. There is no way to describe this, therefore that being (sat) is said to be unknowable (avidya).

22. That one existent Being is said to be the destroyer of ignorance. Lack of knowledge gives rise to the false conception of ignorance.

23. When knowledge and ignorance are both lost in oblivion within the one consciousness, it is like when both sunshine and its shadows are lost in the shade of night.

24. Then there remains only the One that is to be gained and known, and thus the loss of ignorance likewise tends to the dissipation of self knowledge, just as the lack of oil extinguishes the lamp.

25. What remains afterwards is either emptiness or the whole fullness of space in which all these things appear to exist, or it is nothing at all.

26. As the minute seed of the banyan tree contains the future tree in its undeveloped state, so the almighty power of omnipotence is lodged in the minute receptacle of the spirit before its expansion into immensity.

27. The Divine Spirit is more rarefied than subtle air, and yet is not an emptiness because it has consciousness (chit). It is like the sunstone with its inherent fire, or like milk with the latent butter unborn in it.

28. All space and time reside in that spirit for their development, just as the spark proceeds from the fire and light issues from the sun in which they are contained.

29. So all things are settled in Supreme Consciousness and show themselves to us as like waves on the sea or the radiance of gems. Our understandings are also reflections of Divine Consciousness

30. which is the storehouse of all things and the reservoir of all consciousness. The divine essence pervades the inside and outside of everything.

31. The Divine Soul is as imperishable as the air within a pot which is not destroyed when the pot is broken, but mixes and continues forever with its surrounding air. Know also the lives and actions of living beings are dependent upon the will of God, just as the movement of iron depends upon the attraction of the loadstone.

32. The action of the inactive or quiescent spirit of God is to be understood in the same manner as the motion of iron is attributed to magnetic attraction. The inert bodies of living beings are moved by force of the conscious soul.

33. The world is situated in that mundane seed of the universe which the wise know by the name of consciousness. The world is as void and formless as empty air. It is nothing and has nothing in it except consciousness. It represents all and everything by itself, like the playful waves of the boundless ocean.

✅
Chapter 6a.10 — Inert Is Not Realized; Ignorance Is of the All-Pervading God

1. Vasishta continued:— Therefore this world with all its moving and unmoving beings is nothing. There is nothing that has its real being or entity except the one true Being that you must know.

2. O Rama, seek him who is beyond our thought and imagination and comprises all entity and non-entity in himself. Cease to seek any living being or anything in existence.

3. I would not have my heart be enticed and deceived by the false attachments and affections of this world. They are all as delusive as our misconception of a snake in a rope.

4. Ignorance of the soul is the cause of our error of conceiving distinctions between things. Knowledge of the identical soul and the reality of things put an end to all distinctions. Distinctive knowledge of existences (bheda jnana) is false, but their generalization leads to right reasoning.

5. They call it ignorance (avidya) when the intellect is weakened by its acceptance of phenomena, but phenomena being left out, the intellect comes to know the soul which is free from all attributes.

6. All this illusion is caused by the mind. If the mind vanishes, the illusion will also vanish. The embodied soul (purusha) is said to last as long as there is consciousness in the body, like the air (ghatambare) in the pot lasts with the lasting of the pot and vanishes upon the pot being broken.

7. The wandering intellect sees the soul wandering, and calm understanding thinks it to be stationary, just as one perceives his breath of life to be slow or quick according to whether he is sitting still or running about. In this manner, bewildered understanding finds the soul to be distracted.

8. The mind wraps the inner soul with the cover of its various desires, just as the silkworm twines the thin thread of its desires (vasanas) round about itself, which its lack of reason prevents it from understanding.

9. Rama said, “I see, sage, that when our ignorance becomes too gross and solid, it becomes as dull and solid as stone. But tell me, O venerable sage, how does consciousness become a fixed tree or any other inert substance?”

10. Vasishta replied:— They have abandoned the capability of thinking which is inherent in human consciousness, so they remain like a living and immoveable plant or an inert material substance.

11. The liberation of no mind is impossible for those whose organs of eight senses lie dormant, dumb, blind and inert as in any dull and dirt matter. If they have any perception, it is only pain.

12. Rama replied, “O sage, who best knows what is knowable, but if consciousness remains as unshaken in a fixed tree, with its reliance in unity and without knowledge of duality, does that not approximate perfection and approach liberation?”

13. Vasishta replied:— Rama, perpetual liberation of the soul follows upon rational investigation into the natures of all other things, their false appearances, and the realization of one common entity.

14. A man only reaches his state of singleness (kaivalya) when he understands that all existence dwells in the unity and when he forsakes his desire for this thing and that.

15. One inclined towards spiritual contemplation, who has investigated divine knowledge in the scriptures, and who has discussed the subject in the company of the learned sages is said to rest in Brahman.

16. One who is dormant in his mind and has the seed of his desires lying latent in his heart resembles an unmoving tree bearing the vegetative seed of future transmigrations within its bosom.

17. All those men are called blocks who, like blocks of wood or stone, lack brains and whose desires are gone to the rack. Men possessing the property of dullness like dull matter are subject to the pains of repeated births, recurring like the repetitions of their remaining desires.

18. All stationary and inert things are endowed with the property of dull matter and are subject to repeated reproductions.

19. Know, O pure hearted Rama, that the seed of desire is as inbred in the heart of plants as flowers are inborn in seeds and earthenware is contained in clay.

20. The heart that contains the fruitful seed of desire can never have its rest or realization even in its dormant state. But this seed being burnt and fried to unproductiveness produces sanctity, though it may appear fully active.

21. The heart that preserves the slightest remnant of any desire can again be filled with its full, luxuriant growth, just as a little remainder of fire or the enemy, or of a debt and disease, and also of love and hatred, is enough to involve one in his ruin, just as a single drop of poison kills a man.

22. He who has burnt away the seed of his desire for anything and everything and who looks upon the world with an even eye of detachment is said to be perfectly liberated both in his embodied state in this earth and in his disembodied or spiritual form of the next world, and is no more subjected to any trouble.

23. Intellectual power enveloped by the seed of mental desire supplies moisture for it to germinate everywhere in the forms of animals and plants.

24. This inherent power resides like productive power in the seeds of living beings, and in that of inertness in dull material bodies. It is of the nature of hardness in all solid substances and that of softness in soft and liquid things.

25. It exhibits ash color in ash and shows particles in the dust of the earth. It shows darkness in all swarthy things and flashes in the whiteness of a glittering blade.

26. Spiritual power assumes the form and figure in which it resides in the community of material things, such as a picture, a pot and the like.

27. In this way the Divine Spirit fills the whole phenomenal world like a cloud filling the sky in rainy season.

28. I have explained the true nature (swarupa) of the unknown almighty power according to my best understanding, and as far as it had been determined by the reasoning of the wise. It fills all and is not the all itself. It is the true entity appearing as no entity at all.

29. Our inability to see this invisible spiritual power leads us to the false conception of the external world, but a slight sight of this Almighty Being removes all our pains in this scene of vanity.

30. The wise call our dim vision of Almighty Power blindness or ignorance. This ignorance give rises to the belief in the existence of the world and thereby produces all our errors and misery.

31. Who is free of this ignorance and beholds the glorious light of God finds darkness disappear from his sight, just as the icicles of night melt away at the appearance of sunlight.

32. A man’s ignorance flies off like the dream he tries to remember after he wakes from his sleep.

33. Again, when a man ponders well the properties of the object before him, his ignorance flies away like darkness at the approach of light.

34. Darkness recedes from a man who advances to explore into it with a lamp in his hand. Butter is melted down by application of heat. In the same way, one’s ignorance is dispelled and dissolved by application of the light of reason.

35. One in darkness with a lit torch in his hand sees only a blaze of light before him and no shadow of darkness about him. In the same way, one who seeks truth perceives the light of truth shining in his face with no trace of the darkness of falsehood behind him.

36. Ignorance flies away and disappears with the light of reason. Although an unreal nothing, illusion appears as something real wherever there is lack of reason.

37. The great mass of thick darkness disappears into nothing at the advance of light. In the same way, the substantiality of gross ignorance is dissolved into insubstantiality at the advance of knowledge.

38. Unless one examines a thing, it is impossible to distinguish it from another. But upon examination, he comes to detect the fallacy of his prejudgment.

39. He who considers whether the flesh, blood or bones of his bodily frame constitutes his personality will at once understand that he is none of these and all these are distinct from himself.

40. Nothing belonging to a person makes the person. Something beyond forms one’s personality. Nothing in the world from its first to last is that spirit which has neither beginning nor end and is the eternal and Infinite Spirit.

41. Ignorance being overcome, there remains nothing except the one eternal soul which is the adorable Brahman and substantial whole.

42. The unreality of ignorance is evident from the negative term of negation and ignoring its essentiality, and requires no other proof to disprove its essence, just as the taste of a thing is best proved by the tongue and no other organ of sense.

43. There is no ignorance or inexistence except the consciousness and existence of God who pervades all visible and invisible natures, to which the names existence and inexistence are attributed.

44. Ignorance (avidya) is not of knowledge but of Brahman. The dispersion of this ignorance brings us to the knowledge of God.

45. Ignorance of Him is the belief that all things in the world are distant and distinct from Brahman. The belief that all things visible in the world are the manifestation of omnipresence causes the removal of ignorance by presenting the presence of God.

✅
Chapter 6a.11 — The Supreme Truth: Knowledge of Brahman

1. Vasishta said:— I tell you again and repeatedly, O pious Rama, for your understanding. You can never know the spirit without a constant habit of contemplating on it.

2. Gross ignorance becomes compact by the accumulated false knowledge of previous births and past lives.

3. The perceptions of external and internal body senses, both in the states of consciousness and unconsciousness, cause the great errors of embodied beings.

4. Spiritual knowledge is far beyond the perception of the senses and can only be attained after controlling the five external organs of sense and the mind, which is the sixth organ of sensation.

5. How is it possible to know the spirit whose essence is beyond the reach of our faculties of sense and whose powers transcend those of all our sensible organs?

6. If you want to be an adept in divine wisdom, you must use the sharp sword of your knowledge to cut off this creeper of ignorance which has grown up in the hollow of the tree of your heart.

7. Rama, conduct the practice of your spiritual knowledge like King Janaka with his full knowledge of all that is knowable to man.

8. Janaka remains certain in his knowledge of the truth when involved in active duties, in his waking state, and when he remains quiet at his leisure.

9. Vishnu was led to perform his various acts in his repeated incarnations through his reliance on this certain truth.

10. May you, Rama, be certain of the main truth which conducted the three-eyed god Shiva in the company of his fair consort, and which led the dispassionate Brahma to the act of creation.

11. It was the assurance of this eternal truth which led the teachers of the gods and demons, even Brihaspati and Bhargava, in their duties, and which guide the sun and moon in their courses, and even directs the elements of fire and air in their wonted ways.

12. This truth was well known to the host of rishis, including Narada, Pulastya, Angira, Pracheta, Bhrigu Krutu, Atri and Suka, as it is also known to me.

13. This is the certainty which has been arrived at by all other learned brahmins and sages, and this is the firm belief of everybody who has been liberated in his lifetime.

14. Rama said, “Tell me truly, O venerable sage, the true nature of the truth upon which the great gods and wisest sages have grounded their belief and became freed from their sorrow and grief.”

15. Vasishta replied:— O worthy prince who is great in arms and in your knowledge of all things, hear me tell you the plain truth in reply to your question, the certainty arrived at by all of them.

16. All these spacious worlds that you see spread all about you is situated in the immensity of Brahman.

17. Brahman is consciousness and this world and all its animate and inanimate creatures. Brahman is me, Brahma, you, and all our friends and enemies.

18. Brahman is the triple times of past, present and future, all of which are comprehended in his eternity like waves and surges in the immensity of the ocean.

19. This same Brahman appears to us in all the various forms of our perception, and in the different shapes of the actor, action and its act, as those of the feeder, feeding and food, and of the receiver, reception and the thing received.

20. Brahman expands in himself by his power of evolution, unfolding himself by his expansion power. Hence he would be our enemy if he would do anything unfavorable into us.

21. Thus Brahman being situated and employed with himself, does nothing either good or evil to any other. The attribution of passions to him is like planting a tree in empty air.

22. They who are dead to their desires are very delighted to reflect on this truth, that they are continually living and moving in the all pervading Brahman.

23. All things are full of Brahman and there is nothing of pleasure or pain. Brahman resides in his identical all and is pleased with all in himself.

24. The Lord is manifest in his Lordship, and I am no other person beside himself. This pot, that painting, and I myself are full with the identical Brahman.

25. Hence it is in vain to speak of our attachment or aversion to worldliness since we bear our bodies and dare to die in Brahman only.

26. Our bodies being the abodes of Brahman, it is false to think of our bodily pains or enjoyments, like thinking a rope to be a snake.

27. How can you say that this or that is your doing when you have no power to do anything? Waves on the surface of the sea cannot move the waters deep below.

28. You, me, he and all others are only breaths of the Universal Spirit. We heave and then subside like waves in the sea, but the spirit of God, like the waters of the deep, does not rise or fall at anytime.

29. All persons returning to Brahman after their death have their bodies and their personal identities reduced into Him and retaining in Him, just as moving and still waters rest alike in the sea.

30. All moving and inert souls and bodies rest alike in the supreme Brahman, just as the individual soul (jiva) and its form reside in God, and whirling and still waters remain in the same sea.

31. The soul and the body are the two states of the likeness and unlikeness of Brahman. One is the living soul of bodies and the other is the gross body itself.

32. Irrational souls who are ignorant of this truth are truly subject to delusion. Rational souls are not so, but enjoy their full bliss on earth while the other is ever doomed to misery.

33. The blind see the world as all dark, while the clear sighted find it fully bright and shining. So the wise are blessed with the knowledge of the one soul of the whole, while the ignorant are immersed in misery by their lack of such knowledge.

34. As the darkness of night presents its demons and ghosts only to the sight of children, and not those of grown up adults, so the world presents its delusions to the ignorant and never to the wise who behold only one Brahman in all things before them.

35. There is nothing here that lives of itself or dies away to nothing. All exist equally in God at all times. Nothing is doomed to be born or perish here to happiness or misery.

36. All beings are situated in the Universal Soul just like waves in the vast expanse of the ocean. Therefore it is false to say that one resides in the spirit and another is beside it.

37. As there is an inborn light in crystal which is capable of reflecting a variety of rays, so the spirit of God dwells in his own spirit in the form of the universe showing various shapes to view by the inner light of the spirit.

38. As water particles fly from waves, fall into the sea, and mix with its water, so the bodies of dying people fall into the body of Brahman where they existed during their lifetimes.

39. There is no being beside the being of Brahman, just as there is no wave or foam or froth of the sea beside the water of the deep.

40. As waves, surges, whirling currents, and their froth, foam, and bubbles and minute particles are all formations of water in the great body of waters, so are all beings only productions of the spirit in the Infinite Spirit.

41. All bodies with their various modes and organs of sense and their several functions, and all visible objects and their growth and decay, together with everything conducive to our happiness and misery, and all other energies and their gains, are the works of Brahma in himself.

42. The production of these various beings in existence is from the essence of Brahman, just as the formation of different ornaments is from the substance of gold. There is no cause of form or formation other than Brahma, and the distinction between cause and creation is the false conception of the ignorant.

43. Mind, understanding, egoism, the elemental atoms, and the organs of sense are all the various forms of Brahman, which is the cause of our joy or grief.

44. The words “I”, “you”, “he”, “this” and “that”, as also the terms of “mind” and “matter” all describe the identical Brahman in the same manner as the roaring of a cloud in the hills resounds in a hundred echoes through their caverns.

45. Brahman appears as an unknown stranger to us through our ignorance of him, like visions in our minds’ dreams appear futile to us.

46. Ignorance of Brahman as what he is makes men reject divine knowledge altogether, just as our ignorance of the quality of gold causes us to throw it away as waste.

47. Brahman is known as the Supreme Spirit and sole Lord by those who are acquainted with divine knowledge. But He is said to be unknown and involved in ignorance by those who are ignorant of Him.

48. Brahman being known as Brahman becomes manifest as such in a moment, just as gold when known as such is taken in due esteem.

49. Those who are versed in divine knowledge know Brahman to be without cause and causing nothing by himself, and that he is free from decay and is the Supreme Spirit and sole Lord of all.

50. He who can meditate on the omnipotence of the Supreme Spirit of Brahman comes to behold him as such in a short time, even without a teacher to guide him in his spiritual knowledge.

51. The lack of divine knowledge is called the ignorance of the ignorant. The knowledge of God constitutes the true knowledge which removes the ignorance.

52. As an unknown friend is no friend at all until he is recognized as such after removal of one’s forgetfulness, so God is no god to one as long he continues in ignorance of Him.

53. We can only know God when the mind comes to perceive the soul unconnected with the body, whereby it alienates itself from all worldly connections in disgust.

54. When the mind is freed from its knowledge of duality, then we come to know the one true God. By the mind’s distaste of dualism, it abandons its attachment to the world.

55. We come to the knowledge of God when we come to know ourselves to be other than our bodies and when we get rid of our personal egoism and forsake our affection for this un-kindred world.

56. The thought of God arises in our minds when we come to the true knowledge of thinking ourselves the same with Brahman, and when the mind is absorbed in meditation of the divine truth in one’s self.

57. God being known as the all of everything and comprising the whole fullness of space, we come to believe the same as Brahman. Losing our egoism and references to others, we come to know the sole entity that comprises the entire universe.

58. When I come to know this true and all-form Brahman as all in all and forming the entire whole, I become released from all my sorrows and grief. I am set free from all my delusions and desires and the responsibility of my duties.

59. I am quite calm and at ease, without any sorrow or grief, by my knowledge of the truth that I am no other than Brahman himself. I am as cool as the moon without her spots and phases in me. I am the all entire, without any disease, decay or diminution in me.

60. It is true that I am the all pervading Brahman. Therefore I cannot wish to have or leave anything from me, because I am also the blood, bones and flesh of my body.

61. It is true that I am Brahman the Universal Soul, and therefore my intellect, mind and physical senses also. I am the heaven and sky with their luminaries and quarters and the nether worlds also.

62. It is true that I am Brahman composing this pot and painting, these bushes and brambles, these forests and their grass, and also the seas and their waves.

63. The unity of Brahman is a certain truth. It is the Self which manifests in seas and mountains and all living beings, and in the qualities of reception and emission, and of extension and contraction in all material bodies.

64. All things of extended forms are situated in the intellectual spirit of Brahman who is the cause of the growth of seeds, vines and other plants.

65. The Supreme Brahman resides in his sheath of the intellectual soul like flavor in the cup of the flower, and thence diffuses itself on all sides in the form of everything everywhere.

66. He who is called the Supreme Spirit is known as the only soul of all. He is called the intellectual soul, Brahman the great, the only entity and reality, the Truth and Intelligence and apart from all.

67. He is said to be the all-inherent element and Consciousness only without anything intelligible in it. He is the pure light that gives every being its consciousness of itself.

68. To the spiritual man God appears to exist everywhere as the tranquil and intelligent Brahman, and contains in himself the powers of all the faculties of the mind and body, such as the understanding and the organs of sense. So the scriptures say, “He is the mind of the mind, the sight of the eye.”

69. Give up the thought of you being different from Brahman by knowing yourself as the reflection of the conscious soul which is the cause of the causes of the existence of the world, just like air is cause of sound caused by empty spirit of God.

70. The consciousness of Brahman is the transparent receptacle of all essences. My ego is of the same essence, which exudes continually like a shower of rain from the transparent spirit of God.

71. I am that light which shines in the souls of yogis. I am that silent spirit supported by the ambrosial drops of Divine Consciousness which continually distils its nectar juice into our souls so that we may feel in ourselves.

72. I am a wheel or a circle without beginning or end because I have the pure consciousness of Brahman in me. I am quiet in my deep sleep of samadhi meditation and I perceive that holy light shining within me.

73. The thought that “I am Brahman” affords a far greater delight to the soul than the taste of any sweet meat, which gives but a momentary delight. So the scriptures say, “God is all sweetness.”

74. One who knows his soul and intellect knows the indestructible Brahman and himself to be identical with Brahman, just as one whose mind is possessed with the image of his beloved sees her bright face in the shining orb of the moon.

75. As the sights of earthly people are fixed on the ethereal moon, so the sight of intellectual beings is fixed on the supreme and indestructible soul, which he knows to be identical with himself.

76. The intellectual power situated in the emptiness of the heart is truly the truth of pure Brahman himself. Its pleasure, pain, mutability and divisibility are attributed only through ignorance.

77. The soul who has known the truth knows himself as Supreme Consciousness, just as the pilgrim on the way sees only his saint before him and no intermediate object besides.

78. The belief that I am the pure and all pervading Consciousness is attended with purity and holiness of the soul. Knowledge of the divine power as the cause of the union of earth, air and water in the production of the germ of creation is the main creed of all creeds.

79. I am that intellect of Brahma which is inherent in all things as their productive power. I am that soul which causes the sweetness of honey and the bitterness of nimba fruits.

80. I am that Divine Consciousness which inheres alike in all flavors, which is devoid of pain and pleasure, and which I perceive in my mind by my consciousness.

81. I am the consciousness of Brahman without decay. I consider my gain and loss in an equal light of detachment while I view this earth, sky, sun and moon displayed before my eyes in all their glory.

82. I am that pure and serenely bright Brahman whose glory is displayed alike in all of these, and which I see shining vividly before me whether I am awake or asleep, dreaming or in deep sleep.

83. I am that Brahman who is without beginning or end, who is known by his four-fold essences, and who is ever indestructible and without decay. He resides in the souls of men through all their reincarnations like sweetness in sugarcane.

84. I am that intellect of Brahman which, like sunshine, equally pervades in the form of transparent light in and above all created beings.

85. I am that all pervasive intellect of Brahman which, like charming moonlight, fills the whole universe, and which we feel and taste in our hearts as the delicious drink of nectar.

86. I am that intellect of Brahman which extends undivided over the whole and all parts of the universe, and which embraces all existence as the moving clouds of heaven encompasses the sky.

✅
Chapter 6a.12 — Qualities of the Self-Realized

1. Vasishta said:— Great minded men who are certain of these truths are purified from their sins. Finding their tranquility in reliance on truth, they enjoy the delight of the even balance of their souls, both in prosperity and adversity.

2. So the wise men of perfect understanding, being evenly dispassionate in their minds, do not feel happiness or sadness in the enjoyment or deprivation of their lives.

3. They remain as unseen and marvelously mighty as the arms of Vishnu, and as straight and firm and yet as low and fragile as the body and broken rocks of Mount Meru.

4. They roam about at pleasure in woodlands and over islands and in cities also. Like the gods of paradise, they wander about the beautiful gardens and sceneries of nature.

5. They rove in flowery gardens shaken by playful breezes and in romantic forests on the foothills and tops of mountains.

6. They conquer their enemies and rule their kingdoms with the royal symbols of the chowry fly-whisk and umbrella. They enjoy the various produce and wealth of their kingdom and observe the various customs and usages of their country.

7. They follow all the rules and rites established by the laws of their countries and inculcated as duties for the observance of all.

8. They do not disdain to taste the pleasures that would make beauties smile, nor are they adverse to the enjoyment of luxuries that they can rightly use and enjoy.

9. They smell the fragrance of mandara flowers and taste the sweet juice of mango fruit. They regale themselves with the sweet songs of apsara nymphs and revel in the trees of Nandana pleasure garden.

10. They never disregard the duties that bind all mankind to them, or neglect to perform the sacrifices and observe the ordinances that are imperative in domestic life.

11. But they are saved from falling into dangers and evils of all kinds, escape the danger of falling under the feet of murderous elephants, and avoid the uproar of trumpets and the imminent death in battlefields.

12. They live with those who are afflicted in their hearts and among the marauding plunderers of the country. They dwell among oppressed cowardly people and among their oppressors. Thus they are conversant with the practices of all opposing parties without mixing with any one of them.

13. But their minds are clear of doubts and free from errors. They are unaffected by passions and affections and unattached to any person or thing. They are quite discrete and disengaged, free and liberated, tranquil and serene, inclined to goodness reclining and resting in Supreme Spirit.

14. They are never immersed in great dangers, nor are they ever involved in very great difficulties. They remain like the boundary mountains that are not immersed in the water they surround.

15. They are never elated with joy at the fluctuating favors of fond and fascinating fortune, nor are they swollen, like the sea, with the increasing digits of the moon.

16. They do not fade away under sorrow or sickness, like plants under the scorching sun, nor are they refreshed by refreshments, like medicinal plants under the refreshing dews of night.

17. Calmly and without anxiety, they are employed in the discharge of their duties and in the acts of fruition. They neither long for nor relinquish the results that are attendant upon their acts.

18. They are neither elated with the success of their undertakings, nor are they depressed by the mishap of their efforts. They are not joyous at their joy and exultation, nor do they under danger and difficulty.

19. They do not droop down under despondence, nor are they dejected in despair. They are not merry in their prosperity, nor do they wail and weep in their adversity.

20. They discharge their customary duties as prescribed by law and usage, but their minds remain as firm and unmoved as a mountain against all the efforts of the body.

21. Now Rama, remove your sight from your own egoism and keep it fixed on the true Ego which is a destroyer of all sins. Then go on with your ordinary course of conduct as you may like.

22. Look at these creations and their various creatures as they have existed in their successive stages and phases, but remain as firm as rock and as deep as the sea, and get rid of your errors.

23. Know this grand hole as the reflection of one sole Consciousness beside which there is nothing as a reality or unreality, or as something or nothing.

24. Rama, have your greatness as the great Brahman and preserve the dignity of human nature about you. Reject all that is unworthy of you. With an unattached heart to everything, manage yourself with gentleness everywhere and thus pass the days here.

25. Why do you weep with your heart full of sorrow and grief? Why do you lament like the deluded? Why wander with your wandering mind like a bit of straw carried by whirling currents?

26. Rama replied, “Truly sage, my questions are now erased from my mind. My heart is awakened to its good senses by your kindness, just as the lotus is enlivened by rising sunlight.

27. My errors are dispersed like morning fog in autumn. My doubts are set down by your lectures, which I will always follow.

28. I am now set free from the follies of pride, vanity, envy and unconsciousness. I feel lasting spiritual joy rising within me after the subsidence of all my sorrows. And now if you are not tired, please deliver your lectures with your clear understanding, and I will follow and practice them without fear or hesitation.”

✅
Chapter 6a.13 — The Two Yogas of Pranayama and Self Inquiry Lead to Meditation

1. Rama said, “I am truly calmed and set at ease, O brahmin, by renouncing all my desires, by my full knowledge of their impropriety, and by my being staid in the state of the liberated, even in this my present life.

2. But tell me, sage, how can a man have his liberation by restraining his breathing for a time? How can restraining the breath restrict the desires that reside and rise from the mind? The breath belongs to the body and comes in and out of the heart and lungs.”

3. Vasishta said:— O Rama, the means of crossing the ocean of this earth is known by the word yoga. Yoga means pacifying the mind in either of the two ways.

4. One is the acquisition of religious instruction, leading to the knowledge of the soul and of the Supreme Soul. The other is restraining breath (pranayama), which you will learn from the lecture that I am about to deliver.

5. Here Rama interrupted and said, “Tell me, sage, which of the two is easier and less painful?”

6. Vasishta replied:— Rama, although I have mentioned two kinds of yoga, yet in common usage the word refers to the restriction of breathing.

7. True yoga is the concentration of the mind in God, which is the only means of our salvation in this world. This is achieved in either of two ways: regulation of breathing and perfection in learning. Both tend to the one and same effect, of fixing the attention in divine meditation.

8. Yoga practices appear too arduous a task to some people, while proficiency in knowledge seems to be too difficult to others. But to my understanding, the ascertainment of truth by theoretical knowledge seems far better than practice.

9. Ignorance is ever ignorant of truth, which does not lend its light to us in either our walking or sleeping states. So the ignorant practitioner is always in ignorance both when he is meditating or otherwise. But knowledge is always knowing, both when the knower is awake or asleep.

10. Yoga practices require fixed attention, painful postures, and proper times and places. It can be impossible to practice owing to the difficulty of getting all these advantages at all times.

11. I have described both kinds of yoga propounded in the scriptures and the superiority of pure knowledge which fills the intellect with its unfading light.

12. The regulation of breath, the firmness of the body, and dwelling in sequestered cells are helpful to reach the goal. But tell me, which of these can give knowledge to understanding, which is the greatest perfection in human nature?

13. Now Rama, if you think it is possible for you to sit quietly with utter suppression of your breaths and thoughts, then you can attempt to sit in your calm posture of meditation without uttering a single word.

✅
Chapter 6a.14 — Bhushunda, the Ancient Crow; and Description of Mount Meru

1. Vasishta related:— The vast universe, O Rama, is only an evolution of the will of the Infinite Brahman, just as the various representations in a mirage are only variations of sunlight.

2. Here the divine Brahma, born of the lotus-form navel of Vishnu, takes the title of the creator and preserver of all that has been produced by the Supreme Spirit. He is called also the great father of all because he produces the prime progenitors of mankind.

3. This divine being brought me forth from his mind. Therefore I am called mind-born (manasaputra), a child of the mind of this holy person. He made me settle first in the fixed polar circle of the starry frame where I watched the revolutions of the planetary spheres and the successive Ages of Manu (manvantara) before me.

4. Once when I lived in the imperial court of Indra, the lord of gods, I heard sage Narada and other messengers of the gods talk about many long lived persons.

5. Among those talking was sage Salatapa, a person of great understanding and a man of honor restrained in his speech. He said by way of conversation

6. that on the northeast summit of Mount Meru there was a place full of sparkling gems. There was a wish-fulfilling kalpa tree of the mango kind there which yielded its fruit in all seasons of the year.

7. The tree was covered with fresh and beautiful vines, and a branch extending towards the south had a large hollow in its top that contained the nests of birds of various kinds.

8. Among them there was a nest belonging to an old crow named Bhushunda who lived quite happy with himself, just as the god Brahma dwells content in his lotus bed.

9. There is no one in the womb of this world who is as long lived as Bhushunda. Not even the gods in heaven can boast of a greater longevity than he among the feathered group, and it is doubtful whether there may be another as old as he in times to come.

10. This old crow was beautiful even in old age. He had become passionless and great-minded by his long experience. He remained quiet with the tranquility of his mind and was graceful as he was full of knowledge of all times.

11. If anyone may have the long life of this crow, his life becomes meritorious and his old age is crowned with wisdom.

12. In this manner, sage Salatapa related the virtues of the bird in full at the request of the gods in heaven. He did not utter anything more or less before the assembly of the gods who knew all things.

13. After the gods were satisfied with the story of the veteran crow, I felt a great curiosity in me to see and know more about this old aged bird.

14. With this desire, I hastened to where the crow was said to rest in his happy nest. In a short time I reached the summit of Meru, shining with its precious stones.

15. The peak of the mountain was flaming like fire with the glare of its gems and red earth, and these painted the upper sky with the bright color of flowery honey and sparkling wine.

16. The mountain shone as brightly as if it were burning with the blaze of the last conflagration. The sky was reddened by their reflection with shades of clouds appearing like the smoke of fire or the blue luster of sapphire.

17. The mountain appeared to be formed by a collection of all kinds of colors on earth, giving it the appearance of the western sky at sunset.

18. The flame of fire proceeding from its crater and emitted through the crevice on its top seemed like the fire of the yogi in yoga, carried up from his bowels to the crown of the head.

19. The reddish peaks and heights of Sumeru resembled his arms and fingers painted with scarlet lac-dye in order to lay hold of his consort, the fair moon, by way of play.

20. The lurid flame of wildfire on this mountain seemed like the burning blaze of sacrificial fires rising to heaven, fed with clarified butter.

21. The mountain with its elevated summit seemed to kiss the face of the sky, raising its fingers in the form of its peaks, their blazing gems resembling the nails of the fingers, in order to count the scattered stars.

22. The clouds roared on one side with the loud noise of drums. On the other, young plants and vines were dancing in happy trees, clusters of flowers were smiling like blooming beauties, and swarms of humming bees were hovering over them.

23. Here the lofty palm trees seemed to be smiling, showing their teeth in their denticulate leaves on seeing the giddy groups of apsara nymphs swinging and loosely strolling about in their amorous dalliances under their shade.

24. There celestials went in pairs to their caves in the mountain in order to relieve themselves of the trouble of trudging over the rugged paths of the craggy mountain. They were clothed in the white vest of the open, and having the stream of the Ganges falling from high for their sacred thread.

25. The white mountain stood like a grey headed hermit, holding reeds as canes in his hand. The celestial inhabitants of the mountain rested under the cover of vines, being lulled by to sleep by the gurgling sound of waters falling from precipice to precipice.

26. The mountain king was crowned by full blown lotuses that grew on its top, regaled by the sweet fragrance which the breezes bore from them. It was decorated with gems of the starry sky on its crown and charmed with the sweet songs of gandharvas playing their tunes on it.

27. His hoary head pierced the silvery region of heaven and was one with the home of the gods.

28. The many colored tops of Meru, emitting the various colors of red, white, black, blue, yellow and gray stones that are embodied in its body, lent the sky its variegated colors in the morning and evening, while the various color blossoms on its tops invited heavenly nymphs to their rambles and sports over them.

✅
Chapter 6a.15 — Vasishta’s Visit & Description of Meru and Bhushunda

1. Vasishta continued:— I saw the kalpa tree on the top of one of these peaks, surrounded by its branches on all sides and covered with flowers appearing like tufts of hairs on its head.

2. This tree was covered with the pollen of its flowers which shrouded it like a thick mist or cloud. Its flowers shown as bright as brilliant gems. Its great height reaching the sky made it look like a steeple standing upon the peak.

3. Its flowers were twice as many as the stars in heaven, and its leaves doubled the clouds in their bulk and thickness. Its filaments were more shiny than flashes of lightning, and its flower pollen was far brighter than the surrounding sunbeams.

4. The songs of the gandharvas dwelling on the branches of this tree played to the buzz of humming bees. The nimble feet and waving palms of apsara nymphs, dancing and playing on every leaflet, were double the number of leaves.

5. The spirits of the aerial spiritual masters and gandharvas hovering on this tree far out-numbered the birds that flocked and fluttered about it. The grayish frost which wrapped it like a shiny covering outshone the glossy rind that served for its raiment of fine linen.

6. The top of this tree touched the moon and by deriving its moisture from that humid planet, yielded its fruits of larger size than the orb of the moon itself. The clouds gathering about its trunk had doubled the size of its joints.

7. Gods rested on the trunk of this tree and kinnaras reclined on its leaves. Clouds covered its trees and asura demons slept under its branches.

8. The apsaras repelled their mates by the sound of their bracelets, as bees put beetles to flight by their buzzing, and sucked the honey from the flower cup to their fill.

9. The tree of desire extends on all sides of the sky and fills the space of the whole world by embodying the gods and demigods and men and all kinds of living beings in it.

10. It was full of blooming buds and blossoms and covered with its tender leaves and leaflets. It was filled with flourishing flowers and graced the forest all around.

11. It flushed with its filaments and abounded with its shining small flowers. With its radiant coverings and ornamented trappings, it was full to provide to the needs of its devotees, and it was ever in a flurry with the playful dance of tender plants and vines all around it.

12. It was fully laden with flowers on all sides and abundant with fruit on all its branches. Covered with copious pollen from its flowers, which it lavished and scattered on all its sides, it became charming and attractive to all hearts.

13. I saw a flock of feathered birds fluttering about the happy covered shelter and resting about the broad branches of the tree. Some were resting within the covering of the leafy tree. Others pecked at the flowers and fruit with their bills.

14. I saw the storks and swans that are the vehicles of Brahma, resembling the digits of the bright moon in whiteness, feeding on fragments of lotus stalks and picking the bulbous roots of arjuna and lotus plants in the lakes.

15. The swans of Brahma muttered the sacred sound of Om, the initial syllable of the Vedas, as they were addicted to it by their teacher, the god Brahma himself.

16. I saw parrots with their blue wings resembling the blue clouds of heaven, their red beaks shining like the flashes of lightning, and uttering their shrill sound like the swaha of the Veda.

17. I also saw the green parrots of the god of fire scattered all about like green kusa grass lying scattered on the sacrificial altar of the gods. I saw young peacocks with their crests glowing like the glistening flames of fire.

18. I saw groups of peacocks fostered by the goddess Gauri, and also the big peacocks that belong to the god Kumara. I also saw the vehicle of Skanda, the peacocks that are versed in knowledge.

19. I saw many heavy and huge bodied birds born to live, breed and die in their natal air, never descending to the ground. These were as white as the clouds of autumn and nestled with their mates in the air. They are commonly known under the name of aerial birds.

20. I saw the goslings of the breed of Brahma’s geese and the younglings of the brood of Agni’s parrots. I saw the peacocks forming the vehicles of the war god Skanda.

21. I saw bharadwaja birds and many other kinds of big charui sparrows. I also saw kalavinca sparrows, little cranes, pelicans, cuckoos, vultures, cranes and cocks.

22. I saw a great variety of other birds such as bhushus, chushus and partridges of many kinds, whose numbers are no less than all the living animals of this earth taken together.

23. Then I began to peer from my ethereal seat, through the thickening leaves of the tree to the nests of the birds, amidst the hollows of far distant branches towards the south.

24. After some time I spied a body of crows at a distance, sitting in rows like leaves of branches, resembling streaks of dark clouds on either sides of the Lokaloka horizon.

25. After a while, I noticed there a lonely branch with a spacious hollow in it. It was scattered over with various flowers and smelling with a variety of perfumes.

26. It was the happy home of virtuous women in heaven who are perfumed with sweet scenting clusters of flowers. There were crows sitting in rows. They were perfectly freed from all cares and sorrows.

27. Their great group appeared like the big body of a cloud separated from the tumultuous air of the lower atmosphere and resting on the calm firmament of the upper sky. There I saw the venerable Bhushunda sitting quietly with his exalted body.

28. He sat there like a sapphire shining prominently among fragments of glass. He appeared to have a brave heart and mind, and of a dignified and graceful appearance.

29. Being heedful of the rule of the restriction of his respiration and suppression of his voice, he was quite happy with his long longevity and was renowned everywhere as a long lived seer.

30. He witnessed the course of ages and aeons, marking their advent and exodus in repeated succession, and thereby was known as the time-worn Bhushunda in this world, being of stout and unflinching mind.

31. He was weary with counting revolutions of kalpa cycles and the returns of the preserving divinities of the world, such as the Shivas, Indras, the gods of the winds, and others.

32. He was the chronicler of all antiquity, the recorder of the wars of the gods and demons and the hurling of high hills in heaven. Yet he was of a clear countenance and profound mind. He was complacent to all and his words were as sweet as honey.

33. This old seer had direct experience of all that was unknown and indistinct to others. He had no egotism or selfishness. He was the lord over all his friends and children, and his servants and their seniors. He was the true narrator of all things at all times.

34. His speech was clear and graceful, sweet and pleasing. His heart was tender like a cooling lake and as soft as a lotus flower. He was acquainted with all usages and customs, his knowledge was deep and profound, and he was ever the serene in appearance.

✅
Chapter 6a.16 — Vasishta and Bhushunda Meet; Vasishta’s Question

1. Vasishta continued:— I then came before the veteran crow with my brilliant ethereal body, like a bright meteor falling from the sky on the top of a mountain. My sudden appearance startled the assembly, as if they were disturbed by my intrusion.

2. The assembly of the black birds trembled like the lotuses of a lake at the shaking of the gentle breeze. The agitation of the air at my slow descent troubled them as much as an earthquake troubles the waters of the deep.

3. But Bhushunda, who was a seer of the three times, was at not all disturbed at my arrival. He knows me as Vasishta, now in attendance upon him.

4. He rose from his leafy seat and advanced slowly before me. With sweet sounds like honey, he said, “I welcome you, great sage, to my humble cell.”

5. Then he stretched both hands to me, holding clusters of flowers that he had at his will and then scattered them in handfuls upon me like a cloud scattering dewdrops over the ground.

6. “Take this seat,” said he, and stretched a newly shorn rind of the kalpa tree with his hand. This he had plucked with his own hand. He did not need the help of his attendant crows for this happy task.

7. On the rising of Bhushunda, the menials also arose from their seats. Then on seeing the sage seated on his seat, they again took their respective seats and posts.

8. Having refreshed myself with the sweet scent of the kalpa vines all about me, all the birds gathered around me sitting face to face with their chief.

9. Having offered me water and honey for my refreshment, together with the arghya worthy of me, the high minded Bhushunda felt the cheer of his mind, then approached me with a pleasing disposition and words as sweet as honey.

10. Bhushunda said, “O lord, after so much time you have favored me with your kind visit, which by its ambrosial influence has resuscitated our tree and ourselves.

11. O great muni who is honored of the honorable, I think that my long earned virtues have brought you here to this place. I would like to know from where your course is bent to my humble abode.

12. You sage, who has long wandered amid the great gloom of this world and know its errors by your infallible experience, must have your peace of mind.

13. What I wish to know is what makes you take this trouble today. We who await your answer will consider it a great favor.

14. By the sight of your holy feet, O venerable sage, we are given knowledge of everything. Yet my obligation at this uncalled for visit emboldens me to ask this further favor from you.”

15. “I know that your knowledge of us as among the long lived has directed your attention towards me and made your holiness sanctify this place by your gracious visit to us.

16. Although I know this is the reason for your visit, yet it is my desire to satisfy myself with the sweetness of your nectar words. That has prompted me to propose this question to you.”

17. In this manner did the long-lived crow, clear sighted with his knowledge of the three times, deliver his question by way of formality.

18. Vasishta answered, “Yes, O king of birds! It is true as you say that I have come here to see your long lasting self.

19. You are truly very fortunate with your serenity, and your wisdom has fortunately saved you from falling into the dangerous snares of this world.

20. Now sage, consent to answer my questions regarding to your great age. Tell me truly. Of what family were you are born and how did you come to know what is worth knowing?

21. Tell me sage, if you remember the length of life that you have passed and if you recollect by your long clear vision how you came to be settled in this lodging.”

22. Bhushunda replied, “I will relate to you all that you ask of me, O great sage. Your great soul shall have to hear it attentively without any inadvertence of your mind.

23. It is certain, O venerable sage, that the topics which deserve the attention of great minded souls like yourselves will prove effective to destroy the evils of the world, just as the influence of the clouds and their propitious rains remove the heat of the sun.”

✅
Chapter 6a.17 — Description of Bhushunda

1. Vasishta said:— Now Rama, this Bhushunda, whose complexion was as black as a cloud heavy with water in the rainy season, had a face which was neither merry nor sorry and a mind free from deceit or cunning.

2. His voice was grave and mild and his words were accompanied by a gentle smile. He spoke of the three worlds as if he balanced three bel fruit in his hands.

3. He looked upon all things as if they were mere straws before him. He weighed the lives of men in proportion to their enjoyments and by the ratio of their rations on earth. He had the knowledge of what could be known and the unknowable One.

4. He was big bodied, grave and quiet, and calm as Mount Mandara. His mind was full and clear as the calm ocean after a storm.

5. His mind was perfectly tranquil and quite at ease, full of joy within itself. He was acquainted with the appearance and disappearance of all beings born in this world.

6. His face was delightful with his inner delight and his voice was as sweet as the melody of a sweet song. He seemed to have taken a new born form on himself, and his joyfulness dispelled the fears of men.

7. After he had respectfully received and approached me with his pure and sweet words, he began to tell me his own story, just as the rumbling of a rainy cloud delights the hearts of the thirsty world.

✅
Chapter 6a.18 — Bhushunda’s Matrika Background, Alambusha; the Matrikas Overpower Parvati

1. Bhushunda related:— In this world there is the god of gods, Hara (Shiva) by name, who is chief among the gods and honored by all the gods of heaven.

2. He had his consort Gauri (Parvati) who is the better half of his body and by whom he is embraced like an ivy clings to a young amra tree. Her bosom resembled a cluster of blooming blossoms and her eyes resembled the lines of black bees fluttering in the summer sky.

3. The hoary locks of hair Hara’s matted head were like white lace made by the snow-white stream of the Ganges, whose waves were like clusters of flowers on a hair-band.

4. The crown of his head was decorated with the shining milk-white disc of the crescent moon which sprung from the bosom of the Milky Ocean and spread her bright radiance and ambrosial dews about his body.

5. The constant flow of ambrosial nectar from the moon on his crest made him immortal by reducing the heat of the deadly poison which he swallowed. That poison marked his throat with the bluish color of sapphire or lapis lazuli, for which he is named blue-throated, Nilakantha.

6. The body of the god is smeared with ash symbolic of the dust to which the world was reduced by the flame of his all destructive fire. The stream of water flowing from the Ganges on his head is typical of the current of his clear knowledge of all things.

7. His body is decorated with strings of bleached bones far brighter than the silvery beams of the fair moon. These serve as necklaces of silver and pearly gems decorating his body.

8. His vest is the open sky with its plates of folded clouds washed by milk-white moonbeams and studded with the many colored spots of the stars.

9. He is surrounded by prowling jackals devouring burnt carcasses on funeral grounds. He lives beyond the habitations of men, in cemeteries and mortuaries in the outskirts of cities.

10. The god is accompanied by the Mother Goddesses, the Matrikas who are decorated with strings of human skulls about their necks and girt with the threads of entrails on their bodies. The fat and flesh of dead bodies and the blood and moisture of putrid carcasses form their delectable food and drink.

11. Their bodies are soft and shining like gold. They move about with sparkling gems on their heads and bracelets of snakes curled round their wrists.

12. The acts of this god Shiva are dreadful to relate and strike terror in hearts of gods and demons, and all others beings beside. One glance of his eye is enough to set mountains on fire and his hunger grasps the whole world in one morsel.

13. The perpetual rest of his meditative mind in holy samadhi trance has restored the world to rest, and the movement of his arms at intervals is attended with the destruction of demons.

14. His forms of the elements are intently bent on their fixed purposes without being deterred by the impulses of his anger, hatred or affection. The wind of his breath makes mountains tremble and turns the humid earth to arid ground.

15. His playmates are devils with their heads and faces resembling those of bears, camels, goats and serpents. They have heads for hoofs, hoofs as their hands, hands that serve as their teeth, and faces and mouths set in their bellies and breasts.

16. His face shone brightly with the rays of his three eyes, and the Matrikas were dependent on him as were his dependent demonic bands of deity attendants (ganadevata, the gods of categories).

17. The Mother Goddesses, together with bands of demons, dance about Shiva lowly at his bidding and feed upon living bodies born and dying in all fourteen regions of creation.

18. These Matrikas, having faces like asses and camels, passed at great distances from Shiva. They are fond of feeding on flesh and fat and drinking the red hot blood as their wine. They have fragments of dead bodies hanging around their bodies like strings of pearls.

19. They live in the hollows of hills, in the open sky, and other regions also. They also dwell in holes under the ground, and they like to live in cemeteries and in the pores of human and brute bodies.

20. There are the goddesses known under the names of Jaya, Vijaya, Jayanti, Aparajita, Siddha Rakta and Alambusha, and another bearing the name of Utpata.

21. These eight are called the leaders of the whole body of Matrikas. The others are subordinate to these, and there are others again subordinate to them.

22. Among all these venerable Matrikas, there is one named Alambusha who is the source of my birth. I revealed this to you on account of your great favor to me, by your kind call to my cell.

23. She had the crow named Chanda for her vehicle, which had its bones and bills as strong as the bolts of Indra’s thunder. Chanda was as dark as a mountain of black blue agate. He served her goddess like Garuda served the consort of Vishnu.

24. Once this group of eight Matrika goddesses assembled and bent their course in the ethereal firmament on some of their malevolent purposes.

25. They made their merry makings and religious revels in the air, then turned their course to the left side where they halted at the shrine of Tumburu which was sacred to Shiva.

26. There they worshipped the forms of Tumburu and Bhairava, which are adored in all the worlds, then entertained themselves with a variety of discourses seasoned with drinking and singing.

27. They look up the topic, among other subjects of their conversation, whether they were slighted and disliked by their paramour (Shiva) who had given one half of his body to his spouse, Uma (Parvati).

28. “We shall now show him our prowess so that he may never think of despising our great powers even by a contemptuous look. For though the god feigns to be single and naked, yet we know he is divided in two parts with his consort Uma forming his better half.”

29. Thus determined, the goddesses overpowered Uma by one of their potent charms and by sprinkling a little water upon her, as they do to distract a beast about to be sacrificed before the alter. By this spell they succeeded changing the fine features of Durga (Parvati), and weakening her body.

30. By their power of enchantment, they managed to detach Uma from the body of Hara (Shiva) and bring her before them with an intent to curse her by converting her fair form to their own dark form.

31. There was great rejoicing on the day they cursed Parvati. All the Matrikas joined dancing and singing and making their giddy revelries before her.

32. The shouts of their great joy and loud laughter resounded in the sky, and the jumping and hopping of their big bodies laid open their backs and bellies to sight.

33. Some laughed so loudly with deafening claps of their hands that the sound rebounded in the sky like the roaring of lions and clouds. Their bodies moved in their warlike dances and the sound of their singing rang through the forests and reached the mountains,

34. sounding loudly echoing in mountain caves and running to the depth of the ocean which swelled with surges like the full moon tide.

35. Others drank their bowels and daubed their bodies from head to foot with liquor, muttering their drunken chatters that chattered in the sky.

36. They drank again and sang louder and louder. They spun around like tops, uttering and muttering like drunkards. They laughed and sipped and chopped and fell down and rolled and prattled aloud. Thus they reeled in fits and chewed pieces of their flesh meats until these drunken dancing goddesses did all their orgies in their giddy revels.

✅
Chapter 6a.19 — Bhushunda’s Birth with Twenty Brothers, Blessings of Brahmi, His Father’s Advice to Live in the Kalpa Tree on Mount Meru

1. Bhushunda continued:— While the goddesses were making merry, their attractive vehicles, their carrier birds, also caught the infection and indulged themselves in giddy jigs and giggles, drinking the red blood of their victims for liquor.

2. Giddy from their drink, the chattering swans that were fit vehicles for Brahma’s consorts danced and frolicked in the air in company with the crow Chanda, the vehicle of Alambusha.

3. Then as the swans darted down, dancing and drinking and chattering on the banks of streams, they felt impassioned and inflamed by lust, because the borders of waters excite desire.

4. The swans excited by their carnal desires dallied with that crow in their state of giddiness, which is often the cause of unnatural desires.

5. Thus that single crow, Chanda by name, mated with seven swans at once on that bank, one by one with everyone of them according to their desire.

6. The swans became pregnant after gratification of their lust, and the goddesses being satisfied by their merry dance became quiet and took rest.

7. Then these goddesses of great delusion went to their consort Shiva and presented his favorite Uma to him for his food.

8. The god bearing the crescent moon on his forehead and holding the trident in his hand, came to know that they had offered his beloved for his meat. He became highly enraged at the Mother Goddesses.

9. Then these Matrikas brought out parts of Uma’s body which they had swallowed in their bodies as their food and presented her entire for her remarriage with the moon-headed deity.

10. At last the god Hara and his consorts, being all reconciled to one another together with their dependents and vehicles, retired to their respective quarters with gladness of their minds.

11. Brahma’s swans, perceiving their pregnancy, returned to the presence of their goddess (Brahmi, the spouse of Brahma) and described what had happened, as I have, O chief of sages, already described to you.

12. On hearing their words, the goddess spoke kindly and said, “You my servants, cannot now be capable of bearing my car in the air as before. You must be allowed to move about at your pleasure until you have delivered of your burdens.”

13. After the kind goddess said these words to her swans who were ailing under the load of their unborn, she returned to her customary meditation and remained in her irreversible rest with the gladness of her mind.

14. The swans, big with the burden of their unborn, grazed in the lotus bed of Vishnu’s navel which had been the birth place of the great Brahma.

15. The swans matured in their pregnancy by feeding upon the lotus-like navel of Vishnu. They brought forth their tender eggs in time, as calm vines shoot out sprouts in the spring.

16. They laid twenty-one eggs in their proper time, which afterwards cracked apart like so many cosmic eggs in the lake located in Vishnu’s navel.

17. It was these eggs, O great sage, that gave birth to twenty-one brothers, all of whom are known under the name of the fraternity of Chanda crows.

18. Born in the lotus bed of Vishnu’s navel, we were fostered and brought up in that place until we were fledged and able to fly and flutter in the air.

19. Then we joined our mother swans in the service of our Matrika goddess, who after our long services unto her, was roused from her intense meditation at last.

20. Now sage, it was in course of time that goddess Brahmi, inclined of her own wish to please, received us into her good graces and favored us with the gift (of foresight), whereby we are quite liberated in this life.

21. We thought of remaining in peace and in the tranquility of our minds. Being determined to take ourselves to solitary contemplation, we went to our father, the old crow Chanda, for his advice.

22. We were received by our father’s embraces and favored with the presence of his goddess Alumbusha. They looked on us with kindness and allowed us to remain near them with our self-restricted conduct.

23. Chanda said, “O my darlings! Have you obtained your release from weaving the web of your desires? You are then set free from the snare of this world which binds fast all beings in it.

24. If not so, then I will pray to my goddess, who is always generous to her devotees, to confer on you the blessing of complete knowledge.”

25. The crows replied, “O sir, we have known whatever is knowable by the good grace of the goddess Brahmi. Now we seek only a good solitary place for the sake of undisturbed meditation.”

26. Chanda returned. “I will point it out to you. It is in the high mountain of Meru in the polar region, which is the seat of all the celestials and the great receptacle of all the treasures and gems on earth.

27. This mountain stands like a lofty pillar of gold in the middle of the great dome of the universe. It is lit by the luminous orbs of the sun and moon as its two lamps, and it is the home of all kinds of animals.

28. This lofty mountain stands like the lifted arm of this orb of the earth, its shining peaks and heights resembling its fingers and their jewels and having moonbeams as a golden canopy raised over its head and the main islands for its bracelets.”

29. “Mount Meru is situated as the sole monarch in the middle of Asia. It is surrounded on all sides by boundary mountains as its chieftains. With its two eyeballs, the rolling sun and moon, it glances over the surrounding hillocks like a king seated in the center looking upon his courtiers sitting around him.

30. Clusters of stars in the sky hang like wreaths of malati flowers around his neck. The bright moon that leads the retinue of stars forms the crowning jewel over its head. The sky on ten sides girds it as its vest, and the naagas of both kinds are the guards at its gates.

31. The apsaras of heaven are employed fanning it with breezes from all quarters, flapping their fly-whisk fans of passing clouds, their hands decorated with the many colors of heaven as their ornaments.

32. Its huge body is stretched over a huge distance, and its feet are rooted fast many fathoms underneath the earth where they worshipped by naagas, asuras and large serpents.”

33. “It has thousands of ridges and steeps, crags and cliffs below its two eyes of sun and moon. These are praised as celestial regions by the gods, gandharvas and kinnaras who inhabit them.

34. There are fourteen kinds of superior beings inhabiting the supernatural world of this mountain. These dwell there with their households and relatives in their respective circles without ever seeing the others’ cities.”

35. “On the northeast corner of this mountain there is a large ridge with its shining summit rising as high and bright as the shining sun.

36. There stands a large wish-fulfilling kalpa tree on the outside of that ridge. This tree is peopled with living beings of various kinds and presents a picture of a whole world in miniature.

37. The southern stem of this tree has a protruding branch with golden leaves. Its blossoms bloom like clusters of brilliant gems. Its fruit are bright and luscious to view, like the bright and cooling orb of the moon.”

38. “Formerly I had built my nest on that branch and decorated it with all sorts of shining gems. There it was, O my children, that I played and enjoyed myself while my goddess sat in meditation.

39. My nest was hidden under shining flowers and stored with luscious fruits. Its door was fastened with bolts of precious gems.

40. It was full of young crows who knew how to behave properly with one another. Its inside was scattered with flowers and was cooling at all times and seasons.

41. Therefore, my children, go to that nest which is inaccessible even to the gods. By remaining there, you will obtain both your livelihood and liberation without any molestation.”

42. Saying so, our father kissed and embraced everyone of us and presented us with meat food he had received from his goddess.

43. After taking our meal, we prostrated ourselves at the feet of our father and his goddess, then flew in the air from the Vindhyan range which is sacred to the goddess Alumbusha.

44. We passed over the nether sky, entered the region of the clouds, then coming out of their hollow caves, we flew on the wings of winds to the empty void of the ethereal gods to whom we paid our homage.

45. Having passed the solar world, we arrived at another sphere of the fixed stars above where we saw the heaven of the immortals. From there we reached the highest heaven of Brahma.

46. There we bowed down to the goddess Brahmi and our mother (the swan) which was her vehicle, and described in detail what our father had told us to do.

47. They endeared and embraced us with kind affection, then bade us to do as we were bid by our father. At this we bowed down to them, then departed from the seat of Brahma.

48. We directed our flight to Meru where we found this kalpa tree and our appointed nest. Here, apart and remote from all, we hold our silence in all matters.

49. We passed the region of the rulers of the skies which shone to a great distance with the blaze of solar rays. We fled through empty air with the speed of winds.

50. I have told you in length in answer to your question regarding the manner of our birth and how we are settled in this place. I have also told you how we came to the knowledge of truth, whereby we have come to this state of undisturbed peace and tranquility. Now bid us, O great sage, what more can I say to satisfy your curiosity about me?

✅
Chapter 6a.20 — Bhushunda’s Survival of the Ends of Ages

1. Bhushunda continued:— This world has existed in the previous kalpa in the very same state as it does at present. There is no variation in the formation or location of anything in any way.

2. Therefore, O great sage, I am accustomed to look to the past and present with an equal eye. I will relate the events of my past life and bygone ages for your information as if they exist with me even now.

3. Today, O great sage, I find the fruits of my past lives’ pious acts have rewarded me with your blessed presence in this, my humble cell.

4. My nest, this tree branch, this kalpa tree, and I myself are all blessed by your propitious presence in this place.

5. Sage, consider to accept of this seat and this gift offered to you by a suppliant bird. Having purified us by your kind acceptance of our poor offerings, please command what other service we can render to you.

6. Vasishta said:— Rama, after Bhushunda had again presented the seat and gift to me, I offered another request to him in these words.

7. I said, “Tell me, O senior among birds, why don’t I see your brothers here? They must be equally old and strong in their bodies and intellects as you show yourself to be.”

8. Bhushunda answered and said:— I am destined to remain here alone, O muni, to witness the continuous course of time and to count and recount the revolutions of ages as they reckon the succession of days and nights.

9. During this length of time, I had the misfortune to witness all my younger brothers give up their mortal frames as trifling straw and find their rest in the blessed state.

10. O great sage, I have seen the very long lived, the very great indignant, the very strong, and very wise all be gorged in the unconscious bowels of bodiless death.

11. Vasishta said, “Say, O venerable father, how did you remain unmolested by the world-ending flood, the great storm which outstripped the winds in its velocity and bore the great bodies of the sun, moon and stars like jewels hanging about its neck.

12. Say, O primeval seer, how did you escape unscathed by the burning flame of solar rays which melted mountains and consumed forests in one alldevouring conflagration.

13. O venerable sage, how did you remain unfrozen under cold moonbeams that froze clear water into hard stone? How did you flee unhurt from the showers of hail which poured in profusion from great flood clouds?

14. Tell me, O ancient bird, why were you not crushed under snow that fell from flood clouds as thickly as huge trees felled by axes from the tops of high hills.

15. Say, why this kalpa tree, which rises higher than all other forests, was not broken down when all other trees on earth were leveled to the ground by the universal tornado?

16. Bhushunda replied:— O brahmin, my station in the open and empty air is quite unsupported, without any solid or fixed support. It is either unnoticed or looked upon with disregard and contempt by all. My living and livelihood are the most despicable among all living beings.

17. Thus has the Lord of beings appointed these aerial beings to remain free from disease and death in these forests, or fly about in empty air in their aerial course.

18. O venerable sage, then how can any sorrow or sickness befall us here? We are born to be immortal and rove freely in open air. We are free from those pains and sorrows which take the birds bound in traps of their own desires, hopes and fears.

19. Sage, I have always placed my reliance on the peace and contentment of my soul. I never allow myself to fall into the error of taking the unsubstantial for substantial.

20. I am quite content with what simple nature requires and affords. I am entirely free from those cares and endeavors that are attended with pain. I live only to pass my time in this, my lonely lodging.

21. I neither wish to entirely wallow in my bodily enjoyments nor desire death to avoid the retribution of my acts. I live as long as I have to live and will die when death comes upon me.

22. I have seen the changeful states of mankind, witnessed many examples of the changing fortunes of human affairs, and thereby have banished all sorts of restlessness from my body and mind.

23. By the constant light of my internal spirit, I am kept from the sight of all sorrow and grief. From my seat on the height of this kalpa tree, I clearly see the course of the world and the changes of time.

24. Though the changes of days and nights are not visible on the high heights of our heavenly mountain, yet I am not ignorant of the changing fortunes of the times and events in the solar and lunar worlds rolling constantly below us.

25. Though my home in the cell of this kalpa tree is always illuminated by the light of gems inlaid in it, yet I can know the course of time by the respirations of my breath, which like a chronometer informs me of the regular course of time.

26. Knowing what is real from all that is unreal, I have refrained from pursuing unrealities and settled in my knowledge of the true reality. By forsaking its natural unsteadiness, my mind is practiced to rest at all times in its perfect peace and tranquility.

27. I am not led to the snare of false worldly affairs, nor frightened like earthly crows in our yearning after food by the hissings of men.

28. By the serene light of the supreme joy of our souls and by the virtue of the unalterable patience of my mind, I look into the errors and delusions of the world without falling in them myself.

29. Great sage, know that our minds remain calm even under the shock of those dangers and perils which ruffle the tempers and understandings of ordinary people, just as pure crystal remains unstained by the blackest colors that surround it.

30. The course of the world appears very smooth and pleasant upon first glance, but as one goes on in it and upon mature consideration, it proves to be frail, unsteady and false.

31. Thus all living beings are seen to pass away. Whether they return here again or not, nobody can tell. Then what is it that we must fear?

32. As the course of streams runs continually to the ocean, so the progress of life tends constantly to the depth of eternity. But I, who stands on the border of the great ocean of eternity, have escaped from being carried away by the current of time.

33. I neither cling to my life nor fling it away, but bear it as well as I may. I remain like airy orchids, lightly touching and unattached to their supporting tree.

34. Moreover, the good of the best sort of men who are beyond the reach of fear, sorrow and pain, like yourself, has set us free from all sorts of malady.

35. From the examples of such persons, my mind has become cold and unconcerned about the affairs of busy life. It is employed only in scanning truth and the true nature of things.

36. My soul find its rest in its unchangeable and unperturbed state. It has the fullness of its light and delight, just as the sea has its floodtide at the rising of the full moon upon its bosom.

37. Sage, I am as highly pleased at your presence here at this time as the Milky Ocean overflowed when it was churned by Mandara Mountain.

38. Sage, I do not account anything as more precious and more favorable than holy saints who have nothing to desire should take pains to pay their kind visit to my humble cell.

39. What do we gain from our enjoyments that are pleasant for the time being, then lose their zest the next moment? Only the company of the great and good gives the best gifts like the philosopher’s stone.

40. You sage, who is cool and grave in your nature, and soft, sweet and slow in your speech, are like the beneficent bee that sits and sips the juice from the flowers in the three worlds and converts it into the sweet balm of honey.

41. I think, O spiritual sage, that all my sins are removed at your blessed sight. The tree of my life is blessed with its best fruit of spiritual bliss which results from the society of the virtuous whose taste removes all diseases and dangers.

✅
Chapter 6a.21 — Explanation of Bushunda’s Longevity; His Memories of the Past

1. Bhushunda continued:— This kalpa tree where we live remains firm and unshaken amidst the revolutions of ages and the blasts of all destroying cyclones and hurricanes.

2. This tree of desire is inaccessible to other people dwelling in all worlds. Therefore we reside here in perfect peace and delight without disturbance of any kind.

3. When Hiranyakha, the gigantic demon of the antediluvian race, strove to hurl this earth with all its seven continents into the lowest abyss, even then did this tree remain firm on its roots on the summit of this mountain.

4. When the mountainous home of the gods trembled with all other mountains of this earth, even then this tree remained unshaken on its firm basis.

5. When Narayana held the seat of the gods with two of his arms and lifted Mandara Mountain with the other two, even then this tree remained unshaken.

6. When the sun and the moon shook with fear at the tremendous warfare between gods and demons, and the whole earth was in a state of commotion and confusion, even then this tree stood firmly on its root.

7. When mountains were uprooted by hailstorms blowing with tremendous violence, sweeping away the huge forest trees of this Mount Meru, even then this tree was unshaken by the blast.

8. When Mount Mandara rolled into the Milky Ocean and gusts of wind filling its caves bore it afloat on the surface of the water, and great masses of flood clouds rolled about in the dome of heaven, even then this tree remained steadfast as a rock.

9. When this Mount Meru was under the grasp of Kalanemi who was going to crush it by his gigantic might, even then this tree remained steady on its roots.

10. When the spiritual masters were blown away by the flapping wings of Garuda, the king of birds, in their warfare with each other for this ambrosial food, even then this remained unmoved by the wind.

11. When the snake that upholds the earth was attacked by Rudra in the form of Garuda, who shook the world by the blast of his wings, even then this tree was unshaken by the wind.

12. When the flame of the last conflagration threatened to consume the world with its seas and mountains, and made the snake which supported the earth on his hoods throw out living fire from all his many mouths, even then this tree was neither shaken nor burnt down by the gorgeous and all-devouring fire.

13. Such being the stability of this tree, O sage, there is no danger that can take us here, just as there is no evil that can ever befall the inhabitants of heaven. How can I, O great sage, ever be exposed to any danger when I am situated in this tree which defies all casualties? I am out of all fear and danger as those who are situated in heaven.

14. Vasishta replied, “But tell me, O sagely bird who has borne the blasts of dissolution, how could you remain unhurt and unimpaired when many suns, moons and stars have fallen and faded away?”

15. Bhushunda said:— The order of the world and the laws of nature are broken and dissolved at the end of a kalpa period. Then I am compelled to forsake our nest as an ungrateful man alienates his best friend.

16. Then I remain in the air freed from my fancies, the members of the body become defunct of their natural functions, and the mind is released from its acts of willing.

17. When the zodiacal suns shine in their full vigor and melt down the mountains by their intense heat, I remain with my understanding under the influence of the power of the Varuna mantra.

18. When the doomsday flood winds blow with full force, shattering and scattering huge mountains everywhere, then by remembering the Parvati mantra I remain as fixed as a rock.

19. When the earth with its mountains is dissolved in water and presents the face of a universal ocean over its surface, then by virtue of the flying power of the Vayu mantra I keep myself aloft in the air.

20. Then I convey myself across this visible world and rest in the holy state of the spotless spirit. I remain in a state of profound sleep without any agitation of body or mind.

21. I remain in this mentally tranquil state until the lotus-born Brahma is again employed in his work of creation. Then I reenter into the limits of the re-created world, where I again settle on this tree of desire.

22. Vasishta said, “Tell me, O lord of birds, why don’t other yogis remain as steady as you by the fixed attention of your dhyana meditation?”

23. Bhushunda replied:— O venerable sage, the inseparable and overruling power of destiny that nobody can prevent or set aside dooms me to live this way, as it does others in their own particular modes of life.

24. None can oppose or remodel what must come to pass on him. It is nature’s law that all things must be as they are ordained to be.

25. Because of my firm desire things are so fixed and allotted to my share that they must so come to pass as my fate at each kalpa and over again, that this tree must grow on the summit of this mountain, and that I must have my nest in its hollow.

26. Vasishta said, “Sage, you are as long-lived as our salvation is lasting. You are able to guide us in the paths of truth because you are wise in true wisdom and calm in your purpose of yoga of deep meditation.

27. Sage, you have seen the many changes of the world, and have been experienced in all things in the repeated course of creations. You must be best able to tell me the wonders that you have witnessed during the revolution of ages.”

28. Bhushunda replied:— O great sage, I remember that the earth beneath this Mount Meru was once a desolate land without a hill, rock, trees, plants or even grass upon it.

29. I also remember the earth under me was full of ashes for a period of numberless centuries of years.

30. I remember a time when the lord of day, the sun, was unproduced, when the moon was not yet known, and when the earth under me was not divided by day and light but was lit by the light of this Mount Meru.

31. I remember this mountain throwing the light of its gems on one side of the valley below and leaving the other in utter darkness. It resembled Lokaloka Mount presenting its light and dark side to people on either side of the horizon.

32. I remember seeing war between gods and demons and the flight and slaughter of people on all sides of the earth.

33. I remember witnessing the revolution of the four yuga ages of the world, and the revolt of the haughty and giddy asuras all along. I also have seen Daitya demons driven back to the wall.

34. I remember the spot of the earth carried beyond the boundaries of the universal flood, and I recollect how the cottage of this world had only the uncreated three (Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva) left in it.

35. I remember seeing no other creature on earth except plants for the long duration of half of the four yuga ages.

36. I also remember this earth full of mountains for the space of four full yugas when there were no men on earth and their customs and usages had no ground in it.

37. I remember seeing this earth filled with the bones of dead Daityas and other fossil remains rising in heaps like mountains and continuing in their dilapidated and crumbling state for myriads of years.

38. I remember the formless state of the world when darkness prevailed over the face of the deep, when the serpentine support of the earth fled for fear, the celestials left their ethereal courses, and the sky presented neither a bird or a tree top.

39. I remember the time when the northern and southern divisions (of India), were both included under the one boundary mountain (of Himalaya). I remember also when the proud Vindhya Hills contended as equals with the great Mount Meru.

40. I remember these and many other events which will be too long to relate. But what is the use of long narrations if you listen to me describing the main substance in brief?

41. I have seen innumerable munis and primogenitors (manvantaras) pass away before me. I have known hundreds of the quadruple yugas glide away, one after the other, all of which were full of great deeds and events but which are now buried in oblivion.

42. I remember the creation in this world of one sole body named Virat, when the world was entirely devoid of men and asuras.

43. I remember that age of the world when brahmins were addicted to wine and drunkenness, when the shudras (the lowest caste) were cast out by the suras (gods), and when women had the privilege of marrying many men,

44. when the surface of the earth was one great sheet of water entirely devoid of any vegetation, and when men were produced without men knowing women.

45. I remember that age of the world when it was a void. There was no earth or sky or any of their inhabitants. No men and no mountains were in existence, nor were there the sun and moon to divide the days and nights.

46. I remember the sphere of heaven shrouded under a sheet of darkness when there was no Indra or other king to rule in heaven or earth, which had not yet its high and low and middle classes of men.

47. It was after that when Brahma thought of creating the worlds and divided them into the three spheres of upper, lower and intermediate regions. Then he settled the boundary mountains and distinguished Asia from the rest.

48. Then the earth was not divided into different countries and provinces, nor were there distinctions of caste and creed or institutions for the various orders of its people. Then there was no name for the starry frame or any name for the polar star or its circle.

49. It was then that the sun and moon had their birth and the gods Indra and Upendra had their dominions. After this occurred the slaughter of Hiranyakashipu and the restoration of the earth by the great Varaha, the boar-like incarnation of Vishnu.

50. Then there was the establishment of kings over the peoples on earth and the revelation of the Vedas given to mankind. After this Mandara Mountain was uprooted from the earth and the ocean was churned by the gods and giant races of men.

51. I have seen the birth of the garuda bird of heaven that bore Vishnu on his back. I have seen the seas breaking in bays and gulfs. I remember all these events as if they were the latest occurrences in the course of the world, like the memories of my youngsters and yourself likewise.

52. In former ages I have known the god Vishnu with his vehicle of garuda to have become Brahma with his vehicle of the swan, and the same transformed to Shiva having the bull for his vehicle, and vice-versa.

✅
Chapter 6a.22 — Further Memories of Past Ages, Gods and Scriptures

1. Bhushunda continued:— Moreover sage, I will tell you many other things that I remember occurred in the course of the world in bygone times. I remember the births of the seers Bharadwaja, Pulasta, Atri, Narada, Indra, the Marichis and you also.

2. I bear in my mind the venerable Pulaha, Uddalaka, Kratu, Bhrigu, Angiras, Sanatkumara, Bhringi, Ganesha, Skanda and others in their retinue who were known as the Master Rishis of yore.

3. I retain the memory of Gauri, Saraswati, Lakshmi, Gayatri and many more who are reckoned as the female personifications of divine attributes. I have seen the mountains Meru, Mandara, Kailash, Himalayas and the Dardura hills.

4. I carry in my memory the exploits of the demons Hiranyaksha, Kalanimi, Hayagriva, Hiranyakashipu, Vati and Prahlada and many others of the Danava and other demonic races.

5. I keep in my mind the memories of the renowned Sibi, Nyanku, Prithu, Vainya, Nala, Nabhaga, Mandhata, Sagara, Dilipa and Nahusa, kings of men and rulers of earth.

6. I know by heart the names of Atriya, Vyasa, Valmiki, Sukadeva, Vatsyayana and other sages, and the names of Upamanyu, Manimanki, Bhagiratha and other pious princes of old.

7. So there are many things of remote past times, and others of later ages, and some relating to the present time, all of which are imprinted in the memory. It is needless to recount them over again.

8. O sagely son of Brahma, I remember your eight births in the eight different epochs of the world. This is your eighth birth in which you have come as a guest to my nest.

9. At one time you were born of air, and at another of heavenly fire. One time you were produced from water, and at others from emptiness and of solid rock.

10. The constitution of created bodies conforms us to the nature of the principle elements of which they are formed. The positions of heavenly bodies have a great influence on their production. I have witnessed three such formations of the world composed of fiery, watery and earthly substances at different times.

11. I remember ten repeated creations in which the usages of people were uniform and alike and the gods were settled in their homes. They were contemporary with the asuras whom they braved in battle and were located in their homestead.

12. I saw the earth sinking five times under, and lifted up as many times from the ocean by the divine Kurma Manvantara, the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of the tortoise.

13. Twelve times I have witnessed the great battle of gods and demigods, uprooting and uplifting Mandara Mountain to churn out the last ambrosia from underneath the ocean.

14. Thrice I have seen the tyrant Hiranyaksha levy his tax upon the gods in heaven, hurling the fruitful earth with all her healing and medicinal plants underneath the ocean.

15. I saw Hari (Vishnu) come down six times in the shape of Renuka’s son, Parashurama, and remove the kshatriya warrior caste for very long periods.

16. O sage, I remember the return of a hundred Kali Yuga ages and a hundred incarnations of Hari in the form of Buddha and as the son of royal Suka or Suddhadana in the land of Kirata.

17. I bear in my memory the overthrow of the demon Tripura by Shiva thirty times, and the disruption of King Daksha’s yagna more than once by the angry Hara (Shiva). I recall the downfall of ten Indras by the offending god who bears the crescent moon on his forehead.

18. I recollect the battle fought eight times between Hari and Hara, and the first appearance of Vishnu and Shiva, and the cold typhoid fevers in these conflicts.

19. I remember, O silent sage, the difference in the intellects of men at every succeeding age and the various readings of Vedas at the ceremonial observances of mankind.

20. O sinless saint, the Puranas, though they agree in the main substance, are so full of interpolations that they have been greatly multiplied in successive ages.

21. I remember also many historical works composed in succeeding ages by authors learned in the Vedas.

22. I remember the wonderful composition of legendary accounts under the title of the Maharamayana, a work comprising one hundred thousand couplets (slokas) full of sound wisdom.

23. This work presents the conduct of Rama for the imitation of men and sets the misbehavior of Ravana as an example for the reproach of mankind. This teaching contains the essence of all wisdom and serves as the luscious fruit of the tree of knowledge placed in the hands of all people.

24. This work is composed by Valmiki, who in time will compose some others also. These you will come to know when they are presented to the world in time.

25. This work, whether it is a composition of Valmiki or of some other person, has been published twelve times and is now going to be almost forgotten by men.

26. The other work of similar importance is known under the name of Mahabharata. I remember it was first written by Vyasa, but it is becoming obsolete at present.

27. Whether it is the composition of a person known by the name of Vyasa or a compilation of some other person, up to this time it has undergone its seventh edition and is now quickly being forgotten.

28. I remember also, O chief of sages, many tales and novels and other scriptures composed in every age and yuga which have been written in a variety of styles and diction.

29. O good sage, I also remember having seen many new productions and inventions following one another in succeeding ages. It is impossible to enumerate this innumerable series of things.

30. I remember Lord Vishnu descending many times on earth to destroy ferocious rakshasa demons, and is now to appear here the eleventh time under the name of Rama.

31. I know Lord Hari (Vishnu) has come down three times in his form of the half lion half man Narasimha to thrash the demon Hiranyakashipu as many times like a lion killing an elephant.

32. Vishnu is yet to be born in his sixteenth incarnation at Vasudeva’s abode for the purpose of rescuing the earth from the burden of the oppression of its tyrant lords and despots.

33. This cosmic phenomenon is no reality, nor it is even in existence. It is only a temporary illusion. It appears like a bubble of water to disappear in the next moment.

34. This temporary illusion of phenomena rises and sets of its own accord in the conscious soul, just as boisterous waves rise and subside of themselves in the bosom of waters.

35. I have known the world to be sometimes uniform in its course and in its state of things. At others, there is a partial difference in their nature and order. At other times also, I observed total change take place in the constitution of things.

36. I remember the former nature and state of things, and the manner and actions of former people and the customs of those times. I saw them give room to others in their turn, and those again to be displaced by others.

37. O brahmin, every revolution of time (manvantara) is attended with a reversion in the course of the world. A new generation is born to supplant the old men of renown.

38. Then I have a new set of friends and a new retinue of relatives. I get a new batch of servants and a new house for my dwelling.

39. Sometimes I had to remain in my solitary retreat by the side of the Vindhya range, and sometimes on the ridge of Sahya Mountain. At other times I had my residence on the Dardura Hills, so my lodging is ever shifting from one place to another and never fixed in any spot forever.

40. I often have been a resident of the Himalayas, of Malaya Mountain in the south of India, then led by destiny, as I described before, I found my last abode on this Mount Meru.

41. By getting to it, I built my nest on the branch of a mango tree and continued to live there, O chief of the munis, for ages and time without end.

42. It is by my pristine destiny that this tree has grown here for my residence. Therefore, O sage, I can have no release from my body to come to my desirable end.

43. By appointment of predestination, the same tree has grown here in the form of the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree. It preserves its beauty even now as it did when my father Chanda was living.

44. Being thus preordained by destiny, I settled in this place when there was no distinction of the quarters of heaven as north or east, nor of the sky or mountain.

45. Then the north was on another side and this Meru was in another place. I was then one and alone, devoid of any form or body and bright as the essence which is never shrouded by the darkness of night.

46. After awaking from the unconsciousness of my trance, I saw and recognized all the objects of creation. I knew the locations of Meru and other hills and valleys from the positions of the stars and the motions of heavenly bodies.

47. The site of the polar circle of Meru and the course of the planets being changed in different creations, there follows an alteration of the points of the compass and a difference in the sides of the quarters. Therefore there is nothing as a positive truth except our conception of it as such and such.

48. The vibration of the soul displays these wonderful conceptions in the mind and excites the various phenomena in nature. It converts a son to a father and makes a son of the father. It represents friend as foe and again shows a foe in the light of a friend.

49. I remember many men became effeminate and many women grew quite masculine. I have seen the good manners of the Satya golden age prevail in the Kali Yuga iron age, and those of Kali gaining ground in its preceding ages.

50. I also have seen many men in the Treta and Dwapara Yugas ages of the world who were ignorant of the Vedas and unacquainted with their precepts. They followed the fictions of their own invention which led them to heterodoxy.

51. I also remember, O brahmin, the laxity of manners and morals among the gods, demigods and men since the beginning of the world.

52. I remember, after the lapse of a thousand cycles of the four yuga ages, that Brahma created from his mind some aerial beings of unearthly forms. These spiritual beings occupied a space extending over ten cycles of creations.

53. I remember likewise the varying positions and boundaries of countries, and also the very changing and diverse actions and occupations of their people. I remember too the various costumes and fashions and amusements of men during the ceaseless course of days and nights in the endless duration of time.

✅
Chapter 6a.23 — Bhushunda’s Fate to Survive Creations; Nothing Is as Precious as Knowing the Soul

1. Vasishta replied:— I then besought the chief of the crows, sitting on one end of a branch of the kalpa tree, to tell me how he avoided falling into the hands of death when all other animals moving about the expanse of the world are doomed to be crushed under its all-devouring jaws.

2. Bhushunda replied:— Sage, you know all things. Yet you would ask me to say what you know full well. Such bidding of my master emboldens your servant to speak out where he should otherwise hold his tongue.

3. Yet when you desire me to tell, I must do it as well as I can because it is considered the duty of a dependant to carry out the commands of their kind masters.

4. Death will not demolish the man who does not wear the pearl necklace of vicious desires on his chest, just as a robber does not kill a traveler who does not have the destructive chain of gold hanging on his breast.

5. Death will not destroy the man whose heart is not broken down by sorrows, whose breast is not sawed like timber by the friction of his sighs, and whose body is not ruined by toil like a tree by worms.

6. Death will not overtake the man whose body is not beset by cares, like a tree with poisonous snakes lifting their hoods above its head, and whose heart is not burnt by its anxieties, like wood by fire.

7. Death will not prey upon the person who is not weakened by the poison of anger and hatred, whose heart cave does not foster the serpent of greed in its darkness, and whose heart is not corroded by the sores of cares.

8. He is not carried away by the cruel hand of death whose body is not already fried by the fire of his resentment, which like the hidden heat of an undersea fire, sucks up the waters of reason in the reservoir of the mind.

9. Death will not kill the person whose body is not inflamed by the fiery passion of love, which like a wildfire consumes the hoarded grain of good sense, and like a pair of sharp scissors snips the heart strings of reason.

10. Death does not approach the man who puts his trust in the one pure and purifying spirit of God, and who has the rest of his soul in the refuge of the Supreme Soul.

11. Death does not lay hold of the person who is firm and calm in the same posture, who does not wander like a monkey from one tree to another, and whose mind is a foreign to unsteadiness.

12. Thus, when the mind is settled in the unalterable state of calm repose in its Maker, it is impossible for the evils and diseases of this world to overtake it at anytime.

13. The fixed and tranquil mind is never overtaken by the sorrows and diseases of the world, nor is it liable to fall into the errors and dangers that befall the restless mob here below.

14. The well composed mind has neither its rising nor setting, nor its recollection or forgetfulness at anytime or other. It has no sleeping or waking state, but has its heavenly revelry which is quite different from dreaming.

15. Distressing thoughts that take their rise from weakened desire and feelings of resentment and other passions, darkening the region of the heart and mind, can never disturb the serenity of those souls who have their repose in the Supreme Spirit.

16. He whose mind is absorbed in holy meditation neither gives away nor receives anything from others, nor does he seek or forsake whatever he has or has not at anytime. He does his duties always by rote as he ought without expectation of reward or merit.

17. He whose mind has found its repose in holy meditation has no cause to repent of any misdeed for his gain or pleasure at anytime.

18. He whose mind has met with the grace of God has enough gain, an excess of delight, and a good deal of every good.

19. Therefore employ your mind to what brings your ultimate good and lasting welfare, in which there is nothing of doubt or difficulty and which is exempt from false expectation.

20. Exalt your mind above the multiplicity of worldly possessions which the impure and unseen demon of evil presents to allure your heart. Settle your mind in the unity of God.

21. Set your heart to that supreme joy which is pleasant both in the beginning and end, delectable to taste, pleasant to sight, sweet to taste, and wholesome in its effect.

22. Fix your mind to what is sought by all good and godly people, which is the eternal truth and the best diet of the soul, from its beginning and during its course in the middle and end and throughout its immortality.

23. Apply your mind to what is beyond your comprehension, the holy light that is the root and source of all in which is all our best fortune and the ambrosial food for our souls.

24. There is nothing more permanent or auspicious among immortals or mortals, or among the gods, demigods, asuras, gandharvas, kinnaras and vidyadharas, or among the heavenly apsara nymphs, than the spiritual bliss of the soul.

25. There is nothing so very graceful or lasting to be found in cities and mountains, in the vegetable creation, among mankind and their kings, or anywhere in earth or heaven as this spiritual joy.

26. There is nothing steady or graceful among the naaga snake or asura demon races and their females, or in the entire infernal region.

27. There is nothing so lovely and lasting in the regions above, below, all around us, and in the spheres of all other worlds as lasting peace of mind.

28. There is nothing blissful or persistent in this world amidst all its sorrows, sicknesses and troubles which encompass all about. All our actions are for trivial matters and all our gains are only trifles at best.

29. There is nothing of any lasting good in all those thoughts that occupy the minds of men and gladden their hearts, and which serve at best to delude the wise to become unsteady in their spirits.

30. No permanent good is derived from the ever busy thoughts and desires of mankind, which at best tend to trouble their minds, as when the gods and demons used Mandara Mountain to disturb the waters of the deep.

31. No lasting good results to anybody from his continuous, various efforts to bring his gain and loss at the edge of the sword.

32. Sovereignty over the whole earth is not so great a boon, nor is one’s elevation to the rank of a god in heaven so great a blessing, nor even the exaltation of one to the position of the world supporting serpent is as great a gain as the sweet peace of mind of the good.

33. It is of no good to trouble the mind with its attention to all the branches of learning, nor is it of any advantage to employ one’s wits and enslave his mind to the service of another. It is of no use to anybody to learn the histories of other people when he is ignorant of himself and his own welfare.

34. It is of no good to live long under the trouble of disease and the sorrow of life. Life and death, learning and ignorance, heaven and hell give no advantage or disadvantage to anybody until there is an end of his desires within himself.

35. Thus these various states of the world and all worldly things may freely appear to the ignorant vulgar, but they afford no pleasure to the learned who knows their instability.

✅
Chapter 6a.24 — Bhushunda Describes Vital Air as the Living Principle

1. Bhushunda continued:— All things in the view of the wise being unstable, unprofitable and unpleasant to man, there is only one reality which is beyond all error and imperishable, which though present in all things and all places transcends the knowledge of all.

2. This essence is the Soul or Self and meditation on it removes all sorrow and affliction. It is also the destroyer of the false vision of the world which has affected every man and biased his understanding by long habit of thinking this phantom of his dream to be a sober reality.

3. Spiritual contemplation dawns in the clear atmosphere of an unpolluted mind and traverses the entire mind like sunlight destroying the darkness of all sorrows and false thoughts.

4. Divine meditation, unaccompanied by any desire or selfish view, penetrates like moonbeams through the darkness of the night of ignorance.

5. This spiritual light is easily obtainable by sages like you, and too difficult to be retained by brutes like ourselves. Because it is beyond all imaginable resemblance, it is known by the spiritual sages as the transcendent light.

6. How can a man of common understanding come to know the clear understanding of the meditative sage?

7. There is a little resemblance between this spiritual light and the intellectual light of philosophers, whose minds are enlightened by the cooling moonbeams of philosophy, just as the minds of inspired saints are illuminated with spiritual light.

8. Among the associates of spiritual knowledge, there is one particularly friendly to me which alleviates all my sorrows and advances my prosperity, and thus relates to the investigation of the vital breath which is the cause of life.

9. Vasishta said:— After speaking in this manner the sagely bird Bhushunda held his silence. I calmly spoke and asked my question by way of amusement, though I was full well acquainted with the subject.

10. I addressed him saying, “O you long living bird and remover of all my doubts, tell me truly, my good friend, what you mean by meditation of the vital breath?”

11. Bhushunda replied:— Sage, you are learned in the knowledge of Vedanta with sure answers for all questions about spiritual science. You are now joking with me, asking this question of me who is only a brute bird and an ignorant crow.

12. Or perhaps you may be testing my shallow knowledge of the subject with an idea to instruct me where my knowledge is imperfect. Either way, I have no objection.

13. Listen as I tell you something related to meditation on vital breath, which is the cause of my longevity and the giver of my spiritual knowledge.

14. Sage, this beautiful fabric of the body, supported upon the three strong pillars of the three humors and having nine doorways about it,

15. is the home of its owner, the haughty householder (egoism) who always dwells in it with his favorite consort, the subtle body (puryashtaka) and his dependants, the five subtle forms of matter (tanmatras) .

16. You well know the inside of this house, so I need not describe it. Its two ears are like its two upper story rooms. The two eyes are as its two windows, and the hairs on the head are like its thatched covering on the top of the house.

17. The opening of the mouth is the great doorway to the house. The two arms are like its two wings. The two sets of teeth are like strings of flowers hung on the gateway for decoration.

18. The organs of sense are the porters to this house, conveying sights, sounds, flavors and feelings to it. These are enclosed by the great wall of the body, and the two eyes keep watch on the tower of this edifice.

19. The blood, fat and flesh form the plaster of this wall, and the veins and arteries are the strings that bind the bamboo bones together. The thick bones are the big posts that uphold this fabric.

20. There are two tender nerves, the energy channels (nadis) called ida and pingala, which lie and stretch along the two sides of this building.

21. There are three pairs of lotus-like organs formed of soft flesh and bones, and these stretch up and down vertically in the body, attached to one stalk-like artery connecting them with one another.

22. The ethereal air inhaled through the nostrils supplies these lotus-form organs with moisture, like water poured on their roots, making them shoot out in soft leaflets that shake gently with the breath of air passing constantly through the lungs and nostrils.

23. The shaking leaves agitate the vital energy like moving leaves of the trees in a forest increase the force of air currents in the sky.

24. The inflated vital energy then passes in many ways through holes in the entrails inside the body, and extends and fills all the pores and canals of the frame from top to bottom.

25. Those who are skilled in pranayama, the science of vital energy, give them different names according to their course, such as the fivefold vital energies of prana, apana, samana, udana, and vyana.

26. All the vital powers reside in the triple lotus-form organ of the heart, and from there extend up and down and on all sides like beams from the moon.

27. These vital powers are employed passing in and out, taking in and letting out, rising and falling, and moving throughout the body.

28. The learned say that prana, the energy or air of life, is situated in the lotus-form organ of the heart and also has the power of moving the eyelids when they twinkle.

29. This power sometimes assumes the form of touch or the feeling of perception, and at others it takes the shape of breath by blowing through the nostrils. Sometimes it is seated in the stomach for digestive action, and often it gives utterance to speech.

30. What more shall I say, other than that it is our lord the air that moves the whole machine of the body, just as a mechanic models everything by means of his machinery.

31. Among these there are two principal airs, by name of prana and apana, which take their two different courses upward and downward. One is the breath of life and the other is the weakened that is let out.

32. It is by watching the course of these airs that I remain quietly at this place and undergo the changing fortunes of heat and cold, as is destined for the feathered tribe.

33. The body is a great machine and the two subtle energies are its indefatigable mover. It has the sun and moon, fire and moonlight, shining in the midst of its heart.

34. The body is a city and the mind is its ruler. The two airs are like the chariot and wheels of the body. Egoism is the monarch of this city, and the eight members are like so many horses attached to the car of the body.

35. Thus by watching the motion of those airs, I find the course of my life to be as interminable as the continuity of my breaths.

36. The vital airs serve the body in all its states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep. His days glide on imperceptibly who remains in his state of profound sleep.

37. These breaths of subtle energy divide into a thousand threads as they pass through the many canals of the body. They are as imperceptible as the white fibers inside the stalks of lotus plants.

38. By watching the constant course of vital airs, by attending to the continued course of time, by thinking of the interminable course of his breaths and the moments of time and the parade of his thoughts, and by attempting to restrain their course by the habit and practice of pranayama, one is sure to lengthen the duration of his life in this world and attain eternal life in the next.

✅
Chapter 6a.25 — Bhushunda on Pranayama: the Inward and Outward Breaths and the States in between (Samadhi)

1. Vasishta said:— Listen Rama. When the bird had said this much, I interrupted him and said, “Tell me, O ancient seer, how and what is the nature of the course of vital airs?”

2. Bhushunda replied:— O sage, how is it that you who knows everything should ask this question of me, as if in jest? But as you ask as this of me, I must tell you all that I know.

3. O brahmin, the vital breath by nature is a moving energy. It is always in motion. It pervades both inside and outside the bodies which its animates.

4. The apana emitting air is also a self motive power that is in constant motion, both inside and outside the living body in its downward or receding direction.

5. It is good for livings being to restrain these vital breaths, both in their waking and sleeping states. Now hear me tell you, O learned sage, how it is to be retrained for the best gain.

6. The internal vital energu (prana) extends from the lotus-like heart to the crevice in the cranium. The wise call its effort to come out (by the mouth and nostrils) exhalation (rechaka) .

7. The meeting of breaths twelve inches from and below the nostrils is called inhalation (puraka) .

8. Puraka is also when the breath passes from outside and enters the inner apana (downward breath; the abdomen) without any effort, filling the inside from the heart to the head.

9. When the apana air has subsided in the heart and prana breath does not circulate in the breast, it is called the state of holding the breath (kumbhaka) which is known only to yogis.

10. All these three sorts of breaths (inhale, hold and exhale) are perceived at the place where the apana takes its rise. This is twelve inches below and outside the tip of the nose.

11. Hear now, O great minded sage, what clear minded adepts have said about the natures of the ever continuing and effortless.

12. The air inhaled from twelve inches outside of the tip of the nose is called puraka (inhalation).

13. As the outer part of a pot planted in the earth appears to sight, so the downward breath apana stretching twelve inches outside the tip of the nose is perceptible to the yogi and is called kumbhaka by the learned.

14. The exhaling air which rises from the heart and extends to the tip of the nose is called the primary and external puraka (taking in) breath by adepts in yoga practice.

15. There is another (or secondary) external puraka air known to the wise which arises at the tip of the nose and extends twelve inches outside of it.

16. After the prana breath sets outside the nostrils, and before the apana downward breath has risen, this interval of the entire suspension of both is known as the state of perfect equalization, the external kumbhaka.

17. The air which breathes out in the heart or pulsates within it, without raising the apana breath, is called the external rechaka (exhalation) in the yoga system. Its knowledge confers perfect liberation to man.

18. The rechaka rising twelve inches is called the strong rechaka.

19. There is another kind of puraka (taking in) which is on the outside of the apana and when it stretches inside of the navel within, it is known under the names of kumbhaka and others.

20. The intelligent man who meditates day and night on the eightfold nature and course of prana and apana, the inhaling and exhaling airs, is not doomed to be reborn anymore in this miserable earth.

21. I have described the various courses of the vital airs or energies. Restraining this life force in the waking and sleeping states of man, whether sitting or waking, produces his liberation.

22. Though these energies are very fleeting in their natures, yet they are restrained by the good understanding of man, even when he is employed in work or eating.

23. However, a man who practices suppression of breathing (kumbhaka) cannot be employed in any action but must remain calmly in this act of suppression by giving up all external thoughts and actions.

24. A few days practice of this yoga, by renouncing all outward objects from the mind, enables a man to attain the state of his unity with the sole Being that is God.

25. Intelligent men have no fondness for worldly things, but bear an aversion to them like a holy brahmin has against sweet milk contained in a skin bag. They remain regardless of visible objects, their eyes closed against them like a blind man who takes no heed of outward appearances.

26. They are in possession of all, which is the sum total of what is to be had as the best gain. Whether they are awake, asleep, walking or sitting, they never lose sight of that true light which leads them to the other world.

27. Those who have obtained the knowledge of the course of his breathings have rid themselves of all delusion and rest quietly within themselves.

28. Whether intelligent people are employed in a busy life or sit inactive at home, they are always quiet and at rest by following the course of their breathing.

29. O brahmin, I know the exhaling breath rises from its source in the lotus-like heart and stretches twelve inches outside where it sets and stops.

30. The apana of inhaling breath is taken from the same distance of twelve inches and is deposited in the cup of the lotus situated in the human heart.

31. As the prana respiration is exhaled out in the air twelve inches from the heart, so the inhaled apana energy is taken into the heart from the same distance in the air.

32. The prana or exhaling breath runs towards the open air in the form of a flame of fire. The inhaled breath turns inward to the region of the heart and goes downward like a current of water.

33. The apana inhaled breath is like cooling moonlight refreshing the body from without. Prana exhalation resembles sunshine or a flame of fire warming the insides of the body.

34. Every moment the prana breath warms the region of the heart, like sunshine inflaming the sky. Then it burns the atmosphere before it by the exhalation of breath through the mouth.

35. Apana air is like the moonlight before the moon. Inhaled inward, it washes the sphere of the heart like a flood, then in a moment it refreshes the whole inside.

36. When the last phase of the moon, like apana inhaling breath, is swallowed by the sun of prana exhaling breath, it sees the Supreme Spirit and has no more cause for affliction.

37. So also when the last portion of the sun-like prana exhaling breath is swallowed by the moon-like apana inhaling breath, then Brahman visits inside and the soul is emancipated from further reincarnation in this world.

38. The prana exhaling breath assumes the nature of solar heat both inside and outside the body. Afterwards it becomes and remains like cooling moonlight.

39. The prana expiration forsakes its nature of the cooling moon and in a moment turns to assume the nature of the hot sun that dries and sucks up everything before it.

40. As long as the prana exhalation is not converted to the nature of the moon after forsaking its nature of the sun, it is considered unconditioned by time and place and free from pain and grief.

41. He who sees the seat of his soul in the mind situated within his heart and at the confluence of the sun-moon prana and apana breathings in the kumbhaka retained breath is no longer subject to be reborn and die.

41a He who feels the sun and moon of his prana and apana breaths ever rising and setting in the kumbhaka retained breath with his heart, truly sees the seat of his mind and soul placed at their confluence and is freed from further birth and death.

42. He truly sees the soul in its full light who beholds this bright sun (prana) shining in the sphere of his heart in conjunction with the rising and setting apana moonbeams in his mind.

43. This light never fades or grows faint at anytime, but dispels the darkness of the heart and produces the completion and perfection of the meditative mind.

44. As the dispersion of outward darkness presents the world to view, so the disappearance of inward obscurity gives out the light of the spirit before the mental sight.

45. The removal of intellectual darkness produces the liberation of the soul and shows the rising and setting sun of the vital breath vividly to view.

46. When the moon of the apana inspired breath sets in the cavity of the heart, the sun of the prana exhalation breath rises immediately to flow out of the heart.

47. The apana inhaled breath having set in the cell of the lotus-like heart, the exhaling breath of prana rises at that very moment to come out of it, just as the shadow of the night is dispersed when the bright sun of day ushers his light.

48. As the prana expiration expires in the open air, in a moment the inhaling breath rises and rushes, just as light having fled from the horizon is immediately succeeded by deep darkness.

49. Intelligent men know that the apana downward breath becomes extinct where the prana upward breath comes to be born, and prana is lost where apana takes its rise.

50. When prana breathing out has ceased and apana has its rise downward, then one supports himself upon the kumbhaka retained air and does not depend on two other passing breaths.

51. On completion of the apana breath in and before the rise of prana breath out, one relying on the kumbhaka air within himself is exempt from pain and sorrow.

52. By depending on the rechaka exhaled breath and practicing the suppression of kumbhaka breath sixteen inches from the apana, a man has no more to be sorry for anything.

53. By making the apana a receptacle of rechaka, filling the prana inside, and finding himself filled with the puraka all within his body, a man has no more to be born on earth.

54. When a man finds the perfect tranquility of his soul by subsidence of both prana and apana within himself, he no longer has to sorrow for anything whatever.

55. When a man reflects upon his prana breath overcome by apana air both inside and outside himself, and loses his thoughts of time and space, he has no more any cause for sorrow.

56. He who sees his prana breath devouring the apana air, both inside and outside himself, together with his sense of space and time, has no more his mind to be reborn on earth.

57. When prana is swallowed up by apana, or apana by prana, both inside and outside the adept, together with his thoughts of time and place,

58. then at that moment the yogi finds his prana set down and his apana to rise no more. Though the interval between the two is common to all animals, only yogis know it.

59. The kumbhaka suppression of breath taking place of itself on the outside is known as the divine state, but when it happens to occur inside without any effort on the part of the adept, it is said to be the state of the most supreme.

60. This is the nature of the Divine Soul and this is the state of Supreme Consciousness. This is the representation of the eternal spirit, and one who attains this state is never subject to sorrow.

61. Like fragrance in the flower, there is an essence dwelling within the vital energies and this is neither prana nor apana but the conscious soul which I adore.

62. As taste dwells in water, so is there an essence immanent in apana, and it is neither apana nor not apana but the intelligent soul which I adore.

63. At the end of the extinction of prana, and beyond the limit of the exhaustion of apana, and situated in the interval between the extremities of both of these, there is that which I always adore.

64. That which forms the breathing of breath and is the life of life, what is the support and bearer of the body, is the intellectual spirit which I ever adore.

65. That which causes the thinking of the mind and the reflection of the understanding, as also the egotism of egoism, is the conscious soul which I have learnt to adore.

66. That which contains and produces all things, which is all as everything is evolved from itself, and what is changed to all at all times, is that mind which I adore forever.

67. What is the light of lights, what is holiness and the holy of holies, and what is unchangeable in its nature, is the consciousness which I adore.

68. I adore that ray of pure intellectual light that rises at the juncture of the setting of the apana and springing up of the prana breath.

68a I adore that consciousness which moves around on the tip of the nose, at the point where the prana sets in and the apana has not yet taken its rise.

69. I adore the consciousness that rises at the time when both prana and apana breaths have stopped, and when neither of them has taken its rise.

70. I adore that consciousness which appears before the yogi and supports him when he has reached the setting of prana and apana breaths, both within and without himself.

71. I adore that consciousness which is force of all forces and rides in the car of prana and apana energy breaths, and when both energies are compressed in the heart of the yogi.

72. I adore the lord consciousness which is the kumbhaka breath in the heart and the apana kumbhaka on the outside, and a part of the puraka left behind.

73. I adore the essence of that consciousness which is attainable by concentration upon breath, and which is the formless cause of our intelligence of the natures of the prana and apana breaths, and also the motive principle of their actions.

74. I adore the essence of that consciousness which is the cause of causes and the main spring of the vibrations of vital energies, the giver of the joy derived from the vibrations of breath.

75. I adore that prime and Supreme Being Brahman who is worshipped by the gods bowing down before him, who makes himself known to us by his own power, and who is known by the particles of vital energies under the name of Spirit.

✅
Chapter 6a.26 — Bhushunda’s Self-Control and Spiritual Knowledge Are the Cause of His Longevity

1. Bhushunda continued:— This is the tranquility of the mind that I have attained by degrees through my meditation on the nature and course of vital energy in me.

2. I sit quietly at all times, my attention fixed at the movement of my breath. I never stir even for a moment from my meditative mood, though Mount Meru may shake under me.

3. Whether I am awake or asleep, or move about or remain unmoved in my seat, I am never without this meditation even in dream, nor does it slide a moment from my steadfast mind.

4. I am always calm and quiet, ever steady and calm in this ever varying and unsteady world. I always remain with my face turned inward in myself, fixed firmly on the object I have at heart.

5. The breeze may cease to blow and the waters may stop to flow, but nothing can prevent my breathing and meditation of them, nor do I ever forget to live without them.

6. By attending to the course of my inhaling and exhaling breaths, I have come to the sight of the soul and have thereby become freed from sorrow by seeing the prime Soul of all souls.

7. The earth has been sinking and rising repeatedly since the great flood, and I have been witnessing the submersion and immersion of things and the destruction and reproduction of beings without any change in the calmness of my soul and mind.

8. I never think of the past and future. My sight is fixed only on the present and my mind sees the remote past and future as ever present before it.

9. I am employed in the business that presents itself to me. I never care for their toil or their reward. I live as one in sleep and solely with myself.

10. I examine all that is and is not, and what we have or have not, and consider likewise all our desires and their objects. Finding them to be only frailties and vanities, I refrain from their pursuit and remain untroubled by their cares forever.

11. I watch the course of my inhalation and exhalation and behold the presence of the super excellent (Brahman) at their coming together. By this I rest satisfied in myself and I enjoy my long life without any sorrow or sickness.

12. I have no such ruinous thoughts of mortal men like “I got this boon now and I will get that beautiful thing later”, so I live long with no discomfort.

13. I never praise or disparage any act by me or others. My indifference to all concerns has brought me to this happy state of carefree longevity.

14. My mind is not elated by success or depressed by adversity, but preserves its self-control at all times, and this is what has brought this happy state on me.

15. I have relied upon my religious renunciation of the world and upon my apathy to all things at all times. I have also abandoned the desire of sensuous life and the objects of the physical senses, and these have set me free from death and disease.

16. O great muni, I have freed my mind from its faults of unsteadiness and curiosity, setting it above sorrow and anxiety. My mind has become deliberate, calm and quiet, and this has made me live long without sickness.

17. I see all things in an equal light, whether it be a beauty or a ghost, a piece of wood or stone, a straw or a rock, or whether it is air, water or fire. My self-control has made me sane and sound in every state of life.

18. I do not think about what I have done today or what I have to do tomorrow, nor do I become troubled under the fever of vain thoughts regarding past and future. This has kept me forever sound and sane.

19. I am not afraid of death, disease or old age, nor am I elated with the idea of possessing a kingdom. My indifference to anything good or evil is the cause of my long life and the soundness of my body and mind.

20. O brahmin, I do not regard anyone in the light of friend or foe, and this equality of my knowledge of all persons is the cause of my long life and lack of complaint.

21. I regard all existence as the reflection of the self-existent One who is all in all and without beginning or end. I know myself as consciousness and this is the cause of my longevity and lack of disease or decay.

22. Whether I get or give away anything, or walk or sit, or rise and breathe, or am asleep or awake, I never think of myself as the gross body but its pure consciousness, and this made me long lasting and durable forever.

23. I think of myself as quite asleep, and I believe this world with all its bustle to be nothing in reality, and this has made long-lived without decay.

24. I take the good and bad accidents of life occurring at their stated times to be all alike to me, like my two arms both of which are serviceable to me. This has made me long lived and imperishable.

25. With my fixed attention and the cool clarity of my mental vision, I see all things in their favorable light. I see all things as even and equal, and this view of them in the same light has made me lasting without any waste.

26. I never see my material body in the light of my ego, and this has made me undying and without decay.

27. Whatever I do or take as my food, I never take them to my heart. My mind is free from the acts of my body, and my freedom from action has caused my undiminished longevity.

28. O sage, whenever I come to know the truth, I never feel proud of my knowledge but desire to learn more about it. This increasing desire of knowledge has increased my life without life’s usual infirmities.

29. Though possessed of power, I never use it to do wrong or injure another. Though wronged by someone, I am never sorry. Though ever so poor, I never crave anything of anyone. This has prolonged my life and kept it safe and sound.

30. I see in these visible forms the consciousness that abides in all bodies. As I behold all these existent bodies in an equal light, I enjoy an undiminished longevity.

31. I am so composed in my mind that I never allow its faculties to be entangled in the snare of worldly desires and expectations. I do not allow these to touch even my heart, and this conferred on me the bliss of my unfading longevity.

32. I examine both worlds as two balls placed in my hands, and I find the nonexistence of the visible world as it appears to a sleeping man. The spiritual and invisible worlds appear fully open to my view, as the world does to a waking person, and my sight has made me as immortal as the world of immortality.

33. I behold the past, present and future as set before me. I see all that is dead and decayed, and all that is gone and forgotten as presented anew in my presence. This view of all keeps me alive and fresh to them alike.

34. I feel myself happy at others’ happiness and sorry to see the misery of other people. This universal fellow-feeling of mine with the welfare and grief of my fellow creatures has kept me alive and fresh at all times.

35. I remain as unmoved as a rock in my adversity and I am friendly to everyone in my prosperity. I am never moved by lack or affluence, and this steadiness of mine is the cause of my undiminished longevity.

36. The firm conviction that has laid hold of my mind, and which has made me live long without feeling sick or sorry for another, is that I am neither related nor belong to anybody, and that none is either related or belongs to me.

37. It is my belief that I am the one Ego with the world and with all its space and time, and that I am the same with the living Soul and all its actions. This faith of mine has made me long lived and undiminished.

38. It is my belief that I am the same Consciousness which shows itself in the pot and the picture, and which dwells in the sky above and in the woods below. My firm reliance has been on this full Consciousness and this has made me long abiding and free from disease.

39. It is thus, O great sage, that I live in the receptacle of the three worlds like a bee living in a lotus flower, and am famous in the world as the everlasting crow named Bhushunda.

40. I am destined to dwell here forever in order to behold the visible world rising and falling in tumultuous confusion in the infinite ocean of the immense Brahman, and assuming their various forms for all eternity like the waves of the sea at their alternate rise and fall.

✅
Chapter 6a.27 — Conclusion of the Story of Bhushunda

1. Bhushunda added, “O sage, I have described what I am and how I am situated at this place. Only because you commanded was I lead to the arrogance of speaking so much to one of superior intelligence.”

2. Vasishta replied, “O sage, it is a wonderful account that you have given of yourself. O excellent! It is a jewel to my ears and fills me with admiration.

3. Blessed are those great souls who have the good fortune to behold your most venerable person, which in respect of antiquity is next to none except the great grandfather of the gods, the lotus born Brahma himself.

4. Blessed are my eyes that are blessed this day with the sight of your holy person, and thrice blessed are my ears filled with the full recital of your sacred knowledge and all purifying wisdom.”

5. “In my wanderings all about the world, I have witnessed the dignity and grandeur of the great knowledge of gods and learned men, but never have I come to see anywhere so holy a seer as yourself.

6. It may be possible by long travel and search to meet with a great soul somewhere or another, but it is hard to find a holy soul like yourself anywhere.

7. We rarely come to find the grain of a precious pearl in the hollow of a lonely bamboo tree, but it is rarer still to come across a holy person like you in any part of this world.”

8. “I have truly achieved an act of great piety and sanctity having paid a visit to your holy shrine and seen your sacred person and liberated soul this very day.

9. Now please enter your cell and go well in this place. It is now the time of midday devotion and the duties of my noontide service call my presence to my heavenly seat.” Vasishta speaking:—

10. Hearing this, Bhushunda rose from his seat in the tree and held out a golden twig from the tree with his two fictitious hands.

11. The full knowing crow made a vessel with his beak and hands, filled it with the snow-white leaves, flowers and pistils of the kalpa plant, and put a brilliant pearl in it to be offered as symbol of respect (arghya) worthy of a divine sage.

12. Then the long-born, ancient bird took the arghya with some water and flowers and sprinkled and scattered them over me from head to foot with great veneration as when they adore the three-eyed god Shiva.

13. Then I said, “It is enough. You need not take the pains to walk after me.” So saying I rose from my seat like a bird stretching its wings to fly in the air.

14. Yet the bird followed me a few miles in the air, until I hindered his proceeding farther by compelling him to return after shaking our hands.

15. The chief of birds looked up for some time as I soared upward in my ethereal journey, then he returned with reluctance because it is difficult to part company from the good.

16. Then both of us lost sight of one another like the sight of the waves is lost after they sink down in the sea. Full with the thoughts of the bird and his sayings, I proceeded upward to meet the munis there. At last I arrived at the sphere of the seven stars of the Pleiades (the saptarshi, the seven rishis) where I was honorably received by my wife Arundhati.

17. It was two hundred years into the prior golden age (satya yuga) when I had been at Bhushunda’s and sat with him upon the tree on the summit of Sumeru.

18. Now, O Rama, that golden age has gone by and we are in the middle of the silver age (treta yuga) when you are born to subdue your enemies.

19. Only eight years ago I met with him again on the same mountain, and found him as sound and the same as I had seen him long before.

20. Now I have told you the whole of the exemplary character of Bhushunda. As you have heard it with patience, so should you consider it with diligence and act according to his sayings.

21. Valmiki says:— The man of pure heart who well considers the story of virtuous Bhushunda will undoubtedly pass over the unstable gulf of this world full of formidable dangers on all sides.

✅
Chapter 6a.28 — The Body, like Creation, Is a Reflection of the Mind

1. Vasishta said:— I have told you, O sinless Rama, the story of Bhushunda who had passed over the perilous sea of delusion by means of his intelligence and wisdom.

2. Keeping this example in mind and following his practice of breath control (pranayama), O mighty armed Rama, you also will pass over the wide ocean of this hazardous ocean.

3. As Bhushunda obtained the obtainable One by means of his knowledge and by virtue of his continued practice of yoga, you also strive to gain the same by imitating his example.

4. Men of understanding may attain the stability of Bhushunda and his reliance on the transcendental truth by practicing pranayama, restraining of their breath.

5. You have heard me tell you many things about true knowledge. Now it depends on your own understanding and choice to do as you like.

6. Rama replied, “Sage who is the luminous sun of spiritual light on earth, at once you have dispelled the thick gloom of unspiritual knowledge from my mind.

7. I am fully awake and joyful in my divine knowledge. I have entered into my state of spirituality. I have known the knowable and I am seated in my divine state like yourself.”

8. “The wonderful life of Bhushunda that you have described fills me with admiration, and it is instructive of the highest wisdom.

9. In the account you gave of Bhushunda, you said that the body is the abode of the soul and that it is composed of flesh and blood, inner bones and outer skin.

10. Sage, please tell me who made this body and how it came to be formed? How it is made to last and who abides inside?”

11. Vasishta answered:— Rama, now listen to what I will explain to you for the instruction of supreme knowledge, and also to remove the evils that have taken root instead of true knowledge.

12. This dwelling of the body that has bones for its posts, blood and flesh for its mortar, and the nine holes for so many windows, is built by no one.

13. It is a mere reflection. It reflects itself to our vision just as the illusion of two moons in the sky is both real and unreal.

14. It may be right to speak of two moons from their double appearance, but in reality there is only one moon and the other is its reflection.

15. Belief that the body exists makes it a reality. The unreal seems as real and therefore it is said to be both real and unreal at the same time.

16. Anything seen in a dream is true as a dream, and appears to be so in the state of dreaming, but afterwards it proves to be untrue. A bubble of water is true as a bubble, which comes to be known afterwards as false in reality.

17. The body seems to be substantial as it does its bodily actions, but proves otherwise when we see only the essentiality of the spirit. In the same way, the reflection of the sun on the sandy desert makes a mirage appear like water, whose reality proves to be unreal the next moment.

18. The body existing as a reflection disappears the next moment. It is nothing more than a reflection, and so it reflects itself.

19. It is your error to think that you are the material body made of flesh and bones. The inner thought of your mind situated in the body makes you think you are “so and so” and “such a one”.

20. Therefore forsake the body that you build for yourself at your own will. Do not be like those who transport themselves to various countries while they are sleeping in their pleasant beds.

21. O Rama, see even in your waking state how you transport yourself to the kingdom of heaven in the fanciful reverie of your mind. So tell me then, where is your body situated?

22. Tell me Rama, where is your body situated when your mind wanders on Mount Meru in your dream, and when you dream to ramble with your body about this earth?

23. Rama, think how you seem to be aimlessly walking about the rich domains in the fancied kingdom of your mind, and tell me whether you are there with your body or if is it left behind.

24. Tell me, where is that body of yours situated when you think of doing many of your bodily and worldly acts in the fancied kingdom of your mind?

25. Tell me, O strong armed Rama, where is your body located when you are thinking about flirting and caressing your loving courtesans in the court of your painful mind?

26. Where is your body with which you seem to enjoy everything? Enjoyment belongs to the mind and not to the body. Both of them are real as well as unreal owing to their presence at one time and absence at another.

27. The body and the mind are present simultaneously with their actions when they participate with one another in their acts. Therefore it is false to say that, “I am this body situated here and these things are mine,” all of which are illusory and caused by illusion.

28. All this is the manifestation of the will or energy of the mind. You must know it either as a long dream or lengthened fallacy of the mind.

29. Know, O son of Raghu’s race, that this world is a display of the vast kingdom of your imagination. It will vanish into nothing when you come to good understanding by the grace of your god.

30. Then you will see the whole as clearly as the light of the rising sun, and you will know this would is like a creation of your dream.

31. This world is a display of the will of the lotus-born Brahma, as I have said before at length in the book of creation.

32. A willful creation arises of itself in the mind as if it were so ordained by destiny. The mind, being fully possessed of the great variety of forms, becomes lost in the error of taking them for true.

33. The world is only a creation and a display of the will just like the fancied mental fabrication of being Brahman possessed the minds of the ten sons of Indu.

34. After the soul has passed from its former form, it receives the same form that it had in the fancy of its mind, which is either what it had been long accustomed or what it fondly longed in the mind.

35. The body shows itself in the form shaped by a person’s prior acts. By the courageous efforts of some, the body can also be shaped by the intellect.

36. He who thinks he is another is transformed into that nature. The thought that you are this or that, and have this thing or others for yourself, is what actually makes you so in this world.

37. Whatever is thought upon keenly and firmly comes to take place accordingly. Whatever is thought of with intensity and great force must occur in a short time.

38. Every day we see the objects of our desire presenting their fair forms to our view like the attractive faces of our beloved ones, just like sights in a dream and distant objects are recalled in the minds of men with their closed or half-shut eyes.

39. This world is said to be a creation of the thoughts of men. It appears to sight from habitually thinking of it, just like the sights in a dream appear to the mind in daytime.

40. The temporary world appears to be as lasting as the river which appears in the sky under burning sunshine.

41. This nonexistent earth also appears as existent in our thought, just as bundles of peacock’s feathers appear in the sky to the weakened eye lacking insight.

42. Only weakened understanding dwells upon the beauties of creation, just as weakened eyesight looks upon the various colors in the sky. But to the clear sighted, understanding the beauty of creation is as fleeting as colors in the sky are to the clear sighted eye.

43. The sharp sighted man is never led away by the display of worldly grandeur, just as even the most timid man is never afraid of a tiger in his imagination.

43a This great show of worldly grandeur can never mislead the penetrating sight of the wise, just as a monstrous creature of imagination cannot terrify even the most timid.

44. The wise man is never afraid of his imaginary world which he knows to be the production of his own mind’s nature of self-evolution.

45. He who has walked in the path of this world need not fear anything in it. He who is afraid of the world for fear of falling into its errors should learn to purify his understanding.

46. Rama, know that the soul is free from the false conception of the world, and free from the errors which pervade all over it. Look well into these things and you will have a nature as pure as your inner soul.

47. The soul is not soiled by impurity, just as a pure gold is not spoiled by dirt. Though gold sometimes may appear tarnished like copper, it soon resumes its color after its dirt is cleansed or burnt away. Thus the world being a reflection of the omnipresent Brahma, it is neither an entity nor a nonentity of its own nature.

48. Thus the abandonment of all thoughts other than of the Universal Soul, Brahman, is called the true discernment of the mind. Such abandonment makes thoughts of life and death, and heaven and hell into nothing, and proves all such knowledge to be only ignorance.

49. The knowledge that everything is only the reflection of Consciousness is called the right discernment of the mind which removes the thoughts of a separate, independent existence of the ego and “you” and also of this world and its ten sides.

50. True and right discernment of the mind means knowing all things to be only reflections of the soul. This knowledge is derived from the mind’s observation of the true nature of things in this real and unreal world.

51. That nothing rises, sets, appears or disappears in this world is what the mind perceives by its right discernment of things and by its investigation into the true and apparent natures of all.

52. Right discernment gives the mind its peace and tranquility, its freedom from all desires, its indifference to joy and grief, and its indifference to all praise and criticism.

53. The mind comes to find this truth of mortality as the cooling salve of the heart: that we and all our friends and relations in this world are doomed to die one day or another.

54. So why should we lament at the death of our friends when it is certain that we must die sooner or later?

55. When we are destined to die, and we have no power to prevent it, then why should we be sorry for others for something we cannot prevent?

56. It is certain that anyone who has come to be born in this world must have some state and property for his support, but what is the cause of rejoicing about it?

57. All men dealing in worldly affairs gain wealth with labor and pain only for their trouble and danger. Therefore, what is the reason for yearning at its want or lamenting at its loss?

58. These spheres of worlds enlarge, expand and rise to our view like bubbles of seawater that swell and float and shine for a time, then burst and subside in the waters of eternity.

59. The nature of reality is real at all times. The condition of the unreal world is insubstantial forever and can never be otherwise or real, though it may appear as such for a time. Then why sorrow for what is nothing and unreal?

60. I am not of this body nor was I in it, nor shall I remain in it, nor is it anything, even at present, except a picture of the imagination. Then why lament its loss?

61. If I am something else besides this body, that is a reflection of pure consciousness. Then tell me, what use are these states of reality and unreality to me, and where shall I rejoice or regret?

62. The sage who is fully conscious in himself of the certainty of this truth does not feel any rise or fall of his spirits at his life or death, nor does he rejoice or wail at having or losing his life.

63. Because after the loss of his gross body, he gains his residence in the transcendental state of Brahman, spiritual existence, just like a little titter bird builds its new nest of tender blades after its previous grassy home is broken down or blown away.

64. Therefore we should never rely on our frail and fragile bodies, but bind our souls to the firm rock of Brahman by the strong rope of our faith, just like they use a strong rope to tie a bull to a post.

65. Having thus ascertained the certainty of this truth, place your faith in the reality of your spiritual essence. By giving up reliance on your frail body, manage yourself with detachment in this unreal world.

66. Adhere to what is your duty here and avoid whatever is prohibited to you. Proceed on your course with an even course of action your mind.

67. He who shuts out the reflections of all worldly objects from his view gets a cool composure of his mind like the coolness at the close of a hot summer day.

68. Look on this universe, O sinless Rama, as one common display of Divine light, like the appearance of daylight which is common to all. The mind colors it with various forms like sunbeams reflecting differently off of different objects.

69. Forsake all reflections. Be without any impression in your mind. Be of the form of pure intellectual light which passes through all without being contaminated by any.

70. You will be quite stainless by your dismissal of all colors and appearances from your mind, and by thinking of yourself as nothing without any true enjoyment in this world.

71. These phenomena are nothing in reality. They show themselves to us only for our delusion. You also will appear as nothing when you think everything is only a display of Divine Consciousness.

72. In addition, the understanding that these phenomena are not false, but they do not lead to our illusion because they are the manifestation of Supreme Consciousness, is also very true and leads to your enlightenment.

73. It is for your good, Rama, if you know either of these (whether the world is real or unreal, it is all a display of the mind) because both of these views will tend equally to your joy.

74. Conduct yourself in this manner, O blessed Rama, and gradually lessen all your affections and dislikes in this world for all worldly things.

75. You can obtain all that exists in this earth, sky and heaven by renouncing of your eager desires and hatreds.

76. Whatever a man endeavors to do with his mind free from his fondness or hatred for it takes place shortly, unlike the attempts of the ignorant.

77. No good quality can have its abode in a heart troubled by waves of faults, just as no male deer will set foot on burning sands or in wildfires.

78. What is there that cannot be acquired in the heart where the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree grows and which is not infested by the snakes of ardent desires or dislikes?

79. Men who are wise and discreet, learned and attentive to their duties, and at the same time influenced by feelings of love and hatred are no better than jackals in human shape. They are accursed with all their qualifications.

80. Look at the effects of these passions on men. They lament others’ use of their wealth and having to leave their hard earned money behind them.

81. All our riches, relatives and friends are as transitory as passing winds. Then why should a wise man rejoice or lament at their gain or loss?

82. All our gains and wants and enjoyments in life are mere illusion (maya) spread by divine power like a net over creation, entrapping all in it.

83. There is no wealth or any person that is real or lasting to anyone in this temporary world. It is all frail and fleeting, stretched out to sight like a fake magic show.

84. What wise man will place his attachment on anything which is an unreality both in its beginning and its end, and is quite unsteady in between? No one has any faith in the tree of his imagination or a castle built in the sky.

85. One fancies seeing a fairy in a passing cloud and is pleased with the sight of what he can never enjoy but only passes by his view to be seen by distant peoples. It is the same with this passing world which passes from the sight of some to that of others without anyone fully enjoying or possessing it for any length of time.

86. The bustle of these fleeting bodies in the world is like the commotion of a castle in the sky, or the appearance of a city in an fleeting dream and fancy.

87. I see the world as a city in my protracted dream, with all its movable and fixed objects lying as quietly and as still as in profound sleep.

88. Rama you are wandering in this world like one rolling in his bed of indolence, lulled to the long sleep of ignorance which leads you from one error to another as if dragged by a chain of continuous dreaming.

89. Rama, break off your long chain of lazy ignorance. Forsake the idol of your errors. Lay hold of the inestimable gem of your spiritual and divine knowledge.

90. Return to your right understanding and, like an unfolding lotus beholds the rising sun, behold your soul in its clear light as a manifestation of the unchangeable luminary of Consciousness.

91. I repeatedly urge you, O Rama, to wake from your drowsiness, and by remaining ever wakeful to your spiritual concerns, see the un-decaying and un-declining sun of your soul at all times.

92. I have roused you from your lazy state of rest and awakened you to the light of your understanding by the cooling breeze of spiritual knowledge and the refreshing showers of my elegant diction.

93. Rama, do not delay enlightening your understanding even now. Attain your highest wisdom in the knowledge of the Supreme Being. Come to the light of truth and shun the errors of the delusive world.

94. You will no longer be subject to any more birth or pain, nor will you be exposed to any error or evil, if you will only remain steady in your soul by forsaking all your worldly desires.

95. O high minded Rama, remain steadfast in your trust in the tranquil and all-encompassing soul of Brahman in order to attain the purity and holiness of your own soul. Thereby you will be freed from the snare of your earthly desires and get a clear sight of that true reality in which you will rest in perfect security, as if in profound sleep.

✅
Chapter 6a.29 — The World Full with Supreme Soul; Shiva Explains the Best Way to Worship God

1. Valmiki relates:— Hearing the sage’s discourse, Rama remained calm with his mind unconsciousness, his spirits tranquil, and his soul full of bliss.

2. The entire audience being quiet, calm and silent, the sage withheld his speech for fear of disturbing their spiritual repose.

3. The sage stopped distilling the drops of his ambrosial speech after the hearts of the audience were lulled to rest by their draughts, just as the clouds cease to drop rain after they penetrate the hearts of ripened grains.

4. After a while, as Rama and the rest were roused from their mental inactivity, the eloquent Vasishta resumed his discourse to explain his former lecture.

5. Vasishta said:— Rama, now you are fully awakened to light and have attained knowledge of yourself. Hence forward remain fixed to the only true object on which you must place your faith. Never set your feet on the field of the false phenomenal world.

6. The wheel of the world is continually revolving round the center of desire. Put a peg in its axis and it will stop from turning about its pole.

7. If you are slack fastening the hub of your mind by your heroic efforts, it will be hard for you to stop the wheel of the world which runs faster the more you slacken your mind.

8. Exert your heroic courage with the aid of your mental powers and wisdom. Stop the motion of your heart which is the center of the wheeling course of the world.

9. Know that everything is obtainable by means of courageous effort joined with good sense and good nature and assisted by a knowledge of the scriptures. Whatever is attained by these cannot be attained by any other means.

10. Relinquish your reliance on destiny which is a creation of childish imagination. Rely on your own efforts and govern your heart and mind for your lasting good.

11. The unsubstantial mind which appears to have substance has had its rise since the creation of Brahma. It has taken a wrong and false course of its own.

12. The unreal and false mind weaves and stretches out a lengthening web of its equally unreal and false conceptions, which afterwards leads the mind to mistake it for a substantial world.

13. All these bodies seen to move around us are the products of the fancies and fond desires of the mind. Though these frail and false bodies cease to exist forever, yet the mind and its wishes are imperishable, showing themselves either in the mind’s reproductions in various forms, or they become altogether extinct in their total absorption in the Supreme Spirit.

14. A wise man is not led away by seeing the pain or pleasure of the soul on the face of man. A sorrowful and weeping face is the indication of pain, and a cheerful and tearless face is the sign of pleasure.

15. You see a man in two ways, one with his body and the other his representation in a picture or statue. Of these the former kind is more frail than the latter because the embodied man is beset by troubles and diseases in his fading, moldering, decaying and dying body, whereby the other is not.

16. The fleshy body is assuredly doomed to die in spite of all our efforts for its preservation, but a body in a portrait being taken good care of, lasts for ages with its undiminished beauty.

17. As the living body is sure to die despite all your care for it, the pictured body must be considered far better than the false and fancied fleshy body produced by will of the mind.

18. The quality and stability that abide in a pictured body are not to be found in the body of the mind. Therefore the living body of flesh is more insignificant than its image in a picture or statue.

19. Think now, O sinless Rama, what reliance is there in this body of flesh, a production of your long fostered desire and a creature of your brain?

20. This body of flesh is more contemptible than those ideal forms which our dreams and desires produce in our sleeping and waking states because the creature of a momentary desire is never attended with long or lasting happiness or misery.

21. The bodies produced by our long desire continue for a longer time and are subjected to a longer series of miseries in this world.

22. The body is a creature of our fancy, neither a reality nor an unreality in itself. Yet ignorant people are fondly attached to it, only to prolong their misery.

23. As the destruction of a man’s portrait does no harm to him, and as the loss of an imagined city is no loss to the city, so the loss of anyone’s much desired body is no loss to him in any way.

24. Again, as the disappearance of the moon’s halo is no deprivation of the moon itself, and as the fleeting passing of a dream world does not annihilate the external world,

25. and as the disappearance of water from the sunny banks of rivers is no deprivation of the river’s water, so the creations of fancy which are not negative in their nature cannot destroy what is positive or do any damage to the machine of the body, and can never injure the disembodied soul.

26. The body is a piece of work created by the architect of the mind in its dreaming sleep walking over the sleeping world. Its decoration or disfigurement is of no essential advantage or disadvantage to the inner soul.

27. There is no end of Consciousness in its extent, or any motion of the soul from its place. There is no change in the Divine Spirit of Brahman, nor do any of these decay with the decline of the body.

28. In its delirium, the inner core of the mind sees spheres over spheres revolving in empty air, like an inner, smaller wheel making an outer, larger wheel turn about it.

29. By its primitive and causeless error, the mind views the constant rotation of bodies both inside and outside of it. Some are moving forward, others are falling down, and many have dropped below.

30. Seeing the rise and fall of these rotating bodies, a wise man must rely on the firmness of his mind and not allow himself to be led away by these repeated successive rotations.

31. Fancy forms the body and error makes the unreal appear as real. The formations of fancies and the fabrications of untruth cannot have any truth or reality in them.

32. The unreal body appearing as real is like the appearance of a snake in a rope. All the affairs of the world are quite untrue and false, appearing as true only for the time being.

33. Whatever a person does unawares is never accounted as the person’s own action. Hence everything done by senseless bodies is not considered as done by them.

34. Will is the active agent of its actions, and this being so, neither the inactive body nor the unchanging soul is the actor of any action.

35. The inert body has no will or effort, so it never is the doer of any act desired by its presiding soul. It is only from the perspective of the soul viewing the action that sees it so.

36. Like the still flame of a lamp burning in still air, the silent and steady soul dwells as a witness to all things and acts that exist and go on in the world.

37. The celestial, luminous orb of the day regulates the daily works of the living world from his seat on high. In the same way, O Rama, administer the affairs of your state from your elevated seat on the royal throne.

38. Thinking one’s being or ego resides in the body is like children seeing ghosts in empty space.

39. The learned are at a loss to explain how unsubstantial ego, which is like an empty ghost, takes possession of the inner body under the name of mind.

40. Never enslave yourself, O wise Rama, to this ghost of your egoism which like a ghostly light leads you to a limbo lake or a bog of hell.

41. The mad and giddy mind, with its capricious desires and whims, plays its foolish pranks in its home in the body like a hideous demon dancing in a dreary desert.

42. The demonic mind, having made its way into the hollow heart of the human body, plays its fantastic parts in such an odd manner that wise men shut their eyes against the sight and sit in their silent contemplation of the secluded soul.

43. After the demon of the mind is driven out, there is no more fear for anyone. All can peacefully dwell in the body as nobody is afraid of living in a deserted and desolate city.

44. It is astonishing that men should place any reliance on their bodies or consider them as their own when they have had thousands of such bodies in repeated prior births, and when they invariably were infested by the demon of the mind.

45. They who die in the grasp of the cannibal of the mind have minds like those of pisacha cannibals in their future births, and never of any other kind of being.

46. The body possessed by the demon of egoism is consumed by the fires of the triple afflictions of local, natural and accidental evils. It is not to be relied upon as anyone’s safe or lasting abode.

47. Therefore, stop dancing with your mind and cease following the dictates of your individual, selfish ego. Let you mind be extended and elevated by forgetting your individual ego in your magnanimity. Rely only on the Supreme Spirit.

48. Hellish people, seized and possessed by the devils of ego, are blinded in their self-delusion and giddiness. They are abandoned by their fellows and friends, just as they are unfriendly to others in this world.

49. Whatever action is done by one bewitched by his ego grows up like a poisonous plant and produces the fatal fruit of death.

50. An ignorant man elated by his egoistic pride is lost both to his reason and his patience. One who is attached to the former by his neglect of the latter is quickly approaching his destruction.

51. The simpleton seized by the devil of egoism is made into fuel for the fires of hell.

52. When the snake of egoism hisses hard in the hollow heart of the tree of the body, it is sure to be cut down by the relentless hand of death who like a wood cutter fells the harmful tree to the ground.

53. O Rama who is the greatest among the great, never look at the demon of egoism, whether it may reside in your body or not, because the very look of it is sure to delude anyone.

54. If you disregard, deride or drive away the demon of egoism from the recess of your mind, there is no damage or danger that it can ever bring upon you in any way.

55. Rama, though the demon of egoism may play all its freaks in its abode of the body, in no way can it affect the soul which is quite aloof of it.

56. Egoism brings a great many evils upon those who have their minds weakened by its influence. It requires hundreds of years to count and recount their harmful effects.

57. Rama, the despotic power of egoism makes men groan under its bondage, constantly uttering piteous exclamations, “We are dying and burning” and such other bitter cries.

58. The soul is free to wander everywhere without having any connection with anyone’s ego, just as the ubiquity of the all pervading sky is unconnected with anything in the world.

59. Whatever is done or taken in by the body in its connection with the airy thread of life, all this is the doing of egoism which empties and impels the body to all its various actions.

60. The quiet and still soul causes all the efforts of the mind, just as the inactive vacuum is the material cause of the growth of trees.

61. Owing to the presence of the soul, the mind develops itself in the form of the body and all its members, just as the presence of light makes a room display its contained objects to sight.

62. Rama, think about the relationship between the ever unconnected soul and mind. It resembles the lack of relation between the disconnected earth and sky, or between light and darkness, or between consciousness and gross bodies.

63. Those who are ignorant of the soul see the mind as quiet after its motion and fluctuation are stopped by pranayama restraint of respiration.

64. But the soul is selfluminous, everlasting, omnipresent and super-eminent. The mind is deceptive and the ego is situated in the heart with too much pride and vanity.

65. In reality you are the all-knowing soul and not the ignorant and deluded mind. Therefore drive away your delusive mind from the seat of the soul because mind and soul can never meet or agree.

66. The mind, like a demon, has also taken possession of the empty house of the body. Like an evil spirit, the mind has silenced and overpowered the intangible soul in it.

67. Whatever you are, remain only quiet in yourself by driving away the demon of your mind, because it robs you of your best treasure of patience and loads all kinds of evils upon you.

68. A man seized by the hungry yaksha demon of his own mind has no chance for any release from the demon’s grasp, either by the lessons of the scriptures or by the advice of his friends, relatives and teachers.

69. A man who has appeased the demon of his mind is capable of being released from its clutches by scriptures and friends just as it is possible to free a deer from a shallow quagmire.

70. All things seen stored in this vacant city, the empty world, are all polluted by the cravings of the mind that licks them from inside the house of its body.

71. Tell me, who is not afraid in this dreary wilderness of the world, infested in every corner by the demonic mind?

72. There are some wise men in this city of the world who enjoy the abodes of their bodies in peace, having tranquilized the demon of their minds.

73. Rama, all the countries that we hear of in any part of the world are found to be full of senseless bodies in which the giddy demons of delusion reside in the cemetery that is the body.

74. Let people rely on their patience and reconsider their souls by their own efforts. Otherwise they will wander about in the forest of this world like lost children.

75. Men wander in this world like herds of male deer in burning deserts. But Rama, take care never to live content grazing on dry grass like a young and helpless deer.

76. Foolish men graze like a young male deer in their pastures in the wilderness of this world. But you, Rama, must stir yourself to kill the great elephant of ignorance and pursue the courageous course of subduing everything in your way.

77. Do not allow yourself, O Rama, to ramble about like other men who wander like senseless beasts in their native forests of Asia.

78. Do not sink yourself like foolish bullocks in the mud of your relatives and friends. For a while it appears to you like a cold bath, but then it daubs you with its mud and mire.

79. Drive away your desire of bodily enjoyments and follow the steps of respectable men. Having well considered the sole object of your soul, attend to your soul only.

80. It is not proper that you should plunge yourself into a sea of intolerable cares and troubles for the sake of your impure and frail body, which is only a trifle compared to the inestimable soul.

81. The body of the ignorant is the product of one thing and is possessed by another which puts a third one to the pain of its support and affords its enjoyment to a fourth one, all like a complicated machinery of many powers.

82. As solidity is the only property of stone, so the soul has the single property of its being. The existence of the soul being common in all objects, it is impossible for anything else to exist beside it.

83. As thickness is the property of stone, so the mind and others are only properties of the soul. There is nothing distinct from the common entity of the soul. It is impossible for anything to have a separate existence.

84. As density relates to the stone and dimension bears relation to the pot, so the mind and all other things are not distinct from one common existence of the soul.

85. Hear another view of spiritual light for dispelling the darkness of delusion, as it was revealed to me in a cave of Mount Kailash.

86. There is a mountain peak, bright as the collected mass of moonbeams and penetrating the dome of heaven, where the god with the crescent moon on his forehead (Shiva) delivered this doctrine to me to ameliorate the miseries of the world.

87. This mountain peak, famed by the name of Kailash, is the dwelling of the consort of Gauri, the god Hara who wears the crescent moon on his head.

88. Long ago I once dwelt on that mountain to worship this great god. I constructed my hermit-cell on the bank of the holy stream of Ganges.

89. I remained there practicing ascetic austerities and performing my holy tapas. The place had many bodies of adepts discoursing on subjects of the sacred scriptures.

90. I made baskets to be filled with flowers for my worship and to store my collection of books. I was employed in other sacred tasks in the forest gardens of Mount Kailash.

91. While I was passing my time discharging the austerities of my penance, it happened on the eighth day of the dark side of the moon of the month of Sravana.

92. After evening twilight was over and sunlight had faded away from the four quarters of the sky, all objects became invisible and stood enraptured in their saint-like silence.

93. It was after half of the first watch of the night had passed. A thick darkness passed over the gardens and woodlands that required a sharp sword to cut it.

94. My intense meditation was broken at this instant, and my trance gave way to the sight of outward objects. I kept looking at them for some time, then I saw a flaming fire suddenly rising in the forest.

95. It was bright as a big white cloud and as brilliant as the shining orb of the moon. It illuminated the gardens on all sides. I was struck with amazement at the vision.

96. As I studied it with the sight of my understanding, the mental vision that was glowing in my mind, I came to see the god Shiva with the crescent of the moon on his forehead, manifest and standing on the tableland.

97. With his hand clasping the hand of Gauri, he was led onward by his attendant Nandi walking before him. After telling my pupils about the vision, I proceeded forward with an appropriate offering in my hand.

98. Led by the sight, I came before the presence of the god with a glad mind. Then I offered handfuls of flowers to the three-eyed god from a distance, in token of my reverence to him.

99. After giving the offering (arghya) worthy of him, I bowed down before the god and approached him. He cast his kind look upon me from his moon-bright and clear sighted eyes.

100. Being blessed by his gracious look, which took away all my pain and sin from me, I did my homage to the god who was seated on the flowery level land viewing the three worlds lying open before him.

101. Then advancing forward, I offered him the arghya of flowers and water that I had with me, and scattered on him heaps of the mandara flowers that grew there.

102. Then I worshipped the god with repeated obeisance and praise, then adored goddess Gauri with the same kind of homage, then her attendant goddesses and demigods.

103. After my adoration was over, the god having the crescent moon on his head spoke to me, who was seated by him, with speech as mild as the cooling beams of the full moon.

104. “Say, O brahmin, whether your affections are at peace within yourself and have found their rest in the Supreme Spirit. Are your blissful feelings settled in the true object of divine essence?

105. Is your tapas going on unobstructed by the demons of your passions? Does joy attend you?

106. Have you obtained the obtainable One that is alone to be obtained? Are you set above the fears that constantly hunt all mankind?”

107. After the lord of gods and the sole cause of all created beings spoke in this manner, I replied submissively with the following words.

108. “O Lord, there is nothing unattainable, nor is there anything to be feared by anyone who remembers the three-eyed god at all times, and whose hearts are filled with bliss by their constant thoughts of you.

109. There is no one in the womb of this world, in any country or quarter, or in the mountains or forests, who does not bow down his head before you.”

110. “Those whose minds are entirely devoted to their thoughts of you get the rewards of the meritorious acts of their past lives. They water the trees of their present lives to produce their manifold fruit in future births and lives.

111. Lord, your remembrance expands the seed of our desire. You are the jar of the nectar of our knowledge. You are the reservoir of patience, just as the moon is the receptacle of cooling beams.

112. Your remembrance, Lord, is the gateway to the city of salvation. I consider your remembrance as the invaluable gem of my thoughts.

113. O Lord of creation, your remembrance sets its foot on the head of all our disasters.”

114. Having said this much, I bowed down lowly before the pleasing deity. Then I addressed him, O Rama, in the manner as I shall describe.

115. “Lord, it is by your favor that I have the fullness of my heart’s content on every side. Yet as there is one question lurking in my mind. I will ask you to explain it fully to me.

116. Tell me, with your clear understanding and without hesitation or weariness, how to worship the gods to remove all our sins and obtain all good confirmed on us.”

117. Shiva replied: Hear me, O brahmin who is best acquainted with the knowledge of Brahma. I will tell you about the best mode of worshipping the gods, which worship is sure to set the worshipper free.

118. But first, O great armed brahmin, tell me if you know at all who is that god whom you make the object of your worship if it is not the lotus-eyed Vishnu or the three-eyed Shiva?

119. It is not the god born of the lotus Brahma, or he who is the lord of the thirteen classes of gods, the great Indra himself. It is not the god of winds, Pavana, or the god of fire, Agni, or the rulers of the Sun and Moon.

120. The brahmin (the earth god, Bhudeva) is no god at all, nor is the king called the shadow of God any god. Neither I, the ego or you are gods, nor is the body or any embodied being, or the mind or any conception or creation of the mind is the true god.

121. Neither Lakshmi, the goddess of fortune, nor Saraswati, the goddess of intelligence, is a true goddess, nor is there anyone that may be called a god except the one true God who is without beginning or end.

122. How can a body that can be measured by form and dimensions be the immeasurable deity? It is the real and unlimited Consciousness that is known as the Shiva or the blissful one.

123. That is the meaning of the word god (deva) and that is the object of adoration. That is the only existent being out of which all other beings have proceeded and in which they have their existence, and wherein they exist with their forms.

124. Those unacquainted with the true nature of blissful Shiva worship the forms of idols and images, just as a weary traveler thinks the distance of a mile to be many miles long.

125. It is possible to be rewarded for one’s worship of the Rudras and other gods, but the reward from meditation of the true God is the unbounded joy of the soul.

126. He who forsakes the reward of true joy for that of fictitious pleasures is like one who quits a garden of mandara flowers for thorny karanja plants.

127. True worshippers know the purely intellectual and blissful Shiva is the only adorable god. Understanding and tranquility and equanimity of the soul, rather than garlands of flowers, are the most acceptable offerings to this god.

128. Know that the true worship of God the spirit is with the flowers of understanding and tranquility of the spirit.

129. Worship the Soul as consciousness and forsake the adoration of idols. Those devoted to any form or fictitious cult are subject to endless misery.

130. Those knowing the knowable One are called saints, but those who slight meditation of the Soul and adore idols are like little children playing with dolls.

131. Lord Shiva is the spiritual god and the supreme cause of all. He is to be worshipped always and without fail with only understanding.

132. You should know the soul to be the intellectual and living spirit, without decrease as the very nature herself. There is no other to be worshipped. True worship (puja) is of the spirit.

133. Vasishta said, “The soul having the nature of intellectual void, just as this world also is an empty void, please tell me, my lord, how Consciousness could become the living soul, as you have declared.”

134. Shiva replied: There being only empty Consciousness in existence which is beyond all limits, it is impossible for an intelligible object to exist anywhere which may continue to all eternity.

135. That which shines of itself is the self-shining Being. It is the Self, the spontaneous agitation of that Being, which has stretched out the universe.

136. Thus the world appears like a city in dream before the conscious soul. This soul is only a form of empty consciousness and this world is only a baseless fabric.

137. It is altogether impossible for any perceptible phenomena to exist anywhere except in the empty sphere of consciousness. Creation is whatever shone forth in the beginning in the plenitude of Divine Consciousness.

138. Therefore this world which shows itself in the form of a fairyland in dream is only an appearance in the empty sphere of Consciousness. It cannot be any other in reality.

139. Consciousness is human speech and the cosmos that supports the world. Consciousness becomes the soul and the living principle. It forms the chain of created beings.

140. Tell me, what else could know all things in the beginning and even before creation of the universe, except the Consciousness which saw and exhibited everything in heaven and earth as contained in itself?

141. The words “sky”, “firmament” and the “emptiness” of Brahman and the world all apply to Consciousness, just like the words “tree” and “tree” mean the same thing.

142. And as both dreams and desires arise in us by our delusion, so only our illusion in the empty space of consciousness makes us perceive the existence of an outer world.

143. Our empty consciousness shows the sight of the external world in our dream. The same thing shows us the world in our waking dream.

144. It is not possible for a city in a dream to be seen anywhere except in the hollow space of our consciousness. In the same way, it is impossible for the waking dream of the world to be shown anywhere except in the emptiness of consciousness.

145. As it is not possible for anything that can be thought of to exist anywhere except in the thinking mind, so it is impossible for this thinkable world to exist in any place other than the Divine Mind.

146. The triple world rose of itself at the will and in the empty space of Supreme Consciousness, like a dream rising and setting in the mind, and not as anything other than Supreme Consciousness or any duality beside Supreme Consciousness.

147. As one sees the diverse appearances of pots and paintings in his dream, all lying within the hollowness of his mind, so at the beginning of creation, the world appears of itself in the emptiness of Divine Consciousness.

147a As there is no substantiality of anything in the fairyland of one’s dreams except his pure consciousness of the objects, so there is no substantiality of anything seen in this triple world, except our consciousness of them.

148. Whatever is visible to sight, and all that exists or does not exist in the present, past or future, and all space, time and mind are nothing other than appearances in the empty consciousness of Brahman.

149. Brahman is truly the god of whom I have spoken. Only he is supreme in its transcendental sense. He is all and unbounded and includes me, you and the endless world in Himself.

150. The bodies of all created beings, whether yours, mine, or others, and of all in this world are all full with the consciousness of the Supreme Soul and no other.

151. As there is nothing, O sage, except the bodies produced from the empty consciousness of Brahman resembling images produced in the fairyland of one’s dream, so there is no form or figure in this world other than what was made in the beginning of creation.

✅
Chapter 6a.30 — Shiva Explains How the Consciousness Forgets Itself

1. Shiva said:— Consciousness is all this fullness of space. It is the sole Supreme Soul. It is Brahman the immense and the transcendent vacuum. It is said to be the Supreme God.

2. Therefore, its worship is of the greatest good and confers all blessings to men. It is the source of creation. All this world is situated on it.

3. It is unmade and uncreated, without beginning or end. It is boundless and without a second. It is to be served without external service, and all joy is obtained thereby.

4. You are enlightened, O chief of sages. I tell you that the worship of gods is not worthy to the wise, and offering flowers and incense is of no use to them.

5. Those who are unlearned and have minds as simple as those of children are the ones mostly addicted to false worship and devoted to the adoration of gods.

6. Such people, not having the quietness of their understandings, are led to ceremonious observances and they falsely attribute the images of their own making to the soul.

7. It is only for children to remain content with offering flowers and incense to gods they honor and have adopted of their own choice.

8. Men worship gods in vain to gain the objects of their desires. Nothing that is false of itself can ever give the required fruit.

9. Adoration with flowers and incense is childish understanding. I will tell you the worship that is worthy of men enlightened like yourself.

10. O most intelligent sage, know that the God we adore is the true God, the receptacle of the three worlds, the Supreme Spirit and no other.

11. He is Shiva, the joy, who is above the ranks of all other gods and beyond all of men’s fictions and fictitious images. He is accompanied with all desires and is the enjoyer of neither all or any part of the production of his will. He is full of imaginations of all things, but is neither the all nor any one of the objects in his mind.

12. He encompasses all space and time, and is neither divided nor circumscribed by either. He manifests all events and things, and is nothing except the image of pure Consciousness Himself.

13. He is undivided consciousness situated in the heart of everything. He produces and absorbs everything in himself.

14. Know Brahman is situated between existence and inexistence. It is He who called God the Supreme Soul, the transcendental, that which is (tat sat), and the syllable Om.

15. By his nature of immensity, he spreads alike in all space. Being the great Consciousness himself, he is said to be transcendent and the Supreme Being.

16. He remains as all in all places, just as sap circulates through the bodies of plants. The great soul of the Supreme Being similarly extends as the common entity of all things.

17. It is He who abides in the heart of your wife Arundhati, just as He does in yours. He also dwells in the heart of Parvati and in those of her attendants.

18. That reasoning which is the universal mind is one and in everyone in all the three worlds. That truly is the God of the wisest among philosophers.

19. Tell me, O brahmin, how can idols and images be called gods if they have hands and feet but are devoid of consciousness which is the core of the body?

20. Consciousness is the core and foundation of the world containing the sap which supplies everything in it. It is the One and all-ego (sarvahm) and therefore all things are obtained from it.

21. He is not situated at a distance, O brahmin, nor is He unobtainable by anybody. He resides always in all bodies and abides alike in all places, as also in all empty space and sky.

22. He does, He eats, He supports all, and He moves everywhere. He breathes and feels and knows every member of the body.

23. Know, O chief of sages, that He is seated in the city of the body, directing the various functions it manifests under his direct appointment.

24. He is the lord of the cavity of the heart and the several hidden sheaths (koshas) contained within the body which He makes and moves as he pleases.

25. The pure soul is beyond the essence and actions of the mind and the six organs of sense. It is only for our use and understanding that we apply the word consciousness (chit) to Him.

26. That intellectual Spirit is too minute, subtle, pure and all-pervading — and it is his choice and will — to manifest a visible representation of himself or not.

27. This consciousness is too fine and pure, and yet manages the whole machinery for beautifying the world, just as the subtle and intelligent season of spring beautifies the vegetable world with freshness and moisture.

28. The beautiful and wonderful properties residing in Divine Consciousness are astonishing to behold in their various displays, such as the sky.

29. Some of these take the name of “living soul” and others assume the name “mind.” Some take the general name of space and others are known as its parts and divisions.

30. Some pass under the name of substance and others of their action. Some are called the different categories of mode and condition, genus, species and adjuncts.

31. Some shine as light and others stand as mountains and hills. Some brighten as the sun and moon and the gods above, and others are like the dark yakshas below.

32. All these continue in their own states without any option on their part. They evolve of their own nature and the causation of the Divine Spirit, just as the sprouts of trees grow of their own accord under the influence of spring season.

33. It is Consciousness alone that extends over all the works of nature and fills all bodies spread over the vast ocean of the world, just as aquatic plants swim over the surface of waters.

34. The deluded mind wanders like a wandering bee, collecting the sweets of its desire from the lotus of the body. Consciousness sits as its mistress, tasting their essence from within.

35. The world with all its gods, gandharvas, seas and hills rolls about in the circuit of Consciousness just like water in a whirlpool.

36. Human minds, like the spokes of a wheel, are bound to the axles of their worldly affairs, turning around and around in the ever revolving world, all within the circumference of Consciousness.

37. It was Consciousness in the form of four-armed Vishnu who destroyed the entire host of demon asuras, just as the rainy season dispels solar heat with its thundering clouds and rainbows.

38. It is Consciousness in the form of the three-eyed Shiva, accompanied by his symbols of the bull and the crescent moon, who continues to show affection, like a fond bee, on the lovely, lotus-like face of his consort Gauri.

39. It was Consciousness that was born in the form of Brahma, like a bee in the lotuslike navel of Vishnu, and settled in his meditation upon the lotus of the triple Vedas.

40. In this manner Consciousness appears in various forms, like innumerable leaves of trees, and like different kind of ornaments made of the same gold metal.

41. Of its own pleasure, Consciousness assumes the paramount dignity of Indra, who is the crown jewel over the three worlds and whose feet are honored by the entire assembly of gods.

42. Consciousness expands, rises and falls, and circulates everywhere in the womb of the triple world, just as the waters of the deep overflow, recede and move about in itself.

43. The moonbeams of Consciousness scatter their brightness everywhere to display to full view the lotus lake of all created beings in the world.

44. The translucently bright mirror of Consciousness shows the reflections of the world and benignly receives the images of all things in its bosom, as if it were pregnant with them.

45. Consciousness gives existence to the circles of the fourteen great regions of creation above and below. It plants them in the watery expanse of the sea on earth, and in the ethereal expanse of the waters in heaven.

46. Consciousness spreads itself like a vine in the empty field of air, and becomes fruitful with multitudes of created beings. It blossoms in the varieties of different peoples and shoots forth in the leaves of their dense desires.

47. These throngs of livings beings are like its pollen flying about. Their desires are like the juice that gives the blossoms their different colors. Their understandings are their covering skins, and the efforts of their minds are buds that unfold with the flowers and fruit of their desires.

48. The graceful pistils of these small flowers are countless in the three worlds. Their constant quivering in the air express their gay dance with the sweet smiling of opening buds.

49. Consciousness stretches out all these real and unreal bodies that expand like gentle and attractive flowers for a time, but never endure forever.

50. Consciousness produces men everywhere like moon-bright flowers, and these flush and blush and sing and dance about considering themselves to be real bodies.

51. It is by the power of this great Consciousness that the sun and other luminous bodies shine in the sky, just as two lovers are attracted to each another to taste the fruit of their enjoyment as gross bodies.

52. All visible bodies seen to move about in this phenomenal world are like flakes of dust dancing in a whirling current.

53. Consciousness is like the light of the universe. It manifests all the phenomena of the three worlds to us, just as the flame of a lamp shows us the various colors of things.

54. All worldly things exhibit their beauty to our sight because they are immersed in the light of Consciousness, just as the dark spot on the moon becomes fully apparent to view by its immersion in lunar beams.

55. By receiving the gilding of Consciousness, all material bodies are shaded in their various colors, just as different trees receive their freshness, foliage and fruit from the influence of rainy weather.

56. Shadow causes the dullness of an object. All bodies are inanimate without Consciousness, just as a house becomes dark without light.

57. If the wonderful powers of Consciousness are lacking in anything, it becomes a shapeless thing and cannot possibly have any form or figure.

58. Consciousness is like light from the sky. Its active power or energy is like its consort residing with her children of desires in the abode of the body, ever restless and busy in her actions.

59. Without the presence of Consciousness, it is impossible for anyone to perceive the taste of any flavor, though it is set on the tip of his tongue.

60. Hear me and tell me. How can this tree garden of the body exist, with its branching arms and hairy filaments, without being supplied with the sap of Consciousness?

61. Know hence that Consciousness, by growing and feeding and supporting them all, is the cause of all moving and immovable things in nature. Know also that Consciousness is the only thing in existence. All else is nonexistent without it.

62. Vasishta said:— Rama, after the moon-bright and three-eyed god had spoken to me in his clear intelligible speech, I asked the moon-bright god again in a clear and audible voice, saying,

63. “O lord, if Consciousness alone is all pervading and the soul of all, then I have not yet been able to know this visible earth in its true light.

64. Tell me. Why do people describe a living person as endued with consciousness as long as he is alive, and say he is devoid of consciousness when he is laid down as a dead and lifeless mass?”

65. The god Shiva replied:— Hear me tell you, O brahmin, all about what you have asked me. It is a question of great importance and requires, O greatest of devotees, a long explanation.

66. Consciousness resides in everybody and all things as their inherent soul. The one is viewed as the individual and active Spirit, and the other is known as the unchanging and Universal Soul.

67. The mind misled by its desires views the inner spirit as another, just as a greedy person takes his consort for another in his dream.

68. As the same man seems to be changed to another person during his fit of anger, so sober consciousness is transformed to a changeable spirit by one’s mistake of its true nature.

69. Consciousness loses its state of purity when it is attributed with many variable qualities and desires. By thinking constantly of it gross nature, consciousness is at last converted to the very gross object of thought.

70. Then the subjective intellect (chit) becomes itself the object of thought (chetya), and having assumed the subtle form of a minute ethereal atom, it becomes the element of sound. Afterwards it is transformed into the rudimentary particle of air.

71. Then this aerial particle, qualified by time and place, becomes the vital principle, which next turns into understanding, then finally to the mind.

72. Consciousness transformed into the mind dwells on its thoughts of the world. Then it is amalgamated with it, in the same manner as a brahmin is changed into a tribal by constantly thinking himself as one.

73. Thus Divine Consciousness forgets its universality by its thoughts of particulars and assumes the gross forms of the objects of its thoughts and desires.

74. Thus Consciousness being full of endless thoughts and desires grows as dull as the gross objects it thinks upon, until at last the subtle intellect grows as stony dull as pure water frozen into massive hailstones.

75. The impassive intellect takes the names of mind and sense and becomes subject to ignorance and illusion by contracting a gross impassivity. Restrained from its flight upwards, the intellect has to grovel forever in the regions of sense.

76. First the intellect becomes subjected to ignorance, then it is fast bound to the fetters of its desires, and then pinched by its yearnings and angry sufferings, it is tormented by the pleasure of affluence and the pains of privation.

77. By forsaking the endless joy (of spirituality), the intellect is subjected to the constantly changing fortunes of mortality. It becomes dejected in despair, lamenting over its grief and sorrow, then burning amidst the fires of its sorrows and misery.

78. See how it is harassed with the vain thought of its personality that “I am such a one.” Look at the miseries to which it is exposed by its reliance on the frail and false body.

79. See how worried it is by being pushed to and fro in the alternate swinging beds of prosperity and adversity. See how it is plunged into the deep and muddy puddle of misery, like a worn out elephant sinking in the mud.

80. Look at this deep and impassable ocean of the world, all hollow within and rolling with the eventful waves of causation. It emits undersea fire from within its bosom, just as the human heart flashes forth with its hidden fire of passions and affections.

81. The human heart staggers between hope and fear like a stray dear in the forest, alternately cheered and depressed at the prospects of affluence and want.

82. The mind led by its desire is always apprehensive of disappointment. It coils back for fear of a reverse, just as a frightened girl flies away from the sight of a ghost.

83. Man encounters all kinds of pain to obtain a certain pleasure, just as a camel browses thorny shrubs in hope of honey inside. But the man slips part way and is hurled headlong to the bottom.

84. A man meeting with a reverse falls from one danger to another, so he meets with fresh disasters, as if one evil invited the other.

85. The mind, captivated by its desires and led onward by its efforts, meets with one difficulty after another and has cause to repent and grieve at every step.

86. As a man advances in life, so he improves in his learning. But alas! At best, all his worldly knowledge serves to bind his soul even more to the earth.

87. Cowards are in constant fear of everything until they die in their fear, just as little shrimp, being afraid of a waterfall, fall on dry land where they perish struggling.

88. The helplessness of childhood, the anxieties of manhood, and the misery of old age are all preliminaries to the sad deaths of men engaged in a busy life.

89. The propensities of past lives cause some to be born as celestial nymphs in heaven, and others as venomous serpents in underground holes. Some become fierce demons, and many are reborn as men and women on earth.

90. Men’s past actions make them born again as rakshasas among savages or as monkeys in forests. Some become kinnaras on mountains and many as lions on mountain tops.

91. The vidyadharas of the Devagiri Mountains, the naagas of forest caves, the birds of the air, woodland animals with four feet, forest trees and plants, bushes on hills and orchids on trees are all only reincarnations.

92. It is the same Consciousness which causes Narayana to float on the surface of the sea and makes the lotus-born Brahma remain in his meditation. It keeps Hara in the company of his consort Uma and places Hari over the gods in heaven.

93. It is this Consciousness which makes the sun make the day and the clouds give rain. It makes the sea breathe out in waves and volcanic mountains blow out in fire and flame.

94. It makes the wheel of time continually revolve in the circle of the seasons, and causes day and night to rotate in their cycles of light and darkness.

95. Here it causes seeds to sprout and grow with the juice in them, and there it makes stones and minerals lie down in mute silence.

96. Sometimes it blooms in fruit ripened by the sun’s heat, and at other times matured by burning fuel. Somewhere it gives us cold and icy water, and at other places it gives spring water that cannot be tasted.

97. Here it glows in luminous bodies, and there it shows itself as impenetrable thickets and inaccessible rocks. It shines bright and white in one place, and dark and blue in another. It sparkles in fire and dwindles in earth. It blows in air and spreads in water.

98. Being the all-pervading, omnipresent, and omnipotent power itself, Consciousness is the one in all and the whole fullness of space. Therefore, it is more subtle and transparent than the rarefied and translucent air.

99. As Consciousness spreads out and contracts itself in any manner in any place or time, so it conceives and produces the same within and without itself, just as the agitation of waters produces both little waves and huge surges of the sea.

100. Consciousness stretches itself in the various forms of ducks and geese, of cranes and crows, of storks, wolves and horses also. It becomes the heron and partridge, the parrot, the dog, the male deer, the monkey, and kinnara likewise.

101. It is the abstract qualities of understanding, beauty and modesty, and of love and affections also. It is the power of illusion and the shadow and brightness of night and moonlight.

102. It stretches itself in these and all other forms of bodies, and is born and reborn in all kinds and species of things. It wanders and rolls all about the revolving world like straw whirling in a whirlpool.

103. It is afraid of its own desires, just as the she-ass is seen to shudder at its own braying, yet it has no one like itself.

104. I have told you already, O great sage, how this principle of the living spirit becomes weakened by its animal propensities and is later debased to the nature and condition of brute creatures.

105. The Supreme Soul receiving the name of living soul, the principle of action becomes a pitiable object. It becomes subject to error and illusion and is subjected to endless pains and miseries.

106. Then the deluded soul is overpowered by its past actions which cause it to choose the wrong unreality for itself. The unreality being frail and perishable makes the active soul perish and undergo countless troubles. Just like the husk born with the rice grain, this consciousness carries its impurity with it.

107. The soul, degraded from its state of endless joy to the miserable condition of mortal life, laments over its fallen state like a widow wailing over her fate.

108. Look on the deplorable condition of consciousness (chit), which having forgotten its original state of purity, is subjected to impotent ignorance. Ignorance casts the living soul into the miseries of degradation, just like they use rope to cast a bucket in a well, lowering it lower and lower until it sinks to the bottom of the pit.

✅
Chapter 6a.31 — Shiva on Consciousness, Living Soul, Understanding, Mind, Vital Air and the Body

1. Shiva continued:— When Consciousness takes the vanities of the world to itself and thinks itself to be a miserable being, it is said to have fallen into error. Then it resembles a dreaming or intoxicated man who is deluded to think he is someone else.

2. Though immortal, yet Consciousness is deceived to believe itself to be mortal by its infatuated understanding, just as a sick man weeps to think he is dead when he is still alive.

3. As an ignorant man sees the revolving spheres to be at a standstill, so the deluded intellect sees the world and thinks its personality as sober realities.

4. The mind alone is said to cause the perception of the exterior world, but the mind cannot be the cause because it is impossible for the mind to have a separate existence independent of consciousness.

5. Thus, it being impossible for the mind to cause, whatever phenomena the mind appears to cause also cannot exist. Therefore consciousness is the only cause of thought, and not the mind or phenomena.

6. There is no spectacle or spectator of anything anywhere other than a delusion, like that which makes oiliness appear on a rock. There is no matter, making or work of any kind unless it is a mistake like darkness in the moon.

7. The terms measure, measurer, and measurable are as non-existent in nature as a forest of plants in the sky. The words consciousness, intellect, reasoning and intelligible are as meaningless in themselves as the absence of thorns and thistles in the Nandana garden of paradise.

8. The personalities of “I”, “you”, and “it” are as false as mountains in the sky. Differences among persons are as untrue as whiteness in ink.

9. The Divine Spirit is neither the same nor different in all bodies because it is as impossible for the Universal Soul to be confined in anybody as it is impracticable for Mount Meru to be contained in an atom of dust. It is impossible to express the Divine Spirit using words and their meanings, just as sandy soil is incapable of growing tender herbs.

10. The saying, “Not this, not that,” is as untrue as the belief that the darkness of night exists in company with daylight. Substantiality and insubstantiality are both as lacking in the Supreme Spirit as heat is lacking in ice.

11. It is as wrong to call the Supreme Spirit empty or solid, just as it is wrong to say a tree is growing in the womb of a stone. To call Spirit either the one or the other is to describe it as the infinite vacuum or the full existence.

12. The sole Unity remains in its state of pure transparency forever. Being unborn from anyone’s thought or mind, it is not subject to misrepresentation by anyone.

13. However, the thoughts of men attribute many faults and failings to Spirit, but all these imputations and false attributes vanish before the person knowing its true nature.

14. The learned, devoid of detachment, are employed in many thoughts and things though not even a straw in all this vast world is under anyone’s command.

15. It is in everyone’s power to get rid of his thoughts, but it is very difficult to get the object of his thought. Then how is it possible for one to have that which is impracticable for him to seek?

16. The one sole and immutable Consciousness that pervades all nature is the supreme One without equal. It is more transparent than the translucent light of a lamp and all other lights.

17. It is this intellectual light that enlightens everything. It is everywhere and ever translucent. It is ever shining without shade and immutable in its nature and mind.

18. It is situated everywhere and in all things, such as pots and pictures, trees and huts, houses, four-footed animals, demons, devils, men, beasts, the sea, earth and air.

19. It remains as the all witnessing Spirit without any vibration or motion of its own to any place. It enlightens all objects without flickering or doing any action by itself.

20. It remains without stained by any connection with an impure body. It continues unchangeable in its relation with the changeful mind. It does not become dull by being joined with the dull body, and it is never changed to anything by its extension over all things.

21. The extremely minute and immutable Consciousness retains its consciousness in itself. By rolling itself like a spool of thread, it enters the body in the form of a particle of air.

22. Then it is accompanied by the powers of vision and reflection, which are wakeful in the waking state and lie dormant in sleep, which is why these are said to be existent and nonexistent by turns.

23. Then the clear and pure consciousness comes to think of many things in its waking state. Thus it is perverted from its purity, just as an honest man who keeps company with the dishonest ends up turning to dishonesty.

24. The intellect contracting and distracting itself with vicious thoughts is like pure gold alloyed with copper that is restored to purity by removing the copper.

25. A good mirror cleaned of its dirt shows a face in clear light. In the same way, the intellect born in a human body attains its divine nature through its good understanding.

26. If the intellect lacks knowledge of itself as the All, it presents a false world as a true reality. But upon coming to know its true nature, it attains the divine state.

27. When the mind thinks it is different from Consciousness and separate from the unrealities in nature, it gets the sense of its egoism, then it perishes though originally it is imperishable in its nature.

28. As a slight wind scatters the fruit of trees growing on the sides of a mountain, so the consciousness of self drops down at the gust of a slight disease.

29. The existence of form, color and other qualities is due to consciousness, just as the position of inferiors depends upon the station of the superior. Through lack of understanding the pure consciousness, infinite and indefinite in itself, is described as a unity, duality or plurality.

30. It is only because of Consciousness that the mind and senses derive their faculties of thinking and perception, just as daylight gives rise to the daily routines of business.

31. The action of vital energy gives pulsation to the pupils of the eye whose light is called sight and which is the instrument of perceiving the forms and colors of things placed outside it. But perception is the power and action of Consciousness.

32. Air and skin are both contemptible and unconscious things, yet their union gives the perception of touch and feeling. The mind becomes conscious of that feeling, but its awareness depends upon and is caused by Consciousness.

33. The particles of scent carried by air to the nostrils give the sense of smell to the mind, but it is Consciousness which perceives the smell.

34. The particles of sound are conveyed by the fluctuations of air to the organ of hearing for the mind to perceive, and the Intellect is conscious of this as in its sleep.

35. The mind is the principle of willing action from some desire or to some end and aim of its own. The thoughts of the mind are mixed with foulness, while the nature of the intellectual soul is quite pure and simple.

36. Consciousness is manifest by itself and is situated of itself in itself. It contains the world within itself like a crystal stone retains the images of all things in its bosom.

37. It is the single and sole Consciousness which contains the whole, without dividing or transforming itself into parts or forms other than itself. It neither rises nor sets, nor moves nor grows at any place or time.

38. It becomes the living soul by fostering its desires, and remains as pure Consciousness by forsaking them forever. Seated in itself, it reflects on its two gross and pure states.

39. Consciousness has the living soul for its vehicle, and the individual ego is the vehicle of the living soul. Understanding is the vehicle of the individual ego, and the mind is the seat of the understanding.

40. The mind has vital breath for its vehicle, and the senses are the vehicles of the vital airs. The body is the carriage of the senses, and the organs of action are the wheels of the body.

41. The motion of these vehicles forms the course of this world and the continued rotation of the body until old age and death, which is the dispensation of the almighty power.

42. The world is shown to us as an optical illusion of the Supreme Soul, like a scene in our dream. It is a reflection and completely untrue, like water in a mirage.

43. Know, O sage, that the vital breath is called the vehicle of the mind only by fiction because wherever there is the vital breath, there is also the process of thinking going on with it.

44. Wherever the vital breath circulates like a thread, acting like a spring, the body is made to shake with it, just as the forms and colors of bodies present themselves to view in light.

45. The mind employed with its desires moves the vital breath and the body like a storm shakes a forest. But when the mind is confined within the cavity of the heart, it stops their motion like winds confined in the upper skies.

46. Confinement of the vital breath in the emptiness of the heart stops the course of the thoughts just as hiding a light removes the visibility of objects.

47. As dust ceases to fly after winds are over, so the thoughts in the mind cease to move when the breath is pent up in the heart.

48. As a carriage is driven wherever the driver wishes to drive it, so the mind driven by the vital breath runs from country to country in a moment.

49. As a stone flung from a sling is lost forever, so the thoughts of the mind are dispersed in the air unless they are fixed upon some object. Thoughts are inherent in the mind and vitality just like fragrance is inherent in flowers and heat in fire.

50. Wherever there is vital breath breathing, there is the principle of the mind with its trains of thoughts, just as whenever the moon appears it is accompanied by its beams. Our consciousness is the result of the vibrations of vital air, like our perception of phenomena. This air sustains the body by supplying juice from food to all the nerves and arteries.

51. Mind and intellect both belong to the body, the one residing in the hollow of vital air, and the other is as clear as consciousness and resides in all gross and subtle bodies, like the all pervading and transparent emptiness.

52. Consciousness remains in the form of conscious self-existence in dull inanimate bodies and appears to be afraid of the vibrations of animal life.

53. The mind recognizes the dull body, enlivened by vital breath, as belonging to itself, and plays many parts and sports with it, just like in its prior state of existence.

54. The mind no longer vibrates after breathing ceases, then, O sage, pure Consciousness is reflected in the eightfold receptacle of vacuum. [The eight basic elements are earth, water, fire, air, space, mind, intellect and identity.]

55. As only a mirror can reflect an image and not a rock, so only the mind serves as the eightfold receptacle, the agent of all actions, and is called by different names according to the views of different spiritual teachers.

56. That which gives rise to the network of our imaginary visible world, and that in which it appears to be situated, and that whereby the mind is made to revolve in various bodies, know that supreme substance to be the Immensity of Brahman, the source of all this world.

✅
Chapter 6a.32 — Shiva on the Preservation and Dissolution of the Body

1. Shiva continued:— Listen, holy sage! I will now explain how the active and oscillating principle of consciousness acts on the human body and makes it move, whereby it receives the noble title of its active agent.

2. But a mind compelled by its former propensities prevails over the intellect. Being hardened in its vicious deeds, the mind pursues its changing wishes and desires.

3. The mind strengthened by illusion, the intellect becomes as dumb and hard as a rock. This power of delusion, growing stronger by divine dispensation, displays the universe to view.

4. It is by the good grace of this power that consciousness is sometimes allowed to perceive the fallacy of this city-in-the-sky world, and at others times to believe it to be a reality.

5. The body is as dumb as a rock without the presence of intellect, mind and its individual ego. When these are present, then the body moves about like a stone flung in the air.

6. As dull iron is made to move by the presence of a magnet, so the living soul acts its parts by the presence of the omnipresent Soul.

7. The power of the all pervading Soul makes the living principle shoot out into infinity forever, just as seeds sprout into trees everywhere. Just like a mirror receives the reflection of objects situated some distance away, so the living soul reflects the image of the distant Supreme Spirit.

8. Forgetting its own real nature, the living soul contracts to become a foul gross object, just as a legitimate twice born man (brahmin), forgetting his birth, mistakes himself for a shudra (low caste).

9. By forgetting its own essence, consciousness is transformed into the sensuous mind, just as some great souls are deceived to believe they are miserable by being distracted from their awareness of their consciousness.

10. The intellect moves the dull and inert body, just as the force of winds shakes the waters of the deep to roll and range about in successions of waves.

11. The active mind, always prone to action, randomly leads the body machine together with the passive and helpless living soul, just as the winds blow in different directions carrying inert materials with it.

12. The body is the vehicle, and God employs the mind and vital breath as the two horses or bullocks that drive it.

13. Others say that the rarefied consciousness assumes a compact form, which becomes the living soul, and this riding on the car of the mind drives it by the vital airs as its racers.

14. Sometimes consciousness seems like something born and in being, as in its state of waking and witnessing objects all around. At others it seems to be dead and lost as in its state of deep sleep. Again, it appears as many as in its dreaming state. At last it comes to know itself as one when it comes to the knowledge of truth and its identity with the sole unity.

15. Sometimes it seems to be of a different form, without forsaking its own nature, just as milk becomes butter and curds, and just as water appears in the shapes of waves and foam.

16. As all things depend upon light to display their different forms and colors, so the mental powers and faculties all depend upon the conscious soul for their different actions.

17. The Supreme Spirit situated in the mind within the body gives the animal soul its life and action, just as all things appear to sight while a lamp shines inside the room.

18. The ungoverned mind gives rise to all diseases and difficulties rising as quickly and thickly as rough waters rise in waves foaming with thickening froth.

19. The living soul, dwelling like a bee in the lotus bed of the body, is subject to diseases and difficulties like the bee is to rains and flood. The living soul is as disturbed by the casualties of life as calm seawater is disturbed to waves by blowing winds.

20. The idea that “the Divine Soul is omnipotent, and the living soul is impotent and limited in its powers; therefore the human soul is not the same as the divine” is the cause of our grief and serves to darken understanding, just as clouds raised by the sunlight obscure the sun.

21. The living soul passes through many incarnations in its ignorance and utter lack of self consciousness, like one subdued to dullness by some sleeping drug that makes him insensitive to the pain inflicted upon his own body.

22. But as the living soul comes to know itself through some means or another, it recovers from its dull unconsciousness and regains its state of original purity, just as a drunken or deluded person turns to his duty once he comes to remember himself.

23. The living soul fills the body and is employed in enlivening all its members. It does not strive to know the cause of its consciousness, just as a leper never attempts to use the parts of his body he is incapable of raising.

24. When the soul is devoid of its consciousness, it no longer makes the lotus-like heart beat and vibrate with the breath of respiration. The heart becomes as motionless as a sacrificial vessel untouched by the priest.

25. When the action of the lotus-shaped heart stops, the motion of the vital breaths also stops, just as the fanning of the palm leaf being over, there is no more breeze.

26. Cessation of the vital air in the body and its flight to some other form (i.e., death) silences life which recedes into the original soul, just as flying dust settles when the winds die down.

27. At this time, O sage, the mind remains in its unstained state without support until it gets another body in which it rests like a seed in soil and water.

28. Thus, the causes of life cease, the eight principles of the body become inert and extinct, and the body drops and becomes defunct and motionless.

29. Forgetting intellect, the intelligible (truth), and intelligence produces the desires to vibrate. This brings memories of the past, or they are buried in oblivion.

30. The expansion of the lotus-like heart causes the subtle body (puryashtaka, astral body) to expand also, but when the organ of the heart ceases to blow and breathe, the body ceases to move.

31. As long as elements of the subtle body remain in the physical body, it lives and breathes, but when these elementary powers are quiet and still, the body becomes inert and is said to be dead.

32. When the contrary humors, or feelings and passions and conscious perceptions, or outward wounds and strokes cause the inner actions of the heart to stop,

33. then the eight-fold material body forces are pent up in the cavity of the heart, just as the force of winds is lost in the hollow of a pair of bellows.

34. When a living body has its inner consciousness but becomes inert and motionless in its outer parts and members, it is still alive by the action of breathing in the inner organ of the heart.

35. Those whose pure and holy desires never forsake their hearts live in a quiet and even state of life. They are known as the living liberated and long living seers.

36. When the action of the lotus-like machine of the heart has ceased and breath no longer circulates in the body, it loses its steadiness and falls unsupported on the ground like a block of wood or stone.

37. As the eight-fold body mixes with the air in the emptiness of the sky, so the mind also is absorbed in it at the same time.

38. But being accompanied by thoughts to which it has been long accustomed, the mind continues to wander about in the air in the regions of heaven and hell where it had long believed it would go upon leaving the body.

39. The body becomes a dead corpse after the mind has fled into the air. The body remains like an empty house after its occupant has left.

40. The all pervading Consciousness, by its power of reasoning, becomes both the living soul and the mind. Passing from its embodied form, it assumes its spiritual nature.

41. In its heart it fosters the subtle essence of the elemental mind, which later assumes a grosser form like the thoughts of things appear in dream.

42. Then, as the intensity of its thoughts makes the unreal world appear as real, it comes to forget and forsake its spiritual nature and transforms itself into a gross body.

43. By mistake it thinks the unreal body is substantial, the unreal is real, and the real is unreal.

44. The intellect is only a particle of the all pervading Consciousness that makes the living soul and which reflects itself in the form of the intelligent mind. Then the mind ascends on the vehicle of the eight-fold body and surveys the phenomenal world as a sober reality.

45. Consciousness is the prime mobile power that gives force to the eight-fold material body to move itself. The action of the breath in the heart, called life, resembles the spiritual force of a ghost rising up in an inert body.

46. When the aerial mind flies into the empty air, after its material frame is weakened and worn out, then the lifeless body remains like a block of wood or stone. Then it is called dead by the living.

47. As the living soul forgets its spiritual nature, becoming decayed in course of time and according to the frail nature of material things, it fades and falls away like withered leaves.

48. When the vital power forsakes the body and the action of the heart muscles stop, the breath of life becomes extinct and the animated being is said to die.

49. All beings, having been born and come to life, fade away in time like all created things in the world. Human bodies also fade and fall away in time, like the withered leaves of trees.

50. The bodies of all embodied beings are equally doomed to be born and die in their time, just as the leaves of trees constantly grow and fall off in season. Why then should we lament the loss of what is surely to be lost?

51. Look at these chains of living bodies, indiscriminately and constantly rising and falling like bubbles and waves in the vast ocean of Divine Consciousness. There is no difference between any and another. Why then should the wise make any distinction between objects that are equally frail in their nature, and proceed from and return to the same source?

52. All-pervading Consciousness reflects itself only in the mind of man, and nowhere else, just as only the mirror receives the reflections of objects and not any other opaque substance.

53. The acts and fates of men are all imprinted in the spacious and clear page of Divine Consciousness, yet all embodied beings cry and complain loudly against the decrees of Heaven which are the results of their own ignorance and tend towards their bitter grief and vain lamentation.

✅
Chapter 6a.33 — Shiva: Resolution of Duality into Unity; Creation Really Exists

1. Vasishta said, “Tell me, my lord who bears the crescent moon on his forehead. How does the pure and simple essence of Consciousness, which is an infinite unity and ever uniform and immutable in its nature, become transmuted to the finite dualities of the variable and impure soul and mind?

2. Tell me, O great god, how this uncaused prime cause becomes diffused in endless varieties. How can we get rid of the plurality of our creeds by our wisdom and put an end to our miseries?”

3. Shiva replied:— When the omnipotent God remains as one unity of immensity, then of course it is absurd to speak of his duality or plurality, or of any manifestation of a part of himself.

4. Taking the single to be double is to ascribe duality to unity. It is futile to ascribe duality to simple consciousness that by its nature is indivisible.

5. The lack of the number one means there is neither unity or duality. There can be no dual without the singular, or single unless there be the number two.

6. The cause and its effect being of one nature, they are both of the same kind, just as the fruit and the seed contained in it. The difference attributed to cause and effect from the change of one thing to the other is only the mere fiction of imagination.

7. The mind itself evolves in its thoughts at its own will. The changes occurring in itself are in no way different from its own nature, just as the seed and fruit are of the same nature. The same fruit produces the same seeds, and these again bring forth the same fruit.

8. Many modifications constantly arise in the infinite mind of the almighty Maker as its eternal will. These actually take place in positive existences. In this world, substantive forms bear the relation of causes and their effects.

9. These productions are like waves in the sea, or a mirage to the children of a barren woman, or the horns of a rabbit, all which are nothing and not in being. They are all as negative as water on a mountaintop or barley growing on the head of a hare.

10. If we inquire into the real truth, we must refrain from arguing over words. Though all things tend to establish the unity, yet it is difficult even in thought to do away with differences, such as those between words and their meanings.

11. The essence of divine omnipotence is not divisible into portions or fractions, like sea waves that are broken into foam and spray.

12. As the leaves, stalks, branches and flowers of trees are nothing other than the same substance, so unity, duality, I, you, and the objectivity of the phenomenal world are not different from the essence of the subjective Consciousness which contains and puts forth itself in all these forms.

13. All time and place and variety of forms are only modifications of Consciousness, so it is improper for us to question the reality of those and assert the certainty of this Consciousness.

14. Time and space and the powers of action and destiny all derive from and are directed by Consciousness and have their own conscious natures.

15. As the power of thinking, the thought and its object together compose the principle of the mind, so the whole universe and everything that bears a name are all included under the term Consciousness (chit) in the same way as water and its rise and fall are all included under the word “wave”.

16. The thoughts that continually rise and fall in the great ocean of the Intellect are like the waves that heave and settle on the surface of the noisy sea.

17. This Supreme Consciousness is known by the various names of the Lord, God, Truth, Shiva, Intellect and others, as it is by the various names of emptiness, unity and Supreme Spirit.

18. Such is the nature of God, whom no words can express and who is called the Ego or the subjective “I am that I am”. God is beyond the power of speech to describe.

19. All that is seen is only the leaves, fruit, flowers and branches of the all creeping vine of Consciousness which, being diffused in all, leaves nothing that is different from it.

20. Divine Consciousness (chit) being omniscient has the great ignorance underlying it. Then looking at this side of itself, it takes the name of the living soul and beholds this shadowy world stretched outside the Divine Mind, as when we see a second moon in the moon’s reflection cast upon clouds.

21. Then, the intellect thinking itself to be a living being and other than what it is, it becomes of the same nature as it thinks and forms itself by its own will.

22. Being transformed from its perfect and immaculate state to that of an imperfect and impure nature, it is made to wade in the stream of this world without ever thinking.

23. The intellectual form, being then assimilated with the elemental body (puryashtaka, astral or subtle body), receives its vital or mortal life and living soul which lives by reflection of the essence of Supreme Consciousness.

24. The spiritual body is transformed into the frail living body, which being joined with quintessence of the five-fold elements, comes to know itself as material substance.

25. Next this substance is infused with the vital breath and receives its vigor and strength like the seed of a plant. Then it feels itself to be endued with life and is conceived in the uterus in its own conception.

26. The same false conception of its gross materiality misleads consciousness into the belief of its own ego and personality. It also conceives its state as a moving or inert being, and this conception instantly converts it into that same form.

27. Again, the simultaneous meeting of a person’s memories and desires changes its former habitual and meaner form to that of a larger and grosser kind.

28. Duality from one’s essential identity and unity results from thinking oneself to be other than what he really is, just as a man becomes a devil by thinking he is possessed by a ghost.

29. The thought of duality of one identical soul in its two aspects of Supreme Soul and individual souls is driven away by the conviction that I do nothing and the agency of all actions rests in the great God himself.

30. The unity is perceived as duality by the dualistic habits of men. Belief in unity destroys the sense of dualism and plurality.

31. There is no duality or secondary being in the individual soul. The living soul may be regarded as the Supreme Soul because there is only one soul, unchangeable without decay at all times and everywhere.

32. All works of imagination disperse with the dispersion of the fumes of fancy, just as one’s aerial castle and fairy city vanish after the frenzied flight of the imaginary dream.

33. It is painful to erect a fabric of imagination, but there is no pain whatever in breaking it down. The mental machinery of imagination is well skilled in building the aerial cities, but not in demolishing them.

34. If the fullness of one’s desires and fancies fill life with pains and troubles, the lack of such wishes and views must serve to set him free from these pains forever.

35. If even a slight desire is enough to expose a man to many cares in life, then its utter privation must afford him complete rest and quiet in his transient state of being.

36. When your mind is loosened from your many serpentine desires, then you will enjoy the sweets of the garden of paradise.

37. Drive away and disperse the clouds of your desire by the breeze of your reason. Come and enjoy your rest under the calm and clear autumn sky of your detachment.

38. Dry the impetuous currents of your rapid desires by the charms of amulets and mantras, then restrain yourself from being carried away by the flood and restrict your mind to its dead inaction.

39. Place your trust in the conscious soul (chit atma) seated in the cavity of your heart, and look upon mankind driven to and fro by the gusts of their desire to be like bits of straw flying randomly in turbulent air.

40. Wash the dirt of your desires out from your mind by the pure water of your spiritual knowledge. Secure the perfect tranquility of your soul and continue to enjoy the highest bliss of a holy life.

41. God is all powerful and omnipresent and displays himself in all forms everywhere.

42. It is thought or imagination that makes the false world appear as true. To make the world vanish into nothing also depends upon thought.

43. The network of our thoughts and desires is interwoven with the threads of our repeated births. The winds of our detachment and indifference blow off this web and settle us in the state of supreme joy.

44. Greed is a thorny plant that has taken deep root in the human heart. It is fostered under the shade of the tree of desire. Root out this tree of desire and the thorny bush of greed will fade away of itself.

45. The world is a shadow, a reflection that rises to view and disappears by turns. An error of the brain presents the sight of the course of nature, like that of a fairyland presented to us in a dream.

46. The king who forgets his nature as the Almighty mistakes himself for a prince who has become the ruler of a land. This concept springs from ignorance of his divine nature. It soon vanishes after he comes to the real knowledge of himself.

47. The king in possession of his present royalty has no memory of his past states, as in the serenity of the autumn we do not remember the foulness of past rainy weather.

48. The thought that is predominant in the mind naturally prevails over fainter and weaker thoughts, just as the highest pitch in music overcomes the bass tones and takes possession of the ear.

49. Think in yourself that you are One. Keep this single reflection before you and holding fast to it, you will become the object of your meditation.

50. Such is the spiritual meditation of spiritually minded people like you who aspire to the highest joy of the Supreme Being. The external forms of worship are fit only for ungoverned minds who seek only their temporal welfare. Worship composed of the worshipper, the forms of the ritual, and the offerings are of ignorant minds and are too insignificant to the wise.

✅
Chapter 6a.34 — Shiva: Three Stages of Awakening

1. Shiva continued:— Such is the constitution of this world made up of reality and unreality and bearing the stamp of the Almighty. It is composed of unity and duality, yet is free of both.

2. Foul ignorance disfigures the conscious intellect so that it views the outer world as distinct from its maker, but to the clear sighted there is no separate outer world. Both inner and outer blend together in unity.

3. The perverted intellect that considers itself to be the body is truly confined in it. But when it considers itself to be a particle of and identical with the divine, it is liberated from its confinement.

4. The intellect loses its integrity by believing the duality of its form and sense. Combined with pleasure and pain, it no longer retains its real essence.

5. Its true nature is to be free from all designation and application of any name or meaning. The words pure, undivided, real and unreal bear no relation to what is an all pervasive emptiness.

6. Brahman the all and full, who is perfect tranquility without a second, equal or comparison, expands himself by his own power as the infinite and empty air, and stretches his mind in the three different directions of the three three-fold functions [creation, preservation, and destruction; waking, sleeping, and dreaming; supernatural, natural, and material; and rajas, tamas and sattva].

7. When the senses and organs of the mind are curbed in the great soul, a dazzling light appears before it and the false world flies away from it, just as the darkness of night disappears before sunlight.

8. The imaginary world recedes from view and falls down like a withered leaf. The living soul remains like a fried grain without power to grow or reproduce.

9. The conscious intellect, cleared of the cloud of illusion that hangs over a deluded mind, shines as clearly as the autumn sky. Having renounced all worldly impressions, it is called that which can be seen (pashyanti) from supernatural sight.

10. Consciousness settled in its original, pure and calm state, after it has passed beyond the commotions of worldly thoughts, when it views all things in an equal and indifferent light, is said to have crossed over the ocean of the world.

11. When consciousness is strong in its knowledge of perfect sleep (susupti) over worldly matters, it is said to have obtained its rest in the state of supreme joy, and to be freed from the doom of reincarnation.

12. Now I have told you, O great brahmin, all about curbing and weakening the mind, which is the first step towards the beatification of the soul by yoga. [The first stage is curbing the mind so it rests in supreme peace beyond rebirth; consciousness of the All. The second is freedom from all vestiges of duality: beyond awake, dream sleep and deep sleep. The next stage, the third that Shiva describes here is turiya, Brahman, and is beyond description.] Now listen as I tell you about the second step in the edification and strengthening of intellect.

13. Unrestricted power of consciousness is when it is filled with perfect peace and tranquility, full of light and clear of the darkness of ignorance, and stretched as wide as the clear dome of heaven.

14. It is as deep as our consciousness in profound sleep, as hidden as a mark in the heart of a stone, and as sweet as the flavor in salt, like the breath of wind after a storm.

15. When in course of time the living principle comes to its end at any place, consciousness takes flight in open air, like some invisible force, and mixes with the transcendent vacuum.

16. It gets freed from all its thoughts, as when the calm sea is freed from its waves. It becomes as calm as when the winds are still, and as imperceptible as when a flower emits its fragrance.

17. It is liberated from the bonds and ideas of time and place. It is freed from the thought of belonging to or being a part of anything in the world. It is neither a gross or a subtle substance. It becomes a nameless essence.

18. It is not limited by time or space. It is of the nature of the unlimited essence of God. It is a form and fragment of the fourfold state of Brahma, God the Creator, without any stain, disease or decay.

19. It is something witnessing all things with its far seeing sight. It is the all at all times and places. It is full light in itself, and far sweeter than the sweetest thing in the world.

20. What I told you is the second stage of yoga meditation. Now listen, O sage who is true to your vows, and well understands the process of yoga. I will tell you about the third stage.

21. Consciousness is without a name because it contains Divine Consciousness and all the objects of thought within its ample sphere, like the great ocean of the world contains all it parts within its spacious circumference. It extends beyond the meaning of the word Soul-of-the-Creator (brahmatma) in its extension without limit.

22. Through great enduring patience in course of a long time, the soul attains the steady and unstained state of its perfection (purushartha). After passing this and the fourth stage, the soul reaches its supreme and ultimate state of joy.

23. After passing successive grades and until reaching the ultimate state, one must practice his yoga like Shiva, the greatest of the yogis. Then he will obtain in himself the unremitting holy composure of the third stage.

24. By long continuance in this course, the pilgrim is led to a great distance which transcends all my description, but may be felt by the holy devotee who advances in his course.

25. I have told you already of the state, which is beyond these three stages. You, O divine sage, ever remain in that state if you wish to arrive to the state of the eternal God.

26. This world which seems to be material, when viewed in its spiritual light, appears infused with the spirit of God. Upon right observation, it is neither the one nor the other, neither springing into being nor ceasing to exist, but ever calm and quiet and of one uniform luster, swelling and extending like an embryo in the womb.

28. The non-dualistic unity of God, his motionlessness, and the solidity of his intelligence, together with the unchangeableness of his nature, prove the eternity of the world, although it appears as instantaneous and fleeting.

29. The solidity of Consciousness produces worlds like frozen water causes hailstones. There is no difference between the existent and nonexistent, since all things are ever existent in the Divine Intellect.

30. All is good, quiet, and perfect beyond the power of description. The syllable Om is the symbol of the whole, and its components compose the four stages for our salvation.

✅
Chapter 6a.35 — Adoration of the Great God, Mahadeva, in the Form of the Ishtadeva

1. Vasishta said:— Then Hara, who is the lake of the lotus of Gauri, desiring my enlightenment, glanced at me for a minute and uttered his words.

2. His eyes flashed with light under his heavenly forehead, like two treasure chests of his understanding, which scattered its rays about us.

3. The god Shiva said:— O sage, call your thoughts home and employ them to think of your own essence and to bring about your ends, just as the breezes of heaven convey fragrance to the nostrils.

4. When the object long sought for is in one’s possession, what else is there to desire? I who have known and come to the truth have nothing to expect as desirable or anything to reject as despicable.

5. When you have mastery over yourself, both in the states of your peace and disquiet, you should apply yourself to the investigation of your own soul without attending to anything besides.

6. At first you may depend upon your observations of phenomena, which you will learn from what I have said if you attend to it with diligence. Vasishta speaking:—

7. After saying this, the holder of the trident told me not to rely on my knowledge of the externals, but to attend to internal breathing that moves this abode of the body, just as the physical forces move a machine. Shiva speaking:—

8. The lifeless body without breath becomes dull and dumb as a block. Its power of movement is derived from the vital air (prana, subtle energy), but its powers of thought and knowledge are attributed to the consciousness.

9. This conscious intellect has a form more rare and transparent than empty air. It is a being which is the cause of all entities. It is not destroyed by destruction of the living body or lack of vital air.

10. The consciousness is more rarefied and translucent than ethereal air and never perishes with the body. It remains as the power of reasoning in the mental and living body.

11. Like a clear shining mirror receives the reflection of external things, so the mind of God reflects all images from within itself and from nothing situated without.

12. As a dirty mirror receives no reflection of outward things, so the lifeless body has no reflection of anything, though it is preserved to our view.

13. All-pervasive consciousness, formless itself, is yet aware of the movement of sensible objects owing to its sense perceptions. But coming to the pure understanding of its spiritual nature, it becomes the supreme Shiva again.

14. The sages cultivate this immaculate intellect under the different names of Hari, Shiva, Brahma and Indra, the gods that are the givers of the objects of desire to all living beings.

15. Consciousness is also called the fire and air, the sun and moon, and the supreme lord. The All is known as the Omnipresent Soul and Consciousness, which is the mine of all Consciousness.

16. It is the lord of gods, the source of celestials, Brahma the Creator, and the lord of heaven. Anyone who feels the influence of this great Consciousness in himself is never subject to illusion.

17. The great souls known in this world under the names of Brahma, Vishnu, Hara and others are all only offspring of Supreme Consciousness endowed with a greater portion of it.

18. They are all like sparks of hot iron or particles of water in the immense ocean of creation. All those who are mistaken for gods have sprung from the source of the Supreme Consciousness.

19. As long as the seeds of error and the sources of endless networks of imagination exist, the tree of gross illusion continues to sprout in endless ramifications.

20. The Vedas, its exposition and other Vedic literature are only tufts of the tree of ignorance for the bondage of men. These again produce many other clumps to hold men tightly in their ignorance.

21. Who can describe the productions of nature in the course of time and place? The gods Hari, Hara, and Brahma are among the number, and they all have their origin in the Supreme Being, their common father.

22. Mahadeva (Great God, Shiva) is the root of all, just as the seed is the source of the branches of trees. He is called the All because He is the essence of all things and the sole cause of our knowledge of all existence.

23. He is the giver of strength to all beings. He is self manifest in all. He is adored and hallowed by all. He is the object of perception to those who know him, and he is ever present in all places.

24. There is no need to address invocatory mantras to the lord, who being omniscient and omnipresent, knows and sees all things as present before him at all places and times.

25. But being always invoked in the mind, this god who resides in everything is attainable by us in every place. In whatever form one’s intellect appears to him, it is all for his good.

26. He takes upon himself a visible form according to the thoughts in the mind of the worshipper. This form is to be worshipped first of all with proper homage as the most adorable lord of gods.

27. Know this as the ultimate knowledge of the greatest minds Whoever has seen his identical soul is freed from the fears and sorrows of old age and is released from future reincarnations, like a fried grain which grows no more.

28. By worshipping this well known and unborn first cause in one’s self and at ease, everyone is freed from his fears and attains his supreme joy. Why then do you bewilder yourselves with the visible vanities of the world?

✅
Chapter 6a.36 — Shiva Describes the Supreme God

1. The god Shiva added:— Know now the lord god Rudra (Shiva), who in the form of one identical Consciousness is situated within every form of being, is the self-consciousness in everyone.

2. He is the seed of seeds and the core and foundation of the course of nature. Know Rudra also as the agent of all actions and the pure gist of Consciousness

3. He is the pure cause of all causes, without any cause of himself. He is the producer and sustainer of all without being produced or supported himself by any other.

4. He is the sensation of all conscious beings, and the sense of all sensitive things. He is the consciousness of all sensuous objects, the highest object of our sensuousness, and the source of endless varieties.

5. He is the pure light of all lights and yet is invisible by all of them. He is the uncreated and supernatural light, the source of all sources of light and the great mass of the light of Consciousness.

6. He is no positive (material) existence but the real entity. He is all quiet and beyond the common concepts of reality or unreality. Among the positive ideas about God, know him only as Consciousness and no other.

7. He becomes the color, coloring and the one coloring. He becomes as high as the lofty sky and as low as a lowly hut.

8. In the expanded mind of this Conscious Intellect there are millions of worlds like grains of sand in the desert, or as many as the blossoms of trees that have blown away, are in full blown, and have yet to come here after.

9. Like an inextinguishable flame, he is ever burning by his own inherent fire. Though always emitting innumerable sparks of his essence all about, yet there is no end of his light, heat and fire.

10. His inner parts contain the great mountains like particles of dust. He covers the highest mountains, like the lofty sky hides dust on earth.

11. He comprehends the great mahakalpa aeons like a twinkling of the eye, and a kalpa age is contained in his quick twinkling motion.

12. Though more minute than the point of a hair, yet he encompasses the whole earth. The seven oceans that encircle the earth cannot encircle the great Infinity.

13. He is called the great creator of the universe though he creates nothing. Though he does all actions, yet he remains calmly as if doing nothing.

14. Though God is included under the category of substance, yet he is no substance at all. Though there is no substantiality in him, yet his spirit is the substratum of all things, the Universal Form (Vishwarupa, body of the universe).

15. He is today and tomorrow, and though the past and future, yet he is always present. Therefore he is not now or then, but everlasting and forever.

16. He is not in the babbling and prattling of babes and children, nor in the crying of beasts and brutes, nor in the language of savages, but he is equally understood by all in their peculiar modes of speech.

17. These words are meaningless and yet are true, like the obsolete words in the Vedas. Therefore no words can truly express what is God because they are not what He is.

18. I bow down to He who is all, in whom all reside and from whom they all proceed, who is in all places and times, and who is diffused throughout all and is called the one and all.

19. In this excessive use of obscure words, there will be found some fully expressive of the meaning, just as in a forest of thick wood we happen to find fragrant flowers, which we pluck and carry by the handfuls.

✅
Chapter 6a.37 — Shiva: The Stage Play and the Dance of Destiny

1. Shiva continued:— The beauty of the words I have said before is tangible and their meanings all allude to the truth, that the Lord of all is the rich chest of gems of all things in existence.

2. How very bright are the rays of the gems contained in the receptacle of the Supreme Consciousness! They shine forth with the collected light of all the luminous worlds.

3. The essence of consciousness flies in the air in the form of the granular dust powder, and becomes the embryonic cell; which in the manner of the vegetable seed, sprouts forth into the germ in its proper time, soil, moisture and temperature.

4. This power of consciousness moves like froth and foam and whirling currents and whirlpools in the sea, and rolls its waters against the hard stones of the beach.

5. It is settled in the form of flavor in flower clusters. It makes them full blown and carries their fragrance to the nostrils.

6. Seated on bodies of stone, it makes them produce un-stone-like substances (trees and flowers) and makes mountains support the earth without actually upholding it.

7. Consciousness takes the form of the air, which is the source of all vibrations, and touches the organ of touch with as much tenderness as a father touches the body of his child.

8. As the divine power extends itself in everything, so it contracts the essences of all things into a mass within itself. Having absorbed the whole in the divine entity, it makes all nature an empty nothingness.

9. It casts the reflection of its own clear image in the transparent mirror of emptiness. It takes upon itself the transparent body of eternity, containing all the divisions of time.

10. Then there issues the power of Destiny, which predominates over the five principal divinities and determines the ultimate fate of all that “this is to be so, and this other wise.”

11. The picture of the universe presents itself to our sight in the presence of the bright light of the all-witnessing eye of the great God, just as the presence of a burning lamp in the room shows us the light of things contained in it.

12. The universal emptiness contains the great theatre of the universe in which divine powers and energies are continually playing their parts, and the spirit of God is their witness.

13. Vasishta asked, “What are the powers of that Shiva, my lord? Who are they and where are they situated? How many are there and how are they employed? Who is their witness?”

14. The god replied:— The god Shiva is the gracious, incomprehensible and tranquil Supreme Soul. He is gracious and formless and of the nature of the pure consciousness.

15. His essences are volition, emptiness, duration, destiny, infinity and fullness.

16. Beside these he has the properties of intelligence, action, causality and stillness. There are many other powers in the spirit of Shiva, of which there is no reckoning or end.

17. Vasishta replied, “Where do these powers come from? How do they get their variety and plurality? Tell me, my lord. From where do they arise and how were they separated?”

18. The god replied:— The god Shiva, who is only consciousness of himself, also has endless forms. The powers that I have said belong to him are small and in no way different from his essentiality.

19. The powers of God are said to be many and different from one another, like the waves of the sea, because God can discriminate among the powers of intelligence, action, passion, vision and others.

20. Thus those different powers act their several parts forever on the grand stage of the universe. The ages, years, months, weeks and days play their parts under direction of Time, the stage manager.

21. That power that appears as one or the another is called the divine powers of destiny. It is distinguished under various names such as the action, energy or will of God, or the dispensation of his Time.

22. That power which determines the states of gods, and those of the great Rudras, and what regulates the conduct of all things from a mean bit of straw to the great Brahma is called predominant destiny.

23. This destiny continues to dance about the great arena of the universe until anxiety and her imaginary source of fear are cleared from the mind through knowledge of truth.

24. The play of destiny is very pleasing to behold owing to the variety of its characters and contrivances, and the quick changes of scenes, and the repeated entrances and exits of its players and actors. It is presented with the music of the drums and trumpets of the roaring kalpantha clouds of doomsday.

25. The dome of heaven is the canopy over this stage, flowers in season are its decorations, and showers of rain serve as the sprinkling of rose water over it.

26. Dark clouds hanging about the heavens are the blue hanging screens around this stage, and the seven oceans of the earth with gems shining in their womb serve as the decorated pits and galleries of this playhouse.

27. The shining sky with its sight of the days and watches, and its eyes of twinkling stars, witnesses the continual rise and fall of all beings and the plunging and upheaval of mountaintops at the great deluge.

28. The revolving luminaries of the sun and moon and the rolling currents of the Ganges River appear as the pearly jewels on the body of this actress, Destiny, and the luster of twilight is like the red dye of her palms.

29. The constant motion of upper and nether worlds, with the continued jingling of their peoples, resemble the footsteps of this Destiny dancing with ringing trinkets and anklets fastened to her feet.

30. Sunshine and moonbeams represent the light of her smiling face, and twinkling stars in the sky resemble drops of sweat trickling down her face.

31. These many, many worlds are like so many apartments of this great theatre. The beings of the three worlds, oppressed by evil forces, are her flowing robes.

32. The two states of pleasure-pain or joy-grief, which are the destined lot of all living beings, are the different comedies and tragedies.

33. God himself, who is neither distant or distinct from this, nor is this stage play distant or distinct from God, is continually witnessing the changing scenes that always take place in the play of Destiny on the great stage of this world.

✅
Chapter 6a.38 — Shiva on the External and Internal Worship of God

1. The god Shiva continued:— This God, the supreme Lord, is the one worshipped by the wise. He is in the form of the intellect and conscious soul. He is the all-pervading and support of all.

2. He is situated alike in a pot or a painting, in a tree or a hut, in a chariot, and in all men and brute animals, under the different names of Shiva, Hara, and Hari, and also Brahma, Indra, Agni, and Yama.

3. He is the Universal Soul inside and outside all. He always dwells in spirit and in the soul of every wise person. This Lord is worshipped in various forms by different people in the many ways described below.

4. First, let me tell you, O great sage, how this God is worshipped with outer forms and formulas. Then you will hear me describe the inner form with which he is worshipped in spirit.

5. In all forms of worship you must cease to think of your body. You must separate your mind from your body, however purified it may be. Then you must diligently apply your mind to think of the pure and bodiless soul that witnesses the body’s operations from inside.

6. Worship of God consists only of inner meditation and not in any form of outer worship. Therefore, apply your mind to the adoration of the Universal Soul by meditating only upon God in your soul.

7. He has the form of consciousness. He is the source of all light and he is as glorious as millions of suns. He is the light of the inner intellect and the origin of “I” and “you”.

8. His head and shoulders reach above the heaven of heavens and his lotus-like feet descend far below the lowest abyss of the void.

9. His arms extend to the endless bounds of all sides and space. In them he holds the many worlds of infinite space like he is wielding weapons.

10. Worlds rolling over each another rest in a corner of his spacious chest. His brightness passes beyond the limits of unlimited emptiness, and his body stretches beyond all imaginable bounds.

11. Above, below, in all four quarters, and on all sides of the compass, he extends unspent and without end. He is surrounded on all sides by the host of gods, Brahma, Rudra, Hari and Indra, and the demigods also.

12. These series of creatures are to be considered as rows of hairs on his body. The different courses of their actions are like strings that bind the machinery of the worlds together.

13. His will and destiny are powers proceeding from his person, his active agencies in nature. Such is the Lord, the Supreme One who is always to be worshipped by the best of men.

14. He is the intellect and the conscious soul, the all-pervading and all-supporting spirit. He resides alike in the pot and the painting, as in the moving chariot and in living animals.

15. He is Shiva, Hari and Hara, Brahma, Indra, Fire and Yama. He is the receptacle of endless beings and the aggregate body of all essences, the sole entity of entities.

16. In himself he contains this mundane sphere together with all the worlds with their mountains and all other contents. All powerful Time which hurls them ever onward is the guard at the doorway of his eternity.

17. The great god Mahadeva is to be thought upon as dwelling in some part of this body of eternity and infinity, with his body and its members and with a thousand ears and eyes.

18. Moreover, this figure has a thousand heads and a thousand hands all decorated. It has many eyes all over its body with their powers of sight, and so many ears also with their power of hearing.

19. His body has the powers of feeling and touch and taste all over its body, as also the power of hearing and that of thinking in its mind within.

20. However, he is wholly beyond all conception. He is perfectly good and gracious to all. He is always the doer of all things that are done and the one who bestows every blessing on all beings.

21. He is always situated inside all beings. He gives strength and energy to all. Having thought upon the Lord of gods in this manner, the devotee is to worship him in the usual ways of rituals.

22. Now listen as I tell you, who is best acquainted with Brahma, how to worship him in spirit, which consists only in adoring him in the conscious soul and not in presenting offerings to him.

23. It requires no light or incense. It has no need of flowers or decorations, nor does it require sprinkling rice, perfumes or sandalwood paste.

24. It needs no fragrance of saffron or camphor or any painting or anything else. It has no need for pouring water which is easily obtainable everywhere.

25. It is only by pouring the nectar juice of understanding that God is worshipped. The wise call this the best kind of meditation and adoration of God.

26. Pure consciousness, which is known to be always present within one’s self, is to be constantly looked into and sought after, heard about, and felt when one is sleeping or sitting or moving about.

27. By constantly talking on the subject and resuming the inquiry after leaving it off, one becomes fully conscious of himself. Then he should worship his Lord in his meditation as identical with his own soul.

28. The offering of the heart in meditation of the Lord is more delectable to him than the sweetest articles of food offered with the most choice and fragrant flowers.

29. Meditation joined with selfconsciousness or penitence of the soul is the best padya and arghya water (washing feet and hands) and offering that is worthy of the Lord. The best meditation is accompanied with the flower of selfoffering to the Lord.

30. Without this kind of meditation, it is impossible to please the Supreme Soul in one’s self. Therefore spiritual meditation is said to abound with the grace of God and the greatest enjoyment of happiness and prosperity.

31. As the animal soul enjoys all its pleasures in the abode of its body, so the rational, spiritual soul derives all its happiness from meditation.

32. An ignorant man who meditates on the Lord, even for a hundred twinkles of the eye, obtains a reward equal to the merit of giving a milk cow to a brahmin.

33. The man who worships the Lord in his soul for half an hour in this manner reaps the reward of making a horse sacrifice.

34. He who meditates on the Lord in spirit and in his own spirit and presents the offering of his reflections to him, is entitled to the merit of making a thousand horse sacrifices.

35. Whoever worships the Lord in this manner for a full hour receives the reward of making a Rajasuya sacrifice. By worshipping him in this way at midday, a man obtains the merit of making many thousands sacrifices of such kind.

36. The man who worships him in this way for a whole day settles in the abode of God.

37. This is called the superior yoga meditation, the best service of the Lord, and the external adoration of the soul.

38. This mode of holy adoration destroys all sins. Whoever practices it for a minute with a steady mind is certainly entitled to veneration of gods and demigods and is placed in the rank of emancipated spirits like myself.

✅
Chapter 6a.39 — Shiva on the Internal Worship of God

1. Shiva resumed:— I will now describe to you the way of inner worship of the spirit in spirit, which is reckoned as the holy of holies and the dispeller of all darkness.

2. This mode of worship also depends on mental meditation. It is conducted in every state of life, whether sitting, walking, waking or sleeping.

3. It requires the supreme Shiva, who is always situated in the body of man and who is the cause of the perception of all things, to be worshipped in spirit and in the spirit of man.

4. Whether you think him as sleeping or rising, walking or sitting, or whether you conceive him touching or making intangible contact with anything, or as quite unconnected and aloof from everything about him,

5. or whether you take him as enjoying the gross objects, or shunning them all by his spiritual nature, or as the maker of all outward objects, and the one who ordains all forms of action,

6. or whether you consider him as remaining quiescent in all material bodies, or that he is quite apart from all substantial forms, you may worship him in whatever form your understanding presents him to you, or as what you can best conceive of him in your consciousness.

7. Whoever has fallen in and is carried away by the currents of his desires, and who is purified from his worldliness by the sacred ablution of his good sense, should worship the Shiva linga as the symbol of understanding by offering whatever is his knowledge of God.

8. He may be contemplated in the form of the sun, shining brightly in the sky, or that of the moon which cools the sky with its benign moonbeams.

9. God is always conscious in himself of all sensible objects, which are ever being brought to his awareness by means of his senses, just as breathing brings fragrance to the nostrils.

10. He gives flavor to all sweets and enjoys the sweetness of his joy in himself. He employs breaths as his horses, and carried in the car of respiration, sleeps in the cave of the heart.

11. Shiva is the witness of all sights and the actor of all actions. He enjoys all enjoyments and remembers all of what is known.

12. He is well acquainted with all the members of his body and he knows all that exists and doesn’t exist. He is brighter than all luminous objects and is to be thought upon as the all-pervading spirit.

13. He is without parts and without the totality of all parts. Being situated in the body, he resides in the emptiness of the heart. He is colorless himself, yet he paints all things in their many colors. He is the sensation of every member of the body.

14. He dwells in the faculty of the mind and breathes in the respirations of all beings. He resides within the heart, the throat and the palate of the mouth. He has his seat between the eyebrows and in the nostrils (as conscious intellect and the subtle breath of life).

15. He is situated beyond the limit of the thirty-six categories of Saivite scriptures, as he is beyond the ten powers (shakti) known to the Shaktas. He moves the heart and gives articulation to sounds. He makes the mind fly about like a bird in the air.

16. He resides both in ambiguous words and words with alternative meanings, situated in all things like oil in sesame seeds.

17. He is without blemish or parts, compact with all the parts of the world taken together. He is situated alike in a part of the lotus-like heart of the wise, as well as in all bodies in general.

18. He is as clear as the pure and spotless intellect. The imputation of parts or divisions to him is only the work of mere imagination. He is seen palpably in everything at all places. He is perceptible to us in our inner perception of him.

19. Though originally of the nature of universal consciousness, yet he appears in the form of individual souls according to the desires of men. Residing in every individual, he is divided into endless dualities.

20. Then this god thinks of himself as an embodied being, endowed with hands, legs, and other body parts with its hairs, nails and teeth.

21. He thinks of having various different powers and faculties and he is employed in a variety of actions according to the desires of the mind. He feels happy when served by his wives and servants.

22. He thinks the mind is the porter at the gate, conducting information of the three worlds to him. He thinks that his thoughts are his chambermaids, waiting at his door with clean clothes.

23. He believes his knowledge of his individual ego is his greatest power and wife, and his power of action is his mistress. He thinks his knowledge of various ancient beliefs are his decorations.

24. He knows his organs of sense and action are the doors to the house that is his body. He is conscious of being the infinite soul from which he is inseparable.

25. He knows himself to be full of the Universal Spirit, filled by and filling others, and that he has the admirable figure of the body through his dependence on the Divine Spirit.

26. He knows that he is filled with the Godhead within him and therefore he is no contemptible soul himself. He never rises or sets or is glad or displeased at anytime.

27. He never feels fully satisfied or hungry, nor does he long after or forsake anything. He is ever the same and of an even course of action, temper and conduct and form at all times.

28. He retains the gracefulness of his person, the clarity of his mind, and the calmness of his views at all times. He is ever the same since his birth, and the self-composure of his soul never forsakes him at anytime.

29. He is devoted to the adoration of his god for long days and nights. The mind abstracted from his body becomes the object of his worship.

30. This god is worshipped with whatever offerings are available to the devotee. All the powers of the understanding are employed in the adoration of the sole Intellectual Spirit.

31. God is to be worshipped with all things suitable for the ritual. No attempt should be made to make any offering which has never been made before.

32. Man being endowed with a body should worship the Lord with his bodily actions and with all things that lead to bodily enjoyment.

33. So Shiva is to be worshipped with food and drink of the best and richest kind, with beddings and seats and vehicles as one can afford to offer.

34. Men must also entertain their souls, which are the homes of the Divine Spirit in their bodies, with all kinds of things that they think are pleasurable to themselves, such as excellent food and drink and all other things that give enjoyment and pleasure.

35. They must diligently serve the Supreme Soul in their souls regardless of any calamity, difficulty, danger or disease that may befall them, and also when they are overtaken by the illusions of their misunderstandings.

36. The ends of all the efforts of mankind in this world, being no more than life, death and sleep, are all to be directed in the service of the soul of nature.

37. Whether reduced to poverty or elevated to royalty or carried by the currents of casualty, men must always serve their souls with the flowers of their best efforts.

38. Whether overwhelmed by conflict and confusion or buffeted in the waves of mishaps, whether undergoing troubles or enjoying the comforts of domestic life, men must serve their souls at all times.

39. When the gentle beams of feeling fellowship with others spreads over the breast of kind hearted men, and when the sweet influence of sympathy melts the heart, then we serve the soul seated inside.

40. When a man has restrained the turbulent passions of his heart by the power of his right judgment, and he has spread the vest of soft tenderness and sweet content over his heart and mind, then let him worship the serene aspect within himself.

41. Let men worship the soul upon the sudden changes of their fortunes, both when they come into possessions and when they lose their enjoyments.

42. The soul should be adhered to and adored, both when you lose and when you abandon your legal or illegal possessions and enjoyments of anything on earth.

43. Isha, the lord of wealth, is to be worshipped by renouncing all wealth which one may have collected by his own efforts or otherwise.

44. Do not regret what is lost. Make use of what you have and adore the Supreme Soul without any inconstancy in your mind and soul.

45. Retain your constancy amidst the scenes of men’s wicked pursuits. Maintain your vow of holy devotion of the Supreme Spirit at all times.

46. Everything appears as good in the sight of the godly who view all things in God. Everything appears mixed with good and evil to the worshipper of material wealth. Therefore look on all things as situated in the Divine Spirit and continue in your vow of the adoration of the Supreme Soul.

47. Things that appear as pleasant or unpleasant at first sight are all to be taken in an equal light by those who are firm in their vow to worship the one Universal Soul.

48. Give up thinking yourself as such a one or not such a one. Forsake all particularities and knowing that all is the universal One, continue in your vow of adoring the Supreme Soul.

49. Worship the Supreme Spirit always residing in all forms and changes of all things.

50. Forsake your pursuit after things and your attempt to avoid anything. Remain indifferent to both extremes. Continue in your adoration of the soul at all times.

51. Neither seek nor forsake anything, but receive what comes to you of itself or by your own lot. Enjoy all things as the sea does the streams of water that flow into it of their own accord.

52. Placed in this wide world of misery, man should take no heed of the lesser or greater sights of grief that constantly present themselves to his view. They are like fleeting shades and colors that paint the empty dome of the skies and soon vanish into nothing.

53. All good and evil befall us by turns at the proper time, place and action. Therefore take them with unconcern and serve your own soul.

54. Whatever is mentioned as fit offerings for worship of the Supreme Spirit, the calmness of your soul is considered the best and fittest offering.

55. Things of different tastes, such as sour, bitter, acid, sharp and pungent, are useless in the service of the spirit. The calm and sweet composure of the soul is delectable to the Supreme Spirit.

56. Equanimity is sweet to taste. It has the supernatural power of transforming everything to ambrosia.

57. Whatever a man thinks upon with the ambrosial sweetness of his disposition, the same is immediately changed to ambrosia, just like nectar-like dew drops under moonbeams.

58. Calmness expands the soul and gladdens the mind, just as sunlight fills the dome of heaven. The unchangeable calmness of the mind is the highest devotion.

59. The mind of man must shine with an even luster, like bright moonbeams in their fullness. The mind must blaze with the transparent light of consciousness, like a bright crystal in sunlight.

60. He who is employed in his outward actions of life with his mind as bright as the clear sky, free of the mist of worldly affections, is said to be the full knowing devotee.

61. The true devotee shines as brightly as the clear autumn sky when worldly impressions are effaced from the heart and not seen even in dreams, when the cloud of ignorance is cleared away and the fog of egoism is utterly scattered.

62. Let your mind be as clear as the moon and as spotless as the blazing sun. Let your mind hide the thoughts of the measurer and measured. Let it have simple consciousness of itself, like a newborn child, perceiving only the steady light of Consciousness, the seed of all intelligence. Then you will attain the state of highest perfection in your lifetime.

63. Living amidst the fluctuations of pain and pleasure, attending on the lot and actions of all living beings occurring at their fixed times and places, remain in the steady service of your soul, the leader of your body, by tranquilizing all the passions and desires of your heart and mind.

✅
Chapter 6a.40 — Shiva on the Worship of God

1. The god Shiva continued:— It is of no consequence whether or not a devotee observes formal worship in its proper time and manner. It is enough if he adores the form of Shiva as the consciousness within himself, which is equivalent to worship of the soul (atma) .

2. This is attended with a delight that becomes manifest within himself. Full of spiritual light and delight, the devotee is assimilated and becomes the same as his god.

3. The meanings of the words affection and hatred do not belong to the holy soul as its separate properties. Rather, they blend together and die in the soul like sparks in fire.

4. The knowledge that the dignity and poverty of men, and also their happiness and misery, proceed from God is considered to be worship of the Supreme Spirit which ordains them all.

5. The consciousness of the world as a manifestation of the Divine Spirit is also reckoned as devotion. A pot or other token for the spirit of God is also worship because God resides in it.

6. The quiet and lightless spirit of Shiva is manifest in all his works of creation, so the whole sensible world is the form of the Supreme Spirit.

7. It is astonishing that every soul forgets its own nature and thinks itself to be a living soul residing in the body, just as they believe the Supreme Soul is confined in a pot or a painting.

8. It is also astonishing how they attribute false ideas of worship, worshipper and the worshipped to the god Shiva who is the infinite soul of all and a pure spirit.

9. The ritual of worship and adoration, which applies to the finite forms of gods (idols), cannot be applied to the worship of the infinite spirit of God.

10. The pure spirit of the eternal, infinite and all powerful cannot be the object of ritualistic worship which relates to finite gods or idols.

11. Know, O brahmin, that the spirit of God which pervades the three worlds and is of the nature of pure consciousness, is not to be circumscribed by any form or figure.

12. Know, O wisest of the wise, that we do not regard those who have their god limited by time and place as among the wise.

13. Therefore, O sage, retract your sight from idols and idolatrous worship. Adopt your view to spiritual adoration. Be of an even, cool and clear mind. Be dispassionate and free from decay and disease.

14. Continue to worship the Supreme Spirit with an unshaken mind by making him offerings of your desires and of all the good and evil that occur to you at anytime.

15. O sage who is acquainted with the sole unity, in the one uniform, even course of your soul and mind, you are thereby set above the reach of the miseries attending this frail life, just as a pure crystal is clear of the shades and impurities of all worldly things.

✅
Chapter 6a.41 — Shiva on How to Know God, the Development of Mind, and Desires & Thoughts Cause Misery

1. Vasishta asked, “What is called god Shiva? What is meant by Supreme Brahman? What is the meaning of soul and what is its difference from the Supreme Soul?

2. All that exists is the true entity and all else is non-entity. What is the emptiness that is nothing? What philosophy knows everything? Explain to me these differences, for you Lord know them all.”

3. The god Shiva replied:— There exists one real being in itself which is without beginning or end and without any appearance or reflection of its own. This entity appears as a non entity because it is imperceptible to the physical senses.

4. Vasishta replied, “Lord, if this entity is not perceptible by the organs of sense and unknowable by understanding, then how, O ruler, is it to be known at all?

5. The god replied:— A man who desires his salvation but sticks to his ignorance is a sage in name only. Such men are subjected to greater ignorance by the scriptures that guide them.

6. Let one ignorance remove another, as washerman cleanses one dirt by another (soap).

7. When the error of ignorance is removed by opposition of the other, then as a matter of course, the soul appears of itself to be seen.

8. A child dirties his fingers by rubbing one piece of charcoal against another, but cleans them by washing his hands.

9. As they examine both sides of a question in a learned discussion, and the truth comes out from amidst them both, so the knowledge of the soul appears from midst of the mist of ignorance.

10. When the soul perceives the soul and scans it by itself, and as it comes to know it in itself, it is said to get rid of its ignorance, which is then said to be utterly destroyed.

11. The paths of learning and the lectures of a teacher are not the proper means to the knowledge of the soul. One comes to know the unity of this thing by his own intuition.

12. All the teachers of scriptures place the soul among the bodily senses, but Brahma is situated beyond the senses and is known after the sense organs have been subdued. Something obtainable in the absence of something else can never be had in the presence of that other thing.

13. However, many things are used as causes for things which they do not cause at all, just as they use a teacher’s lectures as means to attain spiritual knowledge.

14. Of course, a course of lectures is calculated to throw light on the student’s knowledge of what can be known, but in matters of abstract knowledge and the invisible soul, it is the soul itself that must throw its own light.

15. No explanation of the scriptures and no lectures of the teacher are calculated to give light on spiritual knowledge, unless they are understood by the intuitive knowledge of the spirit itself.

16. Again, the soul is always learning and getting lectures, therefore both must combine with inquiry to bring us to the light of the soul.

17. Therefore a combination of book knowledge with the teacher’s instruction joined with the investigation of the inquirer is calculated to enlighten us on spiritual knowledge, just as the appearance of the day with the rising sun and waking world gives an impetus to the rise of daily duties.

18. After the physical senses and actions have subsided and the sensations of pain and pleasure have become imperceptible, we come to the knowledge of Shiva, otherwise known as the soul, the He that is (tat sat) and many other names.

19. This infinite entity has existed in its empty form, rarer than the ether, since this matter which fills space was not and existed only in its spiritual or ideal forms.

20. He is continually meditated upon by the good discernment of seekers of salvation, and he is variously represented by the pure minded and those of weakened minds.

21. There are others who are situated in the sight of and not far from the path of living liberation, who are employed in leading others to salvation and in the exposition of the scriptures.

22. Many thinking and learned men have used the words Brahma, Indra, Rudra and the names of the rulers of worlds for God in order to justify the doctrines of the Puranas, Vedas and Siddhantas.

23. Others have applied fictitious titles like consciousness or intellect (chit), Brahma, Shiva, the soul or spirit (atma), the Lord (isha), the Supreme Spirit and God (ishwara) to the nameless God that is apart and aloof from all.

24. Such is the truth of nature and of you also, called Shiva the blissful, which always confers all joy to the world and to you also.

25. The words Shiva, soul, supreme Brahman and others have been coined by the ancients to express the Supreme Being. Though they differ in sound, there is no difference in meaning or what they signify.

26. Know, O chief of sages, that wise men always adore this God whom we serve and to whom we return as the best and ultimate state of all.

27. Vasishta said, “Lord, please explain to me briefly how the ever existent God remains as nonexistent. How can God come into existence from its prior state of nonexistence?”

28. The god Shiva replied:— Know that the meaning of the word Brahma and other names for God are related only to our consciousness. Though God is as clear as the sky and as minute as an atom, God contains the great bulk of Mount Meru.

29. Although this is unintelligible to us, far beyond our conception or comprehension, yet it becomes intelligible when we think of God in the form of our consciousness.

30. By taking it objectively, it becomes intelligible to us like our own individual ego. By thinking on its personality, we have the same idea as one has of a wild elephant from seeing one in a dream.

31. These ideas of God’s ego and personality, being limited by time and space, consequently give rise to many aerial forms as attendants upon God.

32. Among these is the entity called the living spirit (jiva), with its vibration and respiration, in the form of a pencil of air.

33. After the power of vitality is established and has come into force, there follows the faculty of understanding which at first remains in utter ignorance.

34. It is followed by the faculties of hearing, action and perceptions, all of which operate inward by without their development into outward organs.

35. All these powers uniting together lead to the excitement of memory, which soon exhibits itself in the form of the mind, the tree of desires.

36. What the learned call the spiritual body is the inner power of God in the form of the conscious soul, seeing the Divine Soul in itself.

37. Afterwards the powers in the mind arise which develop themselves in the outer organs, although their powers may be wanting in them.

38. These are the essences of air and motion, and of feeling also, together with the senses of touch and heat emitted by the eyes.

39. There are the essences of color, water and taste also, and likewise the essences of smell and flavor too.

40. There are the essences of earth and gold, and the essences of thick mass, and also the essences of time and space, all of which are without form and shape.

41. The spiritual body contains all these essences in itself as its component parts, just as the seed of a fruit contains in its cell the leaves and germ of the future tree.

42. This spiritual body contains the eight elementary senses. Therefore it is also called the astral body (puryashtaka, subtle or minute body). These elementary senses afterwards develop into the organs of sense.

43. The primary or spiritual body which is formed in this manner is actually nobody at all because it is devoid of understanding, intellect, senses and consciousness.

44. It is only the Supreme Being which contains the essence of the soul, just as the sea contains clear waters.

45. The soul possesses its consciousness and knowledge. Everything else is dull and inert matter viewed by the soul like a fairyland in a dream.

46. Shiva can be known by consciousness and knowledge, and what cannot be known by consciousness and knowledge can be nothing at all.

47. The Supreme Soul sees all things within itself as parts of itself. He beholds particles of his atomic self formed into innumerable bodies.

48. These bodies increased in bulk, became big bodies, and bore the marks of the organs upon them.

49. Then it became in the form of a man from his thought of being so. This soon grew up in its size of a full grown man,

50. and this is how our bodies appear to us in our living state, like a fairyland appearing in a dream.

51. Vasishta said, “I see how appearance of the human body resembles the vision of a fairyland in a dream. I also see the miseries awaiting human life in this world. Now tell me, my lord. How is all this misery to be removed from the world?”

52. The god Shiva replied:— All human sorrow is the result of desires and belief in the reality of the world. The entire world must be known to be as unreal as the waves of water seen in a mirage.

53. For what good or use is desire? Why should a dreaming man be deluded to drink the show of water in the mirage?

54. The viewer of truth, freed from his views of personal ego and objective reality, who has abandoned deluded and delusive thoughts and in the utter absence of all worldly thoughts from his mind, truly beholds the true existence of God in his presence.

55. Where there is no desirer or desire or the desired object, but only the thought of the one unity, all error and misery are an end.

56. He whose mind is free of the true and false imaginary demons of common and imaginary error and is settled in the thought of one unity alone, sees nothing but the unity before him.

57. Desires of the mind arise like demons in the midway sky. Thoughts of the world wander about the sphere of the mind like numerous worlds revolving in the sky. Hence there is no peace of the soul unless these desires and thought subside.

58. It is useless to counsel a man towards wisdom if he is elated by his own personal ego and deluded by the waters of the mirage of this fleeting world.

59. Wise men should advise only the prudent and not throw their instruction away to children who wander in error and are shunned by good people. To give good counsel to the ignorant is like offering a fair daughter in marriage to the apparition of a man seen in a dream.

✅
Chapter 6a.42 — Shiva on the Phases and Names of the Supreme Soul; Spiritual Cords

1. Vasishta asked, “Tell me Lord, what happens to the living soul after its situation in the open air, and after it observes the vanity of the elemental and material body on its first creation?”

2. Shiva replied:— The living soul, having sprung from the Supreme and being situated in the open firmament, views the body formed in the manner I have described, just as a man sees a vision in his dream.

3. The living soul, being everywhere, enters and acts in every part of this body according to the command of the embodied intellect, just as a sleeping man acts his parts in a dream yet still bearing his body.

4. Before it was the indiscrete infinite soul. Then it became the discrete spirit called the first male. This spirit was the primary cause of creation in itself.

5. Thus this animated spirit became like Shiva at the beginning of the first creation. It was called Vishnu in another. It became the lotus-born Brahma or the great patriarch in others.

6. The great progenitor of one creation becomes the intellect in another, then the male agent of will to create afterwards, and at last it looks upon itself as a male form according to its will.

7. The primary will of ideal creation becoming compact in time, it takes the form of the mind which feels itself able to bring about whatever it wills in itself.

8. This creation of the world by Brahma is mere imagination, like the sight of an apparition in the air or in a dream. But it appears as a positive reality to the false sight of one who believes it is real.

9. The prime male agent who becomes the beholder of his creation retains the power of exhibiting himself in the empty air every moment, or to retract them into himself.

10. To him, a kalpa or great kalpa age is a mere twinkling of his eye. By his own expansion or contraction the world makes its appearance or disappearance.

11. Worlds appear and disappear at his will at each moment of time, in each particle of matter, and in every pore of space. There is no end to these successions in all eternity.

12. Many things are seen to occur one after another in conformity with the course of our desires. But with our sight of the Divine Spirit, we never find anything taking place.

13. All created things do not occur to the unchanging Shiva. They are like shadowy appearances in empty air that rise of themselves and disappear in air.

14. All real and unreal appearances vanish of themselves, like mountains appearing in dreams. All these creations have no command over their own causation or space or time.

15. Therefore all these phenomena are not real, potential, imaginary or temporary appearances. There is nothing produced or destroyed at anytime.

16. All these are the wonderful phenomena of our ideas and wishes exhibited by the intellect in itself. This world is like the appearance of a castle in the sky in a dream, and subject to its rise and fall by turns.

17. Visible forms that appear to be moving about in time and space actually have no motion whatever in either. They remain as fixed as an ideal rock in the mind forever.

18. So also, the extension of the unreal world is no extension at all, just as the magnitude of an ideal rock has no dimension.

19. The situation and duration of the unreal world conform exactly to the ideas of its time and place that exist in the mind of the Maker of all.

20. In this manner he is instantly changed to a worm from his idea of it, and so are all the four orders of living beings born in this world.

21. Thus, from his ideas of them, the creative Power becomes all things in an instant, from the great Rudras down to mean bits of straw and the most minute atoms and particles of matter.

22. This is how past and present creations are produced from the memories of the past, which is the cause of the delusion of taking the world for a real existence.

23. After giving up the thought of any difference between the creator and the created, and by the habit of thinking all as unity, one becomes Shiva in a minute, and by thinking so for a longer period, one is assimilated into the nature of Supreme Consciousness.

24. Individual consciousness proceeds from the original Consciousness and rises without occupying any place. It is of the nature of understanding or the intellect and it resides in the soul like empty air in the middle of a stone.

25. The soul, which is like eternal light, is known under the name of Brahma. The intellect seated in this soul becomes weakened as the creative power increases and strengthens in it.

26. Next the particles of time and place join together to form minute atoms which, by forming the elementary bodies, have the living principle added to them.

27. These then become plants, insects, beasts, brutes and the forms of gods and demigods. These being stretched out in endless series remain like a long chain of being connected by the strong and lengthening line of the soul (sutratma, spiritual cord).

28. Thus the great God who pervades all his works in the world connects all things in being and not in being like pearls in a necklace by the thread of his soul. He is neither near us nor far from us, nor is he above or below anything whatever. He is neither the first nor last but everlasting. He is neither the reality nor unreality, nor is he in the midst of these.

29. He is beyond all alternatives and antitheses. He is not to be known beyond our imaginary ideas of him. He has no measure or dimension or any likeness or form to represent him. Whatever greatness and majesty men attribute to him, they are all extinguished in his glory like fire cooled in water.

30. I have answered all your questions. Now I shall proceed to my desired place. Be happy, O sage, and go your way. Rise, O Parvati, and let us make our way.

31. Vasishta said:— When the god with his blue throat had spoken in this manner, I honored him by throwing handfuls of flowers upon him. Then he rose with his attendants and pierced the emptiness of heaven.

32. For some time after the lord of Uma and master of the three worlds had departed, I remained reflecting on all I had heard from the god. Then having received the new doctrine with the purity of my heart, I gave up the my external forms of worshipping God.

✅
Chapter 6a.43 — Vasishta Exhorts Rama; Rama without Questions

1. Vasishta said:— I well understand what the god told me. You too, O Rama, know the nature of this world very well.

2. When the false world appears in a false light to the false understanding of man, and everything is proven to be only vanity of vanities, tell me, what is true and good and what is untrue and bad?

3. The alternative of something is not that thing itself, so the form of the soul, though not the soul itself, yet serves to convey some idea of the soul.

4. As fluidity is the nature of liquids and fluctuation is that of wind, and as emptiness is the state of the sky, so is creation the condition of the spirit or Divine Soul.

5. Ever since hearing Shiva’s explanations, I have worshipped spirit in spirit and given up my eagerness for the outward adoration of gods.

6. I pass these days of my life under this rule, even when I am peacefully employed performing prescribed and popular rituals.

7. I have worshipped the Divine Spirit in all modes and forms and offerings of flowers as they present themselves to me. In spite of interruptions, I have uninterruptedly adored my God at all times, day and night.

8. All people in general are concerned with making their offerings acceptable to their receiver, God, but the meditation of the yogi is the true worship of the spirit.

9. Having known this, O lord of Raghu’s race, abandon the society of men in your heart and walk in your lonely path amidst the wilderness of the world, thereby remaining without sorrow and remorse.

10. When exposed or reduced to distress or aggrieved at the loss or separation of friends, rely on this truth and think upon the vanity of the world.

11. We should neither rejoice nor regret the acquisition or loss of friends and relations because all things are so frail and unstable in this transitory world.

12. Rama, you well know the precarious state of worldly possessions and their destructive effects. They come and go of their own accord, but overpower a man in both states (of prosperity and adversity).

13. So uncertain are the favors of friends and fortune and so unforeseen is their loss, that it is impossible for anybody to account for them.

14. O sinless Rama, such is the course of the world, that you have no command over it nor is it ever subject to you. If the world is so insubordinate, then why should you be sorry for something you cannot manage?

15. Rama, mind your spiritual nature and know you are an expanded form of your consciousness. See how you are cooped up in your earthly frame. Forsake your joy and grief at the repeated entrances and exits of your corporeal body.

16. Know my boy that you are purely of the form of your consciousness, inherent throughout all nature. Therefore there is nothing in the world that you can assume or reject.

17. What cause of joy or grief is there in the changing fortunes of things in the world? They are all the results of the mind’s revolutions on the pivot of conscious intellect. They resemble the whirling waters of the sea caused by a vortex current.

18. Rama, take yourself to the fourth stage of deep sleep trance (susupta). This even course of action results in samadhi.

19. Be as cold and composed, with your peaceful face and expanded mind, as the quiet spirit of God is diffused and displayed throughout all nature. Remain as full as the vast ocean in the contemplation of that soul, whose fullness fills the whole.

20. You have heard all this already, Rama! You are filled with the fullness of your understanding. Now if you have anything else to ask with regard to your former question, you can ask.

21. Rama said:— Sage, my former questions are all dispersed at present. I have nothing more to ask you.

22. I have known all that is to be known. I have a heartfelt satisfaction at this, and now I am free from the foulness of the objective, of dualism and of fictions.

23. The foulness of the soul proceeds from ignorance, and this ignorance which had darkened my soul is now removed by the light of spirituality.

24. I have now come to understand that I was under error that is neither foul matter nor is it born nor does it die at anytime.

25. I am now confirmed in my belief that all this is Brahman diffused throughout nature, and I have ceased from all doubts and questions on the subject, nor do I have any desire to know anything more about it.

26. My mind is now as pure as purified water. I have no need to learn anything from the preaching and moral lessons of the wise.

27. I am unconcerned with all worldly affairs, just as Mount Sumeru is unaware of the golden metals in its bosom. Having all things about me, I am quite indifferent to them because I have not what I expect to have, nor do I possess any object of my fond desire.

28. I expect nothing that is desirable nor reject anything to which exception can be taken, nor is there a mean between desirable and undesirable in this world. There is nothing that is really acceptable or avoidable in the world, nor anything which is truly good or bad.

29. Thus, O sage, the false thought of these opposites is entirely dispelled from me. I neither care for a seat in heaven nor fear the terrors of hell.

30. I am as fixed in the one Spirit as Mount Mandara is firmly seated in the sea. That one Spirit scatters its particles throughout the three worlds just like that mountain splashed water when it churned the ocean.

31. I am as firm as fixed Mandara, while others wander in their errors of discriminating between positive and negative and the true and false.

32. The heart of that man who thinks the world is one thing and the Divine Spirit is another must be entangled with the weeds of doubts.

33. He who seeks his real good in anything in this world never finds it in the unsubstantial material world, which is full of the confused waves of eternity.

34. It is by your favor, O venerable sage, that I have passed over the noisy ocean of this world to the limits of its perilous coasts. I have arrived at the shore of safety and found the path of my future prosperity.

35. I am no longer lacking that supreme joy which is the supreme good of all things. I am full in myself as the lord of all. I am quite incapable of being subdued by anybody since I have defeated the wild elephant of my own greed.

36. Being loosened from the chain of desire and freed from the fetters of choice, I am rich and blessed with the best of all things. This is the internal satisfaction of my soul and mind which gives me a cheerful appearance in all the three worlds.

✅
Chapter 6a.44 — Vasishta Praises Rama’s Understanding; Warns Him to Maintain It

1. Vasishta said:— Rama, whatever acts you do with your organs of action and without application of the mind to the work, know such work to be no doing of yours.

2. Be like one who does not feel a pleasure upon achieving an action which he did not feel a moment before, and in the next moment, is unaware that he has done the work.

3. Memory of an experience does not repeat the same delight, therefore it is childish and not manly to take any delight in a momentary pleasure.

4. Whatever is pleasant during its desire has only that desire as the cause of pleasure. Hence the pleasure of a thing lasting until it becomes unpleasant is no real pleasure. Therefore the wise forsake this frail pleasure together with its temporary cause of desire.

5. If you have arrived to that high state, then be careful for the future. Merge yourself no more in the narrow pit of your personality.

6. You who have found your rest and repose seated in the highest height of spiritual knowledge must not allow your soul to plunge into the deep and dark cave of your egoistic individuality.

7. Thus seated on the peak of your knowledge, as on the top of Mount Meru, and remembering the glories all around, you cannot choose to fall down into the hell pit of this earth to be reborn in the dark cave of a mother’s womb.

8. It appears to me that you, O Rama, are of an even temperament. You have the quality of truth fully in your nature. I understand you have weakened your desires and have entirely gotten over your ignorance.

9. You appear to be settled in your nature of purity. The temperament of your mind appears to be as calm and quiet as the sea when it is full and untroubled by the rude and rough winds of heaven.

10. May your expectations set at ease and your wants end in contentment. Let your madness turn to right-mindedness. Live unconnected with and aloof from all.

11. Whatever objects you see placed before you, know them to be full of Divine Consciousness which is consolidated and extended through all as their common essence.

12. One ignorant of the soul is tightly bound to his ignorance. One acquainted with the soul is liberated from his bondage. Hence, O Rama, learn to meditate constantly and intensely upon the Supreme Soul in your own soul.

13. Detachment wants to enjoy nothing and refuses the enjoyment of whatever presents itself. Know that being without desire is the cool calm of the mind, resembling the serenity of the sky.

14. Preserve the cold detachment of your mind. Discharge your duties with the cool application of your organs of action. This detachment of your mind will render you as steady as the sky throughout all the accidents of life.

15. If you can combine the knower, knowable and the knowledge in your soul, then you will feel the tranquility of your spirit and you will no longer feel the troubles of earthly life.

16. The expansion and contraction of the mind cause the display and dissolution of the world. Therefore try to stop the action of your mind by restraining the breaths of your desire.

17. The breath of life conducts and stops the business of the world by its movements and rest. Therefore restrain the breathing of the vital air by your practice of regulating your breathing.

18. Ignorance gives rise to ceremonious works. Knowledge represses them. Therefore boldly put ignorance down by your own forbearance, the instructions you derive from the scriptures, and your teachers.

19. As winds flying with dust darken the fair face of the sky, so consciousness sullied with phenomena obscures the clear face of the soul.

20. The relationship between vision and what can be seen causes the appearance of the world and its course, just as the relationship between sunlight and forms makes them appear in various colors to the eye.

21. But the lack of this relationship removes the phenomena from sight, just as the absence of light takes away the colors of things.

22. Fluctuations of the mind cause illusions, just as the heart throbbing raises emotions. They all stop when these organs are suspended. The waves raised by the motion of water and the action of winds subside in the deep where these actions cease.

23. The abandonment of every jot of desire, the suspension of breath, and the exercise of reasoning will contract the actions of the heart and mind, thereby preventing the rise of passions, affections and illusions.

24. The unconsciousness that follows the inaction of the heart and mind when vital breath is suspended is the highest perfection.

25. There is pleasure seeing phenomena which is common to all living being. But this being felt spiritually amounts to holy pleasure. The sight of God in one’s consciousness, which is beyond the province of the mind, transcends mental pleasure and gives a divine ecstasy called brahmananda (bliss of Brahman).

26. The true bliss of the soul is known when the mind is dormant and unconscious. Such bliss cannot be found even in heaven, just as it is not possible to have a cooling bath in a sandy desert.

27. The inertness of the heart and mind is attended with a delight felt in the innermost soul that cannot be described in words. It is an everlasting joy that neither rises nor falls, nor increases or decreases.

28. Right understanding weakens the sensuous mind, but wrong understanding only serves to increase its irrational sensuousness. Then it sees the thickening mists of error rising like ghosts and apparitions before children.

29. Though the sensational mind exists in us, yet it seems to be quite nonexistent and extinct before the light of our rationality, just as copper appears to disappear when melted with gold.

30. The mind of the wise is not sensuous because the wise mind is an essence of purity by itself. The mind of the senses is changed in name and nature to that of the understanding, just as copper is converted to the name and nature of gold.

31. But it is not possible for the mind to be absorbed in consciousness all at once. Its errors are removed only by right understanding. Its essence is never annihilated.

32. Things taken as symbols of the soul are all as unsubstantial as the mind and vital principle, all of which are as unreal as the horns of a rabbit. They are only reflections of the soul which vanish from view once the soul is known.

33. The mind exists only for a short time, during its continuance in the world. After it has passed its fourth stage of unconsciousness, it arrives to the state of mental inactivity (turiya) which is beyond the fourth stage.

34. Brahman is all even and one, though appearing as many amidst the errors that rule the world. He is the soul of all and has no partial or particular form of any kind. He is not the mind or anything else, nor is He situated in the heart (as a finite being).

✅
Chapter 6a.45 — Parable of the Bael Fruit as Creation

1. Vasishta said:— O Rama, listen to a pleasant story, never told before, which I will briefly narrate for your instruction and amusement.

2. There is a big and beautiful bael fruit tree, as large as the distance of many thousands of miles, and so solid that it does not ripen or rot in the course of many, many ages.

3. Its fruit has a lasting flavor like sweet honey or celestial ambrosia. Though grown old, yet the tree increases with fresh and beautiful foliage day by day like the new moon.

4. This tree is situated in the midst of the universe, just like the great Mount Meru is placed in the middle of the earth. It is as firm and fixed as Mandara Mountain, immovable even by the force of the winds of the great flood.

5. Its root is the foundation of the world and it stretches on all sides to distances of immeasurable extent.

6. There were millions of worlds within this fruit like its innumerable seeds. These worlds were minute compared to the great bulk of the fruit. They appeared like dust particles at the foot of a mountain.

7. The bael is filled with all kinds of delicacies that are tasteful and delicious to the six organs of sense. Not one of the six kinds of tasty pleasures is lacking in this fruit.

8. The fruit is never found in its green or unripe state, nor is it ever known to fall down over-ripe on the ground. It is always ripe of itself, never rotten or dried or decayed at anytime by age or accident.

9. The gods Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra are not as everlasting as this tree, nor do they know anything of the origin of this tree or anything about its extent and dimensions.

10. No one knows the germ and sprout of this tree, and its buds and flowers are invisible to all. There is no stem or trunk or bough or branch of the tree that bears this great fruit.

11. This fruit is a solid mass of great bulk. There is nobody who has seen its growth, change or fall.

12. This is the best and largest of all fruits and having no central core or seed, it is always sound and unsoiled.

13. It is as dense in its fullness as the inside of a stone, and as overflowing with bliss as the disc of the moon drizzling with its cooling beams. It is full of flavor and distils its ambrosial nectar to the conscious souls of men.

14. It is source of delight in all beings. It is the cause of the cooling moonbeams by its own brightness. It is the solid rock of all security, the stupendous body of joy. It contains the core and foundation that support and sustain all living souls, which are the fruits of the prior acts of people.

15. Therefore that transcendent central core, which is the wonder of souls, is contained in the infinite spirit of God, deposited and preserved in that auspicious fruit, the bael.

16. God is deposited with its wonderful power in that small bael fruit, which represents the human as well as the Divine Soul, without losing its properties of thinness and thickness and freshness forever.

17. The thought that “I am this” clothes unreality with a gross form. Though it is absurd to attribute differences to nullities, yet the mind makes them of itself, then believes its fictitious creatures as real ones.

18. The Divine Ego contains the essential parts of all things set in their proper order, as the emptiness of the sky is filled with minute atoms out of which the three worlds burst forth with all their varieties.

19. In this manner the power of consciousness grew in its proper form, yet the essence of the soul retains its former state without exhausting itself.

20. The power of consciousness, being thus stretched about, makes it perceive the fabric of the world and its great bustle in its tranquil self.

21. It views the great vacuum on all sides and counts the parts of time as they pass away. It conceives a destiny which directs all things and comes to know what is action by its operation.

22. It finds the world stretching as the wish of one, and the sides of heaven extending as far as the desires of men. It comes to know the feelings of love and hatred and the objects of its liking and dislike.

23. It understands its egoism and non-egoism, the subjective and the objective, and views itself in an objective light by forgetting its subjectivity. It views the worlds above and, being itself as high as any one of them, finds itself far below them.

24. It perceives one thing to be placed before and another to be situated beside it. It finds something to be behind and others to be near or far away from it. Then it comes to know some things as present and others as past or yet to come.

25. Thus the whole world is seen like a play house in the power of consciousness with various imaginary figures blooming like lotuses in a lake.

26. Our consciousness is seated in the center of the lotus of our hearts. It has knowledge of our endless desires budding about it. It sees the countless worlds turning around like a rosary of lotus seeds.

27. Its hollow, cell-like skies are filled with the great Rudras who wander about in the distant paths of the midway sky, like falling comets with flaming tails.

28. It has the great Mount Meru situated in its middle like the bright core in the middle of a lotus flower. The moon-capped summit of this mountain is visited by the immortals who wander about it like bees in quest of ambrosial honey distilled by the moonbeams on high.

29. Here is the tree of the Nandana garden of paradise with its clusters of beautiful flowers diffusing their fragrance all around. There is the deadly tree of the old world, scattering its destructive pollen that makes us chose death and hell.

30. Here the stars are shining like bright filaments of flowery trees growing on the banks of the wide ocean of Brahman. There is the pleasant lake of the Milky Way in the boundless space of emptiness.

31. Here roll the uncontrolled waves of ceremonial acts filled with frightful sharks, and there are the dreadful whirlpools of worldly acts that whirl mankind in endless births for ever more.

32. Here runs the lake of time in its meandering course forever with the broad expanse of heaven for its blooming blossom and having moments and ages for its leaves and petals, and the luminaries of sun, moon and stars for its bright pistils and filaments.

33. Here it sees the bodies of living beings filled with health and disease, teeming with old age, decay and the torments of death. There it beholds the jarring expositions of the scriptures, some delighting in their knowledge of spiritual wisdom, others rambling in the gloom of ignorance.

34. In this manner our inner consciousness represents the wonders contained in the pulp of the bael fruit which is full of the unsubstantial substance of our desires and wishes and the coreless essence of our false imagination.

35. It sees many that are tranquil, calm, cool and dispassionate, who are free from their restraints and desires. They are heedless of both their activity and inactivity. They do not care for works whether done or left undone by them.

36. Thus this single consciousness presents her various aspects, though she is neither alone nor many of herself. She is what she is. She has in reality only one form of peaceful tranquility, though she is possessed of the vast capacity of conceiving in herself all the manifold forms of things at liberty.

✅
Chapter 6a.46 — Parable of a Carved Rock as the Soul

1. Rama said, “Venerable sage who knows the substance of all truths, I understand the parable of bael fruit, which you just told me, is related to the essence of compact consciousness, which is the only unit and identical with itself.

2. The whole totality of existence together with the personalities of I, you, this and that form the fullness of consciousness. There is not the slightest difference between them, such as this is one thing and that another.”

3. Vasishta answered:— As this cosmic egg, the universe, is similar to a gourd containing mountains and all other things as its inner substance, so does consciousness resemble the bael fruit, the great foundation that contains even the universe as the kernel inside it.

4. But although the world has no other receptacle beside Divine Consciousness, yet it is not literally the kernel inside that crust.

5. Consciousness resembles the hard coating of the pepper seed, containing inside the soft substance of its central core. It is also similar to a block of stone bearing carved figures peacefully sleeping in it.

6. O moon-faced Rama, hear me relate another pleasant story which will appear equally charming and wonderful to you.

7. There is a huge block of stone somewhere which is as big as it is thick and solid. It is bright and glossy, and cold and smooth to touch. It never wastes or wears out, or becomes dark and dim.

8. Within the bosom of this wonderful stone there are many full blown lotuses and unnumbered buds of water lilies growing in a clear lake of water.

9. There are many other plants also growing in that lake, some with their long and broad leaves and others with their alternate and joint thin leaves.

10. There are many flowers with uplifted and downcast heads, and others with their petals hanging before them. Some flowers grown on a single stalk and others grow separate and apart from one another. Some are concealed and others manifest to view.

11. Some have their roots formed of the fibers of the outer layer and others have their outer layers growing upon the roots. Some have their roots on the tops and others at the foot of trees, while there are many without their roots at all.

12. There are a great many conch shells about these, and unnumbered diseases also scattered all about.

13. Rama said, “All this is true. I have seen this large saligrama stone in my travels. I remember it was placed in the shrine of Vishnu in a bed of lotus flowers.”

14. Vasishta replied:— You say truly that you have seen that great stone and know its inside also. But do you know the unperforated and hollow-less stone of the Divine Mind that contains the universe in its hollow receptacle and is the life of all living beings?

15. The stone of which I have been describing is marvelous and supernatural and contains in its void-less bosom all things as nothing.

16. The stone-like consciousness contains all these massive worlds within its spacious sphere. It is figuratively called a stone from its solidity, cohesive impenetrability and indivisibility, qualities like those of a block of stone.

17. This solid substance of consciousness, in spite of its density without any void, contains all the worlds in itself, just as the infinite space of heaven is filled with subtle and atmospheric air.

18. The mind is occupied with all its various thoughts, just as the world is filled by earth, sky, air and atmosphere, and the mountains and rivers on all sides. There is no hole or hollow that is not occupied by something or another.

19. The solid soul of God resembles this massive stone. It contains all these worlds that are displayed like so many beds of lotuses in their blooming beauty. Yet there is nothing so very pure and unstained as this solid crystalline soul.

20. It is the practice of men to paint blocks of stones with figures of lotuses, conch shells and other images. So it is the tendency of the fanciful mind to picture many fantastic forms on the solid rock of the soul.

21. All things in the world appear exactly like the various figures carved on a stone, seeming to be separate but carved in relief.

22. As a lotus carved in rock is not different from the rock itself, so no part of existence is set apart from the substantiality of Divine Consciousness which represents its subtle ideas in their condensed forms.

23. The forms of creation are as inseparable from the formless intellect of God just as the forms of lotus flowers carved in stone are not separate from the shapeless stone.

24. These endless chains of worlds are all linked together in the boundless intellect of God in the same way as clusters of lotus flowers are carved together in stone, and like seeds are set together inside a long pepper.

25. These revolving worlds do not rise or fall in the sphere of the Infinite Intellect, but they remain as firm as the kernel of a bael fruit and as fixed as the fidelity of a faithful wife.

26. The revolution of worlds and their changing scenes seen taking place in Divine Consciousness do not prove a change within the all-containing Infinite Intellect because its contents of finite things are so changeable in their nature.

27. At last, all these changes and varieties subside in the Divine Intellect, just as waves and water drops sink down in the sea. The only change observable in the Supreme Intellect is its absorption of all finite changes into its infinity.

28. The word that has produced all this causes their changes and their dissolutions in itself. But know that the word “change” is altogether meaningless because it is from Brahman that this divine command and these changes have sprung, and all these and the original divine command are only Brahman.

29. Brahman being both the mainspring as well as the mainstay of all changes in nature, he is neither excluded from or included under any change which occurs in the sphere of his immensity.

30. Know change in one or the other of two senses. Change of the Divine Spirit in the works of creation resembles the change or development of the seed into its stem, fruits and flowers and other parts. The other is change is a display of delusion like the appearance of water in a mirage.

31. As the substance of a seed gradually transforms itself into the various states of its development, so the density of Divine Consciousness condenses itself more and more in its production of solid and compact worlds, and this is the course of the formation of the cosmos by slow degrees.

32. The union of the seed with the process of its development forms the duality that is destroyed by the loss of either of these. Only imagination paints the world as a dull material thing when there is no such grossness in pure Consciousness.

33. Consciousness and dull matter cannot combine, nor can the one be included within the other. Therefore the ideal world resembles marks carved in stone and in no way different in their natures.

34. As the core and foundation of a fruit is nothing other than the fruit itself, so the cosmos forms the gist of solid Consciousness and is no way separable from Consciousness which is like a thick stone containing marks and under-marks layered under one another.

35. So we see the three worlds lying under one another in the womb of the unity of God, just as we see the sleeping and silent marks of lotuses and conch shells carved in the hollow of a stone.

36. There is no rising or setting of the course of the world, but everything is as fixed and immovable in it as an inscription carved in stone.

37. The core and foundation of Divine Consciousness causes the creative power and the act of creation, just as the substance of stone produces and reduces the figures in the stone.

38. As the figures carved in stone have no action or motion of their own, so the agents of the world have no action of their own, nor is this world ever created or destroyed at anytime.

39. Everything stands fixed in the mind of God as if they were firm and immovable rocks. All have their forms and positions in the same manner as they are ordained and situated in the Divine Mind.

40. All things are filled with the essence of God and remain in a state of near sleep in the Divine Mind. The various changes and conditions of things that appear to us in this world are the mere aimless digressions of our false fancy, for everything is as fixed and unchanged in the mind of God as the inert images on a stone.

41. All actions and motions of things are as motionless in mind of God as the carved figures lying asleep in the hollow of a stone. It is the wrong, irrelevant view of things that presents all these varieties and changes to us. Considered in the true and spiritual light, there is no body or any change that presents itself to our sight.

✅
Chapter 6a.47 — The Density of the Intellect; Bael Fruit, Stones and Peahen Eggs

1. Vasishta continued:— The great Consciousness, which can be compared to a bael fruit, contains the universe as its own matter and marrow within itself. It broods upon the universe as in its dream.

2. All space and time and action and motion being but forms of itself, there can be no distinction of them in Consciousness.

3. All words and their senses, and all acts of volition, imagination and perception being actions of Consciousness, they can not be unrealities in any respect.

4. As the substance contained in a fruit is called different names like kernel, core, pulp and seeds, so the core and foundation of solid Consciousness being only one and the same thing takes many names according to their varied forms.

5. A thing though the same yet has different names according to its different states and changes of form. As it is with the contents of a fruit, so it is with the subjects included under Consciousness.

6. Consciousness reflects its image in the mirror of the world, just as sculptured images are expressed in a slab of stone.

7. The brilliant gem of Supreme Consciousness produces numberless of worlds in itself, just as the gem of your mind casts the reflection of every object of your desires and imagination.

8. The casket of Consciousness contains the spacious world set inside it like a pearl of vast size, but the world is only a part of the other, although appearing to be distinct and different.

9. Consciousness is like the shining sun that illuminates all things in the world. It brings on the days and nights by turns, showing and hiding things to and from our view.

10. As the waters of a whirling current rotate and hurl down into the turbulent center of the sea, so do these worlds roll and revolve in the cavity of Consciousness. Though its contents are of the same kind, yet they appear different from one another like the pulp and seeds of fruit.

11. The body of a stone, like Consciousness, contains the marks of whatever exists in present creation and the marks of whatever does not presently exist.

12. All real essence is the substance of the applelike Consciousness, whether it is in being or not in being. All objects whether in being or not being obtain their form and figure according to the core and foundation of that intellectual fruit.

13. As a lotus loses its own separate being by being carved in stone, so do all these varieties of existence lose their differences by being engrossed into the unity of intellectual substance.

14. As the diversity of the lotus changes to the identity of the stone by its union with and entrance into its cavity, so the varieties of creation become all one in the solid mass of Divine Consciousness.

15. As a mirage appears to be a sheet of water to a thirsty deer, while the intelligent know it to be a reflection of sunlight on sandy desert, so reality appears as unreal and the unreal appears as real to the ignorant. In truth, there is neither the one nor the other here, only images of the Divine Mind.

16. As the body of waters fluctuates itself, so there is vibration within the solidity of Divine Consciousness.

17. The lotuses and conch shells are of the same substance as the stone in which they are carved. But the world and all its contents contained in Consciousness are not of the same substance or nature.

18. The big block of stone which we are using as a metaphor for Divine Consciousness is itself contained in the Divine Consciousness. While figures on the stone are carved out of its body, those of Divine Consciousness are eternally inherent in it.

19. This creation of God is as bright as the autumn sky and as fair as liquid moonbeams.

20. The world is eternally situated in God, like figures in stone which are never erased. The world is as inseparably connected with God as the godhead of God with himself.

21. There is no difference in these, just as there is none between the tree and its plant. All the worlds that are seen all about are not different from Divine Consciousness.

22. These worlds as well as Consciousness are neither produced nor destroyed at anytime because they exist in the spirit of God. The spirit of God shows them in their various forms, just as the heat of the sun exhibits a sheet of water in sandy desert.

23. The world with all its solid rocks, trees and plants dissolves into Divine Consciousness at the sight of the intelligent, just as hard hailstones are seen to melt into pure, liquid water.

24. As water vanishes into air and that again into vacuum, so all things pass away in the Supreme Spirit. Again, it is the consolidation of Consciousness that forms the solid substances of hills, plants and all tangible things.

25. The central core hidden in the minute substance becomes the innermost essence in its enlarged state. So the flavor of things concealed in the atoms becomes perceptible in their density with their growth.

26. The power of God resides in the same manner in all physical things, such as the properties of flavors and moisture inherent in the vegetable creation.

27. The same power of God manifests itself in many forms in things, just as the same light of the sun shows itself in the various colors of things according to the constitution of their component particles.

28. The Supreme Soul shows itself in various ways in the substance and properties of things, just as Divine Consciousness represents the forms of mountains and all other things in the changeful mind.

29. As the soft and liquid yolk of a peahen’s egg contains the toughness and various colors of future quills and feathers, so there are varieties of all kinds inherent in Divine Consciousness, requiring time to develop.

30. As the multicolored feathers of a peacock’s tail are contained in the moisture within its egg, so the diversity of creation is ingrained in the Divine Mind.

31. The judicious observer will find the one self same Brahman is present everywhere before his sight. He will perceive his unity amidst all diversity, as in the yolk of the female peahen.

32. In reality, the knowledge of the unity and duality of God, and that of God containing the world in himself, are all as false as the belief in the entity and nonentity of things. All these are to be considered as the one and same thing, identical with one another.

33. Know him as the supreme, the source of all entity and nonentity, and on whose entity they depend, whose unity comprises all varieties which appear as virtual and are not real existences.

34. Know the world to be compressed within the category of Consciousness. Consciousness is assimilated within the works of creation in the same manner as the feather is related to the moisture in the egg, the one being the production and the other the producer of another.

35. The cosmic egg resembles the peahen’s egg. The spirit of God is as the yolk of that egg. It abounds with many things, like the many colored feathers of peacocks, all of which serve only to mislead us into error. Know therefore there is no difference in outer form or the internal spirit of the world, just as there is none in the outer peacock and the inner yolk.

✅
Chapter 6a.48 — Unity and Identity of Brahma and World; the Realized

1. Vasishta continued:— That which contains this wide extended universe within itself without manifesting its form to us is very much like the egg of the peahen. It contains all space and individual bodies in its yolk.

2. In reality it has nothing in it, yet it appears to contain everything in itself, just as a spotless mirror reflects the image of the moon and a hollow egg bears the figure of a future peacock.

3. In this manner gods and sages, saints and holy men, and spiritual masters and great rishis meditate on the true and self-existent form of God, and find themselves seated in their fourth state of bliss above the third heaven.

4. These devout persons sit with their half-shut eyes, without any movement of their eyelids, and continue to view the visible glory of God shining in its full light in their inner souls.

5. Thus enraptured in their conscious presence of God, they are unconscious of any other thought in their minds. Though living, they remain without respiration of their vital breath.

6. They sit quietly like figures in a painting, without breathing, silent as carved statues without any action of their minds.

7. They remain in their state of holy bliss without using their minds for any fleeting thoughts. Whenever they have any agitation they can effect anything, just as the Lord God works all things with his slightest nod.

8. Even when their minds are employed in meditative thoughts, they are usually attended with a charming gladness, like that of charming moonbeams falling and pleasing the leafy branches of trees.

9. The soul is as delighted with seeing the holy light of God as the mind is delighted at the sight of cooling moonbeams emitted afar from the lunar disc.

10. Pure consciousness is as clear as the fair face of the bright moon. It is neither visible nor in need of admonition. It is neither too near nor too far from us.

11. Only through one’s self-reflection can the pure intellect be known, and not through physical organs, the living spirit or mind, or by our desire to know it.

12. It is not the living soul or its consciousness, or the vibrations of the body, mind or breath. It is not the world or its reality or unreality, its emptiness or solidity, or the center of anything.

13. It is not time or space or any substance at all. It is neither a god nor any other being. It is whatever is free from all these and unconfined in the heart or any of the sheaths inside the body.

14. The soul is that in which all things are moving, and which is neither the beginning nor the end of anything, but exists from eternity to eternity. The soul is not characterized by any of the elements of air and the like.

15. The soul is an entity that is never annihilated in this or the next world, though sentient bodies may be born and die away a thousand times here below, like earthen pots.

16. There is no removal of this empty spirit from its seat, both inside and outside of everybody. Know, O you who are the best of the spiritually minded, that all bodies are equally situated in the all pervading Spirit.

17. The imperfection of our understanding creates the difference between spirit and body. The perfection of our judgment is when we believe the Universal Soul is diffused throughout the universe.

18. Though warmly engaged in business, yet remain not addicted to worldliness by your indifference to the world and to all moving and unmoving things that exists on earth.

19. Know all these as the great Brahman, the pure soul that is without the properties and attributes of mortal beings. It is without change or beginning or end. It is always tranquil and in the same state.

20. Rama, through your spiritual vision you now know that all things, including time and action and all causality, causation and its effects, together with the production, preservation and dissolution of all, is composed of the spirit of God. You are freed from your wanderings in the world in your bodily form.

✅
Chapter 6a.49 — Changes in the World Are no Changes; Ignorance Does Not Exist

1. Rama said, “Sage, if there is no change in the immutable spirit of God, then how do these various changes constantly appear to occur in this world?”

2. Vasishta replied:— Listen Rama. The alteration of a thing that does not revert to its former state is called its change. Change occurs in the example of milk converted to curds or butter. It never becomes pure milk again.

3. Milk converts to curds, but curds never revert to their former state of milk. Such is the nature of change in the state of things. But such change can never affect the great God who remains the same through the first, intermediate and last states of things.

4. There is no change in the immutable Brahman such as with milk or with any other thing. Brahman, having no beginning or end, has no age or stage of life assigned to him.

5. Attributing any state of beginning or end to eternal God is the false imputation of ignorance and error. There can be no change in the changeless one.

6. Brahman is not our consciousness or the object of our consciousness. He is as unconnected with us as our soul and intellect are. He is only known to us by the word.

7. A thing is said to be the same if it is the same in the beginning and end. The difference that takes place in form is only a mist of error and is not taken into account by the wise.

8. Only the soul remains the same with itself, both in the beginning, middle and end of it, and in all places and times. The soul never changes with changes of the body or mind and therefore forms the identity of the person.

9. The soul, formless and identical with itself, forms the personality and individuality of a being. Because it is not subject to any pattern or mutation at anytime, it constitutes the essential identity of everybody.

10. Rama replied, “If the Divine Soul is always the same and perfectly pure in itself, from where does the error of change come? What is the cause of the ignorance that shows these changes to us?”

11. Vasishta replied:— The concept of Brahman implies that He is all that is, what was, and what will be in future, that he is without change, beginning or end, and that there is no ignorance in him.

12. The intended meaning of the word Brahman does not include anything that is nonexistent or the negative idea of ignorance.

13. You and I, this earth and sky, the world and all its sides, together with the elements of fire and others, are all the everlasting and infinite Brahman. Within Brahman there is not the slightest misunderstanding.

14. Ignorance (avidya) is only a name and an error. It is another word for unreality. Rama, you can never call something a reality which never exists of itself.

15. Rama said, “Why sage, you yourself talked about ignorance in the chapter on Tranquility (Upasama, Book 5) and told me to know all these as products of error.”

16. Vasishta answered:— Rama, all this time you have been immersed in your ignorance. At last you have come to your right understanding by your own reasoning.

17. It is the practice of pundits and men of learning to use words like ignorance, living soul and the like in order to awaken the unenlightened to their enlightenment.

18. So long as the mind is not awakened to the knowledge of truth, it remains in the darkness of error forever, even though it may travel a hundred miles.

19. When the living soul is awakened to its right sense by the force of reason, it learns to unite itself to the Supreme Soul. Without the guidance of reason, the living soul is successful in nothing despite all its efforts.

20. He who tells a vile, unenlightened man that all this world is the great Brahman himself does no more than communicate his sorrows to the headless trunk of a tree.

21. A fool is brought to his senses by reasoning, and the wise man knows the truth from the nature of the subject. The ignorant never learn wisdom without the persuasion of reason.

22. You have been unwise for so long relying upon your own judgment. But being guided by me, you are now awakened to truth.

23. I am Brahman, you are Brahman, and the visible world is Brahman himself. Know this truth and nothing else, and do as you please.

24. God is inconceivable. No conception of God can be true. The visible world is all that is known of him. Know him as the One and the Infinite and you will not be misled into error.

25. Rama, whether when you are sitting or walking, waking or sleeping, constantly think in yourself that you are this Supreme Spirit which is of the form of light and intelligence and pervades all things.

26. Rama, if you are without your individual ego and selfishness, and if you are intelligent and honest, then be as universal and tranquil as Brahman himself who is equally situated in all things.

27. Know your self as the pure consciousness situated as one in all, without beginning or end, the essence of light, and the most transcendent of all being.

28. What you call Brahman or the Universal Soul or the fourth, transcendent state, know that they are all the same as matter and nature. It is the inseparable One in all, just as clay is the essential substance of a thousand water pots.

29. Nature is not different from the nature of the soul, just as the clay is no other than the pot itself. The divine essence is like the clay, and the Divine Spirit extends as the inner matter of all things.

30. The soul has its pulsation like the spinning of the whirlpool. This force is named matter (prakriti) and it is nothing other than an effort of the spirit.

31. As the different words pulsation and vibration mean the same thing, so the soul and nature express the same substance and are not different in their essence.

32. Mere ignorance makes their difference which is removed by their knowledge, just as sheer ignorance represents a snake in the rope which is soon removed by knowledge of their nature.

33. As the seed of imagination falls in the field of the intellect, it shoots forth in the sprout of the mind, which becomes the germ of the wide spreading tree of the universe.

34. The seed of false imagination, scorched by the flames of spiritual knowledge, will be unable to vegetate though it be sprinkled with the water of fond desire.

35. If you do not sow the seed of imagination in the soil of your intellect, you will stop the germination of the plants of pain and pleasure in the field of your mind.

36. Rama, you have come to know the truth. You must forsake your false conception of such a thing as ignorance or error existing in the world. Know that there is no duality in the unity of God. Being full with the knowledge of one Supreme Soul, you must repudiate your ideas of pain or pleasure in anything here below. Pain turns to pleasure and pleasure to pain. Know them both as unreal as they are vain.

✅
Chapter 6a.50 — How the Soul Receives Sensations and the Objects of Senses

1. Rama said, “Sage, I have known whatever is to be known. I have seen all that is to be seen. I am filled with the ambrosial nectar of divine knowledge which you have kindly imparted to me.

2. I see the world full with the fullness of Brahman. I know the fullness of God has produced this complete creation. The fullness of God fills the universe. Its size depends on the fullness of the all pervading deity.”

3. “With much fondness I would like to propose another question to improve my understanding. I hope you will not be angry but will instruct me like a kind father does his fondling boy.”

4. “We see that the organs of sense, such as ears, nose, eyes, mouth and touch, exist in all animals.

5. Why do the dead do not perceive the objects of their senses as well as the living?

6. How is it that the dull organs perceive outer objects, like a pot and other phenomena, which are imperceptible to the inner heart, in spite of its natural sensitivity?

7. The relation between outer objects and the organs is like that between magnet and iron which attract one another without coming into contact. But how can the small cavities of the organs be able to bring huge objects that surround us on all sides into the mind?”

8. “If you well know these secrets of nature, then please communicate them to me in a hundred ways in order to satisfy my curiosity.”

9. Vasishta answered:— Now Rama, I tell you in brief that neither the organs nor the heart and mind, nor the pots and pictures are things in reality because it is impossible for anything to exist apart and independent of the pure and intelligent spirit of God.

10. Divine Consciousness, purer than air, takes the form of the mind by itself. Then it assumes its elemental form of the physical body and exhibits all things agreeably to the ideas engraved in the mind.

11. The same elements, stretched out into matter and nature, exhibit the whole universe as its ensemble, and the organs and their objects as its parts.

12. The mind takes the elemental form of its own nature and reflects itself in all the parts of nature in the forms of pots and all the rest of things.

13. Rama replied, “Tell me sage, what is the form of that elemental body that reflects itself in a thousand shapes on the face of the eight-fold elemental world, as it were, on the surface of a mirror?”

14. Vasishta replied:— This elemental body, the seed of the world, is the Brahman without decay who is without beginning or end. Brahman is of the form of pure light and intellect, devoid of parts and attributes.

15. Brahman, being disposed to its desires, becomes the living soul. This being desirous of collecting all its desires and the parts of the body together, becomes the beating heart in the middle of all.

16. It becomes ego from the thought of its egoism. It is called the mind from its minding the many things in itself. It takes the name of understanding (buddhi) from its understanding (bodha) of things, and the name of sense from its sensation of external objects.

17. It thinks of taking a body and becomes the same body, just as a potter having the idea of a pot forms it in that manner. Such being the nature of the soul, being and doing all what it likes, it is therefore manifest in its eight different forms.

18. Consciousness is also called the eight-fold soul because it presides over each person’s eight-fold functions, such as those of perception, action, passion, witnessing all things, and the like, and also its inner consciousness and its power of vitality.

19. The living soul takes different forms at different times according to how it is employed in any one of these eight-fold functions, and also according to how it is moved by the various desires that arise by turns.

20. The eight-fold nature of the soul causes it to expand itself into the same form as it is led to by its varying desires at anytime. It is similar to a seed that shoots forth its leaves according to the quantity of water with which it is watered.

21. The soul forgets its intellectual nature and thinks it is a mortal and material being embodied in the form of a living creature or some inanimate being. It remains unaware of itself under the influence of its false belief.

22. In this way the living soul wanders about the world as if dragged back and forth by the rope of desire tied about its neck. Now it soars high and then it plunges below like a plank rising up and sinking below the waves and currents of the sea.

23. There are some who, being released from imprisonment in this world, come to know the Supreme Soul and attain that state which has neither beginning nor end.

24. There are others who, weary and worried by their many reincarnations after the lapse of much time, come to their knowledge of the soul and thereby obtain their state of final bliss.

25. In this way, O intelligent Rama, the living soul passes through many bodily forms. Now you shall hear how it comes to perceive the outer objects of pots and the like through the external organs of perception.

26. After consciousness takes the form of the living soul and the living soul has received its vitality, the action of the heart sends its feelings to the mind which is the sixth organ of the body.

27. As the living soul passes into the air, it comes in contact with external objects through the sense organs of the body. Then joining with consciousness it perceives external sensations within itself.

28. The union of the living soul with outer objects causes sensations and carries them to the mind. When the soul is defunct and the mind dormant, there is no perception of externals.

29. Whatever outer object is set in the open air, it casts its reflection on the subtle senses of living beings coming in contact with the living soul that feels the sensation. But if the soul has departed, the dead body has no life or feeling of anything in existence.

30. When the form of an object comes in contact with a person’s eyesight, it casts its picture on the eyes which is instantly conveyed to the inner soul.

31. The image cast on the retina is reflected to the clearer mirror of the soul, which perceives it by its contact with the reflection. Thus outer things come to the knowledge of the living soul.

32. Even babies can know what comes in touch with them, just as brutes and vegetables have the power of feeling the objects they touch. How then it is possible for the sensitive soul to be ignorant of its tangible objects?

33. The clear rays of eyesight that surround the soul present it with pictures of visible objects carried to the mind’s consciousness, whereby the soul comes to know.

34. The process is the same with the other senses, also, whether taste, smell, sound, or touch. The soul contacts through the mind and the sense organ.

35. Sound remaining in its receptacle of air passes into the cavity of the ear, and from there it enters the hollow space of the soul, giving it the sensation of its nature.

36. Rama said, “I see that reflections of things are cast in the mirror of the mind, like images of things carved on wood and slabs of stone. But tell me sage, how is the reflection of the image cast onto the mirror of the mind?”

37. Vasishta replied:— O best of those who know spiritual wisdom, know that the gross images of the universal and particular souls which are reflected in the mirror of the mind are as false as the images of God and gods carved in stone and wood.

38. Rama, never rely on the substantiality of this false world. Know it to be a great vortex of whirling waters, and ourselves as the waves rolling upon it.

39. There is no limitation of space or time or any action in the boundless ocean of the infinity and eternity of God. You must know that your soul is identical with the Supreme which is everywhere and omnipresent.

40. Remain always with a calm and quiet mind, without addiction to anything in this world. Know the vanity of worldly pleasures and pains and go on with a contented mind wherever you will.

✅
Chapter 6a.51 — One Becomes Many; Ignorance; Consciousness Precedes Sense; Scriptures & Agnostic Doctrines

1. Vasishta resumed:— Rama, you have heard me tell you that even the lotus-born Brahma, who was born long before you, at first had no organs of sense.

2. Brahma, the collective agent of creation, was endowed with only consciousness to perform all his functions. All individual personalities are endowed with only their self-consciousness to discharge all their necessary duties.

3. The living soul, dwelling in its body in the mother’s womb, reflects on the actions of the senses and finds their proper organs supplied to its body immediately.

4. The senses and the organs of sense are forms of consciousness. This I have fully explained to you in the case of Brahma, who represents the collective body of all individual souls.

5. At first there was the pure consciousness in its collective form in the Divine Intellect. This afterwards came to be diffused in millions of individual souls from its sense of egoism. At first was the Divine Soul “the I am all that I am” and afterwards became many as expressed in the Vedic text eko’ham bahu syam (“I am one. May I be many”).

6. There is no stain in the pure universal, undivided and subjective Divine Spirit from being divided into the infinity of individual and objective souls because the universal and subjective unity is the innumerable objective individualities which it evolves of itself.

7. The objectivity of God does not imply his becoming either the thinking mind or the living soul, or his assuming an organic body or any elemental form.

8. He does not become the intelligible or the unintelligible. He is ever existent, appearing nonexistent to the ignorant. This is called the Supreme Soul which is beyond the comprehension of the mind and apprehension of the senses.

9. The living soul arises from Him, as well as the thinking mind. For explanation purposes, we can describe them like sparks emitted from fire.

10. From whatever source ignorance may have sprung, you have no need to inquire as to its cause. Taking ignorance as an illness, you should seek the remedy of reasoning for its cure.

11. After all forms of things and all false knowledge of particulars are removed from your mind there remains a knowledge of unity in which the whole firmament is lost, like a mountain concealed in an atom.

12. That in which all the actions and commotions of the world remain still and motionless, as if buried in dead silence and nothingness, is the surest rock of your rest after the bustle of worldly business.

13. The unreal, or the negative idea that we call ignorance, also has a form as insubstantial as it is nothing. Look at her and she becomes nothing. Touch her and she perishes and vanishes from sight.

14. Seek after her and what can you find but her nothingness? If by your efforts you can get anything of her, it is like water in a mirage.

15. Ignorance alone creates her reality. Her unreality appears as a reality and destroys the seeming reality at once.

16. Agnosticism imputes false attributes to the nature of God. The doctrine of agnostics is to misrepresent the Universal Spirit as having the forms of a living soul and a perishable body.

17. Now listen closely as I tell you that scriptures have been invented to propagate agnostic religion and belief in ignorance by setting up the living soul and other phenomena as God instead of the Supreme Spirit.

18. The scriptures are fond of representing Divine Consciousness in a visible form. People have stained the pure Spirit with many gross forms, such as the elemental and organic body which is enlivened by the vital Spirit dwelling in it.

19. Whatever they think a thing to be, they believe in that. They make truth out of an untruth and its reverse likewise, just as children make a devil of a doll and afterwards break it into nothing.

20. People take the frail body formed of the five elements as a reality and believe that the body’s organ openings are the locations where the sensing soul resides.

21. They believe the five-fold organs perceive the five-fold objects of the senses, which serve at best to represent objects in a different light from what they are, just as a seed produces leaves of various colors.

22. They reckon some as the internal senses, such as the faculties of the mind and the feelings of the heart, and others as external, such as the outer organs of action and sensation. They place their belief in whatever their souls and minds suggest to them to be either as false or true.

23. They believe the moonlight is hot or cold depending on how their outward perception feels.

24. The pungency of pepper and the emptiness of the sky are all according to one’s knowledge and perception of them. They do not belong to the nature of things. For sweet is sour to some, and sour is sweet to others. Many think the sky is empty, but it is found to be full of air by others who assert the dogma that nature abhors a vacuum.

25. People have made certain actions and rituals which are in common practice the articles of their creed, and they have built their faith of a future heaven on the observance of those usages.

26. The living soul, full of its desires, is led by two different impulses. One is its natural tendency to some particular action. The other is whatever some particular law or another directs. However, natural propensity gets the better of the other.

27. The soul produces all objective dualities from what is only the subjective unity, just as the sweet sugarcane produces candy and the clay of the earth forms water pots.

28. In these as well as in all other cases, the changes that take place in the forms of things all result from time and place and other circumstances, but nothing God produces in the universe has any relation to the nature of God.

29. As sugarcane produces its leaves and flowers from its own sap, so the living soul produces dualities from the essence of its own unity, which is the Supreme Soul itself.

30. It is God seated in all souls that views the dualities of a pot, picture, a cot and personal ego in itself, and so they appear to every individual soul in the world.

31. The living soul appears to assume the different forms of childhood, youth, and age at different times, just as a cloud in the sky appears as an exhalation, a watery cloud, and the sap of the earth and all its plants at the different times of the hot and rainy seasons of the year.

32. The living soul perceives all these changes as they are exhibited before it by the Supreme Soul in which they are all present. There is no being in the world who is able to alter this order of nature.

33. Even the sky, which is as clear as a looking glass and is spread all about and within everybody, is unable to represent all the various forms presented to the soul by the great Soul of souls.

34. The soul situated in the Universal Soul of Brahman shines as the living soul of living beings. But it amounts to a duality to impute even an incorporeal idea of ignorance to God because the nature of God is pure Consciousness which cannot admit an ignorant spirit.

35. Whatever is ordained to manifest in any manner is its nature and stamp (swabhava). Though such appearance is no reality, yet you can never undo what is ordained from the beginning.

36. As a golden ornament presents the joint aspects of its reality and unreality at the same time, so are all things only combinations of the real and unreal in their substantial essence and outward appearance. But both of these dissolve at last in the Divine Spirit, just as a gold ornament is melted down to liquid gold in a crucible.

37. Divine Consciousness being all pervasive by reason of its intellectuality is also diffused over the human mind, just as the gold of an ornament settles and remains dull in the crucible.

38. The heart, having the passive nature of dull intellectuality, receives fleeting impressions from the active mind and takes the form that it feels strongly impressed upon it at the time.

39. The soul assumes many shapes at different times according to the ever changing prospects that various desires always present.

40. Likewise, the body takes different forms according to its inner thoughts and feelings, just as a city seen in a dream varies considerably from what is seen with open eyes. So we shape our future forms by the even course of our minds.

41. As a dream presents the shadows of things that disappear on our waking, so these living bodies that we see all about must vanish into nothing upon their death.

42. What is unreal is doomed to perish, and those who die are destined to be born again. The living soul takes another form in another body, just as it sees itself in a dream.

43. This body does not become another, though it may change from young to aged in course of time, because the natural form of a person retains its identity in every stage of life through which it has to pass.

44. In his dream, a man sees all that he has seen or heard or thought of at anytime. The whole world being incorporated in the state of dreaming, the living soul becomes the knower of all that is knowable in his dream.

45. That which a man has not seen awake, but is known to him only by name, can never be seen in dream, such as the pure soul and the intellect of God.

46. The living soul sees in its dreams the objects that it has seen before. The intellectual part of the soul also sees many things that were unknown to it.

47. Subdue your former desires and propensities by your present, courageous efforts. Exert your utmost to change your habitual misconduct in favor of your future good behavior.

48. You can never subdue your senses or prevent your reincarnation without gaining your liberation. Without liberation, you must continue to rise and plunge in the stream of life forever.

49. The imagination of your mind causes the body to understand your soul to be like a shark and the desire of your soul like a ghost that lays hold of children in the dark.

50. The mind, understanding and personal ego, joined with the five elements, form the body composed of the eight-fold subtle properties.

51. The bodiless or intellectual soul is finer than empty air. The air is its great tree, and the body is its mountain.

52. One devoid of passions and affections and exempt from all the conditions of life is entitled to liberation. He remains in a state of profound deep sleep in which gross objects and the desires of life lie wiped out and buried forever.

53. The state of dreaming is one in which the dreamer is conscious of his body and self-existence. The dreamer has to wander about or remain fixed in some place until his attainment of final liberation. Such is the state of living beings and plants.

54. Sometimes the sleeping, and often the dreaming person, have to carry movable bodies (ativahika) with them until they obtain their final emancipation from life.

55. When some ominous dream awakens the sleeping soul from mental inactivity, it awakens to a fire created by its own misery.

56. The state of unmoving minerals, including even that of a fixed branch of the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree, exhibits no sign of intelligence, only gross dullness.

57. When dull, deep sleep (susupta) is interrupted by some dream, the dreamer is led to the miseries of life in this world. But he who awakes from his trance with full consciousness finds the perfect joy of the fourth (turiya) state open fully to his view.

58. The living soul finds liberation by means of its intelligence. It is also through intelligence that the soul recognizes its spirituality, just as copper, cleansed of its rust by some acid, assumes the brightness of pure gold.

59. A living soul obtains two kinds of liberation through its intelligence. One is called emancipation from life and the other is known as release from the burden of the body (deha mukta).

60. Emancipation from life means the attainment of the fourth state of perfection. Intelligence means the enlightenment of the soul, which is obtainable by cultivation of understanding.

61. The soul acquainted with scriptures and knowing the Supreme Spirit in itself becomes full of God. The ignorant soul sees only horrors rising before it, like the ghosts of his troublesome dreams.

62. Horrors arising in man’s heart serve only to disturb his inner peace. There is nothing in the heart of man other than a particle of Divine Consciousness.

63. Men are truly subjected to misery if they see God in any light other than the divine light that shines in the soul of man, and if they do not understand that there is no other light.

64. Look at the world whenever you will and you will find it full of illusion everywhere, just as you find nothing in a pot full of foul water except dirty sediments.

65. In the same manner you see the atoms of human souls, full with the vanities of this world. Vanities are from the chains of man’s worldly desires. Men are released by breaking those bonds of desire.

66. The soul sleeps under the spell of its desires and sees those objects in its dream. After desires are dispersed, the soul wakes to the state of turiya joy. The spell of gross desire extends over all animate and inanimate creation.

67. The desires of superior beings are of a pure nature. Those of intermediate natures are less pure. The desires of inferior beings are of a gross nature, and there are others without desires such as pots and blocks of wood or stone.

68. The living soul becomes united with an outer object when one perceives and the other is the object of perception. Both, namely the inner soul and the outer object, being pervaded by the all pervasive Intellect of God, become one and the same with God, the common receptacle of all.

69. Hence the belief in separate perceiver, perception, and the object of perception is as false as water in a mirage. There is nothing we can shun or grasp as desirable or disgusting when they are all the same in the sight of God.

70. All things internal or external manifest as parts of the one universal and intellectual Soul. All worlds are only the manifestations of Divine Consciousness. It is vain to attribute any difference to them. All of us are displayed in Consciousness which forever contains the inner and outer worlds.

71. As the ocean is a calm expanse of water after its waves subside, reflecting the sky clearly, so it is that after we lose sight of the diversities presented to our superficial view, the entire universe appears as the reflection of one glorious and everlasting God.

✅
Chapter 6a.52 — Story of Vishnu’s Dual Incarnations as Krishna and Arjuna

1. Vasishta said:— Rama, know that this world is like a dream that is common to all living beings. It is filled with many agreeable scenes that form the daily romance of lives. The world is neither true nor entirely false.

2. Because the living souls of men do not always sleep, their waking state is also considered dreaming.

3. Life is a longer dream than the short ones in our sleep. Intelligent Rama, know that it is as untrue as it is unsubstantial and airy in its nature.

4. The living souls of the living world continually pass from dream to dream. It is their nature to view the unrealities of the world as positive realities.

5. They ascribe solidity to the subtle and subtlety to what is solid. They see the unreal as real and in their ignorance, they think the dead are the living.

6. They think the revolution of all worlds is confined within the solar system. They wander about like dream-walkers or fluttering bees about the living soul, which they distinguish from the Supreme.

7. They consider and meditate upon the living soul as a separate reality owing to its omnipresence and immortality and as the source of their own lives.

8. Listen as I share the best lesson of detachment, the one which lotus-eyed Lord Krishna taught to Arjuna and whereby that sagely prince became liberated in his lifetime.

9. Thus Arjuna, the son of Pandu, will happily pass his life. I hope you will imitate his example if you want to pass your days without grief or sorrow.

10. Rama said, “Tell me sage, when will this Arjuna, the son of Pandu, come to be born on earth? Who is this Hari (Vishnu) who will deliver this lesson to him about indifference to the world?”

11. Vasishta replied:— There is only the one Soul to whom a name is applied only by fiction. He remains in himself from time without beginning or end, just as the sky is situated in emptiness.

12. We behold in him the optical illusion of this extended world, just as we see the different ornaments in gold and many waves in the sea.

13. The fourteen kinds of created beings display themselves in him. In him is the network of this universe in which all worlds are suspended, like birds hanging in the net in which they are caught.

14. In him live the gods Indra and Yama and the sun and moon who are renowned and hallowed in the scriptures. In him abide the five elements of creation and those who have become rulers.

15. That one thing is virtue and therefore expedient, and another is vice and therefore improper, are both placed in him as his laws which men in their freedom may accept or reject as good or evil.

16. It is obedience to divine law that employs the gods in their fixed duties with steady minds.

17. Lord Yama, the god of death, is accustomed to make his penance at the end of every four yugas on account of his greatness destroying God’s creatures.

18. Sometimes he sat in penance for eight years, at others for a dozen years. Often he sat in penance for five or seven years, and many times for a full sixteen years.

19. On one occasion, as Yama sat observing his austerity, indifferent to his duties, death ceased to hunt living beings in all the worlds.

20. Hence a multitude of living beings filled the surface of the earth and made the ground pathless and impassable by others. They multiplied like filth-born gnats in rainy weather that obstruct the passage of elephants.

21. Then the gods sat together in council. After various deliberations they decided upon exterminating all living beings to relieve the over burdened earth.

22. In this way many ages have passed away and many changes have taken place in the customs of people. Unnumbered living beings have come and gone with the revolutions of the worlds.

23. Now it will come to pass that this Yama, the son of the sun god Surya and the lord of the regions of the dead, will again perform his penance after the expiration of many ages to come.

24. He will again resume his penance for a dozen years to atone for his sin of destroying the living. Then he will abstain from his habitual conduct of destroying the lives of human beings.

25. At that time, the earth will be filled with deathless mortals. This wretched earth will be covered and overburdened with people like trees in a dense forest.

26. The earth, groaning under her burden and oppressed by tyranny and lawlessness, will have recourse to Hari (Vishnu) for her redress, just as a virtuous wife seeks the protection of her husband from the aggression of tribals.

27. For this reason, Hari will be incarnate in two bodies joined with the powers of all the gods. He will appear on earth in two persons of Nara and Narayana, the one a man and the other Lord Hari himself.

28. With one body Hari will become the son of Vasudeva and therefore will be called Vasudeva (i.e., Lord Krishna). With the other he will be the son of Pandu and therefore will be named Pandava Arjuna, Arjuna the Pandava.

29. Pandu will have another son named Yudhisthira who will adopt the title of Son of Righteousness (dharma). Acquainted with politics, he will rule over the earth to its utmost limits of the oceans.

30. His rival will be Duryodhana, his cousin by his paternal uncle. There will be a dreadful war between them, like the struggle between a snake and a weasel.

31. The belligerent princes will wage a furious war for the possession of the earth, armies of eighteen legions on both sides.

32. The god Vishnu will cause Arjuna to slay them all with his great bow Gandiva, thereby relieving the earth of her burden of riotous peoples.

33. The incarnation of Vishnu in the form of Arjuna will comprise all the qualities incident to humanity. He will be filled with feelings of joy and vengeance which naturally co-exist with mankind.

34. Seeing the armies on both sides arrayed against each other, friends and kinsmen ready to meet their fate, pity and grief will seize Arjuna’s heart and he will not want to participate in the war.

35. Then Hari, in his intelligent form of Krishna, will persuade his ignorant person in the form of Arjuna to perform his part as hero and crown his valor with success.

36. Krishna will teach Arjuna about the immortality of the soul by telling him that the soul is never born, nor does it die at anytime. The soul has had no prior birth nor will it be born again on earth. It is unborn and ever lasting, indestructible with the destruction of the body.

37. He who thinks the soul kills or is killed by anybody is ignorant of its nature. The soul neither kills nor is ever killed by anybody.

38. It is immortal and uniform with itself, more rare and subtle than air and emptiness. The soul is the form of the great God himself. It is never and in no way destroyed by anybody.

39. O Rama who is conscious of yourself, know your soul is immortal and unknown, without beginning, middle or end. It is of the form of consciousness and clear without any stain. By thinking yourself as such, you become the unborn, eternal and un-decaying soul yourself.

✅
Chapter 6a.53 — Krishna Admonishes Arjuna

1. The Lord Krishna said:— Arjuna, you are not the killer (of any soul). You must shun your false conceit. The soul is ever lasting and free from death and decay.

2. He who has no sense of individual ego in him and whose mind is not moved (by joy or grief) neither kills nor is killed by anybody, though he may kill everyone in the world.

3. Whatever is known in our consciousness, the same is felt within us. Therefore shun your inner consciousness of your individual ego, such as this is “I”, these are mine, and these others are theirs.

4. The thought that you are connected with persons and things, the thought that you might be deprived of them, and the resulting joy or grief to which you are subjected, must affect your soul in great measure.

5. He who does something with his body and connects even the least amount of his soul’s attention with what he is doing becomes infatuated by his egoism and believes himself to be the doer of his action.

6. Let the eyes see, the ears hear, and your touch feel their objects. Let your tongue taste the taste of a thing, but why take them to your soul? Where is your sense of “I” situated in these sensations?

7. The minds of even the great are truly employed in what they are doing, but where is your ego in all this that you should be sorry for its pains?

8. Your assumption that you are doing any action, actions which result from many, only amounts to a conceit of your vanity and exposes you not only to ridicule, but to frustrate the merit of your act.

9. Yogis and hermits do their rituals and their ordinary actions with the attention of only their minds and senses, often only with the physical body, in order to acquire and preserve the purity of their souls.

10. Those who have not subdued their bodies with the sleep of detachment are employed repeating their actions without ever being healed of their disease (of anxiety).

11. No person is graceful whose mind is soiled with selfishness, just as no man however learned and wise is held in honor whose conduct is blemished with impoliteness and misbehaviors.

12. He who is devoid of his selfishness and egotism, patient both in prosperity and adversity, is neither affected nor dejected whether engaged in activities or not.

13. O son of Pandu, know that this battlefield is the best field for your martial action, worthy of your great good, glory and ultimate happiness.

14. Though you reckon it as heinous on the one hand and unrighteous on the other, yet you must acknowledge the excellence of the occasion and the imperative of the duties required of your martial race. So do your duty and immortalize yourself.

15. Even the ignorant stick fast to the proper duties of their race. No intelligent person can neglect or set his duties at nothing. The mind devoid of vanity cannot be ashamed or dejected, even if one fails or falls in the discharge of his duty.

16. O Arjuna, do you duty with the fixed attention of your yoga on it and avoid all company. If you do your works as they come to you by yourself alone, you will never fail or be foiled in any.

17. Be as quiet as Brahman. Do your works as quietly as Brahman. Like Brahman, leave the result to Him and by doing so, assimilate yourself into the nature of Brahman.

18. Commit yourself and all your actions and intentions to God. Remain as unaltered as God himself. Know him as the soul of all and thus be the decoration of the world.

19. If you can lay down all your desires and become as even and cool mind as a muni if you can join your soul to the yoga of contemplative renunciation (sannyasa). Then you can do all your actions with a mind unattached to any.

20. Arjuna said, “Please Lord, explain to me fully. What is meant by the renunciation of all connections, commitment of our actions to Brahman, dedication of ourselves to God, and abdication of all concerns?

21. Tell me also about the acquisition of true knowledge and divisions of yoga meditation, all of which I require to know in their proper order to remove my gross ignorance on those subjects.”

22. The Lord Krishna replied:— The learned know the true form of Brahman, of which we can form no idea or conception, but which may be known after restraining our imagination and pacifying our desires.

23. After these, readiness of action constitutes our wisdom, and perseverance in these practices is what is called yoga. Self dedication to Brahman rests in the belief that Brahma is all this world and myself also.

24. As a stone statue is hollow inside and outside, so is Brahman as empty, tranquil and transparent as the sky, which is neither to be seen by us nor is it beyond our sight.

25. Then Brahman bulges out a little from itself and appears as something other than what it is. It is the reflection of the universe, but all as insubstantial as this empty void.

26. What is this idea of your own ego when everything is evolved out of Supreme Consciousness? Of what account is anyone’s personality which is only an infinitesimal part of the Universal Soul?

27. The ego of the individual soul is not apart from the Universal Spirit, although it seems to be separate, because there is no possibility of exclusion or separation of anything from the omnipresent and all comprehensive soul of God. Therefore, a distinct ego is meaningless.

28. As is the case with our egos, so it is with the individuality of a pot or a monkey. Nothing is separate from the universal whole. All existences are likes drops of water in the sea. It is absurd for anyone to presume an ego.

29. Things that appear to be different to the conscious soul are to be considered as the various imageries represented in the one soul.

30. Knowledge of particulars and species is lost in the idea of the general and the highest all. Renunciation of the world means renouncing the results of our actions.

31. Without attachment means renouncing all our worldly desires and intensely applying the mind to the one sole God of the many varieties of the creation in His imaginary representations.

32. Dualism is the belief that one’s selfexistence is distinct from that of God. Lack of dualism constitutes dedication of oneself to God. Ignorance creates distinctions by giving different names and attributes to the one Intellectual Soul.

33. The meaning of the term “Intelligent Soul” undoubtedly is that God is one with the universe and that Consciousness is the same with all space and its contents of worlds and their motions.

34. Consciousness is the unity of Eternity, and Consciousness is duality and plurality in the world, and the variety of its many varied productions. Therefore be devoted to the sole Ego of Consciousness, and drown your own individual ego in the universal Ego.

35. Arjuna asked, “There being two forms of God, one transcendent of spiritual and the other transparent or material, tell me, to which of these I shall resort for my ultimate perfection?”

36. Lord Krishna replied:— Truly there are two forms of the all pervading Vishnu, the ordinary or exoteric and the other supreme or esoteric. The ordinary has a body and hands holding the conch shell, the discus, and the mace and lotus. It is the common form for public worship.

37. The other is the esoteric or spiritual form which is undefined and without beginning or end. It is usually expressed by the term Brahman (great).

38. As long as you are unacquainted with the nature of the Supreme Soul and you are not awakened to the light of the spirit, you continue to adore the form of god with four arms.

39. By this means you will be awakened to light by your knowledge of the Supreme. When you come to comprehend the Infinite in yourself, then you shall no longer have to be born in any mortal form.

40. When you are acquainted with the knowledge of the knowable soul, then your soul will find its refuge in the eternal soul of Hari (Vishnu) who absorbs all souls in him.

41. When I tell you “this is I” and “I am that”, bear in mind that I mean to say “this and that is the consciousness of the Supreme Soul” which I assume to myself for your instruction.

42. I understand you to be enlightened to truth and to rest in the state of supreme joy. Now that you are freed from all your temporal desires, I wish you to be one with the true and Divine Spirit.

43. See yourself as the soul of all beings and those beings themselves. Think your own self or soul as the microcosm of the great universe, and be tolerant and broad sighted in your practice of yoga.

44. He who worships the Universal Soul that resides in all beings as the one identical and undivided spirit is released from the doom of repeated births, whether he leads a secular or holy life in this world.

45. The meaning of the word “all” is unity and the meaning of the word “one” is the unity of the soul. The phrase “all is one” means that the whole universe is collectively only one soul.

46. He who shines as light within the minds of all persons and dwells in the inner consciousness and perception of every being, is no other than the very soul that dwells within me also.

47. That which is settled in shape of taste in the waters all over the three worlds, what gives flavor to milk, curd and butter, what dwells as taste in salt and imparts its sweetness in sweet foods, that is this savory soul which gives a delight to our lives and a good taste to all the objects of our enjoyment.

48. Know that your soul is the capacity to perceive which is situated in the hearts of all physical beings. Its subtle rarity eludes our perception of it, and it is quite removed from all perceptible phenomena. Therefore it is omnipresent everywhere in everything.

49. As butter is in all kinds of milk and the sap of all sappy substances is inborn in them, so the Supreme Soul is intrinsic and immanent in everything.

50. As all the gems and pearls of the sea have a luster inherent in them which shines forth both inside and outside, so the soul shines in and out of everybody without being seated in any part of it, whether inside or outside anywhere.

51. As air pervades both inside and outside of all empty pots, so the spirit of God is diffused in and about all bodies in all the three worlds.

52. As hundreds of pearls are strung together by a thread in the necklace, so the soul of God extends through and connects these millions of beings without it being known by any.

53. He who dwells in the hearts of everybody in the world, from Brahma the Creator to the simples grasses that grow on the earth, the essence which is common in all of them is Brahman the unborn and undying.

54. Brahma is a slightly developed form of Brahman who resides in the spirit of the great Brahman. The same dwelling in us makes us mistake the true Ego to be our individual ego.

55. The Divine Soul being manifest in the form of the world, tell me what can destroy or be destroyed in it? Tell me, Arjuna, what can be subject to or involved in pleasure or pain?

56. The Divine Soul is like a large mirror showing the images of things upon its surface, like reflections on glass. Though these reflections disappear and vanish in time, yet the mirror of the soul is never destroyed but looks as it looked before.

57. When I say “I am this and not the other”, I am quite wrong and inconsistent with myself. Similarly it is wrong to say that the human soul is the spirit or image of God, and not that of any other being, when the identical Divine Spirit is present and immanent in all.

58. The revolutions of creation, preservation and final dissolution take place in an unvaried and unceasing course in the spirit of God, and so are feelings on the surface of the waters of the sea.

59. As stone is the essence of rocks, wood of trees and water of waves, so the soul is the constituent element of all existence.

60. He who sees the soul in all substances and every substance in the soul, and who views both as the component of each another, sees the uncreated God as the reflector and reflection of Himself.

61. Arjuna, know that the soul is the integral part of everything, the constituent element of the different forms and changes of things, just as water is of waves and gold is of jewelry.

62. As loud, noisy waves are let loose in the waters and jewelry is made of gold, so all things exist and are composed of the spirit of God.

63. All material beings of every species are forms of the great Brahman himself. Know this one as all, and there is nothing apart or distinct from him.

64. How can there be an independent existence or any voluntary change of anything in the world? Where can they or the world be except in the essence and omnipresence of God? Then why do you think of them in vain?

65. By knowing all that I have told you, the saints live fearlessly in this world by reflecting on the Supreme Being in themselves. They move about liberated in their lifetime with the inner calmness of their souls.

66. Enlightened saints attain their imperishable states by being invincible to the errors of fiction without being subdued by the evils of worldly attachment. They always remain in their spiritual and holy states by being free from temporal desires and the conflicts of jarring passions, doubts and dualities.

✅
Chapter 6a.54 — Krishna Admonishes Arjuna: Do Your Duty with Detachment

1. Lord Krishna continued:— Listen moreover, O mighty armed Arjuna, to the enlightening speech which I am about to deliver to you for the sake of your lasting good and welfare.

2. Know, O child of Kunti, that the perception of the senses, the feelings conveyed to our minds by the physical senses, such as those of cold and heat and the like, cause our physical pleasures and pains. But as these are transitory, coming to us and passing away by turns, you must remain patient under them.

3. Knowing neither pleasure nor pain to be uniform and monotonous, what is it that you call real pleasure or pain? A thing having no form or figure of its own can have no increase or decrease in it.

4. Those who have suppressed the feelings of their senses by knowing the illusory nature of sense perceptions are content to remain quiet with an even course of action their minds, both in their prosperity and adversity. They truly are the men who taste the ambrosial nectar of immortality in their mortal state.

5. Knowing the soul to be the same in all states, alike in all places and times, they view all differences and accidents of life with detachment. Being sure of the unreality of unrealities, they retain their endurance under all the varying circumstances of life.

6. Never can joy or grief take possession of the one soul which, being universal in its nature, can never be exceptional or otherwise.

7. The unreal has no existence. It is not positive or negative at anytime, so there can be nothing that is a positive joy or lack of joy in any place when God himself is present everywhere.

8. Abandon the thoughts of joy or lack of joy of the world. Seeing there is no such difference in the mind of God, stick fast in a state of indifference to both.

9. Though the intelligent soul and external phenomena are closely situated inside and outside the body, yet the inner soul is neither delighted nor depressed by the pleasures or pains that envelop the external body.

10. All pleasures and pains relate to the physical body. They touch the mind which is situated in it, but no bodily hurt or debility affects the soul which is seated beyond it.

11. The assumption that the soul participates in the pleasures or pains that affect the gross body is caused only by error arising from our ignorance.

12. The material is no reality. Its feelings of pain or pleasure are never real ones that touch the intangible soul. Who is so senseless as not to perceive the wide separation between soul and body?

13. The full understanding of what I am telling you, O descendant of Bharata, will surely destroy the error arising from ignorance.

14. As knowledge removes the error and fear arising from one’s ignorance of a snake in a rope, so our misconception of the reality of our bodies and their pleasures and pains is dispelled by our knowledge of truth.

15. Know that the entire universe is identical with uncreated Brahman. It is neither produced nor dissolved by itself. Knowing this as a certain truth, believe only in Brahman as the most supreme source of the tree of all knowledge.

16. You are only a little wave in the sea of Brahman’s essence. You rise and roll for a little while, then subside to rest. You foam and froth in the whirlpool of Brahman’s existence, a drop of water in the endless ocean of Brahman.

17. As long as we are in action under the command of our general, we act our parts like soldiers in the field. We all live and move in Brahman alone, and there is no mistake of right or wrong in this.

18. Abandon your pride and haughtiness, your sorrow and fear, and your desire of pain or pleasure. It is bad to have any duality or doubt in you. Be good with your oneness and integrity at all times.

19. Think this about the destruction of these multitudes of forces under your arms, that all these are evolved out of Brahman and you are reducing them to Brahman himself.

20. Do not care for your pleasure or pain, your gain or loss, or your victory or defeat. Rely only on the unity of Brahman. Know the world as the vast ocean of Brahman’s existence.

21. Being alike and unchanged by your loss or gain, and thinking yourself as nobody, go on in your proper course of action, just as a gust of wind takes its own course.

22. Whatever you do, whatever you eat, whatever sacrifices you make, or any gift that you give to anyone, commit them all to Brahman and remain quiet in yourself.

23. Whoever thinks of becoming anything in earnest, he undoubtedly becomes that in process of time. Therefore, if you wish to become like Brahman himself, learn in all your thoughts and deeds to assimilate yourself to the nature of Brahman.

24. Let one who knows the great Brahman be employed in doing his duties as they occur to him without any expectation or reward. As God does his works without any aim, so should the godly do their works without any object.

25. He who sees the inactive God in all his active duties and sees all his works in the inactive God, that man is called the most intelligent among men. He is said to be the readiest discharger of his deeds and duties.

26. Do not do your works in expectation of their rewards, or engage yourself to do anything that is not your duty or improper for you. Do your duties as your yoga of fixed meditation and not in connection with others or their rewards.

27. Do not be addicted to active duties or decline your inactivity either. Never remain ignorant or negligent of your duties in life, but continue in your work with an even temper at all times.

28. Though employed in business, a man is said to be doing nothing at all who does not foster the hope of a reward for his acts, and who is ever content in himself, even without a patron or refuge.

29. The addiction of one’s mind to anything makes it his action, and not the action itself. Ignorance causes this tendency to believe actions are one’s own. Therefore ignorance is to be avoided by all means.

30. A great soul settled in divine knowledge, freed from need or desire for anything, may be employed in all sorts of works without being reckoned as the doer of any.

31. He who does nothing is indifferent about its result. This detachment amounts to his equanimity, which leads to his endless joy, which is next to the state of Godhead.

32. Believe in the unity of the Supreme Spirit by avoiding the dirt of duality and plurality of beliefs. Whether or not you do your ceremonial acts, you will not be accounted as the doer.

33. The learned consider a man to be wise whose acts in life are free from desire or some object of desire, and whose ceremonial acts are burned away by the fire of spiritual knowledge.

34. He who remains peaceful, calm, quiet and tranquil in his soul, without any desire or greed for anything in this world, may be doing his duties here without any disturbance or anxiety in his mind.

35. A man who does not argue with anyone but is always settled with calm and quiet rest of his soul, united with the Supreme Soul without ceremonial observances, and who is satisfied with whatever is obtained of itself, such a man is considered as a decoration of this earth.

36. They are called ignorant hypocrites who, having repressed their organs of actions, still indulge themselves in pleasures of the senses by recalling their memories in their minds.

37. He, who by the power of his wise mind has governed his outer and inner senses and employs his organs of action to perform his physical work and ceremonial acts without addiction to them, is quite different from the one described before.

38. As the overflowing waters of rivers fall into the profound and motionless sea, so the souls of holy men enter into the ocean of eternal God where they are attended with a peaceful bliss never to be obtained by those who are greedy and worldly.

✅
Chapter 6a.55 — Krishna: The Soul is Permanent, the Body Perishes; Mind Creates Body

1. Lord Krishna said:— You need not abstain from your enjoyments, or hold back your mind from them, or give up their acquisition. Simply remain with an even course of action your mind and be content with what comes to you.

2. Never be intimately related to your body because it is not intimately related with you. Remain intimately connected with yourself, which is your uncreated and imperishable soul.

3. We suffer no loss by the loss of our bodies, but we lose everything by the loss of our souls which last forever and never perish.

4. The soul is not weakened, like the sentient mind, by loss of the objects of sense enjoyment. Constantly employed in action, yet the soul does nothing by itself.

5. One’s addiction to an action makes it his act, even though in reality he is no actor. Only ignorance incites the mind to action, and therefore this ignorance must be removed by all means.

6. A great minded man, acquainted with the superior knowledge of spirituality, forsakes his tendency to action and does everything that comes to him without his being the actor.

7. Know that your soul is without beginning or end, without decay and imperishable in its nature. The ignorant think the soul perishable. You must not fall into this sad error like them.

8. The best of men, blessed with spiritual knowledge, do not regard the soul in the same light as the ignorant vulgar who either believe soulless matter to be the soul or think themselves as incorporate, individual souls by the vanity of their individual ego.

9. Arjuna said, “If it is so, O Lord of worlds, then I believe that the loss of the body is attended with no loss or gain to the ignorant.”

10. Lord Krishna replied:— So it is, O mighty armed Arjuna! They lose nothing by losing the perishable body. But the soul is imperishable and its loss is the greatest of all losses.

11. I see no greater mistake of men in this world than when they say that they have lost anything or gained something that never belongs to them. It appears like the crying of a barren woman for her child which she never had, nor is expected to have at anytime.

12. It is axiomatic truth established by the learned and well known to all men of common sense, though the ignorant may not perceive it truly, that an unreality cannot come to reality, nor a reality go to nothing at anytime.

13. That which has spread out this perishable and frail world is imperishable. There is no one that can destroy the indestructible.

14. Finite bodies are said to be the abode of the infinite soul, yet the destruction of the finite, frail body is no loss to the infinite and imperishable soul. Therefore know the difference between the two.

15. The soul is a unity without duality. There is no possibility of the soul’s nonexistence. The eternal and infinite reality of the soul can never be destroyed with the destruction of the body.

16. Leave aside unity and duality and take that which remains. Know the transcendental deity to be that state of tranquility situated between reality and unreality.

17. Arjuna replied, “Such being the nature of the soul, then tell me, O Lord. What causes the certainty in a man that he is dying? What makes him think that he is either going to heaven above or hell below?”

18. The Lord replied:— Arjuna, know that within the body composed of the elements of earth, air, water, fire and ether, and also within the mind and understanding, there is a living soul dwelling.

19. The embodied and living soul is led by its desire, like the young of a beast led by a rope tied around its neck, and it dwells in the recess of the body, like a bird in a cage.

20. Then as the body is worn out and becomes infirm over course of time, the living soul leaves it, like moisture from a dried leaf, and flies to where it is led by its inborn desire.

21. The living soul carries with it the senses of hearing, seeing, feeling, taste, touch and smell from its body, just as the breeze blows the fragrance from flowers.

22. The body is the production of one’s desire. It has no other assignable cause. It weakens by the weakening of its desire and being altogether weak and wasted, it becomes extinct in its final absorption in the Godhead.

23. A greedy man, staunch in his desires, passes through many wombs into many births, like a magician is skilled leaping up and down in earth and air.

24. The parting soul carries the properties of the senses from the body’s sense organs, just as the flying breeze bears the fragrance of flowers in its flight through the sky.

25. After the soul has fled, the body becomes motionless, like the leaves and branches of trees remaining still after winds die down.

26. When the body becomes inactive and insensitive to wounds inflicted upon it, it is then called dead and lifeless.

27. As this soul, in its form of vital air, resides in any part of the sky, it sees the same form of things manifest before it as was accustomed to desire when living.

28. The soul comes to find that all these forms and bodies are as unreal as those it left behind. So must you reckon all bodies after they are destroyed, unless you are so profoundly asleep as to see and know nothing.

29. Brahma, the lord of creation, has created all beings according to the images that were impressed in his mind in the beginning. He sees them still, continuing and dying in the same forms.

30. Whatever form or body the soul finds on itself on its first and instantaneous springing to life, the same is invariably impressed in its consciousness until its last moment of death.

31. The original desire of a man is the root of his present manliness, which becomes the cause of his future success. A man’s present effort is able to correct and make up past mistakes and deficits and support him in his old age.

32. Whatever is pursued with ardent exertion and diligence, the same is gained among all other objects of one’s former and future pursuit.

33. Whether a man is exposed on the barren rocks of the Vindhya Hills or blown and carried away by the winds, he is supported by his manhood. Therefore at all times, a wise man should never decline to discharge the legal duties required of him.

34. Know that the heaven and hell of which you ask are the creatures of men’s old prejudices. They are the productions of human wish existing only in the customary bias of the populace.

35. Arjuna said, “Tell me, O Lord of the world! What cause gave rise to the prejudice of a heaven and hell?”

36. The Lord replied:— These prejudices are as false as airy dreams. They have their rise from our desires which, waxing strong by our constant habit of thinking them as true, make us believe them as such. Desires mislead us to rely upon the reality of the unreal world. Therefore for our real good, we must shun our desires.

37. Ignorance is the source of our desires. Ignorance is the mainspring of our error of taking what is not-self for the true self. Knowledge of the self combined with right understanding can dispel the error of our desires.

38. You are best acquainted with the self, O Arjuna! You well know the truth, therefore try to rid your error of yourself and not yourself, as this “I” and that “another.” Also rid yourself of your desires for yourself and other.

39. Arjuna said, “I believe the living soul dies with the death of its desires, because the desire is the support of the soul, which must languish and droop down for want of a desire.

40. Tell me, what is subject to future births and deaths after the living soul perishes with its body at anytime or place?”

41. The Lord replied:— O intelligent Arjuna, know that the yearning soul has the form of desires in the heart, and any other form that one has framed for himself in his imagination.

42. A soul is said to be liberated in this life if it is identical with itself, unaltered in all circumstances, never subject to the body or any desire on earth, and freed from all desires by its own discretion.

43. Living in this manner, you must always seek the truth. Being released from the snare of worldly cares, you are said to be liberated in this life.

44. The soul burdened with its desires is like a bird in its cage. Though a man may be very learned and observant of all his religious rites and duties, yet he is not said to be liberated as long as he labors under his desires.

45. The man who sees the chain of desires glimmering in the recesses of his heart and mind is like a short-sighted man who sees a glittering, colorful peacock tail in the spotless sky. He is liberated whose mind is not bound to the chains of desires. Release from this chain is called his liberation in this life and in the next.

✅
Chapter 6a.56 — Krishna’s Description of the Mind

1. Lord Krishna continued:— Arjuna, forsake your sympathy for your friends using the cold detachment that you have acquired from the abandonment of your desires and cares, and using the liberation that you have attained to in this your living state.

2. Be dispassionate, O sinless Arjuna, by forsaking your fear of death and decay of the body. Be as clear in your mind as the clear sky by driving away the clouds of your cares and dispelling all your aims and attempts of either good or evil for yourself or others.

3. Discharge your duties as they come to you in the course of your life. Do well whatever is proper to be done so that no action of yours may go to waste.

4. Whoever in the course of his life does work that comes to him of itself, that man is called liberated in his lifetime. The discharge of such deeds belongs to the condition of living liberation.

5. That I will do this and not that, or accept of this one and refuse the other, are the conceits of foolishness. They are all alike to the wise.

6. Those who do works that occur to them with the cool calmness of their minds are said to be the living liberated. They continue in their living state as if in profound sleep.

7. He who has contracted the members of his body and curbed the organs of his senses from their outward objects resembles a tortoise that rests quietly by contracting its limbs within itself.

8. The universe resides and continues in the Universal Soul in all three times, present, past and future, just as the mind, like a master painter, draws the picture of the world on the aerial canvas.

9. The multicolored picture of the world, drawn by the painter of the mind in empty air, is as void as empty air, yet it appears as prominent as a figure in relief and as plain as a pike staff.

10. Though the formless world rests on the plane of emptiness, yet the wonderful error of our imagination shows it to be conspicuous to view, just as a magician shows his aerial cottage to our deluded sight.

11. As there is no difference in the flat surface of the canvas which shows the swelling and depression of figures in the picture to our sight, so there is no convexity or concavity in the dead flat of the spirit which presents the uneven world to view.

12. O lotus-eyed Arjuna, know that the picture of the world in the empty vacuum is as void as emptiness itself. It rises and sets in the mind just like temporary scenes that appear in the imagination of a mentally disturbed person.

13. Though it appears as real as a city in the air drawn by our imagination because of our long habit of thinking it so, this world is all hollow inside and outside.

14. Without self reflection, truth appears as false and false as true, as in a delirium. By mental analysis, truth comes to light and the error of untruth vanishes into nothing.

15. The autumn sky, appearing bright and clear to the naked eye, still has flimsy clouds. The picture drawn over the plane of the empty mind presents the figures of our fancied objects in it.

16. The baseless and unsubstantial world appearing on the outside is only a fantasy without reality. When there is nothing such as you or I or anyone in real existence, then tell me, who can destroy or be destroyed?

17. Drive away the false ideas of slayer and slain from your mind. Rest in the pure and bright sphere of the Divine Spirit. There is no movement in the intellectual sphere of God which is ever calm and quiet. All activity belongs to the mental sphere and the action of the restless mind.

18. Know that the mind contains everything in its clear sphere, such as time and space, the clear sky, and all actions and motions and positions of things, just like a map of an area presents the sites of all places upon its surface.

19. Know that the mind is more empty and rarified than empty air, and Consciousness has painted the picture of this immense universe upon this canvas of the mind.

20. But infinite vacuum being wholly empty, it does not have diversity or divisibility in it as they are exhibited in the mind as it creates and destroys its castles in the sky.

21. Earthly mortals seem to be born and die every moment, just as the changeful thoughts of the all-engrossing mind are ever rising and existing in it.

22. The false thoughts of the mind, so instantaneous and temporary, have the power to stretch out ideas of length and duration of the world, as they have of producing a new idea of all things from nothing.

23. Moreover, the mind has power to prolong a moment into a kalpa age, as it does of enlarging a minute speck into a mountain and of increasing a little to a multitude.

24. It also has the power to produce a thing from nothing, and of converting one to another in a trice. This capacity gives rise to the false conception of the world, just like it is the nature of the mind to create castles in the air and fairylands in a moment.

25. Likewise, the mind has brought this wonderful world into existence, which arose in the twinkling of an eye, as a reflection and not a creation of the mind.

26. All these are only ideal forms and shadowy shapes of imagination, though they appear hard and solid as a diamond. They are the mistaken ideas of some unknown form and substance.

27. Whether you desire or dislike your worldly interests, whether you have concern or indifference for the world, show me. Where is its solidity? The mind itself being located in the intellect of the divine contriver, the picture of the world cannot be located anywhere else.

28. O how very wonderfully bright is this prominent picture, drawn without base or coating, so conspicuous before us in various pieces without any paint or color with which it is made.

29. O how pleasant is this transparent picture of the world, and how very attractive to our sight. It was drawn on the inky coating of chaotic darkness and exhibited to the full blaze of various lights.

30. It is decorated with diverse colors and filled with various objects of our desire in all its different parts. It exhibits many shows pleasant to sight and presents all things to view of which we have notions in our minds.

31. It presents many planets and stars before us, shining all about with their different shapes and spheres. The blue dome of heaven resembles a blue lake brightened with the shining sun, moon and stars like blooming lotuses.

32. There are multicolored clouds, hanging like many colored leaves of trees on the blue sky, appearing like pictures of men, gods and demons, drawn over the domes of the three regions (earth, heaven and hell).

33. The unsteady and playful painter that is the mind has sketched and stretched out the picture of the sky as a theater to exhibit the three worlds as its three different stages, where all deluded peoples are portrayed as joyful players, acting their parts under the encircling light of Supreme Consciousness.

34. Here is an actress with her calm body of golden color, her thick braids of hair, and her eyes glancing on the people with flashes of sunshine and moonbeams. The rising ground is her back and her feet reach the infernal regions. Clothed with the robe of the scriptures, she acts the plays of morality, opulence and the farce of enjoyments.

35. The gods Brahma, Indra, Hari and Hara form her four arms of action. The property of goodness is her bodice, and the two virtues of discretion and apathy are her prominent breasts. The earth resting on the head of Adisesha, the serpent of the underworld, is her lotus-like footstool held up by its stalk. Her face and forehead are decorated with the paints of mineral mountains whose valleys and caves form her belly and bowels.

36. The fleeting glances of her eyes dispel the gloom of night, and the twinkling of stars are like the erection of hairs on her body. The two rows of her teeth emit the rays of flashing lightning, and all earthly beings are like the hairs on her body, rising like piles about the bulb of a kadamba flower.

37. This earth is filled with living souls that exist in the spacious vacuum of the Universal Soul, appearing like figures painted in it. This skillful artist of the mind has displayed this illusive actress of the universe to show her various features as in a puppet show.

✅
Chapter 6a.57 — Krishna on the Abandonment of Desire and Result of Tranquility

1. Lord Krishna said:— Look here, O Arjuna! The great wonder about this subject is that the picture appears before the canvas upon which it is drawn.

2. The painting is prominent, but the basis on which it exists does not appear. This is all as wonderful as a block of stone that floats on water or a gourd which sinks, as in a magic play.

3. The universe resting in the emptiness of the Divine Spirit appears like a picture on the tablet of the mind. Say then, how does this ego, the self knowledge of your substantiality, arise from the bosom of the empty nothingness?

4. All these are the vacant production of emptiness, so they are equally swallowed up in the empty womb of an infinite emptiness. They are no more than hallow shadows of emptiness stretched out in empty air.

5. This empty air is covered with the snare of our desires, stretching as wide as the sphere of these outstretched worlds. The band of our desire encircles the worlds as their great belt.

6. The world is situated in Brahman like a reflection in a mirror. It is not subject to partition or obliteration because it is identical with the receptacle in which it exists.

7. The nature of Brahman as a permanent emptiness is inseparable from his essence. No one could ever be able to divide empty air in half or remove it from its place.

8. Your ignorance of this has made you accustomed to your desires, so although you are filled with every virtue, it is hard for you to get rid of your desires.

9. He who has planted the smallest seed of desire in the soul of his heart, though he may be very wise and learned in all things, is confined like a lion in the cage.

10. Desire which has become a habit grows as rank as a thick wood in his breast unless its seed is burnt away by the knowledge of truth so it cannot sprout anymore.

11. When the seed of desire has been burned, the mind is no longer inclined to anything and one remains untouched by pleasure and pain, like a lotus leaf in water.

12. Now therefore, O Arjuna, remain calm and quiet in your spirit. Be brave and devoid of all desire in your mind. Melt down the mist of your mental delusion by the heat of your tapas without desire. From all that you have learned from my holy lecture to you, remain in perfect tranquility with your reliance in the Supreme Spirit.

✅
Chapter 6a.58 — Arjuna Understands Krishna’s Words

1. Arjuna said, “Lord! It is by your kindness that I am freed from my delusion and have regained my memory of who I am. Now I am placed above all doubts and I will act as you have said.”

2. Lord Krishna replied— Your soul has attained its tranquility and the purity of its nature when you find the feelings and faculties of your heart and mind are fully pacified through your knowledge.

3. In this state, the soul becomes unconscious of all mental thoughts. It is full of consciousness in itself. Freed from all inner and outer perceptions, it perceives the one Brahman in itself who is all and everywhere.

4. No worldly being can observe this elevated state of the soul, just as nobody can see a bird that has fled from the earth into the upper sky.

5. A pure soul devoid of desire becomes full of consciousness and spiritual light. It cannot be perceived by even the most foresighted observer.

6. Unless one has purified his desires, one cannot perceive this transcendental and transparent state of the soul. It is a state as imperceptible to the impure as the smallest particle of an atom is imperceptible to the naked eye.

7. Attainment of this state drives away knowledge of all objects that can be sensed, such as pots, plates, and other phenomena. What is there so desirable that it is worth having more than the Divine Presence?

8. As frost and ice melt when a volcanic mountain erupts, so our ignorance melts away at our knowledge of the conscious soul.

9. What are these mean desires that we have which blow away like the dust of the earth? What are our possessions and enjoyments but traps for our souls?

10. As long as our ignorance displays herself in her various shapes, we remain ignorant of the pure and modest nature of our inner souls.

11. In the inner soul, all outward appearances fade away and appear in their transparent forms. The soul grasps the whole in itself, just as emptiness contains the fullness of all in it.

12. That which shows all forms in it, without having any form of itself, is that transcendent substance which is beyond description and transcends our comprehension of it.

13. Now get rid of the poisonous and colic pain of your desire for gain and the permanence of your own existence. Utter inwardly to yourself the mantra of your renunciation of whatever can be desired, and thus prosper in the world without fear for anything.

14. Vasishta said:— After the Lord of the three worlds had spoken these words, Arjuna remained before him silent for a moment. Then like a bee sitting beside a blue lotus, Arjuna uttered the following words to the dark bodied Krishna.

15. Arjuna said, “Lord! Your words have dispelled all grief from my heart. The light of truth is rising in my mind like the sun rising to awaken the closed and sleeping lotus.”

16. Vasishta said:— After saying this, Arjuna being cleared of all his doubts grasped his Gandiva bow and rose with Hari (Krishna) for his charioteer in order to proceed to his warlike exploits.

17. He will transform the face of the earth into a sea of blood flowing out of the bodies of combatants. He will wound their charioteers and horses and elephants. The flights of his arrows and thickening darts will hide the sun in the sky and darken the face of the earth with flying dust.

✅
Chapter 6a.59 — Knowledge of the Latent and Inscrutable Soul

1. Vasishta continued:— Keep this lesson in mind, O Rama! Know it as the purifier of all sins. Remain in your renunciation of all attachments and resign yourself to God.

2. Know the Supreme Soul in which all things reside, from which everything has issued, and which is everything itself on all sides of us. It is changed through all and is ever the same in itself.

3. It seems to be far away but it is nearest to us. It appears everywhere always situated in everything. It is by that essence that you live and it undoubtedly is what you are.

4. Know that the thinking principle, consciousness itself, is the highest state, above whatever can be known by the mind. It is knowledge and intelligence by itself, beyond our thoughts and what we can think about.

5. It is the highest consciousness and that supreme joy which surpasses the majesty of majesties and is the most honored of the honored.

6. This thing is the soul and its consciousness. Emptiness is the immensity of the supreme Brahman. It is the supreme good which is joy and tranquility. It is full of knowledge and omniscience, the highest of all states.

7. The soul abides in the intellect. It has the form of consciousness of all things, feeling and perceiving everything. It exists of itself.

8. It is the soul of the universe, like oil in the sesame seed. It is the central core of the tree of the world, the light and life of all animal beings.

9. It is the thread that connects all beings like pearls in a necklace suspended on the breast of empty air. It is the flavor of all things, like the pungency of pepper.

10. It is the essence of all substance, the truth that is the most excellent of all the truths of truths. It is the goodness of whatever is good and the greatest good in itself.

11. By its omniscience, the soul becomes the all that is present in its knowledge and which we take by our misjudgment for real entities in this world.

12. We are the soul, but we mistake ourselves to be in the world. All these mistaken entities vanish away before the light of reason.

13. The emptiness of Brahman, the space occupied by Divine Spirit, is without beginning or end and cannot be comprehended within the limited space of our souls. Knowing this for certain, the wise are employed in their outward duties.

14. That man is free from ups and downs who always rests in the calm tranquility of his soul, whose mind is never elated or dejected at any event, but always retains the evenness of its course.

15. He whose mind is as vacant as empty air is called a great soul (mahatma). His mind resting in the state of unity remains with the body in a state of sound sleep.

16. An ideal man with a great soul who preserves the evenness of his mind remains as undisturbed under the pressures of his duties as a reflection in a mirror. They are both the same, being only shadows of reality.

17. He who retains the impression in his mind like images in a mirror, in their even and unvaried state, is himself a reflection in Divine Consciousness.

18. So let a man discharge the customary duties of life as they occur to him, with a pure transparent mind, as all the creatures of God perform their various parts like images imprinted in Divine Consciousness.

19. There is no unity or duality in Divine Consciousness. The application of the words “I” and “you” to one or the other really refers to the same, as they have come to be used from the instruction of our elders.

20. Consciousness which of itself is tranquil in itself, acts its wonders in itself. It is the pulsation of consciousness that displays the universe as its development, and this pulsation is the omnipotence of God.

21. If the pulsation of Divine Consciousness stops, the course of the universe ceases. As it is with Supreme Consciousness, so it is with its parts of individual consciousness whose action and inaction spread out and limit the sphere of their thoughts.

22. What is called individual consciousness or its action is a non-entity in nature. The subtle body of Consciousness is a mere emptiness.

23. The world appears as something by our thinking of it as such. It vanishes when we cease to think of it as something objective, disappearing like figures in a picture burnt to ashes.

24. The world appears as one with the deity only to one who sees unity in himself. Only the vibration of the intellect causes the revolution of worlds like the turning of a potter’s wheel.

25. As the measure, shape and form of a gold ornament are not different from the gold, so the action of the intellect is not separate from the world. Intellect forms the world, just as gold becomes the ornament. The world and intellect are the same thing, just as the ornament and its gold.

26. Not knowing that the mind is the pulsation of intellect is what frames a separate world, just as ignorance of the gold makes an ornament appear as something else.

27. The mind is wholly absorbed in intellect, so pure intellect is all that is. As we come to understand the nature of one’s self or soul, there is an end of worldly enjoyments.

28. Disregard of enjoyments is an education of the highest wisdom, therefore no kind of enjoyment is acceptable to the wise.

29. Know that another indication of wisdom is that no man who has eaten his fill ever has a craving for any bad food (sensual pleasure) that is offered to him.

30. Another sign of wisdom is our natural aversion to craving enjoyments. He knows that the vibrations of his intellect creates the sense of one’s perception of all pleasures.

31. A wise man is one who has this good habit deeply rooted in his mind. An intelligent man refrains from enjoying whatever is enjoyable in this world.

32. Whoever pursues his perfection in order to be admired by others may as well strike the air with a stick or beat the bush searching for perfection because it requires sincerity of purpose to be successful in anything.

33. Sometimes people emaciate and torture the body in order to have a full view of the inner soul.

34. As long as the unconscious spirit flutters in its unsteadiness and goes on wandering from one object to another, the light of understanding do not rise or shine within.

35. But as soon as the light of tranquil consciousness appears in its brightness within the inner soul, the fluttering of the unsteady spirit is put to flight, like the flickering of a lamp after it is extinguished.

36. There is no such thing as vibration or suspension of the tranquil spirit because the quiescent soul neither moves forward nor backward. It has no motion in any direction.

37. The soul that is neither unconscious of itself nor has any vibration in it, is said to be calm and quiet. As the soul remains indifferent to vibrations and gains its forms of pure transparence, it is no more liable to its bondage in life nor seeks to know its liberation to set it free from rebirth.

38. The soul that is settled in Supreme Soul has no fear of bondage or need of its liberation. Consciousness being without its reasoning, or having no object to dwell upon, becomes unconscious both of its existence as well as extinction.

39. He that is full with the spirit of God in himself is equally ignorant of his bondage and his liberation. The desire of being liberated indicates a lack of self-sufficiency and perfection.

40. “Let me have my equanimity and not my liberation.” This desire is also a bondage in itself. Unconsciousness of equanimity and liberation is reckoned as our chief good. The supreme state is pure consciousness without a shadow.

41. The restoration of consciousness to its proper form consists in divesting it of all that it can perceive. Phenomena are only vibrations of the great Consciousness.

42. Only that which is seen and destructible in its nature is subject to bondage and liberation. The invisible soul, which can take the name of ego, is indestructible and has no position or form or figure of itself.

43. We know not what there is to be brought under or loosened from bondage by anyone. It is not the pure desire which the wise form for themselves, and it does not affect the body.

44. Therefore, the wise practice the restraint of their breath in order to restrain their desires and actions. Being devoid of these, they become pure Consciousness.

45. These being suppressed, the idea of the world is lost in the density of Consciousness because the thoughts of the mind are caused only by the vibration of Consciousness.

46. This is the realization of the truth. The world is born of the vibrations of Consciousness. The world vanishes being destroyed by the knowledge of the light of splendid Divine Consciousness.

47. There remains nothing, no action of the body or mind, only the vibration of Consciousness. The phenomenal world is nothing but a protracted dream from one sight to another. The learned are not deluded by these appearances which they know to be exhibitions of their own minds.

48. Know within yourself in your meditation that hidden soul which gives rise to our consciousness of the essences of things appearing constantly before us. All these fantasies of our brain dissolve in that hidden soul like dirt in the water. All our perceptions and conceptions of the passing world are flowing in a perpetual stream within the soul.

✅
Chapter 6a.60 — The Majesty and Grandeur of God

1. Vasishta continued:— Such is the first great truth concerning Divine Consciousness that contains the gigantic forms of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

2. Through the greatness of God, all people in their own separate worlds are as flashy as great princes, ever exulting in their power to float and traverse in the regions of open air.

3. By dwelling in the spirit of God, earth born mortals are as happy as the inhabitants of heaven.

4. Yes, they live in Him who have found him. They who have taken their refuge under the shade of the Supreme Spirit are not to be restrained by anybody.

5. He who meditates for a moment on the universal essence of all becomes liberated in an instant and lives as a liberal minded sage, a muni on earth. He does what are his duties in this world and never grieves in discharging them.

6. Rama said, “Sage, how is it possible to meditate on the Universal Soul in all things when one has buried his mind, understanding, ego and self in the unity of God? How can the soul be viewed in plurality when all things have been absorbed in the unity?”

7. Vasishta replied:— The God that dwells in all bodies, moves them to their actions, receives their food and drink in himself, produces all things, and annihilates them at last, is of course unknowable to our consciousness.

8. This indwelling principle in everything without beginning or end and inherent in the nature of all is called the common essence of all because it constitutes the tattwa identity (essential nature) of everything in the world.

9. It dwells as emptiness in the vacuum and as the property of loudness in sound. It is situated as feeling in whatever is felt and as texture in the objects of touch.

10. It is the taste of all that can be tasted by the tongue. It is the light of all objects that can be seen and the vision of the organs of seeing.

11. It is the sense of smell in the act of smelling and the odor in all odorous substances. It is the plumpness of the body and the solidity and stability of the earth.

12. It is the fluidity of liquids and the breezes of the air. It is the flame and flash of fire and the thinking of the understanding.

13. It is the thinking principle of the thoughtful mind and the ego of our egoism. It is the consciousness of the conscious soul and it is the conscious heart.

14. It is the power of growth in vegetables and perspective in all pictures and paintings. It is the capacity of all pots and vessels and the tallness of stately trees.

15. It is the immobility of inert object and the mobility of movable bodies. It is the dull unconsciousness of stones and blocks, and the intelligence of intelligent beings.

16. It is the immortality and Godhead of the immortal gods and the humanity of human beings. It is the curvedness of crooked beasts and the supine proneness of crawling and creeping insects.

17. It is the current of the course of time and the revolution and aspects of the seasons. It is the passing of fleeting moments and the endless duration of eternity.

18. It is the whiteness of whatever is white and the blackness of all that is black. It is activity in all actions and it is stern fixity in the doings of destiny.

19. The Supreme Spirit is quiescent in all that is calm, and lasting and fleeting in whatever is passing and perishing. He shows his productiveness in the production of things.

20. He is the childhood of children and the youth of young men. He shows himself as fading in the decay and decline of beings and as his extinction in their death and death.

21. Thus the all pervading soul is not apart from anything, as the waves and froths of the foaming sea are no way distinct from its body of waters.

22. These many forms of things are all unrealities. They are taken for true in our ignorance of the unity which multiplies itself in our imagination, just as children create and produce false apparitions from their unsound understandings.

23. “It is I,” says the Lord, “who am situated everywhere, and it is I who pervades the whole and fills it with all varieties at pleasure.” Know therefore, O high minded Rama, that all these varieties are only creatures of imagination in the mind of God, and from there are reflected into the mirror of our minds. Know this rest in the calm tranquility of your soul, and enjoy the undisturbed solace and happiness of your high mind.

24. Valmiki said:— As the sage was saying these things, the day passed away under its evening shade, the sun sank down in its evening devotion, and the assembly broke with mutual salutations to the performance of their evening ablutions, until they reassembled on the next morning.

✅
Chapter 6a.61 — Description of the World as a Passing Dream

1. Rama said, “O sage, without doubt we are a dream-drawn house, the body of the lotus-born Brahma, the first progenitor.

2. If this world is a non-entity (asat), we must know our existence to be the same non-entity. Then how is it possible that we have acquired such a firm faith in the reality (sat) of this dream?”

3. Vasishta responded:— We are shining here as a created being by the previous birth of Brahma, but in fact, the reflection of soul shines forever as nothing else.

4. Owing to the omnipresence of consciousness, all beings exist as reality everywhere, and if consciousness rises from unreal knowledge, consciousness as real knowledge destroys the unreal one.

5. Therefore whatever comes from these five elements is only transitory, but owing to the firm belief of ego, we enjoy a firm faith that it is real.

6. In a dream, we see a good many things as reality, but as soon the dream is over, we do not find the things we had dreamed of. As long we remain in ignorance, we see the reality of the world in the same way.

7. O Rama, the dreaming man thinks his dream is reality because he has faith in it. In the same way, this world appears as reality to the supreme God who has no beginning or end.

8. That which is created by a dreaming man is said to be his own, just as we can say that what is in the seed is in the fruit.

9. Whatever comes from non-entity is to be called non-entity. Though the unreal can be workable, it is not reasonable to think that what is unreal is good.

10. As the thinking result of unreality is to be given up, so the firm faith which arises in the dreaming man that the dream is real must also be given up.

11. Whatever the soul creates in a dream is our firm belief, but that remains only for a short time.

12. Brahman’s long drawn dream is this world, hence we also think this world is long drawn, but in fact, this world is a moment to Brahman.

13. Consciousness is the creator of all elements. She creates everything according to her model, hence creator and creation are one and the same.

14. As the backward and forward whirling motion of water makes a deep swell, and as a fairy appears in a dream, so all these nothings are in reality.

15. This entity with its change is nothing. In whatever manner we look at an object, it will appear in the same manner.

16. The rule of the false dream is not to reproduce because the production is not in the world, but owing to ignorance, it appears so.

17. In the three worlds we see wonderful objects, such as undersea fire burning in the water.

18. A good many cities exist in emptiness, and birds and stars remain in the sky. We find a lotus in stone, like trees growing without earth.

19. One country gives every kind of object to the seeker, like a wishfulfilling tree that gives all objects to the seeker. We see a stone or rows of jewels like fruit from a fruitful tree.

20. Life like frogs exists within a stone. A moonstone gives water.

21. In a dream, many things are made and unmade within a minute, all of which, in fact, are as unreal as one’s death in a dream.

22. The natural water of the elements is suspended in the sky (cloud) when the heavenly Mandakini River remains in emptiness.

23. A heavy stone or a winged mountain flies in the air. Everything can be obtained through a stone when everything can be secured from the philosopher’s stone.

24. In Indra’s garden of bliss, every desired object can be obtained, but when one is liberated, such kind of desire for objects is lacking.

25. Even dull matter acts like a machine, hence every object acts like wonderful false magic.

26. By magical art we see even impossible objects such as two moons, headless trunks (kavandhas), mantras, drugs, and pisacha ghosts. All these are the works of wonderful false magic and are, in fact, nothing.

27. We see the impossible as real and possible. Impossibility becomes real only because of our false ideas.

28. Though it appears as real, a false dream is in fact unreal. There is nothing which is unreal and there is nothing which is real.

29. So all worldly beings see this dream of creation as real, just as a dreamer takes his dream as a reality.

30. By passing from one error to another error, from one dream to another, a firm faith in the reality of the dream comes out.

31. As a stray deer repeatedly falls into a pit for green grass, so ignorant man repeatedly falls into the pit of this world owing to his ignorance.

✅
Chapter 6a.62 — The Mendicant’s Idle Thought: the Story of the Hundred Rudras

1. Vasishta resumed:— Rama, let me tell you the story of a certain mendicant who fostered some desire in his mind and wandered through many migrations of his soul.

2. At one time, there lived a great mendicant who devoted his life to holy meditation and passed his days observing the rules of his mendicancy.

3. In the intensity of his samadhi, his mind was cleansed of all its desires and became assimilated in the object of its meditation, just as seawater changes in the form of waves.

4. Once he was sitting on his seat after finishing his meditation, about to discharge some sacred function of his order, when a thought chanced to pass over his clear mind.

5. He looked into the reflection of the thought that arose in his mind of itself: that for his pleasure, he should reflect upon the various conditions of common people and the different modes of their life.

6. With this thought, his mind passed from reflecting upon himself and his God to that of another person. He lost the calm composure of his mind, just like when the quiet sea is disturbed by a whirlpool.

7. He thought to become an ideal man and in an instant, he became the imagined person, Jivata by name.

8. Jivata, the ideal man, wandered about like a dreaming person through the walks of an imaginary city which he had raised in himself, just like a sleeping man dreams and builds houses in the sky.

9. Jivata drank his fill at pleasure, just like a giddy bee sips honey from lotus flowers. He became plump and hearty with his sports and enjoyed sound sleep from his lack of cares.

10. In his dream, Jivata saw himself in the form of a brahmin who was pleased with his studies and the discharge of his religious duties. As he thought of this within himself, he was transformed to that same state, just as in the space of a thought, a man transplants himself from one place to another.

11. One day the good brahmin, who was observant of his daily rituals, fell asleep into a deep trance. He dreamt he was doing the duties of the day, just as a seed hidden in a shell inwardly performs its act of vegetation.

12. In his dream, the same brahmin saw himself changed to a chieftain who ate and drank and slept as any other man in general.

13. The chief, in his own dream, thought himself to be a king who ruled over the earth extending to the horizon surrounded by all kinds of enjoyments, just as a vine is studded with flowers.

14. Once as this king felt himself at ease, he fell into a sound sleep free from all cares. He saw the future consequences of his actions, as effects are attached to a cause and as flowers issue from a tree.

15. He saw his soul assuming the form of a heavenly maid, just as a plant produces its flowers and fruit.

16. As this heavenly maid was lulled to sleep by her weariness and fatigue, she saw herself turn into a deer, as the calm ocean finds itself disturbed by whirling currents and waves.

17. This frightened fawn with unsteady eyes fell into a sound sleep and saw herself transformed into a creeping plant.

18. The crooked beasts of the field and the creeping plants of forest also have their sleep and dreams of their own nature. Their dreams are caused by what they saw and heard and felt in their waking states.

19. This vine came to be beautified with fruits, flowers and leaves forming a covered shelter for the seat of the floral goddess of the woods.

20. Hidden in the vine’s heart were its wishes, in the same manner as a seed conceals the would be tree. At last the vine, in its inner consciousness, saw itself full of frailty and failings.

21. It had remained long in its sleep and rest, but being disgusted with its drowsy dullness, the vine thought of being the fluttering bee that was its constant guest. Immediately it found itself changed to a fluttering bee.

22. The bee flew at pleasure over the tender and blossoming vines in the forest, landing on the petals of blooming lotuses like a fond lover courting his mistresses.

23. It wandered about the blossoms, blooming like brightening pearls in the air, and drank the flowers’ nectar-like juice like a lover sipping nectar from his beloved’s red lips.

24. The bee became captivated by the lotus of the lake and sat silent upon its thorny stalk on the water. For such is the fondness of fools, even for what is painful to them.

25. The lake was often infested by elephants who tore and trampled over the lotus beds, because the base take pleasure destroying God’s fair works.

26. The fond bee meets the fate of its fondled lotus and was crushed under the tusk of the elephant like rice is ground by teeth.

27. The little bee, seeing the big body and might of the elephant, took a fancy of being such. By imagining himself as so, he was instantly converted to the elephant of his imagination.

28. At last the elephant fell into a pit, deep and dry as the dried bed of a bay, just as a man falls into the profound and empty ocean of this world overcast by an impenetrable darkness.

29. The elephant became a favorite of the prince for defeating his enemies’ armies, and he routed about at random with his giddy might like lawless robbers wandering about at night.

30. Afterwards, the elephant fell under the sword of the enemy, his body pierced all over by their deadly arrows, as the haughty egoism of the living body drops down in the soul under the wound of right reason.

31. The dying elephant, having been accustomed to see swarms of bees fluttering over elephants’ trunks sipping the ichor exuding from them, long had cherished the desire of becoming a bee. So now he came to be a bee in reality.

32. The bee rambled at large among the flowery vines of the forest and again rested among the lotus beds of the lake, because it is hard for fools to get rid of their fond desires, though they are attended with danger and peril.

33. At last the playful bee was trampled down and crashed under the feet of an elephant, and, by its long association with one in the lake, become a goose.

34. The goose passed through many lives until it became gander sporting with the geese in the lake.

35. It came to pass that the gander fostered the idea of being the swan that serves as the vehicle of Brahma, just as the yolk of an egg fosters a feathered fowl.

36. As it was fostering this strong desire in itself, the gander grew old and diseased, like a piece of wood eaten by worms. Then as he died with his consciousness of being Brahma’s bird, in his next birth he was born as the great swan of that god.

37. The swan lived in the company of the wise and became enlightened from the views of worldly beings. He continued for ages in his disembodied liberation, caring for nothing in the future.

✅
Chapter 6a.63 — Dream of Jivata: the Hundred Rudras

1. Vasishta continued:— Once, this bird that played beside the lotus seat of Brahma went to the city of Rudra (Shiva) with his god on his back. There he saw the god Rudra face to face.

2. Seeing Rudra, the swan thought himself to be so. The figure of the god was immediately impressed upon his mind, like the reflection of an outer object in a mirror.

3. Being full of Rudra in himself, he left his bird body, just as a flower’s fragrance leaves it petals, mixes with the breeze, and flies in the open air.

4. He passed his time happily at that place, in the company of his attendants and the various different classes of Rudra’s dependent divinities.

5. This Rudra, being full of the best knowledge of divinity and spirituality, looked back into his understanding and the past accounts of his prior lives that were almost countless.

6. Having clear vision and clairvoyance, he was astonished to see the naked truth that appeared to him like sights in a dream, which he recounted to himself as follows. Jivata, as Rudra, speaking:—

7. O, how wonderful is this illusion stretched all about us. Illusion’s magic wand fascinates the world. It exhibits the tangible untruth as positive truth, just as sunbeams spreading over the sterile sands of the dreary desert present the appearance of clear water.

8. I well remember my primary state of pure consciousness, its conversion into the state of the mind, and how it was changed from its supremacy and omniscience to the bondage of the limited body.

9. By its own desire the living soul assumed a material body to itself, formed and fashioned agreeably to its fancy, like a picture drawn in a painting. It became a mendicant in one of its prior births when it was unattached to the objects exposed to view all around.

10. The same mendicant sat in meditation by controlling the actions of his body and began to reflect on outer objects with great pleasure in his mind.

11. He buried all his former thoughts in oblivion and thought only of the object that he was employed to reflect upon. This thought so engrossed and worked upon his mind that it prevented the rise of any other thought.

12. The phenomenon that appears in the mind also offers itself to view. As the brown of fading autumn supersedes the spring green of leaves and plants, so the man coming to his maturity forgets the helpless state of his boyhood and is thoughtless of his approaching decay and decline.

13. Thus by his fallible and unsteady desire, the mendicant became the brahmin Jivata, making him wander from one body to another, like little ants entering the holes of houses and things.

14. Being reverential towards brahmins in his mind, he became the wished for person in his own body. Reality and unreality have the power of mutually displacing one another according to the greater influence of either.

15. The brahmin next became a chief because of his strong preference for that, just as a tree becomes fruitful by continuously absorbing moisture from the earth.

16. Being desirous of dispensing justice and discharging all legal affairs, the chief wished for royalty and had his wishes fulfilled by this becoming a king. But as the king was over fond of his courtesans, he was transformed into a heavenly nymph that he prized in his heart above all.

17. But because the celestial dame prized the trembling sight of a frightened deer above her own heavenly form and station, she soon changed into a deer in the woods, destined to graze as a miserable beast for her foolish choice.

18. The deer was very fond of browsing tender grass and leaves. At last it became the same creeping plant that had crept into the opening of her craving mind.

19. The creeper, being long accustomed to dote on the bee that used to be in its company, found in its consciousness to be that insect after the destruction of its own form.

20. Though well aware of being crushed under the elephant, together with the lotus flower in which it lived, yet the vine was foolish to take the form of the bee for its pleasure of wandering about the world.

21. Being thus led into a hundred different forms, I have at last become Rudra. It is all because of the capriciousness of my erratic mind in this changing world.

22. Thus have I wandered through the many different paths of life in this wilderness of the world. I have roamed in many aerial regions as if I were treading on solid, substantial ground.

23. In one of my many births I was named Jivata. In another I became a great and respectable brahmin. I became quite another person again, and then found myself as a ruler and lord of the earth.

24. I had been a drake living in lotus plants and an elephant in the valleys of the Vindhya Hills. Then I assumed the body of a stag, fleet in my limbs.

25. After I first deviated from my state of godliness, I was still settled in the state of a devotee with devotion to divine knowledge, practicing the rites befitting my position.

26. In this state I passed many years and ages. Many a day, night, season and century glided on imperceptibly.

27. But I deviated again and again from my habitual course, often subjected to new births and forms, until at last I was changed to Brahma’s vehicle of the swan by virtue of my former good conduct and company.

28. The firmly established habits of a living beings must come out unobstructed, though they may be held back in many intermediate births, even for a millennium. Yet they must come and lay hold of the person some time or another.

29. It is only by accident that one has the blessing of some good company in his life. Then his inborn habit may be restrained for a time, but in the end it is sure to break out with violence in utter defiance of every check and rule.

30. But he who keeps only good society and always strives for his edification in what is good and great is able to destroy the evil propensities that are inbred in him, because the desire to be good is what actually makes one so.

31. Whatever a man is accustomed to do or think upon constantly, in this life or in the next state of his being, the same appears as a reality to him in his waking state of daydream, just as unreality appears as real in the dream of a man in sleep.

32. Thoughts that employ our minds appoint our bodies to do their wished for works. These works have some temporary good and evil also. Therefore it is better to restrain and repress these tumultuous thoughts rather than cherish them for our pleasure or pain.

33. Only the thought in our minds makes us take our bodies for ourselves. Thoughts stretch wide this world of unrealities, like an enclosed seed sprouts forth and spreads itself into a bush.

34. The world is only the visible form of a visible thought and nothing more in reality, a fantasy and illusion of our sight.

35. The illusive appearance of the world presents itself to our sight like the many colors of the sky. Therefore, by ignoring of it, we may wipe those impressions off from our minds.

36. It is an unreal appearance displayed by the Supreme Essence as a real existence only for his pleasure. It cannot do any harm to anybody.

37. I rise and look into all these varieties in nature for the sake of my pleasure and curiosity. I have the true light of reason in me, whereby I discern the one unity quite apart from all varieties. Vasishta speaking:—

38. After all this reasoning, the incarnate Rudra returned to his former state and reflected on the condition of the mendicant, whose body was now lying like a dead corpse on the barren ground.

39. He awakened the mendicant and raised his prostrate body by infusing his consciousness into it. Then the resuscitated monk came to understand that all his wanderings were only hallucinations of his mind.

40. The mendicant found himself to be the same with Rudra standing in his presence, as also with the bygone ones that he recollected in his memory. He was astonished to think how he could be one and so many, though it is no wonder to the intelligent who well know that one man acts many parts in life.

41. Afterwards both Rudra and the mendicant got up from their seats and proceeded to the home of Jivata situated in a corner of the intellectual sphere.

42. They passed over many continents, islands, provinces and districts until they arrived at Jivata’s home where they found him lying down with a sword in hand.

43. They saw Jivata lying asleep and unconscious as a dead body. Rudra put aside his bright celestial form in order to enter into the earthly abode of the deceased.

44. They brought him back to life and intelligence by imparting to him portion of their spirit and intellect. Thus this one soul exhibited the triple forms of Rudra, Jivata and the mendicant.

45. With all their intelligence, they remained ignorant of one another. They marveled to look on each other in mute astonishment, as if they were the figures in painting.

46. Then the three went together in their aerial course to the air-built home of the brahmin who had erected his baseless fabric in empty air and which resounded with empty sounds all around.

47. They passed through many aerial regions and barren and populous tracts of air until at last they found the brahmin’s heavenly residence.

48. They saw him sleeping in his house surrounded by the members of his family, his wife’s arms around his neck as if unwilling to part with her deceased husband.

49. They awakened his drowsy intelligence by means of their own intelligence, just as a waking man raises his own sleeping soul by means of his own awareness.

50. From there they went on in their pleasant journey to the kingdoms of the chief and the king mentioned before. These were situated in the bright regions of their intellectual sphere, illuminated by the brightness of their intellect.

51. Having arrived at that region and that very place, they observed the haughty chief lying on his lotus-like bed.

52. He lay with his gold colored body in the company of his golden colored bed-partners like a honey sucking bee lying inside the embrace of a lotus flower’s petals.

53. His mistresses hung about him like the tender stalks and tufts of flowers hanging on a tree, surrounded by a belt of lit lamps, as when a golden plate is studded by a circle of brilliant gems.

54. They awakened him by infusing their own spirit and intelligence into his body and mind, then they sat together marveling at each other, as an identical man with so many forms.

55. Next they went to the palace of the king. After awakening him with their intelligence, they all wandered about the different parts of the world.

56. At last they came to the swan of Brahma. Being all transformed into that form in their minds, they all became the one Rudra personality in a hundred persons.

57. Thus the one consciousness is represented in different forms and shapes according to the various inclinations of their minds, like so many figures in a painting. Such is the divine unity represented as different personalities, according to the various tendencies of individual minds.

58. There were a hundred Rudras, a hundred forms of the uncovered consciousness. They are acquainted with the truths of all things in the world and the secrets of all hearts.

59. There are a hundred and some hundreds of Rudras who are known as very great beings in the world. Among them, only eleven are situated in so many worlds.

60. All living beings who are not awakened to reason are ignorant of the identity of each another. They view them in different and not in the same light. They are not farsighted to see any world other than the one that is the closest to them.

61. Wise men see the minds of others and all things arising in their minds, like waves in the sea. Unenlightened minds remain dormant in themselves, like inert blocks of stone.

62. As the waves mix with themselves because of water’s fluidity, so the minds of wise unite with one another by the solubility of their understandings, like elastic fluids and liquids.

63. Among all the multitudes of living beings that are presented to our sight in this world, we find the one unchanging element of Consciousness to be diffused in all of them, making unreal appear as real.

64. This real but invisible Divine Consciousness remains forever. All the unreal but visible appearances disappear into nothing. An empty space remains after a thing is removed from its place, or a hole is dug in the ground.

65. You can conceive of the idea of existence and the five-fold elemental principles in nature. So you can also comprehend the notion of the omnipresence of Divine Consciousness which underlies the elemental principles.

66. You see various statues and images carved in stone and wood and set in the hollows of rocks and trees. So also you should be able to see all these figures in the hollow space of the universe, situated in the identical Consciousness of the Omnipresent Deity.

67. In the pure Consciousness of the unknown and invisible Deity, the knowledge of the known and visible world resembles the ever-changing, uncaused and unconscious shapes in the sky, the causeless substratum of everlasting and all pervading emptiness.

68. Knowledge of phenomena is the bondage of the soul. Ignoring phenomena leads to its liberation. Therefore do as you like; either towards this or that.

69. Knowledge and ignorance of the world are the causes of the bondage and liberation of the soul. These also produce the reincarnation and final emancipation of the animal spirit. By your indifference to them, you can avoid both. Therefore do as you may best choose for yourself.

70. What disappears is not worth seeking or being sorry for its loss. That which is gained of itself in our calm and quiet without any anxiety or diligence on our part is truly reckoned to be our best gain.

71. That which exists only in our perception is not true knowledge but mere fallacy. True knowledge is that of the subjective consciousness, to which one must always be aware.

72. As a wave is an agitation of water, so this creation is only a vibration of the Divine Consciousness. The only difference between them is that one is the production of the elements in nature and the other is that of the Divine Will.

73. The surging of waves occurs in conjunction with existing elements at certain spots and times, but the production of the world is wholly without the junction of elemental bodies, which were not in existence at its creation.

74. The shining worlds shine with the light of Divine Consciousness in which they are situated. They are thoughts in its consciousness. It transcends the power of speech to define what it is, and yet it is expressed in the Vedas in the words that, “It is the Supreme Soul and perfect joy” (Shiva Paramatma).

75. Thus the world is the form of consciousness in Divine Consciousness and they are not different from one another, just as words can never be separated from their meanings. It is said that the world is the vibration of the Divine Spirit. Only the ignorant say the wave and water are two different things.

✅
Chapter 6a.64 — The Attendants of God Rudra; How One Soul Becomes Many

1. Rama said, “Tell me sage. What became of the many forms that the mendicant saw in his dream? Did the different forms of Jivata, the brahmin, the swan and others return to themselves, or did they forever remain as Rudras?”

2. Vasishta replied:— They all remained with Rudra as parts and compositions of himself. Being enlightened by him, they wandered all about the world and rested content with themselves.

3. With Rudra, they all saw the magic scenes displayed before them until at last they were dismissed from his company to return to their own states and places.

4. Rudra said, “Go you now to your own places, and there enjoy your fill with your family. Return to me after some time having completed the course of your enjoyments and sufferings in the world.

5. Then you will become parts of me and remain as my attendants to grace my residence until at last we all return to the supreme at the end of time and be absorbed in the last ultimate state of all.”

6. Vasishta said:— So saying, Lord Rudra vanished from their sight and mixed with the Rudras who viewed all worlds in their enlightened intellects.

7. Jivata and the others returned to their respective homes where they had to share in their domestic joys in the company of their families for their allotted times.

8. Then, having wasted and shuffled off their mortal coils at the end of their limited periods, they will be promoted to the rank of Rudras in heaven and they will appear as shining stars in the firmament.

9. Rama replied, “All those forms of Jivata and others are only creations of the empty imagination of the mendicant. I cannot understand how they could be beings as there is no substance in imaginary things.”

10. Vasishta replied:— The truth of imagination lies partly in our consciousness and partly in our representation of the image. An image giving a false shape to anything is as untrue as any nothingness in nature. But what we are conscious of must be true, because our consciousness comprehends everything in it.

11. Thus, all that is seen in dream and shown to us by imagination is impressed in our consciousness at all times and forever.

12. A man traveling from one country to another, and again to some other place, has no knowledge of the distance of his journey unless he is conscious of its length and duration in space and time. So without our consciousness of it in our sleeping state, we are ignorant of the duration of our dream and our passing from one dream to another.

13. Therefore our consciousness contains all things that are represented to it by the intellect. It is from our reasoning that we have knowledge of everything, because the intellect is full of knowledge and pervades everywhere.

14. Imagination, desire and dream are one and same thing. One produces the other and all are lodged in the intellect. Their objects are obtained by our intense application to them. Desire produces imagination which is the cause of dream. They are phenomena of mind and their objects are the results of deep meditation.

15. Nothing is to be had without its practice and meditation of it. Men of enlightened minds gain the objects only through their yoga and meditation of them.

16. These adepts view the objects of their pursuit in all places, such as the god Shiva and other master yogis. Such was my aim and attempt also, but it was not attended with success.

17. I was unsuccessful because of my lack of fixed resolve, failing in both because attending to both sides. [Vasishta may be referring to something Shivabalayogi often related, that even Vasishta, who sat in tapas for many centuries, was unsuccessful so long as he thought his individual ego was God (aham brahmasya). TLP.] Only the firm resolution in one point gives a person success in any undertaking.

18. One going in a southerly direction cannot arrive at his house in the north. Such is the case with pursuers and what they pursue, which they well know to be unattainable without their firm determination on it.

19. Whoever resolves to gain his desired object must fix his view on that object. The mind fixed on the object brings it into effect.

20. So the mendicant having Rudra as the sole object in his view became assimilated into the very form of his wish. Because whoever is intent on one object must remove all duality from himself.

21. The other imaginary forms of the mendicant were all different persons in their different spheres. They had obtained their different forms according to their respective desires from one state to another.

22. They did not know or look on one another, but they all had their thoughts fixed on Rudra alone. Because those who are awakened to their spiritual knowledge have their sight fixed on their final liberation, while unenlightened mortals are subjected to repeated births because of their repeated wishes.

23. It was according to the will of Rudra that he took this one form and many others upon himself, such as he wills to become a vidyadhara demigod in one place and a pundit scholar in another.

24. This story of Rudra serves as an example of the efficacy of intense thought and practice. All men may become one or another or many more, whether learned or ignorant, according to their thoughts and conduct.

25. One may have his manhood and his godhead by courageous and godlike actions at different times and places. Being both at the same time requires much greater ability and energy of the mind and the body.

26. The living soul, being one with the Divine, has all the powers of the Divine implanted in it. The Infinite being grafted in the finite, they are of the same innate nature.

27. The living soul expands and contracts in its life and death, just as the Divine Soul has its evolution and involution in its acts of creation and dissolution. But the Divine Soul destroys no soul because it is the soul of souls and the collection of all souls. Therefore anyone who would be godly must refrain from slaughter.

28. Yogis and yoginis continue to discharge their sacred rites, as enjoined by law and usage, and either remain in this world or freely wander about in others at large.

29. A yogi may be seen in different forms at once, both in this world and in the next, according to the merit of his actions, just as the great yogi and warrior King Kartavirya Arjuna became the terror of the world as if he were everywhere while he remained quite at home.

30. So also does the god Vishnu appear in human forms on earth while he sleeps at ease in the Milky Ocean. The yoginis of heaven hover over animal sacrifices on earth while they reside in their groups in the ethereal sphere.

31. Indra also appears on earth to receive the offerings of men while he is sitting in his heavenly seat on high, and Narayana takes the forms of a thousand Ramas upon him in his conflict with multitudes of rakshasa demon legions.

32. So did one Krishna become a hundred to receive the obeisance of his reverential princes. He appears as a thousand in the company of many thousands of monarchs in the Kuru assembly.

33. God becomes incarnate in many forms, with parts and particles of his own spirit for the preservation of the world. The one Lord became many in a moment in the company of his mistresses.

34. In this manner did the forms of Jivata and others, which were the creatures of the mendicant’s imagination, retire at the command of Rudra to their own particular homes and respective desires.

35. There they enjoyed all their delights for a long time until they entered the home of Rudra where they became the demigod’s attendants and remained in his retinue for a great length of time.

36. They remained in the company of Rudra, dwelling in the Nandana gardens of evergreen and ever blossoming kalpa vines of paradise, blooming with clusters of shining small flowers, wandering at pleasure to different worlds and to the celestial city of Shiva on Mount Kailash, playing in the company of heavenly nymphs and bearing the crowns of immortality on their heads.

✅
Chapter 6a.65 — Rama’s Wonder at the Error of Men

1. Vasishta continued:— As the mendicant saw this transient scene of error in his mind, so is the case with all living beings. They look on their past lives and actions apart from themselves and in the persons of other men.

2. The past lives, actions and deaths of all reflective souls are as deeply imprinted in them as any thought is preserved in the retentive mind and empty intellect.

3. Distant and separate things are mingled together in the present sphere of one’s soul, and all persons appear as distinct figures in the dream.

4. The human soul, though it is a form of the divine, but being enclosed in its frail and mortal body, is doomed to misery until its final liberation from birth and body. Thus I have related to you the fate of all living souls in the example and tale of the mendicant monk.

5. O Rama, know now that the souls of all of us are like that of the mendicant. They are vibrated and moved by the impulse of the Supreme Spirit, yet they are fallible in their nature, falling from error to error in every moment.

6. As a stone falling from a rock falls lower and lower to the ground, so the living soul, once fallen from its height of Supreme Spirit, descends lower and lower to the lowest pit.

7. Now it sees one dream and then passes from it to another, and thus rolling forever in its dreaming sleep, it never finds any substantiality whatsoever.

8. The soul, hidden under the illusion of errors, sometimes happens to come to the light of truth, either by the guidance of same good instructor or by the light of its own intuition. Then it is released from the wrong notion of its personality in the body and comes to the true knowledge of itself.

9. Rama said, “O! the impenetrable gloom of error that spreads over the human soul causes it to believe in the mist of its errors, just as a sleeping man enjoys the scenery of his dreams.

10. The gloom of error is shrouded by the thick darkness of the night of false knowledge and falls into the pit of illusion which spreads over the world.

11. O! the remarkable error of taking a thing as our own which in reality belongs to nobody but the lord and master of all.”

12. “It is necessary for you, sage, to explain to me, from where does this error arise? How could the mendicant, with his share of good and right understanding, fall into error? Tell me also, you who knows all, whether he is still living?”

13. Vasishta replied:— I will explore the regions of the three worlds in my samadhi meditation tonight and tell you tomorrow morning whether the mendicant is living or not, and where he may be at present.

14. Valmiki said:— As the sage was speaking in this manner, the royal garrison sounded the trumpet of the departing day with the beating of drums. The sound filled the sky with the loud roar of doomsday flood clouds.

15. Princes and citizens assembled in the court and threw handfuls of flowers at the sage’s feet, just like trees dropping their flowers in the ground, blown by a fragrant breeze.

16. They also honored the other great sages. All rose from their respective seats and the assembly broke afterwards with mutual salutations to one another.

17. All the residents of earth and air went to their respective homes with the setting sun and discharged their duties of the departing day in obedience to the ordinances of the scriptures.

18. They all performed their services as prescribed in their ceremonial observances, in which they placed their strong faith and veneration.

19. All the mortals and celestials who formed Vasishta’s audience now began to reflect on the sage’s lecture. The night passed as short as a moment with some, and as long as an age with others.

20. As the morning rose with the returning duties of men, and employed all beings of heaven and earth to discharge their morning services, the court reopened to receive the audience who assembled there with mutual greetings and salutations to their superiors.

✅
Chapter 6a.66 — The Mendicant’s Wanderings; Multiple Births with Similar Forms and Personalities

1. Valmiki related:— After the sages Vasishta and Vishwamitra had taken their seats in the court hall, groups of celestials and aerial spiritual masters entered, together with the monarch of earth and the chiefs of men.

2. Then Rama and Lakshman came into the court with their companions. They shone like a clear lake of lotus beds unshaken by the gentle breeze, glistening by the bright light of moonbeams.

3. The chief of sages opened his mouth without anyone asking him. He did not wait for anyone to ask because wise men are always kind hearted, ready to communicate their knowledge to others of their own accord.

4. Vasishta said:— O Rama who is the moon in the sphere of Raghu’s family, last night after a long time I came to see the mendicant with the all seeing eye of my intellectual vision.

5. I thought in my mind and wandered wide and afar to find out where that man was. I traversed all continents and islands, passing over all hills and mountains on earth.

6. I had my head running upon the search, but could not find anywhere a mendicant of that description. Because it is impossible to find in the outer world the fictions of our air-built castles.

7. Then at the last watch of the night, I ran in my mind and passed over the regions on the north like fleet winds fly over ocean waves.

8. There I saw the extensive and populous country of Jina, lying beyond the utmost boundaries of Valmika, where there is a beautiful city called Vihara by its inhabitants.

9. There a mendicant named Dirghadrusa (foresighted) lived whose hair was silver with age and who continues meditation confined in his lovely cottage.

10. He is used to sitting in meditation for three weeks at a time, keeping the door of his cell locked for fear of being disturbed by outsiders’ intrusion.

11. In this way, even his dependents are kept outside while he is absorbed in meditation.

12. He passed his three weeks sitting in deep, secluded meditation, which in his mind was a thousand years.

13. In olden times, there had been a mendicant of his kind, as I have already related to you. This is the second living instance of that sort. We know not where and when a third or another like this may be found to exist.

14. I was long in quest, like a bee in search of flowers, to find such another in the womb of this lotuslike earth, with all possible inquiry on my part.

15. I passed beyond the limit of the present world and pierced through the mist of future creations. There I met with what I sought, the resemblance of the present mendicant.

16. As I looked into the world lying in the womb of the future, deposited in the mental world of Brahma, I met with a third one resembling Brahma in his conduct.

17. Passing through many worlds, one after another, I saw many things in various futures which are not in the present world.

18. There I saw sages who are now sitting in this assembly, and many more brahmins who are of the nature of these who are present here, but also different from them.

19. There will be this Narada with his present course of life, but also differing from this Narada. Likewise there will be many others with their various modes of life.

20. This Vyasa and this Suka, and these Saunaka, Pulaha and Krutu, will reappear in future creations with the same natures and characters.

21. The same Agastya, Pulastya, Bhrigu and Angirasa, all of them and all others, will again come into existence with their very same forms and character traits.

22. They will be born and reborn sooner or later so long as they are subject to this delusion of regeneration and resuscitation. They will retain their similar births and modes of life, like all others to be reborn in this or in the future world.

23. The souls of men revolve repeatedly in the world, like waves rolling forever in the waters of the sea. Some souls retain their same forms, while others very nearly so in their reappearance.

24. Some are slightly altered in their figures, and others are entirely different in their forms, never regaining their original likeness. So does this prevailing error of regeneration delude even the wise to repeated births.

25. So what is the meaning of the mendicant’s long meditation of twenty days and nights when a moment’s thought and the results of bodily actions produce endless births and transformations?

26. And where is the reality of these forms that are mere conceptions of the mind? These ideas and reflections, growing ripe with repetition, appear as full blown flowers to sight. They resemble the water lily in the morning, beset by the busy murmur of humming bees.

27. Gross form is produced from pure thought, just as a large burning fire is lit by a minute spark or a sunbeam. Such is the formation of the whole fabric of the world.

28. All things are manifest as particles of divine reflection, and each particle exhibits a variety of parts. These neither exist nor are nothing at all, but they all exist in the universal, which is the cause of all causes and the source of all sources.

✅
Chapter 6a.67 — The Unity of God; Religious Differences Are Divisive

1. Dasharata said, “O great sage, let my attendants go immediately to the mendicant’s cell and, having roused him from his meditation, bring him here in my presence.”

2. Vasishta replied:— Great king, the body of that mendicant is now lying lifeless on the ground. It is pale, cold, covered with dirt, and has not even a bit of its vitality left in it.

3. His life has fled from his body, like odor from the lotus of the lake. He is now liberated from the bonds of this life and is no more subject to the cares of this world.

4. It has been a whole month that his servants have waited to open his door and they will see his emaciated frame.

5. Afterwards they will take out the body and bathe it in water, then having anointed it, they will place it for their adoration, as they do a defiled idol.

6. The mendicant being freed from his body cannot be brought back to his senses. They have entirely left their functions in his mortal frame.

7. As long as one labors under the darkness of his ignorance, it is hard to evade the enchanting delusion of the world, but it is easily avoided at all times by one’s knowledge of truth.

8. The fabrication of the world is untrue, just like making ornaments from gold. Creation is caused by the error of taking form as substance.

9. This delusion (maya) of the world is situated in the Supreme Soul like rows of waves upon the surface of the calm waters of the sea. So it is said in the Vedas that the moving worlds are like the fluctuations of the Divine Soul.

10. The intelligent soul, taking the form of the individual human soul, sees the phenomenal world just like he sees dreams one after another. All these vanish upon waking to sense and right reason.

11. As every man of understanding recognizes the original in its image, so the man of reason recognizes the original idea of the Soul in its forms of creation. An ignorant man who sees the world as a thorny bush or a confused jungle can have no idea of the all-designing Framer and his frame work of the universe.

12. The world is shown to every living being, as it was shown to the dreaming mendicant, in the form of the vibrations of the Supreme Spirit, like the fluctuation of waves on the surface of the sea.

13. The world first appears in the universal, collective mind of the creator Brahma, and in the same way those shadowy forms appear in the minds of all individuals who lack enlightenment.

14. To the clear mind this world appears like a fleeting dream, as it first appeared to Brahma. The multitudes of worlds that are discovered one after the other are no more than the successive scenes of passing dreams in the continuous sleep of ignorance.

15. All living beings in their various forms are subject to the error of believing the unreal world to be a reality, though they well know in their being that the world is no better than a continuous dream or delusion.

16. The animal soul, though possessed of intelligence, is yet liable to transgress from its original nature, thereby becoming subject to decay, disease, death and all kinds of woe.

17. The godlike intellect, at its pleasure, frames the celestial and infernal regions in our dreams by the slight vibrations of the mind, then takes delight in rambling over and dwelling in them.

18. Divine Consciousness by its own impulse takes the form of living souls upon itself. It wanders from itself to ransack over the false objects of the deceptive senses.

19. The mind is also the Supreme Soul. If it is not so then it is nothing. The living embodied is also the Supreme Soul, an expression of the Supreme Soul like a shadow of the substance.

20. So the Supreme Brahman is said to reside in the universal Brahman according to how men conceive of the one Brahman in whom all attributes unite, like water with water and sky with air.

21. Men live in this apparent physical form of Brahman, yet they think it is other than a reflection of God. It is like a child seeing his own reflection in a mirror and being startled thinking that another person is standing there.

22. Wavering understanding causes these differences which disappear of themselves after the mind resumes its steadiness in the unity of God. In that steadiness, differences are lost like offerings of butter are consumed in sacred fire.

23. After the true knowledge of God is gained, there is no more vacillation or dogmatism, no unity or duality. All distinctions dissolve in an indistinct Consciousness, which is as it is and is all in all.

24. When from the sum and substance of all reasoning it is understood that there is only the one Consciousness, which is the subject of all the many names that are applied to it, then there remains no more differences of the various religious faiths in the world.

25. Differences of faith create differences in men. Eliminating distinctions in creeds destroys all differences and unites all in one common faith in the Supreme Being.

26. Rama, you see differences because of your lack of understanding. You will get rid of them as you come to your right understanding. Ask anyone and you will find the truth of what I am saying and you will be fearless of any sectarian feeling or hatred.

27. In that state of fearlessness, the knower of Brahman finds no difference in the states of waking, dreaming, sound sleep or the fourth stage of meditation. He sees no difference in his earthly bondage or his liberation from it. All is equal to him.

28. Tranquility is another name of the universe. God has given his peace to everything in the world, therefore all religious divisions are the false creations of ignorance. No religious advocate has ever seen the invisible God.

29. The action of the heart and the motion of vital air cannot move the contented mind to action when the mind is devoid of desire, indifferent to the vibrations of breath and the heart.

30. The intellect freed from ideas of unity or duality, rid of its anxious cares and desires, has approached a state that is next to that of God.

31. The pure desire that exists in consciousness, like a stain on the moon, is no impurity but the solidification of condensed consciousness.

32. Rama, remain always in the state of your collected intellect because it concentrates everything in itself, and leaves nothing beyond it. This is the most faultless, perfect form of faith.

33. The moon-like consciousness, having the mark of no desire on it, is a vessel of ambrosia. A drink of that ambrosia drowns the thoughts of all that is and all that is not into oblivion.

34. Refer your thoughts of whatever you have or want to the region of your intellect. Taste your inner delight as much as you like.

35. Rama, know that the words vibration and inaction, desire and no desire, and such other spiritual or theological terms, only serve to burden and misled the mind to error. Keep yourself from thinking on these. Remain in your peace and quiet, whether you attain your perfection or otherwise.

✅
Chapter 6a.68 — Four Types of Silence (Mouna), the State of Sleep-Silence

1. Vasishta said:— Rama, remain as inwardly quiet as in your silent sleep. Keep the thinking of your mind at a distance. Get rid of the wanderings of your imagination and remain firm in the state of Brahman.

2. Rama said, “I know what is meant by restraint of speech, quietness of the sense organs, and the muteness of a block of wood. But tell me. What is sleep-like silence, which you know well by your practice?”

3. Vasishta replied:— The sages of old (munis) describe two kinds of practices of silence (mouna). The one silence is that of the rigid ascetic, like a wooden statue of a saint. The other is the silence observed by those who are liberated in their lifetime.

4. The wood-like devotee is the austere ascetic who does not meditate in his mind, but is firmly employed in the discharge of the rigorous rites of religion. He practices painful restraints of his bodily organs and remains speechless like a wooden statue.

5. The other kind is the living, liberated yogi who looks at the world with unconcern, who delights in his meditation of the soul, and who passes as any ordinary man without any distinctive mark of religious order or secular rank.

6. The difference between these two kinds of saintly and holy men is in the fixedness of their minds and the calmness of their souls, and is what passes under the title of silence and saintliness.

7. Thus silent sages describe four kinds of silence (mouna): silence in speech, silence of the sense organs, wood-like speechlessness (violent restraint), and the silence that is like one’s sleep.

8. Silence in speech consists of keeping one’s mouth and lips closed. Silence of the senses implies keeping the organs of sense under strict control. Rigorous muteness means the abandonment of all actions, and sleepy silence is as silent as the grave.

9. There is a fifth kind of dead-like silence which occurs in the austere ascetic in his state of unconsciousness, in the profound meditation of the tranquil yogi in samadhi, and in the mental abstraction of the living liberated.

10. All the first three states of silence occur in the devotee who practices austerities. The fourth, the sleep-like silence, is the only silence that is conducive to attaining living liberation.

11. Though speechlessness is called silence, yet it is not a complete restraint of speech. The mute tongue may brood evil thoughts in the mind which lead to the bondage of men.

12. An austere devotee practices restraint without being mindful of his own egoism, or seeing phenomena, or listening to others’ speech. Seeing nothing beside him, he sees all in himself, like living fire covered under ashes.

13. The mind being busy in these first three states of silence, but freely indulging in its fancies and reveries, makes silent sages (munis) in appearance only, but none like this understands the nature of God.

14. None of these has any of that blessed divine knowledge which is so very desirable to all mankind. I state freely that they do not know God, be they angry with me or not as they may.

15. The inactive, meditative silent sage who is liberated from all bonds and cares in his lifetime is never to be born in any shape in this world. It is interesting to know more about them, as I will tell you.

16. He does not need to restrain his breathing or vital airs, nor does he need the triple restraint of his speech. He does not rejoice at prosperity, nor is he depressed in adversity, but preserves his equanimity and the evenness of his senses at all times.

17. His mind is under the guidance of his reason, neither excited by nor restrained from its fancies. His mind is neither restless nor dormant. It exists as much as it does not exist.

18. His attention is neither divided nor dammed but fixed in the infinite and eternal one. His unconfined mind thinks and reasons about the nature of things. Such a one is said to be the sleeping silent sage.

19. The sleeping silent sage knows the world as it is. He is not led to error by its deluding varieties. He scans everything as it is without being led to skepticism.

20. The sleeping silent sage places his faith and trust on the one endless and ever blissful Shiva as the collection of all knowledge and the displayer of this universe.

21. The sleeping silent sage sees emptiness as fullness and views this all as nothing. His mind is even and tranquil.

22. The best state of silence is in he who views the universe as neither reality nor unreality, but as an empty vacuum without foundation, but full of peace and divine wisdom.

23. The mind that is unconscious of effects and is unconscious of the different states of prosperity and adversity is said to rest in its highest state of rest and quiet.

24. The source of unimpaired restraint is perfect equanimity of the mind and evenness of temper that is not liable to change or fluctuation, with a clear conscience and unflinching self-consciousness.

25. The real source of silence is the consciousness that “I am nothing, nor is there anything besides” and that the mind and its thoughts are not reality.

26. The state of sleepy silence means knowledge that the Ego pervades this universe and the Ego’s essence is displayed equally in all things, which is the meaning of the expression, “The one that is.”

27. Now, if Consciousness constitutes all and everything, how can you conceive your distinction from others who are moved by the same power that dwells alike in all? This knowledge is called everlasting sleep and forms the groundwork of every kind of silence.

28. This is the silence of profound sleep. Because it is an endless sleep in the ever wakeful God, this sleep is like being awake. Know this as the fourth stage of yoga, or rather, the stage that is above it.

29. This profound trance is called the fourth state of entranced meditation. The tranquility which is above this state may be had in one’s waking state.

30. He who is situated in his fourth stage of yoga has a clear conscience and quiet peace attending on him. The adept who is established in this state may or may not meditate, and may be embodied or without body.

31. Yes, O Rama, desire to be settled in this state! Know that neither I nor you nor any other person is any real being in this world. The world exists only as a reflection of our minds, and therefore the wise man should only rely upon the heart of empty consciousness which comprehends all things in it.

✅
Chapter 6a.69 — Samkhya & Jnana Yoga; Mind (Desires) and Vital Breath Linked

1. Rama said, “Tell me, O chief of sages, how was it that the Rudras came to be a hundred in number? Are the attendants of Rudra also Rudras?”

2. Vasishta replied:— The mendicant saw himself in a hundred forms in a hundred dreams which he dreamt one after another. This I told you before, although not in detail.

3. All the forms that he saw in the dream became so many Rudras, and all these hundred Rudras remained as so many attendants on the principal Rudra.

4. Rama asked, “But how could the one mind of the mendicant be divided into a hundred in so many bodies of the Rudras? Was it undivided like a lamp that lights a hundred lamps without any diminution of its own light?”

5. Vasishta answered:— Know Rama, that disembodied or spiritual beings of pure natures, because of the liquid-like nature of their souls, are capable of assuming any form they fancy.

6. The soul, being omnipresent and all pervading, takes any form whatever upon itself, whenever and wherever it likes, by virtue of its consciousness.

7. Rama replied, “But tell me sage, why does Lord Shiva wear a string of human skulls about his neck and smear his body with ashes, stark naked? Why does he dwell in funeral grounds, lustful in the greatest degree?”

8. Vasishta replied:— Gods and perfect beings such as the spiritual masters are not tied down by laws which weak and ignorant men have devised for their own convenience.

9. The ignorant, on account of their uncontrollable minds, cannot go on without the guidance of law. Otherwise they are subject to every danger and fear, like poor fishes.

10. Intelligent people are not exposed to the evils in life that ignorant people of ungoverned minds and passions experience with their restless and vagrant habits.

11. Wise men discharge their business as it occurs to them at times. They never undertake to do anything of their own desire. Therefore they are exposed to no danger.

12. The god Vishnu engaged himself in action and incarnated because of an impulse of the occasion. So did the god Shiva with the three eyes, as well as the lotus-born god Brahma.

13. The acts of wise men are neither to be praised nor blamed because they are never done from private or public motives.

14. As light and heat are the natural properties of fire and sunshine, so the actions of Shiva and other gods are ordained from the beginning, like the caste customs of the twice born, three higher dvija castes.

15. Though the nature of all mankind is the same, as ordained in the beginning, yet the ignorant have created differences among themselves by instituting distinctions among castes and customs. Their institutions are of their own making, so they are subjected by them to the evils of future retribution and reincarnation.

16. Rama, so far I have told you about the four types of silence of embodied beings, but I have not spoken about the nature of the silence of disembodied souls.

17. Now hear how men obtain this chief good by knowledge of the intellectual souls in the clear sphere of their own consciousness, which is far clearer than the ethereal sphere of the sky.

18. Men became renowned as Samkhya yogis or categorical philosophers through their knowledge of all kinds of knowledge and by constant devotion to meditation, and by the study of the numerical philosophy of particulars in the Samkhya system.

19. Yogis pursuing the path of knowledge are those who meditate on the form of the eternal one without decay by suppressing their breath and union with that state which presents itself to their mind.

20. Some obtain the unpretentious and undisguised state of joy and tranquility, desired as the most desirable thing by all, through Samkhya yoga, others through jnana yoga.

21. The result of both forms of yoga is the same. This is known to anybody who has experienced it because the state arrived at by the one is the same as that of the other.

22. In this supreme state, the actions of the mental faculties and vital breath are altogether imperceptible, and the network of desires is entirely dispersed.

23. Desire constitutes the mind, which again is the cause of creation. Therefore by destroying desires and mind, one becomes motionless and inactive.

24. The mind forgets its inner soul, never bothering to look at it even for a moment. It is solely occupied with its body and looks at the phantom of the body like a child sees at a ghost.

25. The mind itself is a false apparition and an unsubstantial appearance of our mistake. The mind can show itself in dream as dying, which is found to be false upon waking.

26. The world is the production of the mind. What am I and who is mine or my children? Custom and education have caused the imaginary demons of our bondage and liberation, which in reality are nothing.

27. There is one thing, however, on which both systems are based. That is the suppression of breath and the restriction of mind, which form the sum and substance of what they call their liberation.

28. Rama replied, “Now sage, if suppression constitutes the liberation of these men, then I may as well say that all dead men are liberated, and all dead animals also.”

29. Vasishta replied:— Of the three practices of the restriction of the breath, body and mind, I believe the repression of the mind and its thoughts to be the best because it is easily practiced. I will tell you how it is to be done for our good.

30. When the vital breath of a soul quits its mortal frame, it perceives the same in itself and flies in the shape of a particle into the open sky, mixing at last with ethereal air.

31. The parting soul is accompanied by its elementary principles, which are the desires of its mind and which are closely united with breath, and nothing besides.

32. As the vital breath quits one body to enter into another, so it carries with it the desires of the heart, just as the winds of the air bear the fragrance of flowers. These reproduce in the future body to cause it only misery.

33. As a water pot thrown into the sea does not lose its water, so the vital breath mixing with the ethereal air does not lose the desires of the mind which it bears with it. They are as closely united as sunbeams with the sun.

34. The mind cannot be separated from the vital breath without the aid of the knowledge, just as a titteri bird cannot be removed from one nest without its mate.

35. Knowledge removes desires. Disappearance of desires destroys the mind. This produces the suppression of breath, and from that proceeds the tranquility of the soul.

36. Knowledge shows us the unreality of things and the vanity of human desires. O Rama, hence know that the extinction of desires brings on the destruction of both the mind and vital breath.

37. The mind without its desires, which form its soul and life, can no longer see the body in which it took so much delight. Then the tranquil soul attains its holiest state.

38. Mind is another name for desire. When desire is eradicated, the soul discriminates the truth which leads to knowledge of the supreme.

39. In this manner, O Rama, we came to the end of our false knowledge of the world, just like we use reason to detect the error of seeing a snake instead of a rope.

40. Learn this one lesson: that restraining the mind and suppression of breath mean the one and same thing. If you succeed in restraining one, you succeed in restraining the other.

41. When the waving of the palm-leaf fan is stopped, the movement of air in the room is stopped. In the same way, when breathing vital breath is stopped, thoughts are stopped.

42. When the body is destroyed, the vital breath passes into empty air where it sees everything according to the desires that have blown along with it from the cells of the heart and mind.

43. As living souls find the bodies in which they are embodied and act according to their different natures, so the departed and disembodied spirits see many forms presented before them according to their desires. They enter into those forms and act agreeably to the nature of that being.

44. As the fragrance of flowers ceases to be diffused in the air when the breezes have ceased to blow, so the vital breath ceases to breathe when the action of the mind is at a stop.

45. Hence the course of the thoughts and the respiration of all animals are known to be closely united with one another, just as fragrance is inseparable from the flower, and oil inseparable from oily seeds.

46. Breath is the vacillation of the mind, just as the mind is the fluctuation of the breath. These two go together forever, like the chariot and its driver.

47. Without any one, the two perish together, just as the container and the contained are both lost at the loss of either. Therefore it is better to lose them for the liberation of the soul than to lose the soul for the sake of the body.

48. Keeping only one object or unity in view will stop the course of the mind. The mind being stopped, then as a matter of course, an utter suppression of the breath follows.

49. Investigate well into the truth of the immortality of your soul. Try to assimilate yourself into the eternal spirit of God. Having absorbed your mind in the Divine Mind, be one with it.

50. Distinguish between your knowledge and ignorance. Lay hold of what is more suitable for you. Settle yourself on what remains after both mind and vital breath disappear. Live while you live relying on Consciousness alone.

51. Continue to meditate on the existence of all things in one firm and ever existent entity alone, until by your constant habit of thinking so, you find all outward existence disappear into nonexistence.

52. The minds of the abstinent, their bodies and their vitality, for lack of food and enjoyments, are unconscious to worldly pleasures. There remains only the consciousness of the transcendent One.

53. When the mind is of one even course and habituated to it by constant practice, then there is an end to the thoughts of endless varieties and particulars. They naturally disappear of themselves.

54. There is an end of our ignorance and delusion as we gain wisdom and reason. We gain our best knowledge by learning, but only by practice can we have the object of our knowledge.

55. The mirage of the world will cease to exist after the mind has become calm and quiet in itself, just as the darkness of the sky is dispersed when rain clouds disappear.

56. Know that only your mind causes your delusion. Therefore strive to weaken its force and action. But Rama, you must not weaken it so much as to lose the sight of the Supreme Spirit which shines as the soul of the mind.

57. Know that the mature state of your mind is when the mind is settled with the Supreme Soul, even for a moment. It will soon yield the sweets of its ripeness.

58. Whether you attain tranquility through Samkhya or Vedanta yoga, it is the same if you can reduce yourself to the Supreme Soul. By doing so even for a moment, you are to be reborn in this lower world no more.

59. The term “divine essence” means the mind devoid of its ignorance which, like a fried seed, is unable to reproduce the tree of the world and has no interruption in its meditation on God.

60. The mind without ignorance, freed from its desires and settled in its pure essence, in an instant comes to see a full blaze of light filling the sphere of the firmament in which it rests and which absorbs it completely.

61. Then the mind is in its pure essence, unconscious of itself, and settled in the Supreme Soul. It never relapses into the foulness of its nature, just as copper mixed with gold never becomes tarnished again.

✅
Chapter 6a.70 — A Vetala Ghost Questions a Prince

1. Vasishta resumed:— As soon as the cloud of ignorance is dispersed by the bright sunbeams of right reason, then life becomes no life and the mind turns to no mind immersed in the soul. This state is called liberation by the wise.

2. The mind and its sense of personal “I” and “you” appear as water in a mirage, but all these unrealities vanish when we come to our right reason.

3. Let me tell you about the questions of a vetala ghost which I happen to remember now. They concern our false and dreaming conceptions of the phenomenal world, and they will serve as examples for the subject of our previous lecture.

4. In the vast wilderness of the Vindhya Hills lived a gigantic vetala who happened to come out on an excursion to the adjoining districts in search of his prey of human beings.

5. Previously he used to live in the neighborhood of a populous city where he lived quite happily and well satisfied with the victims that were offered to him daily by the good citizens.

6. Although he wandered through the city afflicted by hunger and thirst, he never killed a human being without some cause or harm. He walked in that place in the ways of honest and fair men.

7. It came to pass that he went out of the city to reside in his woody retreat where he never killed any man unless pressed by excessive hunger, and when he thought it was equitable for him to do so.

8. There he happened to meet a ruler of the land, strolling about in his nightly rounds. The vetala cried out him in a loud and appalling voice.

9. The vetala exclaimed, “Where are you going, O prince? Now you are caught in the clutches of a hideous monster. Now you are a dead man, my ration for this day.”

10. The prince replied, “Beware, O night demon! If you attempt to unjustly kill me for your food, I will break your skull into a thousand pieces.”

11. The vetala replied, “I will not kill you unless you deserve it. You are a ruler. It is your duty to attend to everyone’s petitions.

12. I ask you, O prince, to answer the questions that I propose to you. I believe you are best able to give a full and satisfactory answer to each one of them.”

13. “Who is that glorious sun, the particles of whose rays are seen to glitter in the surrounding worlds? What is that wind which blows these dusts of stars in the infinite space of emptiness?

14. What is that identical thing which passes from one dream to another and assumes different forms by hundreds and thousands, yet does not forsake its original form?

15. Tell me what is that core particle in bodies that is covered under a hundred sheaths, laid over and under one another like the layers of a plantain tree?”

16. “What is that minute atom which is imperceptible to the eye, yet produces this immeasurable universe, with its stupendous worlds and skies, and prodigious planets on high and mountains below, and which are the minutest parts of that minute particle?

17. What is that shapeless and formless atom which remains as the core and foundation under the rocks of huge mountains, and which underlies the triple worlds of heaven, earth and infernal regions?”

18. If you, O sinful soul, fail to answer to these questions, then you will be the killer of yourself, becoming my food this moment. And at the end, I will devour all your people, just as the lord of death destroys everybody in the world.

✅
Chapter 6a.71 — Prince’s Answers to the Vetala’s First Question

1. Vasishta related:— The prince smiled at hearing these questions from the vetala. As he opened his mouth to reply, the luster of his pearly teeth shed a brightness on the white dome of the sky. The prince speaking:—

2. This world was at first an undeveloped grain. Afterwards it was covered by a dozen elemental sheaths, like thin skin or bark.

3. The tree that bears thousands of such fruit is very tall with equally long, out stretched branches and similarly very long and broad leaves.

4. This great tree is of a huge size and very astounding to see. It has thousands of huge branches spreading wide on every side.

5. There are thousands of such trees, and a dense forest of many other large trees and plants in that person.

6. Thousands of such forests stretch over it, abounding in thousands of mountains with their high peaks.

7. The wide extended lands that contain these mountains also have very large valleys.

8. These widespread lands also contain many countries with their adjacent islands, lakes and rivers.

9. These thousands of islands also contain many cities with varieties of buildings and works of art.

10. These thousands of tracts of land, which are sketched out like so many continents, are like so many earths and worlds in their extent.

11. That which contains thousands of such worlds as the cosmic egg is as unlimited as the spacious womb of the sky.

12. That which contains thousands of such eggs in its chest also bears many thousands of seas and oceans resting calmly in its large heart.

13. That which displays the loud noisy waves of seas is the lively and playful soul, heaving as the clear waters of the ocean.

14. That which contains thousands of such oceans, with all their waters in his unconscious womb, is the god Vishnu who filled the universal ocean with his all pervasive spirit.

15. That which bears thousands of such gods, like a string of pearls about the neck, is the great god Rudra.

16. That which bears thousands of such great gods like hairs on his body is the supreme Lord God of all.

17. He is that great sun that shines in a hundred of such gods, all of whom are only frictions of the rays of that great source of light and life.

18. All things in the universe are only particles of that uncreated Sun. I have explained to you that it is the Intellectual Sun who fills the world with his rays and shows them light.

19. The all knowing soul is the supreme sun that enlightens the world and fills all things in it with particles of its rays.

20. The omniscient soul, that surpassing sun, produces the rays that show everything to light. Without that soul, like without sunlight, nothing would grow or be visible in the outer world.

21. All living beings who have their souls enlightened by the light of philosophy see the sphere of the universe is a blaze of the shining sun of Consciousness. In that Consciousness, there is not the slightest stain of the false conceptions of the material world in it. Know this and hold your peace.

✅
Chapter 6a.72 — The Prince’s Answers to the Vetala’s Remaining Questions

1. The prince replied:— The essences of time, space and force are all of intellectual origin. Pure Consciousness is the source of all, just as air is the receptacle of odors and dust.

2. The Supreme Soul is like the universal air that breathes out particles contained in consciousness, just as the ethereal air bears fragrance from flowers.

3. The great Brahman of the conscious soul passes through the dreaming world.

4. The trunk of a plantain tree is made up of thin layers of skin folded and intertwined over one another. Its central core is hidden inside. In the same way, everything in the world presents its exterior appearances to the view, while its substance of Brahman is hidden deep inside.

5. The words “entity,” “soul” and “Brahman” used to describe God do not signify his nature. God, like the empty void, is devoid of all designations and qualities, indescribable by any words.

6. Whatever essence one perceives is the product of another, like the outer layers of the trunk of a plantain tree produced by the inner ones. All such coatings are only developments of Divine Consciousness lying at the bottom.

7. The Supreme Soul is said to be a minute atom because of its subtlety and the imperceptibly of its nature. It is also said to be the base of mountains and all other bodies owing to its unlimited extent.

8. The endless being, though similar to a minute atom, is also large, containing all these worlds as its minutest particles. These worlds are as evident to us as the many aerial scenes appearing in our minds in dreams.

9. This being is similar to an atom owing to its imperceptibleness. But it is also described as being like a mountain because it fills all space. Though it is the foundation of all formal existence, yet it has no form or figure of its own.

10. The three worlds are like the fatty bulb of that concentrated consciousness. Know, you righteous soul, that it is that Consciousness which dwells in and acts in all the worlds.

11. All these worlds are filled with the design of Intelligence which is quiet in its nature and exhibits endless kinds of beautiful forms of its own. Know, O young vetala, that irresistible power. Reflect on this and keep quiet.

✅
Chapter 6a.73 — Conclusion to the Story of the Vetala

1. Vasishta resumed:— After hearing these words from the prince, the vetala remained quiet, reflecting on what the prince had said, his mind capable of reasoning.

2. Being quite calm in his mind, he reflected on the pure doctrines of the prince. Being quite absorbed in his fixed meditation, he immediately forgot his hunger and thirst.

3. I have told you, Rama, about the vetala’s questions and the manner in which these worlds are situated in the atom of consciousness, and nowhere else.

4. The world resides in the cell of atomic Consciousness. It ceases to exist by itself upon right reasoning, just like the body of a ghost exists only in the imagination of children. In the end, nothing remains except the everlasting one.

5. Curb and contract your thoughts and heart from everything. Enclose your inner soul within itself. Do what you have to do at anytime without desiring or attempting anything of your own will. Thus you will have peace of mind.

6. Employ your mind, O silent sage, to keep itself as clean as the clear sky. Remain in one even and peaceful even course of your soul. View all things in one and the same light.

7. A steady and brave mind, with its promptness in action, is successful in the most difficult undertakings, as was King Bhagiratha with his steady perseverance.

8. It was by his perfectly peaceful and contented mind, and by the lasting joy of the equanimity of his soul, that this king succeeded to bring down the heavenly Ganges on earth, and the kings of Sagar’s line were enabled to perform the difficult task of digging the Bay of Bengal.

✅
Chapter 6a.74 — King Bhagiratha Tires of the World, Seeks the Counsel of Sage Tritala

1. Rama said, “Please sage, tell me the wonderful story of King Bhagiratha and how he succeeded bringing down the heavenly Ganges River on the earth below.”

2. Vasishta replied:— King Bhagiratha was a person of outstanding virtues. He was distinguished as a crowning mark over all countries of this earth and its seas.

3. All his suitors received their desired boons, even without asking. Their hearts were as happy at the sight of his moon-bright face as if they were gazing upon a precious and brilliant gem.

4. His charities were always profusely lavished upon all good people for their maintenance and support. He carefully collected even things of small worth, prizing them as if they were gems.

5. He was bright in his person, like blazing fire without smoke, and never weak, even when he was tired from attending to his duties. He drove away poverty from the homes of men, just as the rising sun dispels the darkness of night from within their houses.

6. All around him he spread the brightness of his courage like burning fire scattering its sparks. He burned like the blazing midday sun to those who were hostile towards him.

7. Yet he was gentle and soft in the society of wise men, cooling their hearts with his cooling speech. He shone amidst the learned like the moonstone glistens under moonlight.

8. He decorated the world with the triple strands of the sacred thread by stretching out the three streams of the Ganges along the three regions of heaven, earth and hell.

9. He filled the ocean, dried up by sage Agastya, with the waters of Ganges, just as a generous man satisfies a greedy beggar with unbounded generosity.

10. This benefactor of mankind took up his ancestors from the infernal region and led them to the heaven of Brahma by way of the sacred Ganges.

11. By his unfailing perseverance, he overcame numerous obstacles and troubles, alternating in his propitiations of the gods Brahma and Shiva and the sage Jahnu, in order to change the course of the heavenly river.

12. Even though he was still in the vigor of his youth, he seemed to feel the decay of age coming quickly upon him. He was constantly thinking about the miseries of human life.

13. His mental reflections on the vanities of the world produced a philosophical apathy in him. This cold heartedness in the prime of his youth was like a tender sprout suddenly shooting forth in a barren desert.

14. In his private moments, the king thought about the impropriety of his worldly conduct. He reflected on the daily duties of life in the following silent monologue.

15. “I see days and nights returning in endless succession, one after the other. Repeating the same acts of giving and taking, and tasting the same enjoyments, have all grown tiresome and tasteless to me.

16. I think that the only thing worth seeking and doing is that which, being obtained and done, leaves nothing else to desire or do in this passing life of troubles and cares.

17. It is shameful for a conscious person to be employed in the same round of business every day. Is it not laughable to be doing and undoing the same thing day after day like silly children?”

18. Being troubled with the world and afraid of the consequences of his worldly course, Bhagiratha silently went to the solitary cell of his teacher Tritala. Bhagiratha spoke to him in the following manner.

19. “My Lord, I am completely tired and disgusted with the long course of my worldly career. I find it all to be hollow and empty within and a vast wilderness without.

20. Tell me, lord. How can I get over the miseries of this world? How can I free myself from my fear of death and disease and from the chains of errors and passions to which I am so tightly bound?”

21. Tritala replied, “It is through the continued evenness of one’s disposition, the uninterrupted joyfulness of his soul, knowledge of the knowable true one, and by self sufficiency in everything.

22. By these means a man is released from misery, his worldly bonds are relaxed, his doubts are dispelled, and all his actions tend to his wellbeing in both worlds.”

23. “That which is called the knowable is the pure soul of the nature of consciousness. It is always present in everything in all places and is eternal.”

24. Bhagiratha replied, “O great sage, I know that the pure conscious soul is perfectly calm and tranquil, incapable of decay and devoid of all attributes and qualities. The pure soul is not the embodied spirit, nor the animal soul, nor the indwelling principle that is the material body.

25. Sage, I cannot understand how I can be that consciousness when I am so full of errors. If I am the identical soul, why does it not manifest in me as the pure Divine Soul itself?”

26. Tritala replied, “Only through knowledge can the mind know the truly knowable one in the sphere of one’s own consciousness. Then the animal soul finds itself to be the all-pervading spirit and is released from future birth and reincarnation.

27. Our lack of attachment to earthly relations, whether our wives, children or other domestic concerns, together with the self-control of our minds, regardless whether confronted with what is advantageous or disadvantageous to us, serve to widen the sphere of our souls and realize their universality.”

28. “What also widens the scope of the soul is the union of our souls with the Supreme Spirit and our continual communion with God, as well as our seclusion from society and remaining in retirement.

29. Our true knowledge is said to be the continued knowledge of spirituality and insight into the sense of the unity and identity of God. Everything else is mere ignorance and false knowledge.

30. The only remedy for our sickness of worldliness is the abatement of our love and hatred. The extinction of our egoistic feelings leads to the knowledge of truth.”

31. Bhagiratha responded, “Tell me, O reverend sage, how is it possible for anybody to get rid of his egoism? It is deeply rooted in our nature and has grown as big with our bodies as the lofty trees on mountain tops.”

32. Tritala replied, “All egoistic feelings subside of themselves with the abandonment of worldly desires. This is accomplished with very great effort by exercising the virtues of self-denial and selfcontrol, and by the expansion of our souls to universal benevolence.

33. We have been subject to the rule of our small egos for so long that we lack the courage to break down the painful prison house of shame at our poverty, and we fear being exposed to other’s ridicule.

34. Therefore, if you can renounce all your worldly possessions and remain unmoved in your mind, then you may get rid of your ego and attain the state of supreme bliss.”

35. “If you can remain deprived of all honors and titles, freed from the fear of falling into poverty, devoid of every effort to attain, poor and powerless among horrible enemies, living in contemptible beggary among them, without egoistic pride of mind or vanity of the body, in utter destitution of all, then you are greater than the greatest.”

✅
Chapter 6a.75 — Bhagiratha Renounces All and Lives as a Wandering Beggar

1. Vasishta related:— Having heard these admonitions from his religious teacher, Bhagiratha decided upon what he was about to do and set about the execution of his determination.

2. He passed a few days devising his plan, then commenced his sacred fire sacrifice (agnishtoma) to consecrate his all for the sake of obtaining his sole spiritual object.

3. He gave away his cattle and lands, his horses and jewels, and his money without number to the twice born classes of men and his relatives, without regard to their merit or demerit.

4. Over three days he gave away all what he had until at last he had nothing for himself, except his life and flesh and bones.

5. When his inexhaustible treasures were all exhausted, he gave up his great kingdom to his neighboring enemies as if it were a piece of straw, to the great mortification of his subjects.

6. As enemies overran his kingdom and seized his royal palace and properties, he clothed himself in a loincloth and went away beyond the limits of his kingdom.

7. He wandered far through distant villages and desert lands until at last he settled where he was quite unknown. Nobody knew his person or face or his name and title.

8. He remained there in seclusion for some time, becoming quite composed and blunt to all feelings within and outside himself. He obtained his rest in the serene tranquility of his soul.

9. Then he wandered about different countries and went to distant islands until at last he unknowingly returned to his native land and city, which was in the grasp of his enemies.

10. There, while he was wandering door to door begging for alms led about by the currents of time, he was seen by the citizens and his former ministers.

11. They all recognized their former king Bhagiratha, whom they honored with due homage. They were very sorry to see him in that miserable state.

12. His enemy came out to meet him and implored him to take back the kingdom and property he had abandoned, but he slighted all their offers as worthless straws, except taking a meager meal from their hands.

13. He passed a few days there, then bent his course another way. The people loudly lamented at his sad condition crying, “Ah, what has become of the unfortunate Bhagiratha!”

14. Then the king walked away with the calmness of his soul, his mind content and his face placid. He amused himself wandering and thinking until he chanced to encounter his teacher Tritala.

15. They welcomed one another, then joining together, they both began to wander about the lands of men, passing over hills and deserts in their holy wanderings.

16. Once when the dispassionate pupil and his teacher were sitting together in the cool calmness of their dispositions, their conversations turned on the interesting subject of human life.

17. “What good is there in bearing our frail bodies? What do we lose by our loss of the body? We neither gain or lose any real advantage, whether having or losing the body, yet we should bear with it as it is and discharge the duties that have come down unto us by custom of the country.”

18. They remained quiet with this conclusion and passed their time traveling from one forest to another without feeling any joy other than their inner bliss, and without knowing any sorrow or the intermediate states of joy and grief.

19. They spurned all riches and properties, the possession of horses and cattle, and even the eight kinds of supernatural powers as worthless straws before the contentedness of their minds.

20. This body, which is the result of our past acts, must be borne with fortitude as long as it lasts, whether we wish it or not, with continued conviction while discharging their ascetic duties.

21. Like silent sages, they welcomed with detachment whatever good or evil, or desirable or undesirable happened as their lot as the unavoidable results of their prior deeds. They had their repose in the heavenly joy to which they had assimilated themselves.

✅
Chapter 6a.76 — Bhagiratha’s Tapas Brings the Ganges River down to the Earth

1. Vasishta continued:— One time as Bhagiratha was passing through a large city, he saw the ruler of that land, who was childless, snatched away by the hand of death, like a fish seized by a shark for its prey.

2. The people were afraid of anarchy and lawlessness without a ruler, so they searched for a proper person with noble qualities and auspicious signs to be made their future king.

3. They encountered the silent and patient king in the act of begging alms, and knowing him to be the former King Bhagiratha himself, they took him escorted by regiments of soldiers and installed him on the throne as their king.

4. Bhagiratha instantly mounted an elephant and was led by a large body of soldiers who assembled about him as thick as drops of rainwater falling and filling a lake.

5. The people shouted “Here is Bhagiratha our lord! May he be victorious forever!” The noise of their shouts reached the farthest mountains and filled their hollow caves.

6. Bhagiratha remained to rule over that kingdom. Then the subjects of his own former kingdom reverently came to him and thus prayed to their king saying,

7. “Great king, the person you appointed to rule over us has recently died, eaten by death like a little fish by a large one.

8. Therefore consent to rule over your kingdom. Please do not refuse to accept an offer which comes to you unasked.”

9. Vasishta said:— The king being asked in this way accepted their prayer, and thus became the sole ruler of the earth, bounded by the seven seas on all sides.

10. He continued to discharge his royal duties without the least dismay or disquietude. He was quite calm and serene in his mind, quiet in his speech, and devoid of passions and envy or selfishness.

11. Then he thought of the redemption of his ancestors who had excavated the coast of the sea and had been burned alive underground. He thought of redeeming them by washing their bones and dead bodies with the waters of the Ganges River, which he heard had the merit of purity and saving all souls and bodies.

12. Until that time, the heavenly stream of the Ganges did not run over the land. It was Bhagiratha who brought it down in order to wash the remains of his ancestors with its holy waters. It was after that that the stream was known by his name as Bhagiratha.

13. King Bhagiratha resolved to bring down the holy Ganges of heaven to the earth below.

14. The pious king resigned his kingdom to the charge of his ministers and went to a remote forest with the resolve of making his austere tapas for the success of his undertaking.

15. He remained there for many years and under many rains, worshipping the gods Brahma and Shiva and sage Jahnu in turns, until he succeeded in bringing the holy stream onto the earth below.

16. It was then that the crystal waves of the Ganges flowed out of the basin of Brahma, the lord of the world, and rushed onto the moon crest of Hara (Shiva). Falling on earth below, it took a triple course, like the meritorious acts of great men.

17. In this way, the three-pronged Ganges River came to flow over this earth, a channel to bear the glory of Bhagiratha to distant lands. Behold her running fast with her heaving waves, smiling all along with her foaming froths. She sprinkles purity all along with the drizzling drops of her breakers and scatters plenty over the land as the reward of the best deserts of men.

✅
Chapter 6a.77 — The Story of Chudala and Sikhidhwaja

1. Vasishta related:— Rama, keep your view fixed to one object, like Bhagiratha. Pursue your calling with a calm and quiet understanding, as was done by that steady minded king in the accomplishment of his purpose!

2. Give up your thoughts of this and that and confine the flying bird of your mind within your bosom. Remain in full possession of yourself following the example of the resolute King Sikhidhwaja of old.

3. Rama asked, “Who was this Sikhidhwaja, sage? How did he maintain the firmness of his purpose? Please explain this to me fully in order to enlighten my understanding.”

4. Vasishta replied:— In a former Age of Bronze (dwapara yuga) there lived a loving pair of consorts who are again to be born in a future period, in the same manner and at the same place.

5. Rama replied, “Tell me, O great preacher! How can the past be the same as now? How can these again be the same in the future?”

6. Vasishta replied:— Such is the irreversible law of destiny and course of nature that the creation of the world must continue in the same manner by the unchanging will of the creator Brahma and others.

7. As those which had been plentiful before come to be at plentiful again, so the past appears at present and also in future. Many other things come to being that had not been before, and many others become extinct in course of time.

8. Some reappear in their former forms and some only resemble them. Others change their forms, and many more disappear altogether.

9. These and many other things are seen in the course of the world. The character who is the subject of this story bears an exact resemblance to the past king of the same name.

10. But let me also tell you that there is yet to be born another king as valiant as the one that had been in the former Dwapara Yuga of the past seventh Manvantara period.

11. It will be after the four yugas of the fourth creation, past and gone, that he will be born again of the Kuru family in the vicinity of the Vindhyan Hills in the continent of Asia.

12. There lived a king named Sikhidhwaja in the country of Malava who was handsome and endowed with firmness and magnanimity in his nature and had the virtues of patience and self control in his character.

13. He was brave but silent and ever inclined to good acts with all his great virtues. He was engaged in the performance of the religious sacrifices and also defeating competitors on the field of archery.

14. He did many public acts and supported the poor people of the land. He was of a graceful appearance and self-satisfied in his countenance. He loved all men with his great learning in the scriptures.

15. He was handsome, quiet and fortunate, equally brave and virtuous. He was a preacher of morality and bestowed all benefits to his suitors.

16. He enjoyed all luxuries in the company of good people and listened to the lessons of the Sruti scriptures. He knew all knowledge without any boasting on his part, and he hated to touch women.

17. His father departed for the next world, leaving him a lad of sixteen years, yet at that tender age he was able to govern his kingdom and defeated his adversaries on all sides.

18. He conquered all other regions of the country using the resources of his empire. He remained free from all fear by ruling his subjects with justice and keeping them in peace.

19. He brightened all by his intelligence and the wisdom of his ministers, until with the course of years he came to his youth in the colorful spring of the year.

20. It was spring and he saw blooming flowers glistening brightly under bright moonbeams. He saw budding blossoms hanging down the trees in the inner apartments.

21. The doorways of the covered shelters were overhung with intertwined branches decorated with small flowers scattering their fragrant pollen like white camphor powder. Rows of guluncha flowers blew their scents all around.

22. There was the loud hum of bees buzzing with their mates upon flowery bushes. Gentle warm breezes blew the sweet scent upward amidst the cooling showers of moonbeams.

23. He saw banks decorated with kadali shrubs glistening with their shining blossoms under the dark shade of plantain leaves. All this excited his yearning after a dear one who was seated in his heart.

24. Giddy with the intoxication of the honey draughts of fragrant flowers, his mind was fixed on a beloved. He did not depart from his thoughts, just as spring is unwilling to quit the flowery garden.

25. “When shall I swing in the cradles of my pleasure garden, sport in this lake of lotuses, and play with my love-smitten maid with her budding breasts resembling two buds of golden lotuses?

26. When shall I embrace my beloved to my bosom on my bed daubed with the dust of powdered frankincense? When shall we on cradle among lotus stalks, like a pair of bees sucking honey from flowers?

27. When shall I see that maiden lying relaxed in my arms, her slender body like a tender stalk, fair as a string of milk-white kunda flowers, or a plant formed of moonbeams?

28. When will that moonlike beauty be inflamed with her love for me?” With these and similar thoughts and ravings, King Sikhidhwaja wandered about the garden looking at the variety of flowers.

29. Then he rambled among flower gardens and outskirts of forests, straying from one forest to another by the sides of swirling lakes blooming with full blown lotuses.

30. He entered gardens formed by twining vines and walked over avenues of many garden grounds and forest lands, seeing and hearing the descriptions of woodland sceneries from his friends.

31. His mind was distracted and he took much delight in hearing discourses on erotic subjects. The only idol in his heart was the bright form of his garlanded and painted beloved.

32. He adored the maiden in his heart, her breasts resembling two golden pots on her bosom, and this purpose was soon discovered by the wise ministers of that state.

33. The business of ministers is to dive into matters by their signs and prognosis, so these officers met together to deliberate on his marriage.

34. They proposed the young daughter of the King of Saurastra for his marriage. She was coming to the full age of puberty, so they regarded her as a proper match for him.

35. The young king was married to a worthy image of himself, the fair Princess Chudala, known all over the land.

36. She was joyful in having him like a lotus bud opening with the rising sun. He made the black-eyed maid bloom like the moon opens the bud of the blue lotus.

37. He delighted her with his love as if making the white lotus bloom. Each inflamed the other’s passions by abiding in the other’s heart.

38. She flourished with her youthful enticements and dalliance, like a new grown vine blooming with flowers, and he was happy and careless in her company, leaving the affairs of state to the management of his ministers.

39. He played in the company of his lady love like a swan paling in a bed of lotuses in a large lake. He indulged his frolics in his swinging cradles and pleasure ponds in the inner apartments.

40. They delighted in the gardens and covered arbors of vines and flowering plants. They amused themselves in the woods walking under sandalwood and gulancha vine shades.

41. They played by rows of mandara trees and beside the lines of plantain and kadali plants. They regaled themselves wandering in the harem and by the sides of the woods and lakes on the outskirts of the town.

42. They wandered far in distant forests and deserts, and in jungles of jam and jambira trees, passing by paths bordered by jasmine plants. In short, they took delight in everything in each other’s company.

43. Their attachment to each another was as delightful to the people as the union of the raining sky with the cultivated ground. Both are productive for the general welfare of mankind.

44. Both were skilled in the arts of love and music. They were so united by their love for each other that one was the counterpart of the other.

45. Being seated in each other’s heart, they were like two bodies with one soul. They shared and taught each other his learning of the scriptures and her skill in painting and fine arts.

46. Since childhood, Chudala had been instructed in every branch of learning, and she taught Sikhidhwaja the arts of dancing and playing musical instruments.

47. They learned and became learned in the respective arts and parts of one another, just as when the sun and moon are in conjunction, they partake of each other’s qualities.

48. Each dwelling in the other’s heart, they became one and the same person sharing the same inclinations and pursuits and becoming more and more endeared to one another.

49. They were joined in one person, like the earthly equivalent of the androgynous body of Uma and Shiva. They were united in one soul, just like the different fragrances of flowers are mixed up in the same air. Their clarity of understanding and their knowledge of the scriptures led them both in the one and same way.

50. They were born on earth to perform their roles as if they were the god Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi. They were equally frank and sweet in their affections for each other, and as eager to share their learning with others.

51. They followed the course of laws and customs and attended to the people’s affairs. They delighted in the arts and science, and also enjoyed their sweet pleasures. They were like two moons shining brightly.

52. They tasted all the sweet enjoyments of life in the quiet and solitary recesses of their private apartments like a couple of giddy swans playing merrily in the lake of the blue sky.

✅
Chapter 6a.78 — The Self Realization of Chudala

1. Vasishta continued:— For many years the happy pair enjoyed the pleasures of their youth, tasting with greater zest every new delight that day by day came their way.

2. Years repeated their revolutions over their protracted revelries until by and by their youth began to give way to the decay of age, just as a broken pitcher lets its waters leak out.

3. Then they began to think that their bodies were as frail as the waves on the sea, liable to fall like ripe fruit from trees, and that no one is able to avert death.

4. As arrow-sharp snow tears at lotus leaves, so old age is ready to batter and shatter our frames. The cup of our life is drizzling away day by day, like water held in the palm falls away drop by drop.

5. While our greed is increasing on one hand, like a gourd plant in rainy weather, on the other hand our youth glides away quickly like torrents of waters falling from mountain cliffs.

6. Our life is as false as a magic play. The body is like a heap of rotting things. Our pleasures are few and painful and as fleeting as arrows flying from the archer’s bow.

7. Afflictions pounce upon our hearts like vultures and kites swooping upon fish and flesh. These bodies are as impermanent as the bursting bubbles of raindrops.

8. All reasoning and practice are as unsound as the weak stem of a plantain tree, and our youth is as fleeting as the fickle woman in love with many men.

9. The taste of youthful pleasure is soon succeeded by a distaste for it in old age. The freshness of plants in spring gives way to the dryness of autumn. Then where in this world is that permanent pleasure and lasting good which never grows stale and is ever sweet and lovely?

10. Therefore we should seek that which will support us in all conditions of life, and which will be a remedy of all the evils that surround us in this world.

11. Being thus determined, they both engaged in the investigation of spiritual philosophy. They thought that knowledge of the soul would be the only balm for healing the choleric pain of worldliness.

12. Thus resolved, they devoted themselves to their spiritual growth, employing their head and heart, their lives and souls in the inquiry, and placing all their hope and trust in the development of their spirituality.

13. For a long time they studied spiritual knowledge together, meditating upon and worshipping the Soul of souls in their own souls.

14. They both enjoyed their studies of divine knowledge, and she took a particular delight in constantly attending to the instructions and sermons of divine teachers.

15. She would listen to explanations of spiritual liberation from scholars who expounded upon the scriptures, and she continued to reflect on the soul day and night. Queen Chudala’s reasoning:—

16. Whether I am engaged in action or not, I see nothing but the one soul in my enlightened and clear understanding. What then, am I that very Self, and is it my own self?

17. Where does this error of my personality come from? Why does it grow up and where does it exist? It cannot be the gross body which has no knowledge of itself and is ignorant of everything. Surely I am not this body. My egoism lies beyond my physical body.

18. The error arises in the mind and grows from childhood to old age. One thinks that the self is lean or fat as if he were the body. It is usual to say “I act” and “I see” and the like as if one’s personality consists in his action, but the acts of the physical body are as unconscious and impersonal as the dull body itself.

19. The part is not different from the whole, nor can one thing produce something that is different.

20. The mind moves the body just like a bat drives a ball. Therefore the mind also must be dull matter, being a part of the material body, differing from it only in its power of will.

21. The determination of the mind impels the physical organs to their various actions, just like a sling sends a pebble in any direction. No doubt this firmness of resolution is a property of matter.

22. Ego leads the body forward in its action, like a channel carries the waters of a stream in its course. This ego has no essence of its own and therefore is as inert and inactive as a dead body.

23. The living principle (jiva) is a false idea, like the phantom of a ghost. The living soul is the one principle of consciousness and resides in the form of air in the heart.

24. Life or the living principle lives by another inner power, finer and more subtle than itself. By means of this internal witness, the soul, all things are known to us and not by means of this gross animal life.

25. The living soul lives in its form of vitality by the primordial power of consciousness. The vital soul, misunderstood as an intelligent principle, exists by means of this intellectual power.

26. The living soul carries with it power infused in it by consciousness, like wind blowing the fragrance of flowers and a channel carrying water to a great distance.

27. The heart, the seat of consciousness, is nothing essential by itself. It is called the center (chitta) for concentrating of the powers of the intellect (chayana) and also the heart (hrid) for its bearing these powers (harana) to the other parts of the body. Therefore it is a dull material substance.

28. All these and the living soul also, and anything that appears real or unreal, disappear in the meditation of consciousness. They are lost in meditation like fire immersed in water.

29. Only our intelligence (chaitanya) awakens us to the knowledge of the unreality and emptiness of gross material bodies. Vasishta speaking:— With such reflections as these, Queen Chudala only thought about how to gain a knowledge of the allenlightening Intellect.

30. Long did she reflect and ponder in this manner, until at last she came to know what she sought and then exclaimed, “O! After so long I have come to know the imperishable one, the only one to be known.” Queen Chudala’s thoughts:—

31. No one is disappointed in knowing the knowable or what is worth knowing. This is the knowledge of the intellectual soul and our contemplation of it. All other knowledge that the mind may have from understanding and the senses and all other things, are only steps that lead toward that ultimate end.

32. All other knowledge is mere nothing, just like a second moon in the sky. There is only one Consciousness in existence, and this is called the great entity, the sum total of all existence.

33. It is the one pure, stainless and holy, without equal or personality in the form of pure intelligence, the sole existence and joy and everlasting without decay.

34. This intellectual power is ever pure and bright, always on the summit without rise or fall. It is known among mankind under the names of Brahman, Supreme Soul, and other attributes.

35. The triple names of the Intellect, Intelligence, and Intelligible do not exactly define his nature because He is the cause of these faculties and the witness of the functions of reasoning.

36. The unthinkable intellect within me is the exact and undecaying copy of Supreme Consciousness. It evolves itself into the different forms of the mind and the senses of perception.

37. The intellect evolves the various forms of things in the world, just as the sea rolls and unrolls the waves in its bosom.

38. This world is truly the appearance of that great Intellect which is like pure crystal stone and is manifest in this form.

39. The same Power is manifest in the form of the world, which has no separate existence except in the mind of the ignorant. It is impossible for any other thing to exist except the self-existing One.

40. Gold appears in the various forms of jewelry. In the same way Consciousness appears as everything in the world in the forms in which it sees itself.

41. As the thought of fluidity in the mind causes us to perceive waves in the water, whether it really exists or not, so thoughts in the Divine Mind show us the picture of the world, whether it is or is not in being.

42. As the Divine Soul appears like waves of the sea because of its thoughts fluidity, so am I the same intellect without any personality of myself.

43. This soul has no birth or death, nor does it have a good or bad future state. It is never destroyed because it is a form of consciousness which is indestructible in its nature.

44. It neither burns nor breaks. It is the unclouded light of the intellect. By meditating on the soul in this manner, I am quite at rest and peace.

45. I live free from error and rest as calm as the untroubled ocean. I meditate on the invisible One who is quite clear to me as the unborn, un-decaying and infinite soul of all.

46. It is the empty soul, unrestricted by time or place, stainless by any figure or form, eternal and transcending our thought and knowledge. It is the infinite void. All attempts to grasp it are as vain as trying to grasp empty air in the hand.

47. This soul equally pervades over all the sura demigods as well as the asura demon races of the earth. But it is none of those artificial forms which the people make with their images of clay, like children’s dolls.

48. The essences of both viewer and the view reside together in the unity of consciousness. Only through error do men make distinctions between unity and duality, and between ego and non-ego.

49. What error or delusion can remain, and how, when and from where can it overtake me, when I have attained my truly spiritual and immortal form, seated in my easy and quiet state?

50. I am absorbed and extinct in eternity. All my cares are extinct with my own extinction in eternity. My soul is in its entranced state between consciousness and unconsciousness. It feels what is reflected upon it.

51. The soul settled in the great intellect of God, shining with the light of the Supreme Soul just like the sky is illuminated by the light of the day. There is no thought of this or that or even of one’s self or that of any other being or non-being. All is calm and quiet and having no object in view, except the one transcendent spirit. Vasishta speaking:—

52. With these reflections, Chudala remained as calm and quiet as a white cloudy spot in the autumn sky. Her soul was awake to the inspiration of divine truth. Her mind was detached from the feelings of love and fear, of pride and pleasure, and quite insusceptible of delusion.

✅
Chapter 6a.79 — King Sikhidhwaja Notices the Change in Queen Chudala

1. Vasishta continued:— Thus did the queen live day by day in the bliss of her soul, her sight concentrated within herself, living in her own and proper element.

2. She had no passion or affection, nor any discord or desire in her heart. She neither coveted nor hated anything. She was indifferent to all, but persistent and vigilant in her course of spiritual pursuit.

3. She had passed over the wide gulf of the world and freed herself from the entangling snare of doubts. She had gained the great good of knowing the Supreme Soul that filled her inner soul.

4. After her weariness of the world, she found her rest in God, her state of perfect bliss and joy. Her name was sounded on the lips of all men as the model of incomparable perfection.

5. In this way, Queen Chudala became acquainted with the true God in a short time because of the earnestness of her inquiry.

6. In the same manner, the errors of the world subside under the knowledge of truth, just as they arise in the human mind by its addiction to worldliness.

7. She found her repose in that state of perfect blessedness in which the sight of all things is lost in its dazzling blaze. She appeared as bright as a fragment of an autumn cloud that stays steady in its place.

8. Apart from and not related with anything, she continued meditating on the Spirit in her own spirit, just as an aged bull remains careless on a mountain top where he happens to find a green meadow for his pasture.

9. By her constant habit of loneliness and the elevation of her soul in her solitude, she became as fresh as a new grown plant, her blooming face shining like a new blown flower.

10. One time it happened to pass that King Sikhidhwaja noticed her pure beauty. Being struck with wonder at seeing her unusual gracefulness, he addressed her. King Sikhidhwaja talking to Queen Chudala:—

11. How is it, my dear, that you are again your youthful bloom like a flowery plant of spring? You appear more brilliant than the world illuminated under the bright beams of the full moon.

12. You shine more brightly, my beloved, than one drinking the ambrosia of life, or one obtaining the object of her desire, filled with perfect delight in herself.

13. You seem quite satisfied and lovely with your graceful appearance. The beauty of your body surpasses that of the bright moon. When you approach me it is like Rati, the goddess of love, approaching her favorite Kama.

14. I see your mind rejecting all enjoyments and it is stingy of its pleasures. It is tranquil and cool, elated with spiritual intensity, and deep as it is tranquil in its nature.

15. I see your mind spurning the three worlds as if they were bits of straw and as if you have tasted all their sweets to its full satisfaction. You are above the endless conflicts and confusions of the world, and quite charming.

16. O fortunate queen, there is no enjoyment of earthly possessions that may equal the spiritual joy of your tranquil mind. The one is as dry as a sandy desert compared with the refreshing waters of the Milky Ocean.

17. Being born with tender limbs resembling the tendrils of young plantains and the soft shoots of lotus stalks, now you seem to have grown strong and stout in your body and mind.

18. Although your features and body are the same as before, you have become like another person, like a plant growing up to a tree under the influence of the revolving seasons.

19. Tell me, have you drunk the ambrosial nectar of the gods? Have you become the sovereign over an empire? Have you gained immorality by drinking the elixir of life or by the practice of hatha or raja yoga?

20. Have you gotten a kingdom or discovered the philosopher’s stone? Have you gained anything that is more precious than the three worlds? Or, O my blue eyed lady, have you obtained something that is not attainable to mankind?

21. Chudala responded:— I have not lost my former form nor have I changed to a new one. I am ever your fortunate lady and wife.

22. I have forsaken all that is untrue and unreal and I have laid hold of what is true and real. In this way I remain your fortunate consort as ever before.

23. I have come to know that which is something, and also everything that is nothing at all. I know how all these nothings come to appear and ultimately disappear into nothing. In this way I remain your fortunate lady as ever.

24. I am as content with my enjoyments as I am without them, whether long past and gone away. I am never delighted or irritated at anything whether good or bad, but preserve my composure in all circumstances. Thus I remain your fortunate consort forever.

25. I delight only in the one empty entity that has taken possession of my heart. I take no pleasure in royal gardens and sports. I remain your fortunate princess as ever.

26. I rely constantly upon myself only, whether sitting on my seat or walking about in the royal gardens or palaces. I am not fond of enjoyments nor ashamed at their absence, and in this manner I continue as your fortunate wife as always.

27. I think myself to be the sovereign of the world, having no form of my own. Thus I am delighted in myself and appear as your fortunate and beautiful lady.

28. I am equally this and not this. I am the reality yet nothing real of any kind. I am the ego and no ego myself. I am the all and nothing in particular, and thus I remain your charming lady.

29. I neither wish for pleasure nor fear any pain. I desire no riches and do not praise poverty. I am composed with what I get and therefore I seem so very happy to you.

30. I play in the company of my friends who have governed their passions by the light of knowledge and the guidance of scriptures. That is why I seem so very pleasing to you.

31. I know, my lord, that everything that I see with my eyes, or perceive by my senses, or conceive in my mind is in realty nothing. Therefore I see something within myself that is beyond the perception of the sense organs and beyond anything the mind can conceive. This bright vision of the spirit has made me appear so very bright to your sight.

✅
Chapter 6a.80 — Sikhidhwaja Laughs at Chudala; Astral Flight; Kundalini to Attain Ends; — the Five-Fold Pattern of Elements

1. Vasishta related:— Her husband heard the beautiful lady’s words but he did not have the intelligence to dive into the meaning of what she said or to understand what she meant by her reliance upon the soul. Instead, Sikhidhwaja told her jokingly,

2. “How hard it is to understand is your speech. How unbecoming it is at your age to speak like a girl about great things, indulging your royal pleasures and sports as you do in your royal state.”

3. “Leaving all things you live in the meditation of the formless. If you have all that is real to sense, then how is it possible for you to be so graceful with an unreal nothing?

4. Whoever abandons the enjoyments of life by saying he can do without them can never retain gracefulness. He is like an angry man who refrains from eating and resting, then weakens himself in his hunger and restlessness.

5. He who abstains from pleasures and enjoyments and subsists upon empty air is like a ghost without material form living a bodiless shadow in the sky.

6. He who abandons his food and clothing, his bedstead and sleep, and all other things, resting devoutly in only the one Soul, cannot possibly preserve his calmness.”

7. “That I am not the body or bodiless, that I am nothing yet everything, are words so contradictory that they have no sane meaning.

8. That I do not see what I see, but see something that is quite unseen, is so very inconsistent that it suggests no sanity of the mind.

9. From these I find that you are still an ignorant and unsteady young lady, my frolicsome playmate as before. I speak this way to you by way of jest in the same way as you have jokingly spoken to me.”

10. The king finished his speech with a good laugh. Realizing it was noon and time for his bath, he rose up and left his lady’s apartment.

11. The queen regretted the situation thinking, “O drat! The king has quite misunderstood my meaning. He did not understand what I meant to say about my rest in the spirit.” Then she returned to her usual daily duties.

12. After that, the happy queen continued her silent meditation in seclusion, but passed her time in the company of the king in the enjoyments of their royal sports and amusements.

13. One day it came to pass that the self-satisfied queen pondered about how to fly in the air. Although she had no desire in her heart, she wished to soar into the sky on an aerial journey.

14. She retired to a secluded spot where she continued to contemplate her aerial journey, abstaining from food and shunning the company of her companions.

15. She sat alone, keeping her body steady on her seat and restraining her upward moving breath between her eyebrows (khechari mudra).

16. Rama asked, “All movement of bodies in this world is through the action of bodies and the impulse of their breathing. Then how is it possible to rise upwards by restraining body and breath?

17. Tell me, sage, how can one fly through the air by breath control and force of will?

18. How can an adept in spirituality or yoga philosophy accomplish this?”

19. Vasishta replied:— Rama, there are three types of attainable goals: effort to obtain the desired object, disdain for the thing sought, and indifference to the object of desire.

20. The first, attainment of the desirable, is secured by employing the means for its success. The second, detestation, hates and slights the thing altogether. The third, detachment, is the intermediate way between the two.

21. All good people seek whatever is pleasant, and everyone avoids whatever is contrary to good. No one seeks or shuns the way in between.

22. As soon as the intelligent, learned devotee comes to the knowledge of his soul and becomes spiritualized in himself, then all these three states vanish from his sight. He feels that they are all the same to him.

23. As he comes to see these worlds full with the presence of God, and his intellect takes its delight in this thought, he remains in the intermediate state of detachment, or he loses sight of even that.

24. All wise men remain in the course of neutrality. The ignorant are eagerly and vainly pursuing their objects, but the dispassionate recluse shuns everything. Now listen as I tell you how to attain something.

25. All success is obtained in the proper time and place and through action and its instruments. This makes a person’s heart as happy as when spring renovates the earth.

26. Among these four (time, place, action and instruments), preference is given to action because it is of highest importance to bring about a result.

27. There are many instruments for flight, such as the use of the gutika Ayurveda pills, application of black powder (collyrium), the wielding of sword and the like. But all of these are attended with many evils that are prejudicial to holiness.

28. There are some gems and drugs, and also some mantras, charms and formulas prescribed for this purpose. But when these are fully understood, they will be found harmful to the practice of yoga.

29. Mount Meru, the Himalayas, and some other holy places are mentioned as seats of divine inspiration, but a full description of them will tend to violate the aim of yoga meditation.

30. Therefore, listen to me tell you something regarding the practice of restraining the breath, which can be used to obtain powers and is related with the story of Sikhidhwaja, the general subject of the present discourse.

31. One should practice the yoga described in the scriptures by driving away all desires from the heart except the one object, and by contracting all the body openings and keeping the posture, head and neck erect.

32. Moreover, one should have the habit of taking pure food and sitting on clean seats. One should ponder the deep meaning of the scriptures, maintaining the virtues of good manners and right conduct in society and refraining from worldliness and all earthly connections.

33. By refraining from anger and greed, and abstaining from improper food and enjoyments, then over the course of a long time, one must become practiced restricting the breath.

34. The wise man who knows the truth and has control over his triple breathing of inspiration, expiration, and retention (puraka, rechaka, and kumbhaka) has all his actions under his control, just like a master has all his servants under his complete control.

35. Rama, know that anyone who has control of his vital breath is a sovereign on earth and has secured his future liberation.

36. Breath of vital energy circulates through the inner lung of the chest which encircles the intestines. Breath supplies all the arteries with life, and it is connected to all of the intestines as if they shared a common channel.

37. There is a curved artery (nadi, subtle channels in the astral body through which the vital energy or life force flows) that looks like the curved shape at the end of a lute’s neck, or the whirling currents of waters in the sea, or the curved half of the letter Om. It is situated in a small circle at the base of the spine (called the kula kundalini nadi).

38. This kundalini is deep seated at the base of the bodies of gods and demigods, men and beasts, fish and fowl, insects and worms, and all aquatic mollusks and animals at large.

39. It continues curved and curbed in the form of a coiled snake in winter until it unfolds its twisted form under the summer heat (intestinal heat), and lifts its hood like the disc of the moon (at the crown of the head).

40. The wind of the breath extends it from the lower base to pass through the heart cavity, touch the space between the eyebrows, and remain in continuous vibration.

41. A mighty power, like the central core within the soft trunk of the plantain tree, is continually vibrating, like the strings of a sitar, within the kundalini nadi.

42. This nadi is called kundalini because of its curved shape. Its power is the prime mobile force that sets the physical body into motion.

43. It is constantly breathing like the hissing of an infuriated snake. With its open mouths, it continually blows upwards to give force to all the organs.

44. The vital energy enters the heart drawn in by the curved kundalini. The kundalini is the seed for the consciousness of the mind and all its faculties.

45. As the kundalini thrills in the body, like a bee fluttering over a flower, so does our consciousness throb in the mind and has the perception of nice and delicate sensations.

46. The kundalini nadi stirs quickly to grasp its gross objects, just as our consciousness is roused at the perception of an object of the physical senses. These come in contact with one another like an instrument laying hold of some material.

47. All the nadis in the body are connected with this grand nadi and flow together like so many cellular vessels into the heart cavity where they rise and fall like rivers in the sea.

48. The continued rise and fall of this main nadi is the common source of all the sensations and perceptions of consciousness.

49. Rama regained, “Sage, how is it that our consciousness, which comes from the infinite intellect at all times and places, is confined like a minute particle of matter within the cellular vessel of the curved kundalini nadi where it rises and falls by turns.”

50. Vasishta replied:— It is true, O sinless Rama, that consciousness is the property of the infinite intellect, always present in all places and things with the all pervading intellect. Yet sometimes it is compressed in the form of a minute atom of matter in material and finite bodies.

51. The consciousness of the infinite intellect is, of course, as infinite as infinity itself. But being confined in physical bodies, it is like fluid diffused over a small space. The sunshine that lights up the universe appears to be flush against a wall or other confined place.

52. In some bodies, consciousness is completely lost, such as in mineral substances that are unconscious of their own existence. In others it is fully developed, as in gods and humans. In some consciousness is imperfectly developed, as in plants, and in others it appears in a perverted form, as in the inferior animals. So everything is found to have its consciousness in some form or other.

53. Moreover, listen as I explain how consciousness appears in various forms and degrees in the different bodies of animated beings.

54. As all cavities and empty spaces are grouped under the category of air, so all intelligent and unintelligent living beings are grouped under the general category of the one ever existent intellect which pervades all things like a vacuum.

55. The same undecaying and unchanging intellect is situated in some places as pure consciousness, and in others in the subtle form of the five-fold elements (ether, air, fire, water and earth).

56. This five-fold element of consciousness is the template for many other five-folds, just as a great many lamps are lit from one lamp. There are the five vital airs, the mind and its five-fold faculties of the understanding, the five internal and the five external senses and their five-fold organs, together with the five elemental bodies. They all have ingrained in them the principles of growth, rise and decay, and the states of waking, dreaming and sleeping.

57. All these five-folds abide in the different bodies of the gods and mortals according to their respective natures and inclinations.

58. Some take the forms of places, and others of the things situated in them. Some take the forms of minerals, and others of the animals living on earth.

59. This world is produced through the action of the five-folds, the principle of intellectual consciousness presiding over the whole and every part of it.

60. The union of these five-folds in gross bodies gives them their intelligence. Therefore we see the mobility of some dull material bodies and the immobility of others.

61. As the waves of the sea are seen to roll in one place and to be still in another, so this intellectual power is in full force in some bodies and quite inactive in others.

62. As the sea is calm and still in one place and quite boisterous in another, so the five-fold body is either in motion or at rest in different places.

63. The five-fold body is mobile by means of the vital airs, and the vital life (jiva) is intelligent because of its intelligence. Rocks are devoid of both, but trees have the faculty of sense because they are moved by the breath of winds. Such are the varying natures of the triple creation of animals, minerals and plants.

64. Different words are used to denote the different natures of things. Fire is the general name for heat and frost is that of coldness in general.

65. Differences in the mind’s desires, which mature in time, dispose the five-fold elements to the forms of the mind’s liking.

66. The many different desires of the mind, running in their diverse directions, are capable of being collected by the wise and employed for their best advantage and well being.

67. Men’s desires, whether for good or evil, can be roused or suppressed by turns and employed to their purposes.

68. Man must direct his desires in a way that promises him the objects of his desires. Otherwise, it will be as fruitless as throwing dust at the face of the sky.

69. The great mountains are only heaps of the five-fold elements hanging on the tender and slender blade of consciousness. These moving and unmoving bodies appear like worms on the tree of knowledge.

70. There are some beings with their desires lying dormant in them, such as the unmoving plants and minerals on this earth. Others have their desires ever active, such as gods, demigods and men.

71. Some are filled with their desires, such as worms and insects living in soil. Others are without desire and the heirs of salvation, such as liberated yogis.

72. Every man is aware that he has a mind and understanding. These and his hands, feet and other body parts are all made up of various combinations of the five-fold elements.

73. Inferior animals have other senses and other types of body parts. In the same way, inert objects also have some kind of sense with other sorts of organs.

74. Thus my good Rama, these five-fold elements display themselves in different forms in the beginning, middle and end of all conscious and unconscious and moving and unmoving beings.

75. The slightest desire of any of these, be it as minute as an atom, becomes the seed of aerial trees producing the fruit of future births in the forms of the desired objects.

76. The organs of sense are the flowers of this tree, the body and the sensations of their objects are like the fragrance of the flowers. Our wishes are like the bees fluttering about the pistils and filaments of our unsteady efforts.

77. The clear heavens are the hairy tufts resting on the stalks of the lofty mountains. Its leaves are the blue clouds of the sky. The ten sides of the sky are like vines spreading all about it.

78. All beings now in being, and those coming into existence in future, are innumerable like the fruit of this tree, growing and blooming and falling off by turns.

79. The five seeds of these trees grow and perish of their own nature and spontaneity in their proper time.

80. They become many from their sameness, and come to exhaust their powers after long inertness, then subside to rest of their own accord like the heaving waves of the ocean.

81. On one side they are swelling like huge surges, and on the other they are sinking low into the deep, excited by the heat of dullness on the one hand and hushed by the coolness of reason on the other.

82. These multitudes of bodies, the playthings of the five-fold elements, are destined to remain and rove forever in this world unless they come under the control of reason and are freed from further reincarnation.

✅
Chapter 6a.81 — Kundalini, Balance of Vital Breath, Physical & Mental Disorders, Simultaneous

& Disjunct Causation; The Sun (Knowledge) and Moon (Ignorance) within

1. Vasishta continued:— The seeds of the five elements are contained inside the great kundalini nadi, expanding every moment from the vibration of vital breath in all beings.

2. The vibration of the kundalini rouses the intellect by its touch, and the rising of the intellect is attended with rising of the intellectual powers as follows.

3. From its vitality, this intellect is the living principle, and from its mental powers, it is the mind. From its volition, this intellect is the principle of will, and from its understanding of all things, it is called understanding.

4. It becomes egoism with its eight-fold properties called the eight subtle bodies (puryashtaka), and it remains the principle of vitality in the body in the form of the kundalini nadi.

5. The intellect abides in the kundalini in the form of triple winds. Being deposited in the bowels and constantly flowing downwards, it takes the name of the apana wind; moving about the abdomen it is called the samana wind; and when seated in the chest it rises upwards, it is known by the name of the udana wind.

6. The apana wind passing downward evacuates the bowels. The samana wind of the abdominal part serves to sustain the body. The udana rising upward and being let out, inflates and invigorates the body. (On account of these forces, there is balance in the system.)

7. If the force of the downward wind is excessive and after all your efforts, you are unable to balance that forcible and irrepressible exit of the apana wind, then the person is sure to meet his death.

8. When one with all his efforts is unable to balance his rising breath of life and it is forced out his mouth or nostrils (the force of the upward force is excessive), death surely follows.

9. If by continual attention one is able to balance the outward and inward flow of his vital breath and preserve calm quiet of his disposition, he is sure to have longevity accompanied with freedom from all diseases.

10. Know that the inaction of the smaller arteries is attended with diseases of the body, but the dysfunction of the greater arteries is followed by serious diseases.

11. Rama said, “Tell me, O holy sage! How are health and sickness connected with the organs and arteries of the body?”

12. Vasishta replied:— Rama, know that both uneasiness and sickness cause pain to the body. Their remedy is healing by medicine, which is attended with our pleasure, but killing them outright by our liberation is what contributes to our true joy.

13. Sometimes the body is subject to both uneasiness and sickness, as one cause the other. Sometimes they are both alleviated to give us pleasure, and at other times they come upon us by turns only to cause our pain.

14. Sickness (vyadhis, illnesses) is the ailing of the body and what we call uneasiness (adhi, psychic disorder) is the trouble of the mind. Both arise because of our excessive desires and our ignorance of the nature of things.

15. Without knowledge of the natures and virtues of things and without control over our desires, the heart string loses its thinness and even course. It becomes swollen and hurried by the impulse of passions and inordinate desires.

16. Both the excitement of obtaining something and the desire for more boil the blood of the heart, shrouding the mind under a shadow of infatuation like an impenetrable cloud in rainy weather.

17. The ever increasing greed of the mind and the subjugation of the intellect to foolishness drive men to distant countries in search of a livelihood,

18. working at improper seasons, doing improper actions, the company of infamous men, and create an aptitude for wicked habits and practices.

19. The weakness and fullness of the intestines, caused by too little food on the one hand and too much on the other, cause the derangement of the humors and the disorder of the temperament.

20. When there is an excess or deficit of humors in the body, a great many diseases grow in it, just as a river becomes foul both when its level is low in the summer heat or swollen in the rains.

21. As the good or bad inclinations of men result from their prior actions in this and previous births, so the anxieties and diseases of the present state are the effects of the good and bad deeds both of this life as also those of the past.

22. I have told you, Rama, about how diseases and anxieties arise in most bodies of men. Now hear me tell you how to eradicate them from human temperament.

23. There are two sorts of diseases common to human nature, namely ordinary ones and the essential. Ordinary ones are the occurrences of daily life and the essential is what is inborn in our nature.

24. Ordinary anxieties are removed by balancing that which is lacking. Ordinary mental anxieties are removed by the removing the cares that make us anxious.

25. But the essential infirmities of one’s disposition, being bred in the blood and bone, cannot be removed from the body without the knowledge of the soul, just as the error of the snake in the rope is removed only by examining the rope.

26. False affections of the mind are the source of all our mental anxieties and physical illnesses. If we dam this main spring, the stream breaks its banks in the rains and carries away the trees that grew by it.

27. Ordinary diseases derived from without can be removed by drugs, the spell of mantras, propitiating and preventative charms, and various treatments according to the prescriptions of medical science and the practice of medical men.

28. Rama, you know the efficacy of baths and bathing in holy rivers. You are acquainted with the expiatory mantras and prescriptions of experienced practitioners. As you have learnt the medical scriptures, I have nothing further to direct you in this matter.

29. Rama replied, “But tell me sage, how do intrinsic causes produce external diseases? How are they removed by remedies other than medicinal drugs, such as the muttering of mantra incantations and observance of pious acts and ceremonies?”

30. Vasishta replied:— A man overtaken by anger, losing sight of whatever is present before his eyes, has his mind disturbed by anxieties and his body disordered in its functions.

31. He loses sight of the broad way before him and takes a devious course of own, like a stag pierced with arrows flying from the beaten path and running into a thicket.

32. The spirit being troubled, the vital airs are disturbed and breathe out in fits and short periods, just as the waters of a river, disturbed by a herd of elephants, rise above its channel and flow over their banks.

33. When the vital airs breathe irregularly, the lungs, nerves and all the veins and arteries of the body become deranged, just as misrule in government puts the laws of the kingdom into disorder.

34. Irregular breathing unsettles the whole body by making blood vessels empty and dry in some parts, and full and stout in others, resembling the empty and full flowing channels of rivers.

35. The lack of free breathing results in indigestion, the poor digestion of food, and loss of lymph and blood that food produces. These defects in digestion bring a great many sicknesses to the system.

36. Vital breaths carry the essence of the food we eat to the interior organs, just as the currents of a river carry floating wood down its stream.

37. The crude matter that remains in the intestines, for lack of assimilation into the blood and circulation in the body because of improper breathing, in the end becomes the sources of many sicknesses.

38. This is the way that troubled states of mind and spirit produce diseases of the body. They are avoided and removed by lack of mental anxiety. Now hear me tell you how mantra-exorcism serves to drive away the diseases of the body.

39. As haritaki fruit by its nature is a purgative purging impurities from the body, so mental effort into the mysterious meaning of mantras removes crude diseases from the body.

40. Rama, I have told you that pious acts, holy service, virtuous deeds and religious observances serve to drive diseases from the body by purifying the mind of its impurities, just as the gold is purified by the touch stone.

41. Purity of the mind produces a delight in the body, just as the rising of the full moon spreads gentle moonbeams over the earth.

42. Vital airs breathe freely from the purity of the mind, and these tend to help the digestive process in the stomach, producing nutrition for the body and destroying the germ of its diseases.

43. I have told you, Rama, about the causes and cures of diseases and distempers in the living body in connection with the subject of the main nadi that is the kundalini. Now hear me tell you about the main point of one’s attainment of perfection (siddhi, mastery) through the practice of yoga.

44. The life of the eight-fold human body is confined in the kundalini nadi, just as the fragrance of a flower is contained in its inner filament.

45. When one fills the channel of this great nadi with his inhaling breath, then shuts it at its mouth and becomes as calm as a stone, he is then said to have attained his rock-like fixity and firmness, and his mastery (siddhi) of inflation (garima).

46. When the body is inflated with air this way, then the wind that is confined in the kundalini nadi is carried upwards by the vital breath (of respiration), from its base at the bottom to the crown of the head where it touches the consciousness seated in the brain and drives away the fatigue of the process.

47. From there the wind rises upward like smoke in the air, carrying with it the powers of all the nadis attached to it like vines clinging to a tree. Then it stands as erect as a stick, its head lifted upwards like the hood of a snake.

48. Then this uprising force carries the whole body, filled with wind from top to toe, into the upper sky, just as an aerosol floats upon the water or an air balloon rises in the air.

49. In this way yogis make their aerial excursions, by compressing air in the wind pipes of their bodies. They are as happy as poor people when they feel they have the dignity of the king of gods.

50. When the force of the exhaling breath (rechaka) compels the kundalini force to stand twelve inches above, outside of the head-gate (Brahma Nadi) between eye-brows,

51. and as it is held there even for a moment by preventing its entry into any other passage, then at that instant, one comes to see the supernatural beings before his sight.

52. Rama said, “Tell me sage. How can we see the supernatural spiritual masters without seeing them with the light of our eyesight and without having any supernatural organ of our own with which to see?”

53. Vasishta replied:— It is true, Rama, as you say, that the aerial bodies of the spiritual masters are invisible to earthly mortals with their imperfect physical organs and without the aid of supernatural organs.

54. The aerial and beneficent spiritual masters become visible to us, like appearances in our dreams, through clairvoyance obtained by the practice of yoga.

55. Seeing spiritual masters is like seeing people in our dream, with only this difference. Seeing a spiritual master is accompanied by many real benefits and blessings bestowed on the beholder.

56. By the practice of holding the exhaled breath twelve inches outside the mouth one may enter into the body of another person.

57. Rama said, “But tell me sage. How you maintain the immutability of nature? I know you will not be displeased at this interruption to your discourse because good teachers are kindly disposed to solve even the intricate doubts of their hearers.”

58. Vasishta replied:— It is certain that the power known as nature is manifest in the will of the spirit in its acts of the creation and preservation of the world.

59. Nature is nothing in reality other than the states and powers of things. These are sometimes seen to differ from one another, just as autumn fruits are found growing in spring in Assam.

60. All this universe is one Brahman. The immensity of God and all its variety is the unity of God. When we talk of different existences and appearances, these are only verbal distinctions for ordinary purposes proceeding from our ignorance of the true nature of Brahman. We do not know why these words attempting to describe divine nature, which are irrelevant to the main subject, are introduced in this place.

61. Rama asked, “Tell me sage. How do bodies become thinned or thickened in order to enter into very narrow passages or occupy large spaces?”

62. Vasishta replied:— As wood and a saw rubbed together causes the wood to split, and as the friction of two things produces a fire between them, so friction between the inhaling and exhaling breath divide the two prana and apana air currents, producing digestive fire in the stomach.

63. There is a muscle in the abdominal part of what is the ugly machine of the internal body. It extends like a pair of bellows above and below the navel, their mouths joined together and shaking to and fro like a willow moved by water and air.

64. Under this bladder the kundalini nadi rests in its quiet state, tied like a string of pearls in a casket.

65. Here the kundalini string turns and twirls around like a string of beads counted about the fingers. It is coiled and has a head like the hood of a snake, and it makes a hissing sound like a snake that has been stricken by a stick.

66. The kundalini thrills in the string of the lotus-like heart, just as a bee flutters over the honey of a lotus flower. It kindles our knowledge in the body like the bright sun over the earth and sky.

67. It is then that the action of the heart moves all the blood vessels in the body to their various different functions, just as a breeze shakes the leaves of trees.

68. As powerful winds rage in the sky and break down the weaker branches and leaves of trees, so the vital airs coil in the body and crush the soft food that has been taken in the stomach.

69. As the winds of air batter lotus leaves, at last dissolving them into its native elements, so the internal winds break down food like the leaves of trees and convert the food ingested in the stomach into chyle (lymph and fat fluids), blood, flesh, skin, fat, marrow and bones one after another.

70. The internal airs clash against one another to produce gastric fire, just as bamboo in the woods produces living fire by their friction.

71. The body is naturally cold and cold-blooded. It becomes heated in all its parts by this internal heat, just as every part of the world is warmed by the sun.

72. Ascetic yogis meditate upon this internal fire, pervading and fluttering throughout the body like golden bees or twinkling stars over the lotus-form heart.

73. Reflections of these lights are attended with the full blaze of intellectual light. A yogi meditating upon these lights sees objects in his heart which are millions of miles away from him.

74. This digestive fire, continually fed by the fuel of food, continues to burn in the lake of the lotus-like muscle of the heart, just like an undersea fire burns in the waters of the seas.

75. But the clear and cold light which is the soul of the body bears the name of the serene moon, somagni or the residence of the moon and fire. It is the product of the other fire of the body.

76. All hotter lights in the world are known by the names of suns or solar fire, and all colder lights are designated as moons or lunar fire. These two lights cherish the world.

77. Know that the world is a manifestation of the combination of intelligence and ignorance, and also a mixture of reality and unreality by the one who has manifest this form.

78. The learned use the terms knowledge, sun and fire to refer to the light of intelligence, and the names dullness, darkness, ignorance and the coldness of the moon to describe the unrealities of ignorance.

79. Rama said, “I well understand that the product of the air of breath and the like, and that the air proceeds from the moon. But tell me sage, from where does the moon come into existence?”

80. Vasishta replied:— Fire and moon (in the body) are mutual causes and effects of each another, just as they produce and destroy each other by turns.

81. Their production alternates like the seed and its sprout. Their repetition is like the return of day and night. They last a while and are lost instantly, like the succession of light and shade.

82. When these opposites appear at the same time, you see them standing side by side like light and shade in daytime. When they occur at different times, you see only one without any trace of the other, just like daylight and nocturnal darkness follow each other.

83. I have told you about two kinds of causality, namely, one in which the cause is co-existent with its effect and the other in which the effect appears after its cause disappears.

84. Synchronous causation is simultaneous with its effect, like the seed is coexistent with its germ and the tree is coexistent with the seed it produces.

85. The other, called the earlier cause, disappears before the appearance of its effect, such as the disappearance of the day causes its subsequent night, and the passing of night causes the following day.

86. The former kind of united cause and effect is exemplified in the example of the doer and the earthen pot, both of which are in existence. This being evident to sight requires no example to elucidate it.

87. The succession of day and night is sufficient proof of antecedent causality, the kind of disunited cause and effect in which the effect is unassociated with its cause.

88. Rationalists who deny the causality of an earlier cause are to be disregarded as fools for ignoring their own experience, and must be spurned with contempt.

89. Know Rama, that an unknown and absent cause is as evident as any present and tangible cause that is perceptible to the senses. Who can deny the fact that the absence of fire produces cold? It is quite evident to every living body.

90. Rama, see how fire ascends upward in the air in form of fumes which take the shape of clouds in the blue sky, which, being transformed afterwards into fire, becomes the immediate cause of the moon.

91. Again the fire, being extinguished by cold, sends its watery particles upwards. This moisture, as the absent or remote cause, produces the moon.

92. Similarly, the undersea fire, falling and feeding on the foulness of the seven oceans, swallows their briny waters, disgorging their gases and fumes in the open air. These flying to the upper sky in the form of clouds, drop down their purified waters in the form of sweet milky fluids in the Milky Ocean.

93. The hot sun devours the frigid ball of the moon during the dark fortnight, then ejects her in the bright half of every month, just as the stork throws off the tender stalk of the lotus which it has taken.

94. Winds that suck up the heat and moisture of the earth in the spring and hot weather, drop them down as rainwater in the rainy season, which serves to renew the body of exhausted nature.

95. The earthly water, carried up by sunbeams which are called his hands, are converted into the solar rays which are the immediate cause of fire.

96. Here the water becomes fire by deprivation of its fluidity and frigidity, which deprivation is the remote cause of the formation of fire and its qualities of dryness and warmth.

97. Fire being absent, there remains the presence of the moon. The absence of the moon presents the presence of fire.

98. Again, the fire being destroyed, the moon takes its place in the same way as the departure of the day introduces the night.

99. Now in the interval between day and night, between daylight and darkness, and in the middle of shade and light, there is a middle point and a certain truth which eludes even the learned.

100. That point is neither nothingness nor an empty emptiness. Nor is it a positive entity. It is the real pivot and connecting link between both sides. It never changes its central place between both extremes of this and that or the two states of being and not being.

101. All things exist in the universe because of the two opposite principles of the intelligent soul and inert matter, just like the two opposites of light and darkness bring on day and night in regular succession.

102. The world began with the union of mind and matter, or the mover and the moved, just like the body of the moon was formed by a mixture of water and nectar particles in the air.

103. Rama, know that sunbeams are made of fiery particles, sunlight is the brightness of the intellect, and the body of the moon is only a mass of dull darkness.

104. The sight of the outer sun in the sky destroys the spreading darkness of night, but the appearance of intellectual light dispels the spreading gloom of the world from the mind.

105. If you see your intellect in the form of the cooling moon, it becomes as dull and cold as that satellite itself. If you look at a lotus at night, you will not find it blooming as it does in the sunshine.

106. Fire in the form of sunlight brightens the moon in the same way as the light of the intellect illuminates the inner body. Our consciousness is like the moonlight of the inner soul. Our consciousness is the product of the sunbeams of our intellect.

107. Consciousness has no action. It is without attribute or name. It is like light on the lamp of the soul and it is known like any common light from the lantern.

108. The eagerness of this consciousness after the knowledge of phenomena makes it aware of the world of the senses. Its thirst after the unintelligible one brings the precious gain of its oneness (kaivalya) with the self same one.

109. The two powers of fire and moon (agni-soma) are united with one another in the form of the body and its soul. The scriptures describe their union as the contact of light with a lighted room, or the reflection of sunshine on a wall.

110. They are also known separately in different bodies and at different times. Bodies addicted to dullness are said to be moved by the lunar influence, and persons advancing in their spirituality are said to be led on by force of solar power.

111. The rising breath (prana), by its nature hot and warm, is said to be agni or fiery. The setting breath of apana, cold and slow, is termed the soma or lunar. They abide as light and shade in everybody, the one rising upward and passing through the mouth and the other going down by the anus.

112. The downward breath (apana) being cooled gives rise to the fiery hot breath of prana, which remains in the body like the reflection of something in a mirror.

113. The light of the intellect produces the brightness of consciousness, and sunbeams reflect themselves as lunar orbs in the dew drops on lotus leaves at early dawn.

114. In the beginning of creation, there was a certain consciousness. Its thought of the properties of heat and cold, agni and soma, came to be combined to form the human body and mind.

115. Rama, strive to settle yourself at that position twelve inches outside the mouth where the sun and moon of the body (prana and apana) meet in conjunction.

116. Remain in that place where the moon has merged with the sun in the heart-space.

117. The sun of pure consciousness is said to be of the form of agni or heat, and the moon has the form of cold. Stay firm in the realization that the moon is the reflection of the sun (prana and apana).

118. Know, O sinless one, that the transit and concurrence of agni and moon take place in the body. The other transits and combinations that occur outside in time are worthless.

119. O Rama, you shall shine among the wise if you can appreciate and know and feel that the external transits and combinations like uttarayana and dakshinayana occur inside the body (by the movements of vital energies). Otherwise, you cannot shine.

✅
Chapter 6a.82 — Instructions for Acquiring Powers

1. Vasishta, continued:— Now hear me now tell you how yogis are able to expand and contract their bodies at will, reducing to atomic proportions and expanding to gross dimensions.

2. Above the lotus-like partition of the heart, there is a blazing fire emitting its sparks, like gold colored butterflies flirting about it, flaring like flashes of lightning in the evening clouds.

3. The fire is aroused and fanned by the animal spirit that blows over it like a breath of wind. This fire pervades the entire body without burning it. It shines as brightly as the sun in the form of our consciousness.

4. It lights into a blaze in an instant, like the early rising of the sun gleams upon morning clouds. The fire melts down the whole body, like a burning furnace melts gold in a crucible.

5. Being inextinguishable by water, the fire burns the whole outer body down to the feet. Then it coils inside the body, remaining in the form of the mind in man’s spiritual body.

6. Having reduced the inner body, it becomes lifeless of itself, as extinct as frost when the winds blow.

7. The kundalini force, being reduced to the fundamental nadi at the base of the spine, remains in the emptiness of the spiritual body like a shadow of smoke from fire.

8. This shade of smoke parades over the heart like a dark colored maiden and encloses in her bosom the subtle body composed of its mind and understanding, the living principle and its egoism.

9. It has the power to enter into the porous fibers of lotuses, to penetrate rocks, to stretch over grass, to pop into houses and stones, to pry in the sky and ply in the ground, and to remain and move about everywhere in whatever manner it likes of its own will.

10. This power produces consciousness and the physical senses by the sap which it supplies to the whole body. It also is filled with juice, like a leather bag dipped in water.

11. This great kundalini artery, filled with gastric fire, forms the body in any shape it likes, just as an artist draws the lines of a picture in any form pictured in his mind.

12. It supplies the embryonic seed placed in the fetus of the mother with the power of its evolution into the fleshy and bony parts of its future body, just as the tender sprout of a plant seed grows in time into a hard woody tree.

13. Rama, know this certain truth acknowledged by the wise, that the living principle acquires whatever state and stature it desires, be that of a mountain or bit of straw.

14. Rama, you have heard of certain powers attainable by the practice of yoga, such as the powers of diminishing and increasing the bulk and stature of the body. Now listen as I give you an interesting lecture on how to attain these powers through knowledge (jnana).

15. Know for certain that there is only one intelligent principle of Consciousness which is inscrutable, pure and most charming, more minute that the minutest, perfectly tranquil, and is nothing of the mundane world or any of its actions or properties.

16. The same Consciousness (chit), being collected in itself into an individuality from the undivided whole and assuming the power of will or volition itself, becomes the living soul by transformation of its pure nature to an impure one.

17. The will is a fallacy and the body is a mistake. Only the ignorant distinguish between the living soul and the Universal Spirit, just like an ignorant child sees a demon in a shadow.

18. When the lamp of knowledge brings the mind to the full light of truth, then the error of will is removed from the living soul, just as the clouds of rainy weather dissipate in autumn.

19. The body rests after wishes have subsided in the mind, just as the lamp is extinguished after its oil is exhausted.

20. The soul that sees the truth has no more knowledge of his body than the man awakened from his sleep has his dream appearing before him.

21. The mistake of the unreal for the real or, what is the same, ascribing reality to unreality is what gives the color of reality to false material bodies. The knowledge of truth removes the error of the physical body and restores the soul to its accustomed splendor and true joy.

22. The error of taking the material body for the immaterial soul is so deeply rooted in the mind that it is as difficult to remove as it is for the strongest sunbeams to penetrate the mental gloom of men.

23. This impenetrable darkness of the mind can only be seen through the sunshine of knowledge that our soul is the seat of the immaculate and all pervading spirit of God, and that I myself am no other than the pure consciousness which is in me.

24. Those who have known the Supreme Soul meditate on it in this manner in their own souls until they find themselves to be assimilated to Supreme Soul by their intense thought of it.

25. Therefore, O Rama, some men convert the deadly poison to sweet ambrosial food, and others change delicious nectar into bitter gall.

26. So whatever is thought upon with intensity in any manner and on any occasion, the same comes to take place. We can see many examples of this.

27. The body seen in the light of a reality is found to be a real existence, but looked upon as an unreality, it vanishes into nothing.

28. O righteous Rama, you have heard talk about the theory of attaining the powers of magnifying and minimizing one’s body at will. Now I will tell you of another method of gaining these powers, to which you shall have now to attend.

29. You can practice exhaling your rechaka breath to extract your vital energy from the cell of your kundalini nadi and infuse it into another body, just as the winds of the air carry the fragrance of flowers into the nostrils.

30. The former body is left lifeless like a log of wood or a block of stone. Such is the relationship between the body and life, like that of a bucket and its water poured out to enliven plants.

31. Thus life is infused in all movable and immovable things in order to enjoy the pleasures of their particular states at its pleasure.

32. The living soul, having tasted the bliss of its complete state, returns to its former body if it is still in existence, or it goes and settles somewhere else, as it may best suit its taste.

33. In this way yogis pass into all bodies and lives with their conscious souls and fill the world by magnifying their spirits over all space.

34. The yogi who is lord of himself by his enlightened understanding, and through his knowledge of all things and their accompanying evils, in an instant obtains whatever he wants and which is present before the brightness of divine light.

✅
Chapter 6a.83 — Queen Chudala’s Powers, the King’s Ignorance, and the Story of the Miserly Kirata

1. Vasishta continued:— Thus Queen Chudala possessed the powers of contracting and expanding herself into any form, and she became expert in these by her continued practice.

2. She made aerial journeys and navigated at pleasure over the expanse of waters. She moved on the surface of the earth just as the River Ganges glides on her silent course.

3. She dwelt in the bosom of her lord like Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, abiding in the heart of Vishnu. With her mind she could travel in a moment over every city and country on the earth.

4. This fairy lady flew in the air and flashed like lightning with the flashes of her twinkling eyes. She passed like a shadow over the earth, just as a body of clouds passes over a range of mountains.

5. She passed without any hazard through grass and wood, stones and clods of earth, and through fire and water and air and vacuum like a thread passing through the hole of a heart.

6. She lightly skimmed over mountain peaks and pried through the regions of the rulers of all sides of heaven. She penetrated into the cavities of the empty womb of emptiness and had a pleasant trip wherever she directed her flight.

7. She conversed freely with all living beings, whether they move or lie on the ground as the beasts of earth or crawl upon it like snakes and insects. She talked with savage pisacha tribes and communicated with men, demigods and the immortal gods.

8. She tried much to communicate her knowledge to her ignorant husband, but he was in no way capable of receiving her spiritual instruction.

9. He understood her only as his young princess, the mistress of his house, skilled only in the arts of attraction and being a housewife.

10. All this time the king remained ignorant of the qualifications of Queen Chudala. He did not know that she had progressed in spiritual science like a young student proficient in the different branches of learning.

11. Also, she was reserved showing her complete learning to her unenlightened husband, just as a brahmin declines to show his secret rites to a vile, low caste shudra.

12. Rama asked, “Sage, if it was impossible for a seer of complete wisdom to communicate her knowledge to her husband Sikhidhwaja, with all her efforts to enlighten him on the subject, then how can it be possible for others to be conversant in spiritual knowledge by any other means?”

13. Vasishta answered:— Rama, the only way of gaining instruction is through obedience to the rule of attending to the precepts of the teacher, joined with the intelligence of the pupil.

14. Neither hearing a sermon nor observing any religious rite is of any value towards the knowledge of the soul unless one employs his own soul to have the light of the Supreme Soul shine upon it. Only spirit can know spirit, just as only a serpent can trace out the path of another serpent.

15. Rama replied, “If such is the course of the world, that we can learn nothing without the instruction of our teachers, then tell me, O sage! How can the precepts of the wise lead to our spiritual knowledge?”

16. Vasishta replied:— Rama, listen as I tell you a story to this effect. There lived an old Kirata of the past who was miserly in his conduct as he was rich in his possessions of wealth and grain. He dwelt with his family by the side of the Vindhya woods, like a poor brahmin living apart from his friends and relations.

17. One time, as he happened to pass by his native forest, he dropped a single chowry shell from his purse. It fell in a shrub and was lost under the grass.

18. He ran on every side, beating the bush for three days to find his lost chowry shell, impelled by his stinginess to leave no fallen leaf unturned.

19. As he searched and turned about, he turned thoughts in his mind, thinking, “Ah! this single chowry shell would make four by its commerce, and that would bring me eight in time, and this would make a hundred and a thousand, and more and more by repetition, so I have lost a treasure in this.”

20. Thus, over and over he counted the gains he would gain, sighing as often at the loss he had suffered and ignoring the rustic peasantry of his foolish cheapness.

21. At the end of the third day he came across a rich jewel, as brilliant as the bright moon, which by a thousand fold compensated for the loss of his worthless chowry shell.

22. He happily returned home with his great gain, highly delighted with the thought of keeping poverty away from his door forever.

23. The Kirata was quite satisfied with his unexpected gain of great treasure while searching for his worthless chowry shell. He passed his days without any care or fear of the changeful world.

24. So the student, in search of worldly knowledge, comes to obtain spiritual knowledge from his teacher. The student’s quest of temporal learning is only a trifle compared to his eternal concern.

25. O sinless Rama, it is impossible to attain divine knowledge merely through a teacher’s lectures because the lord is beyond the perception of senses. God can not be expressed by or known from the words of the instructor’s mouth.

26. Yet it is also true that without the guidance of the spiritual guide, it is impossible to attain spiritual knowledge. No one can gain a rich gem without his search after a chowry shell, like the miserly Kirata.

27. As the search for a chowry shell resulted in the gain of a jewel, so our attendance on the secular instructions of the teacher becomes an indirect cause to our acquisition of the invaluable treasure of spiritual knowledge.

28. Rama, look at these wonderful events of nature that bring about results different from what we were pursuing.

29. It often comes to pass that our attempts are attended with another result from what should have happened. Therefore, it is better for us to remain indifferent with regard to the results of our acts.

✅
Chapter 6a.84 — King Sikhidhwaja Abandons His Kingdom for the Life of a Hermit

1. Vasishta related:— King Sikhidhwaja continued in utter darkness without sight of his spiritual knowledge, groping his way in the gloom of the world in utter despair of any glimpse of hope, like a childless man passes his sorrowful days.

2. His heart, without hope of salvation, burned inconsolably in the flame of his anxieties. His great wealth only served as fuel to feed the fire of his hopelessness. He lacked the cooling shower of spiritual knowledge.

3. He found some consolation in lonely retreats in mountain caves and beside waterfalls where he wandered freely, like a beasts of prey running from the arrows of hunters.

4. Rama, he became as distracted as you had been before, discharging his daily rituals only at the humble request and repeated solicitations of his attendant servants.

5. He was as unexcitable and cold blooded as a religious recluse. He avoided the enjoyments of princely pleasures and abstained from his usual food.

6. He gave his homage to the gods, brahmins and his relatives with large donations of lands and gifts of gold and cattle.

7. He went on performing the austerities of religious rites and the rigorous ceremonies of chandaryana and others. He travelled through wilds and deserts and inhabited lands to his pilgrimages far and near.

8. Yet nowhere did he find any consolation for his mind, which is what he was seeking like a miner digging in barren soil in quest of some mineral that is not to be found.

9. He was languishing under the intensity of his anxiety, as if suffering under the fiery heat of the sun. He sought some remedy for the worldly cares that haunted him constantly, day and night.

10. Being absorbed in his thoughts, he sought not for anything of the poisonous pleasures of his kingdom. With meekness of spirit and mind, he did not look at the grand estate that lay before him.

11. It happened one day, as he was sitting with his beloved princess reclining on his lap, that he spoke to her in his sweetly flowing speech as follows.

12. Sikhidhwaja said:— I have long tasted the pleasures of my kingdom and enjoyed the sweet and bitter of my large property and landed possessions. Now I am grown weary of them as they are both the same and stale to me.

13. Know my delighted lady, that a silent sage is exempt from pleasure and pain. No prosperity or adversity can ever befall a lonely hermit of the forest.

14. Neither the fear of loss of lives in battle nor the dread of losing territory in defeat can ever take a lonely hermit of the forest. Therefore I think the helpless state of a hermit is happier by far than the dignity of royalty.

15. The woodland grounds are as pleasing to me as you are, with clusters of blossoms in spring, ruddy leaves resembling your rosy palms, their twisted filaments like the curls of your hair, and the flimsy white clouds like clean garments.

16. Blooming flowers resemble ornaments and their pollen is the scented powder on their bodies. Seats of reddish stones resemble buttocks.

17. Surrounding, pearly streams flowing in the woods resemble hanging strings of pearls on their necks. Their foaming waves are like clusters of pearls tied like knots on their clothing. Tender vines are their playful daughters and the frisky deer are like their playful darlings.

18. Perfumed with the natural fragrance of flowers, having swarming bees for their eyelids and eyebrows and wearing flowers as their garments, the woods offer an abundance of fruit for food.

19. The pure waters of the falling cascades are sweet to taste. They cool the body as your company gratifies my senses. Therefore I foster an equal fondness for these woodland scenes as I bear for your company.

20. The calm composure which solitude seems to give to the soul, in my estimation, is far superior to the delight that I derive from cooling moonlight or the bliss that I might enjoy in the paradise of Indra and in the heaven of Brahma himself.

21. Now my dear one, you should not put any obstacle in the way of my plans, because no faithful wife ever presents any obstruction to the desires of her lord.

22. Chudala replied:— Work done in its proper time is commendable. It is as delightful to see flowers blossoming in spring as it is pleasant to find ripe fruit and grain in autumn.

23. Retiring in the forest is for the old and decrepit and others broken down in body by age. It is not fitting for a young man like yourself to fly from the world. Therefore I do not approve your choice.

24. Let us remain at home, O young prince, so long as we have not passed our youth. We flourish here like flowers that do not abandon their parent tree until flowering time is over.

25. Like flowery vines, let us grow white with grey hairs on our heads, then leave our home together like a pair of fond herons fly away forever from a dried lake.

26. Mind also, my noble lord, the great sin that waits on a disgraceful king of royal race who abandons the welfare of his people during the time of his rule.

27. Moreover, keep in mind the opposition you will have to face from your subjects who are authorized to check your unseasonable and unworthy act as you are empowered to check theirs.

28. Sikhidhwaja replied:— Know my royal lady, that your appeal is in vain. I am determined to go away from here. Know me as already gone from you and your kingdom to a retreat in woods far away from here.

29. You are young and handsome. You should not accompany me to dreary deserts and forests which, in many respects, are dreadful and impassable by men.

30. Women, however hardy they may be, are never able to endure the hardships of forest life, just as it is impossible for a tender stem to withstand the stroke of an axe.

31. Remain here, O excellent lady, and rule over this kingdom in my absence. Take the burden of supporting your dependents, which is the highest and best duty of women.

32. Vasishta related:— Saying this to the moon-faced queen, the self-governed king rose from his seat to make his daily ablution and discharge his many duties of the day.

33. Afterwards, the king took leave of his subjects, despite all their appeals to detain him. He departed like the setting sun towards his forest journey, which was unknown and impassable by everyone.

34. He set out like the setting sun deprived of his glory and disappeared like the sun from the sight of all. A veil of melancholy covered the face of the queen as she saw her lord leaving the recess of her chamber, just as the face of nature is hidden in the shadow of darkness when daylight disappears below the horizon.

35. Now the dark night advanced, veiling the world under her covering of ashcolored dusk, just as when the god Shiva forsakes the fair Ganga and takes the dark Yamuna into his embrace.

36. The sides of heaven seemed to smile all around with teeth-like clumps of evening clouds and the light of moonbeams glittering on the shoots of tamara trees.

37. As the lord of the day departed towards the setting mountain of Sumeru on the other side of the horizon in order to wander over the paradise of the gods on the north, so the brightness of the day began to fail as the shade of evening prevailed over the face of the forsaken world.

38. Now dark night accompanied by her lord, the night luminary, advanced on this side of the southern hemisphere to play like a loving couple with this cooling light and shade.

39. Clusters of stars were scattered in the ethereal sphere under the canopy of heaven, looking like handfuls of fried rice scattered by the hands of celestial maidens on some auspicious occasion.

40. The dark colored night gradually advanced to her puberty with the buds of lotuses as her budding breasts. Then she smiled with her moonlike face littered in the opening of the nightly flowers.

41. After performing his evening services, the king returned to his beloved queen who was drowned in deep sleep, as Mount Mainaka drowned in the depth of the sea.

42. It was around midnight, when all was still and quiet all about. People were all fast asleep, as if covered in stone.

43. He found her fast asleep in her soft and downy bed, resting in the lap of deep slumber like a female bee in a lotus.

44. The king started up from his sleep, parted from his cold embrace of the sleeping partner of his bed, all as the ascending point of Rahu slowly lets the eclipsed moon in the east from its mouth.

45. He got up from his half of the bed while the queen lay on the other half, as when the god Vishnu rises from his bed of the waters of the Milky Ocean, leaving the lonely Lakshmi rolling in the waves after him.

46. He walked out of the palace and ordered the guards to stand at their places. Full of confidence in himself, he told them that he was going to arrest a gang of robbers beyond the outskirts of the city.

47. “Farewell my royalty,” he thought, then passed onward out of his kingdom, passing through inhabited tracts and forest lands, as the course of a river runs to the sea.

48. With his firm fortitude in the gloom of night, he passed through thickets of forests beset by thorny bushes, full of heinous beasts and reptiles.

49. In the morning he arrived at some open land free of woods and jungles. That day he walked from sunrise to sunset when he took refuge under the shelter of a grove.

50. The sun departing from sight left him to the darkness of night, when he performed his bathing and the daily rite. Having eaten some root or fruit which he could find, he passed the night resting on barren ground.

51. Again and again morning appeared and brought to light many new cities and districts and many hills and rivers which he passed over bravely for twelve days and nights.

52. He reached the foothills of Mandara Mountain, covered by a forest so dense and immense that no human foot could penetrate. It was far from the reach of man and the boundaries of human habitation.

53. There he found a place by running streams, set with rows of trees with aqueducts under them, where there were the traces of a dilapidated dwelling, apparently the deserted house of some holy hermit.

54. It was clear of all harmful reptiles and small insects and was planted with sacred plants and vines for the sacred purposes of holy spiritual adepts. It was also full of fruit trees that supplied its occupant with plenty of food.

55. There was a level and pure spot of ground with a water course and green vegetation and trees loaded with luxuriant fruit and stretching a cooling shade all over it.

56. It was here that the king built a covered shelter of green vines and leafy branches. Their blooming blossoms glistened like the blue dome of heaven under the lightning of the rainy season.

57. He made himself a staff of bamboo and some vessels for his food and drink, and also some plates to put his offerings of fruits and flowers, and a jar to present holy water. He strung some seeds together to make his saintly rosary.

58. He gathered the hides of dead animals to cover the cold, and a deerskin for his meditation seat, placing them carefully in his holy hermit’s cell.

59. He also collected all other things that were of use in the discharge of his priestly functions. He kept them in his sacred cell just like the Lord of Creatures has stored the earth with every provision required for living beings.

60. He performed his morning devotions, then later he turned his beads muttering his mantras. In the afternoon he performed his sacred ablution, offering flowers in the service of the gods.

61. Afterwards he took some wild fruit, ground root, and soft lotus stalks for his food in the evening, then passed the night with his lonely self-possession meditating upon his Maker.

62. Thus did the King of Malwa pass his days with perfect cheer of heart in the hermitage that he had constructed at the foot of Mandara Mountain. He thought no more of his royal pleasures. They were utterly lost under the influence of his renunciation which had taken full possession of his entire soul and mind.

✅
Chapter 6a.85 — Chudala Appears as a Brahmin Boy to Sikhidhwaja; Narada’s Ejaculation; the Outline of Nature as Created by Brahma

1. Vasishta continued:— In this manner, King Sikhidhwaja remained in his monastery in the forest in his state of perfect joy. The queen remained at home and did as you shall now hear from me.

2. After the king left the palace at midnight, Chudala woke up from her sleep like a frightened deer startled by fear.

3. She found the bed vacated by her husband and thought it as dreary as the sky without sun or moon.

4. She rose up with a sad face, her heart full of sorrow. Her limbs were as lank as the leaves of plants deprived of water in summer.

5. Sorrow sat heavy in her heart and drove away the charm and cheerfulness of her face. She remained like a winter day, overcast by clouds or covered by a frost.

6. For a while she sat on the bedstead sorrowfully thinking, “Ah sorrow unto me that my lord has gone from here and abandoned a kingdom for a retreat in the woods.

7. What can I do now? I ought to go to my husband, wherever he is, because it is appointed both by the law of nature and God that the husband is the only resort and support of the wife.”

8. Having thought so, Chudala rose up to follow her husband. She fled through a window shutter into the open air.

9. She roamed in her aerial course by the force of her breath on the wings of air. To the aerial spirits, the spiritual masters, she looked like a second moon moving in the skies.

10. As she was passing at nighttime, she happened to see her lord wandering about with a sword in his hand, looking like the ghost of a vetala demon wandering in the lonely forest.

11. The queen, seeing her husband in this manner from her aerial seat, began to reflect on the future state which awaited her husband and which she foresaw by the power of her yoga.

12. It is certain, O Rama, that whatever is allotted in the book of fate as befalling on anybody at anytime or place or manner, the same is sure to take place at the very moment and place and in the same way.

13. The queen, plainly seeing whatever was to take place with her husband and knowing it could not be averted by any means, refrained from going and telling him what was to happen.

14. “Let my visit to him be postponed to a future occasion when it is destined for me to be in his company again.”

15. Thinking so, Chudala turned her course away from him and returned to her inner apartment where she reclined on her milk-white pillow like the crescent moon rests on the ancient forehead of Shiva.

16. The queen told her people that the king had gone on some important occasion. Relieved with the knowledge that he would return, she took command of the government in her own hands.

17. She managed the realm like her husband according to the established rules of toleration, and with the same care and vigilance as a woman guarding her ripening cornfields.

18. In this manner they passed their days without seeing one another. The married pair lived separately from each other, one in the royal palace and other in the lonely forest.

19. Days and nights passed into weeks and fortnights, then months and seasons in regular succession. One counted his days in the woods and the other in her princely palace.

20. What is the use of a lengthy description of all eighteen years that slowly passed over the separated couple, one living in her palatial dome and the other in his woodland retreat?

21. Many more years passed in this manner until the hermit King Sikhidhwaja, in his holy retreat in a hut by the great Mandara Mountain, was overtaken by hoary old age.

22. The queen knew that the passions of the king were declining with age and grey hairs. Finding herself not yet too old to overtake him in the distant forest,

23. and believing that it was the proper time for her to prevail on him and bring him back to the palace, she thought of joining her husband where he was.

24. With these thoughts, she made up her mind to go towards Mandara Mountain. She left her home that night, mounting on the wings of air into the upper sky.

25. As she flew onward on the wings of air, she saw in the upper sky some women who were spiritual masters wearing the thin bark of the kalpa tree and covered with clusters of jewels.

26. These were the inhabitants of the garden of paradise going out to meet their spiritual master husbands, sprinkled with perfumes and shedding their dew like bright moonbeams.

27. She breathed the air perfumed by the flowers of the Nandana garden of paradise and worn by the women masters of paradise. She wallowed in the moonbeams that spread like waves of the Milky Ocean.

28. She felt a purer moonlight as she ascended into the higher atmosphere. She passed through clouds like lightening.

29. She thought to herself, “This lightning, though situated in the bosom of her cloudy spouse, is yet looking at him repeatedly with the winkling of her eyes. In the same way I must look for my absent lord as I pass like the lightning through the midway sky.”

30. “It is true,” she thought to herself, “that it is impossible to avoid one’s nature during one’s lifetime. Hence it is impossible for my disturbed mind to be calm without the sight of my loving and lion-like lord.

31. My mind wanders and runs mad when I think, “I will see my lord” and “When will I see these vines turning round and clasping their supporting tree?”

32. My mind is impatient seeing the close contact of these senseless vines and the superior female masters in quest of their consorts.

33. How and when shall I, like them, come to meet the man who is in my heart?”

34. “These gentle breezes, these cooling moonbeams, and those plants of the forest all continue to disturb my heart and set it on fire.

35. O my simple heart, why do you throb in vain and thrill within every vein within me? O my faithful mind who is as pure as the air, why do you loose your reason and right discretion?

36. It is you, O faithless mind, that excites my heart to run after its spouse. Better remain with your yearnings in yourself than torment my quiet spirit with your longings.”

37. “Or why is it, O silly woman, that you long in vain after your husband who possibly has become too old? He is now an ascetic, too weak in his body and devoid of all earthly desires.

38. I think that any desire to enjoy his royal honors and pleasures have been utterly rooted out of his mind. The plant of his fondness for sensual gratifications is now as dry as a channel that has emptied its waters into a large river.

39. I think my husband, who was fond of me as to share the same soul, has become as indifferent to soft passions like a dried and withered tree.”

40. “Or I will try the power of my yoga to waken his mind to sense and infuse the eager longings and throbbing of my heart into his?

41. I will collect and focus the thoughts of the ascetic devotee towards the government of his kingdom where we may settle forever to our hearts’ content.

42. After such a long time I have discovered the way to my object by infusing my very thoughts into the mind of my husband.

43. The union of minds between a wedded pair and the pleasure of their constant union contribute to the highest happiness of human beings on earth.”

44. Revolving in this manner, Queen Chudala continued on her aerial journey, now over mountains and clouds, then passing the boundaries of lands and visible horizons. She reached the sight of Mandara and found the glen and cavern in it.

45. She entered the grove as an aerial spirit invisible to sight. She passed like air, revealed only by the shaking of the leaves on trees.

46. She saw a leafy hut in one corner of the wood and recognized her husband by the power of her yoga, though he appeared to be transformed into another person.

47. She found that his body, previously decorated with royal clothes and jewels glittering like Mount Meru with its gold, had grown lean and thin, dark and dry as a withered, dried leaf.

48. He wore a covering of coarse material and looked as if he had been dipped in a fountain of ink. He sat alone in one spot, looking like the god Shiva wholly devoid of all desire.

49. He was sitting on the barren ground, stringing flowers to his braided hairs, when the beautiful queen approached before him.

50. She was moved to sorrow at the sight of his miserable plight, thinking, “Alas, how painful it is to see this pitiful sight!

51. O, the great stupidity that rises from ignorance of spiritual knowledge and which has brought on this miserable condition on this self-deluded king.”

52. “I must not call him unfortunate as long as he is my husband, though the deep darkness of his mind (ignorance) has brought on this miserable plight.

53. I must try my best to bring him to the knowledge of truth. No doubt that will restore him to his sense of enjoyment here and of his liberation hereafter, and change his figure to another form altogether.

54. He always treats me like his young and silly wife, but I must get closer to him to instill understanding in his mind or else my words will have no effect on him.

55. Therefore, I will assume the form of a devotee in order to admonish my husband. It is possible that if I admonish him in this manner, it will make its effect upon he who is now grown white haired with old age.

56. It is possible that good senses may dawn in a clear understanding that is not perverted from its nature.” Thinking in this way, Queen Chudala took the shape of a brahmin boy.

57. She reflected a little on the agni-soma mantra and changed her form like water turning into a wave, then descended on the earth in the form of a brahmin’s lad.

58. She advanced toward her lord with a smiling face, and King Sikhidkwaja saw the brahmin boy advancing towards him.

59. The boy appeared to come from some other forest and stood before the ascetic king in the form of devotion itself. His body, bright as molten gold, was ornamented with a string of pearls.

60. The white sacrificial thread graced his neck and his body was covered with two pieces of milk-white vests. He held a sacred water pot on one hand, and with his pupil’s staff in the other, he made his approach to the king.

61. His wrist was entwined by a string of beads and a long, double chain of beads hung from his neck to the ground.

62. His head was covered by long and flowing jet black hair, like strings of black bees fluttering about the tops of white lotuses. His radiance shed a brightness on the spot.

63. His face, ornamented with earrings, glowed like the rising sun with his luster of rosy rays. The knotted hair on top of his head, a mandara flower fastened on it, appeared like a mountain peak with the rising moon above it.

64. The husband, sitting quietly with his tall body, his limbs and senses under his subjection, ash rubbed all over his body, appeared like a mountain of ice.

65. He saw the brahmin boy appearing before him like the full moon rising on the golden mount of Meru. He rose before him respectfully.

66. Thinking his guest was the son of some god, Sikhidkwaja stood with his bare feet before him and addressed him saying, “Obeisance to you, O you son of a god! Take this seat and sit yourself here.”

67. With his hand, Sikhidkwaja pointed to the leafy bed that spread before him and offered a handful of flowers which he poured into the boy’s hands.

68. The brahmin boy responded saying, “I greet you in return, O son of a king! You look like a dew drop or beaming moonlight sparkling on a lotus leaf.” He then received the flowers from his hand and sat upon the leafy bed.

69. Sikhidhwaja said, “Tell me, O you heaven-born boy, from where did you come and where are you going? It is a lucky day for me that has brought you to my sight.

70. Please accept this pure water, fragrant flowers, and this offering also. Receive this garland of flowers that I have strung with my hands. May all be well with you.”

71. Vasishta related:— So saying, Sikhidhwaja offered the flowers, the garland, and other offerings to the lady who was devoted to him, as is the custom of ceremonial law.

72. Chudala (as the brahmin boy) said:— I have travelled far and wide over many countries on the surface of this earth. I have never met with such a hearty reception and such honors as I have now received from you.

73. Your humility, courtesy and complacence reveal you to be highly favored of the gods and indicate that you will have a long life on earth.

74. Tell me, O devotee. You have abandoned all your earthly desires and practiced magnanimity and tranquility of your soul for a long time. Have you ever applied your mind to attain your final liberation and extinction?

75. You have vowed to undergo the hardship of this forest life and forsaken the care of your large kingdom. You have, my dear sage, chosen a very painful alternative for your final liberation.

76. Sikhidhwaja replied:— Being a god yourself, I do not wonder how you know these things. You wear this form of a brahmin boy, yet the supernatural beauty of your body says that you are an all-knowing god.

77. I think that your body is designed and formed with the ambrosial beams of moonlight. Otherwise, how could your mere appearance shed such sweet peace even at first sight?

78. O handsome boy, I see in your person a great resemblance to the features of my beloved who is now ruling over my kingdom.

79. Please, now refresh your fair and fatigued body by wearing these flower garlands from head to foot, just as a white cloud is a garment covering a mountain from its top to bottom.

80. I see your face as beautiful as the stainless moon. Your limbs are as delicate as tender flower petals, and I see them now waning and fading under the bright sun.

81. Pretty youth, know that I strung these flower garlands in service for the gods. Now I offer and give them to you who is no less a god to me.

82. My life is crowned today with its best luck by this opportunity to serve a guest like you. The wise say that hospitality to guests has merit equal to service to the gods.

83. Now please, O moon-faced god, reveal to me, which god are you? From which lineage of gods comes the god who consents to dignify me with this visit? Please tell me all this and remove the questions that disturb my breast.

84. The brahmin boy replied:— Hear me, king, relate all that you want to know of me, for who is there so uncivil as to deceive and not comply with the request of a humble suppliant?

85. In this world there lives the well known holy saint, Narada by name. He is the snowy spot of pure camphor on the face of those who are famed for the purity of their lives.

86. Once this godly saint sat in meditation in a cave of the golden mountain where the holy Ganges River flows fast with her running current and huge waves dashing against the shore.

87. The saint stepped onto a beach of the river to see how it glided on in its course like a necklace of gems torn down from the high mountain.

88. He heard the tinkling sound of trinkets and bracelets and a mixed murmur of voices. He was curious to know what it was and from where it came.

89. He lightly looked towards the sacred stream and saw a group of young ladies who equaled the celestial nymphs Rambha and Tilottama in their beauty. These damsels were playing and bathing in the clear waters of the holy river.

90. They plunged and played in the waters, hidden from the sight of men and all naked with uncovered breasts blooming like buds of golden lotuses in a lake.

91. They ran to and fro, dashing against each another like ripe fruit on trees, as if intoxicated with flavored liquor, making their observers giddy themselves.

92. Their swollen breasts formed the sanctuary of the god of love. They were washed by the pure waters of the sacred river.

93. Their fullness with delicious liquor put to blush the sweet waters of the sacred Ganges River. They were enclosed in the garden of paradise like the wheels of the car that the god Kama rides upon.

94. Their buttocks were like the pillars of a bridge in water, obstructing and dividing the free passage of the waters of the Ganges. Their upper bodies gave a luster of the world’s beauty.

95. The shadows of their bodies were clearly visible to the naked eye on the clear waters of the Ganges, like a kalpa tree in rainy season with all its branches.

96. The thick vegetation of spring gave shade from the light of day. The flying dust of flowers filled the forest air with fragrance.

97. Water fowls of various kinds were sporting on the banks, as they do by the seaside and watering places round the trees. These ladies’ budding breasts made the blooming lotus buds blush.

98. They held up their faces, beautiful as lotus buds, while their loosened hair hung like swarms of bees. The loose glances of their eyes played like fluttering black bees.

99. Their swollen breasts resembled golden lotuses used by the gods as golden cups to hide their ambrosial nectar for fear of it being seized by demons and demigods.

100. Now they were seen hiding in secret covered shelters and in mountain caves, like lotuses hidden under foliage, and then they were hastening to the cooling river beach to bathe their lovely limbs in its clear stream.

101. The saint saw the collection of young ladies looking as beautiful as the body of the full moon. His mind was ravished with their beauty.

102. He lost the balance of his reason and became elated with giddiness. The breath of his life throbbed in his heart from the impulse of delight that raged and boiled in his breast.

103. At last the excess of his bliss made his passion pour out, just as the fullness of a summer cloud breaks out in water in rainy weather.

104. The saint turned as pale as the waning moon, like pale moonlight on frost, like a fading plant torn from its supporting tree.

105. He faded like the stalk of a vine split in two and withered away like a sapling after it has lost its juicy sap.

106. Sikhidhwaja asked:— Narada is a pure saint, liberated in his lifetime and acquainted with all knowledge. He is devoid of desires or passions, as pure as the clear air both inside and outside his body.

107. How is it that even holy Narada himself, who always leads his life of celibacy, could lose his patience and composure?”

108. Chudala (as the brahmin boy) replied:— Know, O kingly sage, that all living beings in the three worlds, not even the gods are exceptions, by their very nature have bodies composed of both good and evil ingredients.

109. Some remain in ignorance and others in knowledge to the end of their lives. Some remain in happiness and others in misery to the end of their days.

110. Some thrive in happiness with their virtues of contentment and the like, enlightened in their minds like a room by the light of the lamps, and like the bosom of the sea brightened the light of the stars of heaven.

111. Some are tormented by their hunger and poverty, involved in misery like the nature under dark clouds.

112. The true and pure reality of the soul, once lost to sight, makes its appearance before him like a dark and thick cloud of rainy weather.

113. Though one may be employed in continuous investigation into spirituality, yet a moment’s neglect of his spiritualism is sure to darken his spiritual light, just as the apparition of the world appears to sight.

114. As the succession of light and dark makes the course of days and nights, so the return of pain and pleasure indicates the progress of life.

115. Thus the two states of pleasure and pain, the results of our prior acts, accompany our lives from birth to death.

116. This impression of past life completely dominates the lives of the ignorant, just as red dye forever colors a cloth, but it is not so with the intelligent. Their knowledge of truth wipes off the stigma of their prior acts.

117. The eternal color of a gem, whether it be good or bad, shows on the outside. A crystal stone, however clear it may be, takes the color of the other objects reflected in it.

118. But it is not so with the intelligent knower of truth, whose soul is free from all inner and outer impressions in his lifetime, and whose mind is never tinged by the reflection of anything around him, as it is with the ignorant.

119. Not only the presence of things and pleasures stain the minds of the ignorant. Their absence and loss also cause great regret from the stain they leave in the memory, just as things are colored not only by new paint, but also various marks and signs.

120. Thus the minds of the ignorant are never cleansed from the stain of their favorite objects. They are never free from their bondage in this world, unlike the liberated sage who is free because of his lack of earthly attachment. Reducing our desires contributes to our liberation. Increasing our wishes leads us to continued bondage in this world.

121. Sikhidhwaja said:— Tell me my lord, why do men feel sorry or happy at their pain or pleasure, and for things that are far away from them and to which they are bound by their birth in this world?

122. I find your words to be as clear as they are pretty and full of meaning. The more I hear them, the more I thirst to listen to them, just as the peacock is not satisfied with the roaring of clouds.

123. Chudala (as the brahmin boy) answered:— It is pleasant to inquire into the cause of our birth and how the soul with the body derives its knowledge through the senses, thereby feeling a delight which is obvious in babies.

124. But the living soul, contained in the heart and running through the kundalini nadi as the breath of life, is subject to pain and sorrow from its birth.

125. The living soul, which is the vital energy entering into the lungs breathing with the breath of life, becomes confined in the arterial chains of prison houses that are different bodies.

126. The breath of life circulates through the body, touching its different parts and the organs of sense, raising their sensations in the soul. As the moisture of the ground grows trees and shrubs, so does our vitality produce the sensations of pleasure and pain in the soul.

127. The living soul, confined in the arteries of different bodies, gives a degree of happiness and steadiness to some which the miserable can never enjoy.

128. Know that the living soul is liberated in the same proportion as it manifests its peaceful tranquil state. Know also that the soul is in bondage to the same degree that there is sorrow on the face and breathing is choked.

129. Alternating feelings of pain and pleasure also indicate bondage of the soul. The absence of these alternations constitutes its liberation. These are the two states of the living soul.

130. As long as the deceptive senses do not bring false sensations of pain and pleasure to the soul, it rests in its state of sweet composure and calm tranquility.

131. When the invisible soul comes in sight of some transient pleasure or want of pain, it becomes as happy as the cheerful sea reflecting bright moonbeams in its bosom.

132. The soul equally exults at the sight of pleasure as it grieves at the knowledge of its unsteadiness, just as a foolish cat rejoices to see a fish even though it does not have the power to catch it.

133. When the soul has the pure knowledge of phenomena and awareness of itself, it comes to know that there is no such thing as actual pain or pleasure. With this knowledge, it remains calm and quietly composed forever and under every circumstance.

134. When the soul comes to know that it has no relationship with any pain or pleasure, and that its living has no purpose at all, then it is then said to be awakened in itself and to rest in its stillness of nirvana.

135. When the living soul comes to know by its internal intuition that pain and pleasure are unreal in their nature, it is no longer concerned about them but rests quietly within itself.

136. When the soul comes to believe that the visible world is nothing but the emptiness of Consciousness or Brahman himself, it gets its rest in its stillness and becomes as cool as a lamp that has gone out because it lacks oil.

137. What leads the soul to becoming unconsciousness of pain and pleasure is the belief that all nature is emptiness, that all existence is the one unity, and the thought of an infinite emptiness.

138. Thoughts of pleasure and pain are as false as the false appearance of the world. This error is inherited by the living soul from Brahma, the first of living beings in the world.

139. Whatever was thought and ordained by the first creative power in the beginning, the same has taken root in the living soul and is going on even to the present time as its nature.

140. Sikhidhwaja asked: Only when one feels some pleasure in his mind does it run in the blood through his veins and arteries. But the holy Narada could not be affected by the sight, or drop his semen because of it.

141. Chudala (as the brahmin boy) replied:— When the animal soul is excited, that excites the living breath of life force (prana) into motion. The entire body obeys the dictates of the mind, just as soldiers obey the orders of their commander.

142. The vital airs being put to motion, they move the internal sap and serum from their seats, just as blowing winds bear the fragrance and pollen of flowers and drop down flowers, fruit and leaves of trees.

143. When semen is put into motion, it falls downwards, just as clouds driven together burst into rainwater.

144. The semen then passes out of the body by the channels of the veins and arteries, just as running waters pass through the channels and canals of a river.

145. Sikhidhwaja said:— O you divine boy! Your instructive words indicate that you know both the past and present states of things. Now please instruct me. What do you mean by the nature of things, the power of Brahma?

146. Chudala (as the brahmin boy) replied:— Nature is the intrinsic character implanted in the constitution of things at the beginning of their creation. This nature continues to this day as the essential part of the pot or painting, as examples, and all other things.

147. It comes on through an accidental course of its own. The learned compare it with the rise and fall of waves and bubbles in water, or the marks of defects in wood or iron.

148. Through the power of this nature, all things in the world move about in their various forms with all their properties of change or inertia. Only the indifferent soul without desires is liberated from the influence of nature. Souls with cravings are fast bound with its own chains, wandering with their restless craving nature in repeated reincarnations.

✅
Chapter 6a.86 — Narada’s Sperm Gestates in a Pot and Is Born as Kumbha, Who Is the Brahmin Boy

1. Chudala continues:— It is the nature of everything in this extensive world to be born of its own kind. All persons and things continue to exist because of their own desires and tendencies, whether it be in the direction of virtue or vice.

2. When the desires in a man’s mind are either diminished or brought under his control, he is no longer subject to the acts of goodness or vice. Utterly indifferent, he becomes exempt from both merit and demerit and from their consequences of reiterated births and deaths.

3. Sikhidhwaja replied:— O eloquent speaker, your words are as full of sense as they are of great importance to me. They indicate your great penetration into the depths of wisdom.

4. Listening to the sweet exultance of your speech has given me a satisfaction equal to that of drinking a large dose of ambrosial water.

5. Now be pleased to give me a brief account of the story of your birth and pedigree. I will listen with all my attention to your words of sound sense and wisdom.

6. Please sage, tell me what the son of lotus- Brahma, the venerable sage Narada, did with the seminal strength which unconsciously fell from him to the ground.

7. Chudala related:— The muni sage curbed back the infuriated elephant of his beastly mind by the strong bridle of prudence and bound it fast with the iron chain of great intelligence.

8. His virile strength, hot as fire, resembled the moon melted down by the flame of the final conflagration. It was as liquefied as quicksilver or other metallic solution.

9. The sage had by his side a water-pot made of crystal stone. He took that pot and put the fluid semen in it, as if depositing liquid moonbeams into the disc of the moon.

10. On one side of Mount Meru, there was a projected rock with a deep cave inside. Passage into it was not obstructed by the heaps of stones which lay before it.

11. The muni sage placed the pot inside that cave as the embryo is situated in the belly. He filled the pot with milk which he produced by his will, just as the lord of creation filled the Milky Ocean with its watery milk.

12. The muni sage neglected his sacred offerings and brooded over the pot, like a bird broods over its egg. Over the course of a month, the fetus grew up in the pot of milk, just as the reflection of the crescent moon increases in the bosom of the Milky Ocean.

13. At the end of the month the pot bore a fully formed fetus, just as the orb of the moon becomes full in the course of a month, and as spring season produces lotus buds with their blushing petals.

14. The fetus came out in the fullness of time with its body fully developed, just as the full moon rises from the Milky Ocean without diminution of any of its digits.

15. The body had become fully developed over this time. Its limbs were as beautiful as the horns of the moon shine brightly in the bright fortnight.

16. After performance of the initiatory ceremonies, the sage instructed him in whatever he knew, as one pours out the contents of one vessel into another.

17. In course of a short time the boy became acquainted with all his father’s oral instructions and became an exact copy of the venerable sage.

18. The old sage became as illustrious with his brilliant boy as the moon shining brightly with its retinue of resplendent stars.

19. Once on a time, sage Narada went to the heavenly abode of his father Brahma accompanied by his young boy and there made his obeisance to the first father of mankind.

20. The boy also bowed down before his grandsire. Brahma, knowing the boy to be versed in the Vedas and sciences, took him up and set him on his lap.

21. Lord Brahma pronounced his blessings on the boy and knowing him to be born of the pot and acquainted with the Vedas, gave him the name of Kumbha (the pot).

22. O hermit, know that I am that son of the sage Narada and grandson of the great lotus-born Brahma himself. I am known by the name of Kumbha from my birth into the pot.

23. I have the four Vedas for my companions and playmates. I always delight in their company and in the heavenly abode of my lotusborn grandfather, the divine Brahma.

24. Know that the goddess Saraswati is my mother and the Gayatri hymn is my maternal aunt. My home is in the heaven of Brahma where I dwell as the grandchild of the lord of creatures.

25. I wander at my pleasure throughout the wide extended world. I wander about with a soul full of joy, and not on any errand or business whatever.

26. I walk over the earth without touching it with my feet. Its flying dust does not approach my body, nor is my body ever fatigued from all its travels.

27. It happened this day that I came to see your hermitage in the course of my ethereal journey, so I directed my course this way in order to see you here.

28. Thus O forester, I have given you the whole story of my life as you have heard just now. It is a pleasure for good people to hold conversation with the good and wise.

29. Valmiki said:— As they were talking in this manner the day past away to its evening service and the sun set down below the horizon. The court broke and everyone left for his evening ceremonial washing, meeting again with the rising sun on the next morning.

✅
Chapter 6a.87 — Chudala, as the Brahmin boy, Criticizes Sikhidhwaja’s Withdrawal

1. Sikhidhwaja said:— Sage, it appears to me that the hoarded merits of all my former lives have brought you to my presence here today, just as an unforeseen hurricane drives the waters of the sea on dry mountain tops.

2. I reckon myself as highly blessed among the blessed today to be this favored by your presence and cooled by your speech like ambrosial dew from your lips.

3. Never has more sensible speech touched and cooled my soul to such a degree as yours now. Therefore I consider your holy presence more precious to me than the gaining of a kingdom.

4. The unrestrained delight which is felt free from selfinterest and selfish motives is far superior to the self-restricted pleasure of sovereignty, which is delightful only once in imagination.

5. Vasishta said:— As the king was uttering these praises, the brahmin boy Kumbha passed over them in silence and interrupted.

6. Chudala (as the Brahmin boy, Kumbha) said:— Sage, please put a stop to your words. Give me an account of yourself as I have given mine to you. Tell me who you are and what you are doing on this lonely mountain.

7. How long have you been living as a forester like this? What is your main object? Tell me the bare truth, because it is beyond the principles of an ascetic to utter anything but the plain truth.

8. Sikhidhwaja replied:— Lord, as you are the offspring of a god, everything must be well known to you. The gods are fully acquainted with the secrets and circumstances of all people. I have very little to relate to you about me.

9. My fear of the world has made me abandon it and make a home in this forest. You know this well, but I will briefly tell you the story.

10. I am Sikhidhwaja, the ruler of a country which I renounced a long time ago for a seat in the forest. Know, O knower of all truths, that my fears of this world’s traps and future reincarnations in it have driven me to retire in this wilderness.

11. This accursed world is nothing but repeated pain and pleasure and repeated life and death. I have undertaken spiritual austerities in these solitary woods in order to evade all this.

12. I wander about and perform my rigorous austerities without any rest. I allow myself no rest, but keep my vigils like a miser over his few possessions.

13. I am without effort or attempt, and so without any fruit or result also. I am lonely and so helpless. I am poor and therefore friendless also. Divine personage, I am wearing out in this forest like a withered tree eaten by worms.

14. I strictly observe all my sacred rites without fail, yet I fall from one sorrow into a sea of sorrows. I have grown too pensive. Even ambrosial nectar is unpleasant to me.

15. Chudala (as the boy, Kumbha) said:— Once I had my great proginitor, Brahma, tell me which is the more useful and preferable for mankind: the observance of duties or their nonobservance for the sake of knowledge.

16. Brahma replied, “No doubt knowledge is the supreme good because it leads a man to understand the unity of God and the oneness of himself. But action has been inculcated in man from creation as his duty in life, both for pleasure and for passing his lifetime.

17. Let those who have not acquired their intellectual light and the sight of the soul be employed in their duties to their offspring and fellow creatures. Who that lacks a silk robe will go about naked instead of wrapping himself with a blanket or coarse cloth?”

18. “The ignorant who are moved by their desires and live upon their hopes meet with their objects as the reward of their action. The knowing and speculative theorist, having no desire in his mind or action of his body, meets with no reward of either.

19. An action without its object goes to nothing and for nothing, just as fruit-bearing plants wither and die without being properly watered.

20. As the effect of one season on plants is displaced by that of the succeeding season, so the fruit of an action is frustrated by the lack of desire.

21. As it is the nature of kusa grass never to bear fruit, although they bear flowers, so my son, no action can produce any fruit without a desire for the object.”

22. “A boy’s mind, possessed with the idea of a ghost in his mind, sees a ghost before him. A sick man having hypochondria of his illness is soon attacked by it.

23. Kusa grass presents its fair flowers to view without ever bearing fruit. In the same way, a speculative theorist meditates on the beauty of his theory without producing its results by the practice.”

24. Sikhidhwaja said:— But it is said that all human desire is vain, and its accompanying egoism is a fallacy, and that they are the creatures of our ignorance, like our error of seeing a sea in the burning sands of a desert.

25. So it is to the sage whose ignorance is completely removed by his knowledge of all things as the Divine Spirit. Of course, such a man has no desire rising in his mind, just as the eyes of the wise see no sea of water in the sands.

26. A person is freed from his bonds of his disease and death by forsaking his desires. When his internal soul becomes as perfect as a god, he is exempt from future birth.

27. But generally, the human mind is filled with desires and only the learned few are exempt. Transcendental knowledge of the knowable one exempts the divinely wise from their rebirth in this mortal world.

28. Chudala (as the boy, Kumbha) replied:— It is true, O kingly sage, that Brahma and other gods, as well as all wise sages, say that knowledge is the chief good. In spite of your knowledge of this, why do you remain in this state of gross ignorance?

29. What is the meaning of these pots and staffs, these wooden stools and those seats of kusa grass? Why is it, O king, that you delight in these false playthings of fools?

30. Why do you not employ your mind to inquire into the questions of what you are, how this world came to be, and how and when it will cease to exist? Instead of inquiring in these solemn truths, you pass your time in foolishness like the ignorant.

31. Why don’t you discuss the nature of bondage and liberation in the company of the learned, and pay your homage at their venerable feet?

32. O king, do you want to pass your life in painful austerities, like some insects finish their days boring holes in the stones in which they live?

33. You can easily obtain the delight you seek if you will only take yourself to the service of holy men and keep company with the tolerant and wise souls, arguing with them on spiritual subjects.

34. Or you may continue to remain in your cave in this forest, living on the simple food of holy men, forsaking the evil propensities of your mind, and living like an insect in a hole under the ground.

35. Vasishta related:— Being thus awakened to sense by his wife, the divine boy, Sikhidhwaja melted into tears. His face bathed in water, he spoke to the lad.

36. Sikhidhwaja said:— O divine child, after such a long time you awake me to my senses. Now I perceive that it was my weak-headedness that drove me from the society of respectable to this lonely forest.

37. Ah! I find that my mind is today cleansed of its endless sins, which has brought you to me to criticize my past misconduct.

38. O beautiful boy, from now on I consider you to be my teacher, my father, and my best friend forever. I acknowledge myself as your pupil, therefore I bow down at your feet and pray you to take pity on me.

39. Please admonish me now on the subject of divine knowledge, as you are best acquainted with it, and whereby I may be freed from all my sorrows and settled with perfect peace and bliss of my mind.

40. Initially you said that knowledge is the supreme bliss or supreme good of mankind. Now tell me. What is that knowledge which saves us from misery? Is it the knowledge of particulars that leads us to know the specials, or that of the general which brings as to the transcendental?

41. Chudala (as the boy, Kumbha) replied:— I will tell you prince as much as I know and what may be best acceptable to you. It is best to not throw away my words in vain, like crowing ravens about a headless trunk.

42. Because words uttered in response to a person’s foolish questions are thrown in vain. Unheeded, they are as useless as eyesight in the dark.

43. Sikhidhwaja said:— Sage, your words are as acceptable to me as the ordinances of the Vedas. Though you utter them without previous meditation, yet I have full faith in them.

44. Chudala (as the boy, Kumbha) replied:— As a boy obeys the words of his father, knowing it to be pronounced for his certain good, so must you receive my words.

45. Believe that my advice is all only for your good. Hear them with proper attention. Listen to my words as you hear music, without inquiring into their reason or rhyme.

46. Let me tell you an interesting story of a certain person whose conduct and character in every way resembled yours, and who was brought back to his sense after long going astray. This is a tale to dispel the worldly cares and fears of the intelligent.

✅
Chapter 6a.88 — The Tale of the Rich Man Who Failed to Grasp the Real Philosopher’s Stone

1. Chudala (as Kumbha) related:— Once there lived a rich man who combined the opposite qualities of charity and poverty in his character, just as the sea contains water and undersea fires in its depth.

2. He was skilled in arts as he was practiced in arms. He was restrained in all dealings as he was expert in business. But his great worldly ambition to which he devoted all his pursuits kept him from the spiritual knowledge of the most high.

3. He employed all his endeavors to obtain the imaginary gem of the philosopher’s stone (chintamani), just as the undersea fire wants to devour the waters and dry up the sea bed.

4. After a lapse of a long time, his great enthusiasm and persevering patience succeeded in bringing him the precious gem at last, because there is nothing which may not be produced by man’s ardent zeal.

5. His attempts were successful because of his unwearied labor joined with firm resolution and a well directed plan. Using such means, even the meanest man is favored with fortune.

6. He saw the stone lying before him, ready to be grasped in his hand, like a hermit sitting on a mountain peak thinks he can easily grab the rising moon with his hand.

7. He saw the brilliant gem before him, but became mistrustful of his sight and the reality of the object, like a poor man, hearing of his sudden elevation to royalty, mistrusts the report and doubts that it was meant for him.

8. The rich man was immersed in his thoughts of amazement for a long time. Overlooking and neglecting to lay hold of his great gain, he kept questioning in his mind in the following manner. The rich man’s thoughts:—

9. Whether this stone is a gem or not, and if so, whether it be the philosopher’s stone or any other, I fear that if I touch it, it will fly away or be soiled.

10. Until this time, no one has obtained the long sought philosopher’s stone. If ever anyone obtained it, the Shastra scriptures say it would be in his next life.

11. No doubt only my miserliness makes me wrongly see this brilliant gem before me with my eyes, like a short-sighted man seeing a flashing firebrand and deep-laid moon in the sky.

12. How could the tide of my fortune run so high at once that I should succeed so soon to obtain the precious stone that is the splendor and height of perfection and which produces all treasure?

13. There must be few, very few indeed, fortunate men who can expect their good fortune to court and wait on them at such little pain in such a short time.

14. I am only a poor and honest man possessed of very little qualification, worth or account among mankind. It is impossible that so miserable a wretch could ever be blessed with this masterpiece of perfection. Chudala (as Kumbha) continues:—

15. For a long time the unbelieving rich man hung in a state of suspense between his certainty and uncertainty. He was so infatuated by his mental blindness that he did not even stretch out his hand to lay hold on the jewel lying openly before him.

16. Hence, whatever is obtainable by anyone at anytime is often missed and lost sight of because of either his ignorance or negligence of it, just as the precious gem in the parable, the sought after object that lay tangible in full view.

17. As the rich man was hanging undecided, frozen by his suspicion, the precious gem flew away and vanished from his sight, just as the deserving man avoids his critic, an arrow flies from its string, or a stone from its sling-shot.

18. When prosperity appears to a man, she confers on him her blessings of wisdom and prudence. But as prosperity forsakes her foolish devotee, she deprives him of all his discretion.

19. The man tried again to invoke and recall the precious gem to his presence, because the persevering spirit is never tired of trying again and again for his expected success.

20. He came to behold before him a brittle piece of glass, shining with its false glare like the former gem. This glass was placed before him by the invisible hands of a spiritual master who had come to tempt him and deride his folly.

21. The fool thought this brittle thing lying before him was the real gem, just as an ignorant fool believes sparkling sands to be pure gold dust.

22. Such is the case with the deluded mind. It mistakes eight for six and foe for a friend. It sees a serpent in a rope and views desert land as a watery expanse. It drinks poison as if it was nectar and spies another moon in the sky in the reflection of the true one.

23. The rich man took up that fraudulent worthless imitation for a real gem. He thought it was the philosopher’s stone which would confer on him whatever he desired. With this belief he gave all he had to charity as they were no use to him anymore.

24. He thought his own country was devoid of everything that was delightful to him. He thought the society of its people were debasing to him. He thought his lost house was of no use of him and that his relatives and friends were averse to his happiness.

25. Thinking like this, he determined to remove himself to a distant country and enjoy his rest there. So taking his false gem with him, he went out and entered an uninhabited forest.

26. There his deceptive gem was of no use to him. It loaded him with all imaginable disasters, like the gloomy shadow of a black mountain and the horrid gloom of deep ignorance.

27. The afflictions brought on by one’s own ignorance are far greater than those caused by old age or the torments of death. The calamity of ignorance, like black hairs covering the crown of the head, supersedes all other earthly afflictions.

✅
Chapter 6a.89 — The Parable of an Elephant Twice Captured

1. Chudala (as Kumbha) said:— O holy hermit, let me tell you another very interesting story which well applies to your case, the ruler of a land, and which will serve to awaken your understandings.

2. There lived a large elephant in the Vindhya Hills. It was the leader of a great number of elephants, and in its big and elevated head, its understanding was as clear as the lofty summit of the mountain that was humbled down at the bidding of sage Agastya.

3. His two tusks were as strong as the thunderbolts of heaven, and as long and stunning as far reaching flashes of lightning. They were as destructive as the flames of the final destruction and so powerfully sharp that they could bore and uproot a mountain.

4. The elephant came to be caught in an iron trap laid by elephant catchers. He was fast held by it just like the Vindhya by sage Agastya’s charm, and just as the giant Bali was bound by the chains of Vamana.

5. The captive and patient elephant was tormented by an iron goad in his trunk. He suffered excruciating pains of his torture, like Tripurasura under the burning fire arrow of Shiva.

6. For three days the elephant lay in this sad plight, watched by his hunter from a distance.

7. The great suffering of the elephant made him open his mouth wide and utter a loud scream that growled like the loud noise of roaring clouds.

8. Then he exerted the force of both his tusks and thereby managed to break the iron bar, just as Bali of old broke open the bolts of the gate of heaven.

9. From a distance, the hunter saw the infuriated beast breaking his hard fetters, just as Lord Vishnu saw the demon Bali breaking out from his underground cell beneath the mountain in order to invade his heaven on high.

10. The elephant catcher climbed a tall palm tree, then jumped from its top in an attempt to land on the elephant’s head, but unfortunately he fell on the ground, just as the demon was hurled down to hell by the victorious Vishnu.

11. The hunter missed the head of the huge animal, instead falling headlong at his feet, just as a ripe fruit is dropped by hurrying winds.

12. Seeing the hunter falling and lying prostrate before him, the great elephant took pity, just as the noble mind is compassionate on others even in their own piteous state.

13. The noble animal thought that it was no bravery on his part to trample over the self-fallen. Thus he had the magnanimity of sparing the life of his own enemy.

14. He broke only his chains and took his way leaving all obstacles and barriers, just as rushing waters bear down the strongest bridge.

15. His strength broke the strong net, but his piety spared the life of the weak man. He went off just like the setting sun after dispelling evening clouds.

16. After he saw the elephant had gone away, the hunter got up from the ground. He found that he was as safe and sound after his fall as he had been before it, just as the elephant had been relieved of his pains after breaking his chains.

17. In spite of the great impact of falling from the tall palm tree, the hunter felt no hurt in any part of his body, which is why I think that the bodies of scoundrels are fortified against every harm.

18. The wicked gain greater strength by execution of their repeated crimes, just as rainy clouds gather the more by their frequent showers. Thus the hunter renewed his hunt.

19. The elephant catcher felt very sorry at his failed attempt to catch the elephant, like the dejection of one who lost a treasure that had fallen into his grasp.

20. He sought about and beat the forest looking for the elephant hiding in the thickets, just as Rahu (the north node of the moon) rises in the sky to lay hold of the moon covered under clouds.

21. After a long search, he saw the elephant resting under a shady tree, like a warrior returned from the battlefield.

22. The cunning huntsmen collected a great many tools to trap the elephant at his resting place.

23. Near that place in the forest, he dug a round ditch, just as the great creator of the world stretched the ocean to encircle this earth.

24. Then he covered the great pit with green branches and leaves, just as autumn covers the face of the empty sky with fleecy and flimsy clouds.

25. One day the elephant was roaming at large in the forest and fell into the pit like a fragment of a rock on the coast falls headlong onto the sea shore.

26. The big elephant was caught in the round pit which was deep as the dreadful sea. He lay confined in it like some treasure is shut up in the hollow womb of a chest.

27. Trapped in the bottom of that far extending pit, the elephant passed his time in endless trouble and anxiety, like the demon Bali in his dark, underground cave.

28. This is the result of the silly elephant letting his cruel hunter go unhurt. Once before the hunter had caught him. If the elephant had made an end of him then, he would not have fallen into the pit to be caught a second time.

29. All foolish people, not having the foresight and precaution to prevent mishaps in the future, are greatly exposed to calamity like the Vindhyan elephant.

30. The elephant was happy with the thought of his freedom from the hunter’s chains. He did not think about any future mishap far away, and that was the only cause for his entrapment.

31. Know, O great soul, that there is no bondage of man except his own ignorance. Not even prisoners in jail are under such bondage as the intellectual servitude of freemen under their errors and prejudice. The greatest freedom of man is enlightenment of the soul and knowledge of the cosmos as one Universal Soul. Ignorance of this truth is the root of the slavery of mankind to the errors of this world.

✅
Chapter 6a.90 — Explanation of the Story of the Philosopher’s Stone

1. Sikhidhwaja said, “O divine boy, please explain the meaning of the parables of the true and false gems, and the unchained and tied up elephant, which you just told me.”

2. Chudala (as Kumbha) replied:— Listen as I expound on the meaning of my stories and their words. I have stored them in your heart and mind for the sake of enlightening your understanding.

3. That searcher after the philosopher’s stone undoubtedly was acquainted with science, but he had no knowledge of the truth. He searched for the gem but he did not know what it was. That man is you.

4. You are versed in the sciences like the rich man in the story, and you shine above others like the shining sun on mountain tops. But you do not have the rest and quiet derived from the knowledge of truth. You are immersed in your errors like a block of stone in water.

5. O holy man, know that the philosopher’s stone is to give up errors. O holy man, try to get that in your possession and with that set yourself above the reach of misery.

6. The renunciation of gross objects produces the pure joy of holiness. The abandonment of the world gives one sovereignty over his soul which is reckoned as the true philosopher’s stone.

7. Abandonment of all is the highest perfection, which you must soon practice, because indifference towards worldly grandeur shows the greatest magnanimity of the soul.

8. You, O king, have forsaken your kingdom together with your queen, riches, relatives and friends. You have rested in your renunciation like Brahma, the lord of creatures, rested at night after completing his act of creation.

9. You have gone too far from your country to this distant hermitage, like the bird of heaven, the great garuda, flew with his prey, the tortoise, to the farthest mountain of earth.

10. With your abandonment of all worldly goods, you have renounced your egotism and cleansed your nature from every stain, just as autumn winds disperse clouds from the sky.

11. Know that only by driving away the egoism of the mind and all desires from the heart does one get his perfection, the fullness of the world, and perfect bliss. But you have been laboring under the ignorance of what is to be abandoned and what is to be retained, just as the sky labors under clouds.

12. It is not abandonment of the world which gives you that highest joy that you seek. You must seek something else.

13. When the mind is infested by its thoughts and the heart is corroded by the sores of its desire, all renunciation flies away like the stillness of a forest flies before a storm.

14. Of what use is the abandonment of the world to one whose mind is ever infested by his troublesome thoughts? It is impossible for a tree exposed to the storms of the sky to be at rest.

15. Thoughts constitute the mind, which is only another name for will or desire. So long as these are raging in a person, it is in vain to talk of controlling the mind.

16. The mind, occupied by its busy thoughts, in an instant finds the three worlds presenting themselves before it. Therefore, what is the use of abandoning this world when the infinite worlds of the universe are present before the mind?

17. Renunciation flies on swift wings as soon as the mind entertains a desire, like a bird flying away as soon as it hears a noise.

18. Detachment is the main object for abandoning the world, but when you allow a care to rankle in your breast, you bid a farewell to your renunciation, just as one bids farewell to his honored and invited guest.

19. After you have let the precious gem of renunciation slip from your hand, you have chosen the false, glossy trifle of austerity for some fond wish that is desirable in your view.

20. I see your mind is fixed upon willful pains of your austerities, just as the sight of a deluded man is fixed upon on the moon’s reflection in water.

21. Forsaking the detachment of your mind, you have followed the cravings of your heart and chosen to live like a hermit, denying bodily passions, which is full of suffering from first to last.

22. He who forsakes the easy task of devotion to God, which is filled with infinite bliss, in order to undertake painful austerities is said to make a suicide of his own soul.

23. You took a vow of self-renunciation by renouncing all your earthly possessions. But instead of observing renunciation, you attached yourself to painful asceticism in this dreary wilderness.

24. You broke the bonds of your kingdom and moved away from its boundaries thinking they were too painful for you. But tell me, are you not constrained here to the far more unbearable and strong chains of rigid imprisonment and tiresome struggles of your asceticism?

25. I think you are much more involved in the care of defending yourself from heat and cold in this forest, and that you are bound more tightly to your rigors than you had any idea of before you left your kingdom.

26. Before you vainly thought to have obtained the philosopher’s stone, but at last you must find that your gain is not worth even a glass trinket.

27. Now sage, I have given you a full interpretation of the eagerness of a man to pocket the invaluable gem. No doubt you have comprehended its right meaning. Now store its meaning in the casket of your mind.

✅
Chapter 6a.91 — Explanation of the Parable of the Elephant

1. Chudala (as Kumbha) continued:— O great king, now hear me explain the meaning of the story of the Vindhyan elephant, which will be as useful to you as it will appear wonderful.

2. That elephant of the Vindhyan range is you in this forest. His two strong tusks are no other than the two virtues of reasoning and renunciation on which you lay your strength.

3. The hunter who was the elephant’s enemy and trapped him is the personification of the great ignorance that has laid hold of you for your misery only.

4. Even the strong is foiled by the weak, led from one danger to another and from sorrow to sorrow just like the strong elephant was led by the weak hunter, and as you, O mighty king, are led by your imbecilic ignorance in this forest.

5. As the mighty elephant was caught in the strong iron chain, so you are held tightly in the trap of your desire which has brought all this calamity on you.

6. Man’s expectation is the iron chain. Expectations are stronger, harder and more durable than the metal. Iron rusts and wastes away in time, but our expectations rise high and hold us faster.

7. The hunter marked the elephant by remaining unseen in his hiding place. In the same way your ignorance lurks from a distance after you, marking you for his prey.

8. As the elephant broke the bonds of his enemy’s iron chains, so have you broken the ties of your peaceful rule and the bonds of your royalty and enjoyments.

9. O pious king, it is sometimes possible to break the bonds of iron chains, but it is impossible, O holy prince, to stop our growing desires and fond expectations.

10. The hunter who caught the elephant in the trap fell from on high to the ground. So was your ignorance also leveled to the ground, seeing you deprived of your royalty and all your former dignity.

11. When a man who is disgusted with the world wants to relinquish his desire of enjoyment, he makes his ignorance tremble, just as a demon who lives in a tree quakes with fear when the tree is felled.

12. When a self-resigned man remains devoid of desire for temporal enjoyments, he bids farewell to his ignorance, which quits him like the demon leaves his fallen tree.

13. A man getting rid of his animal gratifications demolishes the abode of his ignorance from the mind, just like a wood-cutter destroys the bird nests in the tree which he has cut down.

14. No doubt you have put down your ignorance by renouncing your royalty and resorting to this forest. Of course your mind is cast down, but it is not yet destroyed by the sword of your renunciation.

15. It rises again and gains renewed strength. Minding its former defeat, it has at last overpowered you by confining you in this wilderness and restraining you in the painful prison of your false asceticism.

16. If you can kill your fallen ignorance in any way, it will not be able to destroy you in your rigorous penance, though it has reduced you to this plight by your abdication of royalty.

17. The ditch that the hunter dug to encircle and trap the elephant is this painful pit of austerity which your ignorance has dug to capture you.

18. The many provisions and supplies the hunter placed over the ditch to entice the elephant are the very many expectations of future reward which your ignorance presents as reward for your penitence.

19. O king, though you are not the ignorant elephant, yet you are not unlike it, being cast in this forest by your incorrigible ignorance.

20. The ditch for the elephant truly was filled with tender plants and leaves for the elephant’s fodder, but your cave is full of rigorous austerities which no humanity can bear or tolerate.

21. You are still caged in this prison house of the ascetic’s cell, doomed to undergo all the imagined torments of your penance and martyrdom. You truly resemble fallen Bali confined in his underground cell.

22. No doubt you are the empty headed elephant, fast bound in the chain of false rigors and imprisoned in this cave of your ignorance. Thus I have given a full exposition of the parable of the elephant of the Vindhya Hills. Now from this, pick out the best lesson for yourself.

✅
Chapter 6a.92 — The King Burns His Hermit Possessions

1. Chudala (as Kumbha) continued:— Tell me king, what made you decline to accept the advice of Queen Chudala, who is equally skilled in morality as well as in divine knowledge?

2. She is an adept among those who know the truth. She actually practices all that she preaches to others. Her words are the dictates of truth. They deserve to be received with due deference.

3. You rejected her advice because of over confidence in your own judgment. Yet let me know, why did she not prevent you from parting with everything?

4. Sikhidhwaja replied, “But I ask you another question, and I hope you will answer. Why do you say that I have not renounced everything when I have resigned my kingdom, my home and my country, and when I have left my wife and all my wealth behind?”

5. Chudala (as Kumbha) replied:— O king, you say truly that you have forsaken your kingdom and home, your lands and relatives, and even your wife and wealth, but that does not make your renunciation complete since none of these truly belong to you. They come of themselves and they go away from man. Only your egoism is yours, and that you have not yet gotten rid of.

6. You have not yet abandoned your egoism, which abandonment is the greatest delight of your soul. You cannot get rid of your sorrows until you are quite free from your egoistic feelings.

7. Sikhidhwaja said, “You say that my kingdom and possessions were not mine. Now all I have is this forest and these rocks and trees and shrubs. If I am willing to quit all these, would that be complete renunciation?”

8. Vasishta said:— Hearing these words of the brahmin boy Kumbha, the conqueror of senses, King Sikhidhwaja held silence for a while, and returned no answer.

9. He wiped off his attachment to the forest from his heart. He made up his mind to move away, just as the current of a stream in rainy weather glides along and carries down the dust and dirt from its shores.

10. Sikhidhwaja said, “Now sage, I am resolved to leave this forest and bid farewell to all its caves and trees. Tell me, does this renunciation of everything form my absolute renunciation of all things?”

11. Kumbha replied:— The foot of this mountain with all its woodlands, trees and caverns are not your property but are common to all. Then how can forsaking them be your absolute renunciation at all?

12. You still have not forsaken your egoism. You must get rid of your ego in order to be freed from the cares and sorrows of this earthly world.

13. If none of these things is mine, then how can total renunciation come from resigning my hermit’s cell and grove?

14. Vasishta said.:— The self-governed Sikhidhwaja became awaked to his sense by Kumbha’s admonitions. For a moment the king remained silent with the light that shone within him.

15. His pure consciousness returned to his mind and the blaze of his right knowledge burnt away the impurities of his attachment to the hermitage, like a gust of wind driving dust from the ground.

16. Sikhidhwaja said, “Sage, I have taken this hermitage from my heart. I have forsaken my attachment to all its sacred, covered shelters and trees. Therefore consider me as having resigned my all and everything in world.”

17. Kumbha replied:— How can I consider you as fully resigned by resigning these gardens and trees and everything else belonging to them? None of them belongs to you. You are not their owner and you do not deserve them in any way.

18. You have another thing that you must forsake, and that is the greatest and best thing that has fallen to your lot in this world. It must be by your renunciation of that thing that you can set yourself free from all.

19. Sikhidhwaja said, “If even this is not the all that I have and which you want me to resign, then take these earthen pots and basins, these hides and skins, and my cave also. Know that I will renounce all these forever and I will take myself elsewhere.”

20. Vasishta said:— So saying the dispassionate king rose from his seat, his mind composed and quiet like an autumn cloud rising and dispersing on the top of a mountain.

21. Chudala, sitting on her seat as Kumbha, could not help smiling in amazement as she saw the king’s motions and movements, just as the sun laughs from above to see the foolish attempts of men on the earth below.

22. Kumbha looked steadily at Sikhidhwaja, sitting silently with the thought, “Ah! let him do whatever he likes. His sanctification and renunciation of the temporal articles of this world do not serve his spiritual edification at all.”

23. Sikhidhwaja then brought out all his sacred vessels and seats from his cave, collecting them all in one place like the great ocean yielding up all her submerged treasures after the great flood was over.

24. Having collecting them in a pile, the king set fire to them with dried fuel like the sunstone or glass igniting the combustible.

25. The sacred vessels and goods were set on fire and burnt down. The king left them behind and sat on a seat beside Kumbha, just as the sun sets on Mount Meru after he had burnt down in the world by the fire of dissolution.

26. The king said to his prayer beads, “You have been a trusted friend to me, your master, as long as I turn you on my fingers, counting beads.

27. And though I have turned you over and over with my sacred mantras in these forests, yet you have been of no service to me at all.

28. And though I have travelled with you, O my sacred casket, and I have seen many holy places in your company, still you have proved to be no good to me. I now resign you to the flames.”

29. The burning fire rose in flames and flashes in the sky appearing like glittering stars. Then he took his deerskin seat and threw it on the fire saying, “For so long I have carried you on my back like an ignorant stag.

30. My ignorance made me hold onto you for so long. Now you are at liberty to go your own way. May peace and bliss attend you forever.

31. Ascend with the rising fire to heaven and twinkle there like the stars.” So saying he took off his hide garment from his body and committed it to the flames.

32. The king’s funeral pyre spread like a sea of fire driven about by winds blowing from the mountains. Then the king thought of also throwing his water pot into the fire.

33. He said to it, “You sage, who bore sacred water for all my sacred functions, O my good water pot, it is true that I do not have the power of properly compensating you for your past services.

34. You were the best model of true friendship, good nature, benevolence and constancy, and the best example of goodness and all good qualities in your great bounty.

35. O you my water pot, who was the receptacle of all goodness to me, now depart your own way by your purification in the same sacred fire in which I first found you (the potter’s fire). May your ways all be blissful to you!” So saying he cast his water pot into the consecrated fire.

36. “All good things are to be given to the good or to the fire, but all bad things are cast off like the dust of the earth as foolish men fall to the ground by their secret craft.

37. It is well for you, my low mattress, to be put to fire and reduced to worthless ashes.” So saying, he took up his mattress and cast it into the flaming fire.

38. Soon the seat on which he used to sit in his pure meditation on God was committed to the flames, because it is better to give up something quickly if one has to get rid of it soon anyway.

39. “This, my alms-pot, which contained the best articles of food presented to me by good people, I now commit to this flame with whatever it has in it.

40. The fire burns a thing only once, until the burnt article ceases to burn anymore. Therefore I shun all the implements of my ceremonial rites in order to set me free from the bondage of all actions for ever more.

41. Be not sorry that I forsake you, for who is there that will bear things that are unworthy of himself?”

42. So saying, he threw all his cooking vessels, the plates and dishes of his kitchen, and everything else he needed or used in his hermitage into the fire. All these burned in a blaze like the world burning with all destructive fire of the final dissolution.

✅
Chapter 6a.93 — Chudala Explains the Meaning of Complete Renunciation

1. Vasishta said:— Sikhidhwaja then rose up and set fire to his hut of dry leaves and grass. As very often is the case with foolish men, that they demolish the structure of their own fancy and caprice.

2. Whatever else was left of the hermit possessions, Sikhidhwaja took them all, one after the other, and set fire to them with his composed and unconcerned mind, observing a strict silence all the while.

3. He burnt and broke down everything, throwing away his food and preserved condiments, his clothes and everything else with a quite content state of his mind.

4. The hermitage was desolate, having been a human home awhile before. It resembled what was left of King Daksha’s sacrificial pavilion after its devastation by the all-devouring fire of Veerabhadra.

5. Frightened deer, afraid of the burning fire, left their beds where they had been laying and chewing cud at their ease and fled far away to distant deserts, just as townsmen flee from a burning quarter to distant places.

6. Seeing all the vessels and utensils burning, fueled by dry wood on all sides, the king seemed to remain quite content and careless amid the scene, retaining possession only of his body.

7. Sikhidhwaja said, “Now I am an all-abandoning saint. I have abandoned all desire and every object. I wonder how I have lived for so long before being awakened to my right knowledge by the holy lectures of my heavenly child.

8. I have now become a pure and perfect unit, quite conscious of the indescribable joy in myself. What use to me are all these attachments and objects of my ever varying desires?”

9. “As the knots of the rope that bind the soul to this world are cut and fall off one after the other, so the mind comes to feel its quiet composure until it attains its ultimate rest and inaction.

10. I am quite composed and at perfect ease with the extinction of my desires. I am joyous and rejoice in myself. My ties are all broken and fallen away from me. At last I have fully accomplished the abandonment of all things.

11. I have become as naked as the open sky and as roofless as the dome of the void. I see the wide world as an expanse of emptiness and myself as a nothingness within the whole emptiness.” “Say, O divine boy, is there anything still lacking in my complete renunciation of everything?”

12. Kumbha replied:— Yet you must be aware, O King Sikhidhwaja, that you are never released from all the bonds of this life by your renunciation of every physical thing that relates to the mortal and transitory state of your being.

13. By the abandonment of the innumerable seeds and sprouts of fond desires which constantly rise like thistles and thorns in the human breast, I see the gravity and purity of the nature of your soul is placed far above the reach and knowledge of the common people.

14. Vasishta said:— On hearing these words of Kumbha, King Sikhidhwaja reflected on its meaning for a short while. He spoke these words in reply as you, O mighty armed Rama, shall now hear from me.

15. Sikhidhwaja said, “Tell me, O heaven born child! What else do you see remaining in me, other than the serpentine entrails within me and its supporting body composed of a heap of flesh, blood and bones?

16. If this body is reckoned as an extension of myself, then I will climb to the top of this mountain and let it fall to be dashed to pieces on the ground. Thus I will get rid of my mortal part forever.”

17. Saying so, as he was proceeding to sacrifice his body on the craggy hill before him, he was interrupted by his teacher Kumbha, who spoke to him as follows.

18. Kumbha said:— What are you are going to, king? Why do you want to destroy your innocent body leaping from that hideous height like an enraged bull hurling its calf down a cliff?

19. What is this body but a lump of dull and gross matter, a dumb and poor painstaking thing. It never does you any harm, nor can you ever find any fault in it. Then why do you vainly wish to destroy something so harmless and faultless?

20. The body itself is a dull and dumb thing. It always remains in a torpid meditative mood. It is moved to and fro by other agencies, like a floating plank tossed up and down by the currents and waves of the sea.

21. He who hurts or annoys his inoffensive lady deserves to be punished with torture, like a cruel villain who robs and annoys a holy saint sitting in his solitary cell.

22. The body is quite guiltless of all the pain and pleasure that befall the living soul by turns, just as the tree is wholly unconcerned with the fall of its fruits and leaves dropped by the blowing winds.

23. You see wind gusts blowing down flowers, fruit and leaves from trees. Then tell me, O holy men! How you can charge an innocent tree with the fault of letting its best produce fall?

24. Know for certain, O lotus-eyed king, that even the sacrifice of your body is not enough to completely renounce all things. Renunciation of everything is not an easy matter.

25. You intend to destroy this inoffensive body of yours in vain. Getting rid of your body does not cause your renunciation or freedom.

26. Your body has an enemy which agitates it like an elephant shaking a huge tree. If you can only get rid of this mortal enemy of your body and soul, then you are then said to be free from all.

27. Now king, by avoiding this deep-rooted enemy of yours, you are freed from the bondage of your body and everything else in this world. Otherwise, no matter how you may kill your body, you can never put a stop to its rebirth.

28. Sikhidhwaja replied, “Then what is it that agitates the body? What is the root of our reincarnations and of the doings and sufferings of our future lives? What is it that by avoiding it, we avoid and forsake everything in the world?”

29. Kumbha replied:— Know, holy king, that forsaking your kingdom or your body, burning your hut and possessions, or all these things taken together, cannot constitute your renunciation of everything.

30. That which is all and everywhere is the one and only cause of everything. One renounces all by resigning everything in that sole existent being.

31. Sikhidhwaja said, “You are saying that there is an all existent situated in everything, and to whom all things are to be resigned at all times. Now sage, you who know the all, what is this all or combination of everything?”

32. Kumbha replied:— Know, O holy man, this all-pervading being is known under various names like the living soul jiva, the life force prana, and many others. It is neither an active or inactive principle. It is called the mind which is ever liable to error.

33. Know that the mind is the seat of illusion that by itself makes the man. It is the essential constituent of every person and the mirror of all these worlds in itself.

34. Know the mind is the source of your body and properties. Know also that it is the root of your hermitage and everything else, just as one tree bears the seed of others.

35. Therefore, if you give up this seed of all events, then you really resign everything in the world which is contained in and depends on this primary seed and mainspring, the mind. All possible and impossible renunciation depends upon renunciation of the mind.

36. The man who is subject to his mind is always subject to cares, both when he is attentive to his duties or negligent of them, or whether he rules his kingdom or flies from it to a forest. But the man of a well governed mind is quite content in every condition of life.

37. The mind revolves constantly like the turning world. It evolves itself into the forms of the body and its limbs, just as a minute seed displays itself in the shape of a tree and its branches and leaves.

38. As trees are shaken by winds, as mountains are shaken by earthquakes, and as waves are blown by air, so the animated body is moved about by the mobile force of the mind.

39. These miserable mortals who are born to death and decay, those happy few who live to enjoy the pleasures of life, and the great sages with staunch hearts and souls are alike bound to their minds.

40. The mind acts its different roles in all the various forms and figures on the stage that is this world. It shows its gestures in the motions of the body. It lives and breathes in the shape of the living spirit. It thinks and reflects in the form of the mind.

41. It takes different names like the understanding buddhi, consciousness, egoism, life or prana, and the intellect according to its different internal functions in the body. It is called the silent soul when it is without any action assigned to it.

42. The mind is said to be the all in all. By getting released of the mind, we are released of all diseases and dangers. Then we are said to have avoided and abandoned everything.

43. O you who wants to know what renunciation is, you must know that renunciation of the mind is renunciation of all. If you succeed renouncing your mind, you come to know the truth and feel the true joy of your soul.

44. Rid your mind, you get rid of the unity and duality of creeds and come to perceive all diversities and pluralities blend in one universal whole which is transcendental tranquility, transparent purity, and undiminished joy.

45. The mind is the field for everyone’s career in this world. But if this field is overgrown with thorns and brambles, how can you expect to grow rice in it?

46. The mind shows its manifold aspects and plays its many parts at will. It turns and moves in the forms of things, just as waters roll in the shapes of waves.

47. Know, young king, that abandonment of all things by renouncing your mind will add to your joy, like gaining a kingdom for yourself.

48. In the matter of self-renunciation, you have been on the same footing as other men in that you resign whatever you dislike and want to have something for which you have a liking.

49. He who connects all the worlds with himself, like a thread connecting pearls in a necklace, is the man who possesses everything by renouncing all things from himself.

50. The soul is unattached to all things, yet it connects and passes through them all like the thread of the Divine Soul connects the worlds like a string of pearls.

51. The soul with no attachment to the world is like lamp without oil that soon burns out into darkness. But the spirit that is warm with its affections is like lamp with oil that burns with universal love and enlightens all objects around it.

52. The Lord who lives aloof from all resembles a lamp without oil in darkness, but the same Lord manifesting himself in all things resembles the lamp with oil that lights every object.

53. After you have renounced all your possessions, you still remain by yourself. In the same way, after you have renounced your body, mind and all, you still have your consciousness, which you can never get rid of.

54. You have burned all your possessions but you have not burned any part of your body. In the same way, by your renunciation of all things, you cannot resign yourself or your soul. That would amount to nirvana or utter extinction.

55. Total renunciation means emptying the soul of all its worldly attachments. Then the soul becomes the seat of all knowledge, the ethereal paradise of hosts of celestial beings.

56. Total renunciation is like the fountain of youth that drives away all fear of disease and death with a single drink. The soul remains untouched by the cares of the world, just as the clear sky is not colored by spots of clouds.

57. Again, total renunciation is the complete abandonment of all affections. It gives a man his true greatness and glory. As you get rid of your temporary affections, so you get the stability of your understanding and the firmness of your determination.

58. Total renunciation, the abandonment of all, is filled with perfect delight. Its contrary is attended with extreme misery. This is a certain truth. Knowing this, choose what you think is best for you.

59. He who gives away his belongings in this life comes to possess them again in his future state, just as rivers that pour their waters into the sea are again filled by flood tide.

60. After complete renunciation in the mind, its emptiness is filled with full knowledge of them, like an empty box that holds rich gems and jewels, which is highly gratifying to the soul.

61. It was by virtue of his renunciation of all things (in the mind) that Sakyamuni, the Lord Buddha, became brave and fearless amidst the troubles of the Kali Age and sat as firm as a rock.

62. Total renunciation of all things is equivalent to acquiring all prosperity because the Lord gives everything to he who dedicates and devotes his all to Him.

63. O king, after your abandonment of all things you have become as quiet as the calm atmosphere. Now try to be as graceful as the graceful moon by the pleasantness of your manners.

64. Now, O high minded king, forget your past abdication of crown and kingdom. Forget your renunciation of all things in this hermitage. Drive away the pride of your total abandonment of all that you had, and be of a clear and pleasing countenance.

✅
Chapter 6a.94 — Kumbha Enlightens Sikhidhwaja Regarding the Mind and Ultimate Causation

1. Vasishta continued:— As the disguised boy was admonishing Sikhidhwaja in this manner on the renunciation of mind, the king thought inwardly on its meaning, then spoke as follows.

2. Sikhidhwaja said, “I find my mind is always fluttering, like a bird in the open sky of my bosom. My mind is constantly lurking like an ape in the wilderness of my heart.

3. I know how to restrain my mind, like they do fish in a net, but I do not know how to get rid of it when it is so engaged with the objects of sense.

4. Please sage, first acquaint me with the nature of the mind, and then teach me the method of renouncing it forever.”

5. Kumbha replied:— Great king, know that desire is the intrinsic nature of the mind. The word desire is a synonym for the mind.

6. Abandonment of the mind is very easy, more easily accomplished than stirring it, and is attended with a greater delight than possessing a kingdom can afford, more pleasant than the scent of fragrant flowers.

7. But it is very difficult for the ignorant to forsake the desires of their minds. It is as hard for them as it is for a peasant to exercise the powers of a kingdom, or for a heap of grass to be as high as a mountain.

8. Sikhidhwaja said, “I understand that it is the nature of the mind to be full of desires. But I find trying to rid the mind to be as impossible as swallowing an iron bolt.

9. I find the mind to be like a fragrant flower in the great garden of the world, and also like the fire pit of all our grief. It is the stalk of the lotus of the world, and it is the wind that blows the gusts of delusion all over the world. Now tell me how this thing may be removed easily?

10. The mind is the locomotive engine of the body. It is the bee that flutters about the lotus of the heart. Now tell me, how can I easily get rid of this mind?”

11. Kumbha answered:— Total eradication of the mind consists in extinguishing the entire world from it. The learned and men of long foresight say that this is abandonment of the mind.

12. Sikhidhwaja replied, “I think extinction of the mind is better than our abandonment of it, on account of securing the success of our purposes. But how can we know the gradual removal of the mind from the hundreds of diseases to which it is subject?”

13. Kumbha replied:— Egoism is the seed and root of the tree of the mind, with all its branches and leaves and fruit and flowers. Therefore root out the mind with its very seed of egoism and you have your breast as clear as the empty and clear sky.

14. Sikhidhwaja replied, “Tell me, O sage. What is the root of the mind? What are its sprouts and fruit? Tell me also how many stems and branches it has, and how it is possible to root it out all at once.”

15. Kumbha replied:— Know, O king, that egoism and all the other words that express the self, such as “mind” or “I” or “me” and the like are the seeds of the tree of the mind.

16. The field of its growth is the Supreme Soul, which is the common source of all beings. But that field being filled with illusion, the mind is deluded to believe itself as a first born sprout springing out of this field.

17. Understanding is the certain knowledge of the mind in its discrete state. Pure understanding is when the germ or sprout of the mind has reached its state of maturity.

18. Understanding (buddhi), when subject to various desires, takes the name of wasteful mind (chitta). Such a mind makes the living being, which is as hollow as a carved stone image, a mere false conception.

19. The body is the stem of this tree of the mind, and it is composed of skin, bones and juicy tissues.

20. The branches of the tree of the mind extend over a great distance all around, and so the sense organs of the body protrude wide about it, perishing in the end trying to seek its enjoyment.

21. Now try to cut off the branches of the tree of your mind and root out the harmful tree all at once.

22. Sikhidhwaja said, “Perhaps I can cut off the branches of the tree of mind somehow or another. But tell me, O my sagely teacher, how can I pull out the entire tree all at once?”

23. Kumbha replied:— All our desires are the various branches of this tree. They are hanging with loads of fruit and they are cut off with the axe of our reason.

24. He alone is able to cut out the tree of his mind who is unattached to the world, who holds his silence and inner tranquility, who is wise in all discussions, and who does whatever offers itself to him at anytime.

25. He who uses his manliness of reason and discretion to cut off the branches and brambles of the tree of his mind is also able to uproot this tree from his heart all at once.

26. The first thing to be done with the mind is to root it out from the heart all at once. The next process is to lop off its branches. Therefore employ yourself more to uprooting it entirely instead of severing of its branches.

27. You may also burn it as the first step instead of cutting the branches. When the great trunk of the tree of the mind is reduced to ashes, there remains an entire mindlessness at last.

28. Sikhidhwaja said, “Tell me, O my sagely guide, what fire can burn away the seed of the tree of the mind which is covered with the skin of egoism?”

29. Kumbha replied:— King, the fire that is able to consume the seed of the harmful plant of the mind is the examination of the question, “What am I that bears this corporeal form upon me?”

30. Sikhidhwaja said, “O sage! I have repeatedly considered questions in my own understanding and found that my egoism does not consist in anything of this world, or of this earth, or of the woods that form its ornaments.

31. My ego resides nowhere in the hills and forests where I lived, or in the shaking of the leaves before me. It does not lie any part of my gross body or in its flesh, bones or blood.

32. It does not lie in any of the organs of action or in the organs of sensation. It does not lie in the mind or in understanding or in any part of the gross body.”

33. “As we see gold in the form of a bracelet, so do I conceive the intelligent soul in the form of my egoism because it is impossible for any material substance to have anything like intelligence.

34. All real existence depends on the Supreme Soul for its existence. All real entities exist in the supreme essence. It is impossible for anything to exist in a nothingness, just as there is no possibility for a forest to exist in an emptiness.”

35. “Thus sage, knowing full well that my egoism is an aspect or shadow of my eternal soul and worthy to be wiped off from it, yet I regret my ignorance of the intrinsic spirit which is to be wiped clean so that the internal soul can be seen in full light.”

36. Kumbha replied:— If you are none of these material objects, as you say, and if your egoism does not consist in materiality, then tell me prince, what you think yourself to be in reality?

37. Sikhidhwaja answered, “O most learned sage, I feel myself to be that intelligent and pure soul which is of the form of consciousness which acquaints me of all existence and which discriminates their different natures.

38. I perceive my egoism is attached to my body, but I am perfectly ignorant whether it is a caused or causeless principle.

39. I am unable, O sage, to rub out this sense of my egoism as an unreality, as something without essence. That is what I greatly regret in myself.

40. Kumbha said:— Tell me O king. What is that great foulness which you feel is attached to you? What makes you act as a man of the world? Do you think it to be something or a mere delusion?

41. Sikhidhwaja replied, “The sense of my egoism, which is the root of the tree of my mind, is the great foulness that attaches to me. I do not know how to get rid of it. However I try to shun it, the more it clings to me.”

42. Kumbha said:— Every effect is produced from some cause or other, and this is the general law of nature everywhere. Anything otherwise is as false as seeing a second moon in the sky, which is nothing but a reflection of the true moon.

43. The cause produces the effect, whether it is a big one or a small element of it. Therefore explore the cause of your egoism, and tell me what it is.

44. Sikhidhwaja replied, “My sagely guide, I know that mere illusion is the cause of the fallacy of my egoism. But tell me sage, how is this error of mine to subside and vanish?

45. My mind’s inclination towards phenomena makes me suffer all these pains and pangs within myself. Now tell me, O muni sage, how to suppress my thoughts of external objects.”

46. Kumbha said:— Tell me whether your thinking and knowing are the cause of whatever you think or know, or whether whatever you think or know activates your thinking and knowing powers. If you can tell me this, then I shall be able to explain the process of cause and effect.

47. Now tell me which do you think is the cause and not the cause of knowing and knowable, and of thinking and the thinkable, which are the subjects of my question to you.

48. Sikhidhwaja answered, “I think, O sage, that what the body senses is the cause of thinking and thoughts, and of knowing and what is known.

49. Our knowledge of things appears only in forms of bodies that can be sensed. Otherwise, a mere abstract thought of a thing is as insubstantial as an airy nothing.

50. As I can not conceive the non-entity of a positive entity or the abstract nature of a concrete body, so I do not know how I can ignore my egoism which is the seed of my mind.”

51. Kumbha said:— If you rely on your material body as a real existence, then tell me, when your soul is separated from the body, what does your knowledge depend upon?

52. Sikhidhwaja replied, “The body, evident to view and a real entity, cannot be taken as unreal by anybody, just as the tangible sunlight cannot be called darkness by any man with common sense.

53. Who can ignore the body? It is full with hands and feet and other parts. It is full of life and activity. Its actions are tangible to sight and evident to our perception.”

54. Kumbha said:— Know O king, that nothing can be said to exist which is not produced by some cause. The knowledge or consciousness that we have of something cannot be produced only by mistake and error.

55. There can be no product without a similar cause, and no material form can come out from a formless and immaterial agent. How can anything come to existence without having its seed of a similar nature?

56. Whatever thing appears to anyone without a true cause is as false an appearance to its deluded observer as a mirage in a desert.

57. Know that you are no real existence, only a false shape of your error. Whatever earnestness you take to it, you will never get any water from this delusive mirage.

58. Sikhidhwaja said, “It is as useless to inquire into the cause of a nonentity, just as it is fruitless to look into the origin of the secondary moon which is only a false reflection of the true one. Believing in a nothingness is like decorating the body of a barren women’s son.

59. Kumbha replied:— The body with its bones and ribs is the product of no assignable cause. Therefore know it to be a nonentity because it is impossible for the frail body to be the work of an everlasting Maker.

60. Sikhidhwaja said, “Now tell me sage, why we should not reckon our parents as the causes and producers of our bodies, with all theirs members and parts, since they are known as their immediate causes?”

61. Kumbha replied:— The parents can be nothing and no cause without having another cause for them, because whatever is without a cause is nothing in itself.

62. The causes of all things and effects are called their seeds. When there is no seed in existence, it is impossible for a seedling to be produced.

63. Therefore, when you cannot trace out the cause of an event, account the event as no event at all. There can be nothing without its seed, and the knowledge of a causeless effect or event is an utter impossibility and fallacy of the understanding.

64. It is an extreme error to suppose the existence of a thing without its cause or seed, such as to suppose the existence of two moons in the sky, of water in a mirage, or the son of a barren woman.

65. Sikhidhwaja said, “Now tell me sage, why should not our parents be taken as the causes of our production, who had our grandfathers and grandmothers for the causes or seeds of their birth likewise. Why should we not reckon our first great grandfather (Brahma) as the first progenitor of the human race?”

66. Kumbha replied:— The first great grandfather, O king, cannot be the original cause, since he also requires a cause for his birth or else he could not come into existence.

67. Even the great grandfather of creation, Brahma himself, must have a cause, a seed from the Supreme Spirit which produced him, or else the visible form in which he appears is no more than a mere delusion.

68. The form of the visible world is as great a fallacy as the appearance of water in a mirage. The creation of the great grandfather Brahma is no more than a false misconception.

69. I will now wipe off the dark cloud of your error, that our great grandfather Brahma was conceived in the womb of the Supreme Spirit. This will be the salvation of your soul.

70. Therefore know, O king, that the Lord God shines forever with his intelligent soul and mind in Himself. It is from him that the lotus-born Brahma and the entire universe are manifest to our view, and that there is nothing which exhibits itself without Him.

✅
Chapter 6a.95 — Sikhidhwaja Understands that God Is No Cause of Anything Separate

1. Sikhidhwaja said, “If the sight of the entire universe is only a phantom, and our knowledge of me, you, and of this and that is only an error of our minds, then why should be concerned or sorry about anything?”

2. Kumbha replied:— The false impression of the world’s existence has firmly laid hold of men’s minds, just as people believe frozen water is dry land.

3. The learned say that knowledge of gross matter is lost with the dispersion of ignorance, and there is no way to get rid of this long contracted prejudice without getting rid of ignorance.

4. Only acute understanding is the means to know the truth: that the creation and dissolution of the world depend upon the will and causality of the Supreme Being.

5. He who understands this is sure to lose his rooted prejudice by degrees and come to the knowledge that the material world is a nothing.

6. By refining your mind away from its predisposition to assume the existence of gross forms, you will come to realize how the idea of the creator, such as Brahma or the Prime Male, is as false as water in a mirage.

7. If the great grandfather of the world is a nothingness, then his creation of all creatures (Prajapati, Lord of Creatures) is similarly false and void, as it is absurd for all impossibility to come into being.

8. The perception of a thing in actual existence is as false as the perception of water in a mirage. A little analysis is enough to remove this error, like the mistake of seeing silver in sea shells.

9. Any object that appears to exist without a cause is only a phantom of error and has no essential form whatever in reality.

10. Whatever is done by one’s false knowledge or mistake is of no use, just as the attempt to fill a pot with the water from a mirage proves to be utterly vain.

11. Sikhidhwaja said, “Why cannot we call the Supreme Brahman to be the cause of Brahma, the first creator of the world who is called the son of God, the one unborn and without end, inexpressible and everlasting?”

12. Kumbha replied:— God Brahman, being neither the cause nor the effect of any action, is only an unchanging unity and transcendent spirit. He is never the cause or effect of anything.

13. How can the incomprehensible and unknowable Brahman be designated the creator when he has no property of creator or created or the instrument or cause of anything?

14. The world has no separate cause. It is not the separate product of any causality whatever. It is no duality but one with unity, without beginning or end, coeternal with the eternal one.

15. He that is inconceivable and unknowable is perfect joy, tranquility and ever without decay. The One can never be the active or passive agent of anything because immutability is his nature.

16. Therefore there is nothing like a creation and the visible world is only a nothing. The Lord God is neither an active nor a passive agent, but quite still and full of bliss.

17. There being no causal power, the world is not the production of anybody. It is only our error that this world is a production without any assignable cause.

18. The uncaused world is the product of nothing and therefore nothing in itself. For if it be the production of nobody, it is a nothingness like its cause also.

19. The nonexistence of anything or the nonexistence of everything is proved as a certain truth. We can have no conception of anything. In the absence of such conception, it is vain to suppose the existence of an egoism or you.

20. Sikhidhwaja said, “Sage, now I perceive the truth. I find all that you have said to be reasonable. Now I see that I am the pure and free soul, quite aloof of any bondage or its liberation from bonds.

21. I understand Brahman is no cause of anything because he is entirely without any causation. The world is a nothingness for lack of its cause, and therefore there is no being whatever which we reckon as differentiated.

22. Therefore there is no such category as the mind or its seed, or growth or decay. Therefore I bow down to myself of which alone I have consciousness in me.

23. I am only conscious of myself. I only know existence in myself. I have no real knowledge of anything except me. All else appears like fleeting clouds in the womb of the sky.

24. The distinct knowledge of the different categories of time, place, and action in the world is now entirely blended with the knowledge of the unity of the tranquil spirit of Brahman.

25. I am tranquil, calm and quiet and settled in the spirit of God. I neither rise nor fall from or move about any of these props on this stage. I remain as you do, in the immovable spirit of God, which is all quiet, holiness, and joy in itself.

✅
Chapter 6a.96 — Kumbha Explains God and Creation Are the Same; Consciousness Depicts Creation (God) According to Its Thoughts

1. Vasishta said:— Sikhidhwaja, having found his rest in the spirit of Brahman, remained quiet for some moments, like a steady and tireless candle flame in a calm, windless place.

2. As he was about to be absorbed in unwavering meditation, he was suddenly roused from his trance by the distraction of Kumbha’s voice.

3. Kumbha said:— O king, I see you are not waking from the sleep of your entranced meditation in which you are situated in perfect bliss. You must neither be absorbed in your contemplation nor be a complete stranger to your abstract meditation either.

4. The mind undivided in its attention is cleansed from all deceit. Freed from its knowledge of parts and particulars, the mind becomes emancipate in its living state. Vasishta talking:—

5. Being thus enlightened by Kumbha, the king became full of enlightenment. Roused from his trance, he shone as brightly as a rich gem when taken out of its cover.

6. The king saw the unreality of visible things in his state of quietism. He now perceived them spread all about him, and he spoke about them to Kumbha.

7. Sikhidhwaja said, “Though I know full well about all these things, yet I want to propose some questions regarding them. I hope you will give answers for my correct and perfect knowledge of them.

8. Tell me, how can we reconcile the impure conception of the Universal Soul representing the universe with the pure idea of the Supreme Soul which is ever calm, quiet and transparent?”

9. Kumbha replied:— You have asked well, O king. This shows the clarity of your understanding. If this is all that you want to know, then hear me explain it fully to you.

10. Whatever is seen here and everywhere, together with all moving and inert creation, are all perishable and become extinct at the end of every kalpa age.

11. At the end of the kalpa age, the true and essential reality remains in an obscure chaotic state, deprived of both light and darkness.

12. This essential reality is Divine Consciousness, pure and quiet and as clear as the transparent air. It is free from all attributes and full of transcendental intelligence.

13. The one that remains at the end of a kalpa is the Supreme Soul. It extends over all space and is purely bright, transparent and quiet. It is enveloped in light and is pure intelligence.

14. It is inscrutable and unknowable, even and quiet, and full of bliss. It is called Brahman the great, the final extinction of all bodies, full of all knowledge.

15. It is the smallest of the small and the largest of whatever is large in the universe. It is the greatest of anything that is great and heavy and it is the best of whatever is good and excellent.

16. It is so very small that if you place this sky beside it, the sky will appear as big as the great Mount Meru by the side of a small atom.

17. It is also so very big and bulky that if this stupendous world were placed side by side to it, the world must appear like an atom before it, or vanish into nothing.

18. Brahman is attributed with the name of Universal Soul because it pervades the entire universe and is its intrinsic soul. Its exterior appearance is called by the title of Viraj (All Radiant).

19. There is no difference between the description and what it describes, just as there is none between the air and the wind, air in motion, and as sky and emptiness are synonyms. The universal Consciousness is the phenomenal world, and the same consciousness is manifested in the forms of “I” and “you.”

20. As wind makes water become a wave at a certain time and place, so the world rises and falls at times in the Supreme Soul without any external cause.

21. As gold is transformed into bracelets at certain times and place, by some means or another, so the spirit of God is transformed into the visible world at certain times, without any assignable cause whatever.

22. The most glorious God is lord of his kingdom of the world. He is one with his creation, ever pure, quiet, and without decay. He pervades over all these worlds scattered like tufts of grass all around us.

23. This transcendentally good and great God is the only real existence. God comprises all temporary and finite existences within himself. Through our own reasoning, we know that this glorious creation of the universe is all derived from him.

24. Know him, O king, to be the essence of the extended universe, extending his form of complete consciousness over everything, a unity that never admits of a duality.

25. Therefore there is no reason to conceive a duality beside his unity because God’s unity is the sole principle of the Supreme Soul, fully manifest in everything in its ever undiminished and everlasting state.

26. The Lord always remains as the all in all, manifest in all various forms, neither visible nor perceptible by us. He cannot be said to be the cause or effect of anything.

27. The Lord, being neither perceptible nor conceivable by us, is something super-eminently good and super-fine. He is all and the soul of all, too fine and transparent and known only by our conceptions of him because he has no conscious perception whatever.

28. Being inexpressible by words and manifest in all without manifestation or appearance of himself, he cannot be the cause of whatever is real or unreal.

29. That which has no name of itself cannot be the seed of another. No nameless nothing can grow anything, nor can a corresponding world spring out of a non-corresponding spirit.

30. Indeed, the inexhaustible mass of Divine Consciousness is no cause or casual instrument or effect of anything. The product of the Divine Soul must be something of the form of the invisible soul, which is everlasting consciousness or intelligence.

31. So, O sage, nothing is produced by the Supreme Brahman, nor does anything arise from Him, like waves from water that have wind for their cause.

32. All distinctions of time and place are absent in the uniform and unchanging spirit of Brahman. There can be no creation or destruction of the world from him, and hence the world is uncreated and without any cause.

33. Sikhidhwaja said, “I know that the waves of water are caused by winds of the air, and so I understand this world and our egoism and the like have their causality in the Supreme Spirit.”

34. Kumbha replied:— O king, now know the positive truth. As I am telling you after all, there is nothing like a separate world or our separate ego existing in Supreme Spirit. The world and the ego exist as one with the Divine Spirit, without bearing any distinct name or personality at all.

35. As subtle ether contains the subtle element of vacuum in its bosom, so the Divine Soul entertains in itself the fine spun idea of the mundane system without its substance.

36. Whether you behold this world in its true form of Divine Consciousness, or in any other form of gross matter, it is to be correctly understood as nothing but a representation of Divine Consciousness.

37. The full knowledge of something makes it sweet to the understanding, even though it may be as bitter as gall to taste. Imperfect knowledge of something, such as that of the world, makes it appear as if full of grief, even though there is no such thing in reality.

38. Ambrosia, the water of life, being taken as a poison will act as poison in the patient’s constitution. So the Lord of intellect appears in a favorable or unfavorable light according to how knowledge or ignorance represents him to our understanding.

39. The blessed Lord God appears to us in a benevolent or non-benevolent aspect, just as our true and false knowledge paints him in our minds, and just as the blinded eye sees many a false sight in the light of the sun.

40. The essence of Brahman always remains the same in his essential form of consciousness, but because of the depravity of our understanding, he is represented in one form now, then in another at a different time and under different circumstances.

41. In fact, the body and the embodied soul appear as any other sensible object in the world, but when viewed in the abstract light of reality, they blend in the spiritual form of God.

42. Therefore it is vain to make any inquiry concerning the nature of the world and our egoism and the like. What is really exists is to be inquired into, and not that which is a nothingness in itself.

43. It is vain to ask about an appearance, which being looked into vanishes into nothing. It is equally vain to speak of the essence of gold when it presents us with no form.

44. Without the existence of God, there is no entity called the world or our egoism. Having no cause, these things are identical with the one self-existent God.

45. The world does not appear of itself. It rests like a carving in the spirit of God. It shows itself as separate to us only by illusion.

46. These existences composed of the five elements produce many other beings, just as males and females mate and produce their offspring in infinity. So Divine Consciousness, being joined with the illusory intelligence, presents endless forms to our view.

47. Through God’s inherent knowledge, the Divine Soul represents itself in the shapes of the many things that are comprised in his omniscience. He is full in himself and manifests his fullness in himself. He is never wanting in his fullness which always exists in Him.

48. The fullness of the world is derived from the fullness of God. Yet the Divine fullness remains complete, just as when you deduct from the infinite, the remainder is still infinite.

49. Divine Consciousness, though forever the same and serene, appears to shine forth in creation because of our knowledge of creation, which dissolves with our imperceptibility of it. So our egoism, being the same with the Divine Ego, appears to be different from it, just as our fluctuating minds depict it in various lights.

50. The Divine Self never becomes many and never forsakes its state without decay. It is of a luminous form and its essence has no beginning or end. It assumes as many forms as the ever changing mind imposes upon it.

51. At one time, the identical soul believes itself to be Viraj, lord of the world, and at another, to be a contemptible being. Sometimes it sees itself in its true form of divinity and at another time its thought makes it think it is some other thing.

52. The world appears as a vast and extended space, perfectly quiet in its nature, inexpressible by words or their meanings. All its objects are of wonderful shape to view and appear to us according to our conceptions without showing their real nature to us.

✅
Chapter 6a.97 — Kumbha: How Variety Appears in Unity

1. Kumbha continued:— Nothing is ever produced or destroyed by the ever tranquil spirit of God. Everything appears as the panorama of the one all God, just like the various kinds of ornaments are made of the same metal of gold.

2. Brahman remains forever in his own essence. He never becomes the seed or cause of any other thing. He is ever of the form of our innate conception of him, and therefore never becomes anything other than our simple idea of him.

3. Sikhidhwaja said, “O sagely guide, I grant that there exists no separate world or any other individual ego in the one pure Shiva, except his own essence of omniscience. But please tell me, what is this world and what are these individual egos that seem to be infinite in number and appear as distinct creations of God?”

4. Kumbha replied:— The essence of God is without beginning or end and extends to infinite space and time.

5. The same is also true of this transparent cosmos, and that is the body of this world which is simply a form of Divine Consciousness and not any void or any separate thing.

6. The essential property of God is his consciousness, therefore he is said to be of essence of consciousness. Just as fluidity is the property of water, so consciousness is the essential property of everything. There is no reason to suppose that the prime cause of all is an unintelligent principle.

7. The Lord is infinite in himself. He is situated in his infinitude forever without the grossness of even infinitesimals ever attaching to pure intelligence in the subjective soul.

8. We cannot attribute the creation of the impure world to the pure essence of the Divine Spirit. The purity of the Divine Soul cannot admit the impurity of creation, which would amount to a duality of purity and impurity in the Supreme Soul.

9. The Lord can never be supposed as the seed or cause of the universe. His nature is inscrutable and beyond our conception. He cannot be thought of as the root of anything whatever.

10. There is no creation or production of an effect without its cause or seed, and reason does not suggest any other source of creation.

11. Therefore there is no gross creation whatsoever, only the form of the intellect itself. All that is visible to us is nothing other than the solid intellect itself.

12. The feeling of egoism and the term “world” are meaningless words and mere inventions of men because nothing can be called an effect or product which has no cause assigned to it.

13. The duality of the world appears in the unity of God in the same manner as sky flowers appear in the hollow vacuum of the sky. All things, being perishable in their nature, can exist only in the intellect in which they live and die.

14. Destruction is not the giver of life to destruction, nor is it a giver of life to perishable things. Therefore consciousness is the giver of light to all, but you may call it by whatever name you like the best.

15. What difficulty is there, provided all things are to called one, when all have come from the intellect? What you call duality is only a mystery of consciousness (chit).

16. The intellect is the only true entity, and it admits no unity or duality in it. Therefore, O king, you must know that all other entities are nothing beside it.

17. The feeling of your individual ego is as false as your conception of any other thing. If the idea of individual ego is proved false, what else can there be except the only entity of the intellect?

18. Thus ego being nothing other than a form of the intellect, there is no difference whatever between them. Hence the words “I” and “you” and the like are mere human inventions to distinguish one form from another.

19. Whether you remain in your embodied or disembodied state, continue to remain always as firm as a rock by knowing yourself only as the pure intellect, and the nothingness of all other things.

20. By always thinking of yourself as the intellect, you will lose the sense of your individual ego and personality. By reflecting on the meaning of the Vedas, you will be lead to the same conclusion.

21. From all these know yourself as the pure essence, which is uncaused and unmade and the same with the first and original principle. You are the same with the free and everlasting Brahman, and multiform in your unity. You are as void as emptiness, having no beginning, middle or end. This world is the intellect and that intellect is the very Brahman himself.

✅
Chapter 6a.98 — Kumbha: Immaterial Cannot Produce Material

1. Sikhidhwaja said, “I understand that there is no such thing as the mind. But as I have no clear and correct knowledge of this subject, I beg of you to tell me, whether it is as I understand or not.”

2. Kumbha replied:— O king, you have truly said that there is no such real entity as the mind at anytime and in any space whatever. That which appears as the mind is nothing other than a faculty of the only one everlasting Brahman.

3. Everything else which is fallible or unconscious of itself, such as the mind or anything of this world, can never be a positive or self-existence substance. Therefore the words “I” and “you” and “this” or “that” are only fabrications of our imagination with no existence in reality.

4. There is no reality of the cosmos or any of its contents. All things that seem to be in existence are no more than various representations of the one self-existent Brahman himself.

5. It is said that there was no mind or its personification of Brahma, or any final dissolution of the world, and this proves their unreality. Again it is said that the mind took the form of Brahma and created the world in the beginning, which also proves the mind to be the Divine Mind, represented by the metaphor of Brahma.

6. There can be no material object without the prior existence of a material cause. So without a material cause, it is impossible to believe the existence of the many material objects of the senses and of the mind that experiences sensations.

7. Hence there is no such thing as a dull and unconscious world. All that appears to exist as such is nothing other than a representation of the Divine Spirit, just as gold exhibits itself in the shapes of many ornaments.

8. It is completely false to believe that the nameless and formless God does all this. Although the world is visible, yet our subjective knowledge of it offers no proof of its reality.

9. That the nameless and formless spirit of God, without shelter or support for itself, should make this world as a home others, is a laughable assumption of only the ignorant.

10. From these reasons it is plain that there is no world in existence, not even the mind which is only a part of it. The world being a non-entity, there can be no mind which is only familiar with the world.

11. The mind means nothing more than a wish. We say that someone has a wish only if there is an object to be wished for. This world which appears to be so very desirable is a nothingness. So how can there be the mind to desire it?

12. That which manifests to us under the name of the mind is nothing other than a manifestation of the spirit of God in itself, although it may be called by various names.

13. These visible phenomena which are so desirable to everyone are no productions of anyone. They are an uncaused entity ever existent in the Divine Mind, from before its production by the mind of Brahma the creator.

14. Therefore the Divine Soul has the form of an intellectual vacuum. It is as empty as the transcendent air. It is full with the light of its intelligence and has no shadow of the gross world in it.

15. The slight light which shines in the Divine Soul is like the twilight that fills the ethereal sphere. It is the reflection of the mirror of Supreme Consciousness. It is neither the dim light of the mind nor any reflection of the phenomenal world.

16. Our knowledge of “I” and “them” and this world is never real or reliable. It is like the appearance of our dreams that serve only to delude us into mistakes.

17. The absence of the desirable world removes our desire of it, so the privation of our desire displaces the mind which is the seat of our desires.

18. The ignorant believe that this visible world is the mind, but the unreal and formless mind did not have this visible form before it developed itself into the form of creation.

19. This world is said to be contemporary with the eternal mind, which is altogether impossible because we read nowhere in the scriptures, nor do we find in the ordinary course of nature, that a visible object has ever come into existence without some cause or other, either in the beginning of creation or at anytime afterwards.

20. How can eternity, un-created-ness and everlastingness be affirmed of this visible world which is a gross material substance subject to decay and dissolution?

21. There is no testimony of the scriptures and no visual evidence or any reasonable deduction to show any material thing to be uncaused by some agent or other and which survives the final dissolution of the world.

22. There is no written testimony of the Vedas, any other scriptures, or the Siddhantas to show that any material thing is ever exempt from its three conditions of birth, growth, and decay, and which is not perishable at the last dissolution.

23. He who is not guided by the evidence and dictates of the scriptures and Vedas is the most foolish among fools, and is never to be relied upon by good and sensible men.

24. It is never possible for anyone to prevent the accidents that are incidental to perishable things, nor can there be any cause to render a material object an immaterial one.

25. However, if we recognize the world as immaterial we identify it with the unchangeable Brahman, exempt from the accidents of action and passion, and of growth and decay.

26. Therefore know this world is contained in the undivided and unutterable emptiness of Divine Consciousness which is infinite and formless emptiness and is forever more in its undivided and indivisible state.

27. Brahman who is having every form and ever tranquil in himself, manifests his own self in this manner in the forms of creation and dissolution all in himself.

28. The Lord now shows himself to our understanding as embodied in his body of the world, and now He manifests himself to us as the one Brahman in his spiritual form.

29. Know after all that this world is only the essence of the one Brahman, beside which there is no separate world or anything else in existence. Only our imagination represents Brahman sometimes in one form and then in another.

30. All this is one, eternal and ever tranquil soul, which is unborn and without any support and situated as it is. It shows itself as various without any variation in its nature. So learn to remain yourself with yourself as motionless as a block of wood, and with your dumb silence in utter amazement at all this.

✅
Chapter 6a.99 — Kumbha Lectures Sikhidhwaja: All Is Brahman

1. Sikhidhwaja said, “O sage, by your good grace I am freed from my ignorance and brought under the light of truth. My doubts are removed and I am situated with my tranquility of my spirit.

2. I have become as one knowing the knowable and who sits silently after crossing over the sea of delusion. I am quiet by quitting my egoism. I am separated of all disquiet by my knowledge of true self.”

3. “O, how I have wandered amidst the confusing depths of the world! After such a long time I have now arrived to the safe harbor of my peace and security.

4. Being so situated, O sage, I perceive neither my individual ego nor the existence of the three worlds. It is ignorance to believe in their existence, but I am taught to believe in Brahman alone.”

5. Kumbha replied:— How is it possible for your individual ego or that of anyone else to exist anywhere when this universe and this air and sky do not exist anywhere?

6. Sit quietly as usual and be as calm and silent as a sage. Remain as still as the calm ocean without the disturbances of the waves and whirl pools within its bosom.

7. Such is the quiet and tranquil state of Brahman who is always one and the same as he is. The words “I”, “you”, “this” and “that” and the world are as devoid of meaning as the universal emptiness is devoid of anything.

8. What you call the world is a thing having no beginning or end. It is the wonder of the Intellect to shine as the clear light which fills the ethereal firmament.

9. The changes that appear to take place in the spirit of God are as extraneous as the different colors that paint the dome of heaven and the various pieces of jewelry which are wrought upon gold. These have no intrinsic essentiality and never affect the tranquility of the Divine Spirit, the uniform serenity of the empty sky, or the nature of the pure metal of gold.

10. As the Lord is self-born, so his eternal will is inherent in and born with himself. What we call free will or fate depends upon the nature of our knowledge of them.

11. Think yourself as something and you become a slave to your desires, but believe yourself as nothing and you are as free and liberated as free air itself.

12. Your personality, whether you are subject either to bondage or freedom, is the certain knowledge or conviction of yourself as a reality.

13. The deprivation of your knowledge of yourself or your egoistic personality leads to your ultimate end. Your knowledge of your personality exposes you to danger. Therefore think yourself as Himself and not yourself, and you are safe from all calamity.

14. No sooner do you get rid of the conviction of yourself than your soul is enlightened by the light of true knowledge. You lose the sense of your personality and become complete in your knowledge of yourself as one with the Supreme Spirit.

15. The inscrutable nature of God admits of no cause because causality refers only to what is caused. Causality cannot come to existence without a cause. Causality cannot apply to the uncaused cause of all.

16. As we have no knowledge of an object which is not in existence, so we cease to have any knowledge of our personality if we cease to consider ourselves as caused and created beings.

17. What is this world to us if we are unconscious of ourselves and if we are free from our knowledge of the objective world? We see only the Supreme Soul remaining.

18. Whatever is manifest here before us is all situated in the spirit of the Lord. All these are transcendent and are situated as such and same with the full and transcendental spirit of God.

19. Therefore all these that are prominent to view are like figures carved on a rock. The light that pervades the whole is the glory of the great God.

20. If the world disappears from view, God’s light which is more transparent than that of the transparent sky will vanish away into nothing.

21. The unconscious world seems to move about like a shadow or a phantom in the air. Therefore it is called the moving world (jagrat). But he alone sees it in its true light who sees it as motionless, without its sense of mobility, perfectly calm and stationary in the spirit of God.

22. When the sight of that which can be seen, together with the sense of that which can be sensed and the feelings of the mind, become tasteless to the dormant soul absorbed in divine meditation, then the wise call it nirvana absorption or the full light and knowledge of God.

23. As the breezeless winds sink in the air and jewelry melts in its gold, so the protruding form of the world subsides in the even spirit of God.

24. The sight of the world and the perceptions of the mind which testify the existence of the world to us, are only the representations of Brahman, just as the false mirage represents water in the desert sands.

25. Like a vast body of water exists without a wave to disturb its surface, so the spirit of God remains in its state of calmness when it is free from its operation of creation.

26. Creation is identical with Brahman. The Lord is the same with his creation. This is true from the statement of the Veda which says, “All this is Brahman and Brahman is this all.”

27. The meaning of the word Brahman, immensity, equally establishes the existence of the world, just as the meaning of the word world or cosmos establishes the entity of Brahman.

28. The meaning of all words taken collectively expresses a multitude, which is synonymous with Brahman, the great and immense collection of the whole.

29. And if we reject the sense of the greatness of God and of the world, as they are usually meant to express, yet the little or minuteness of God that remains is so very minute that words cannot express it.

30. The Lord that remains as the inherent and silent soul of all bodies is only one soul in the collection. He remains as a huge mountain of his intelligence in the form of the whole of this universal cosmos.

✅
Chapter 6a.100 — Kumbha Lectures Sikhidhwaja: More on All Is Brahman

1. Sikhidhwaja said, “If is it so, O most intelligent sage, that the world is like the nature of its maker, then the world must resemble Brahman in every respect.”

2. Kumbha replied:— Where there exists a cause, there is also an effect associated with it. Where there is no cause whatever, there can be no resulting effect.

3. Therefore there is no possibility of any cause or its effect in this world which is manifest before us. It is the identical essence of the ever tranquil and unborn spirit of God.

4. The effect of a cause necessarily has the same nature as the cause, but what similarity can exist between one which is neither the cause or effect of the other?

5. Tell me, how can a tree grow which has no seed for its growth? How can God have a seed whose nature is inscrutable in thought and inexpressible in words?

6. All things that have their causality at anytime or any place have the nature of their cause, but how can there be a similarity of anything with God who is never the cause of an effect?

7. Brahman the un-causing uncaused cause of all has no causality in him. Therefore the meaning of the word “world” is something that has no cause whatever.

8. Therefore think of yourself as Brahman, according to the view of the intelligent. The world appears as something created in the sight of men of imperfect understandings.

9. When the world is taken as one and the same with the tranquil intellect of God, it must be viewed in the light of the transparent spirit of Brahman.

10. O king, the intelligent say that any other notion which the mind may entertain about the nature of God is a destruction of the right concept of God.

11. The destruction of the mind is equivalent to the destruction of the soul, and slight forgetfulness of the spirit is hard to regain in a whole kalpa age.

12. As soon as you are freed from your personality, you find yourself to be full of divine knowledge. Your false personality flies away from your perfection in spirituality.

13. If you think the world exists from the meaning of the word vishwa (all), then tell me how and from where could all this come into existence?

14. How can you call one a brahmin who lifts up his arms and proclaims himself about to be a shudra?

15. If someone cries out that he is dead because his pulse is weakening, take both his death and his life to be mistaken.

16. All these false appearances that present themselves before us are as false as a circle described by the whirling flame of a torch, and as delusive as water in a mirage, a secondary moon in mist, and ghosts appearing to children.

17. The mind is the common, true name of this false substance which misleads us to error. It is wrapped in ignorance and error.

18. The mind is another name for ignorance, an unreality appearing as a real entity. Here ignorance takes the name of the mind and unreality passes under the title of reality. Ignorance is the lack of true knowledge and knowledge is the absence of ignorance.

19. Ignorance or false knowledge is driven away by our knowledge of truth, just as the error of water in the desert is dispelled by knowledge of mirages.

20. As the knowledge of mirages removes the error of water in a sandy desert, so the knowledge of the mind as gross ignorance removes the false mind from the inner seat of the heart.

21. Knowledge that the mind is an unreality immediately roots out its projections, just as knowing that a rope is not a snake removes the fear of the snake in the rope.

22. As the knowledge of the falsehood of the snake in the rope removes the mind’s projection of the snake, so the knowledge of unreality of the mind removes its offspring of error and ignorance from within us.

23. The knowledge that there is no such thing as the mind removes its false impressions from the heart, because mind and our individual ego are only the young offspring of our ignorance.

24. There is no mind or ego in us as we commonly believe. There is only one pure consciousness both within and without us, something we can hardly perceive.

25. You have had the sense of your desire, your mind and your personality for such a long time. They are only from your ignorance. Now you are quite set free from all of them by being awakened to the light of knowledge.

26. All the troubles that you have suffered are due to fostering the inborn desires of your heart. They are all driven away by your lack of desire, just as the wind disperses a forest fire.

27. The dense essence of God pervades the whole universe, just as the ocean surrounds all the continents of the earth.

28. Nothing exists such as I, you, this, or that or anything else. There is no mind or senses and no earth or sky. They are all manifestations of Divine Spirit.

29. As visible objects appear in the forms of a frail pot and other fragile bodies on earth, so the many false invisible things appear to us in the forms of the mind, egoism and the like.

30. There is nothing that is born or dies in all these three worlds. Only the display of Divine Consciousness gives rise to the ideas of existence and nonexistence.

31. All these are only representations of the Supreme Soul, now evolved and now spread out from it. There is no room for unity or duality or any error or fallibility in its nature.

32. Mind, O friend, that you are the true one in the shape of your senses. These will never be burnt at your cremation, nor will you be utterly destroyed by your death.

33. No part of you is ever increased or annihilated at anytime. The entirety of your pure self is immortal and must remain entire forever.

34. The powers of your will and unwillingness and the other faculties of your body and mind are attributes of yourself, just as moonbeams are the significant properties of the moon.

35. Always remember the nature of your soul to be unborn and uncreated, without beginning or end, never decaying and ever remaining the same. It is indivisible and without parts. It is the true essence existing from the beginning without end.

✅
Chapter 6a.101 — The Mind of the Living Liberated Is Called Goodness; — Kumbha Advises Sikhidwaja to Abandon His Austerities

1. Vasishta said:— The king had listened to the lectures of Kumbha. For some time he remained in silent and deep meditation of his soul as if in a state of trance.

2. He continued with his mind intent and eyes fixed, quite speechless all the while. He resembled the figure of a silent sage, or a carved statue without motion or sensation.

3. After a while he awoke with eyes twinkling. Chudala, still in her disguised form of Kumbha the brahmin youth, approached him.

4. Kumbha said:— Say king, how did you enjoy yourself in your short lived trance? Did you feel that sweet composure of your soul which the yogis experience in their steadfast meditation and unshaken samadhi trance?

5. Tell me, were you awakened in your innermost soul and set free beyond the region of error and darkness? Have you known the knowable one and seen what is to be seen?

6. Sikhidhwaja replied, “O sage, by your good grace I have seen a great glory in the most high heaven of heavens.

7. I have seen a state of bliss which is full of ambrosial delight never known to mortals and whose sight is the most ultimate reward of the wishes of the best and most intelligent men, and of saints and mahatmas.

8. In your company today I have felt a delight which I have never experienced before.

9. O lotus-eyed sage, never have I enjoyed such a degree of spiritual bliss which knows no bounds and is a sea of ambrosial delight!”

10. Kumbha said:— The mind becomes composed and tranquil after its desire of enjoyments is subordinated, when it becomes indifferent to the taste of sweet and bitter, and when it has full control over the organs of sense.

11. There arises a peace in the mind which is purer than any earthborn delight. It is as delightful as dew drops falling from flowers under bright, cooling moonbeams at night.

12. It is today, O king, that your bad desires, like bitter tastes, are improved by your advancement in knowledge.

13. By your holiness, O lotus-eyed king, the filth of your person is cleansed out like ripe fruit falling from trees.

14. Only as the desires of the impure heart become purified by reason does it become capable of receiving the instructions of the wise, just like a straw drawing water inside.

15. After the bitterness of your disposition was softened by my lectures, you have been awakened by me to your spiritual knowledge.

16. Just now you have been cleansed from your impurity and immediately purified by your pure knowledge. Even now you have received my admonition and have been instantly awakened to your knowledge.

17. Today you are cleansed from the merits and demerits of your good and bad conduct. You have a new life in you through the influence of good society.

18. It was before midday today that I have come to know the enlightenment and regeneration of your soul to spiritual light.

19. I find you now, O king, to be weakened in your mind from taking my words to your heart. Having rid feelings from your mind, you are awakened to your spiritual knowledge.

20. As long as the mind has its seat and operations in the heart of man, it retains its companion of ignorance by its side. As soon as the mind forsakes its residence in the heart, pure knowledge comes to shine forth in it like midday light.

21. The mind suspended between unity and duality is called ignorance. Reducing these is known as knowledge and the way to the salvation of the soul.

22. You are now awakened and emancipated. Your mind is driven away from your heart. You are now the reality and rescued from your unreality. You are set beyond this world of unreality.

23. Rest in the pure state of your soul by being devoid of cares and anxieties. Forsake all society and do not place the reliance of your soul upon anyone or anything here. Become like a devout, divine and silent sage, saint or muni.

24. Sikhidhwaja said, “So I see, sage, that all ignorant people rely mostly on their minds, but the few who are awakened to the knowledge of God do not pay attention their minds.

25. Now sage, please tell me. How do living liberated men conduct themselves in this world? How do these unmindful men, like you, manage yourselves here?

26. Tell me fully and by the brightness of your glowing words, dispel the deep darkness that is seated in my heart.”

27. Kumbha replied:— All that you say, O king, is exact and indisputable truth. The minds of living liberated men are dead in themselves. Like blocks of stone, their minds never grow or sprout forth in desires.

28. Gross desires that grow from wishes become the causes of men’s reincarnations in some form or other. This is known by the name of mind. When that becomes altogether extinct in men, they know the truly knowable one.

29. The desire which guides those who know the truth in this life of action in this world is known by the name of goodness. This is unproductive of future birth.

30. Great souls and living liberated men, being placed in their quality of goodness and having their organs under control, do not place any reliance upon their minds.

31. The darkened mind is called the mind, but the enlightened mind is known as the principle of goodness. The unenlightened rely upon their minds, but enlightened men of great understanding rely only upon their goodness.

32. The mind is repeatedly born with the body, but the nature of goodness is never reborn anymore. The unawakened mind is under perpetual bondage, but the enlightened soul is under no restraint.

33. Now sage, you have become of the nature of goodness and you deserve the title of he who has forsaken all things. I understand that you have completely gotten rid of the inclinations of your mind.

34. I find you today as brilliant as the full moon freed from the shadows of an eclipse. Your mind has become as lucid as the clear sky without any stain in it.

35. You have that equanimity which is characteristic of the complete yogi. This which you exhibit in yourself is called total renunciation of all.

36. Enlightened understanding is free from the restraints of any desire for heaven or future rewards. By means of superior divine knowledge, it is free from the restraints of observing austerities and charity.

37. All austerities and mortifications serve only to obtain a short lived cessation of pain. The happiness that is wholly free from decay is only found in one’s equanimity and detachment under all circumstances of life.

38. That thing must be truly good if it is different from the temporary enjoyment of bliss of heaven, and altogether different from a transitory pleasure that is preceded and followed by pain.

39. We are all doubtful of the happiness that awaits us hereafter in heaven. Our religious acts serve to procure some happiness for those who are unacquainted with the complete joy of their souls derived from their spiritual knowledge.

40. Let them use their ornaments of brass who have no gold ornaments for their decorations. Let the ignorant adhere to their rituals and not the wise who are quite happy in their knowledge. But you, O king, have happily come both to your knowledge and happiness in the company of your Queen Chudala and others.

41. Therefore, why are you vainly devoted to the observance of your austerities? Mortifications and penance of asceticism are prescribed for the atonement of men’s prior misdeeds.

42. Both the beginning and end of asceticism are attended with pain. Only the middle promises a short and temporary happiness. Mortifications are mere preparations for the purification of the soul.

43. Remain steady in that pure knowledge which is said to be the result of penitence. When the soul is pure with the clarity of the intellectual sphere, all things and thoughts will be as transparent to view as in the clear light of the sky.

44. All things are seen to rise and disappear in the empty sphere of Divine Consciousness. Thoughts of our good and bad actions are like drops of rain that mix with the waters of the immeasurable ocean of the Divine Soul.

45. Therefore, O Sikhidhwaja, abandon the barren soil (of rituals) and resort to the abundant field (of divine knowledge). As you would ask a good friend, ask me to know your best good.

46. As a wife who wants to be close to her husband should refrain from asking him for petty things, so you should refrain from asking your God for trifling blessings if you want to be in communion with him. Know that the objects of your desire are not always for your good.

47. No wise man runs to grasp the sun’s reflection in water. You should never pursue the pleasures of heaven or the joy of liberation after you have found Him in your own spirit.

48. Forsake what is unstable, though it may appear stable to you. You are always stable by leaving the unstable to perish by itself.

49. Knowing the instability of things, preserve the stability of your mind, because the motionless mind perceives no fluctuation of its thoughts and no change or motion of things.

50. All our evils proceed from the actions of our bodies and the thoughts of our minds. These two are the mainsprings of men’s miseries in all places and times.

51. If you desire to enjoy the happiness of quiet and rest, curb the unsteadiness of your mind and be ever calm and quiet.

52. Know that all motions and their lack dwindle into perfect rest in the mind of a truly wise man. Therefore hold them in equal light and be happy forever.

53. Sikhidhwaja said, “Tell me sage, how can the motion and force of a thing be one and the same with its immobility and rest? I dare say that you, who is the remover of my doubts, will quickly clear this point for me.

54. Kumbha replied:— Only one thing is the all and whole of this universe. It is like the water of the sea and it is agitated by its intelligence, just as the sea is agitated into waves.

55. The immensity of Brahman, which is called the only essence and has the form of pure consciousness, is seen in the shape of the world of forms by the ignorant.

56. The agitation of consciousness is all in all in the world and constitutes the moving principle of the universe.

57. The agitation of consciousness, being the Divine Spirit, is the same as its stillness. The unity of these two forms, agitation and stillness, is the spirit of God called Shiva.

58. The agitation of the Divine Spirit in the work of creation vanishes before the sight of perfect understanding. To the ignorant, it appears to be in active operation, like seeing a false snake in a rope.

59. Conscious intellect is ever busy and active, from which it derives its name (chit, consciousness). But the inactive spirit which is all pervasive is both inexpressible as well as inconceivable because it is devoid of all attributes (turiyatita).

60. By long study of the scriptures and association with the wise, and also by continued practice of yoga, the light of the Supreme Spirit dawns in the inner soul like the rising moon with her benign beams.

61. The Supreme Spirit is only perceived from the benign rays it radiates, which the wise call the light of the Supreme Spirit. We perceive it by our understanding.

62. Now you have known the essence of your soul which is without beginning, middle or end and which must continue forever as your real and true state. There is no other distinct form of the great intellectual soul. Know this as yourself, and remain free from all sorrow and pain.

✅
Chapter 6a.102 — Kumbha Departs; Sikhidhwaja in Samadhi

1. Kumbha continued:— I have already told you, O king, how all the phenomena of the world sprung from Brahman and how they all also disappear in him.

2. Having heard all this from me and having understood and reflected upon all that I have said, you are at liberty, O sagely king, to repose in the supreme bliss which you have well known and felt within yourself.

3. I am now returning to my heavenly abode at this time of the conjunction of the moon, when it is very likely that sage Narada may have come before the assembly of the gods from his seat in the high heaven of Brahma.

4. He may be angry at not finding me there, and it is not showing good manners in a youth to tease his superiors at anytime.

5. May you ever abide at your ease by your utter abandonment of every tint of desire, and by your firm reliance in these holy precepts which the wise have always in their view.

6. Vasishta said:— Upon hearing these words, Sikhidhwaja was about to throw a handful of flowers and make his obeisance to his departing teacher, Kumbha vanished immediately from his sight and mixed in the ethereal air.

7. As one absorbed in meditation does not see the things present before him even in his waking state, so the king lost sight of Kumbha from before his presence.

8. The king was plunged in deep sorrow after Kumbha departed. He remained like a painted picture, his thoughts dwelling on his vanished friend.

9. He thought how marvelous it was and how very inscrutable are the ways of providence that it should bring him to the light of the self-manifest Lord through the means of a stranger, Kumbha.

10. “Where is this sage Narada,” thought he, “and who is his son, this Kumbha, to me? How did it happen that after so long I should come to be awakened by him?”

11. “O! how very fully has that son of the divine sage explained everything to me with his good reasoning. I am now awakened from my long slumber in ignorance.

12. How I had been plunged in the mud of my acts for such a long time! I was rolling on the wheels of distinguishing between doing what was right or wrong.”

13. “How very pure and cold, tranquil and quiet is my present state. I find my essence to be cooling to me as I am washed in the cold bath of Self realization.

14. I am quite calm and lost in my trance. I sit alone as one with Unity. I have no desire for even a straw, but remain solely by myself.”

15. Thinking thus in himself and relieved of all impressions (vasanas), the king entered into the state of samadhi and sat as quiet as a statue carved in wood.

16. He became silent and had no desire or refuge for his reliance. He remained in his immovable posture, like the peak of mountain.

17. Being freed from fear in an instant, he remained a long time with the tranquility of his soul and mind. Being united with the Supreme Spirit in his samadhi, he continued long in his dreamless trance, his soul shining like the rising sun.

✅
Chapter 6a.102 — Kumbha Returns and Awakens the Trace of Life in Sikhidhwaja

1. Vasishta said:— Now hear me tell you about Sikhidhwaja, sitting like a block of wood on one side, and the reappearance of Chudala to him from the other.

2. After Chudala had given enlightening instruction to her husband Sikhidhwaja, in her disguise of the sagely Kumbha, she disappeared and traversed into the regions of air.

3. In the empty sky she dropped the from of the divine sage’s son which she had taken by her magic spell. The enchanted form melted away in the air and she appeared in her female form of beautiful appearance.

4. She directed her airy course to her palace in the city where she showed herself as their queen before her assembled attendants and courtiers and discharged the royal duties of her absent lord.

5. After three days she again took to her aerial journey, assumed her enchanted form of Kumbha, and advanced to the hermitage of Sikhidhwaja in the forest.

6. There she saw the king in his woodland retreat, sitting in his posture of deep meditation resembling a figure carved in wood.

7. Seeing him this way, she exclaimed repeatedly in herself, “O what a fortune that he is reposing here in his own soul, sitting quiet and tranquil in himself.”

8. “I must now awaken him from his trance in the Supreme Being or else his soul will soon forsake its mortal frame owing to his disregard of it. He will end his worldly bondage by excessive meditation.

9. It is desirable that he should live some time longer, either with his royalty in the palace or with devotion in this forest. Then we both will depart together, throwing off our mortal bodies.”

10. “It would be difficult to instruct him in all stages of meditation. There is no end of these things. I will try to train him only in the practical aspects of yoga.”

11. Thus reflecting in herself she made a loud shout which startled the wild beasts but did not rouse the entranced king, though she repeated her loud shouts before him.

12. When neither her shouts nor shrieks could rouse he who remained unshaken as a stone in rock, she shook him with her hands in an effort to bring him back to his sense.

13. Though shaken and moved and thrown down on the ground, yet the king neither awoke nor came to his senses. Then Chudala thought on another means in the disguise of Kumbha.

14. She thought, “Ah! I see my lord is absorbed in his prophetic trance and I must find some means to rouse him to his sense.

15. Or, why should I try to rouse his deified spirit back to its sensation when he is so well absorbed in his state of disembodied meditation?

16. I also wish to get rid of my female form and reach that state of supreme bliss like him, which is free from further births and transmigrations.”

17. Thus thinking to herself, Chudala was about to abandon her own body when her better understanding stopped her from undertaking that attempt.

18. “First let me feel the king’s body,” she thought, “whether there is an end of his life or there is any feeling or pulse in his heart.

19. Should he be alive, he must come back to his sense, just as the juicy root of trees recalls flowers in spring.

20. If he is alive he will walk about like me in his state of a living liberated soul. If he be found to be no longer living, then I shall follow him to the next world.”

21. With this in mind Chudala felt his body and examined it with her eyes. Perceiving him to be living, she rejoiced and said to herself,

22. “He has still a trace of life pulsating in his heart. The beating and throbbing of his heart show his life is not yet extinct.”

23. Rama asked, “How can a little spark of vital flame be residing in the body of the self distracted yogi, whose mind is as cold as stone and whose body becomes as hardened as a clod of earth or a block of wood?”

24. Vasishta replied:— The trace of life remains in the heart as an imperceptible atom and in the manner of consciousness, just as future flowers and fruit are contained in their seeds.

25. The calm and cold yogi who is devoid of his knowledge of unity and duality and sees all things in the same light, who remains as quiet as a rock and without the pulsation of his heart, still has the vibration of his consciousness within him.

26. The body of a temperate and tranquil minded man never wastes or swells in bulk. It never decays or grows but ever remains in the same state.

27. The body of a man whose mind vibrates with thoughts of unity and duality changes and decays. This is never the case with a yogi of unchanging mind.

28. The action of the heart is the spring of life for everybody in this world, just as the honey in the flower cup is the cause of its future fruit.

29. The frail bodies of mortals are subject to fits of joy and anger, quickness and dullness, every moment. These, O Rama, are the seeds of repeated births and they are hard to be checked or subdued.

30. When the mind is still and quiet, the body becomes as dull as if it were lifeless. The body is subject to no passion or change whatever. It remains as even as the still and clear sky which nothing can disturb.

31. The man of even and dispassionate mind is never disturbed or tainted by any fault. He remains as calm as the waters of the ocean without breeze or waves.

32. The body is never lifeless and life is always perceptible unless the mind is defunct in its action. The mind becomes unexcitable and numb in itself only after long practice.

33. The body without the action of its mind and vitality quickly rots and melts away, just as snow melts away under the heat of the sun.

34. The body of Sikhidhwaja was felt to be hot, though it was without its active mind. Therefore it was known to possess its vitality, which prevented it from wasting and rotting away.

35. The noble lady, having perceived the body of her husband to be in that plight, held it tightly with her hands and began to consider what to do with it.

36. She thought, “I will try to raise him by infusion of my reasoning into his mind. This will no doubt bring him back to his senses.

37. If I do not raise him now, he must rise himself after sometime. But why must I remain alone waiting until then?”

38. Having thought so, Chudala left her body, the framework of the senses, and entered the body of the king and joined with his intellectual essence.

39. She gave a vibration to the reasoning of her living lord. After putting it into action and motion, she returned to her own body, just as a bird quickly moves from the twig of a tree, which is shaken thereby, and comes back to its own nest again.

40. She rose in her form of the brahmin boy Kumbha and sat upon a flowery bed, where she began to chant her hymns of the Sama Veda, her soft tunes resembling the melodious chime of buzzing bees.

41. The king, on hearing the tuneful chime of the hymns, felt an intellectual exhilaration. His dormant life was awakened to its consciousness, just as the lotus bud comes to bloom by the breath of spring season.

42. His eyelids opened to light like a lotus bud blooms with sunlight, and the king’s whole body became vivid with renewed life.

43. Before him, he saw the brahmin boy Kumbha in his divinely fair form singing Sama hymns as if the god of music was present in person.

44. “O fortunate am I,” thought he, “to have found my friendly Kumbha again before me.” So thinking, he picked up some flowers and offered them to him.

45. “O how great is my good fortune,” he said to his guest, “to be thus recalled to your gracious memory. What else could cause a divine person like yourself to be so favorably disposed towards me?

46. The cause of my salvation has caused you to come and call on me. What else would bring a son of a god down to visit me again?”

47. Kumbha spoke. “O sinless prince, my mind was ever intent on you ever since I left you. Now it has come back to me as I find you well in this place.

48. I do not reap so much delight in the ever delightful region of heaven as I do here in your presence. It is because I have the great work of your redemption no longer pending before me.

49. I have no friend or companion that is dearer to my soul than you. I have no faithful pupil or confidential disciple like you in this world.”

50. Sikhidhwaja replied, “Ah! Now I see that the trees of this mountain are about to yield the fruit of my meritorious acts. They have made a retired recluse like you condescend to desire my company.

51. If these woods and trees and I, who is so devoted to you, should find more favor in your sight than the bliss of your heavenly abode, then please may you live with me in this lonely forest.

52. As for me, I am so blessed with the gift of your samadhi that I always have my perfect rest in God, even in this place. I have no desire for heavenly delights.

53. Resting in that state of pure effulgence, I enjoy my fill of heavenly bliss even in this earth below.”

54. Kumbha questioned, “Have you ever had your repose in the state of supreme joy? Were you ever freed from the misery which always attends the knowledge of duality?

55. Have you ever felt a disgust with all temporary enjoyments? Have you rooted out your taste for the tasteless pleasures of this earth?

56. Has your mind ever rested in that state of even detachment which has no liking for the desirable or dislike for the undesirable, but is always content with whatever awaits upon it at anytime?”

57. Sikhidhwaja replied, “It is by your favor sage, that I have seen all that transcends human sight. I have reached beyond the limits of the universe and obtained the best obtainable and most certain bliss.

58. After long I am freed from decay and disease and gained all which is to be gained, and wherewith I am quite content.

59. I require no further advice from anyone for my upliftment.” “I feel fully gratified with everything in all places. I am quite at ease and freed of disease everywhere.

60. I have nothing to know that I don’t know; nothing to obtain that has not been obtained. I have forsaken whatever is not worth having, and my soul has its reliance in the supreme essence.

61. I rest quite aloof from everything. I am devoid of any fear or error or apathy of anything. I am always situated in the even and calm course of my mind and in the equality of my soul with all others. I am free from all imagination, as the clear sky is free from all tint and cloud.”

✅
Chapter 6a.104 — Sikhidwaja & Kumbha Enjoy Each Other’s Company; — Kumbha on the Needs (Fate) Incident to the Body

1. Vasishta related:— In this manner these two who knew the knowable God continued their conversation on spiritual matters until the third watch of the day in that forest.

2. Then rising together they wandered in the delightful valleys about cooling lakes and pleasant streams.

3. In this way they wandered in that forest for full eight days, passing their time in conversation on various subjects.

4. Then said Kumbha to the king, “Let us walk to some other forest.” He gave his consent uttering the word Om, and then they walked forward in each other’s company.

5. In this manner they walked over many forest lands and passed by many jungles and shores. They saw many lakes, thick woods, and rising hills and their thickets of dense woods and plants.

6. They traversed many woodland tracts and rivers, and saw many villages, towns, and woods on their way. They passed by many sweet sounding rivers and gardens, and many holy places and the abodes of men.

7. They were united together in equal love and friendship, being of equal age and the same even course of mind. They were of equal liveliness, and both walked or stayed together with their unanimity.

8. They worshipped the gods and the spirits of their ancestors in holy places and ate what they got at any place. They lived together both in marshy and dry lands in concord and peace.

9. The loving pair, bearing equal affection for one another in their hearts, dwelt together in friendship amidst woods of tamara trees and in the forests of the Mandara hills.

10. To them no place was their home or own, but they were alike in all. Nothing occurred to disturb their minds which were always as undisturbed as a mountain amidst the winds.

11. Sometimes they walked amidst the flying dust and at other times amidst the far stretching fragrance of sandalwood forests. They were now covered with ashes and then besmeared with sandal paste.

12. They were sometimes clad in good garments and sometimes in multicolored clothes. Now they were covered with tree leaves and at another they were decorated with flowers.

13. Remaining in each other’s company for some days, and having the unanimity of their hearts and minds, the king was as perfected in his nature as another Kumbha himself.

14. The holy and faithful Chudala, seeing the divine form of her husband Sikhidhwaja, began to reflect within herself in the following manner.

15. “How divinely fair has my husband become, and how very charming are these woodland scenes. By living long in this place, we must be an easy prey for the god of love.

16. I see that although one is liberated in his lifetime, yet the sense of his liberation cannot give him freedom from his obligation of testing the pleasures that are presented before him. I think it is ignorance to refuse offered enjoyments for the king.

17. Seeing my husband to be noble minded and free from all bodily disease and debility, and having a flowery grove before, it must be a wretched woman who refuses to advance to her lord at such a time.”

18. “That wretched woman is truly undone who, seated in her covered shelter of flowers, has her husband presented before her and yet fails to approach to him for her satisfaction.

19. Accursed is the woman who being wedded to a handsome husband, and having him alone in her company, fails to associate with him.

20. To one acquainted with true knowledge, of what good is it to reject a lawful pleasure that presents itself before that person?

21. So I must contrive some means in this forest whereby I may be successful to make my husband join with me.”

22. Having thought so in her mind, Chudala, disguised in the form of Kumbha, spoke to the king like a female nightingale mutters to her mate from her flowery covered shelter in the forest.

23. “This is the first day of the new moon of the lunar month of Chaitra, and this is a day of great festivity in the court of Indra in heaven.

24. So I must return to the assembly of the gods and present myself before my father in that assembly. So my departure is ordained by destiny and cannot be averted by any means.

25. You shall have to expect my return to this forest this evening. In the meantime, divert yourself in these flowery trees, which will lull your anxiety for me to rest.

26. I shall positively return here from the blue sky by the evening of this day. I shall soon join your company, which is ever delightful to me.”

27. So saying, she gave a stalk of flowers of the Nandana forest to her beloved to serve as a token of her affection for him.

28. The king said, “You must return to me soon.” She instantly disappeared from his sight and mixed with the air like a light autumn cloud vanishing in the empty sky.

29. He flung flowers after her as she mounted in the sky, and these floated in the air like icicles in the cold season.

30. Sikhidhwaja first saw her flight, then her disappearance from him like a peacock looking at the flight of a cloud with uplifted eyes.

31. At last the body of Kumbha vanished from Sikhidhwaja’s sight and mixed in the open air, as the waves of the sea subside in still and smooth waters.

32. Chudala reached her celestial city, resembling the garden of paradise with its kalpa trees in full bloom, its shining towers waving with flags hoisted on both sides of its charming paths.

33. She secretly entered her private apartment and met the company of the maids waiting for her, just as the graceful beauty of spring meets the long expectant trees of the forest.

34. She attended to her state affairs and discharged them quickly. Then she flew aloft in the air and dropped at Sikhidhwaja’s abode like flowers and fruit of autumn dropping on the ground.

35. She appeared there with a sad face and deeply dejected in her mind, like the fair moon darkened under mist or a beautiful lotus hidden under a fog.

36. Believing her to be his Kumbha, Sikhidhwaja rose up and stood in his presence. But he was troubled in his mind to see him so sad and sorry. He asked the cause and addressed him saying,

37. “I greet you, O Kumbha, but why do you appear so sad today? You are the son of a god and must not be sorry at anything. Please take your seat here.

38. Holy saints and those who know the knowable one, like you, are never moved by joy or grief, but remain untouched by them, as the lotuses remain intact in the water.”

39. Vasishta said:— Being thus approached by the prince, Kumbha sat on his seat and then said in reply, with a voice as thin and soft as the sound of a bamboo flute. Kumbha speaking:—

40. I know that those who know the truth, but remain impatient under bodily accidents and mental anxieties, are not truthful men but cheats who cheat people by their pretended truthfulness.

41. Know prince that the most learned, if they foolishly expect to evade the condition to which they are exposed by their nature, are the most ignorant.

42. The sesame seed naturally has oil inherent in it, and the body also has its inherent incidents. He who is not subject to his bodily accidents is like one who can separate wind from air with his sword.

43. Of course, it is best to evade the evils that are incidental to the body, but it is necessary to undergo patiently what is unavoidable by our bodily powers.

44. Again, as long as we have our bodies we must exert our bodily organs to their proper actions and never attempt to suppress them by our understanding, as it is done by many a wise man.

45. Even the great Brahma and the gods are subject to the conditions of their bodily frames. Even they with their great understandings do not have the power to avoid what is determined by irrevocable destiny.

46. It is beyond the power of both the wise and the unwise to deter the power of destiny. Destiny makes all things run in their destined course, just as the waters of rivers run into the sea.

47. The same irrevocable destiny equally determines the fates of the wise and unwise. She guides them with her fingers to the same goal until they get their release from the body.

48. However, the ignorant, whether exposed to prosperity or adversity, are always destined to undergo their effects upon their bodies.

49. Therefore, it must be known by both the wise and unwise that all beings are destined to roll in their repeated rotations of pleasure and pain, and that there is no power to change the ever chanceful ordinances of unchanging destiny.

✅
Chapter 6a.105 — Kumbha’s Story of Being Cursed by Durvasa, Nightly Changing into a Female

1. Sikhidhwaja said, “If such is the case, sage, that destiny overrules all events, why should you be sorry for anything that has happened to you? You know you are a son of a god and you know the knowable.”

2. Kumbha replied:— Hear, O prince, the wonderful accident that has occurred to me. I will relate to you all that has happened to me in this body.

3. The heart becomes light when its grief is shared with a friend, just as the thickened gloom of clouds dissipate after they discharge their waters in rain.

4. The troubled mind is restored to its serenity by its communication with a sincere friend, just as the muddy waters of a jar are cleared by filtering with kata seeds.

5. After I left here, by handing over the stalk of flowers to you, I traversed though the regions of air until I reached the heavenly abode of the god.

6. There I met my father and accompanied him to the court of the great Indra, where having sat a while, I got up with my father and then departed from him at his abode.

7. Leaving the seat of the gods in order to come down on earth, I entered the region of air. I kept my pace with the fleet steeds of the chariot of the sun in the airy paths of the skies.

8. Thus sailing together with the sun, I reached the point of my separation from him and there took my path through the midway sky, as if I were sailing in the sea.

9. I saw there, in a track before me, a path stretching amidst the watery clouds of air, and marked the angry sage Durvasa gliding swiftly by it.

10. He was wrapped in the covering of clouds and encircled with girdles of flashing lightning. The sandal taints on his body were washed off by showering rains and he seemed like a maiden making her way in haste to meet her lover at the appointed place.

11. Like a devotee he hastened to discharge his fond devotions on the beach of the River Ganges, flowing under the shade of the boughs of the rows of trees on the shore.

12. I saluted the sage from my aerial seat, and said, “You, wrapped as you are in your blue vest of the cloud, seem to advance in haste, like an amorous woman going to meet her lover.”

13. Hearing this, the reverend sage was angered and pronounced his curse upon me saying, “Be you transformed to the amorous woman you think me to be.

14. Go your way and bear my curse, that every night you shall become a woman with protuberant breasts and long braids of hairs on your head, filled with all feminine grace and dalliance.”

15. I was thunderstruck and deeply dejected at this curse. I found the old muni had already disappeared from before me, then I turned my course this way from the upper sky, being quite sick in my heart.

16. Thus I have related to you everything about my being changed to a lady at the approach of night. My constant thoughts are how I shall manage myself under my womanhood.

17. How shall I divulge to my father the shame of becoming a swollen breasted maid at night? How can I reconcile myself to my terrible fate throughout the course of my life? O how wonderful is the decree of fate that we are fated to bear in this world in the course of time!

18. Now I am unlucky to become a prey for young men and the subject of fighting among them, like a piece of flesh among hungry vultures.

19. O what fun have I become to the ludicrous children of the gods in heaven! Ah, how shameful have I been before the sages who must be quite ashamed of me. How shall I remain anywhere and before anybody in my female form at night?

20. Vasishta said:— After saying this much, Chudala became as mute as a silent muni. She remained as quiet as if she were in a swoon.

21. Then the pretended Kumbha, seeming to recover his senses and his patience also, spoke out to himself, “Ah! why do I wail like the ignorant when my soul suffers no change by this?”

22. Sikhidhwaja spoke:— Sage, why do you sorrow for the body? You are the son of a god. Whatever may happen to the body, it can never affect the intangible soul.

23. Whatever pain or pleasure befalls us in this life, it all affects the changing body and can never touch the unchanging soul.

24. If you are acquainted with the Vedas and fortified against all events, you should not allow yourself to be so much moved by these accidents. You are not like others who are constantly subject to all the casualties of life.

25. To be sorry in sorrow is very sorrowful in the wise. Therefore you who have spoken these precepts before should not now be overwhelmed in sorrow. Remain as unmoved as you are wont to be unshaken all along.

26. Vasishta related:— In this did the two hearty friends continue to grieve with one another, consoling each other by turns under the cooling shade of the grove where they sat together.

27. At last the bright sun, who is the light of the world, set down in darkness like lamp without oil. Kumbha was despondent at the prospect of her female form.

28. The full blown lotuses closed their leaves like the closing eyelids of the busy dwellers of the world. Footpaths became as deserted by their passengers as the hearts of loving wives are lonely in the absence of their husbands who are devoted to travelling and staying in distant countries.

29. The upper sky borrowed the appearance of the lower earth by spreading the curtain of darkness over groups of its twinkling stars, like the outstretched nets of fishermen enfolding fish.

30. The black dome of the sky was smiling above with its retinue of shining stars, just like the blue beds of lakes rejoiced with their chains of blooming lilies below. The land resounded with the noise of black bees and beetles and the cries of reddish geese on the water.

31. The two friends rose and offered their evening prayers at the rising of the moon, chanted their hymns and muttered their mantras, and took their shelter under the forest retreat.

32. Afterwards Kumbha, changed as he was to a female form, and sitting before Sikhidhwaja, spoke his faltering speech to him in the following manner.

33. “Sage, I seem to fall down, cry out and melt away in my tears to see myself even now changed to my feminine figure in your presence.

34. See sage, how quickly the hairs on my head lengthen into curling locks, and how they sparkle with strings of pearls fastened to them, like the brilliant clusters of stars in the azure sky.

35. Look here at two snowy balls bulging out of my bosom, like two white lotus buds rising on the surface of waters in the spring season.”

36. “Look how my long robe is stretched down to the heels and how it covers my whole body, like that of a female.

37. Look at these shining ornaments and wreathes of flowers decorating my body, like the blooming blossoms of spring ornamenting the forest tree.

38. Lo! the moon-bright vest covering the crown of my head and the necklaces hanging about my body.

39. Look at my features, how they are converted to their feminine attractiveness, and see how my whole body is graced all over with feminine loveliness.”

40. “O! how very great is my sorrow at my sudden change into a woman. Tell me friend, what am I to do and where to go with this my female form?

41. I perceive also the change in my inner parts and in my thighs and posterior.” Kumbha said this much to her friend, then remained quite mute and silent.

42. The king also, seeing him thus, remained in mute gaze and silence. Then after a while, he opened his mouth and spoke as follows,

43. “Of course it is very sorrowful and pitiable to see you transformed this way into a female. But you, sage who knows the truth, also know that there is no contending with fate.

44. Whatever is destined must come to pass. Wise men must not be startled or feel sorry because all events affect only the body and cannot affect the inner soul.”

45. Kumbha replied, “So it is, and I must bear my feminine form with an unfeminine soul.

46. I will no more sorrow for what is never to be averted, but must endure with patience what I cannot reject.” Relying on this principle, they alleviated their sorrow for what was impossible to avoid.

47. They passed their nights in peace and slept in the same bed without touching one another. Kumbha rose in the morning in his masculine form again, without any trace of his female features, feminine beauty or grace.

48. Kumbha was Kumbha again by being divested of his female form. Thus he passed as bisexual and having two forms being of the brahmin boy Kumbha by day and of Chudala the princess by night.

49. In his male form, Kumbha continued as a friend to the king in the daytime. In the female form of Chudala, he lived as a virgin maid with him at night.

50. Thus did Chudala cling to her husband like a necklace hangs upon a person’s neck and breast. They continued to wander in each other’s company to different countries and over distant hills to satisfy their curiosity.

✅
Chapter 6a.106 — Chudala Weds Sikhidhwaja

1. Vasishta resumed:— After several days passed this way, Chudala, in her disguise as the pretended brahmin boy Kumbha, spoke to her husband.

2. “Hear me, O lotus-eyed prince,” she said, “to what I tell you in good earnest, because I am obliged to become a woman every night and continue to be so for ever more.

3. I wish to fulfill the part of my womanhood by joining myself to a husband by legal marriage for all that time.

4. I want to taste the pleasure of conjugal union with my dear friend, who is of his own accord so very friendly to me without any endeavor on my part. So I hope you will place no difficulty in my way.”

5. “I choose you sage, as my husband, of all others in the three worlds. Therefore be pleased to accept me for your wife every night.

6. The delightful pleasure of conjugal union has come down to us ever since the commencement of creation. Therefore our obedience to the ordinance of nature can cause no guilt on our part.

7. I desire that we may do as we like without desiring or disliking anything, and that we be far from expecting the consequence of what we like or dislike.”

8. Sikhidhwaja answered, “Friend, I see neither good nor evil in accepting your proposal. You are at liberty to do as you like.

9. Being indifferent my mind to everything in the world, I see everything in the same and in an equal light. So I let you have your choice as you may like.”

10. Kumbha replied, “If so, then I say that this day is very favorable for celebrating the wedding ceremony. It is the full moon of Sravana and an all lucky constellation according to my best calculation.

11. On this day of the full moon, our marriage may take place both during the day as well as at night in the gandharva form (by mutual consent).

12. It will be celebrated either on the summit of Mahendra Mountain or on the delightful tableland there about, or in the cave of some mineral mine, and in the light of the shining gems and mineral ores in the mountain.”

13. “Rows of stately trees all around will shed their flowers at the nuptial ceremony. The twining vines on them will represent the dance of dancing girls by their twisting and shaking.

14. Let the bright luminary of the night, accompanied by his consort retinue of shining stars, witness our marriage from the high sky with their wide open and glaring eyes.”

15. “Rise, O king, for your wedding. Let us both hasten to select the forest flowers and prepare the sandal paste and collect the scattered gems with which to decorate our wedding seats.”

16. Saying so, they both rose together and picked the flowers and collected the gems.

17. Then in a short time, they went to the shining land and heaped it with flowers of various kinds.

18. They had their wedding clothing and necklaces ready on the spot, and the god of love helped with supplying everything required on the occasion.

19. Having thus prepared the items of their wedding ceremony and stored them in a golden cave of the mountain, they both went to sacred stream of the heavenly Ganges Mandakini for making their holy ablutions therein.

20. Here Kumbha served as the priest, pouring the holy water profusely on the lofty head and elevated shoulders of the king, just as the elephantine clouds of Indra pour rainwater in plentiful showers on the towering tops and height of hills.

21. Similarly, the king acted the part of the ministering prince, washing the body of his beloved princess now in the form of Kumbha. Thus the two friends anointed and wiped clean the bodies of their former and future consorts.

22. Bathed and purified, they adored the gods, the munis and the spirits of their ancestors for the sake of their honor and without any desire of getting any good or gain from them, for they well knew that there was nothing to benefit themselves from their service to the gods, deified spirits and divine sages.

23. They took their frugal food as their nature and the course of the world required, seasoned with the nectarine juice of their good and refined intelligence.

24. They wore the whitish bark of kalpa trees as their clean wedding clothes and ate its fruit as their wedding cakes. Then they went to the altar for their wedding ceremony.

25. At this time the sun descended below his setting mountain, as if to complete their conjugal union in secret.

26. It now became dark and twilight. They discharged their evening service and offered their prayers. Groups of stars appeared in the sky to witness their union in marriage.

27. Then came the dark night as the only friend of the happy pair, spreading the veil of darkness over the face of nature and smiling with the blushing of snow white lotuses and lilies of the valley.

28. Kumbha collected rich stones and placed those shining on the tableland of the mountain, while Brahma lighted his two lamps of the sun and moon together in the heavens.

29. Being then changed to the female form, Kumbha anointed the king with fragrant sandalwood paste, agallochum, camphor powder and pulverized musk.

30. She adorned his body with strings, bracelets and wristlets of flowers, and dressed it in a robe of thin kalpa tree bark.

31. His body was also decorated head to foot with the filaments of kalpa plant, clusters of parijata flowers, and many other flowers and gems.

32. She appeared in her bridle garb and maiden-like figure, with her big and swollen breasts and all her youthful grace and allurements.

33. She thought that as she was now attired and appeared as a marriage bride, she must now offer herself to a husband worthy to her.

34. “Here I am as a lovely bride,” she thought to herself, “and there is my husband in my presence. I must ask him to accept my hand. This is not the time to withdraw the hand.”

35. So saying, she approached her husband sitting apart from her in the wood. She appeared like Rati, the goddess of love, advancing towards her loving Kama.

36. She went to him and said, “I am Madanika by name and your loving wife. Therefore I bow down at your feet with the regard due to a husband.”

37. So saying, the beautiful lady bent down her head with female bashfulness and made her obeisance to her lord with the pendant locks on her head.

38. Then she said to him, “O my lord, adorn me with ornaments then light the marriage fire to affirm your acceptance of my hand.

39. You appear exceedingly fair to my eyes. You make me quite fond of you. You seem to surpass the god of love in your beauty, even when he wedded his Rati at first in his youthful bloom.

40. O prince, these flower wreathes on your body look like the bright beams in the body of the moon. To me, those strings of flowers hanging on your chest look like the stream of Ganges gliding on the breast of Sumeru Mountain.

41. With the flowing braided hairs on your head, you look like Mandara Mountain with clusters of vines hanging down from its top. Your head appears like a golden lotus with its hanging hairs resembling the filaments of the flower and covered with strings of blackening bees.

42. The shining ornaments and flowery decorations of your body add a light and gracefulness of Mount Meru, with its mineral ores on one side and its floral beauty on the other.”

43. After her flattering speech was over, the new bride and bridegroom and future husband and wife sat contented together, unmindful and forgetful of their past conjugal relation.

44. The brave princess, now Madanika by name, and the noble prince Sikhidhwaja the saint both sat together on a golden seat, which added fresh luster to the beauty and decoration of their bodies.

45. They were bedecked with their headdresses, garlands of flowers and ornaments of gems and pearls, and were furnished with flowers and ointments and clad in fine cloths all over their bodies.

46. The young lady Madanika blazed like Rati with her maddening beauty. She appeared like the goddess Gauri, the excellent model of beauty, at her wedding festivity.

47. The noble lord having adorned his noble lady with his own hands, spoke to her. “O deer-eyed lady, you are as graceful as the goddess Lakshmi of grace and prosperity.

48. I pray that all prosperity attend on you as it does with Sachi, the queen of heaven, in the company of her lord Indra, and as it existed between Hara and Gauri, and between Hari and his consort Lakshmi, the goddess of fortune.

49. You look like a clear lake of lotuses, your breasts blooming like lotus buds and your black-blue eyes resembling blue lotuses. The sweet fragrance of your lotus-like body invites buzzing bees fluttering all about you.

50. You also appear like the tender shoot of the kalpa plant of Kama, your red palms resembling its reddish leaves and your swollen breasts like its blooming buds, and every part of your body is as delicate as its delicious fruits.

51. With your cooling body and your moonlike face and its smiles like moonbeams, you are as beautiful as the full moon and equally delightful to sight.

52. Rise therefore my beautiful lady and ascend on the matrimonial altar and there perform the wedding ceremony standing on the slab of stone marked with creeping plants and their fruits.”

53. Vasishta said:— The altar was studded with strings of pearls, bunches of flowers suspended on all sides. It had four large coconuts hung over the four sides of its square.

54. Pots filled with holy water from the Ganges were set about it, and the sacred matrimonial fire was lighted amidst it, fed with sandalwood and other fragrances.

55. They walked around the flaming fire clockwise, then sat on seats of leaves with their faces turned towards the east.

56. After sitting on the altar, the matrimonial couple lighted the nuptial fire and made offerings of sesame seeds and fried rice upon its flames.

57. Having lifted the wife with his own hands, the husband and wife appeared like Shiva and Parvati in the forest. The married pair turned again about the sacred fire, and offered to each other their own selves and loves as their marriage dowries.

58. They showed their shining faces to one another as their nuptial presents, and completed the ceremony by going round the fire and scattering the fried rice upon it.

59. The husband and wife now parted other hands from their hold of the palms of one another. Their smiling faces appeared like the lunar disc on the new moon.

60. After this, when the moon had already run her course of the first watch of the night, they went to sleep on a flowery bedstead which they had newly prepared.

61. The moon cast her beams to fall aslant on the bedstead, as when attendant women cast their glances askance on the bridal bed.

62. She next spread her bright beams all about the couple’s leafy covered shelter, as if to listen to the pleasant conversation of the new married couple.

63. The pair, having sat awhile in the light of mineral lamps, retired to their sleeping bed which they had prepared in a secluded spot.

64. It was a bedding of flowers covered with heaps of flowers of various kinds.

65. There were heaps of lotuses of golden color, as also mandara and other sorts of flowers, to drive away fatigue by their fragrance.

66. The flat of the flowery bed of the bridal pair resembled the plane of the broad and bright moon, and a level surface covered by cooling ice.

67. It also resembled the wide sea whose waters are permeated by the bright moon and whose surface supplies a bed to Ananta, the sleeping serpent of the infinite god Vishnu.

68. The loving pair then lay themselves down and rolled upon their snow white bed of flowers, as when Mandara Mountain rolled about and churned the Milky Ocean.

69. They passed their bridal night caressing each other and conversing on topics of love. The entire night glided before them as if only a few moments.

✅
Chapter 6a.107 — Chudala Makes a False Indra Appear to Test Sikhidwaja

1. Now as the eastern sun gilded the world with his golden rays, the queen consort of Sikhidhwaja changed her form of Madanika to that of the brahmin boy Kumbha.

2. She stood openly as such before her friend, sitting in the cavern of Mandara where at night they lived in conjugal union together like a pair of forest deities.

3. During the days they wandered in the forests and among trees and plants loaded with fruit and flowers of various colors.

4. They passed the day together as two loving friends and spent the night as a wedded couple. They were never separated from each other either by day or night.

5. They rambled about the caverns and trees of the mountain and played under the covered shelters of spice and mandara trees.

6. They wandered about the outskirts of Dardura, Kailash, Mahendra, Malaya, Gandhamadana, Vindhadri, and Lokaloka.

7. On every third day or night, when Chudala found the king to be fast asleep, she used to assume her former form of the queen and return to her royal palace and discharge her state affairs as before, then return to her husband in the forest.

8. Thus the loving pair lived as two friends by day and as husband and wife at night, both decorated with flowers and sleeping on their flowery bed.

9. They remained for a month in a shining cave of Mahendra under the shade of delightful sarala trees where they were greatly endeared by forest deities and kinnara foresters.

10. They lived a fortnight in a tree on Suktimat Mountain surrounded by mandara trees and kalpa plants, feasting upon the fruit which they could reach with their hands.

11. They passed two months on the southern ridge of the winged mountain of Mainaka, its covered shelters over hung by the fruits and flowers of the celestial parijata trees.

12. They dwelt a month in the valley of Jammu at the foot of Himalayan range and beside the Jambu River. They fed on the jam fruit that give its name to the whole country.

13. They travelled through the northern Kuru country for ten days, and for seven and twenty days they stayed in the districts lying north of Kosala.

14. In this manner they passed over many countries and hilly districts, living together as two friends by day and as a married pair at night.

15. Thus many months rolled away in their travels through many places, until a thought arose in the mind of Chudala to test her associate. She thought,

16. “I will test the heart of my partner and see whether it is liable to have any attraction toward beauty and pleasurable objects.”

17. Thinking so, Chudala by her magic skill showed the god Indra playing in the company of celestial apsara nymphs in that forest.

18. Sikhidhwaja saw the god Indra with his companion there. He advanced before him and worshipped him as he deserved, saying,

19. “O lord of gods, will you consent to reveal to me the cause of your arrival in this forest from your seat in the high and far distant heaven?”

20. Indra replied, “Virtue has attracted us down to these woods, as the flying kites of the air are drawn to earth by the string fastened to their breasts.

21. Now rise from here and proceed with us to heaven where the celestial apsara nymphs are eagerly expecting to see you since they have heard of your wonderful virtues.

22. Wear these sandals, hold this sword, anoint your body with this ointment, and ascend to the upper sky and thence to heaven in the manner of the masters and perfect yogis.”

23. “On reaching the region of the gods, you will enjoy all sorts of delights which await the living liberated souls in this world and the next, and to which I now come to invite you.

24. No holy man like yourself ever neglects the offered occasion to their prosperity, nor should you scorn to take your heavenward course with ourselves at this moment.

25. Let there be no impediment to your ascent to the enjoyment of heaven where you will enjoy your full bliss and which will be blessed by your presence as the three worlds are by the presence of Vishnu.”

26. Sikhidhwaja said, “I know, O lord of gods, the delights that abound in heaven, but I have my heaven everywhere and there is no particular place which I consider as heaven.

27. I am content everywhere and I am pleased with every place. My soul being desirous of nothing from its fullness in itself, I am fully satisfied everywhere.

28. O god, if remaining forever in the same place and in the same state is what you call heaven, then pardon me for I decline to go it.”

29. Indra answered, “I know, O holy saint, that those who have known the knowable and who are perfect in their understandings are indifferent to sensual gratification. However, it is not the part of the wise to reject an enjoyment which offers itself by the gracious allotment of his destiny.”

30. After the god had said so, the king remained silent and returned no answer. Then the god said, “If you are resolved not to leave this place, then I must leave you here and make my way to heaven.”

31. Sikhidhwaja said, “I must not go there now, though I may do so on some future occasion.” Upon this the god made farewell.

32. All the other gods who were in Indra’s retinue also vanished upon the disappearance of their chief, just as the huge surges of the sea subside in the deep together with their foaming froths.

✅
Chapter 6a.108 — Chudala again Tests Sikhidwaja by Taking a Lover; then Manifests in Her Own Form

1. Vasishta related:— The queen retracted the enchantment by which she had presented the god Indra before the king. She was glad to find that he had subdued his desire of enjoyment.

2. He remained with perfect tranquility and equanimity of his mind at the appearance and in the presence of the god Indra, fearless, indifferent and unmoved by the god’s persuasion.

3. “I will again try to know by some means or other whether this prince is subject to the passions of anger or annoyance or any other feeling, which serve at best but to blindfold the understanding.”

4. With this intention she assumed the form of the chaste Madanika at the approach of night, when the moon had already appeared above that forest land.

5. The wind was blowing gently, bearing the sweet fragrance of flowers. Sikhidhwaja was sitting by the side of a river performing his evening prayers.

6. She entered her covered shelter formed by twining vines and decorated with flower garlands that made it look like the shelter of a forest goddesses.

7. She slept there on a bed of flowers she had made herself, adorned with flower wreaths on her body. She had her beloved one seated in her heart and laid herself on a pillow.

8. Sikhidhwaja sought her in the gardens and at last found her sleeping in the covered shelter, with a pretty paramour holding her neck in his arms.

9. Her lover’s hair hung on his neck and shoulders and his beautiful body was daubed with sandalwood paste. He had a wreath of flowers on his head, distorted from his crown which lay loose on the pillow over which it rolled.

10. The flowing tresses of the mistress fell in two fold braids on her shoulder blades of golden color, hanging over her ears and eyebrows and her cheeks and face.

11. He saw the amorous pair with their smiling faces kissing and embracing each another, as when ivy twists around a large tree.

12. They lay with wreathed flowers hanging loosely on their bodies. Both were fascinated with love of one another by the contact of their bodies, which infused their reciprocal passions in the heart for each other.

13. They were both infatuated and ravished by their mutual love, bruising breasts on the other’s bosoms.

14. Seeing this, Sikhidhwaja felt no change in his disposition. He was rather pleased to find them sleeping so very happily in each another’s embrace.

15. “Remain you lovers,” he said, “as you are to your hearts’ content. I will put no obstacle in your way, nor make you afraid of me by my presence in this place.” Saying so, he withdrew from there.

16. Immediately at this time, she also withdrew her charm and assumed herself as the beautiful goddess of love and loving spouse of the prince.

17. She came out and saw the king sitting in a cave of the mountain, in the posture of intense meditation with both eyes open.

18. The lady Madanika advanced towards him with a bashful face, then sat silently by his side with her downcast look and sad appearance, as if abashed and ashamed of her past misconduct.

19. After a moment, as Sikhidhwaja was released from his meditation, he cast his eyes upon her and spoke to her with an exceedingly sweet voice, which spoke the frankness of his mind.

20. “Lady,” he said, “why do you come so soon to me and leave off the enjoyment of your happiness? Happiness is the end and aim of all beings on earth.

21. Go, return to your lover and gratify him with all your passionate embraces. Mutual love, so much desired by all, is hard to be had by any in this world.

22. Think not, lady, that I am at all angry or sorry for this affair as I am always contented in myself, knowing the true One that is only to be known.

23. My companion Kumbha and I are always dispassionate in our temperaments. But you arise as a woman from the curse of Durvasa, so you are always at liberty to do whatever you like without incurring any displeasure from me.”

24. Madanika replied, “So it is, O highly favored one of heaven. You know that women by their nature are eight times more passionate than men and therefore should not be criticized on account of their gratification of their natural passions.

25. I am only a frail woman. I found you absorbed in deep meditation. I could not choose other than to take a partner as you saw in the depth of the forest and in the night.”

26. “The weak sex in general, and maidens in particular, are ever fond of illicit love by their very nature for the gratification of their lust, which they can never have the power to check.

27. A woman becomes graceful in the company of man and no curse, prohibition, men’s menaces or regard of chastity is of any use to stop them from it.

28. I am a woman and a weaker vessel, an ignorant and independent lady. Therefore sage, it becomes you to forgive my unsteadiness, because forgiveness is the most prominent feature of holiness.”

29. Sikhidhwaja replied, “My young lady, know that anger has no seat in my heart, as there grows no plant in the sky. It is only for fear of incurring the disgrace of good people that I must decline to take you as my spouse.

30. But I can associate with you as before in mutual friendship for ever more, without bearing any yearning or grudge in my heart, either for or against one another.”

31. Vasishta replied:— After Sikhidhwaja had consented to continue in his detachment and disinterested friendship with his only companion in the forest, Chudala was highly pleased to know the nobleness of his mind. She thought to herself,

32. “O, the transcendent tranquility which this lord of mine has gained, whose dispassion has set him above anger and who has attained his living liberation.

33. No delight attracts his heart, nor any excellence ever attracts his soul whose mind is not elated by pleasure or prosperity, or depressed by pain or calamity.

34. I think that all the imaginable perfections have jointly met in his person, as the goddess Lakshmi of prosperity is united with the lord Narayana.

35. It is now the proper time for me to bring to his memory all and everything relating to me by abandoning my form of Kumbha and disclosing myself to him in my form of Chudala.”

36. With this thought, she threw off her form of Madanika and took the appearance of Chudala upon herself.

37. She issued out of the body of Madanika in the form of Chudala and stood openly before him, like a jewel taken out of a chest and exposed to view.

38. The king saw her unblemished and lovely figure, and found his beloved Madanika transformed into his wedded spouse Chudala.

39. He saw his own wife present before him, like a lotus flower blooming in the spring, and like the goddess Lakshmi of prosperity rising out of the earth, or like a brilliant gem displayed openly from its casket.

✅
Chapter 6a.109 — Sikhidwaja & Chudala Reunited

1. Vasishta related:— Sikhidhwaja was surprised to see his queen appearing so suddenly before him. He looked upon her with eyes staring with mute astonishment. Then he broke his silence, uttering the following words in a faltering speech.

2. “What are you, O lotus eyed maid, and from where do you come to this place? Why do you come here and how long have you been here? Say for what purpose do you abide in this forest?

3. Your gait and figure, your features and your form, your sweet smiles, manners and courtesy, speak you plainly to be a copy of the image of my wedded wife.”

4. Chudala replied, “So it is my lord, as you think me to be your lawful consort. As you see, I am no doubt your Queen Chudala who has met you today in her natural and undisguised form.

5. I assumed the counterfeit forms of Kumbha and others only to show your mistaken course. I have used every means and stratagem to recall you to the right path.”

6. “Ever since your foolishly renounced your kingdom to perform ascetic austerities in the forest, I have had recourse to employ every means to reclaim you to the right path of religion.

7. I awakened to the light of truth. My form of Kumbha and all the other forms which I took upon myself were chiefly intended for your instruction.

8. The forms of Kumbha and others were not real but magical appearances before you. You who knows the knowable can very well discern the whole affair in your meditation.

9. You will be convinced of all this if you will only look into it by the light of your meditation and not otherwise.” After Chudala said this much, the king sat in yoga asana posture and meditated.

10. He saw the whole affair, rising and exhibiting itself plainly before his mental vision, from the renunciation of his royalty until his meeting with Chudala at the end.

11. All these he saw rising in his soul in one moment of meditation. The successive events appeared from the renunciation of his kingdom to the present instant.

12. The king, seeing all these in his meditation, felt glad in himself and greatly rejoiced when he came to the end of the scenes, ended his meditation and opened his eyes.

13. He extended both arms, the hairs standing on end from joy, his face shining and expressing the gladness of his heart, tears trickling from his eyes, his limbs weakened by his want of self-control.

14. Then he embraced her to his bosom for a long time, as a weasel does its mate. This continued embrace indicated the permanency of their passion for one another.

15. Nobody, not even the hundred-hooded Sesha serpent with its hundred tongues, can express the height of happiness which the happy pair felt on this occasion of their reunion as their two bodies met together, like the two orbs of the sun and moon in their union, or as their two discs were joined in one, as if stuck together with some paste or clay.

16. The two constant lovers continued in their close contact like two adjacent rocks sticking to one another, until at last they parted, their bodies profusely perspiring.

17. Then they gradually relaxed their arms from their embraces. Their hearts, which had before long overflowed with delight, became as light as two empty pots of water.

18. They loosened their arms and stared at each another with a fixed and mute gaze of amazement. After the intensity of their delight was over, they sat silently with their deep felt love.

19. Then the king laid his hand under the chin of his legal and royal consort and spoke to her in soft and sweet words distilled with honey.

20. “Matrimonial love is righteous and far sweeter than celestial ambrosia itself. O my moon-faced love, then how was it that you could continue so long without tasting its sweets?

21. You have doubtless undergone much deprivation and suffered great pains in the absence of your husband. The struggle that you have taken on yourself to release me from the prison of the world was exceedingly great.”

22. “I know not with whom to compare you, for the great wisdom that you have displayed in your act of my redemption. Even the pious ladies Sachi and Arundhati and the great goddesses Gauri, Gayatri, Lakshmi and Saraswati fall short of your admirable qualities.

23. My love, I see that even the personified powers of understanding and prosperity, the persons of the graces and clemency, and the virtues of forgiveness, sympathy and universal love are unequal to your virtues and beauty.

24. I know no adequate recompense for your labor, or how to repay my gratitude to you who has spared no patience and persevered through all pains for the sake of my instruction and redemption.”

25. “O say, what payment will reward your pains and gladden your mind in exchange for releasing me from the dark pit of ignorance and reclaiming me from the boundless wilderness of errors?

26. The true virtue of faithful wives is to raise their fallen husbands. This virtue can serve to save a man from his degradation much greater than scriptures or learning, riches, or the spiritual guide and his teaching.

27. Faithful and affectionate wives are of greater service by far to their husbands than a brother or relation or any friend or servant, or even a guru or one’s riches can ever be.

28. The faithful wife is a man’s best guide. She serves as his best abode and attendant more than anything else in this world. Therefore the wife deserves always to be regarded above all others, with utmost diligence and attention.

29. The happiness of both worlds depends entirely on the disinterested and virtuous wife who serves as a raft to her husband for his going across the wide ocean of the perilous world.”

30. “How shall I, O virtuous lady, possibly repay what you have done for me? I now regard you as the wisest and best of all the virtuous ladies in the whole world.

31. Your name must ever after remain foremost among all virtuous woman in the world in all future stories of female virtues and respectable character among the women.

32. I think the virtuous lady Arundhati and others, whose names are immortalized in the record of sacred history because of their virtues, will feel jealous of you as they came to learn about your chastity and other admirable qualities. So my dear, let me embrace you again to my bosom.”

33. Vasishta related:— Saying so, Sikhidhwaja again held Chudala to his close embrace, as the weasel does his mate in their mutual fondness.

34. Chudala said, “My lord, I was sorry to find you entirely devoted to your dry ceremonial duties. It was for that reason that I took so much pain to dissuade you from them and lead you to the knowledge of the intelligent soul.

35. Now tell me, my lord, what shall we do in this place and what is the use of your extolling my virtues so far?”

36. Sikhidhwaja replied, “O most excellent among women, you are here at your liberty to do whatever you think is best. It is the prerogative of respectable ladies to manage everything in their own way.”

37. Chudala answered, “Now my lord, as you have come to know that you are released from the network of this world and are set free on the shore from all its conflicts and confusions, you must have perceived by now that your past austerities were all in vain and gone for nothing.

38. You must have known that it is all in vain when you say ‘I do this or that, and will get its reward, and will thus be settled in life,’ and the like. Say do you smile to think of these and other wanderings of your simple understanding?

39. Do you know that these wanderings are the creatures of your greed and mere creations of your fancy?

40. Do you perceive that these false creations of your imagination are as unreal as the appearance of mountains in the empty air?”

41. “Say what have you learnt after all? What do you depend upon? What object do you seek at present? How do you see all your bodily acts, either of your past or future life?”

42. Sikhidhwaja replied, “O dear lady, with your blooming eyes resembling the leaves of a full blown blue lotus, I am likewise situated in and at the same place where you are also located.

43. I am tranquil and like the object of my meditation. I am situated in the true ego long after leaving the sense of my personality. I have arrived at that state which is known and felt only by the heart.”

44. “There is no power anywhere, not even that of Hari and Hara, that is able to obstruct my heartfelt joy which makes me think myself as nothing else or less than the consciousness itself.

45. I am now free from errors and liberated from the chains of the world. I am neither this nor that, nor am I glad or sorry at anything or at any event in the world.

46. I am neither any gross or subtle matter, nor am I like a ray of sunlight that emanates from the body of the sun and falls below by traversing through the midway sky.”

47. “I am of the essence of that glorious light which is ever without increase or decrease. I am always tranquil and even in my nature. I am quite at ease, having no desire of my own or anything to expect from anyone.

48. O you, most chaste lady, know me to be of that essence which exists as nirvana everywhere. I am what I am and what I cannot describe, and no other than this.”

49. “O beautiful lady, with your eyes glancing like the flitting waves of rivulets, I bow down to you as my instructor because it is by your good grace that I have come across the turbulent ocean of the world.

50. No longer shall I be soiled with the dirt of the earth. I am cleansed of it like a bit of gold purified from its alloy by repeated burnings.

51. I am quite calm and easy, quiet and free from passions, and never divided in my attention or distracted in my mind. I am beyond all things. I am everywhere and all pervading. I am situated as I am.”

52. Chudala said, “If you remain in this manner, O lord of my life and dearly beloved of my heart, then tell me, my lord. What is now most agreeable to your most noble disposition?”

53. Sikhidhwaja answered, “I know of nothing, O good lady, that is either delectable or detestable to me. I do the same as you do. I am exactly of the same mind as you in everything.

54. O you who is as fair as the sky, know that I have nothing to choose for myself beyond what I am possessed of. I leave it to you to choose and do whatever you think proper for us.

55. I will act as you will, like your shadow or reflection in the mirror, because my mind is devoid of desire and effort. I will patiently bear with whatever comes to pass on me.

56. I will neither excite nor prevent, neither praise nor blame you for anything you do, but leave you at full liberty to do whatever you best choose for yourself.”

57. Chudala replied, “If it is as you say, then hear me tell you what is best to be done by you at present. You are to imitate the conduct of living-liberated persons, released from ignorance and knowing the unity of the deity pervading all things in every place.

58. We are both as devoid of desires as the emptiness of the sky is without population. But that which I wish to do is what you do not wish at all.”

59. “Say what man is there who neglects his life and livelihood and remains only in his intellect? There are three stages of human life, namely, its beginning or boyhood, its middle or youth, and its end or old age. Being situated in the middle stage, we must do the duties belonging to this state before we proceed to the last stage of our being.

60. We are by birth the king and queen of a kingdom, therefore it is most important for us to rule our state and pass our days discharging the duties of our royalty until our end.”

61. Sikhidhwaja said, “Tell me, O steady minded lady, what do you mean by the three stages? How do we stand at the midmost one without having a bit to care for the final one?”

62. Chudala replied, “Know king that we are royal persons by birth. We must continue as such from the first to the last stage of our lives.

63. Why then do you allow the incapacity of old age to overtake you in the prime of your youth when it is your duty to remain in your city and palace and govern your princely state?

64. I will rule there as your consort queen and crown the ladies in the royal apartment. All young maidens of the city will dance with joy to see their king and queen again in the royal palace.

65. Then the city glittering with its uplifted flags, resounding with loud beating drums and decorated with wreaths of flowers hanging all about, will resemble a spring garden smiling with its green plants, blooming buds and blushing flowers all around.”

66. Vasishta related:— Hearing these words of the queen, the king smilingly spoke to her with sweet words spoken from the simplicity and frankness of his soul.

67. “If such is your pleasure, my dear broad-eyed beloved, to incite me to earthly pleasures, then tell me what cause had I to disregard the heavenly happiness which was offered to me by the god Indra?”

68. Chudala replied, “Know prince, that I also have no taste for earthly enjoyments or any great pleasure for its grandeur or greatness. I depend upon the bounty of nature and live as I receive from her hand.

69. Hence I have no taste for heavenly joys or earthly royalty, nor do I derive any pleasure from the performance of virtuous and courageous acts. My delight is in the undisturbed equanimity of my mind and the positive rest of my position.

70. Only after I have lost my feeling of pleasure in something and that of pain in another do I gain my equanimity and indifference to both and am settled in my perfect rest and tranquility.”

71. Sikhidhwaja responded, “You have rightly said, O large eyed lady with your calm and cool understanding, that it is all alike, whether we get or lose a kingdom, since we derive no lasting good nor suffer great evil from either its gain or loss.

72. Let us remain in perfect peace by avoiding all thoughts of pleasure or pain, freed from envy, imitation and jealousy. Let us continue in the same state of thoughtlessness as we are at present.”

73. In this manner the married couple passed the day in their sweet endearments and mutual conversation. The day glided on swiftly and sweetly over their feast of reason and flow of the soul.

74. They rose on the departure of the day to discharge their duties on the parting days. Though they were ill provided for the emergencies of night, yet they well knew how to suit themselves to every occasion in every place.

75. Despising heavenly bliss, the loving pair lived together in perfect contentment with their conjugal bliss. They both slept in the same bed, loving and loved by one another.

76. The entire night passed swiftly in their heaven-like happiness of conjugal enjoyment, their expressions of love and affection for each other, and in their excited anxiety for each other’s embrace.

✅
Chapter 6a.110 — Sikhidhwaja Returns to Rule His Kingdom; His Nirvana

1. Vasishta related:— The eastern sun rose above the horizon like a brilliant gem appearing out of its containing casket, and dispelled the darkness of the sky, just as the blazing gem enlightens the room with its rays.

2. His dawning rays pierced the eyes of sleeping men and opened their eyelids, just as they open the petals of the closed lotuses. They roused the lazy world to activity, as if the sunbeams gave the sound of the morning bell.

3. The loving pair rose from their bed of flowers in the cave of the mountain brightened by its mineral gold. They sat on their soft and cool leafy seats to make their morning prayers and discharge their religious functions.

4. Then Chudala stood before a golden vessel of water where she made him take his solemn oath by the names of seven oceans of the earth.

5. Then she made him sit by the sacred water pot, facing towards the rising sun in the east. In this sequestered retreat, she performed the rite installing him to rule his kingdom.

6. After the ceremony was over, they both sat on the same bedding when the godlike Chudala spoke to her husband in the following manner.

7. “Now my lord, leave off your quiet character of a hermit muni and assume the strength of the eight rulers of the upper skies and world below.”

8. After Chudala had spoken in this manner, the king assented to what she said and told her that he will do as she asked him and return to his kingdom with her.

9. Then he said to the queen who was standing at the post of the custodian on her inaugurated lord, “Now, my dear, I will install you to the rank of the queen regent in my turn and in return for yours.”

10. Saying so, he caused holy bathing in an adjacent pool and anointed her as the consort queen of his royalty and kingdom.

11. Then the king asked her to exert the powers of her perfection in yoga meditation to produce in their presence a large force and retinue, as they wanted and thought suitable to their royal dignity.

12. Hearing these words of king, the praiseworthy queen, by the power of her yoga, produced a body of forces as large and as vast as the outstretched clouds in rainy season.

13. They saw their cloud-like forces composed of lines of horses and elephants, flags flying in the air in the form of scattered clouds, the forest land covered by the feet of foot-soldiers.

14. The sound of music resounded in the hollow caves of mountains and woods. The flash of the helmets on the soldiers’ heads drove away the darkness of the sky.

15. Then the royal pair mounted upon a royal elephant, oozing with the perfume of its ichor, escorted by the army on both sides of their procession.

16. King Sikhidhwaja sat with the queen on the same seat accompanied by a mighty force composed of foot-soldiers and chariots that plowed the ground as they drove on forward.

17. The mighty force poured out like a rolling mountain, seemingly blowing off and breaking down the rock and highlands like a cyclone carrying off everything in its way.

18. The king then proceeded with his great procession from Mahendra Mountain past the mountains and flatlands, rivers, forests and homes of men.

19. He pointed out to his royal consort the places where he had stayed before on his way from out of his city, which he now saw in his heavenly brightness as being near.

20. All his chiefs and chieftains advanced to meet their king. They welcomed him with shouts of his victory from their heartfelt joy, or from the revival of their hopes on the occasion of his happy return.

21. The king entered the city accompanied by his two regiments on both sides and attended by bands of musicians playing in concert with the singing and dancing party.

22. He passed through the marketplace and saw the beauty of the shops one after the other. He was hailed by groups of city women who threw handfuls of flowers and fried rice at him as he passed by.

23. He saw numerous flags and banners raised up on every side. He saw strings of pearls hung over the doorways of houses. The women of city were singing and dancing in merriment all around, giving it the appearance of Kailash, the abode of the gods.

24. He entered his royal palace with all his retinue and was welcomed by the congratulations of his courtiers and attendants. He gave due honors to all his servants, then dismissed the retinue as he entered the inner apartment.

25. He ordered a festivity to be observed for a week, then engaged himself in the management of state affairs and in meditation in the inner apartment.

26. He ruled over his kingdom for ten thousand years. He and his queen gave up the burden of their bodies and expired together about the same time.

27. Having left his mortal frame, he obtained his nirvana like a lamp that has gone out for lack of oil. He attained the state in which the high minded soul has no more to return and be reborn on earth.

28. It was by his observance of equanimity that he enjoyed the peaceful rule of ten thousand years. He had the good fortune to live and die together with the queen with whom he attained nirvana.

29. It was by his view of all persons and things with an even sight and in the same light, and his avoidance of fear and sorrow, together with his lack of pride, envy and hatred, and the dispassion of his disposition, also his observance of the duties to which he was bound by his birth, that made him put off his death for more than a thousand years and enjoy a peaceful rule for all time with the partner of his joy.

30. Now Rama, try to imitate this king and be like him in everything. King Sikhidwaja’s virtues made him the crown of all other kings on earth. He enjoyed all the enjoyments of life and lived a long life until he attended his final state of immortality. O Rama, follow your own callings and never be sorry at any accident in life. Be ever prompt and vigilant in your duties and enjoy the prosperity of temporal enjoyments and spiritual liberations both together.

✅
Chapter 6a.111 — Story of Kacha & His Enlightenment by Brihaspati

1. Vasishta related:— Now I have told you the complete story of Sikhidhwaja. I hope you will imitate his example and set yourself free from all sorrow and misery.

2. Shut out the visible world from your sight. Shut in your passions and affections in close confinement within your heart. Continue with the dispassion of your mind forever attached to the Supreme Spirit.

3. Rule in your kingdom with the example of Sikhidhwaja and conduct yourself in a manner that may secure for you the fruition of both worlds (peace and liberation).

4. As Sikhidhwaja came by degrees to attain his enlightenment, so also did Kacha the son of Brihaspati receive the enlightenment of his reason, as I shall now relate to you.

5. Rama said, “Please tell me sage, in short, how this Kacha, the saintly son of sage Brihaspati, came to his enlightenment and right understanding, after he was deluded before by error, as was Sikhidhwaja.”

6. Vasishta began by saying:— Hear Rama, another tale as interesting as that of Sikhidhwaja. It is about how Kacha, son of the godlike Brihaspati, was awakened to the light of truth.

7. He had passed the period of his youth and was about to enter the career of worldly life. He had acquired full knowledge of worlds and things when he asked the following question of his father.

8. He said, “Tell me, O father who knows all righteousness, how is the animal spirit, bound to the body by means of the too thin thread of life, released from its bondage in this temporary world?”

9. Brihaspati replied, “The soul, my son, is well able to fly away easily and swiftly over the perilous ocean of the world, by means of its abandonment of concerns with it.”

10. Vasishta added:— Kacha, hearing this holy statement of his father, abandoned all his earthly properties and expectations and left his house and went to forest where he took his shelter.

11. Brihaspati was filled with sorrow at his departure, because it is nature of good hearted men to feel equal anxiety both at the union as well as the separation of their friends.

12. After the sinless Kacha had passed eight years in solitude, he encountered his reverent father who had been looking for him in the woods.

13. The son rose and did homage to his venerable father, who embraced him in his arms and breast. Kacha then spoke to his father, the lord of speech, in words that flowed like honey from his lips.

14. Kacha said, “You see father, that for these full eight years I have forsaken everything and taken myself to this solitary retreat. Still, why is it that I do not enjoy the lovely and lasting peace of mind which I have been seeking so long?”

15. Vasishta related:— Upon hearing Kacha’s sorrowful words, the lord of speech Brihaspati told him again to abandon his all, then left him and made his way to the upper sky.

16. After his father’s departure, Kacha cast off his clothing made of tree bark and leaves. His frail body appeared out of it like the clear autumn sky after the setting of the sun and the rise of the stars of heaven.

17. He then moved to another forest where he took shelter in the cave of a rock that protected him from rain and rainy clouds, just as the autumn sky protects the landscape from the floods of rain.

18. He lived all alone on one side of a wood with his naked body and tranquil and vacant mind, breathing only the breath of his life. As he was afflicted on one occasion in this state of his body and mind, he happened to see his father standing before him.

19. The pious son rose from his seat and did reverence to his father with all the marks of filial piety. Being then clasped in his close embrace, he asked him in his faltering words as follows.

20. Kacha said, “Behold my father how I have forsaken everything. I have even cast away my tree-bark dress and my shelter of reeds and weeds. Yet why do I not find my rest in my god? What must I yet do to attain to that state?”

21. Brihaspati said, “I told you my son, to forsake your all. This all means the mind which comprehends all things in it. By forsaking your mind you can gain perfect joy. The learned know the mind is all in all because it contains everything. There is nothing besides the ideas of them in our minds.

22. Vasishta related:— Saying so, Brihaspati, the lord of speech, flew hastily into the sky. His son Kacha immediately strove to abandon the thoughts and operations of his mind.

23. But he found it impossible to subdue his mind or suppress its action and motion. Then he recalled his father to his mind, and thought in himself to be in his presence.

24. He considered in himself that the mind was no part of his body or anything among the known categories in nature. “It is quite aloof and apart from all, and therefore perfectly guiltless in itself. Why then should I abandon so innocent and constant a companion of mine?

25. Therefore I shall seek my father’s help to learn how and why the mind is accounted as the greatest enemy of men. Learning this fully from him, I will immediately forsake it from me and obtain my joy thereby.”

26. Vasishta related:— Having thought so, Kacha went upward to the upper sky where he met the lord of speech. He bowed down to him and did his homage with filial respect and affection.

27. Kacha then asked his father to tell him the true nature and form of the mind so that he would be able to detect it and accordingly forsake it.

28. Brihaspati answered, “Men acquainted with the mental science know the mind as the egoism of a man. The inner feeling of one’s ego takes the name of his mind and no more.”

29. Kacha replied and said, “O father of unlimited understanding who is the teacher of all the multitude of gods, explain to me this intricate point of identity of the mind or intellect or egoism.

30. I see the difficulty of forsaking this mind and forgetting this egoism or self-personality. I also understand the impossibility of one’s perfection without abandoning both of these. Tell me now, O greatest of yogi thinkers, how is it possible to get rid of them in any way?”

31. Brihaspati answered:— Why my son, the destruction of our egoism is as easy as the blinking of our eyelids and easier far than crushing flowers. There is not the least pain in rejecting this feeling.

32. Now my boy, listen as I tell you how this is to be done in a moment, and how it is to be removed like true knowledge of the nature of a thing removes a long standing bias of ignorance.

33. My son, in reality there is no such thing as what you call your egoism or personality. It is an unreality appearing as reality, a false mental fabrication like the ghost of little children.

34. Like the fallacy of water in the mirage and the mistake of a serpent in the rope and all other errors appearing as truths, the misconception of egoism is a mere delusion of understanding.

35. The delusion of vision shows a couple of moons in the sky and shows many things as their doubles. In the same way, the error of our understanding presents us with our false egoism instead of the one real and everlasting Atman (Soul).

36. There is only one real Atman, without beginning or end and quite transparent in itself. It is more transparent than the clear atmosphere and an Intelligence that knows all things.

37. It is always omnipresent as the light of all things and the life of all living beings. Only this essence spreads throughout all nature and shines in all her phenomena, as the same essence of water displays itself in all rolling surges and waves and moving bubbles in the sea.

38. Such being the case, tell me what is this special egoism of ours, and how and from where could a separate personality come to exist? Where can you find dust rising from water, or see water springing from fire?

39. My son, shun your false belief in the difference of this one and that other, and yourself as another person. Refrain from thinking that you are a mean and contemptible being confined within the limits of space and time.

40. Know yourself (soul) to be unbounded by space or time, ever extended all over in your essential transparency, always the same in all seeming varieties, the one unchanging, pure and simple Consciousness.

41. Your Self (soul) is situated in the fruit, flowers and leaves of all the trees on every side of you. You abide in everything like the core and foundation for its existence, and as moisture for its growth. The pure intellect eternally inheres in everything as its soul and essence. Tell me then, O Kacha, from where do you derive a belief in your egoism and personal existence?

✅
Chapter 6a.112 — Parable of the Aerial Man Building Aerial Homes

1. Vasishta related:— Kacha, son of the divine teacher Brihaspati, being thus advised by his respected father in the best kind of yoga meditation, began to meditate as one liberated from his personal ego entity, lost and absorbed in essence of the only one and self-existent deity.

2. Kacha remained quite free from his I-ness and meness with the tranquility of his mind, cut off from all the ties of nature, all apart from the bonds of worldly life. So I advise you, Rama, to remain unchanged and unmoved amidst all the changes and movements of earthly bodies and changing fortunes of a mortal life.

3. Know all egoistic personality to be nonexistent. Never hesitate to remove yourself from this asylum of unreality whose essence is like nothing at all, like the horns of a rabbit, whether you grab it or lose it.

4. If it is impossible for your egoism to be a reality, then why talk of your birth and death or your existence and nonexistence? That is like planting a tree in the sky. You can reap neither fruit nor flower.

5. After your egoism is annihilated, pure consciousness remains. It has the form of pure intellect and not that of the unsteady mind. It is tranquil without any desire and extends through all existence. It is more minute and more subtle than the smallest atom. It is the pure power of reasoning and understanding.

6. As the waves are raised upon water and ornaments are made of gold, so our egoism springs from the original pure consciousness and appears to be something different from it.

7. Only our ignorance and imperfect knowledge represent the visible world as a magic show. But the light of right knowledge brings us to see the one and identical Brahman in all forms of things.

8. Shun your questions of unity and duality. Remain firm in your belief of that state which lasts after the loss of both. Be happy with this belief and never trouble yourself with thinking anything else, like the false man in the tale.

9. There is an inexplicable magic enveloping the whole. This world is an impenetrable mass of magic and sorcery which enwraps as thickly as the autumn mists obscure the sky. This is all scattered by the light of good understanding.

10. Rama said, “Sage, your learned lectures, like drinks of nectar, have given me entire satisfaction. I am as refreshed by your cooling speeches as the parching swallow is cooled by a shower of rainwater.

11. I feel as cold within myself as if I were anointed with heavenly ambrosia. I think myself raised above all beings in my possession of unequalled riches and greatness, by the grace of God.

12. I am never tired, even with the fullness of my heart, to listen to the discourses that issue from your mouth. I am like a chakora bird that is never satisfied with swallowing dewy moonbeams by night.

13. I confess to you that I am never satisfied drinking the sweet nectar of your speech. The more I listen to you, the more am I disposed to learn and listen to you. For who is there so satisfied with ambrosial honey that he declines to taste the nectarine juice again?”

14. “Tell me father, what do you mean by the false men of the tale who thought the real entity as a nonentity and looked on the unreal world as a solar and solid reality?”

15. Vasishta related:— Now, Rama, listen as I tell you the story of the false and fanciful man. It is pleasant to hear and quite ludicrous and laughable from first to last.

16. Once, somewhere, there lived a man like a magical machine who lived like an idiot with the imbecility of his infantile simplicity, full of gross ignorance like a fool or blockhead.

17. He was born somewhere in some remote region of the sky and was doomed to wander in the ethereal sphere like a false apparition in the air or a mirage in the sandy desert.

18. There was no other person other than himself. Whatever else there was in that place, it was only his self or an exact likeness of his self. He saw nothing but himself and anything that he saw he thought to be only his self.

19. As he grew up to manhood in this lonely retreat, he reflected in himself thinking, “I am airy and belong to the aerial sphere. The air is my province. Therefore I will rule over this region as mine.

20. The air is my ownership right and therefore I must preserve it with all diligence.” Then with this thought he built an aerial house for his home in order to protect and rule his aerial dominion.

21. He placed his reliance upon that aerial castle from where he could manage to rule his aerial domain. He lived quite content amidst the sphere of his airy habitation for a long time.

22. But in course of time his air-built castle became dilapidated and at last utterly destroyed, just as the clouds of heaven are driven and blown away in autumn, and the waves of the sea are dispersed by a breeze and sink down in the calm after storms.

23. Then he cried out in sorrow, saying, “O my air-built house! Why are you broken down and blown away so soon? O my air-drawn habitation, where have you withdrawn from me?” In this manner, he wailed in his excessive grief and said, “Ah, now I see that an aerial something must be reduced to an aerial nothing.”

24. After lamenting in this manner for a long time, this simpleton dug a cave in the vacuum of the atmosphere. He continued to dwell in that hollow cavity in order to look up to his aerial kingdom from below. Thus he remained quite content in the closed air of the cave for a long period of time.

25. In process of time his cell wasted and washed away. He became immersed in deep sorrow upon the dispersion of his empty cave.

26. Then he constructed a hollow pot and took up residence deep inside it, adapting his living to its narrow limits.

27. Know that his brittle earthen pot also broke down in short time. He came to know the frailty of all his dwellings, just as an unfortunate man finds the unsteadiness of all hopes and help which he fondly lays hold upon.

28. After his pot broke, he got a tub for his residence. From there he surveyed the heavenly sphere, just as anyone beholds it from his own particular house.

29. In course of time, his tub was also broken down, this time by some wild animal. Thus he lost all his temporary residences, just as the darkness and dews of night are dispelled and sucked up by sunlight and heat.

30. After he had sorrowed in vain for the loss of his tub, he took refuge in an enclosed cottage with an open space in the middle in order to view the upper skies.

31. All devouring time also destroyed that dwelling of his, scattering it all about like the winds of heaven disperse the dried leaves of trees, leaving him to bewail the loss of his latest retreat and shelter.

32. Then he built a hut in the form of a barn house in the field. From that place he watched over his house of the air, as farmers keep watch and take care of their granaries.

33. But the driving winds of the air drove away and dispersed his shelter, just as they do the gathering clouds of heaven. The roofless man had once more to deplore the loss of his last refuge.

34. Having thus lost all his homes in the pool and pot, in the cottage and the hut, the aerial man was left to moan over his losses in his empty abode of the air.

35. Being thus situated in his helpless state, the aerial man reflected upon the narrow confines of the homes which he had chosen for himself of his own accord. He thought of the many pains and troubles that he had repeatedly undergone in the erection and destruction of all his aerial castles by his own ignorance only.

✅
Chapter 6a.113 — Explanation of the Parable of the Aerial Man Building Aerial Homes

1. Rama said, “Please sage, please interpret your parable of the false man. Tell me the allusion it bears to the fanciful man whose business it was to watch the air.”

2. Vasishta replied:— Rama, listen as I expound to you the meaning of my parable of the false man and the allusion which it bears to every fanciful man in this world.

3. The man that I have described as a magical engine means the egoistic man who is led by the magic of his egoism to look upon the empty air of his personality as a real entity.

4. The dome of the sky, which contains all these orbs of worlds, is only an infinite space of empty void, just as it was before this creation came into existence, before it became manifest to view.

5. The spirit of the inscrutable and impersonal Brahman is immanent in this emptiness and becomes apparent in the personality of Brahman, like an audible sound issuing out of the empty air which is its receptacle and support.

6. From this arises the subtle individual soul with the sense of its egoism, just as the vibration of winds springs from motionless air. Then, as the subtle individual soul grows up in time in the same element, it comes to believe it has an individual soul and a personality of its own.

7. Thus the impersonal soul, assimilated with the idea of its personality, tries to preserve its egoism forever. It enters into many bodies of different kinds and creates new ones for its home upon the loss of the former ones.

8. This egoistic soul is called the false and magical man because it is a false creation of unreality, a production of vain ignorance and imagination.

9. The pit and the pot, the cottage and the hut, represent the different bodies, their empty void supplying the egoistic soul with a temporary home.

10. Now listen as I tell you the different names under which our ignorant spirit passes in this world, and begins itself under one or other of these names.

11. It takes the various names of the living soul, understanding, mind, heart, and ignorance and nature also. It is known among men by the words imagination, fancy and time, which are also applied to it.

12. In these and a thousand other names and forms, this vain egoism appears to us in this world. But all these powers and faculties are mere attributes of the true Self which is imperceptible to us.

13. The world is truly known to rest without basis in the extended and empty womb of the visible sky. The imaginary soul of the egoist is supposed to dwell in it and feel all its pain and pleasure in vain.

14. Therefore O Rama, do not be like the imaginary man in the fable. Do not place any reliance upon your false personality or subject yourself, like the egoistic man, to the fancied pleasure and misery of this world.

15. Do not trouble yourself, like the false man, with the vain care of preserving your empty soul or suffer like him from the pain of your confinement in the hollow of a pit, pot or other forms.

16. How is it possible for anybody to preserve or confine empty spirit within the narrow limit of a pot or the like when it is more extended than the boundless sky and more subtle and more pure than the all pervading air?

17. The soul is supposed to dwell in the cavity of the human heart. It is thought to perish with the decay and destruction of the body. Hence people are seen to lament the loss of their frail bodies as if it caused the destruction of their indestructible soul.

18. As the destruction of the pot or any other hollow vessel does not destroy the subtle air which is contained within, so the dissolution of the body does not dissolve the embodied and intangible soul.

19. Know Rama, that the nature of the soul is that of the pure conscious intellect. It is more subtle than the encompassing air and far more minute than the smallest atom. It is only a particle of our consciousness, as indestructible as the all pervasive air which is never to be nullified.

20. The soul is never born nor does it die as any other thing at any place or time. It extends over the whole universe as the Universal Soul of Brahman which encompasses and comprehends all space and manifests itself in all things.

21. Know this spirit as one entire unit, the only real entity. It is always calm and quiet without beginning, middle or end. Know it as beyond positive and negative and be happy with your knowledge of its transcendental nature.

22. Now free your mind from the false thoughts of your egoism which is the home of all evils and dangers and is an unstable thing depending on the life of a man. It is full of ignorance and vanity and its own destruction and final destruction. Therefore get rid of your egoistic feeling and rely only upon the ultimate and supreme state of the one everlasting God.

✅
Chapter 6a.114 — Supreme Spirit, Thought, Creation

1. Vasishta said:— The mind first sprang from the Supreme Spirit of Brahman. Being possessed of the power of thinking, it was situated in the Divine Soul and was called the Divine Mind or Intellect.

2. The unsteady mind resides in the spirit of God as the feeling of fragrance abides in the cup of a flower and as fluctuating waves roll about in a river. Know, Rama, that the mind radiates from its central point in Brahman, just as the rays of the sun extend to the circumference of creation.

3. Men forget the reality of the invisible spirit of God and view the unreal world as a reality, just as deluded people are inclined to believe a serpent in a rope.

4. He who sees sunlight without seeing the sun from where they proceed sees it in a different light than the light of the sun.

5. He who looks at an ornament without looking into the gold of which it is made is deluded by the finery of the ornament without knowing the value of the precious metal of which it is made.

6. He who looks at the sun together with his glory and sees the sunbeams knowing the sun from where they proceed, truly beholds the unity of the sun with his light and not his duality by viewing them separately.

7. He who looks at waves without seeing the sea in which they rise and fall has only the knowledge of the turbulent waves disturbing his mind. He has no idea of the calm waters underlying them.

8. But who looks on the waves as the water of which they are composed, he sees the same water to be in common in all its swellings and has the knowledge of its unity and common essence in all its varieties.

9. In this manner, seeing the same gold in its transformation into various sorts of ornaments, we have the knowledge of the common essence of gold in all of them in spite of their distinctions in form to sight.

10. He who sees only the flames and is unmindful of the fire which emits them is said to be ignorant of the material element, knowing only its transient and fleeting flares.

11. The phenomenal world presents its aspect in various forms and colors, such as the many forms and variations of clouds in the sky. Whoever places his faith and reliance upon their reality and stability has his mind always busied with those changeful appearances.

12. He who views the flame as the same as the fire has only the knowledge of fire in his mind and does not know the duality of the flame as a thing distinct from its unity.

13. He who is freed from his knowledge of dualities has his mind restricted to the one and only unity. He has a great soul that has obtained the obtainable one and is released from the trouble of diving into the depth of the duality and plurality of all visible objects.

14. Get rid of your thoughts of the endless multiplicities and varieties of things. Keep your mind fixed steadily within the cavity of your pure intellect and employ it to meditate upon Supreme Consciousness without thought of any object of the senses.

15. When the silent soul forms an effort of will in itself, then there arises the power of its versatile desires, like the force of the fluctuating winds rising from the bosom of quiet air.

16. Then from the silent soul arises the willful mind as a distinct and independent thing of itself. It thinks in itself as the undivided and Universal Mind of the mundane world.

17. Whatever the mind wills to do in this world, the same comes to take place immediately, agreeably to the type formed in its will.

18. This mind passes under various names such as the living principle, understanding, egoism, and the heart. It becomes as minute as a microscopic organism and an aquatic mollusk, and as big as a mountain and fleeter than the swiftest winds.

19. It forms and sustains the world at its own will. It becomes unity and plurality at its own option. It extends itself to infinity and shows itself in the endless diversity of objects which fill its ample space.

20. The whole scenery of the universe is nothing other than a display of the eternal and Infinite Mind. It is neither a positive reality nor a negative unreality of itself, but appears to our view like the visionary appearance in a dream.

21. The phenomenal world is a display of the kingdom of the Divine Mind just like paradise is a display of imagination formed in the minds of men, and like every man builds the airy castle of his mind.

22. Only our knowledge of the existence of the world in the Divine Mind serves to remove our fallacy of the entity of the visible world. If we look into the phenomenal in its true light, it speedily vanishes into nothing.

23. When we do not consider visible things in their true color, but take them in their false colors as they present themselves to view. We find them expressed in a thousand shapes, just as we see the same seawater in its diverse and various forms of foam, froth, bubbles, waves, surges, tides and whirlpools.

24. As the sea bears its body of waters, so the mind shows itself in the shape of its various faculties. Mental powers are always busy with their many functions under the influence of Supreme Consciousness, all without affecting its tranquility.

25. Yet the mind, whether in its state of sleeping or waking or in its bodily or mental actions, does nothing of itself apart from the dictates of consciousness.

26. Know that there is nothing new in whatever you do or see or think upon. Everything proceeds from the inherent intellect which is displayed in all things and in all the actions and thoughts of men.

27. Know all these to be contained in the immensity of Brahman, besides whom there is nothing in existence. He abides in all things and categories. He remains as the essence of the inner consciousness of all.

28. Divine Consciousness exhibits the entirety of the imaginary world. The evolution of consciousness takes the name of universe with all its immense numbers of worlds.

29. How does your false idea of the difference of things from one another arise? When you know that it is the one Consciousness alone that assumes these various forms, then you have nothing to fear about the bondage or liberation of your soul.

30. O Rama, give up your egotism, pride, and self-esteem. Give up your thoughts of bondage and liberation. Remain quiet and self subdued in the continued discharge of your duties, like the holy mahatmas of elevated souls and minds.

✅
Chapter 6a.115 — Shiva Describes the Triple Virtues of Men to the King of the Bhringis

1. Vasishta said:— Take my advice, Rama, and strive to be an example of the greatest man in your deeds, enjoyments and bounty. Rely on your unshaken endurance by driving away all your cares and fears.

2. Rama asked, “Tell me sage. What is the deed that makes the greatest actor, and what is that thing which constitutes the highest enjoyments? Tell me also, what is the great virtue which you advise me to practice?” Vashishta speaking:—

3. Long ago, Lord Shiva who bears the crescent moon on his forehead explained these three virtues to the lord of the Bhringis, who was thereby released from all disease and disquiet.

4. Long ago, on a northern peak of the north Lokaloka Mountain, the god who wears the crescent moon as a crown on his head used to hold his residence together with all his family and attendants.

5. It happened that the mighty but little knowing lord of the Bhringis asked him one day, his palms pressed together and his body lowly bowing down before the god who is the lord of Uma,

6. “My lord, please explain to me what I ask you to explain for my knowledge, for you know all things and you are the god of gods.

7. Lord! I am overwhelmed with sorrow to see the loud noisy waves of this deep and dark world in which we have been constantly struck back and forth forever, without finding the calm and quiet tree of truth.

8. Tell me, my Lord, what is that certain truth and inner assurance on which we may rely with confidence, and whereby we may find our rest and repose in this our shattered house of this world?”

9. The Lord replied, “Always place your reliance on your unshaken patience and neither care nor fear for anything else. Always strive to be foremost in your action and passion and in your renunciation of everything.”

10. Bhringi replied, “Explain to me fully, my lord. What is meant by being the greatest in action and passion? What are we to understand from the greatest liberality or abandonment of everything here?”

11. Lord Shiva replied:— He is said to be the greatest actor who does his deeds as they occur to him, whether of goodness or of evil, without any fear or desire of fruition.

12. He who does his acts of goodness or otherwise, who gives no expression to his hatred and affection and feels both pleasure and pain equally without reference to any person or thing and without the expectation of their consequences, is said to be the greatest actor in the theatre of this world.

13. He is said to act his part well who does his business without any ado or anxiety and maintains his silence and purity of heart without any taint of egoism or envy.

14. He is said to act his part well who does not trouble his mind with the thoughts of actions that are accounted as auspicious or inauspicious, or considered as righteous or unrighteous according to common opinion.

15. He is said to perform his part well who is unaffected by any person or thing, but witnesses all objects as a mere witness and goes on doing his business without his desiring or deep engagement in it.

16. He is the best actor who is devoid of care and delight and continues in the same way and even course of his mind, retaining the clarity of his understanding at all times and without feeling any joy or sorrow at anything.

17. He does his duties best who is ready in his mind when it is the time for action and sits unconcerned with it at other times, like a retired and silent sage or saint.

18. He who does his works with unconcern and without assuming the vanity of being the doer is accounted as the best actor. He acts his part with his body but keeps his mind quite unattached to it.

19. He is reckoned as the best actor who is naturally quiet in his disposition and never loses the evenness of his temper, and who does good to his friends and evil to his enemies without taking them to his heart.

20. He is the greatest actor who looks at his birth, life, death and his rising and falling in the same light. He does not lose the equanimity of his mind under any circumstance whatsoever.

21. Again, he is said to enjoy himself and his life the best who does not envy anybody and does not pine for anything, but enjoys and acquiesces to whatever is allotted to his lot with cool composure and submission of his mind.

22. He also is said to enjoy everything well who receives with his hands what his mind does not perceive, acts with his body without being conscious of it, and enjoys everything without taking it to his heart.

23. He is said to enjoy himself best who looks at the conduct and behavior of mankind like an unconcerned and indifferent spectator. He looks upon everything without craving anything for himself.

24. He whose mind is not moved with pleasure or pain and is not elated with success and gain or dejected by his failure and loss, and who remains firm in all his terrible tribulations, is the man who is said to be in the perfect enjoyment of himself.

25. He is said to be in the best enjoyment of himself who meets with an equal eye of detachment his decay and death, his danger and difficulty, his wealth and poverty, and looks on their ups and downs with an eye of delight and cheerfulness.

26. He is called the man of greatest gratification who sustains all the ups and downs of fortune with equal firmness of mind, just as the deep sea contains its loud noisy waves in its fathomless depth.

27. He is said to have the highest gratification who is possessed of the virtues of contentment, equanimity and benevolence which always accompany his presence, just as cooling beams cling to the disc of the moon.

28. He too is greatly gratified in himself who tastes the sour and sweet and the bitter and pungent with equal pleasure, and tastes a savory and an unsavory dish with the same taste.

29. He who tastes the tasty and juicy and the distasteful and dry food with equal pleasure, and beholds the pleasant as well as unpleasant things with equal delight, is the man that is ever gratified in himself.

30. He to whom salt and sugar are alike and to whom salty and sweet food are equally edible, and who remains unchanged both in his happy and adverse circumstances, is the man who enjoys the best bliss of his life in this world.

31. He is in the enjoyment of his highest bliss who makes no distinction of one kind of food from another and who yearns for nothing that he can hardly earn.

32. He enjoys his life best who braves his misfortune with calmness and bears his good fortune, his joyous days, and better circumstances with moderation and coolness.

33. He is said to have abandoned his all who has given up the thoughts of his life and death of his pleasure and pain, and those of his merits and demerits from his mind.

34. He who has abandoned all his desires and exertions and forsaken all his hopes and fears and erased all his determinations from the tablet of his mind is said to have renounced everything in this world and to have freed himself from all.

35. He who does not take the pains that invade his body, mind and senses to his mind is said to have cast all the troubles of his mortal state away from himself.

36. He is considered the greatest giver of his all who gives up the cares of his body and life and has abandoned the thoughts of acts judged to be proper or improper for himself.

37. He is said to have made his greatest sacrifice who has sacrificed his mind and all his mental functions and endeavors before the shrine of his self-denial.

38. He who has given up the sight of what is visible from his view and does not allow what can be sensed to intrude upon his senses is said to have renounced all and everything from himself. Vasishta speaking:—

39. It was in this manner that the lord of gods Mahadeva gave his instructions to the lord of the Bhringis. By acting according to these precepts, O Rama, you must attain the perfection of your selfdenial.

40. Meditate always on the everlasting and pure spirit that is without beginning or end, which is wholly this entire immensity and has no part or partner, and no representative or representation of itself. By thinking in this way you become stainless yourself and come to be absorbed in the same Brahman where there is all peace and tranquility.

41. Know the one Brahman without decay is the soul and seed of all various works or productions that proceed from him. His immensity spreads unopened throughout the whole of existence, just as endless space comprehends and manifests all things in itself.

42. It is not possible for anything at all, whether of positive or potential existence, to exist without and apart from this universal essence of all. Rely secure with this firm belief in your mind and be free from all fears in the world.

43. O most righteous Rama, look always to the inner soul within yourself and perform all your outer actions with the outer members of your body by forsaking the sense of your egoism and personality. Thereby be freed from all care and sorrow and you shall attain your supreme joy.

✅
Chapter 6a.116 — Melting Down of the Mind; Self Inquiry

1. Rama said, “O all-knowing sage, please tell me, what becomes of the essence of the soul after one’s egoism is lost in his mind and both of them are dissolved into nothing?”

2. Vasishta replied:— However great and predominant is one’s egoism over himself, and however much its accompanying evils of pride and ignorance may overpower man, yet they can never touch the pure essence of the soul, just as the water of the lake cannot come in contact with the lotus-leaf.

3. The purity of the soul appears vividly in the bright and serene countenance of a man after his egoism and its accompanying faults are all melted down in his deadened mind.

4. All the ties of our passions and affections are cut asunder and fall off upon breaking the string of our desires. Our anger becomes weakened and our ignorance wears out by degrees.

5. Our desire is weakened and wearied and our covetousness flies far away. Our limbs become weakened and our sorrows subside to rest.

6. Then our afflictions fail to afflict us and our joys cease to excite us. Then we have a calm everywhere and a tranquility in our heart.

7. Joy and grief now and then cloud his countenance, but they cannot over shadow his soul which is bright as eternal day.

8. The virtuous man becomes a favorite of the gods after his mind with its passions is melted down. Then there rises the calm evenness of his soul resembling the cooling beams of the moon.

9. He bears a calm and quiet disposition, offending and opposed to none, and therefore loved and honored by everyone. He remains retired and constant to his task and enjoys the serenity of his soul at all times.

10. Neither wealth nor poverty and neither prosperity nor adversity, however opposite they are to one another, can ever affect or mislead or elate or depress the minds of the virtuous.

11. Unfortunate is the man who is drowned in his ignorance and who does not seek the salvation of his soul. Salvation is easily obtainable by the light of reason which serves to save him from all the difficulties of this world.

12. He who wants to obtain his longed for joy and cross over the waves of his miserable transmigrations in the vast ocean of this world must always inquire within, “What am I? What is this world? What am I to be afterwards? What is the meaning of these short lived enjoyments here? What are the fruits of my future state?” These inquiries are the best expedients towards the salvation of the soul.

✅
Chapter 6a.117 — Sage Manu Teaches King Ikshaku: Creation Is an Appearance

1. Vasishta said:— Rama, know that the renowned King Ikshaku was the founder of your race. Learn, O descendant of that monarch, the manner in which he obtained his liberation.

2. Once upon a time when this monarch was ruling over his kingdom, he came to think upon the state of humanity in one of his solitary hours.

3. He wondered what might be the cause of the decay, disease and death, and also of the sorrow, pleasure and pain, and likewise of the errors to which all living beings are subject in this mortal world.

4. He reflected long upon these thoughts, but was unable to find out the cause he so earnestly sought. He happened to meet sage Manu one day, coming to him from Brahmaloka. King Ikshaku proposed the same questions to him.

5. Having honored the lord of creatures as he took his seat in his court, Ikshaku asked be excused for asking him some questions to which he was impelled by his impatience.

6. “By your favor, sage, I take the liberty of asking you a question regarding the origin of this creation and the original state in which it was made.

7. Tell me, what is the number of these worlds and who is their master and owner? When and by whom is it said to be created in the Vedas?

8. Tell me, how may I be freed from my doubts and false beliefs regarding this creation, and how I may be released from them like a bird from its net?”

9. Manu replied:— I see, O king, that after a long time you have come to exercise your reasoning, as shown by your asking me a question as important as this.

10. All this that you see, nothing is real. They resemble fairy castles in the air and water in a mirage in sandy deserts. Anything which is not seen in reality is considered nothing in existence.

11. Even the mind which lies beyond the six senses is reckoned as nothing in reality. But that which is indestructible is the only thing that is said to exist, and that which is (tat sat) is the only being in reality.

12. All these visible worlds and successive creations are only unsubstantial appearances in the mirror of that real substance.

13. The inherent powers of Brahman evolve themselves like shining sparks from fire. Some of these assume the forms of luminous worlds while others appear in the shapes of living soul.

14. Others take many other forms which compose this universe. There is nothing like bondage or liberation here, except that the undecaying Brahman is all in all. There is no unity or duality in nature, except the diversity displayed by the Divine Mind from the essence of his own consciousness.

15. As the same water of the sea shows the various forms of its waves, so does Divine Consciousness display itself in everything. There is nothing else besides this. Therefore leave aside your thoughts of bondage and liberation and rest secure in this belief from the fears of the world.

✅
Chapter 6a.118 — Manu Teaches Ikshaku: Divine Will Creates & Dissolves

1. Manu continued:— By Divine Will, the living souls of beings evolve from the original Consciousness, just as waves arise in the ocean.

2. These living souls retain the tendencies of their prior states in former births and thereby are led to move in their course of light or ignorance in this world, accordingly subject either to happiness or misery, which is felt by the mind and never affects the soul itself.

3. The invisible soul is known in the knowable mind, which is moved to action by it (the soul) just as the invisible point of Rahu becomes visible to us during the eclipse of the moon.

4. Neither the teacher of scriptures nor the lectures of our spiritual teachers can show the Supreme Spirit before our sight, but our spirit shows us the holy spirit when our understanding rests in its own true essence.

5. As travelers journey abroad with their minds, free from all attainment and aversion to any particular object or spot, so self-liberated souls are found to stay in this world quite unconcerned even with their bodies and the objects of their senses.

6. It is not for good and godly men to pamper or famish their bodies, or quicken or weaken their senses, but to allow them to be employed with their objects at their own option.

7. Be of an indifferent mind with regard to your bodies and all external objects. Enjoy the cool calmness of your soul by taking yourself entirely to your spirituality.

8. The knowledge that “I am an embodied being” is the cause of our bondage in this world. Therefore it is never to be entertained by those who seek their liberation.

9. But the firm conviction that “I am no other than an intellectual being, as rarefied as the pure air” is the only belief that is able to free our souls from their bondage in this world.

10. As the light of the sun pierces and shines both within and without the surface of a clear sheet of water, so does the light of the holy spirit penetrate and shine both inside and outside the pure souls of men, as well as in everything else.

11. The variety of forms makes the various kinds of ornaments out of the same substance of gold. So it is that the various acts and ways of the one soul make the differences of things in the world.

12. The world resembles a vast ocean, and all its created are like the waves upon its surface. They rise for a moment only to be yield to the latent flame of their desires that cannot be satisfied.

13. Know all the worlds are absorbed in the vast ocean of the Universal Soul of God, just as all things are eaten by death and time and lie buried, like the ocean itself, in the stomach of Agastya that cannot be satisfied.

14. Cease thinking that the bodies of men are their souls. See all that is visible in a spiritual light. Rely solely on your spiritual self and sit retired from all except alone with yourself.

15. Men are seen foolishly to wail for the loss of their souls, though it is lying within themselves, just as a fond mother moans on missing her child, forgetful of it sleeping upon her lap.

16. Men bewail the loss of their bodies crying, “O I am dead and gone” and so on, not knowing that their souls are ever without decay and imperishable.

17. As the fluctuation of water shows many forms upon its surface, so the will of God exhibits the forms of all things in Divine Consciousness.

18. Now king, keep the steadiness of your mind and repress your imagination and the flights of your fancy. Call your thoughts home and confine them to yourself. Remain calm and cool and undisturbed amidst all disturbances and go and rule your kingdom with your mind settled in the Self.

✅
Chapter 6a.119 — Manu Teaches Ikshaku: Living in the Spirit

1. Manu resumed:— The Lord with his creative power exerts his active energy and plays the part of a restless boy (in his formation of the worlds). Again, by his power of re-absorption, he absorbs all into himself and remains in his lonesome singleness.

2. His volition gives rise to his active energy, so his non-use of will causes the cessation of his exertion and the absorption of the whole creation in himself.

3. As the light of the luminous sun, moon and fire, and as the luster of brilliant gems spread themselves on all sides, and as the leaves of trees grow of themselves, and as the waters of a waterfall scatter their particles all about,

4. so the light of divine glory displays itself in the works of creation that appear intolerable to the ignorant who know not that it is the same God appearing to be otherwise.

5. It is a wonderful illusion that has deluded the whole world which does not perceive the Divine Spirit that pervades every part of the universe.

6. He who looks on the world as a scenery painted in the tablet of Divine Consciousness, remaining unimpressed and without desire of everything, quite content in his soul, has put on an invulnerable armor upon himself.

7. How happy is he who having nothing, no wealth or support, yet has his all by thinking himself as the all intelligent soul.

8. The idea that something is pleasurable and something else is painful is the sole cause of all pains and anxiety. The destruction of these feelings by the fire of our indifference to them prevents the access of pain and affliction to us.

9. O king, use the weapon of samadhi and cut in half the feeling of the agreeable and disagreeable. Tear apart your sensations of love and hatred by the sword of your courageous equanimity.

10. Clear the entangled jungle of ceremonious rites by the tool of your disregard of the merit or demerit of acts. Relying upon the rarified nonmaterial state of your soul, shake off all sorrow and grief from you.

11. Know your soul to be full of all worldly possessions. Drive all differences from your mind. Bind yourself solely to reason and be free from all fabrications of mankind. Know the supreme bliss of the soul and be as perfect and unfailing as the soul itself. Being embodied in the intellectual mind, remain quite calm and transparent, aloof from all the tears and cares of the world.

✅
Chapter 6a.120 — Manu Teaches Ikshaku: Seven Stages of Yoga; Living Liberated

1. Manu continued:— Yogis say that the first stage of yoga is enlightenment of understanding by the study of scriptures and attendance on holy and wise men.

2. The second stage of yoga is discussion and reconsideration of what has been learnt before. The third is the reflection of the same in one’s self and is known under the name of self-inquiry or meditation. The fourth is silent meditation in which one loses his desires and darkness in his presence before the light of God.

3. The fifth stage is one of pure consciousness and joy in which the living liberated devotee remains in a partly waking and partly sleeping state.

4. The sixth stage is one’s consciousness of indescribable bliss, in which he is absorbed in a state of trance.

5. Resting in the fourth and succeeding stages is called liberation, then the seventh stage is the state of an even and transparent light in which the devotee loses his self consciousness.

6. The state above turiya or fourth stage is called nirvana or extinction in God. The seventh stage of perfection relates only to disembodied souls and not to those of living beings.

7. The first three stages relate to the waking state of man, and the fourth stage concerns the sleeping state in which the world appears like a dream.

8. The fifth stage is the stage of sound sleep in which the soul is drowned in deep joy. The unconsciousness of one’s self in the sixth stage is also called his turiya or fourth state.

9. The seventh stage is still above the turiya state of self-unconsciousness. It is full of divine effulgence whose excellence no words can express and no mind can conceive.

10. In this state the mind is withdrawn from its functions, freed from all thoughts of whatever can be thought, and all doubts and cares are drowned in the calm composure of its even temperament.

11. The mind that remains unmoved amidst its passions and enjoyments and is unchanged in prosperity and adversity, retaining full possession of itself under all circumstances, becomes of this nature both in its embodied and disembodied states of life and death.

12. The man who does not think himself to be alive or dead, or to be a reality or otherwise, but always remains joyous in himself, is one who is truly called to be liberated in his lifetime.

13. Whether engaged in business or retired from it, whether living with family or leading a single life, the man who thinks himself as nothing but consciousness and who has nothing to fear or care or to be sorry for in this world, is reckoned as liberated in this life.

14. The man who thinks himself to be unconnected with anyone, free from disease, desire and affections, who believes himself to be a pure aerial substance of Divine Consciousness, has no cause to be sorry for anything.

15. He who knows himself to be without beginning or end, decay or death, and to be of the nature of pure intelligence, remains always quiet and composed in himself and has no cause for sorrow at all.

16. He who considers himself to belong to that Intellect which dwells alike in the minute blade of grass and the infinite sky, in the luminous sun, moon and stars, and in the various races of beings such as men, naagas and immortals, such a man has no cause whatever for his sorrow.

17. Whoever knows the majesty of Divine Consciousness to fill all the regions both above and below and on all sides of him, and reflects himself as a display of his endless diversity, how can he be sorry at all for his decay and decline?

18. The man who is bound by his desire is delighted to have the objects he seeks, but the very things that tend to his pleasure by their gain prove to be painful to his heart at their loss.

19. The presence or absence of something is the cause of the pleasure or pain of men in general. The wise practice the curtailment and absence of desires.

20. If we act with unconcern and little desire or expectation of reward, no act or its result leads either to our joy or grief.

21. Whatever act is done with ardent physical effort and the whole hearted application of mind and soul tends to bind a man. An indifferent action, like a fried grain, does not germinate into any effect.

22. The thought that I am the doer and owner of a deed overpowers all bodily exertions and sprouts fourth with results that are forever binding on the doer.

23. As the moon is cool with her cooling beams and the sun is hot by his burning heat, so a man is either good or bad according to the work he does.

24. All acts done or left undone are as short lasting as the cotton flying from cottonwood trees. They are easily put to flight by the breath of understanding. All the acts of men are lost by cessation of their practice.

25. The germ of knowledge growing in the mind increases itself day by day, just as seed sown in good ground soon shoots forth into the paddy plant.

26. There is one Universal Soul that sparkles through all things in the world, just as the same translucent water glistens in lakes, large oceans and seas.

27. Withhold your notions of the varieties and multitudes of things and know these as parts of one undivided whole which stretches through them as their essence and soul.

✅
Chapter 6a.121 — Manu Teaches Ikshaku: Avoiding the Sense of Ego and Possession

1. Manu continued:— The soul originally is full of bliss by its nature, but being subject to ignorance, it fosters its vain desire for temporal enjoyment, from which it has the name of living soul.

2. But when the desire of pleasure is lessened by the discriminative knowledge of man, he forsakes his nature of a living and mortal being and his soul becomes one with the Supreme Spirit.

3. Therefore do not allow your desire of earthly enjoyment to draw your soul up and down to heaven and hell, like a bucket whose handle is tied with a rope and cast down and pulled up from a well.

4. Selfish people who claim something as theirs from that of another are grossly mistaken and led into error. They are destined, like the bucket in a well, to descend lower and lower.

5. He who gets rid of his knowledge that “this is I” and “that is another” and “that this is mine” and “that is the others” gradually rises higher and higher according to his greater disinterest.

6. Do not delay depending upon your enlightened and elevated soul extending over and filling the whole space of the sky and comprehending all the worlds in it.

7. When the human mind is thus elevated and expanded beyond all limits, then it approaches the Divine Mind and is assimilated to it.

8. Anyone who has arrived at this state may well think he is able to effect whatever was done by the gods Brahma, Vishnu, Indra, Varuna, and others who were of such elevated souls and minds.

9. Whatever acts are attributed to any of the gods or other persons are no more than the display of divine pleasure in that form.

10. Whoever is assimilated into Divine Consciousness and has become deathless and unmindful of his mortal state has a share of incomparable supreme joy for his enjoyment.

11. Continue to think this world as neither a vacuum nor a fullness, neither a material nor a spiritual substance. It is neither an intellectual being nor a quite unconscious thing.

12. By thinking in this way, you will have composure of your disposition, or else there is no separate place or time or condition for your liberation.

13. Without egoism and ignorance, we get rid of our personal existence. Our contemplation of the nature of God and his presence before us in meditation constitutes our liberation.

14. The even delight and perpetual tranquility of the soul constitute our bliss and liberation. These are to be obtained through calm and cool reasoning in the meaning of scriptures, avoiding all impatience, unsteadiness of mind and temper, and the pleasures derived from our taste in poetry, light studies and trifling amusements.

✅
Chapter 6a.122 — Manu Teaches Ikshaku: Manu’s Admonition to Ikshaku

1. Manu continued:— Now the living liberated yogi, in whatever manner he is clad, however well or ill fed he may be, and wherever he may sleep or lay down his humble head, rests with joy in his mind in a state of perfect ease and blissfulness as if he were the greatest emperor of the world.

2. He breaks down all the bonds of caste and creed, and the rites and restraints of his order by the battery of the scriptures. He wanders free from the snare of society like a lion having broken loose from his cage roaming rampant everywhere.

3. He has his mind abstracted from all objects of the senses and fixed on an object which no words can express. He shines forth with a grace in his face that resembles the clear autumn sky.

4. He is always as deep and clear as a large lake in a valley. Being rapt in heavenly joy, he is always cheerful in himself without care or want of anything else.

5. He is ever content in his mind without having anything for his dependence or any expectation of reward for his actions. He is neither addicted to any meritorious or unworthy acts nor subject to joy or grief for anything of pleasure or pain.

6. As a piece of crystal does not receive or emit any other color in its reflection except that of its pure whiteness, so the spiritually minded person is not imbued with the tinge of the effects of his actions.

7. He remains indifferent in human society and is not affected either by the torture or the pleasures of his body. He considers his pain and pleasure as passing over his shadow. He never takes them to his heart as they do not touch his intangible soul.

8. Whether honored or dishonored by men, he neither praises nor is displeased with them. He remains either connected or unconnected with the customs and rules of society.

9. He hurts nobody, nor is he hurt by any. He remains free from the feelings of anger or affection, fear and joy.

10. No one can have the greatness of mind from his own nature, but it is possible for the Author of nature to raise the greatness of mind even in a child.

11. Whether a man leaves his body in a holy place or in the house of a low savage, or whether one dies at this moment or many years afterwards,

12. he is released from his bondage to life as soon as he knows the soul and gets rid of his desires. The error of egoism is the cause of his bondage and its eradication through knowledge is the means of his liberation.

13. The living liberated man is to be honored and praised and to be bowed down to with veneration, regarded with every attention by everyone who desires his prosperity and elevation.

14. No religious sacrifice or willful austerity, no charity or pilgrimage can lead us to that supremely holy state of human dignity which is attainable only by our respectful attendance upon the godly who have gotten rid of the troubles of the world.

15. Vasishta said:— The venerable sage Manu, having spoken in this manner, departed to the celestial abode of his father Brahma. Ikshaku continued to act according to the precepts delivered to him by the sacred seer.

✅
Chapter 6a.123 — Spiritual Powers

1. Rama said, “Tell me sage who is the most learned in spiritual knowledge, can a living liberated man of this kind obtain any kind of extraordinary power?”

2. Vasishta replied:— The all-knowing sage sometimes has a greater knowledge of one thing than another, and has his mind directed in one particular way as opposed to another, but the learned seer of a contented mind has his soul quite at rest in itself.

3. There are many who by their complete knowledge of particular mantras, tantras, and the virtues of certain minerals have attained the power of aerial flight and other powers, but what is extraordinary in these?

4. The powers of self-expansion and contraction and other powers have been acquired by others through their constant practice. These are disregarded by seers in spiritual knowledge.

5. This is this difference between knowing seers and the bulk of idle practitioners in yoga. The knowing seers are content with their dispassionate mind without placing any reliance on practice.

6. This is truly the sign of the inconspicuous seer in yoga, that he is always cool and calm in his mind and freed from all the errors of the world, and in whom the traces of the passions of love and anger, sorrow and illusion and the mishaps of life are scarcely visible.

✅
Chapter 6a.124 — Three Bodies; Turiya; the Story of the Hunter and the Sage

1. Vasishta said:— Know now that the Lord stops to take upon Himself the nature of the living or animal soul, just as a brahmin, by disregarding the purity of its original nature, assumes the character of a vile shudra for some mean purpose.

2. There are two kinds of living beings that come into existence in the beginning of the repeated creations. One comes into existence without any causality and therefore is called the causeless or uncaused.

3. Then the soul emanating from the Divine is subject to various reincarnations and becomes many kinds of beings according to its previous acts and propensities.

4. All beings originally emanate without any cause from the source of the Divine Essence. Then their actions become the secondary cause of continuous reincarnations.

5. The personal acts of men cause their happiness and misery. The will produced by the conscious knowledge of one’s self becomes the cause of the action.

6. Will or desire of any action or its result is likewise the cause of one’s bondage to this world. What they call liberation is no more than our release from the bonds of our desires.

7. Therefore be careful to choose what is right and proper from whatever is wrong and improper, and try to reduce your wishes as much as possible.

8. Do not let yourself possess or be possessed of anything or any person, but give up thinking on anything besides what remains after the thoughts of all other things.

9. Anything to which the senses are addicted serves to bind the soul the more it takes pleasure in it, and also to unbind and release the mind in proportion to the distaste which it bears to it.

10. If there is anything which is pleasing to your soul, know that is your binding string to the earth. If, on the contrary, you find nothing to your liking here, then you are free from the traps of all the valueless things on earth.

11. Therefore let nothing whatever tempt or deceive your mind to anything that exists whether living or inanimate. Regard everything from a mean bit of straw to a great idol as unworthy of your regard.

12. Think not that you are a doer or giver of anything, or a person offering anything or eating what you have offered to the gods. Be quite aloof from all your bodily actions owing to the immaterial nature of yourself or soul.

13. Do not concern yourself with past acts or cares for the future over which you have no command, but discharge well your present duties as they are and come to your hand.

14. All men’s feelings and passions, their desires and all the rest, are strung together with their hearts. Therefore it is necessary to cut these heart strings with the weapon of a brave and strong heart.

15. Now break your sensuous mind by the power of your reasoning mind and restrain its rage of running into errors as they break iron pegs using iron hammers.

16. Intelligent men rub out one dirt using another and remove one poison by another poison. Soldiers oppose a steel weapon with a weapon of the same metal.

17. All living beings have a triple form of the subtle, solid and the imperceptible spiritual bodies. Now lay hold and rely upon the last in utter disregard of the two former.

18. The solid or gross body is composed of hands, feet and other members and limbs. It exists upon its food in this lower world.

19. The living being also has an intrinsic body which is derived from within and is composed of all its wishes in the world. This body is known as the mental or intellectual part of the body.

20. The third form is the transcendental or spiritual body. It assumes all forms and is the simple intellectual soul which is without beginning or end and without any alteration in its nature.

21. This is the pure turiya state in which you must remain steadfast as your living liberation. Reject the two others in which you must place no reliance.

22. Rama said, “I have understood the three definite states of waking, dreaming, and sound sleep as they have been defined to me. But the fourth state of turiya is yet left undefined. I beg you to explain it clearly to me.”

23. Vasishta answered:— Turiya is that state of the mind in which the feelings of one’s egoism and non-egoism, and those of existence and inexistence are utterly drowned under a total aloofness, a state in which the mind is settled in one unchangeable and uniform even course of tranquility and clearness.

24. In that state the selfish feelings of mine and yours are altogether wanting, and one remains as a mere witness of the affairs of life. This is the turiya state of living liberation.

25. This is neither the state of waking, owing to its lack of any wish or concern, nor the state of sound sleep, which is one of perfect unconsciousness.

26. It is that calmness in which the wise man sees everything going on in the world. It is like the state of unconsciousness of the ignorant in which they perceive no stir in the course of the world.

27. The evenness of the mind after the falling down of every bit of egotism, like the settling of turbulent waters underneath, is the turiya state of the detachment of the soul.

28. Hear me give you an example on this subject which will grant as clear a light to your enlightened mind as that of all seeing gods.

29. It happened once that a hunter, roaming for his prey in some part of a forest, chanced to see a sage sitting silently in his solitude. Thinking it something strange, the hunter approached him saying,

30. “O sage, have you seen a wounded stag fleeing this way with an arrow in its back?”

31. The sage replied, “You ask me where your stag has fled, but my friend, know that sages like us who live in the forest are as cool as blocks of stone.

32. We lack that egoism which enables one to conduct the transactions of the world. Know, my friend, that the mind conducts all the actions of the senses.

33. Know that long ago the feeling of my egoism has dissolved in my mind. I have no perception whatever of the three states of waking, dreaming, and sound sleep. I rest quietly in my fourth state of aloofness in which there is no vision of what can be seen.”

34. The hunter heard the sage’s words but being quite at a loss to comprehend its meaning, he departed on his own way without saying a word.

35. Therefore, O Rama, I tell you there is no other state beyond the fourth or turiya quietism. It is that unalterable aloofness of the mind which is not to be found in any other.

36. Waking, dreaming and sound sleep are the three tangible conditions of the mind. These are respectively the dark, quiet and unconscious states in which the mind situated in this world.

37. The waking state presents us the dark complexion of the mind and its susceptibility to all the passions and evils of life. The sleeping state shows us its quiet aspect, its lack of cares and anxieties.

38. The state of sound sleep is one of unconsciousness. The state beyond these three bears the feature of death in it. Yet this dead-like figure possesses the principle of life which is experienced by yogis by diligent attention and preserved from harm and decay.

39. Now Rama, the sages say that the soul which remains in its quiet rest after its renunciation of all desire is in the cool calmness of itself, the liberated state of the holy and devout yogi on earth.

✅
Chapter 6a.125 — Means of Attaining Steadiness of Turiya State

1. Vasishta resumed:— Know Rama, that the conclusion which is arrived at in all works on spiritual philosophy is the negation of everything except the entity of the Supreme Soul. There is no principle of ignorance or delusion which is a secondary agent under one quiescent Brahman, who is ever without a second.

2. The spirit of the Lord is always calm with the serene brightness of Divine Consciousness in itself. It is full of its omnipotence and is attributed with the name of Brahman.

3. Some determine that the Divine Spirit is formless vacuum. Others call it omniscience. Most people in the world call it the Lord God.

4. O sinless Rama, avoid all these and remain quite silent in yourself. Be extinct in the Divine Essence by restraining the actions of your heart and mind and by the tranquility of your soul.

5. Have a quiet soul in yourself and remain like a deaf and dumb man in your outward appearance. Look always within yourself and be full with the Divine Spirit.

6. Discharge the duties of your waking state as if you are doing them in your sound sleep. Forsake everything in your inner mind and do whatever comes to you outwardly without taking any into your heart.

7. The essence of the mind is only for one’s misery, as the absence of mind is his highest joy. Therefore the mind must be drowned in the intelligent soul by completely destroying the action of mental powers.

8. Remain as cold as a stone at the sight of anything that is delightful or disgusting to you. Like this, learn to subdue everything in the world under your control.

9. The objective is neither for our pleasure or pain, nor is it the intermediate state of the two. Therefore it is by diligent attention to the subjective that we can attain the end of all our misery.

10. He who has known the Supreme Soul has found within himself a delight that resembles the cooling beams of the full bright moon. Being possessed of the full knowledge of the essence of all things in the three worlds, he performs his parts as if he were not paying attention to them.

✅
Chapter 6a.126 — The Seven Stages of Yoga; Each Leads to the Next through Incarnations

1. Rama said, “Sage, tell me about the practices of the seven stages of yoga and the characteristics of yogis in every stage.”

2. Vasishta related:— Rama, know that mankind is divided into two classes, the zealous and the resigned. One expects heavenly reward and the other is inclined to supreme joy. Know their different characters as follows.

3. Those who are addicted to enjoyments think the quietude of nirvana as nothing to their purpose. They prefer worldliness above final bliss. He who acts his part in this sense is called an active and energetic man.

4. Such a man of the world is like a tortoise which, though it has its neck well hidden in its shell, still stretches it out to drink the salt water of the sea that it inhabits until after many births, he gets a better life for his salvation.

5. But he who reflects on the nothingness of the world and the uselessness of his situation in it, such a man does not allow himself to be carried on by the current of his old and recurring course of duties here in day after day.

6. He who, after being released from the burden of his business, reflects on the delight of his rest after labor, is the man who is said to repose in his quiescence.

7. When a man comes to investigate in himself how he shall become dispassionate and get over the loud noisy ocean of the world, such a man is said to have come to his good and right sense and to stand on the way to his tolerance.

8. He who has an insensitivity in his heart to the very many thoughts that daily rise in his mind, and who manages his gravest and greatest concerns without being much concerned about them in his mind, such a man is said to taste the delight of his steadiness day by day.

9. He who condemns the rustic amusements and mean employments of men, and instead of taking up the faults and failings of others for his merry talk, employs himself to meritorious acts,

10. whose mind is engaged in agreeable tasks and painless acts, who is afraid of sin and rejects all pleasures and bodily enjoyments,

11. whose conversation is full of love and tenderness, appropriate without any harshness, and whose speeches are suitable to the time and place in which they are delivered,

12. such a man is said to stand on the first step of yoga when he makes it his duty to attend the society of the good and great, whom he learns to imitate in his thoughts, words, and actions.

13. He also collects books on spiritual learning from everywhere and reads with attention and diligence. He then considers their contexts and lays hold on the tenets which serve to save him from this sinful world.

14. Such a man is said to have come upon the (first) stage of yoga, or else he is a hypocrite who assumes the disguise of a yogi for his own interest only. The yogi then comes to the next step of yoga, which is called the stage of investigation.

15. From the mouths of the best scholars, he hears explanations of the scriptures and the Puranas, the rules of good conduct, and the manner of meditation and conduct of yoga practice.

16. Then he learns the divisions of categories and distinction of things, together with the difference between actions that are to be done or avoided. All this heard from the mouth of an adept in yoga will facilitate his course through the other stages. It is like the master of a house who easily enters every apartment of his house.

17. He takes off his outer habit of pride and vanity, his jealousy and greed, and the other passions which formed, as it were, an outer garment of his body just like a snake casting off his old skin.

18. Having thus purified his mind, he attends to the service of his spiritual teachers and holy persons and acquaints himself with the mysteries of religion.

19. Then he enters the third stage which is to avoid all company, which he finds as agreeable as a bed of flowers.

20. He learns to steady his mind according to the dictates of scriptures. He passes his time talking on spiritual subjects in the society of hermits and devotees.

21. He sits with dispassionate renunciants and religious recluses who are disgusted with the world. Relying upon the firm rock of his faith, he wears out his long life with ease.

22. He passes his mortal life with cheerful delight of his loneliness and the pleasing tranquility of his mind in his woodland retreat and wanderings.

23. By study of holy books and performance of religious acts, he gets a clear view of things, as it generally attends upon the virtuous lives of men.

24. The conscious man who has arrived at the third stage of yoga practice perceives in himself two kinds of disconnection with the world, as you will now hear from me.

25. This disconnection of a person with all others is of two sorts, one which is his ordinary disassociation with all persons and things, and the other is his absolute disconnection with everything, including himself.

26. Ordinary disconnection is the sense of one being neither the subject or object of his action, nor being the slayer of or slain by anybody, but that all accidents are incidental to his prior acts and all are dependent on the orderings dispensed of Providence.

27. It is the conviction that I have no control over my happiness, misery, pain or pleasure, and that all prosperity and adversity, employment, privation, health and disease happen to me of their own accord.

28. All union is for its separation and all gain is for its loss. So health, disease, pain and pleasure come by turns, and there is nothing which is not succeeded by its reverse, because time with its open jaws is ever ready to devour all things.

29. The negative idea of nonexistence, which is produced in the mind from our lack of reliance on the reality of things, is the sense conveyed by the expression, our ordinary disconnection with all things.

30. With this sort of the disunion of everything in the mind, and our union with the society of high minded men and disassociation with the vile and unrighteous, and association with spiritual knowledge,

31. these joined with continuous exertion of manliness in habitual practice of these virtues, one assuredly arrives at the certain knowledge of what he seeks as clearly as he sees a globe set in his hands.

32. Knowing that the supreme author of creation sits beyond the ocean of the universe and watches over its concerns impresses us with the belief that it is not I but God that does everything in the world. There is nothing that is done here by me, but by the great God himself.

33. Having left aside the thought of one’s agency on any act, whoever sits quiet silent and tranquil in himself, such a one is said to be absolutely unconnected with everything in the world.

34. The Lord of all is he who does not reside within or without anything, or dwells above or beneath any object, who is not situated in the sky or in any side or part of the all surrounding air and space, who is not in anything or in nothing, and neither in gross matter nor in the conscious spirit,

35. who is present and manifest in everything without being expressed in any, who pervades all things like the clear sky, and who is without beginning or end or birth or death. Whoever seeks this Lord of all is said to be set in the best part of this third stage of yoga.

36. Contentment is a sweet fragrance in the mind, and virtuous acts are as handsome as the leaves of a flower. The heartstring is like a stalk troubled by the thorns of cares, anxieties and suffering with the gusts of dangers and difficulties.

37. The flower of inner discrimination is expanded, like the lotus-bud, by the sunbeams of reason and produces the fruit of renunciation in the garden of the third stage of yoga practice.

38. Association with holy men and doing virtuous acts, one suddenly arrives at the first stage of yoga.

39. So this first step is to be preserved with care and nurtured like a tender sprout, watering its roots with reason.

40. The yoga practitioner, like a good gardener, must foster the rising plant of spiritual knowledge by the daily application of reasoning to every part of it.

41. This stage being well managed and all its parts being properly performed, introduces the succeeding stages.

42. Now the better part of the third stage, as already described, is one of all desires removed from the mind of the yogi.

43. Rama said, “Now sage, tell me. How is salvation attained by an ignorant man, one of base birth addicted to baseness himself who has never associated with yogis or received any spiritual instruction,

44. who has never ascended any of the first, second or succeeding stages of yoga, and who is dead in the same state of ignorance in which he was born?”

45. Vasishta replied:— An ignorant man who has never attained any of the states of yoga in his whole life is carried by the current of his reincarnation to wander in a hundred births until he happens, by some chance or other, to get some glimpse of spiritual light in any of his births.

46. Or it may be that he happens to associate with holy men and becomes dissatisfied with the world. The renunciation which springs thereby becomes the ground for one of the stages of his yoga.

47. By this means, the man is saved from this miserable world, because it is the united voice of all the scriptures that an embodied being is released from death as soon as he has passed through any one stage of yoga.

48. The performance of even a portion of some of the stages of yoga is enough for the remission of past sins and for conducting the purified person to the celestial abode in a heavenly car.

49. He enjoys the celestial gardens of Sumeru in company with his beloved when the weight of his righteous acts outweighs those of unrighteousness.

50. The yogi, released from the trap of his temporal enjoyments and having passed his allotted period, dies in due time to be reborn in the houses of yogis and rich men or in the private houses of learned, good and virtuous people.

51. Being thus born, he undertakes the habitual practice of the yoga of his former birth and has the wisdom to immediately begin at the stage he practiced which he had left unfinished before.

52. These three stages, Rama, are called the waking states because the yogi retains his perception of the differences of things, just as a waking man perceives the visible to differ from one another.

53. Men employed in yoga acquire a venerable dignity which cause the ignorant to also wish for their liberation.

54. He is reckoned venerable who is employed in all honorable deeds and refrains from what is dishonorable, and who is steadfast in the discharge of all his social duties, whether they are of the ordinary or occasional kind.

55. He who acts according to customary usage and the ordinances of scriptures, who acts conscientiously and according to his position and thus dispenses all his affairs in the world, is truly called a venerable man.

56. The venerable nature of yogis germinates in the first stage, blossoms in the second, and becomes fruitful in the third stage of yoga.

57. The venerable yogi who dies in the state of yoga enjoys the fruits of good desires for a long time, then becomes a yogi again.

58. The practice of the parts enjoyed in the three first stages of yoga first serves to destroy the ignorance of the yogi, then sheds the light of true knowledge in his mind as brightly as the beams of full moon illuminate the sky at night.

59. He who devotes his mind to yoga with undivided attention from first to last, and who sees all things in one even and same light, is said to have arrived at the fourth stage of yoga.

60. As the mistake of duality disappears from sight and the knowledge of unity shines supremely bright, the yogi in this state is said to have reached the fourth stage of yoga when he sees the world like a vision in his dream.

61. The first three stages are called the waking state of the yogi, but the fourth is said to be a state of dreaming. That which can be seen disappears from his sight, just as the dispersed clouds of autumn gradually vanish from sight, and as the scenes in a dream recede to nothingness.

62. They who have their minds lying dormant in them and who are unconscious of their bodily sensations are said to be in the fifth stage. This is called the sleeping state or the trance of yoga meditation.

63. In this state, there is an utter cessation of awareness in the mind of the yogi of the endless varieties of things and species. The yogi relies on his awareness of only an undivided unity. His sense of duality is entirely melted down and lost in the cheerfulness of his awakened mind.

64. The fifth stage is also a state of sound sleep. The yogi loses all external perceptions and sits quietly with his internal vision.

65. The continued calmness of his posture gives him the appearance of sleep. The yogi continues in this position practicing the denial of all his desires.

66. This step leads gradually to the sixth stage, which is a state of unconsciousness both to the existence and nonexistence of things, as also of one’s egoism and non-egoism.

67. The yogi remains unmindful of everything, quite unconscious of unity or duality. By being freed from every scruple and suspicion in his mind, he arrives at the dignity of living liberation.

68. The yogi of this sort, though still living, is said to be extinct or dead to his consciousness. He sits like a lamp in a picture that emits no flame. He remains with a vacant heart and mind like an empty cloud hanging in the empty air.

69. Within and without he is full of divine ecstasy, like a full pot in a sea. He is possessed of higher power, yet he appears as worthless on the outside.

70. After passing his sixth grade, the yogi is led to the seventh stage which is called a state of disembodied liberation because of its pure spiritual nature.

71. It is a state of quietude which cannot be described in words. It extends beyond the limits of this earth. It is said to resemble the state of Shiva by some, and that of Brahman by others.

72. By some it is said to be the state of the androgynous deity, or the indistinct state of male and female powers. Others have given many other names to it according to their fancies.

73. The seventh is the state of the eternal and incomprehensible God which no words can express or explain in any way. Thus Rama, have I described the seven stages of yoga.

74. By practice of these perfections, one evades the miseries of this world. By subjection of the unruly elephantine senses, one can arrive at these perfections.

75. Rama, hear me tell you about a furious elephant which with its protruded tusks was ever ready to attack others.

76. As this elephant was about to kill many men unless it could be killed by one of them, so are men’s senses like ferocious elephants of destruction to them.

77. Hence every man who has the valor of destroying this elephant of his sensuality as his very first step becomes victorious in all the stages of yoga.

78. Rama said, “Tell me sage, who is this victorious hero in the field of battle? What is the nature of this elephant that is his enemy? What are these grounds of combat where he encounters him, and how does he defeat and kill this great foe?”

79. Vasishta replied:— Rama, our desire has the gigantic figure of this elephant which roams at random in the forest of our bodies and sports demonstrating all our passions and feelings.

80. It hides in the hidden place of our hearts and has our acts for its great tusks. Its fury is our ardent desire for anything, and our great ambition is its huge body.

81. All the scenes (desire objects) on earth are the fields for its battle, where men are often defeated in their pursuit of any such desire.

82. The elephant of desire kills miserly and covetous men in the state of their wish or desire, or exertions and effort, or longing and yearning after anything.

83. In this way fierce greed lurks in the sheath of human breast under different names. Only refraining from those desires serves as the great weapon of their destruction.

84. This constant desire to possess everything in the world is conquered by reflection on the omnipresence of the soul in all of them, and that the unity of my soul stretches over and grasps all things that I desire.

85. He who continues in this world like the rest of mankind is doomed to suffer under the colic pain of this venomous greed.

86. Our highest liberation is the diminution of the stinging poison of greed. Our liberation is when the calm and cooling countenance of the absence of desire appears to our sight.

87. Words of advice stick to the wise mind like drops of oil adhere to a glass mirror. Our indifference to the world is the only prevention of its thorns, and it is the best advice to the wise.

88. It is advisable to destroy a desire by the weapon of detachment as soon as it arises in the breast. It is proper to root out the sprout of a poisonous plant before it spreads itself on the ground.

89. The lustful soul is never free from its miserliness, while the mere effort of detachment makes it set quiet in itself.

90. Having no care for anything, by lying down as inactive as a dead carcass, you can kill your desire by the weapon of your detachment, just like they catch and kill fishes with hooks.

91. The wise say that desire is that attitude of “let this be mine” or “I may have it” and the lack of every desire is called renunciation.

92. Know that the memory of something is also the desire to have it again. Memory includes both what was enjoyed before and in the future.

93. O high minded Rama, you must learn to remain like a senseless block in your mind by forgetting whatever you think of or otherwise. For your detachment from the world, all must be buried in forgetfulness.

94. Who will not lift up his arms and have his hairs standing on end to hear and reflect that lack of desire is the supreme good of everyone’s desire.

95. By sitting quite silently and quietly one attains the state of supreme joy, a state before which the sovereignty of the world seems like a bit of straw.

96. As a traveler traverses on foot through many regions to reach to his destination, so the yogi passes through all his ordinary acts in order to reach his goal of final bliss.

97. What is the good of using many words when it can be expressed in a few? Our desire is our strongest bondage and its lack our complete liberation.

98. Now Rama, rest quietly in your joy knowing that all this creation is full of the uncreated, everlasting, un-decaying and tranquil spirit of God. Sit quietly delighted in yourself seeing all that is visible in its spiritual sense.

99. Know to ignore everything and the quiet posture of the yogi, which the spiritually minded call the state of yoga. Continue to discharge your duties even in your yoga state until you get rid of them by deprivation of your desires.

100. The wise also describe yoga as unconsciousness of one’s self. It consists of the entire absorption of one’s self in the supreme by wasting away the mind and all its operations.

101. Again, this self absorption is conceiving of one’s self to be the all pervasive spirit of Shiva, uncreated, selfconscious and ever benevolent to all. This conception of one’s self is equivalent to renunciation of everything besides oneself.

102. He who has the sense of egoism and selfishness is never released from the miseries of life. The negation of this sensation produces our liberation. Therefore each person may choose to do either this or that for his bondage or liberation.

✅
Chapter 6a.127 — Valmiki Admonishes Bharadwaja

1. Bharadwaja asked Valmiki, “Tell me sage, what did Rama do after hearing the sage’s lecture? Did he with his enlightened understanding ask any other question? Or did he remain in ecstatic quietude with his full knowledge of yoga and the Supreme Soul?”

2. “What did that supremely blessed yogi (Vasishta) do next? He is adored by all and honored even by gods. He is a personification of pure understanding, free from the state of birth and death, filled with every good quality and always kindly disposed to the welfare and preservation of the peoples in all the three worlds.”

3. Valmiki replied:— After hearing Vasishta’s lecture combining the essence of Vedanta philosophy, lotus-eyed Rama became perfectly acquainted with the full knowledge of yoga.

4. He felt his bodily strength failing and his body falling. He stared with glaring eyes, his clear intellect shrouded under a cloud. He awoke in a moment from his entranced state and felt a flood of rapturous joy within himself.

5. He forgot about asking questions and listening to their answers. His mind was full with the ambrosial nectar of delight. In his emotional state, the hairs of his body stood up like bristles.

6. An indescribable light with unusual brightness spread over his consciousness. That light put the auspicious prospects of the eight siddhi powers of yoga into utter shade.

7. In this way Rama attained the highest state of Shiva, in which he sat calmly without uttering a word.

8. Bharadwaja said, “O how much I wonder at such a high dignity which Rama had attained. How much I regret the impossibility of its attainment by a dull and ignorant sinner as myself.”

9. “Tell me, O great sage, how may it be possible for me to attain to that stage of perfection which is impossible even for the gods Brahma and others to attain? Tell me also, how can I get over the impassable ocean of earthly troubles?”

10. Valmiki replied:— By reading of the history of Rama from first to last, by following the precepts of Vasishta as given in these lectures, and by consideration of their true sense and meaning in your understanding, you may be able to attain the state that you desire. This all that I can tell you at present.

11. The world is an exhibition of our ignorance. There is no truth in anything we see in the world. It is only a display of our error. For that reason it is entirely disregarded by the wise, and so much regarded by fools.

12. There is no entity or anything here other than Divine Consciousness. Why then are you deluded by phenomena? Learn their secrets and have a clear understanding.

13. The perception of the delusive phenomena resembles the waking dream of day dreamers. He alone is said to be awake who has the lamp of his intellect ever burning within himself.

14. The world is based on emptiness and it also ends in a vacuum. Its midmost part being likewise empty, there is no reliance placed upon it by the intelligent or the wise.

15. Our primeval ignorance accompanied by our primordial desires presents all that is nonexistent as existing, just as our fancy paints a paradise or fairy city to our view, and sleep shows its various dreams before us.

16. Being unpracticed to taste the sweet plantain of your beneficent intellect, you are deluded to greedily devour the delirious drug of your desires and make yourself giddy with drinks of its poisonous juice.

17. He who lays hold of true knowledge for his support never falls down in the pit of ignorance during his wakeful state. Those who depend only upon their subjective consciousness stand above all other states.

18. So long as the adepts in yoga do not plunge themselves into the fresh and sweet waters of the great fountain of their consciousness, they must be exposed to the loud waves of the dangerous ocean of this world.

19. That which has no existence before and which will remain not existing afterwards must be understood to be nonexistent in the interim also. Just as our night dreams and fleeting thoughts are never in being, so is this world and whatever is seen in it.

20. All things are born of our ignorance, just as bubbles are swollen air. They glisten and move about for a moment, then melt into the sea of our knowledge.

21. Find out the stream of the cooling waters of your consciousness and plunge yourself deep into it. Drive away all external things from you like they shut out hot and harmful sunbeams from houses.

22. The one ocean of ignorance surrounds and floods the world, just as a single salt sea surrounds and washes an island. The distinctions of “I” and “you” and the like are the waves of this salt sea of our falseness.

23. The emotions of the mind and its various feelings and passions are the many forms of the waves of this sea of ignorance. Our egoism and selfishness make the great whirlpool in which the self-willed man is hurled of his own accord.

24. His love and hatred are the two sharks that lay hold of him in their jaws and drag him at last into the depth, which nobody can prevent.

25. Go and plunge yourself in calm and cooling sea of your solitude and wash your soul in the nectar waters of your ambrosial singleness. Dive deep into the depth of unity and fly from the salt sea of duality and the distasteful waves of diversities.

26. Who is lasting in this world and who is passing from it? Who is related to anyone and what does one derive from another? Why are you drowned in your delusion? Rise and be wakeful.

27. Know yourself as that one and same soul which is said to be diffused all over the world. Say what other thing there is that should you regret or lament except that and you?

28. Brahman appears to ignorant children as spread out through all the worlds, but the learned always rely upon the concentrated blissful soul of God.

29. Unreasonable men grieve and are pleased suddenly and without cause. It is a sad thing to find them in error. But the learned are always joyful.

30. The truth of the fine subtlety of the Divine Soul is hidden from eyes of the ignorant. They are as doubtful about its nature as men are suspicious of foreign lands and waters.

31. See the great bodies of earth, air, water and sky composed of atomic particles, so durable as to last forever. Why then mourn at the loss of anything in the world?

32. From nothing comes nothing. Something cannot become nothing. Only the appearance of form takes place in the substance of things.

33. By virtue of prior acts in former births, men are reborn in different shapes to enjoy or suffer the results of those acts. Adore therefore the Lord God and author of the worlds who is always bountiful and bestows all blessings.

34. The worship of this God destroys all our sins and cuts off the knots of snares of this world.

35. You may worship Him in some form or other until your mind is cleared and your nature is purified. Then you can resort to the transcendent spirit of the formless deity.

36. Having overcome the impenetrable gloom of ignorance by force of the purity of your nature, you may pursue the course of the yoga with the humility of your inner soul and belief in the scriptures.

37. Then sit a moment in your fixed meditation (samadhi) and behold the transcendent spirit in your own spirit. In this state the dark night of your former ignorance will break forth into open and bright daylight.

38. It must be by one’s courageous efforts, or by virtue of meritorious acts in former births, and also by grace of the great God, that men may obtain the obtainable one.

39. Neither birth nor character, nor good manners or bravery of a man ensures him success in any undertaking. It is the merit of acts in former births.

40. Why do you sit so sadly to think of inscrutable and unavoidable fate? There is no power, not even that of God himself, to erase what has been already been destined.

41. Where is the expounder of spiritual science, and where is the pupil who can comprehend it fully? What is this creeping plant of ignorance, and what is this inscrutable destiny, that joins two things together? These are questions too difficult to be solved.

42. O Bharadwaja, let your reason help you overcome your illusion. Then no doubt you will gain an uncommon share of wisdom.

43. See how a high spirited hero overpowers all his imminent dangers and stretches his conquest far and wide. On the other hand, see how a mean spirited man is tried and grieves at the ordinary casualties of life.

44. A good understanding is the result of and attends upon the meritorious deeds of many lives, as it appears in the acts of wise men and in the lives of all living liberated persons.

45. Know my son that the same action is filled with your freedom or bondage according to whether it proves favorable or adverse to you.

46. The righteous acts of virtuous men serve to destroy the sins of their past lives, just as rain showers extinguish a fire in the forest.

47. But my friend, if you want to avoid falling into the deep whirling currents of this world, I would rather advise you to avoid religious acts and attach your mind to the meditation of Brahman.

48. So long as one is attached to the outer world, led by his desires that cannot be satisfied, he is exposed to the contrary wind and waves of the sea. He can find his rest only in the calm water of his solitude.

49. Why do you lean so much upon your sorrow only to blind your understanding? Rather support yourself on the strong staff of your good understanding and it will never break under you.

50. Those who are reckoned among great men never allow themselves to be altered or moved by their joy or grief to be carried away like straw by the currents of a river.

51. Friend, why do you sorrow for people who are swinging in the cradle of the circumstances of life in the dark night of this world, playing their several parts with giddy amusement?

52. Look at playful Time that sports joyously in this world with the slaughter and production of endless beings by turns.

53. His game is not particular of any age or gender. He chases all in general like an all-devouring serpent.

54. Why talk of mortal men or other animals that live to die in a moment? Even all the gods are under the clutches of the remorseless and relentless Death.

55. Why do you dance and make yourself merry in your amusement when you are in danger of losing by degrees the powers of your body and limbs? Sit but silently for a while and see the drama of the course of this world.

56. Seeing the ever varying scenes of this changeful theatre of the world, the wise spectator, O good Bharadwaja, never shrinks or trembles for a moment.

57. Shun your unwelcomed sorrow and seek the favorable amidst all that is unfavorable. Do not sadden the clear and cheerful countenance of your soul, which is of the nature of the perfectly blissful intellect of God.

58. Always bear reverence towards the gods, brahmins and your superiors. Be a friend even to irrational animals in order to meet with the grace of God, according to the saying of the Vedas.

59. Bharadwaja replied, “By your kindness, I have known all these and many more truths. I come to find that there is not a greater friend than our indifference to the world, or a greater enemy to us than this world itself.

60. I want to learn the substance of all the knowledge that sage Vasishta imparted in the great work of many words.”

61. Valmiki answered:— Bharadwaja, hear now of the highest knowledge for the liberation of mankind, the hearing of which will save you from drowning in the injustice of the world.

62. First bow down to that Supreme Being who is of the nature of the solitary entity combined with intellect and joy, who is ever existent with his attributes of creation, preservation and destruction.

63. I will tell you, in short and upon the authority of the scripture, how you may come to know the first principle and the manner in which it exhibits itself in the acts of creation, preservation and destruction of the universe.

64. But tell me first, how have you forgotten what I have told you on this subject? If you consider from first to last what is already in your memory, it is possible to know everything, just like they survey the entire earth from a small globe held in the hand.

65. Now consider all this in your own mind and you will get the truth which will prevent all your sorrows. Moreover, associate with the learned and study the best books which with the help of your reasoning and renunciation, may lead you to endless joy.

✅
Chapter 6a.128 — Valmiki Summarizes the Yoga Vasishta for Bharadwaja; Vishwamitra Explains Who Is Rama; Rama Is Brought out of Samadhi

1. Valmiki continued:— The yogi should be peaceful and tranquil, exempt from all forbidden acts and those proceeding from a desire of fruition. He must avoid all sensual gratifications and have his belief in God and his holy religion of the Vedas.

2. He must rest quietly in his seat, his mind and body under his control, and continue repeating the syllable Om until his mind is cleared.

3. Then he must restrain his breathing to purify his inner organs (heart and mind), then restrict his senses by degrees from their respective outward objects.

4. He must think on the natures and causes of its body and its organs of sense, his mind and its understanding, and also his soul and its consciousness, and repeat the scriptures or the holy texts which relate to these subjects.

5. Let him sit reclined meditating on Viraj, initially as the god of visible nature, then as the internal soul of nature. Next he must meditate on the formless spirit as part and abstracted from all. At last he must fix his mind solely in the supreme cause.

6. Let him cast off in his mind and the earthly substance of his flesh and bones to the earth, and commit the liquid part of his blood to the water, and the heat of his body to fire.

7. Then he is to give over the airy and empty parts of his body to air and vacuum. Having returned his elemental parts to the five elements, he shall deliver the organs of his sense to the particular divinities from whom they are derived.

8. The ears and other organs which serve to sense phenomena all around, having been cast aside, he is to give the skin of his body to electricity.

9. Let him then resign his eyesight to the sun (Surya) and his tongue to water (Varuna). Next he must give up his breath to air (Vayu), his voice to fire (Agni), and his palms to the god Indra.

10. He must then offer his feet to the god Vishnu and his anus to Mithra. After giving up his penis to Kasyapa, he should dedicate his mind to the moon (Soma).

11. Afterwards he must lay down his understanding to Brahma, and the other inner faculties to special divinities, and at last also give up his outer senses to their presiding duties.

12. Having thus given his entire body to the gods, he should think himself as the all comprehending Viraja. This he must do pursuant to the statements of the Veda, and not of his own will or fabrication.

13. The Lord who embodies the whole universe in himself, in his androgynous form of half-male and half-female, is said to be the source and support of all sorts of beings.

14. He was born in the form of creation and it is he who is settled in everything in the universe. He caused this earth to appear from the two part cosmic egg, as also the water which is twice as much as the land.

15. He produced the heat twice as much as the water, and the air double in volume to that of heat, and lastly emptiness which is twice more in its extent than the air which it contains. Each latter one lies next above the former.

16. These form the world whether they are divided or undivided from their succeeding and surrounding ones. The earth is surrounded by the sea, and the sea surrounded by undersea fire.

17. Thus the yogi, by contracting his thought of the former one under the latter, will absorb his thought of heat under that of air, and this again under his idea of emptiness, which at last is swallowed up by his thought of the great cause of all.

18. In this manner the yogi must remain for a moment only in his spiritual form by contracting his physical body under the spiritual.

19. The wise describe the spiritual body composed of the ten senses of perception and conception, the mind or memory, and the understanding faculties, to be above and outside the physical half of the cosmic egg. The yogi must think himself to be this supernatural spiritual being (Hiranyagarbha).

20. The former, material half, composed of the five-fold subtle elements, is represented by the figure of the four-faced Brahma and differs from the former by being an evolution of un-evolved spirit.

21. The nameless and formless being in which the world exists is called matter (prakriti) by some, illusion (maya) by others, and atoms by philosophers.

22. Agnostics, whose minds are confused by false reasoning, call it ignorance. After all, it is that hidden and unknowable something in which all things dissolve at the ultimate dissolution of the world.

23. Again, everything that is quite unrelated to the Divine Spirit and intellect comes into existence at the recreation of the world and retains and remains in its primary form to the end of the world.

24. Think of creation in the direct method and of its destruction in the reverse order, then take yourself to the fourth stage of turiya after you have passed over the three preceding steps.

25. To attain the state of blissfulness, you must enter into the Supreme Spirit by removing all impressions of matter and sense from your mind, mind and understanding, and all desires and acts that lie unexpanded and hidden in it.

26. Bharadwaja responded:— I am now quiet released from the chains of my impressions, as my intellectual part has found its entrance into the sea of transcendent blissfulness (turiya).

27. The nature of my soul, being indistinct from the Supreme Spirit, makes me identical to it. I find that I am devoid of all attributes, only an intellectual power like the Spirit.

28. As the emptiness inside a pot becomes one with the universal and all pervading vacuum after the pot is broken, so the human soul vanishes into the Supreme Spirit after it flies from the confines of the body after its destruction.

29. As a fire brand cast into a burning furnace becomes the one and the same as the fire, so the kind mixing with its kind becomes indistinctly known under common name.

30. Again, as straw swimming in a salt sea become transformed to the sea salt, so all animal and inanimate souls mixing with the Divine Soul become animated also.

31. As salt thrown into the sea looses its name and nature and becomes sea salt, so everything is swallowed in the Universal Soul and assimilated to it.

32. As water mixing with water, salt with salt, and butter with butter lose their distinctions and not their substances, so myself and all other substances mixing with the Divine Spirit lose our distinct names without loosing our true substance.

33. All bodies, absorbed in the all-knowing and ever blissful consciousness of the great Creator of all, become equally all pervading and tranquil and everlasting and blessed forever.

34. So I think I am like the supreme transcendent being without any part or partner, without action or passion, without the organs of sense, and neither loving nor hating anyone.

35. I think myself as that sole entity which is the form of truth and immutable in its nature and desires, devoid of virtue and vice, perfectly pure and the supreme cause of all worlds.

36. I am that blissful Brahman who is without a second and without decay, the form of pure light who is described by negative properties, and who is beyond the three qualities of active, passive and superlative (rajas, tamas and sattva) which do not relate to him as they do to others.

37. Thus one should meditate on himself as Brahman, even when he is employed discharging the duties destined to his station in life. His continued practice of this kind of meditation will gradually wear out all other impressions from his mind.

38. The mind being thus set down, the soul will appear of itself within the man. The appearance of the inner spirit serves to destroy all his internal grief and fill its place with heart felt joy.

39. He also perceives the height of the truth shining in himself, that there is no other blissful god beside his own consciousness and this is what he calls his ego and the supreme Brahman.

40. Valmiki said:— Friend, if you want to stop the revolution of the wheel of this world upon you, give up your observance of religious acts and devote yourself to meditation on Brahman.

41. Bharadwaja replied, “I have understood well the meaning of the knowledge you have imparted to me. I have acquired clarity of understanding and I no longer have any reliance upon the world.

42. I desire to know about the duties of those who have gained the spiritual knowledge of God. Are they subject to or freed from the performance of meritorious acts?”

43. Valmiki said:— Those who seek liberation are not liberated from doing that which if avoided involves the guilt of omission of duty. But he must refrain from doing the acts of his desire, and those which he is prohibited from doing.

44. When the living soul comes to feel spiritual bliss in itself, when his sensuous desires disappear from his mind and he perceives his organs of sense lying quite calm and quiet under him, then he may consider himself as one with the all pervading spirit of the Lord.

45. When the sentient soul conceives in itself the sense of its conversion to the essence of God beyond the bounds of the body and its senses and beyond the reach of his mind and understanding, then it is freed from its obligation of worldly duties.

46. When the soul is free from all its action and passions and remains aloof from all titles and attributes, when it gets rid of the feelings of pain and pleasure, then he is freed from the burden of his duties.

47. When one sees the Supreme Soul pervading all beings and sees all creation existing in the Universal Spirit, when he finds no difference between the mundane soul and the Supreme Spirit, then he is released from the bonds of his action.

48. When the living soul has passed over the three states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep and enters into the fourth turiya state of perfect bliss, then he is freed from the obligations of earthly duties.

49. The fourth state of turiya means residing in the living Universal Soul of God. It is the state of the soul’s liberation from its condition of sleeping in ignorance. It is full of spiritual bliss.

50. This turiya state, the consciousness of one’s joy, derives from the fixedness of the soul in the supreme. It is the great end of yoga meditation.

51. After the mental operations of a man have ceased, he perceives nothing within himself except the turiya state which is a calm quiescence of the soul in the sea of ambrosial waters of the one sole unity.

52. Why do you plunge yourself under the waves of the salty waters of the sea of duality? Fly to the Lord of worlds and adore the great god who is full of all blessings.

53. Thus I have related to you, my son, all the doctrines of Vasishta. It is the best means to your knowledge and practice of yoga meditation.

54. You truly will be able, O wise Bharadwaja, to learn everything by digesting the substance of this scripture and considering the meaning of the precepts of this great teacher.

55. According to the statements of the Vedas, we attain the perfection of anything by continued practice. Therefore, you must avoid attending to all other things and concentrate your mind on the object of your practice.

56. Bharadawja replied, “Tell me O sage, the course of conduct which Rama followed after he received knowledge of yoga and united his soul with the Supreme Spirit.

57. By knowing this I also will try to practice upon the same model so that I may succeed to attain the same state of spiritual elevation and bliss like him.”

58. Valmiki said:— When the virtuous and high minded Rama was absorbed and sat entranced in Divine Essence, Vishwamitra addressed the venerable Vasishta.

59. Vishwamitra said:— O highly endowed son of Brahma, wise Vasishta, even now you have shown the effectiveness of your teaching by awakening the dormant power of Rama.

60. He is truly the best in yoga who transforms the body of his pupil by his kind look, touch and sound and causes his inspiration by infusing the holy spirit of Shiva in him.

61. So it was with Rama, whose pure soul was dispassionate by its own nature and whose earnest desire of mental cessation and detachment led him to that happy state through conversing with his spiritual guide.

62. The intelligence of the student causes his understanding through the guidance of his spiritual teacher. But when these three roots or principles are imperfect, how can understanding arrive at its perfection?

63. It is evident that knowledge is in need of both pupil and teacher for its communication. When both pupil and teacher are competent and worthy of one another, it is certain that the result will be likewise.

64. Now be pleased to rouse Rama from the samadhi of mental inactivity, which you alone can do by your bliss in detachment, while we who are employed in worldly affairs are too far from it.

65. Please sage, remember the cause that calls us here and the business to which we are invited at the earnest request of King Dasharata himself.

66. Therefore O sage, do not frustrate our object by the purity of your mind. We have a service to perform to the gods and which is the cause of Rama’s incarnation on earth.

67. I am to conduct Rama to the home of the spiritual masters, then he shall be called to destroy the rakshasas, after which he will be led to the salvation of Ahalya and his marriage to Sita.

68. He will break the great bow of Shiva in a valiant deed for that marriage, then he shall encounter the furious Parashurama and restrain his pride and way to heaven.

69. Then fearless Rama will forsake his paternal and ancestral kingdoms to which is he unattached and, under pretext of his banishment, he will take himself to Dandaka Forest and its foresters.

70. He will restore the sanctity of many pilgrimage places and thereby save the lives and souls of beings from sin and death. He will show the world the sorrows of men at the loss of their wives from his own example of Sita’s abduction by Ravana.

71. He will set the example of husbands’ duty of recovering wives from the hands of their kidnappers by his recovery of Sita and his slaughter of Ravana, and by assembling the monkeys of the forest in his favor.

72. He will prove the purity of Sita to please his plea and he will be employed in the observance of all religious acts for the entire liberation in this world, and lack any desire of reward in the next.

73. But in order to secure the future welfare of men, he will encourage the practice of spiritual devotion and ritual acts according to the instruction of those who are best acquainted with those subjects.

74. He will liberally bestow his liberation to every living being of every kind. These and many others are the duties of Rama to this world and to me also.

75. Such are the acts that Rama shall perform, wherefore he is to be thanked by everyone here for all his conquests which no one else can make. So fare you well.

76. Valmiki resumed:— After these words of the sage were heard by the princes in the court and the assembled spiritual masters and great yogis such as Vasishta and others, they thanked the hero and remained to think of his lotus-like feet with respect and esteem.

77. But the sages Vasishta and others were not to be satisfied until they could hear more about the lord of Sita whose virtues they all eagerly expected to hear fully and recite in their songs of praise.

78. Vasishta then said to Vishwamitra, “Tell me sage, who was this lotus-eyed Rama in his past life? Had he been a god or sage or an ordinary man?”

79. Vishwamitra replied:— Believe what I say. This Rama is that primary Supreme Being who churned the sea for the good of the world. He is known only by the deepest learning of the Vedas.

80. He is full of spiritual joy, meek and gentle. He has the auspicious Srivatsa mark upon his body. He is bountiful to all living beings and quickly appeased by all.

81. He destroys everyone in his rage and abandons all the frail trifles of this world. He is the first male and creator of all and supports, nourishes and is kind friend of all.

82. He has passed over the unsubstantial and illusory things of this world. He is the sea of joy and is dived in by the dispassionate.

83. Sometimes he is known as a liberated soul, relying in himself. At others he is seen to be settled in his turiya state of samadhi trance, and sometimes as a male or female agent of creation.

84. He is the god of the triple Vedas and beyond the reach of the three qualities of things. He is the soul of the Vedas and the wonderful Soul (Purusha Viraj) that is displayed in the six branches of the Vedas.

85. He is the four-armed Vishnu and the four-faced Brahma, the creator of the world. He is also the great Mahadeva with his three eyes who is the destroyer of the world.

86. He is the uncreated creator born by his yoga or union with the power of delusion. He is the ever wakeful and the ever great spirit of God which, though it is formless, yet forms and supports this frame of this universe by transforming himself into the form of a man-lion.

87. As victory is carried upon the wings of bravery, and as light is carried upon the flame of fire, and as learning bears and conveys the fruit of good understanding, so is this godlike Rama carried upon the wings of the garuda bird of heaven.

88. Blessed is this King Dasharata who has the Supreme Being for his son. Fortunate is the ten-headed Ravana for finding a place in the mind of Rama as his enemy.

89. How lamentable is the state of heaven by Rama’s absence from it. How pitiable is the infernal region from its loss of Lakshman (Ananta serpent) who is present here. Happy is this earth, the middle land, from the presence of the two gods from those two regions in this place.

90. This Rama is an incarnation of the god Vishnu who sleeps in the midst of the sea. He is the incarnate Supreme Soul without decay. He is a consolidation of Divine Consciousness and joy in his person.

91. The yogis of subdued organs discern Rama in spirit, but we of ordinary understanding can see him only in his outward figure.

92. We hear that he has come down to blot out the iniquities of the race of Raghu, and hope that the venerable Vasishta will kindly guide him to the affairs of the world.

93. Valmiki said:— Saying this much, the great sage Vishwamitra held his silence. Then the intense Vasishta opened his mouth and addressed Rama.

94. Vasishta said:— O great armed Rama! O highly intellectual prince! It is not the time for you to be absorbed in yoga. Rise and rejoice the hearts of your people.

95. Until you satisfy the wants of men and their expectations of you, you are not allowed to attain the perfection of your pure samadhi meditation.

96. Therefore attend to the temporal affairs of your state for some time and discharge the burden of your duties to the gods. Then take yourself to the state of your spiritual advancement and be happy forever. Valmiki speaking:—

97. Despite being addressed in this manner, Rama remained absorbed in his trance and uttered not a word in reply. Then the spirit of Vasishta entered the heart of Rama through the restful passage of the sushumna nadi.

98. It infused its force to the respiration, mental faculties, organs and the vital spirit of Rama. It ran through the veins and arteries and inflated the organs of sense. Then Rama slowly opened his eyes and saw before him sage Vasishta with learned men about him. He remained gazing upon all without any wish or effort of his own, and without considering anything of his duties, or what he was to avoid.

99. He heard the voice which his teacher Vasishta had uttered to him. He respectfully replied.

100. Rama said, “By your kindness sage, I am taught to have no concern with anything of the injunctions or prohibitions of the law. Yet it is my duty to abide by all that my teacher bids me to do.

101. I think, O great sage, that of all the sayings of the Vedas, Agamas, Puranas, and other scriptures, the word of the teacher is the highest law. His bidding is a command and its opposite a positive prohibition.”

102. So saying, the virtuous Rama bowed down his head at the feet of venerable Vasishta, then spoke of his indifference to the world to all present in the assembly.

103. Rama said, “May you all prosper and know the most certain truth to which I have arrived. There is nothing better than the knowledge of the Self, and none superior to the teacher from whom it is derived.”

104. The spiritual masters and others responded saying, “Such is the impression of Rama in our minds also. It is by your favor and acceptance that this belief is confirmed in us.

105. We thank you, Rama Chandra, and wish all happiness to attend on our great prince. We beg leave of sage Vasishta for our departure as we are called here.”

106. Valmiki said:— So saying they rose giving praises to Rama, blessing him with showers of flowers falling upon his head from their hands.

107. Thus have I related to you the whole story of Rama. O Bharadwaja, follow the same course of yoga and be happy forever.

108. Now my relating the perfection to which Rama had arrived, together with my telling you the varied sayings of the sage which are like so many strings of gems to be worn on the chests of yogis and poets, will serve by the grace of the sage to give you liberation.

109. Whoever hears and attends to these discourses of Rama and Vasishta is sure to be relieved in every state of life and be united with Brahman after his release.

110. Thus ends the Maharamayna of sage Vasishta and spoken by Valmiki relating to the boyhood of Rama and consisting of thirty-two thousand sloka stanzas.

Book 1 Book 2 Book 3 Book 4 Book 5 Book 6a Book 6b