The original Sanskrit attributed to Sage Valmiki translated to English by Vihari Lala Mitra (1891) edited by Thomas L.

Palotas (2013)

Publisher: Handloom Publishing Shivabalayogi Seva Foundation P.O. Box 64634, Tucson, Arizona U.S.A. 85728 Shri Shivabalayogi Maharaj International Trust www.shivabalayogi.org

BOOK VI, Part 2 The Latter Treasury (Uttaradha Bhaga)

Sage Vasishta explains that true detachment is achieved only by the awakening of self knowledge (atman jnana). The result is an automatic cessation of all actions and their results. The person no longer identifies with the body or seeks enjoyment in worldly objects. It is only when this realization of ones identity with the Supreme Self (atman) remains firmly established that one attains supreme liberation (param nirvana). Vasishta also narrates his own experiences of samadhi. The sense of separate identity is lost in this state. He knows himself as one with pure consciousness (chidakasa). With the attainment of this knowledge everything else becomes known to him. He sees himself as existing everywhere and in all places and therefore he feels no need for movement, as he has nowhere to go to. Though devoid of the sense organs, he can see everything with his eye of wisdom (jnana netra) and he thus perceives that the innumerable universes of myriad names and forms exist within the pure consciousness as his own body. As the discourse nears its end Ramas doubts and mental agitations are all gone. When Vasishta begins to discuss the ultimate state of bliss (nirvana) Rama and the others in the assembly listening are all lifted to the blissful plane of consciousness. Rama, freed from the distressing thoughts that had been weighing upon his mind, is absorbed in samadhi and has no more questions to ask. As the great sage concludes his discourse, Rama exclaims in rapturous joy, Ah! I have attained the most wonderful state of nirvana that is the end of the purpose of life! I am always in form (swarupa) but in the extremely peaceful myself there is nothing. There is nothing that is now covetable to me. Vasishta then goes on to explain that having attained the state of nirvana, rishis are endowed with the highest state of samadhi (sahaj samadhi) that allows them to mix with people and to perform their allotted duties in life without coming down from their samadhi state. Then Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwara appear and advise Shri Rama to remain firmly established in brahman always and to joyfully carry out his work and duties in the true spirit of one who is liberated while living (jivan mukta).

Chapter 1 Passively Act out Your Duties from Prior Lives

Rama asked, Renouncing the idea of ones personal ego results in the attendant evil of inertness and inactivity. This naturally brings on a premature decay and decline and the eventual falling off of the body. Then how is it possible, sage, for an indifferent person of this kind to practice his actions and discharge the active duties of life? 2 Vasishta replied: Rama, giving up false ideas is possible for a living person, but not for one who is dead and gone. Now listen as I expound this truth which will greatly please your ears. 3 The idea of ones personal ego is said to be an idealism by idealists, but the meaning of the word emptiness is the repudiation of that false notion. 4 Idealists say the essence of all substances is a creation of the imagination and they describe the idea of pure emptiness as giving up this false conception. 5 The best and wisest of men say that the idea of anything in the world as something in reality is mere imagination, but the belief that all things are an empty nothing displaces the error of thought from the mind. Since all things are reduced to and return to nothing, this alone is the ever lasting something. 6 Know your memory of anything is only your imagination, and its forgetfulness alone is good for you. Therefore try to blot out all your former impressions from your mind as if they were never impressed on it. 7 Erase from your mind the memory of all you have felt or unfelt, and remain silent and secluded like a block after forgetting all things whatsoever. 8 Continue your practice of continuous action with an utter forgetfulness of the past, because your habit of activity is enough to conduct you through all the actions of your life, as it is the habit of a half-sleeping baby to move its limbs. 9 It requires no design or desire on the part of an actor to act the part to which he is led by the course of his prior propensities, just as a potters wheel is propelled by its original momentum without requiring the application of continued force for its whirling motion. So, O sinless Rama, consider our actions to be directed by our previous impressions and not our present efforts. 10 Hence renunciation has become the pleasant tendency of your mind, without its inclination to the gratification of its desires. The leanings of men to particular pursuits are directed by the current of their previous inclinations. The predisposition of the mind is said to be the cause of the formation of the character and fortune of a man in his present state, which runs like a stream in its habitual course and carries all men like straw floating along with its currents. 11 I say that lack of desire is our supreme bliss and supreme good. I am proclaiming this with a loud voice and lifted arms, and yet nobody will listen to me. Why is it that none would perceive it as such? 12 The wonderful power of illusion makes men neglect their reason and throw away the richest jewel of their mind from the chest of their breast in which it is deposited. 13 The best way to renunciation is to ignore and deny phenomena, which is what I want you to do. Know that your disavowal of all is of the greatest reward to you, as you will be able to experience for yourself. 14 Sitting silently with calm content will lead you to that blissful state before which your possession of an empire will seem insignificant and only serves to increase your desire for more. 15 As the feet of a traveler are in continuous motion until he reaches his destination, so the body and mind of the covetous are in continuous agitation until his renunciation gives him rest. 16 Forget and forsake your expectation of reward for the result of your actions. Allow yourself to be carried onward by the current of your fortune without taking anything to your mind, like a sleeping man unconsciously carried on by his dreams. 17 Stir yourself to action as it occurs to
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you without any purpose or desire and without feeling any pain or pleasure. Let the current of the business conduct you onward like the current of a stream carries a bit of straw in its course. 18 Take no pleasure or pain to your heart from the work in which you are employed, but remain unconscious of both, like a wooden machine working for others. 19 Remain insensitive to pleasure or pain in your body and mind and all the sense organs, like sapless trees and plants in winter when they bear their bare trunks without sensitivity in their limbs. 20 Let the sun of your good understanding suck up the consciousness of your six external senses, just as sunshine dries up the moisture of winter plants. Continue to work with the members of your body like an engine is set to work. 21 Restrain your intellectual pleasures from their inclination to sensual gratifications, and retain your spiritual joy in yourself to support your life, just as the ground carefully retains the roots of trees in winter for their growth in spring season. 22 It is the same whether or not you continually gratify the cravings of your senses. They will continue unsatisfied in spite of all your supplies. The vanities of the world will profit you nothing. 23 If you move about continually like a running stream, or like the continuous shaking of water in a hydraulic engine, free from every desire and craving of your mind, then you are said to advance towards your endless bliss. 24 Know this as a transcendent truth, capable of preventing all your future reincarnations in this world: that you become accustomed to the free agency of all your actions without being dragged to them by your desires. 25 Pursue your business as it occurs to you without any desire or purpose of your own towards its object. Continue to turn about your callings, just like a potters wheel revolves round its fulcrum. 26 Think neither of the object of your action nor its reward, but know them to be equally alike whether you refrain from action or do it without desire for its result. 27 But what is the use of many words when it can be expressed in brief? The desire for results is the bondage of your soul. Renouncing your desire for results is filled with perfect freedom. 28 There is no business whatever for us in this world that must be done or abandoned at anytime or place. Everything is good that comes from the good God. Therefore sit quietly with your cold detachment before the occurrence of any event. 29 Think of your works as no works and take your abstinence from action as your greatest work. Remain quiet in your mind during both action and inaction, just as Divine Consciousness is in ecstasy amidst the thick of its action. 30 Know that unconsciousness of all things is the true yoga-trance which requires the complete suppression of mental operations. Remain wholly intent on the Supreme Spirit until you are one and the same with it. 31 When you identify with the tranquil and subtle spirit, without any sense of dualism and the existence of anything else, absorbed in thought of the endless and pure essence of God, then nobody can sorrow for anything. 32 Let no desire rise in your detached mind, like a tender germ sprouting in the sterile desert soil. Do not allow a wish to grow in you like a slender blade shooting in the bosom of a barren rock. 33 The unconscious and insensible saint derives no good or evil by doing or not doing any deed or duty in his living state or in his next life. 34 There is no sense of duty or abandonment of duty in the minds of the saintly yogis who always view the equality of all things and acts. Never consider their deeds as their own doings. Do not think they are the agents of their own actions. 35 Consciousness of individual ego and the sense of selfishness will never release a man from the miseries of life. Only his unconsciousness of these can save him from all sorrow. Therefore everyone may choose which of these he may best like. 36 There is no other ego or me other than the one self-existent being and God having all forms. Besides the essence of this transcendent being, it is hard to account for any of the many things that appear to be otherwise than Himself. 37 The visible world appearing so vividly to our sight is nothing more than the

manifestation of the one Divine Essence in many, like the transformation of gold into the many shapes of ornaments. Seeing the continual decay and disappearance of phenomena, we ignore their separate existence. We acknowledge the sole existence of the one being who lasts after all and forever.

Chapter 2 Lack of Choice Means No Responsibility for Actions

Vasishta continued: Do not think of unity or duality but remain quite calm and quiet in your spirit and as cold hearted as damp mud. The worlds are still with the unmoving spirit of the divinity working in them. 2 The mind with its understanding, egoism and all its thoughts is full of the Divine Spirit in its diverse forms. Time and its motion and all sound, force and action, together with all modes of existence are only manifestations of Divine Essence. 3 Divine Spirit has the form of jelly-like mud (i.e., it is plastic in nature) showing all things, forms and colors, and the mind and all its functions also, upon its own mold of endless shapes and types beyond the comprehension of men. 4 Divine Essence forms the patterns, forms and shapes of all things, together with the measurements of space and time and the position of all the quarters and regions of the earth and heavens, all formed out of its own substance like on a mold of clay. So all things existent or nonexistent are the products and derivations of the formative mud and mold of the Divine Spirit. 5 Remain indifferent about the essence of your egoism and selfishness, which is nothing other than that of the Supreme Spirit. Live unconcerned with everything, like a dumb insect inside a stone. 6 Rama asked, Sage, if a wise and God knowing man lacks the false knowledge of egoism and selfishness, then how is it that the abandonment and renunciation of his duties will impose any guilt or evil upon him, and his full observance of them is attended with any degree of merit or reward? 7 Vasishta replied: I also will ask you one question, O sinless Rama, and you should answer it soon if you understand well what is rightly meant by the term duty and that of activity. 8 Tell me, what is the root of action and how far does it extend? Is action destructible at last or not, and how is it totally destroyed at the end? 9 Rama asked: Why sage, whatever is destructible must be destroyed by rooting it out all together, and not by chopping off branches. 10 The acts of merit and demerit are both to be destroyed together with their results of good and evil. This is done by eradicating and eliminating them altogether. 11 Hear me tell you, sage, about the roots of our deeds. By the rooting them out, our actions are wholly eradicated, never to grow forth anymore. 12 I think, O sage, that this body of ours is the tree of our action that has grown in the great garden of this worlds surrounded with twining vines of various kinds. 13 Our past acts are the seeds of this tree, and our happiness and sorrow are the fruit that cover it. It is green with the vegetation of youth for a while, and it smiles with its white blossoms of grey hairs and the pale complexion of old age. 14 Destructive death lurks about this tree of the body every moment, just as the light-legged monkey climbs over trees to break them down. It is overwhelmed in the womb of sleep, just as a tree is overwhelmed under the mists of winter. Its flitting dreams are like the falling leaves of trees. 15 Old age is the autumn of life and decaying wishes are like the withered leaves. Wife and family are as thick as grass in the wilderness of the world. 16 The reddish palms and soles of the hands and feet, and the other reddish parts of the body, resemble the reddening leaves of this tree which are continually moving in the air with the marks of slender lines upon them. 17 Little reddish fingers with their flesh and bones, covered by thin skin and moving in the air, are like the tender shoots of the tree of the human body. 18 Soft and shining nails, set in rows with their rounded forms and sharpened ends, are like the moon-bright
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buds of flowers with their painted heads. 19 This tree of the body is the growth of the ripened seed of the past acts of men. The organs of action are the knotty and crooked roots of this tree. 20 These organs of action are supported by the bony members of the body and nourished by the sap of human food. They are fostered by our desires, resembling the core and blood of the body. 21 Again, the organs of sense supply those of action with their power of movement, or else the body with the lightness of all its members from head to foot would not be moved to action without the sensation of their motion. 22 Though the five organs of sense grow apart at great distances from one another, like so many branches of this tree of the body, yet they are moved by the desire of the heart which supplies them with their sap. 23 The mind is the great trunk of this tree which comprehends the three worlds in it. It is swollen with the sap that it draws through its five-fold organs of sense, just as the stem of a tree grows with the juice it draws by the cellular fibers of its roots. 24 The living soul is the root of the mind, and having intellect ingrained, it is always busy with its thoughts which have the same intellect for their root. But the root of all these is the one great cause of all. 25 The intellect is the great Brahman which has no cause of itself. Having no designation or termination, it is truth from the purity of its essence. 26 The consciousness of ourselves as personal ego is the root of all our actions. The internal thought of our personal entity is the root of our energy and gives impulse to all our actions. 27 It is our perception, O sage, which is said to be the source and root of our actions and whenever there is this principle in the mind, it causes the body to grow in the form of the big salmali tree. 28 When this perception, otherwise called consciousness, is accompanied with thoughts of ego and personality, it becomes the seed of action. Otherwise, mere consciousness of the Self is the state of the Supreme Soul. 29 So also when consciousness is accompanied with its power of intellectual reasoning, it becomes the source and seed of action. Otherwise, it is calm and quiet because that is the nature of the Supreme Soul. 30 Therefore the knowledge of ones personality is the cause of his action, and this causality of action, as I have said, is quite in conformity with your teachings to me. 31 Vasishta said: Thus Rama, action with discernment is based on the knowledge of ones personality. Therefore it is impossible to avoid activity as long as the mind is situated in the body and has the knowledge of its personality. 32 Whoever thinks of anything sees the same both within as well as outside of himself. Whether it is in reality or not, still the mind is possessed with a mental fabrication of it. 33 Again whoever thinks of nothing truly escapes from the error of mistaking a mental fabrication for reality. But at present we are not going to discuss whether the reality is a falsity, or the falsity of anything is a sober reality. 34 This thinking principle presents the shadow of something within us and passes under various names like will, desire, mind and its purpose. 35 The mind resides in the bodies of both rational and irrational beings, and in their waking and sleeping states. Therefore, it is impossible to get rid of the mind by anybody at anytime. 36 So long as the mind is busy with its thoughts, neither silence nor inactivity of a living body amounts to refraining from action. Only the unawareness of the meaning of the word action amounts to ones postponement from acts. 37 Freedom to choose either to do or not to do anything is meant to make ones action. Therefore, by avoiding your choice in the doing of an act you avoid it altogether. Otherwise there is no other means to avoid an agents responsibility for his own acts. 38 Nobody is deemed to be the doer of an act who does not do it by his deliberate choice. Knowledge of the unreality of the world also leads to ignoring all action. 39 Ignoring the

existence of the world is renunciation of it. Renunciation of all associations and connections is the same as ones liberation from them. Knowledge of the knowable One necessarily includes knowledge of all that is to be known. 40 There being no such thing as production, there is no knowledge of anything whatever that is produced. Therefore abandon your eagerness to know the knowable forms and seek knowledge of the only invisible One. 41 There is no knowing whatever of the nature and actions of the quiescent spirit of Brahman. Its action is only the reasoning of its consciousness which evolves itself in the form of an infinite emptiness. 42 The learned well know the teaching of the Vedanta, that utter unconsciousness is liberation. Hence no one is exempt from action as long as he lives with his conscious body. 43 Those who regard action as their duty are never released from their subjection to the root of action. This root is the desire minds consciousness of its own actions. 44 It is impossible, O Rama, to destroy this bodiless consciousness without the weapon of good understanding. It lies so very deep in the mind that it continually nourishes the roots of action. 45 When we can nourish the seed of bodiless consciousness by our great efforts, then we should be able to destroy bodiless consciousness using the same weapon, effort. 46 In the same manner, we also can destroy the tree of the world with its roots and branches. 47 Only one exists which has no sensation and has the form of endless emptiness. That unintelligible empty form and pure intelligence is the core and substance of all existence.

Chapter 3 Disappearance of Phenomena

Rama said, Tell me, O sage, how is it possible to convert our knowledge to ignorance? It is impossible to make a nothing of something or make anything out of a nothing. 2 Vasishta replied: Truly a nothing or unreality cannot be something in reality, and a real something cannot become an unreal nothing. In any case, where both of these are possible, there perception and lack of perception of something are equally tangible of themselves. 3 Two senses of the word knowledge are apparent in the example of a rope appearing as a snake. Here the knowledge of the rope is certain, but that of the snake is a mistake or error. It is the same with a mirage presenting the appearance of water. 4 Therefore it is better to have no knowledge of these false appearances, whose knowledge tends to our misery only. Know the true reality alone and never think of the unreal appearance. 5 Thought confirming perceptions of the senses is the cause of sorrow for all living beings. Therefore it is better to root out the sense of what can be perceived from the mind and rely only upon knowledge of the underlying Universal Soul. 6 Leave aside the knowledge of parts and the sense of perceiving objects of the senses. Know the whole as one Infinite Soul in which you have your rest and nirvana. 7 Destroy all your acts of merit and demerit by the force of your discrimination. Your knowledge of the impermanency of your deeds, aided by your knowledge of truth, will result in your mastery (siddhi) of yoga. 8 By rooting out the memories of your acts, you put a stop to their results and your course in the world. If you succeed to gain the object of your search by means of your reason, you no longer have any need for your action. 9 Divine Consciousness, like the bael fruit, forms its core and seeds (of future worlds) within itself, lying hidden inside and never bursting out of its bosom. 10 As a thing contained in its container is not separate from the containing receptacle, so all things that lie in the womb of space are included in the infinite space of the Divine Mind which encompasses endless emptiness in it. 11 As the property of fluidity is never separated from the nature of liquids, so thoughts are never separated from the thinking principle of the Divine Mind. 12 Again, as fluidity is the inseparable property of water and light is that of fire, so thoughts and thinking intrinsically inhere in the nature of Divine Consciousness and not as its separable qualities. 13 Thoughts are the action of consciousness process of reasoning. Their deprivation gives rise to the imaginary fabrications of error in the mind. There is no other cause of error, nor does it last unless it rises in the absence of reason. 14 Thoughts are the action of the intellects process of reasoning, just as movement is that of the wind. By means of their respective actions we have our perceptions of them. But when the soul ceases action, then both of these are at a utter stop within and without us. 15 The body is the field and scope of our actions and our egoism spreads itself over the world, but our unconsciousness and lack of ego tend to put away the world from us just as lack of force puts down a breeze. 16 Unconsciousness of body and mind renders the intelligent soul as dull as a stone. Therefore root out the world from your mind like a boar uproots a plant with its tusk. 17 Only in this way, O Rama, can you get rid of the seed vessel of action in your mind. There is no other way to enjoy the lasting peace of your soul. 18 After the germinating seed of action is removed from the mind, the wise man loses sight of all temporal objects in his full view of the holy light of God. 19 Holy saints never seek to have, or dare to avoid, or leave any employment of their own choice or will. Therefore they are said to be truly saintly souls and minds who are strangers to the preference or rejection of anything. 20 Wise men sit silently wherever they sit and live, their hearts and minds as vacant as the empty
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sky. They take what they get and do what is destined to them as they are unconscious of doing them. 21 As sediments are swept away by the current of a stream, so saintly and meek minded men are moved to action by a power that is not their own. They act with their organs of action with as much unconcern as babies move their bodies in their half-sleep state. 22 As the sweetest things appear unsavory to those who are satisfied with them, so the delights of the world seem disgusting to those who are delighted with divine joy in themselves. They are so absorbed in their rapture that, like insane people, they are unconscious of what is passing in and about them. 23 Unconsciousness of ones acts makes abandonment of action, and this is perfected when a person is in full possession of his understanding. It matters not whether a man does anything or nothing with his insubstantial or unconscious organs of action. 24 An action done without desire is an act of unconsciousness. They are not recognized as our actions and leave no trace in our minds. 25 An act which is not remembered, forgotten as if it buried in oblivion, is an act without a doer. This forgetfulness is equal to the abandonment of action. 26 He who pretends to have abandoned all action without abandoning them from his mind is said to be a hypocrite and is devoured by the monster of his hypocrisy. 27 They who have rooted out the prejudice of actions from their lives and taken themselves to the rest and refuge of inaction are freed from the expectation of reward from whatever they do, and also from the fear of any evil for what they avoid to perform. 28 They who have eradicated the seeds of action with their roots and germs from the ground of their minds always have an undisturbed tranquility to rest upon which is attended with a serene delight. 29 The meek are slightly moved in their bodies and minds by the current of business in which they have fallen. The reckless are carried onward, whirling in the torrent, like drunken people lying on the ground or like anything moved by a machine. 30 Those who are seated in any stage of yoga and are graced with the calmness of liberation appear as cheerful as men in a playhouse who are half asleep and half-awake over the act in this great theatre of the world. 31 We say a tree is wholly eradicated when it is drawn out by its roots. If we merely chop off its branches, it will grow again. It must be uprooted from the ground. 32 So the tree of your acts, though its branches be chopped off, will grow again if it is left rooted. 33 To abandon your acts, it is enough to remain unconscious that you are performing them. Other recipes for the same will come to you of themselves. 34 Whoever adopts any other method to abandon his actions, other than those prescribed here, his attempts are as useless as striking the air. 35 The reasoned abandonment of a thing is true renunciation. Whatever is done without intent is like a fried grain or seed that never sprouts or brings forth fruit. 36 An act done with will and physical effort becomes productive with the moisture of desire, but all other efforts of the body without the will are entirely fruitless to their actor. 37 After one has gotten rid of his action and freed himself from further desire, he becomes liberated for life, whether he may dwell at home or in the woods or live in poverty or affluence. 38 A contented soul is as solitary at home as in the midst of the most remote forest, but a discontented mind finds the solitary forest to be as thickly crowded with irritations as much as the disturbances in a family house. 39 A quiet and calmly composed spirit finds the lonely woodland, where a human being is never to be seen even in a dream, to be as lovely as the bosom of a family dwelling. 40 A wise man who has lost the sight of visible phenomena and the endless particulars abounding in this forest of the world beholds the silent and motionless sphere of heaven spread everywhere around him. 41 A thoughtless ignorant whose unsatisfied ambition grasps the whole universe in his heart, rolls over the surface of the earth and all its loud seas with as much joy as upon a bed of flowers. 42 All these cities and towns, so tumultuous with crowds of men, appear to an ignorant, moneyless man as a garden of flowers where he picks up his worthless penny with as much delight

as holy men culling fragrant blossoms to make their offerings to holy shrines. 43 The wide earth with all her cities and towns and distant districts and countries, so full of mutual strife and broil, appear to the stained soul of the ignorant and greedy as if they are reflected in their fair forms in the mirror of their minds, or painted in their bright colors upon the canvas of their hearts.

Chapter 4 Annihilation of Egoism

Vasishta continued: One abandons the world through diminishing ones ego, like a lamp going out for lack of oil, and by knowing that all that can be perceived lies within the conscious soul. 2 Abandonment of the world is not giving up actions but renunciation of the knowledge of the objective world. The subjective soul is without the reflection of the visible world, and the objective self is immortal and indestructible. 3 After the knowledge of the individual self and this and that and mine and yours becomes extinct like an extinguished lamp, there remains only the intelligent and subjective soul. 4 But he whose knowledge of himself and others, and of mine and yours and his and theirs has not yet abated in his subjectivity has no intelligence, tranquility, abandonment or extinction of himself. 5 After extinction of ones egoism and selfishness, there remains the sole and tranquil and intelligent soul, beside which there is nothing else in existence. 6 The egoistic part of the soul being weakened by the power of true knowledge, everything in the world wastes away and dwindles into insignificance. Though nothing is lost in reality, yet everything is buried with the extinction of the self. 7 The knowledge of ego is lost under that of the non-ego, without any delay or difficulty. It being so easy to effect, there is no need to resort to difficult methods to remove the ego. 8 The thoughts of ego and non-ego are only false conceptions of the mind. The mind being as empty as the clear sky, there is no solid foundation for this error. 9 No error exists unless it moves upon the basis of ignorance. It grows upon misjudgment and vanishes in the light of reason and right judgment. 10 Know all existence to be only Consciousness which extends like an unreal emptiness. Therefore sit silently in the empty space of Consciousness in which all things are extinct as nothing. 11 Whenever the idea of ego occurs to the mind, it should immediately be put down by its negative idea of non-ego, that I am nothing. 12 Let the conviction of non-ego replace that of ego. Ego is a meaningless term, as untrue as empty air or the flower of a tree rooted in the air. Being fixed like an arrow in the bow-string of holy meditation, strive to hit the mark of Divine Essence. 13 Always know that your ideas of ego and you and I are as unreal as empty air. Being freed from the false idea of every other thing, quickly cross the delusive ocean of the world. 14 How can a senseless and beastly man attain the highest state of divine perfection if he is unable to overcome his natural tendency towards egoism? 15 He who by his good understanding has been able to subjugate the six-fold beastly desires of his nature is capable of receiving knowledge of great truths, and not any other foolish man in human shape. 16 He who has weakened and overcome the inborn feelings of his mind becomes the receptacle of all virtue and knowledge. Such a person is called a man in its proper sense of the word. 17 Whatever dangers may threaten you on rocks and hills and upon the sea, you may escape them by thinking that they cannot injure your inner soul, though they may hurt the flesh. 18 Knowing that your egoism is nothing in reality, except your false conception of it, then why do you allow yourself to be deluded by it like the ignorant who are misled by their frenzy? 19 There is nothing here that is known to us in its reality. All our knowledge of things is as false as that of an ornament in gold. So our knowledge of the ego is lost by our forgetfulness of it. 20 Try to dislodge the thoughts that arise in your mind like constant vibrations in the air by thinking that you are not the ego and that your ego has no foundation at all. 21 The man who has not overcome his ego and its accompaniments of covetousness, pride and delusion listens to these lectures in vain. They are useless to him. 22 The sense of egoism and the other which abides in you is nothing other than the stir of the Supreme Spirit which stirs alike in all like motion impels the
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winds. 23 The uncreated world which appears like an act of creation is inherent and apparent in the Supreme Soul. In spite of all its defects and frailty, it is fair by being situated in the Supreme Soul. 24 The Supreme Soul neither rises nor sets at anytime, nor is there anything else existent or nonexistent besides that One. 25 All this is transcendental in the transcendent spirit of God and everything is perfect in his perfection. All things are quiet in his tranquility and whatever is, is good by the goodness of the great God. 26 All things are extinct in the ever existing spirit of God. They are quiet in his quiescence, and all good in his goodness. This extinction in the ever existing soul of God is no annihilation. It is understood like the sky, but it is not the sky itself. 27 Men may bear the strokes of weapons and suffer the pain of diseases, yet how is it that nobody can tolerate the thought of the extinction of his ego? 28 The word ego is the ever growing seed of the meaning of everything in the world. That egoism being rooted out of the mind, this world also is uprooted from it. 29 The meaningless word ego, like empty vapor or smoke, has the property of soiling the mirror of the soul, which resumes its brightness after removal of the mist. 30 The significance of the word I or ego is as force or fluctuation in the calm and quiet atmosphere. This force being still, the soul resumes its serenity like that of the unseen and imperceptible and one eternal and infinite air. 31 The significance of the word ego produces the shadow of external objects in the mind. That shadow being lost, there follows the serenity and tranquility of the soul which are the attributes of the unknowable, infinite and eternal God. 32 After the cloudy shadow of the sense of the word ego is removed from the atmosphere of mind, the clear sky of transcendent truth appears shining with serene brightness throughout its infinite sphere. 33 After the essence of the soul is cleansed of its impurity, without any alloy or base metal, it shines with bright luster like pure gold when purified from its mixture with copper or other metals. 34 As an insignificant term bears no accepted sense, so the unintelligible word ego bears no definite sense of any particular person. It is equal to the non-ego or impersonal entity of Brahman. 35 Only Brahman resides in the word ego. Brahman exists as named objects and materials, like calmness which is a reflection of being. 36 The meaning of the word ego, which contains the seed of the world in it, is rendered unsuccessful by our ceasing to think of it. Then what is the good of using the words I and you that serve only to bind our souls to this world? 37 The essence is the pure and blissful spirit which is afterwards soiled under the name of ego. Ego rises out of that pure essence, just as a pot is produced from clay, but its substance is forgotten under its form, just as gold is forgotten in its form of an ornament. 38 From this seed of ego, the visible plant of creation takes its rise and produces countless worlds as its fruit which grow to fade and fall away. 39 The meaning of the word ego, like the minute seed of a long pepper, contains the wonderful productions of nature consisting of the earth and sea, hills, rivers, and forms and colors of things with their various natures and actions. 40 Heaven and earth, air and space, hills and rivers everywhere are like the fragrance of the full blown flower of ego. 41 Ego, in its widest sense, stretches out to the edges of creation and contains all the worlds under it, just as daylight comprehends all objects and their action under it. 42 As early daylight brings the forms and shapes and colors of things to view, so our ego presents the false appearance of the world to our visual sight. 43 When ego, like a particle of dirty oil, falls into the clear water of Brahman, it spreads over its surface in globules that resemble worlds floating in the air. 44 At a single glance, ego sees multitudes of worlds spread before its visual sight, just as the blinking eye observes thousands of specks scattered before its sight. 45 Egoism being extended far perceives the furthest worlds lying stretched before its sight. But the unselfish soul without ego, like a sleeping man, does not perceive the nearest object, just as our eyes do not see the pupils lying within them. 46 We can get rid of the mirage of the world only through the force of unfailing

reasoning and the total extinction of our egoistic feelings. 47 Only by our constant reflection upon our consciousness does it become possible for us to attain the great object of our ultimate end, the attainment of the perfection of our souls. Then we have nothing more to desire or grieve at, nor any fear of falling into error. 48 It is possible by your own endeavor, and without the help of any person or thing, to attain your perfection. Therefore I see no better means for you than the thought of the extinction of your egoism. 49 Now Rama, this is the summary of the whole doctrine: that you forget your ego and yourself and extend the sphere of your soul all over the universe and behold them all in yourself. Remain quite calm and quiet and without any sorrow, exempt from all acts and pursuits of the frail and false world, and think of the soul as one whole and not as a part of the universe.

Chapter 5 Bhushundas Story of a Vidyadhara and His Questions

Vasishta continued: A conscious man who employs himself to inquire after truth, after controlling his nature and restraining his organs of sense from their objects, becomes successful at last. 2 But a man of perverted understanding who has no command over his own nature finds it as impossible to gain any good or better state, just as it is in vain to expect any oil from pressing sand. 3 A little instruction is as impressive on the pure mind as a drop of oil sticks to clean linen, but no education has any effect on the hard heart of fools, just as the most brilliant pearl makes no impression on a dirty glass mirror. 4 I recall an example of this teaching from an old story related to me by the aged Bhushunda in past days, when I was living with him on the top of Sumeru Mountain. 5 In times of old, I once argued this question, among other things, with the time-worn Bhushunda when he was living in his solitary retreat in one of the caves of Mount Meru. I said to him, 6 O long living seer, do you remember ever having seen a person of infatuated understanding who was unconscious of himself and ignorant of his own soul? 7 Bhushunda replied: Yes, there lived a vidyadhara spirit of old, on the top of the mountain on the horizon, who was greatly distressed with constant struggle and yet anxious for his longevity. 8 He took up austerities of various kinds and observed abstinence, self-restraint and vows of various forms and thereby attained an life without decay which lasted for many ages of four kalpas of four yugas each. 9 At the end of the fourth kalpa he came to his senses and his perception suddenly burst forth in his mind, like emeralds glaring out of the ground at the roaring of clouds. 10 Then the vidyadhara reflected, What stability can I have in this world where all beings are seen to come repeatedly into existence, to decay with age, and at last to die and dwindle away into nothing? I am ashamed to live in this state of things and under such a course of nature. 11 With these reflections he came to me quite disgusted at the frailties of the world and distasteful of harmful vanities. He asked me questions regarding the city with its eighteen compartments [i.e., ten organs, five vital airs, mind, soul, and body]. 12 He advanced before me and bowed down profoundly. After being honored by me, he took the opportunity to ask his questions. 13 The vidyadhara said, I see these organs of my body, which though so frail are yet as hard and strong as any weapon of steel. They are capable of breaking and tearing everything and hurtful in their acts of injuring others. 14 I find my senses to be dim and dark, always disturbed and leading to dangers. The passions in the heart set fire to the forest of our good qualities and boil with the waves of sorrow and grief. The dark ignorance of our minds envelops everything in the deepest gloom. Hence our real happiness consists in control over our bodily organs, senses, and the passions and feelings of the heart and mind. Happiness is not to be had from any object of sense.
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Chapter 6 The Vidyadhara Expresses His Disgust with the World to Bhushunda
The vidyadhara spirit continued: Tell me now, what is the most noble state which is devoid of increase or decrease or any pain whatever, which is without beginning or end, and which is most sanctified and sanctifying? 2 For so long I have been sleeping like an inert soul. Now I am awakened to sense by the grace of the Supreme Soul. 3 My mind is heated with the feverish fervor of my unsatisfied desire. It is full of regret at my ignorance. Now raise me from the depth of darkness in which I grovel under my delusion. 4 Many a time does misfortune overtake the fortunate, and bitter sorrows befall the wise and learned, just as in the end, hoarfrost falls on tender lotus leaves and discolors them. 5 We see frail living beings constantly springing to birth and dying away to no purpose. They exist neither for virtuous acts nor their liberation, but are born only to die like gnats and insects. 6 I have passed through different stages of life, now with one state of things and then with another, and deceived by the gain of worthless trifles. We are always discontented with the present state and cheated repeatedly by the succeeding one. 7 There is no end to the rambling of the restless, unwary mind, ever running after its frail pleasures and floating as it were upon the breakers of its enjoyments. The mind has no rest after its struggles but wanders onward in the desert paths of this dreary world. 8 The objects of enjoyment, which are the causes of our bondage in this world, appear at first to be very charming and sweet, but they are all frail and ever changing in their natures, and in the end prove to be our destruction. 9 Moved by our egoism and led by a sense of honor to live in dishonor, I am degraded from the dignity of my high birth as a vidyadhara spirit. I am not pleased with myself. 10 I have seen the pleasure garden of Chitra-radha (chief of gandharvas) and all the sweet and soft flowery beds on earth. I have slept under the branches of wish-fulfilling kalpa trees in paradise and have given away all my wealth and property in charity. 11 I have played in the groves of Mount Meru and about the cities of the vidyadharas. I have wandered about in heavenly cars and in the aerial regions on all sides. 12 I have rested amidst heavenly forces and reposed in the arms of my consorts. I have joined bands of heavenly women in their joyous frolic and music, and I have walked through the cities of the rulers of mankind. 13 I saw nothing of any worth among them, only the bitter sorrow of my heart. Now I come to find by my best reason that everything is burnt down to ashes before me. 14 My eyes, ever inclined to dwell upon the sights of things and become infatuated for the face of my mistress, have been the cause of great affliction to my mind. 15 My eyesight runs indiscriminately after all beautiful objects without its power of considering whether this or that is for our good or bad. 16 My mind also, ever prompt to meet all hazards and to expose itself to all kinds of restraints, never finds its rest until overwhelmed under some danger and exposed to the peril of death. 17 My sense of smell likewise is ever alert seeking after fragrant and delicious things to its own peril. It is difficult for me to repress it, like trying to restrain an unruly horse. 18 I am restrained by the sense of smell through the two canals of my nostrils bearing the bodys rotten breath, coughs and colds. I am constrained like a prisoner of war in a dungeon. 19 My craving tongue forces me to seek my food in these rugged and dreary rocks, the haunt of wild elephants where wolves search for their food. 20 I need to restrain the sensitivity of my
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body and make my skin endure the heat of hot weather, burning fire, and burning sun. 21 My ears, sage, which ought to take a delight at hearing good lectures, are always inclined to listen to talk that is no way profitable to me but misleads me to wrong, just as grass covering a well tempts a silly deer to his ruin. 22 I have listened to the endearing speeches of my friends and servants and attended to the music of songs and instruments, but I have derived no lasting good from that. 23 I have seen the beauty of women and the natural beauty of objects everywhere. I have seen the sublime beauty of mountains and seas and the grandeur of their foothills and coasts. I have witnessed the prosperity of princes and the brilliancy of gem and jewels. 24 I have long tasted the sweets of the most delicious dishes. I have relished food of the six different tastes served to me by gorgeous ladies. 25 I have associated with lovely damsels clad in silken robes wearing necklaces of pearls, reclined on beds of flowers, and fanned by soft breezes. I have had all these pleasures of touch and enjoyed them unrestrained in my pleasure gardens. 26 I have smelled the odors on the faces of heavenly damsels and I have had the smell of fragrant balms, perfumes and flowers. I have inhaled fragrances carried to me by the breath of soft, gentle and fragrant breezes. 27 Thus have I seen and heard, felt and smelled, and repeatedly tasted whatever sweets this earth could afford. Now they have become dry, distasteful, stale and unpleasant to me. Say, what other sweet is left for me to enjoy? 28 I have enjoyed all these enjoyments of my senses for a full thousand years, and still I find nothing either in this earth or in heaven that is able to yield full satisfaction to my mind. 29 I have reigned for a long time over a realm and enjoyed the company of courtesans in my court. I have vanquished the forces of my enemies in battle, but I know of no great profit that I have gained thereby. 30 Those demons who were invulnerable in warfare and seized the dominion of the three worlds, even those invincible asura demons have been reduced to ashes in a short time. 31 I think the best gain is that which, once gained, leaves nothing else to be desired or gained. Therefore I must seek that precious gain, however difficult it may be to attain. 32 What difference is there between those who have enjoyed the most delightful pleasures and others who have never enjoyed them at all? Nobody has ever seen the heads of the former kind crowned with kalpa tree wreaths or the latter with diminished heads. 33 I have long been led by my organs of sense to enjoy beautiful objects in the wilderness of this world. I have been quite deceived by them, like a child by a cheat. 34 Only now and too late, and after being repeatedly deceived by my organs of sense, I have come to know that the objects of my senses are my greatest enemies. 35 I see the deceitful organs of sense, like so many sly hunters, have laid their snares about the wild forest of this world to trap all unwary people, just as they do silly deer or beasts of prey by enticements. 36 There are few men in this world who are not poisoned by the deadly venom of their serpent-like organs of sense. 37 The forest of the world is full of furious elephants of enjoyments, surrounded by the snare of our desire. Our greed wanders rampant with sword in hand, and our passions stir like keen spearmen tearing our hearts and souls every moment. 38 Our bodies become a field of battle where the commanding charioteer of our egoism has spread a net of deceit employing our efforts as horsemen and our desires as noisy revelers. 39 The organs of sense are the flag-bearers set at the extremities of the battlefield that is our body. They are reckoned the best soldiers who by their bravery are able to overtake these staff-bearers in the field. 40 It may be possible for us in war to pierce even the head of furious Airavata, the war elephant of Indra, but it is too hard for anyone to repress the unruly senses within their proper bounds. 41 The greatest victory that may be won by the valor, magnanimity and fortitude of great men is to conquer the unconquerable organs of sense. 42 When a man is no longer thrown and carried about by the irresistible force of his sensual appetites, like a bit of insignificant straw, he is said to have attained the perfection and excellence of the gods of heaven. 43 I account men of well

governed senses and great patience to be truly men. All other men of ungoverned minds are mere moving machines made of the flesh and bones that compose their bodies. 44 O sage, I think I can overcome all things if I could only reduce the force of the five external organs of sense which form the battalion under the minds command. 45 By the prescriptions of reason you may be able to heal the sensual appetites which form the great sickness of the mind. Otherwise you cannot get rid of them with any medicine or mantra, or by holy pilgrimage or any other remedy. 46 I am led to great distress by the joint force of my senses, just as a lonely traveler is robbed by a gang of thieves. 47 The organs of sense are like dirty canals of the body with their stagnate and foul watery matter. They are filled with harmful and hairy moss and emit a stink of malaria. 48 The senses seem to me to be like so many deep and dark forests covered with impenetrable snows and full of terrors that render them impassable to travelers. 49 The organs of the outward senses resemble the stalks of lotuses growing upon the dirt of the body with holes in them, but without any visible thread inside. They are knotty on the outside and without any consciousness of their own. 50 Our senses are like so many seas with salty water and huge waves dashing on every side. They are full of various gems and pearls, but they are also full of horrible whales and sharks. 51 Sensual pleasures bring on the untimely death of the sensualist and causes grief and sadness to his friends. It makes others take pity on his state and mourn at his fate, which leads him only to repeated reincarnations. 52 The senses are a vast and unlimited wilderness to men, friendly to the wise and hostile to the unwise. 53 The sphere of the senses is as dark as that of a cloudy sky where the black clouds of distress are continually growling and the lightning strikes of joy constantly flash with their impermanent glare. 54 The organs of sense are like underground crevasses or mounds of mud upon earth. Inferior animals take refuge in them, but they are shunned by superior and intelligent beings. 55 They are like hidden pits covered with thorns and brambles and inbred with venomous snakes in which the unwary fall to be struck and bitten to death. 56 All sensualities are like savage rakshasa demons who wander and revel in their adventurous excursions in the darkness of night and feed on human victims. 57 Our organs of sense are like dry sticks, all hollow and empty in the inside. They are crooked and full of joints, fit only as fuel for fire. 58 The bodily organs are the instruments of vice, like pits and thickets obstructing our way, like a reed flute full of dirt. 59 The limbs of the body are the implements of its action and the instrument for producing an infinite variety of works. They are like the potters wheel, turning and whirling with their mud in order to produce the fragile pottery of clay. 60 Thus sage, I am plunged in the dangerous sea of my sensual desires. You alone are able to raise me out of it by your kindness to me. They say that in this world only holy saints are victorious over their senses. Only their company removes the grief of mankind and saves them from the perilous sea of sensuality.

Chapter 7 Bhushunda Describes the Seed of the Tree of the World

Bhushunda replied: Having listened to this holy speech by the vidyadhara spirit, I answered his questions in plain words as follows. 2 Well said, O chief of the vidyadharas. It proves that you are awakened to your good sense by your good fortune. After so long you now desire to be raised out of the dark pit and dungeon of the world. 3 Your holy intentions shine brightly like blazing clouds in midday light, and like pure liquid gold melted down by the fire of right reasoning. 4 Your clear mind will easily be able to grasp the meaning of my advice to you, just as a clean mirror is capable of receiving the reflection of every object set before it. 5 You must give your assent to what I say by uttering the syllable Om. You need have no doubt and may take what I have come to know by my long research as certain truth. 6 By giving up your ignorance, you well know that whatever you feel within yourself is not your self, and that it is hard to have it, in spite of your long search. 7 Know it for certain that there is no I or you and no phenomenal world that may be called real. All this is the blissful God who is no cause of either your happiness or misery. 8 We cannot use reason to determine whether this world is a creation of our ignorance or whether it is ignorance itself, because there being only one simple entity, there is no possibility of the coexistence of duality. 9 The world appears like water in a mirage. It is insubstantial and though it appears to be something real, in reality it is nothing at all. The phenomena that appear to view are all Himself and nothing else. 10 The world being like water in a mirage, it neither exists or doesnt exist. There can be no reflection of it either. Therefore it must be only Brahman. 11 The seed of the world is the I ego, the subjective self. The you or the objective world is derived from the subjective self or egoism. Such being the case, the visible world with all its lands and seas, its mountains and rivers and gods also, is a huge tree growing out of the same original source of egoism. 12 The great tree that represents all the worlds grows out of the particle of egoism. The organs of sense are the juicy roots of this tree, and the far extending sky is the many branches of the main tree of the mundane world. 13 The starry frame in the sky is the netted canopy high over this tree. The groups of constellations are bunches of blossoms of this tree. The desires of men are like the long fibers and filaments of the tree. Luminous moons are its ripe fruit. 14 The many spheres of heaven are the hollows of this large and great tree and Meru, Mandara and other mountains are its great boughs and branches. 15 The seven oceans are the ditches of water dug around the trunk and roots of this tree. The infernal region is the deep pit underlying the roots of this tree. The yugas and other cycles of time are its knots and joints, and the rotation of time over it is like a circle of worms constantly sucking up its sap. 16 Our ignorance is the earth in which it grows, and all peoples are like flights of birds hovering upon it. Its false apprehension forms its great trunk which is burnt by the fire of nirvana and our knowledge of the utter extinction of all things. 17 The sights of things, the thoughts of the mind, and the various pleasures of the world are all as false as a forest growing in the sky, or like silver in white clouds or in the coating of conch and pearl shells. 18 The seasons are its branches and the ten sides of the air are its smaller branches because they spread themselves in all directions. Self-consciousness is the core and essential part of this tree and the wind is the breath of life that fluctuates in every part of this tree of the world. 19 Sunshine and moonbeams are the two flowers of this tree. Their rising and setting represent the opening and closing of blossoms. Daylight and the darkness of night are like
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butterflies and bumble bees fluttering over them. 20 In the end, know that one all pervading ignorance extends all over this tree of the world. Ignorance stretches from its roots in the nether worlds through all sides of the compass to its top in the heavens above. It is all an unreality appearing as real existence. When egoism, which is the seed of this fallacy, is burnt up by the fire of non-egoism, the tree will no longer grow or give seed for future births in this imaginary world.

Chapter 8 Bhushunda Describes the Tree and the Temple of Illusion

Bhushunda continued and said: Now vidyadhara, you have heard how the mundane tree comprises the earth with her mountains and cavern abodes, and stretches to all sides and touches the skies bearing all living beings continually moving and living upon it. 2 Such is the tree of the world that grows out of the seed of egoism. But when this is roasted by the fire of reason, it ceases to sprout forth anymore. 3 What is visible does not exist. I and you are not a positive reality. The fallacy of their existence is completely burnt away by the knowledge that all is identical with God. 4 The thought of I and you becomes the seed of the world. Therefore, the thought of non-ego and no you removes the idea of egoism and you, and this is the true and best knowledge of God. 5 Think of the nonexistence of the world before its creation. Tell me, where was this knowledge of egoism and the other, or this delusion of the unity or duality? 6 Those who strive diligently to get rid of their desires altogether, according to the instructions of their spiritual teachers, truly become successful in obtaining the supreme state. 7 As the confectioner becomes skillful in his profession by learning and practicing of the art of confectionary, so the inquirer after truth becomes successful by constant application and by no other means. 8 Know that the world is a wonderful phenomenon of the intellect. It does not exist in outer space as it appears to the naked eye, but in the inner mind. 9 As a picture is the copy of the pattern inscribed in the painters mind, so the opening and closing of our thoughts unfolds or obscures the world to us. 10 This thought or fancy of the mind makes us see a large building supported on huge columns, studded with gems and pearls and gilded with bright gold. 11 It is surrounded by a thousand pillars of precious stones, rising high like the peaks of Mount Sumeru and emitting the various colors of the rainbows, glittering with the brightness of the evening sun on clouds. 12 It is furnished with many a fountain for the enjoyment of men, women and children living under it among the decorations of all kinds of animals. 13 It is full of elements with its enemy of darkness that is light. Darkness and light are its alternate results, hence it has derived its name as picture. 14 There are lakes of lotuses with kalpa trees beside them for the sport of women who pluck their flowers to decorate themselves, flowers that scatter their fragrance as plentifully as clouds sprinkle their rain all around. 15 Here the great boundary mountains are as light as toys in the hands of children. The breath of little children toss and whirl them about like playthings. 16 Here the bright evening clouds are like ladies glittering earrings and light autumn clouds are like flying fans and flappers. The heavy clouds of rainy season move as slowly as the waving fans of palm leaves. The orb of the earth moves about under the canopy of the starry heavens like dice on a chessboard. 17 Here all living creatures and the sun and moon move about like dice and the king and queen on a chessboard. The appearance and disappearance of the world in the arena of vacuum are like the gain or loss of a chess piece in a game played by the gods. 18 A thought long dwelt upon and brooded over in the mind comes to appear as really present before the sight of its creator. 19 In the same way, this world of forms is a visible representation of the thoughts of the mind. It is as an exquisite performance of the artists mind from a prototype grafted in the soul. 20 It is the apparition of an unreality, present in appearance but absent in substance. It truly is the appearance of an unreality, by whatever cause it may have come to appear. 21 It is like the various forms of ornaments made of the same gold substance. The vault of the world is as full of ever changing wonders as the changeful and wonderful thoughts of the mind. Therefore the cessation of thought causes the extinction of the world. 22 Hence it lies entirely
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within your power to have or leave the world as you may like. Either disregard your temporal enjoyments, if you seek your final liberation, or continue in your acts and rites in order to continue your repeated reincarnations through endless births and deaths. 23 I understand you have attained a state of reason and you have purified your soul in this your second or third stage of yoga. I believe you will not fall back down to a lower order. Therefore hold your silence and rely on the purity of the soul and shut out all that is visible from your sight.

Chapter 9 Bhushunda on the Creations of the Intellect

Bhushunda said: The unintelligible objects of thought are phenomena of the intellect. They lie as calmly in the great, inert body of the intellect like sunbeams shine on the surface of a clear basin of water. 2 The unintelligent world exists in the intelligent intellect by its power of using the intellect and remains alike with the unlike, just as the undersea fire resides in water and latent heat with cold. 3 Both the intelligent and the unintelligent have their source in the understanding process of the intellect which produces and reduces them from and into itself, just as the wind both fans land extinguishes fire. 4 Rest in the intellect that remains after negation of your egoism. Remain in that calm and quiet state of the soul which results from your thinking in this manner. 5 You are settled in your form of intellect, both within and without everything, just as sweet water remains in and out of a raining cloud. 6 There is nothing as I or you. All are forms of the one intellect connected with the intellect which is Brahman itself. There is nothing else endued with intelligence. The whole is one stupendous intelligence with which nothing can be compared. 7 The one Intelligence is the earth, heaven and nether world, together with their inhabitants of men, gods and demigods. It exhibits in itself the various states of their being and actions. 8 As the world is seen to remain quietly, a representation like a map, so does the universe appear from its portrayal in the emptiness of the Divine Mind. 9 Hence we see various appearances unfolded from the Divine Mind and exhibited to view. It is your choice whether to view them as animate or inanimate beings. 10 These are the wonderful phenomena of the intellect. They appear like so many worlds in the open sky. They are like a mirage created by sunshine to delude the ignorant. They appear as empty air to the learned who see them in their true light. 11 As a blinded eye sees apparitions in clear sky, so the world appears as a phantom before the general short-sightedness of unspiritual and ignorant people. 12 Knowledge of the objective world and that of the subjective ego are mere reflections of ideas in the mind. They appear and disappear by turns, just as a city is gilded or shaded by the falling and failing of sunlight. But in this case, city houses are realities but the apparitions of the mind are as baseless as a garden in the empty sky.
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Chapter 10 Bhushunda Describes Brahman

Bhushunda continued: Know O vidyadhara spirit, that the world is an evolution of Divine Intelligence, and not as it appears to be: an inert mass distinct from that intelligence. The reflection of hot sunbeams on water is not different from the cold water. In the same way, the reflection of the world in Divine Intelligence is not different from the substance of that Intelligence itself. 2 Therefore remain at rest without making any distinction between your knowledge of the world or its absence. A picture drawn on the tablet of the painters mind, and not painted on an outward canvas, is as false as a fairyland in empty air. 3 The omnipotence of Brahman also contains unconscious matter in his intelligence, just as the calm and clear water of the sea contains the matter which is its future waves, froth and foam. 4 As the froth is not produced in water without some cause or other, so creation never proceeds from the essence of Brahman without its particular cause. 5 But the uncaused and causeless Brahman can never have any cause whatever for his creation of the world, nor is there anything in this or any other world that is ever born or destroyed in Brahman. 6 The complete lack of a cause makes the growth and formation of the world an utter impossibility. It is as impossible as the growth of a forest or the sight of a sea in a mirage in a desert. 7 The nature of Brahman is the same as infinity and eternity. It is tranquil and immutable at all times. Therefore it is not liable at anytime to entertain a thought or will to create. Thus, there being no temporary cause for such, the world itself must be identical with Brahman. 8 Therefore, the nature of Brahman is both as empty as the hollow emptiness of air and as dense as the density of a rock. The solidity of Brahman represents the solid cosmos, as his insubstantiality displays the empty atmosphere. 9 Whether you can understand anything or nothing regarding the mysterious nature of God, remain quite unconcerned about it. Rest your soul in that Supreme Spirit in which all intelligence and its absence are both alike. 10 The everlasting bliss of the uncreated God has no reason to create the world which cannot increase his bliss. Therefore, from the improbability of God making a creation for no purpose whatsoever, know that all that exists is uncreated God himself. 11 Of what use is it to reason with the ignorant concerning the production and destruction of creation when they do not know the Divine Intellect? 12 Wherever there is the Supreme Being, there are worlds also because the meaning of the word world conveys the sense of their variety. 13 The Supreme Brahman is present in everything in all places, in the woods and grass, in the habitable earth and in waters likewise. So the creatures of God bring forth every part of creation together with the all-creative power. 14 It is improper to ask what is the nature and constitution of Brahman because there is no possibility of ascertaining the essence and absence of the properties of an infinite and transcendental entity. 15 All lack is absent in Him who is full in himself. Any particular nature is inapplicable to the Infinite One who comprehends all nature in him. All words that describe his nature are mere reasoning contrary to logic. 16 Nonexistence is altogether impossible for the everlasting and self-existent being who is always existent in his own essence. Any word descriptive of his nature is only a misrepresentation of his true nature and quality. 17 He is neither I nor you. He is unknowable to understanding and invisible to people in all worlds. Yet He is represented as such and such, which are like false phantoms of the brain presenting themselves as ghosts to children. 18 That which is beyond the sense of I and you (subject and object) is the truly Supreme, but what is seen under the sense of I and you proves to be null and void. 19 The distinction of the world from the essence of Brahman is entirely lost in the sight of those who see
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only the unity of Brahman. The subjective and objective are of equal importance to those who believe all objects of sense are mere productions of fancy from the very substance of Brahman, just as the various ornaments are only transformations of the same gold material.

Chapter 11 Bhushunda: Creation Necessarily Is of the Same Nature as Brahman

Bhushunda continued: He is said to abide in the Supreme whose mind is unmoved by the blow of a weapon on his bare body, or even a touch on his naked skin. 2 One must strive by exercise of his manly powers and patience to practice rigid mental quietness and indifference to attain deep sleep state over all visible appearances. 3 A wise man acquainted with the truths of nature is not troubled by the severest trials or persecution, just as the heaving waves of the lake cannot submerge a lotus that stands firm in its water. 4 He who is impassive as empty air to the blows of weapons on his body, and who is unaffected by the embraces of beautiful women, is the only person who inwardly sees what is worth seeing. 5 As poison assumes the form of an insect which is not different from the nature of poison, 6 so the infinite number of souls produced in the Supreme Spirit retain the nature of their original substance and which they are capable of knowing. 7 As an insect born in poison does not die from it, so the human soul produced by the Eternal Soul is not subject to death, nor does it forsake its own nature though it takes a grosser form like vile, poisonous insects. 8 Things born in and produced by Brahman are of the same nature with Brahman, though different from it in appearance, like an insect from poison which adheres to the food and appears as otherwise. So the world exists in Brahman but appears to be without it. 9 No worm is born in poison that does not retain the nature of poison. It never dies in it without being revivified in it. 10 Owing to the indestructible property of self-consciousness, all beings pass over the great gulf of death, just like they leap over a gap in the ground caused by the gouge of a bulls hoof. 11 Why do men neglect to lay hold on that blessed state which is beyond and above all other states in life, and which when had, infuses a cool calmness in the soul? 12 What a great stain to the pure soul to neglect meditation on glorious God, before which our mind, egoism and understanding all vanish into insignificance. 13 As you look upon a pot or a piece of cloth as mere trifles, so you should consider your body as brittle as glass and your mind, understanding and egoism as empty nothings. 14 The wise and learned divert their attention from all worldly things, and also from their internal powers of mind and understanding, to remain steadfast in their consciousness of the soul. 15 A wise man takes no notice of others faults or merits, nor does he notice the happiness or misery of himself or anyone else. He knows full well that no one is the doer or sufferer of anything whatsoever.
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Chapter 12 Bhushunda on the Identity of Will & Its Work of Desire; Vasishta on the Four Quarters to Attain Liberation from Ignorance
Bhushunda continued: The supposition that an emptiness is a part of the universal emptiness is false, so the concept of an individual ego is altogether an error. 2 The false conception of limited emptiness produced from unlimited emptiness has given rise to the mistaken belief of unreal and individual souls proceeding from the one universal and undivided soul of God. 3 Divine Intellect exists in the form of air in air which it takes for its body. It is manifest throughout the aerial sphere and therefore I am neither the ego nor the non-ego. 4 The unity of subtle intellect is of such a nature that it contains the gravity of the immense world in the same manner as a heavy mountain is contained in an atom. The conscious intellect is of the form of air, empty and all pervading. 5 The intellect, rarer than subtle air, thinks of the gross nature of unintelligent matter which exhibits itself in the form of the world. 6 It is well known to the spiritually minded person that our egoism and the materiality of the world are only expansions of intellect, just as the currents and swirls of streams in whirlpools are only expansions of water. 7 When this process of intellect is stopped, the whole course of nature is at a standstill, just like the water of a lake without waves or the quiet sky without wind. 8 Thus there is no cause of any physical action in any part of the world except what is derived from the agitation of Intellect, without which this whole is a shapeless void and nothing. 9 The action of Intellect makes the world appear to us at all times and places, whether in the sky, water or land, or when we wake, sleep, or dream. 10 The action and inaction of the Intellect is imperceptible to our understanding because of the extreme subtleness of the mind, more transparent than clear sky. 11 The knowing soul is one with the Supreme Spirit. It is unconscious of pleasure or pain or the sense of its egoism. Melted down into Divine Essence, it resides as the fluidity of psychic fluid. 12 A wise man has no regard for any external intelligence, fortune, fame or prosperity. Having no desire or hope to rise or fear to fall, he sees none of these things before him, just as one in the gloom of night sees no object visible in broad daylight. 13 The moonlight of the intellect issues forth from the moonlike disc of the glory of God. It fills the universe with its ambrosial flood. There is no other created world, nor any receptacle of time or space except the essence of Brahman which fills the whole. 14 Thus the whole universe being full with the glorious essence of God, it is the mind which revolves with the spheres of the worlds on itself, like ripples on the surface of waters. 15 The revolving world is rolling on like a running stream to its decay with its ever rising and sinking waves and its gurgling and spiraling currents and whirlpools. 16 As moving sands appear like water and as distant smoke seems like gathering clouds to the deluded, so this world appears to them as a gross object of creation, a third thing beside Divine Spirit and mind. 17 As sawed off wood appears to be separate blocks, and as water divided by wind has the appearance of detached waves, so this creation in the Supreme Spirit seems to be something without and different from it. 18 The world is as un-solid and insubstantial as the trunk of a plantain tree, and as false and frail as the leaves of the tree of our desire. It is plastic in its nature, but as hard as stone in substance. 19 It is personified in the form of Viraj with his thousand heads and feet, and as many arms, faces and eyes, his body filling all sides with all mountains, rivers and countries situated in it. 20 It is empty within and without any core. It is painted in many colors and has no color of itself. 21 It is covered with bodies of gods and demigods, gandharvas, vidyadharas, and great naaga serpents. It is inert, moved by the all moving air of the all connecting spirit of God (sutratma). It is animated by the all enlivening vital life force of the Supreme Soul.
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As the scene of a great city appears brilliant in a painting well drawn on canvas, so the picture of the world displayed by imagination in the retina of the mind appears charming to those who do not choose to consider it in its true light. 23 The reflection of the unreal and imaginary world which falls on the mirror of the fickle and fluctuating mind appears to swim upon its surface, like a drop of oil floating over the surface of water. 24 This world is covered with the network of feelings imprinted in the heart and interspersed with winding, whirling currents of mistake and misery. It runs with the flood of our affections and with silent murmurs of sorrow. 25 Common understanding is ready to attribute choice, the predicates I and you and so forth to the original and prime Intellect, but none of these is separate from the Supreme One, just as fluid is no other than water itself. 26 The luminous Intellect itself is called creation, or else there is no other creation or any creator. 27 As the power of impulse is inherent in every moving substance, like the blowing of winds and flowing of water, so the Intellectual Soul, being of a empty form, knows all things only in their empty or ideal states. 28 As seas and oceans become the seeming cause for separate countries by separating one land from another, though the vacuum remains ever the same, so delusion is the cause of different ideas and dreams of material objects, but spirit remains unchanging forever. 29 Know the words mind, egoism, understanding and such other words which signify the idea of knowledge proceed only from ignorance. They are soon removed by proper investigation. 30 Through conversation with the wise it is possible to remove one half of this ignorance. By investigation into the scriptures, we can remove a quarter of it. Our belief in and reliance on the Supreme Spirit serves to put down the remaining quarter. 31 Having thus divided yourself into these fourfold duties, and by each destroyed the four parts of ignorance, at last you will find a nameless something which is the true reality itself. 32 Rama said, Sage, I can understand how a portion of our ignorance is removed by conversation with the wise, and how a quarter of it is driven away by the study of scriptures. But tell me. How is the remainder removed by our belief and reliance in the spirit? 33 Tell me sage, what do you mean by the simultaneous and gradual removal of ignorance? What am I to understand by what you call the nameless one and the true reality, as distinguished from the unreal? 34 Vasishta replied: It is proper for all good and virtuous people who are dispassionate and dissatisfied with the world to have recourse to wise and holy men, and argue with them regarding the course of nature in order to get over the ocean of this miserable world. 35 It is also proper for intelligent persons to search diligently after passionless and unselfish men wherever they may be found, and particularly to find and revere such of them who possess knowledge of the soul and are kindly disposed to share their spiritual knowledge with others. 36 Finding such a holy sage takes away half of ones temporal and spiritual ignorance by setting him on the first and best step of divine knowledge. 37 Thus half of ones spiritual gloom is dispelled by association with the holy. The remaining two-fourths are removed by religious learning and ones own faith and devotion. 38 Whenever any desire of any enjoyment whatever is carefully suppressed by his own effort, it is called self-exertion and it destroys one fourth of spiritual ignorance. 39 The company of the holy, the study of scriptures, and ones own efforts tend to take away ones sins. This is done by each of these alone or all of these together, either by degrees or all at once. 40 Whatever remains after the total extinction of ignorance, whether as something or nothing at all, is said to be the transcendent and nameless or unspeakable something or nothing. 41 This truly is the real Brahman, the undestroyed, infinite and eternal one. Being only a manifestation of the insubstantial will, Brahman is also understood to be a nonexistent blank. By knowing the measureless, immeasurable and unerring Being, rely upon your own extinction in

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nirvana and be free from all fear and sorrow.

Chapter 13 Bhushundas Anecdote of Indras Rule of an Atomic World

Bhushunda said: The universe contains the totality of existence and appears as a wide extended sphere. It is not in need of any preexistent place or time as recipients of its substance just as ethereal light requires no prop or pillar in the heavens for its support. 2 The fabrication of this triple world is the mere thought or working of the mind. All this is more quiet and calm, more minute and light, and much more translucent than odor residing in the air. 3 The world is a wonderful phenomenon of the intellect. Though it is as minute as a particle of fragrance borne by the wind, the world appears as big as a mountain to outward organs of sense. 4 Everyone views and thinks of the world in the same form and light as it presents itself to him, just as the operations of the mind and visions in a dream appear as they occur to their recipients and to no one else. 5 I will tell an old legend of what happened to Indra, the lord of the gods, when he was confined in a minute particle in times long ago. 6 Once upon a time it came to pass that this world grew up as a small fig fruit on a branch of the great tree of a kalpa age. 7 The mundane fruit was composed of the three compartments of earth, sky and infernal regions which contained the gods and demigods of heaven, the hills and living creatures on earth, the marshy lands below, and troops of gnats and flies. 8 It was a wonderful production of consciousness, as high as handsome full-blown buds with the juice of desire. It was scented with all kinds of smelling fragrances that were tempting to the mind by the variety of its tastes that were sweet to eat. 9 This tree grew upon the Brahman tree which was overhung by millions of creepers and orchids. Egoism was the stalk of the fruit which appeared beautiful to sight. 10 It was encompassed by artery nerves called oceans and seas whose light is the principal door of liberation. It secreted the starry heaven above and the moist earth below. 11 It ripened at the end of the kalpa age when it became the food of black crows and cuckoos, or if it fell below there was an end of it by its absorption into the indifferent Brahman. 12 At one time the great Indra, the lord of the gods, lived in that fruit, just like a big mosquito lives in an empty pot as the great leader of its company of small gnats. 13 But this great lord was weakened in his strength and valor by his study and his teachers lectures on spiritualism, which made him a spiritually minded person and a seer in all past and future matters. 14 It happened once upon a time, when the valiant god Narayana and his heavenly host had been resting and their leader Indra was weakened in his arms, that the demon asuras rose in open rebellion against the gods. 15 Then Indra rose with his flashing arms and fire and fought for a long time with the strong asuras. At last Indra was defeated by superior strength and fled from the field. 16 He ran in all ten directions, pursued by the enemy wherever he fled. He could find no place to rest, just as a sinner has no resting place in the next world. 17 Then as the enemy lost sight of him for a moment, he made use of that opportunity. He compressed the thought of his big body in his mind and became a minute form on the outside. 18 Then through his consciousness of his personal minuteness, he entered the womb of an atom which was glittering amidst the expanse of solar rays, like a bee entering a lotus bud. 19 He immediately rested in that state and his hope of final bliss in the next. He utterly forgot the warfare and attained the ultimate bliss of nirvana. 20 In that lotus and instantly in his imagination, he conceived his royal palace. He sat in lotus posture as if resting on his own bed. 21 Then Indra, seated in that mansion, saw an imaginary city containing a grand building in the middle, its walls studded with gems, pearls and coral. 22 From within the city, Indra saw a large country all around containing many hills and villages, pasture grounds for cattle, forests and human dwellings. 23 Then Indra felt a desire to enjoy that
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country he had formed in his imagination, with all its lands and hills and seas. 24 Afterwards Indra conceived a desire to possess the three worlds, together with all the earth and ocean, sky and infernal regions, the heavens, planetary spheres above and mountain ranges below. 25 Thus did Indra remain there as lord of the gods in possession of all abundance for his enjoyments. Afterwards, a son was born to him named Kunda, of great strength and valor. 26 Then at the end of his lifetime, this Indra of unblemished reputation left his mortal body and became extinct in nirvana, like a lamp extinguished for lack of oil. 27 Kunda reigned over the three worlds. Then, having given birth to a boy, he departed to his ultimate state of bliss after the end of his life term. 28 That son also ruled in his time, then departed at the end of his lifetime to the holy state of supreme bliss. He also left a son after him. 29 In this manner a thousand generations of grandsons of the first Indra have reigned and passed away in their time. There is still a prince named Ansaka reigning over the land of the lord of the gods. 30 Thus generations of the lord of immortals still hold sovereignty over the imaginary world of Indra in that sacred particle of sunbeam in empty air. That atomic particle is continually decaying and wasting in this long course of time.

Chapter 14 Bhushunda: Countless Indras Ruling an Atomic World

Bhushunda continued: There was a prince born of the race of that Indra who also became lord of the gods. He was endowed with prosperity and all good qualities and devoted to divine knowledge. 2 This prince of Indras race received his divine knowledge from the oral instruction of Brihaspati. 3 Knowing the knowable one, the prince persisted in the course of knowledge as he was taught. Being the sovereign lord of the gods, he reigned over all three worlds. 4 He fought against demigods and conquered all his foes. He made a hundred sacrifices and got over the darkness of ignorance by his enlightened mind. 5 He remained long in meditation, his mind fixed in the central channel within his subtle body (the sushumna nadi) that resembles the thread of a stalk of the lotus. He continued to reflect on hundreds of many other matters. 6 Once he had a desire to see the essence of Brahman by the power of his understanding in meditation. 7 He sat in quiet seclusion and in the silent meditation of his tranquil mind, he saw the disappearance of the chain of causes all about and inside himself. 8 He saw the omnipotent Brahman extended in and about all things, present in all times and places and existing as all in all. 9 His hands stretch to all sides and his feet reach the ends of the worlds. His face and eyes are on all sides and his head pierces the spheres. His ears are set in all places and he endures by encompassing all things everywhere. 10 He is devoid of all organs of sense, yet possessed of the powers of all senses in himself. He is the support of all. Being destitute of qualities, he is the source and receptacle of all quality. 11 Unmoved and unmoving by himself, he is moving in and out of all things, as well as moving them all both internally and externally. He is unknowable owing to his minuteness and appears to be at a distance though he is so near us. 12 He is like the one sun and moon in the whole universe, and the same land in all the earth. He is the one universal ocean on the globe and the one Mount Meru all about. 13 He is the core and gravity of all objects and he is the one emptiness everywhere. He is the wide world and the great cosmos that is common to all. 14 He is the liberated soul of all and the primary consciousness in every place. He is every object everywhere and beside all things in all places. 15 He is in all pots and huts and in all trees and their coatings. He moves carts and carriages and enlivens all men and other animals. 16 He is in all the various customs and manners of men and in all the many modes of their thinking. He resides equally in the parts of an atom as in the stupendous frame of the triple world. 17 He resides as pungency in the heart of pepper and as the empty space in the sky. The three worlds exist in his intellectual soul, whether they are real or mere unrealities. 18 Indra saw the Lord in this manner. Then being liberated from his animal state by the help of his pure understanding, he remained in the same state of meditation. 19 In his abstract thought, the magnanimous god saw all things united in his meditative mind. He saw this creation in the same form as it appears to us. 20 Then he wandered in his mind all over this creation, believing himself as the lord of all he saw. He became the god Indra and reigned over the three worlds and their many colorful spectacles. 21 Know, O chief of the race of vidyadhara spirits, that to this day the same Indra who descended from the family of Indras is still holding his reign as lord of the gods. 22 Then he perceived in his mind, by virtue of his former habit of thinking, the seed of his memory sprouting forth with the lotus stalk in which he thought to have lain before. 23 I have told you about the reign of the former Indra in the heart of an atom in the sunbeam, and of the residence of his last generation, the latter Indra, in the hollow fiber of the lotus stalk. 24 So have thousands of other Indras gone by, and are going on still in their fancied realm in the empty sky, all in the same manner
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and mode as observed by their predecessors. 25 So runs the course of nature in ceaseless succession, like the current of a river running onward to the sea. So do men, whether or not acquainted with divine knowledge, flow on as streams to the abyss of eternity. 26 Such is the lengthening delusion of the world which appears to be true but vanishes to nothing at the appearance of the light of truth. 27 From whatever cause, and in whatever place or time, and in whatever manner this delusion is seen to have sprung, it is made to disappear by knowledge of it. 28 Only egoism produces the wonderful appearance of delusion, like clouds in the sky cause rain. Ego spreads itself as a mist, but disappears immediately at the sight of light. 29 He who has gotten rid of his belief in sight of the world and has attained knowledge of the self-reflecting soul, who has placed his belief in one empty form of empty air devoid of all properties and beyond all categories, is freed from all option and settled in the only One.

Chapter 15 Bhushunda, the Sense of Ego Is the Seed of Error

Bhushunda resumed and said: Wherever anyone has a thought of ego, the idea of the world is found inherent in it, just as it appeared to Indra within the heart of an atomic particle. 2 The error of the world covers the mind like green grass spreads over the ground. The origin of the error is the idea of ones ego and it takes its root in the human soul. 3 This minute seed of ego, moistened with the water of desire, produces the tree of the three worlds on the mountain of Brahman in the great forest of emptiness. 4 The stars are the flowers of this tree, hanging on high on the branches of mountain crags. Rivers resemble its veins and fibers, flowing with the juicy core of their waters. The objects of desire are the fruits of this tree. 5 The revolving worlds are the fluctuating waves of the water of egoism. The flowing currents of desires continually supply varieties of exquisite social meetings, sweet to the taste of the intellect. 6 The sky is the boundless ocean full of ethereal waters, abounding with showering drops of starlight. Plenty and poverty are the two whirlpools in the ocean of the earth, and all our sorrows are the mountainous waves on its surface. 7 The three worlds are presented as a picture of the ocean, with the upper lights as its froths and foams swimming upon it. Planets are floating like bubbles upon it and their belts are like the thick valves of their doors. 8 The surface of the earth is like a hard and solid rock, and the intellect moves like a black crow upon it. The hurry and bustle of its people are like the constant rotation of the globe. 9 Infirmities and errors, old age and death, are like waves gliding on the surface of the sea. The rising and falling of bodies in it are like the swelling and dissolving of bubbles in water. 10 Know the world to be a gust of the breath of your ego. Know it also as a sweet scent from the lotus-like flower of ego. 11 Know the knowledge of your ego and that of the objective world are not two different things. They are one and the same thing, just as the wind and its breath, water and its fluidity, and fire and its heat. 12 The world is included under the sense of ego, and ego is contained in the heart of the world. These being productive of one another are reciprocally the container and contained of each other. 13 He who erases the seed of his ego from his understanding by ignoring it altogether has washed the picture of the world from his mind by the water of ignorance of it. 14 Know, O vidyadhara spirit, that there is no such thing as ego. It is a causeless nothing, like the horn of a rabbit. 15 There is no egoism in the all pervading and infinite Brahman who is devoid of all desire. Therefore, there being no cause or ground for it, it is never anything in reality. 16 Whatever is nothing in reality could not possibly have any cause in the beginning of creation. Therefore egoism is a nothingness, like the son of a barren woman is a nothingness. 17 The lack of egoism on the one hand proves the deprivation of the world on the other. Thus there remains the Intellect or the one mind alone in which everything is extinct. 18 From the proof of the absence of ego and the world, the operations of the mind and the sight of all that can be seen come to an end. Nothing remains for you to care for or fear. 19 Whatever is not is a nothing. The rest is as calm and quiet as nothing in existence. Knowing this as a certainty, be enlightened and fall no more to the false error which has no root in nature. 20 Being cleansed from the stain of imagination, you become as purified and sanctified as the holy Lord Shiva forever. Then the sky will seem to you like a huge mountain and the vast world will shrink to an atom.
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Chapter 16 The Extinction of the Vidyadhara in Samadhi

Bhushunda continued: As I was speaking in this manner, the chief of the vidayadharas became unconscious of himself and fell into the trance of samadhi. 2 Despite my repeated attempts to awaken him from that trance state, he did not open his eyes but remained wholly absorbed in his nirvana trance. 3 He attained the supreme and ultimate state and became enlightened in his soul. He made no other further attempt to know what he sought. Vasishta speaking: 4 Rama, I have told you this story to show the effect of instruction on pure hearts, where it floats like a drop of oil on the surface of water. 5 This instruction consists in forgetting the existence of individual ego in the Supreme Spirit. This is the best advice and there is nothing else like this calculated to give peace and comfort to your soul. 6 But when this advice falls on the soil of evil minds, it is suppressed and lost in the end, just as the purest pearl falls from the surface of a smooth mirror. 7 Good advice sticks fast in the calm minds of the virtuous, entering their reasoning souls like sunlight shining in a diamond. 8 Egoism is truly the seed of all worldly misery. The seed of the thorny silk tree grows only prickles on earth. In the same way, the thought that this is mine is the out stretching branch of this thorny tree. 9 First the seed ego, then its branches of me or my-ness produce the endless leaves of our desires. Their sense of selfishness produces the burdensome fruits of our sorrows and misery. 10 Then the vidyadhara said (to Bhushunda), I understand, O chief of sages, that with this knowledge even dull people become long lived in this world. This true knowledge is the cause of your great longevity and that of other sages. 11 After the pure in hearts and minds are once admonished with the knowledge of truth, they soon attain the highest state of fearlessness. 12 Vasishta said: The chief of the birds of air spoke to me this way on the summit of Sumeru Mountain. Then he held his silence like the mute clouds on the top of Rishyasringa chain. 13 I took leave of the sagely bird and went to the home of the vidyadhara spirit to learn the truth of the story, then returned to my place which was graced by the assembly of sages. 14 I have told you, O Rama, the story of the ancient bird and the calmness attained by the vidyadhara with little pain and knowledge. Eleven great yugas have elapsed since my conversation with Bhushunda, the ancient chief of the feathered crow tribe.
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Chapter 17 The Minute Seed of Egoism; as a Cannonball

Vasishta said: The tree of desire which produces the fruit of worldliness and is filled with the taste of all kinds of sweet and bitterness may be checked in its growth by means of the knowledge of ones lack of egoism. 2 By the habit of thinking one has no egoism, one comes to view both gold and stone and all sorts of rubbish in the same light. By being calm and quiet in all events, one never has any cause for sorrow at anything whatsoever. 3 When the cannonball of egoism is fired from the gun of the mind by force of divine knowledge, we are at a loss to know where it takes its flight. 4 The stone of egoism is flung from the parapets of the body by the gigantic force of spiritual knowledge. We do not know where this heavy egoism will land and be lost. 5 After the stone of egoism is flung away by the great force of the knowledge of Brahman, we cannot say where this engine of the body is lost forever. 6 The meaning of ego is frost in the heart of man. It melts under the sunshine of the lack of ego. It flies off in vapor, then disappears into nothing we know not where. 7 Ego is the juice of the inner part of the body and the lack of ego is the solar heat without. The former is sucked up by the latter and forsakes the dried body like a withered leaf, then flies off where we know not. 8 The moisture of egoism, being sucked up from the leafy body of the living, flies by the process of suction by solar heat to the unknown region of endless vacuum. 9 Whether a man sleeps in his bed or sits on the ground, whether he remains at home or wanders on rocks, whether he wanders over the land or water, wherever he sits or sleeps or is awake or not, 10 this formless egoism abides in him, either as gross matter, the subtle spirit, or in some state or the other which, though far away from him, seems to be united with him. 11 Egoism is seated like a minute seed in the heart of the fig tree of the body where it sprouts forth and stretches its branches and makes up the different parts of the world. 12 Again, the big tree of the body is contained within the minute seed of egoism which bursts out into branches forming the various parts of the universe. 13 As everyone sees the small seed as containing a large tree which develops itself into a hundred branches, bearing all their leaves, flowers and abundant fruit, so the big body resides within the atomic seed of egoism with all its endless parts of physical organs and mental faculties which are discernible to the sight of the intelligent. 14 Egoism is not to be had in the body by reasoning, which points out the mind of everybody, but seek it in the sphere of Empty Consciousness. The seed of egoism does not spring from the heart of unreality. The blunder of the reality of the world is destroyed by the fire proceeding from the spiritual wisdom of the wise.
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Chapter 18 All Memories Remain in Bits in the Air; Each Sees Only His Own
Vasishta related: There is never and nowhere an absolute death or total dissolution of the body, mind, soul or egoism. The final release is the creation of the inner imagination of the mind. 2 Look at these flying sights of Meru and Mandara Mountains displayed before you. They are not carried to and fro to everybody, but are reflected in everyones minds like the flying clouds of autumn in the water of a river. 3 These creations are placed over, above, below and under one another like the coatings of a plantain tree. Creations are either in contact or detached from one another like clouds in the sky. 4 Rama said, Sage, I do not fully understand the sound sense of what you say by the words, look at these flying sights. Therefore I ask you to explain this clearly to me. 5 Vasishta replied: Know Rama, that life contains the mind and the mind contains the worlds within it, just as there are various kinds of trees with their various parts contained in the core of a small berry. 6 After a man is dead, his vital energies fly and unite with the ethereal air, like the waters of streams flow into the ocean. 7 Then the winds of heaven disperse his vital energies and the imaginary worlds of his lifetime which existed in the particles of his vital breath. 8 I see the winds of heaven carrying away the vital energies together with their contents of imaginary worlds and filling the whole space of air with vital breath on all sides. 9 I see Meru and Mandara Mountains drifting with imaginary worlds before me. You also will observe the same before the sight of your understanding. 10 The ethereal airs are full with the vital energies of the dead which contain the minute particles of mind. These minds contain the various types of the worlds in them, just as sesame seeds contain oil inside. 11 As the ethereal airs carry the vital energies, which are of the same kind, so the vital breaths carry particles of the mind. These again bear pictures of the worlds in them, as if they were grafted upon them. 12 The same emptiness contains the entire creation and the three worlds with the earth and ocean, all of which are carried in emptiness like different odors are carried by the winds. 13 All these are seen in the sight of understanding and not by the sight of the visual organs. They are the portrayals of our imagination, like the fairylands we see in our dreams. 14 There are many other things more subtle than the visible atmosphere and which, owing to their existence only in our desire or fancy, are not carried upon the wings of the winds as the former ones. 15 There are some certain truths derived from intellect called intellectual principles. They have the power to cause our pleasure and pain and lead us to heaven or hell. 16 Again our desires are like the shadows of cities floating on the stream of life. Though the current of life is continually gliding away, yet the shadowy desires, whether successful or not, ever remain the same. 17 The vital breath carries its burden of the world along its course to the stillness of endless emptiness, just as breezes carry away the fragrance of flowers to the dreary desert where they are lost forever. 18 Though the mind is ever fickle, changeable and forgetful in its nature, yet it never loses the false idea of the world which is inherent in it, just as a pot removed to any place and placed in any state never gets rid of its inner emptiness. 19 So when the fallacy of the false world has taken possession of the deluded mind, it is equally impossible either to realize the form of the formless Brahman or to set the false world at nothing. 20 This world is a revolving body carried about by the force of the winds, yet we have
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no knowledge of its motion. It is like sitting quietly in a boat that is carried miles away by the tide and winds. 21 As men sitting in a boat have no knowledge of the force which carries the boat forward, so we earthly beings have no idea of the power associated with its rotating motion. 22 As a wide extending city is represented in miniature in a painting at the foot of a column, so this world is contained in the core of the minute atom of the mind. 23 A thing however little or insignificant is given much too great importance by the low and mean, just as a handful of paddy rice is of greater value to a little mouse than gems, and a particle of mud to a contemptible frog than the pearls under the water. 24 A trifle is taken as too much by those who are ignorant of its insignificance, just as the learned in the error of their judgment mistake this imaginary world as a preparation for their future happiness or misery. 25 The inner belief of something as really good and of another as positive evil is a mistake common to the majority of mankind, and to which the learned also are liable in their conduct in this world. 26 As the intelligent and embodied soul is conscious of every part of the body in which it is confined, so the enlightened living soul (jiva) beholds all the three worlds displayed within itself. 27 The unborn and ever lasting God, who is of the form of conscious soul extending over the infinity of space, has all these worlds as parts of his all pervading empty body (as in the god Viraj). 28 The intelligent and ever living soul sees the uncreated worlds deeply impressed in itself, just as a rod of iron, were it endowed with intelligence, would see future knives and needles in itself. 29 A clod of earth, whether endowed with intelligence or not, knows the seed hidden in it which later sprouts. In the same way, the ever living soul knows the world contained in it. 30 As the sensitive or insensitive seed knows the germ, plant and tree within its core, so the spirit of God perceives the great tree of the world conceived in its deepest womb. 31 As a man with eyesight sees the image of something reflected in a mirror which a blind man does not, so a wise man sees the world in Brahman, which the ignorant does not perceive. 32 The world is nothing except the union of the four categories of time, space, action and substance. Egoism, being indistinct from the attributes of the world, exists in God who contains the whole in Himself. 33 Whatever lesson is taught to anybody by means of a parable, know that the simile relates to some particular property of the compared object and not in all respects. 34 Whatever is seen moving or unmoving here in this world is the expanded body of the living soul, without any alteration in its atomic minuteness. 35 Leaving intelligence aside and taking force only, we find no difference between this physical force and the giver of the force. 36 Again, whatever alteration is produced in the motion or choice of any thing or person at any time or place or in any manner, it is all the act of Divine Consciousness. 37 Consciousness infuses the mind with its power of choice, volition, imagination and the like because none of these can sprout in the mind without consciousness and without a conscious cause. 38 Whatever desires and fancies arise in the minds of the unenlightened, they are not like the positive will or decree of the Divine Mind owing to the endless varieties and inconsistencies of human wishes. 39 The desires arising in the minds of the enlightened are like no desires and as if they never arose because 40 all thoughts and desires being groundless, they are as false as childrens idle wishes. For who has ever held the objects of his dream? 41 Intention (sankalpa), with its triple sense of thought, desire and imagination, is impressed by consciousness on the living soul from its past memory. Though we have a notion of this idea of the individual soul, yet it is as untrue and insubstantial as a shadow, but not so original Consciousness which is both real and substantial. 42 He who is free from the error of taking the unreal world for real becomes as free as the god Shiva himself and, having gotten rid of the physical body, becomes manifest in his spiritual form. 43 The imagination of the ignorant whirls about the worlds like cottonseed flying in the

wind. But they appear to be as unmoved as stones to the wise who are not led away by their imagination. 44 So there are multitudes of worlds amidst many other things in the vast womb of emptiness which nobody can count. Some are united with one another in groups, and others that have no connection with another. 45 Supreme Consciousness, being all in all, manifests itself in endless forms and actions filling the vast space of infinity. Some are as transient as raindrops or bubbles in air and water that quickly burst and disappear. Others appear as great cities situated in the heart of the Infinite One. 46 Some of these are as durable as rocks, and others are continually breaking and wearing out. Some appear bright as if with open eyes and others dark as if with closed eyelids. Some are luminous to sight and others hidden under impenetrable darkness. Thus the heart of Consciousness resembles a vast expanse of ocean with the waves of creation rolling through all eternity. 47 Some, though set apart, continually tend towards another, like the waters of distant rivers run to mix with those of seas and ocean, and like the luminous bodies of heaven appear together to brighten its sphere.

Chapter 19 The Form of Viraj, the Living Cosmos

Rama said, Sage, tell me about the nature of the living soul. How does it assume its different forms? Tell me also, what is its original form and what forms does it take at different times and places? 2 Vasishta replied: The infinite consciousness of God, which fills all space and vacuum, takes of its own will a subtle and minute form called by the name of Intellect. This is expressed by the term living soul (jiva). 3 Its original form is neither that of a minute atom nor a bulky mass. It is neither an empty void nor anything having solidity. It is the pure intellect with consciousness of itself. It is omnipresent and it is called the living soul. 4 It is the minutest of the minute and the hugest of the huge. It is nothing at all, and yet the all which the learned call the living soul. 5 Know it as identical with the nature, property and quality of any and every object that exists anywhere. It is the light and soul of all existence. It is identical with all by its absorbing the knowledge of everything in itself. 6 Whatever this soul thinks in any manner of anything at any place or time, it immediately becomes that by its notion thereof. 7 The soul possesses the power of thinking, just as air has its force in the winds. The souls thoughts are directed by its knowledge of things and not by the guidance of anyone, like children creating the appearance of ghosts. 8 As the existent air appears to be nonexistent without the motion of the wind, so the living soul which desists from its function of thinking is said to be extinct in the Supreme Deity. 9 The living soul is misled to think of its individuality as the ego by the density or dullness of its intellect. It supposes itself to be confined within a limited space of place and time and within the limited powers of action and understanding. 10 Being thus circumscribed by time and space, and endowed with substance and properties of action and the like, it assumes to itself an unreal form or body with the belief of it being a sober reality. 11 Then it thinks itself to be enclosed in an ideal atom, just as one sees his own unreal death in a dream. 12 Just as in a dream of the mind one finds his physical features changed to another form, so the soul in its state of ignorance forgets its intellectual nature and becomes the same nature and form as it constantly thinks upon. 13 Thinking itself to be transformed into a gross and material form, such as that of Viraj the macrocosm, it views itself as bright and spotted as the moon with the black spot upon it. 14 Then, in its body resembling the moon, it finds the sudden union of the five senses of perception appearing of themselves within. 15 Then these five senses are found to have the five organs of sensation for their inlets, by which the soul perceives the sensation of their respective objects. 16 Then the Purusha, or First Male power known as Viraj, manifests himself in five other forms said to be parts of his body. These are the sun, the sides, water, air, and the land, which are the objects of the five senses. He then becomes endless forms according to the infinite objects of his knowledge. Thus he is manifested in his objective forms, but remains quite unknown to us in his subjective or causal form which is unchangeable without decay. 17 At first he sprang up from the Supreme Being as its mental energy or the mind. He was manifest in the form of the calm and clear sky with the splendor of eternal delight. 18 He was not of the five elemental form, but the soul of the five elements. He is called the Viraj Purusha, the macrocosm of the world, and the Supreme Lord of all. 19 He rises spontaneously of himself, then subsides in himself. He expands his own essence all over the universe, and at last contracts the whole in himself. 20 He arose in a moment with his power of volition and with all his desires in himself. He rises of his own will at first and after lasting long in himself, dissolves again in himself.
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He is the same with the mind of God. He is the great body of the material world. His body is called the container of the eight elementary principles, and also the spiritual form. 22 He is the subtle and gross air manifest as the sky, but invisible as subtle ether. He is both within and without everything, and is yet nothing in himself. 23 His body consists of eight members, namely the five senses, the mind, the living principle and egoism, together with the different states of their being and not being. 24 He (in the form of Brahma) first sang the four Vedas with his four mouths. He determined the meanings of words and it was he who established the rules of conduct which remain in fashion to this time. 25 The high and boundless heaven is the crown of his head and the lower earth is the footstool of his feet. The unbounded sky is his large belly and the whole universe is the temple over his body. 26 The multitudes of worlds all about are the members of his body. The waters of seas are the blood of the scars upon his body. The mountains are his muscles and the rivers and streams are the veins and arteries of his body. 27 The seas are his blood vessels and the islands are the bonds round his persons. His arms are the sides of the sky and the stars are the hairs on his body. 28 The forty-nine winds are its vital airs. The orb of the sun is its eyeball while its heat is the fiery bile inside its belly. 29 The lunar orb is the sheath of his life and its cooling beams are the humid humors of his body. His mind is the receptacle of his desires and the core of his soul is the ambrosia of his immortality. 30 He is the root of the tree of the body and the seed of the forest of actions. He is the source of all existence. He is cooling moonlight diffusing delight to all beings by the healing beams of that balmy moon planet Oshadhisa (lord of medicinal herbs). 31 The scriptures say that the moon is the lord of life, the cause of the body and thoughts and actions of all living beings. 32 It is from this moonlike Viraj which contains all vitality in himself that all other living beings in the universe take their rise. Hence the moon is the container of life, mind, action and the sweet ambrosia of all living beings. 33 The will or desire of Viraj produced the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva from himself. All the celestial deities and demons are the miraculous creations of his mind. 34 It is the wonderful nature of intelligent Consciousness that whatever it thinks upon in its form of an infinitesimal atom, the same appears immediately before it in its gigantic form and size. 35 Rama, know that the entire universe is seat of the soul of Viraj and that the five elements compose the five component parts of his body. 36 Viraj shines as the collective or Universal Soul of the world in the bright orb of the moon. He diffuses light and life to all individuals by spreading moonbeams which produce vegetable food for the support and sustenance of living beings. 37 The plants supply animal bodies with their sustenance and thereby produce the life of living beings. They also produce the mind which becomes the cause of the actions and future births by the minds efforts towards the same. 38 In this manner a thousand Virajes and hundreds of mahakalpa periods have passed away. There are many such still existing and yet to appear, with varieties of customs and manners of peoples in different ages and climates. 39 The first and best and supremely blessed Viraj Purusha resides in the manner in which we conceive him, indistinct in his essence from the state of transcendent divinity, his huge body extending beyond the limits of space and time.

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Chapter 20 Description of Viraj & the Origin of Individual Life

Vasishta continued: This Viraj Purusha is a volitive principle. Whatever he wills to do at anytime, the same appears instantly before him in its material form of the five elements. 2 O Rama, the sages say that this will has become the world because by being intent upon producing the this world, it expanded in that same form. 3 Viraj is the cause of all things in the world which came to be produced in the same form as their material cause. 4 As the great Viraj collectively is the aggregate of all souls, so is he distributed likewise in the individual souls of everyone. 5 The same Viraj is manifest in the meanest insect and the highest Rudra, in a small atom as in a huge hill. He expands himself from a seed to a very large tree. 6 The great Viraj himself is the soul of every individual, from the creeping insect to the mighty Rudra of air. His infinite soul extends even to atoms that are sensible and conscious of themselves. 7 As Viraj expands and extends his soul to infinity, so he fills the bodies of even microscopic atoms with particles of his own essence. 8 In reality, there is nothing great or small in the world. Everything appears to be in proportion as it is filled and expanded by the Divine Spirit. 9 The mind is derived from the moon and the moon has sprung from the mind. So does life spring from life and fluid water flows from the congealed snow and ice and vice versa. 10 Life is only a drop of seminal fluid, distilled as a particle by the amorous union of parents. 11 Then this life reflects in itself, derives the properties of the soul, and becomes like it in the fullness of its perfections. 12 Then the living soul has consciousness of itself and of its existence as one pure and independent soul. But there is no cause whatever as to how it comes to think of itself a material being composed of the five elements. 13 Opposing nature leads one to error but in fact, nature always remains the same. It is like wrong interpretation of language that instills bad ideas while the character remains the same. 14 The living soul is conscious of its existence by itself. The minds instinct to perceive things is devoid of consciousness, and not the breath of life or external air. 15 But being harassed by the frost of ignorance and confined to the objects of sense, the living soul is blinded of its consciousness and is converted to the breathing soul or vital life, and so loses the sight of its proper course. 16 Being thus deluded by the illusion of the world, the soul sees duality instead of its unity. Being converted to the breathing of vital life, unity is lost to the sight of the soul which is hidden under it. 17 We remain confined to this world of ignorance as long we enjoy the idea of ego. But as soon we give up the idea of ego, we become free men. 18 Therefore, O Rama, when you are able to know that there is no salvation and confinement in this world, and no existence or nonexistence, then and there you will be a truly free man.
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Chapter 21 Earning a Living from the Scriptures

Vasishta continued: A wise man must always conduct himself wisely and not with mere show or affectation of wisdom, because even the ignorant are preferable to affected and pretended lovers of learning. 2 Rama asked, Tell me sage, what is meant by true wisdom and by the show or affectation of it? What is the good or bad result of either? 3 Vasishta replied: A friend to learning is someone who reads the scriptures and teaches to earn his livelihood without endeavoring to investigate into the principles of his knowledge. 4 This is learning only to earn a living in a busy life without showing its true effect upon the improvement of a persons understanding. 5 Someone satisfied with his food and clothing as the best gains from his learning is known as an amateur and novice in the art of explaining the scriptures. 6 He who performs righteous and ceremonial acts as ordained by law with an intent to gain results is called a probationer in learning and is nearly to be crowned with knowledge. 7 Knowledge of the soul is reckoned as the true knowledge. All other knowledge is merely a semblance of it, being empty of essential knowledge. 8 Those who are content with bits of secular learning without receiving spiritual knowledge, all their labor in this world is in vain. They are called mere novices in learning. 9 Rama, you must not rest here with your hearts content unless you can rest in the peace of your mind with your full knowledge of the knowable one. You must not remain like a novice in learning in order to enjoy the fruits of this painful world. 10 Let men work honestly on earth to earn their bread and let them take their food for sustenance of their lives. Let them live to inquire after truth and let them learn that truth which is calculated to prevent their return to this miserable world.
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Chapter 22 The Meaning of Knowledge; the Wise and the Not Wise
Vasishta resumed: The truly wise man, by his knowledge of the knowable One, has placed his reliance in Him, has set his mind to its pristine purity by cleansing it from its worldly propensities, and has no faith in the merit of acts. 2 The truly wise are the learned who know all kinds of learning and yet are employed in acts with indifference to everything. 3 The heart of a truly wise man is detached from all his acts and efforts, and his mind is unaffected, calm and quiet at all times. 4 The true meaning of the word knowledge is the sense of ones liberation from the doom of birth and death. The art of earning food and clothing is only the practice of cunning fellows. 5 He is called a wise man who, although engaged in mundane transactions, remains without any desire or expectation and continues with a heart as vacant as empty air. 6 The accidents of life come to pass without any direct cause and to no purpose. What was neither present nor expected comes to take place of its own accord. 7 The appearance or disappearance of an event or accident proceeds from causes quite unknown to us, and these afterwards become causes of the effects they produce. 8 Who can tell what is the cause for rabbits to lack horns or the appearance of water in the mirage? They cannot be found out or seen. 9 Those who explore the cause for rabbits to lack horns may well expect to embrace the necks of the sons and grandsons of a barren woman. 10 The cause of the appearance of unreal phenomena of the world is nothing other than our lack of right sight which presents these phantoms to our view, and which disappear at a glance of our rational vision. 11 The living soul appears as the Supreme Spirit when it is seen by the sight of our blind intellect, but no sooner does the light of Divine Consciousness dawn in our minds, than the living or animal soul shrinks into nothing. 12 The unconscious Supreme Soul becomes awakened to the state of the living soul, just as the potential mango of winter becomes the positive mango in spring. 13 The intellect awakened becomes the living soul which, in its long course of its living, becomes worn out with age and toil and passes into many births in many kinds of beings. 14 Wise men who possess their intellectual sight look within themselves in the recesses of their hearts and minds without looking at what is visible outside, and without thinking of anything or making any effort whatever. They move on with the even course of their destiny like water flowing on its course to the ocean of eternity. 15 They who have come to the light of their transcendent vision fix their sight on brighter views beyond the sphere of phenomena and discern the invisible exposed to their view. 16 They who have vision of transcendent light, owing to their heedlessness of everything in this world, have slow and silent motion like that of a hidden water course. 17 They who are regardless of phenomena and are thoughtless of the worlds affairs are like those who are disentangled from their snares. They are truly wise who occupy themselves with their business as freely as the airs of heaven gently play and move the leaves of trees. 18 Those who have seen the transcendent light across the dizzy scenes of mortal life are not restricted to the course of this world, just as sailors are not restricted to shallow and narrow pools and streams. 19 They who are slaves to their desires are bound to the bondage of works ordained by law and scriptures. Thus they pass their lives in utter ignorance of truth. 20 The bodily senses fall upon carnal pleasures like vultures pouncing upon rotten dead flesh. Therefore curb and retract desires with diligence and fix your mind to meditate on the state of Brahman and the soul. 21 Know that Brahman is not without creation, just as no gold is without its form and reflection, but keep yourself clear from thoughts of creation and reflection and confine your mind to the meditation of Brahman filled with perfect bliss. 22 Know Brahman is as inscrutable as the face of the universe is indiscernible in the darkness of the chaotic state at the end of a yuga age when there
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is no appearance of anything and no distinction of conduct and manners, 23 and the elements of production in the consciousness of divine nature are in their quiescent agitation in the Divine Spirit, like the movements of flimsy vapors in the darkness of an immovable and wide spreading cloud. 24 As water particles are in motion in a still pond, so are the changing thoughts in the changeless soul, and so are the motions of elemental bodies in the unchanging essence and nature of God. 25 As the universal and undivided sky and space take the names of the different quarters of heaven, so indivisible Brahman, being one and same with creation, is understood as distinct and different from it. 26 The world contains egoism as the ego contains the world. One contains the other, just as the covering layers of the plantain tree contain and are contained under one another. 27 The living soul (jiva), being possessed of egoism, sees its internal world through the openings of the organs of sense which seem to be lying without it. In the same manner, mountains look upon lakes issuing out of its caves as if they were outward things. 28 So when the living soul makes the mistake of seeing itself, it is like taking a bar of gold for an ornament which is to be made of it. 29 Hence they who are acquainted with the soul and are liberated in their lifetime never think themselves as born or living or dying at anytime. 30 Those who are awakened to the sight of the soul are employed in the actions of life without looking at them, like a householder discharges his domestic duties while his mind is fixed on the milk pot in the cow stall. 31 As the god Viraj is situated with his moonlike appearance in the heart of the universal frame, so the living soul resides in the heart of every individual body like a little or large dew drop, according to the smallness or bigness of the physical body. 32 This false and frail body is believed to be a solid reality because of its tripartite figure and is mistaken for the ego and soul because of the consciousness displayed and dwelling in it. 33 The living soul is confined like a silkworm in the cell of its own making (karma-kosha) by acts of its past life. The living soul resides with its egoism in the seed of its parents like fragrance in the honey cups of flowers. 34 Egoism residing in the seminal seed spreads its consciousness throughout the body from head to foot, like moonbeams scattered throughout the universe. 35 The soul stretches out the fluid of its intelligence through the openings of its organs of sense. This being carried to the sides through the medium of air, extends all over the three worlds like vapor and smoke cover the face of the sky. 36 The body is full of consciousness, both in its inner and outer parts, but the cave of the heart is where our desires and egoism are deeply seated. 37 The living soul is made up of only its desires. Desires soon come out from within the heart and appear on the outside in a persons outer conduct. 38 The error of egoism can never be suppressed by any means other than one being inattentive to himself and his awareness of the fullness of divine presence in his calm and quiet soul. 39 Though dwelling on your present thoughts, yet you must rely upon your reflection of the empty Brahman by the speedy suppression of your egoism by degrees and your self-control. 40 They who know the soul manage themselves here without fostering their earthly thoughts. They remain like silent images of wood, without looking at or thinking of anything at all. 41 He who has fewer earthly thoughts is said to be liberated in the world. Though living in it, he is as clear and free in his mind as the open air. 42 Egoism breeds in the heart and grows into intelligence circulating throughout the whole body from head to foot, like the sunbeams that pervade the sphere of heaven. 43 Ego becomes the sight of the eyes, the taste of the tongue, and hearing in the ears. Then the five senses, being fastened to the desires in the heart, plunge the ego into the sea of sensuality. 44 Thus omnipresent consciousness loses its purity and becomes the mind employed with one or other of the senses, just as the common moisture of the earth grows the sprout in spring.

He who thinks on the various objects of the senses without knowing their unreality and the reality of the only One, and who does not endeavor for his liberation here, has no end of troubles in this life. 46 That man reigns as an emperor who is content with any kind of food and clothing and with any sort of bed anywhere, 47 who with all his desires of the heart is indifferent to all the outward objects of desire, who with his vacant mind is full with his soul, and being as empty vacuum is filled with the breath of life, 48 who whether he is sitting or sleeping, or going anywhere or remaining unmoved, continues as quiet as in his sleeping state, and though stirred by anyone, he is not awakened from his slumber of nirvana in which his mind and its thoughts are all drowned and have become extinct. 49 Consciousness is common to all. It resides in each heart like fragrance in flowers and flavor in fruit. 50 Self-consciousness makes an individual person. The extinction of selfconsciousness is said to form the wide world all about, but being confined to ones self, it eliminates the sight of the world from view. 51 Be unconscious of the objects on earth and remain unconscious of all your prosperity and affluence. If you wish to be happy forever, make your heart as hard as impenetrable as stone. 52 O righteous Rama, convert the feeling of your heart to unfeeling and make your body and mind as unconscious as the hardest stone. 53 Of all the positive and negative acts of the unwise and wise men, there is nothing that makes such a marked difference between them as those proceeding from the desire of the unwise and the lack of desire of the wise. 54 The result of the desired actions of the unwise is the world stretched out before them, while the result of acts done without desire by the wise serves to put an end to the world before them. 55 All that which is visible is destructible, and that which is destroyed come to be renewed to life, but that which is neither destroyed nor resuscitated is you, your very soul. 56 The knowledge of the worlds existence is without foundation. Though it is thought to exist, it is not found to be so in reality. It is like water in a mirage. 57 The right knowledge of things removes the thought of egoism from the mind, and though a thing may be thought of in the mind, yet it takes no deep root in the heart, just as a burnt seed does not sprout in the ground. 58 The man who does his duties or not, but remains passionless and thoughtless and free from frailty, has his rest in the soul and his nirvana is always attendant upon him. 59 Those who are saintly remain calm and quiet through their control of the mind and by suppression of desires for enjoyments. But those who are weakened in their natures have a mine of evils in their hearts. 60 The wise soul is distinguishable from others by its brightness, full of light like a cloudless sky. The same soul is alike in all, but in the ignorant the soul appears as dim as evening twilight. 61 As a man sees the light of heaven coming from a great distance and filling the space around him, so the light of the Supreme Soul fills and reaches all. 62 The infinite and invisible consciousness, as wonderful as the clear sky, conceives and displays this wonderful world within the infinity of its own emptiness. 63 To the learned and unerring, those who have gotten rid of the error of the world and rest in their everlasting tranquility, the world appears like a consumed and extinguished lamp. To all common people, the world appears to be placed in the air by the will of God for the enjoyment of all.

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Chapter 23 Story of Vasishta Meeting the Brahmin Manki in the Desert Seeking Rest in an Outcaste Village
Vasishta said: I have spoken on dispassion and renunciation of worldly desires. Therefore rise and go beyond the material world after the example of one Manki. 2 Once there lived a brahmin named Manki who was applauded for his devotion and steadfastness to holy vows. 3 It happened at one time on some particular occasion that I was coming down from the vault of heaven upon an invitation from your grandfather Aja. 4 As I wandered on the surface of the earth to reach your grandfathers kingdom, I encountered a vast desert scorched by sunshine. 5 It was a dreary waste without end, filled with burning sands and hidden by grey and fly dust, marked by a few scattered hamlets here and there. 6 The extended waste, its unrestricted emptiness, howling winds, burning heat and light, seeming water in sand, and untraveled ground resting in peace appeared like the boundless and spotless immensity of Brahman. 7 Its deceptive mirages upon sand, its dullness and empty space, and the mist hanging on all sides seemed as delusive as the appearance of illusion itself. 8 As I was wandering along this hollow and sandy wilderness, I saw a wayfarer idly walking before me and muttering to himself in the agony of his wearisome journey. 9 The traveler said, This powerful sun afflicts me with blazing beams as much as the company of evil-minded men annoy me. 10 Sunbeams pour down fire on earth and melt the core of my body and bones, just as they dry up leaves and ignite forest trees. 11 Therefore I must go to that distant hamlet for relief from this weary journey and recover my strength and spirits to continue my travel. 12 So thinking, he was about to proceed towards the village where low caste Kiratas lived when I interrupted him. 13 Vasishta said: I salute you, O you passenger of the sandy desert. May all be well with you who is my fellow traveler on the way, looking so good and passionless. 14 O traveler of the lower earth who has long lived among men, and who has not found your rest, how is it that now you expect to have it in this remote village of mean people? 15 You can have no rest in the homes of vile people in that distant village which is mostly peopled by Pamara villains, just as thirst is not appeased but increased by drinking salty water. 16 Those huts and hamlets shelter cowardly cowherds and those who are afraid to walk in the paths of men, just as timid deer are adverse to wander beyond their own track. 17 They have no stir of reason or any flash of understanding or mental faculties in them. They are not afraid evil actions, but remain and move on like stone mills. 18 Their manliness consists in the emotions of their passions and affections and in exhibitions of the signs of their desire and aversion. They delight mostly in actions that appear pleasant at the moment. 19 As there are no rain clouds over dry and parched desert lands, so there is no shadow of pure and cooling knowledge stretched over the minds of these people. 20 Rather dwell like a snake in a dark cave, or remain like a blind worm in the center of a stone, or limp about as a lame deer in a barren desert, rather than mix in the company of these village people. 21 These rude rustics resemble poison mixed with honey. They are sweet to taste for a moment, but prove deadly at last. 22 These villainous villagers are as rude as rough winds that blow gusts of dust amidst shattered huts built with grass and dried leaves. 23 After I addressed the traveler in this way, he felt as glad as if he had been bathed in ambrosial showers. 24 The traveler said: Who are you sage? Your magnanimous soul seems to be full and perfect in yourself, full of the Divine Spirit. You look at the bustle of the world like a passer-by is unconcerned with the
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commotions of a village. 25 Have you drunk the ambrosial nectar of the gods that gave you the divine knowledge? Are infused with the spirit of the sovereign Viraj that is quite apart from the fullness of space it fills, quite full with its entire emptiness? 26 I see your soul is as empty yet as full as his, and as still and yet as moving as the Divine Spirit. It is all and not all what exists, something yet nothing. 27 It is quiet and fair, shining and yet unseen. It is inert and yet full of force and energy. It is inactive with all its activity and action. 28 Though now journeying on earth, you seem to range far above the skies. You are without support, though supported on a sound basis. 29 You are not stretched over objects, and yet no object exists without you. Your pure mind, like the beautiful moon, is full of the nectar beams of immortality. 30 You shine like the full moon without any of her digits or blackish spots. You are cooling like moonbeams, full of ambrosial juice as that watery planet. 31 I see the existence and nonexistence of the world depend upon your will and your intellect contains the revolving world, like the germ of a tree contains within it the would be fruit. 32 Sage, I am a brahmin descended from sage Sandilya. My name is Manki and I am intent on visiting places of pilgrimage. 33 I have made very long journeys and I have seen many holy places in my travels all about. After long time, I have turned my course to return to my native home. 34 But my mind is so sick and adverse to the world, that I hesitate to return home. I have seen the lives of men pass away from this world like flashes of lightening. 35 O sage, please give me a true account of yourself, as the minds of holy men are as deep and clear as clear lakes. 36 When great men like you show kindness at the first sight of someone as mean as I am, his heart is sure to glow with love and gratitude, just as lotus buds are blown. I am hopeful of your favor towards me. 37 Hence, sage, I hope that you will kindly remove the error which is born in me by my ignorance of the delusions of this tempting world. 38 Vasishta replied: O wise man, I am Vasishta, the sage, saint and inhabitant of the ethereal region. I am traveling this way on an errand of sagely King Aja. 39 I tell you sage, do not be disheartened at your ignorance. You have already come onto the path of wisdom and you have very nearly gotten over the ocean of the world and arrived at the shore of transcendental knowledge. 40 I see that you have come to possess the invaluable treasure of indifference to worldly matters. This kind of speech and sentiments, and the calmness of disposition which you have displayed, can never proceed from a worldly person and indicates your high-mindedness. 41 A precious stone is polished by gently rubbing away its impurity. So the mind comes to its reasoning by rubbing off of the impurity of its prejudice. 42 Tell me what you desire to know and how you want to abandon the world. In my opinion, knowledge and abandonment are accomplished by practicing the teachers instructions and by questioning what he does not know or understand. 43 It is said that whoever has a mind to cross the doom of his souls reincarnation should possess good and pure desires in his mind, and an understanding inclined to reasoning under the direction of his spiritual guide. Such a person is truly entitled to attain to the state which is free from future sorrow and misery.

Chapter 24 Manki Complains about Life to Vasishta

Vasishta said: Being thus approached by me, Manki fell at my feet. Then shedding tears of joy from both eyes, he spoke to me with due respect. 2 Manki said: O venerable sage, I have long been travelling in all ten sides of the earth, but I have never met a holy man like you who could remove the doubts arising in my mind. 3 Sage, today I have gained the knowledge which is the chief good of a brahmin whose sacred body is more venerable and far more superior in birth and dignity than the bodies of all other beings in heaven and on earth. But sage, I am sorry at heart to see the evils of this nether world. 4 Repeated births and deaths and the continued rotations of pleasure and pain are all painful because they end in pain. 5 Because pleasure leads to greater pain, it is better, O sage, to continue in ones pain. The sequence of fleeting pleasures being only lasting pain, pleasure is to be considered as pain. 6 O friend, all pleasures are painful to me. My pains have become pleasurable at my advanced age when teeth and hair are falling with decay and my internal parts are also wearing out. 7 My mind continually aspires to higher stations in life, but it fails to persevere in its holy course. The seedling of my salvation is suppressed by thorns and thistles of my evil and worldly desires. 8 My mind is situated amidst its passions and affections within the covering of my body, just as the banyan tree stands amidst its falling leaves inside a rustic village. Desires fly like hungry vultures all over its body in search of their abominable sustenance. 9 My wicked and crooked thoughts are like the brambles of creeping and thorny plants. My life is a weary and dreary maze, a dark and dismal night. 10 The world with all its people, without the moisture of true knowledge, is parched and dried up like withered plants, decaying day by day with constant cares, fast advancing towards its dissolution without being destroyed all at once. 11 All our present acts are drowned in those of our past lives and, like withered trees, bear no flower or fruit in our present life. Actions done with desire end with the gain of their transitory objects. 12 Our lives are wasted in our attachment to family and dependents. We are never employed to lead our souls across the ocean of the world. The desire of earthly enjoyments decay day by day and a dreadful eternity awaits us. 13 Our prosperity and possessions, whether they are more or less, are as harmful to our souls as the thorny and poisonous plants growing in the hollow caves of earth. We are attended with thoughts and cares causing fever heat in the soul and emaciating the body. 14 Fortune sometimes makes brave and fortunate people fail at the hands of foes, just as a man ardent with the desire for gems in his mind is tempted to catch naaga serpents lying in dark caves with shining gems on their hoods. 15 I am entirely inclined to give up the objects of sense. My mind is polluted by worldly desires and is all hollow within. I am abandoned and shunned by the wise like a dead sea with its troubled and muddy waters. 16 My mind turns about false vanities like rheumatic pains throughout the body. 17 Despite my innumerable deaths and although my mind is cleansed from the impurity of ignorance by reading scriptures and associating with good men, I am still hunting with sorrow after desired emptiness, just as the moon and stars with their power to remove darkness stand good in emptiness. 18 There is no end to the dark night of my ignorance when the gloomy apparition of my egoism has played out its part. I do not have knowledge which will destroy my ignorance, like a lion destroying a furious elephant, and burn down my actions like a fire burns straw. 19 The dark night of my earthly desire is not yet over, and the sun of my disgust of the world
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has not risen. I still believe the unreal as real and my mind wanders about like an elephant. 20 My senses continually tempt me. I know not what will be the end of these temptations which prevent even the wise from observing the precepts of the scriptures. 21 This lack of sight and disregard of the scriptures lead to our blindness by lighting our desires and by blinding our understanding. 22 Therefore sage, tell me. What am I to do in this difficulty? What may lead to my chief good? I am asking you to tell me. 23 It is said that the mist of our ignorance flies like clouds at the sight of wise men and with the purification of our desires. Now sage, confirm the truth of this saying of wise men by enlightening my understanding and giving peace to my mind.

Chapter 25 Vasishta Instructs Manki

Vasishta said: Consciousness, the reflections of consciousness, the desire of having them, and their imagination are the four roots of evil in this world. Though these words are meaningless, yet considerable sense is attached to them as the four sources of knowledge. 2 Know that knowledge is also their reflection which is the seat of all evils. All our disasters proceed from that, just as thickly as vegetation growing by water. 3 Men clothed in the robes of their desires walk in the dreary paths of this world with very many varieties of their actions, like circles drawn under circles. 4 But these wanderings over earth and desires cease for the wise, just as moisture in the ground dries at the end of spring season. 5 Our various desires grow the very many thorny plants and brambles in the world, just as spring sap causes thick clumps of plantain trees to grow. 6 The world appears as a dark maze to the mind sweetened in the serum of its greedy appetites, just as the ground is shaded under bushy trees growing from the water supplied by spring season. 7 There is nothing in existence except the clear and empty Consciousness, just as there is nothing in the boundless sky except the hollow emptiness of air. 8 There is no intelligent soul beside this One. All else is the everlasting reflection of this One alone. The world is called ignorance and error. 9 He is seen (in spirit) without being seen, and is lost upon being seen (by visual sight). Looking with ordinary sight one sees only what is unreal, like ghosts and demons appearing before children, and not the true Divine Spirit. 10 By rejecting all visible sights, understanding views the one essence of all. All things merge into it, just as all the rivers on earth fall into one universal ocean. 11 As an earthenware cannot be without earth, so all intelligent beings are never devoid of their consciousness or intellect. 12 Whatever is known by understanding is said to be our knowledge. But understanding has no knowledge of the unknowable, and no lack of understanding can have any knowledge, owing to their opposite natures. 13 As there is the same relation of knowledge among the looker, his seeing and the sight, so it is omniscience of Brahman which is the only essence. All else is as nothing as a flower growing in the air, which never exists. 14 Things of the same kind carry a relationship to one another and readily unite in one. So the world being alike to its idea, and all ideas being alike to the eternal ideas in the mind of God, therefore the world and the Divine Mind are certainly the same thing and no other. 15 If there be no knowledge or idea of wood and stone, then they would be the same as the nonexistent things of which we have no idea. 16 When the outer and visible features of things are so exactly similar to our ideas and knowledge of them, they appear to be no other than our ideas or knowledge of them. 17 All visible appearances in the universe are only the outstretched reflections of our inner ideas. Their fluctuation is like that of the winds and their motion is like that of the waters in the ocean. 18 All things are mixed together with the omnipresent spirit, just as a log of wood is covered by black dye. Both appear to be mixed together to the unthinking, but both are taken for the one and same thing by the thinking part of mankind. 19 The idea of reciprocity is unity, and the knowledge of mutuality is also union. Examples are the interchange of water and milk, the correlation of vision and what can be seen, and not the union of the wood and black dye with one another. 20 The knowledge of ones egoism is his bondage. Knowledge of his lack of ego is his emancipation. Thus ones imprisonment and freedom from the confines of his body and the world being both under his control, why should he neglect freeing himself from his perpetual bondage?
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Like seeing two moons in the sky or water in a mirage, we believe in the reality of our egoism which is altogether an unreality. 22 The disbelief in ones egoism removes the concept of I and selfishness. It is possible to everyone to get rid of these mistaken ideas. So how is it that anyone should remain ignorant? 23 Why do you maintain your egoism and remain confined in your body like a plum drowned in a cup of water, or like air confined in a pot? Your relation to God is to be nothing else but like himself and to be one with him. Have the reciprocal knowledge of yourself in the likeness of God. 24 It is said that the lack of reciprocal knowledge makes the union of two things into one, but this is wrong both ways. Neither does any dull material thing or any spiritual substance lose its own form. 25 Force is not converted to inertness from the indestructibility of their nature. Whenever the spiritual is seen or considered as the material, it becomes a duality, and there is no unity in this view of the two. 26 Thus men under the influence of their desires, harassed by their varied vanities, continue going downward like a stone torn from the head of a cliff falls from precipice to precipice headlong to the ground. 27 Men are carried here and there by the currents of their desires like bits of straw. They are overtaken and overwhelmed in an endless series of difficulties which are impossible for me to number. 28 Men, cast like a ball flung from the hand of fate, hurry onward with their ardent desires until they are hurled into the depth of hell where, worried and worn out with hell torments, they take other forms and shapes after lapses of long periods.

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Chapter 26 Vasishtas Teaching Continued; Manki Attains Self Realization

Vasishta said: Thus the living soul, having fallen into the maze of this world, is subject to disasters and accidents as countless as the microscopic organisms generated in rainy season. 2 All these accidents, though unconnected with one another, follow as closely upon each other as stones lying scattered together in the rocky desert, linked in a lengthening chain of thoughts in the mind of man. 3 The mind blinded of its reason becomes a wilderness overgrown with the tree of its disasters, yet the mind by its pretended merriment and good humor appears to men to be smiling like a spring grove. 4 O how pitiable are all those beings! Bound to their subjection to hope, they are subject to diverse states of pain and pleasure in their repeated births in various forms on earth. 5 Alas for those strange and abnormal desires which subject the minds of men to the triple error of taking the nonexistent to be actually present before them. 6 Those who know the truth are delighted in themselves. They are immortal in their mortal life. They are diffusers of pure light all about them. What is the difference between the wise sage who is coldly detached in all respects and the cooling moon? 7 What is the difference between a whimsical boy and a covetous fool who desires anything without consideration of past or future? 8 What is the difference between the greedy fool and voracious fish that devour the alluring bait of pleasure or pain and will not give up the bait until they are sure to give up their lives? 9 All our earthly possessions, whether our bodies, lives, wives, friends or properties, are as frail as a brittle plate made of sand. As soon as it dries, it crumbles and breaks to pieces. 10 O my soul, you may forever wander in hundreds of bodies of various forms in repeated births and pass from the heaven of Brahma to the highest sphere of Brahma, yet you can never have tranquility unless you attain the steady detachment of your mind. 11 Bondage to the world is dispersed by mature introspection into the nature of things, just as an uneven, rugged road does not stop a wayfarer from walking with his open eyes. 12 The negligent soul becomes prey to desire and unruly passions, just as a heedless traveler is caught in the clutches of demons. But the well-guarded spirit is free of fear of any demon. 13 As opening ones eyes presents what can be seen to sight, so waking consciousness introduces ego and the phenomenal world into the mind. 14 As closing one eyes shuts out visible objects from sight, so the closing of consciousness puts out the appearance of all sights and thoughts from your eyes and mind. 15 The sense that the external world exists, together with that of ones individual ego, is all unreal and empty. It is consciousness alone that shows everything in itself by the fluctuation of its mistaken wanderings, just as the motion of wind displays the varieties of clouds in empty air. 16 It is only Divine Consciousness which exhibits unreal phenomena as real in itself, without creating anything apart or separate from its own essence. It is similar to how clay or metal produces a pot or a jar out of itself, which is not distinct or separate from its substance. 17 As sky is only an emptiness and wind is a mere fluctuation of air, and as waves are composed of nothing but water, so the world is nothing other than a phenomenon of consciousness. 18 The world exists undivided in the bas-relief of consciousness. The world has no existence separate from its substance of the conscious soul, which is as calm and clear as the empty air. The world resembles the shadow of a mountain on the surface of water, or a surging wave rising on the surface of the sea. 19 The wise and unexcitable sages have a calm coolness in their souls. To them the shining worlds appear like cooling moonbeams falling on the internal mirror of their minds. 20 How is this invisible supreme light produced in the calm, quiet and all-pervading auspicious soul in the empty expanse of the universe? 21 That essence called Brahman forms the essential nature and form
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of everything. Brahman permeates throughout all nature, except where it appears to be obstructed by some preventive cause or other. 22 Anything which presents a hindrance to the permeation of divine essence, like a flower growing in the air, is a nothing in nature. 23 The wise man sits quietly like a stone without the action of even his inner mental faculties, because the Lord is without reflection or sensation of anything and without birth or decay at anytime. 24 He who by constant practice remains unconscious of everything, like the empty state of the open sky, arrives at a state of sound sleep or trance without the disturbance of dreams. 25 But how do we know that the world is the mere thought or will of the Divine Mind? Where is it said that the creative power of Brahmans thought forms the wonderful world in his mind without the aid of any tool or instrument or means or ground for its construction? Hence the world is merely an ideal and nothing real. There is no cause or creator of it whatsoever. 26 As the Lord stretches out the world in his thought, he or it instantly becomes the same. As the Lord is without any visible form, so this seeming world has no visible or material form whatsoever, nor is there any framer of what is simply an ideal. 27 So all men are as happy or unhappy as they think themselves to be in their minds. They all abide in the same Universal Soul which is common to all. Yet everyone in his own mind believes himself to be of his own kind. 28 Therefore it is vain to regard anything or any intellectual being as a material substance, just as it is false to regard the imaginary hills of ones dream as being real rocks situated on earth. 29 By assigning egoism to ones self, one becomes subject to error and change. Lack of egoism places the soul in unchanging identity and tranquility. 30 As the meaning of bracelet is no different from the gold of which it is made, so the sense of your false egoism is no different than the tranquil soul. 31 The tranquil sage, calm and sober minded like a silent muni, is no voluntary actor of any act, although he may be physically employed in his active duties. The quiet saint carries with him an empty and careless mind, although it may be full of learning and wisdom. 32 The wise man manages himself like a mechanical figure or puppet, never moving of its own motion but moving as it is moved. Having no impulse of his own desire within him, he sits as quietly as an immobile doll. 33 The wise man who knows the soul is as quiet as a baby sleeping in a swinging cradle, moved without moving itself. The wise man moves his body like a baby, without having any cause for doing so. 34 The soul that is intent on the thought of the One only, calm and quiet as the infinite spirit of God, becomes unconscious of itself and all other things, together with all objects of desire and expectations of good or bliss. 35 He who is not the viewer himself, who does not have the view before him, and who is exempt from the triple condition of subjective, objective and action, such a person can have no other object in his view that is concentrated on the vision of the invisible One. 36 Our sight of the world is our bondage. Our disregard of it is our perfect freedom. Therefore, he who rests in his disregard of whatever is expressed by words has nothing to look after or desire. 37 Say, what is ever worth looking after or worthy of our regard when our material bodies are as evanescent as our dreams and our individual existence is a mere delusion? 38 Therefore a wise man rests only in his knowledge of the true One by subjecting all his efforts and desires and suppressing all his curiosity, being devoid of all knowledge save that of the knowable One. 39 Hearing all this, Manki was released from his great error, just like a snake sloughs of its skin to which it had been tightly bound. 40 He retired to a mountain where he remained in deep meditation for a hundred years. He discharged the duties that occurred to him of their own accord, without retaining any desire of anything. 41 He still resides there, unmoved and unconscious like a stone, quite detached in all his senses and feelings, and wakeful with his internal consciousness by the light of his yoga contemplation. 42 Now Rama, enjoy your peace of mind by relying upon your habit of reasoning and discrimination. Do not corrupt your understanding under fits of passion. Do not let your mind be

fickle like a fleeting cloud in the dry season of autumn.

Chapter 27 All Is One, so We Cannot Conceive Diversity

Vasishta continued: Be dead to your senses and retain the tranquility of your soul by accepting whatsoever you get as your lot. Otherwise fair will appear as foul, like a pure crystal showing itself black in the shade. 2 All is contained in the only one all extended Soul, so we can not conceive how variety or multiplicity can arise from unity. 3 The attributes of consciousness are entirely of an empty nature, having neither beginning nor end. Consciousness is neither produced nor destroyed with the production and destruction of the body. 4 All unconscious and material bodies are moved by the miraculous power of the intellect or mind which, being unmoved of itself, gives motion to bodies, just as the still waters of the sea give rise to waves. 5 As it is error to suppose a sheet of cloth in a cloud, so the supposition of egoism in the body is altogether false. 6 Do not rely on the unreal body which is of this world and grows to perish in it. Depend on the real essence of the endless spirit for your everlasting happiness. 7 Empty consciousness is the essential property of the immortal soul. This is the transcendent reality in nature, and may this super-excellent entity be your essence likewise. 8 If you are certain of this truth, you become as glorious as that essence because a person in deep meditation loses himself in the object on which he meditates. 9 The triple aspects of viewer, view, and viewing are the three properties of the one and same intellect. There is nothing other than the knowledge of this, as there is no thought unlike the act of its thinking. 10 The soul is ever calm and clear and uniform in its nature. It does not rise or fall like the tides by the moons influence, nor is it soiled like seawater by stormy winds. 11 A passenger in a boat sees the rocks and trees on the bank to move. One thinks a shell or conch contains silver. The mind mistakes the body for reality. 12 As the sight of the substance dispels the view from the intellectual perspective, so the intellectual view dispels belief in the material. When knowledge of the living soul is dissolved in the Supreme Soul, there remains nothing except the unity of the all pervading spirit. 13 The knowledge that all this world is quite calm and quiet and that all is an evolution of the Divine Spirit takes away the belief in everything else, which is nothing but the product of error and illusion. 14 As there is no forest in the sky, moisture in sand, or fire on the moon, so there is no material body in the sight of the mind. 15 Rama, do not fear for this world, a mere creation of your error without any real existence whatsoever. Know this transcendent truth, O you who is the best among those who inquire after truth, that this world is a nothing and void. 16 Your mistake of the existence of the visible world and any disbelief about the invisible soul must have been removed today by my words. Say now, what other cause can there be for of your bondage in this world? 17 As a plate, water-pot or any other earthenware is no more than clay, so the outer world is nothing other than the inner thought of the mind. It wears away under the power of reasoning. 18 Whether exposed to danger or difficulty, placed in prosperity or adversity, or subject to wealth or poverty, O Rama, you must preserve your even disposition while conscious of your joy and grief. Be joyfully free from the knowledge of your individual ego and remain as you are, calm by nature and not subject to any state. 19 Remain Rama, as you are, like the moon in the sphere of your race, with your full knowledge of everything in nature. Avoid joy or grief at every occurrence and give up your desire or disgust for anything in the world. Do so or as you may choose for yourself.
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Chapter 28 Destiny, Deed, Agent & Doing Are All the Same; God as the Seed
Rama said, Please sage, explain to me about the acts of men which become the causes of their repeated births, just as seeds are sources of future trees. Explain those acts described as divine dispensation, destiny, or fate (daiva). 2 Vasishta replied: The meaning of daiva or destiny is as that of a potter producing pottery. It is the act of intelligence and not of blind chance or human effort. 3 How is it possible for any action to be done only by human effort without some effort of understanding directing human energy to action? It is this intelligent power that makes the world and all that it contains. 4 The prosperity of the world depends on understanding exerting itself with a desire to bring about some certain end. It ceases when understanding, the cause of the course of the world, ceases. 5 Mental indifference or lack of desire in the mind is called a negative act. The mind that merely moves on without engaging in any pursuit is like the smooth current of a stream without surges. 6 There is no difference between a thinking and unthinking soul except that the mind of one is moved by its imagination to invent some art or work. 7 As there is no essential difference between water and its waves, or between desire and its result, so there is no difference between the intellect and its function, nor is there any difference between actions and their agent. 8 Rama, know the action as the agent. The actor is the same as his action. Both are quite alike just as ice and coldness. 9 As frost is cold and cold the same as frost, so the deed is the same as its doer, and the doer is the same as the deed he does. 10 The vibration of Consciousness is the same as destiny which is also the agent of action. These are synonymous terms expressing the same thing. Destiny, deed and other words have no distinct meaning. 11 The vibration of consciousness is the cause of creation, just as the seed is the source of a tree. Lack of this vibration produces nothing. Therefore intellectual activity contains the seed of the whole world. 12 The Divine Mind contains in its infinite expanse all the ample space of time and place. Of its own nature, it sometimes fluctuates and sometimes is at a standstill, much like the vast ocean. 13 The causeless and un-causing seed of the Intellect, being moved by desire, becomes the cause of the precise details of material bones, just as the seed produces sprouts and plants. 14 All plant life, whether grass, vines or trees, grows from their particular seeds, and these seeds originate from the vibration of the Divine Mind, which is uncreated and without any cause. 15 There is no difference between the seed and its sprout, just as there is no difference between heat and fire. As you recognize the identity between seed and its sprout, so must you recognize the identity between man and his acts. 16 Divine Intellect exerts its power in the womb of the earth and grows the sprouts of unmoving plants as from their seed. These become great or small, straight or crooked as Divine Intellect would have them to be. 17 What other power is there beside that of the Intellect to grow sturdy oaks from soft clay and humid moisture that are the womb of the earth? 18 It is this Intellect which fills the seeds of living beings with vital fluid, like the sap inside plants gives growth to flowers and fruit on the outside. 19 If this all inhering Intellect were not almighty, say then, what other power is there that could produce the mighty gods and demigods in the air and the huge mountains on earth? 20 The Divine Mind contains the seeds of all moving and unmoving beings. They all have their being from the movement of this intellectual power, and from no other source whatever. 21 As there is no difference between the alternate productions of seed, plant and fruit from one another, so there is no difference in the reciprocal causation of man, his acts and vice versa. In the same way there is not even a shade of difference between the swelling waves and the
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sinking waters of the sea. 22 Shame on that silly and beastly being who does not believe in the reciprocity of man and his actions, or agent and his act, as taught in the Vedas. 23 The restless craving that is inherent in ones consciousness is the embryonic seed of his reincarnation, just like the growth of plants. Therefore it is necessary to kill the seed by frying it in the fire of renunciation. 24 The learned say that detachment is performing an act, whether good or bad, without taking it to the mind. 25 It is also said that detachment is the destruction of desire which loosens a man from all connection to an act. Therefore try by all means in your power to create in your mind a total unconcern for everyone and an indifference to all things whatsoever. 26 In whatever manner you think it possible, get rid of your craving desires, whether by theoretical or practical yoga or your human efforts. You must root every desire from your heart in order to secure your best welfare and perfect bliss. 27 You must endeavor to the utmost of your human power to suppress some portion of your egoism in order to prevent the rise of selfish passions and desires within your heart. 28 There is no other way to cross the impassable expanse of the world except by the exercise of our human virtues, nor is there any other way of extinguishing our ardent desires except by the extinction of egoism. 29 The inherent consciousness of the ever existent Soul is both the prime seed as well as the first sprout of the world. It is the source of action and its cause and effect on men. The ever existent Soul is called destiny and the happiness and sorrow of all. 30 In the beginning there was no seed or sprout, nor any man or his action. There was no such thing as destiny or doom or any other prime cause, but all that existed was Supreme Intellect which is all in all. 31 There is no seed or sprout in reality, nor is there any action or its active agent in fact. There is only one Supreme Intellect in absolute and positive existence. It is under the auspices of this hollowed name that you see all these gods and demigods and all men and women performing their respective parts as actors on the stage of the world. 32 Knowing this certain truth and thinking yourself as the imperishable one, be free from your thoughts of agent and action. Give up all your desires and false imagination, and live to reflect only upon your selfconsciousness. 33 Remain fearless, O Rama, and be graceful with the calm composure of your mind. Subdue all your desires and lay aside your fears with them. Rely on your clear intellect and continue to do your endless acts. Be full in yourself with the Supreme Soul, and thus you shall have the fullness of your desires fulfilled in you.

Chapter 29 Sermon on Holy Meditation

Vasishta continued to say: Always remain looking inwardly by being freed from the feelings of passion and desire. Continue in the performance of your actions everywhere, but always reflect upon the quiet and spotless consciousness within yourself. 2 The mind which is clear like the open sky, full of knowledge and settled in the Divine Consciousness, always even, graceful and replete with joy, is said to be highly favored of heaven and expanded by Brahman. 3 Whether overtaken by pain and grief, or exposed to dangers and difficulties, or attended by pleasure or prosperity, in a greater or less degree, 4 in whatever place and in whatever state you are placed, bear your afflictions with a glad heart. Whether you weep or cry, or become a play of opposite circumstances, be joyful for both are meant for your good. 5 If you are delighted in the company of your consorts and feel happy at the approach of festivity and prosperity, it is because you are tempted by your fond desire of pleasure, like ignorant people. 6 Fools who are allured by their greed for gain meet with their fate in hazardous exploits and warfare. It is fit that they should burn with the fire of their desire, like straw consumed in a fire. 7 Earn money by honest means with the caution of a crane in whatever opportunity presents itself to you. Do not run in pursuit of gain like the ignorant crowd. 8 O you destroyer of your foes, forcefully drive away all your desires as your greatest enemies, just as the winds of heaven drive away the empty, rainless clouds of the sky. 9 Be tolerant, O Rama, of ignorant people who are led away by their desires and deserve your pity. Be reverent towards high minded men. Be delighted in yourself by speaking sparingly and without being misled by your desires likes the ignorant mob. 10 Congratulate with joy and sympathize with sorrow. Pity the sorrows of the poor and be valiant among the brave. 11 Turn your eyes into your heart and be always joyous by communing with your soul. Then whatever you do with a liberal mind, you are not to answer for it as its agent. 12 By remaining fixed in the meditation of your soul and by having your eyes always turned within yourself, you shall be invulnerable even at the strike of a thunderbolt of Indra. 13 He is said to be master of himself who is freed from the delusion of desire and lives retired in the cave of his consciousness, who is attached to his own soul and acts at his own will and has his delight in his very self. 14 No weapon can wound the man established in the Self, no fire can burn his soul, no water can drench the spirit, and hot winds cannot dry him up. 15 Grasp the firm pillar of your soul, which is unborn and uncreated, without decay and immortal. Adhere steadfastly to your soul just as one clings to the pillars of his house. 16 The world is a tree and all things in it are like the flowers of this tree. Our knowledge of all things is like the fragrance of these flowers, but our self-consciousness is the essence of them all. Therefore look internally to this inward essence before you mind the externals. 17 All outward affairs are brought about by their inner reflection in the mind. It is as hard to bring a desire into being as it is to raise a stone to life. 18 Get rid of your bodily exertions and lull your mind to sleep. Do all your duties like a tortoise with its contracted limbs. 19 Manage your affairs with a half-sleeping and half-awakened mind. Do your outward functions without the effort of your mental faculties. 20 As children possess their innate knowledge and dumb creatures are endowed with their instinct, without the feeling of any desire rising in them, so masters live and act with their minds unattached to anything, as vacant as the empty air. 21 Remain untroubled and free from care, with a entirely sleepy and indifferent mind within yourself, a mind devoid of all its functions and
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quite absorbed in itself, and slightly acting on the members of the body. 22 After your mind is cleansed from the stain of desire, you may continue to discharge or dispense with your duties by subduing your mind with knowledge and resting quietly in your pure consciousness. 23 Go on managing your outward affairs in your waking state as if your faculties were dormant in sleep. Neither desire to have anything nor let go of anything that presents itself to you. 24 If you are dormant when waking, by your inattention to all about you, so you are awake when sleeping by your trance in the heart of the Supreme Soul. And when you are in the condition of the union of the two, you attain the state of perfect enlightenment. 25 Thus by your gradual practice of this habit of mental indifference, you reach that state of unity which has no beginning or end and is beyond all other things. 26 The world certainly is neither a unity nor duality, therefore leave inquiry into its endless varieties. Resort to your supreme bliss with a mind as clear as the translucent sphere of empty air. 27 Rama asked, If it be so, O great sage, that there is no ego or you, as you say, then tell me, why are we conscious of ourselves? How are you sitting here under the name of sage Vasishta? 28 Valmiki said: Being thus questioned by Rama, Vasishta, the best of speakers, remained silent for a moment, reflecting on the answer he should make. 29 His silence created some anxiety in the royal audience. Rama, also perplexed in his mind, repeated his question to the sage saying, 30 Sage, why are you as silent as I am? There is no argument in the world which sages like you are unable to solve and expound. 31 Vasishta replied: It is not owing to my inability to speak or want of argument on my part that made me hold my tongue. It is the wide scope of your question that kept me from giving its answer. 32 Rama, there are two kinds of questioners, namely, the ignorant and the intelligent. So there are two modes of argument: the simple mode for simpletons and the rational form for intelligent and reasonable men. 33 Rama, for so long you have been ignorant of superior knowledge and fit to be taught in ordinary, ambiguous language. 34 But now you have become an expert in superior truth and found your rest in the state of supreme bliss. Therefore you no longer benefit from the ambiguous language of common speech. 35 Whenever a good speaker wishes to deliver an eloquent speech, (he must first consider) whether it be long or short or relate to some abstruse or spiritual subject. 36 There is no counterpart to the ego which lacks all representation and cannot be described by the sound of any word. Ego is beyond the attributes of number and other categories, so one cannot attribute any such fiction of fancy to it. It is the totality of all, as light is composed of innumerable particles of ray. 37 It is not right, O Rama, that one who has known the truth should give an imperfect or defective answer to a question. But what can he do when no language is perfect or free from defect, as you well know? 38 It is right, O Rama, that I who know the truth should declare it to my students. The knower of abstract truth is known to remain as silent as a block of wood. The soundness of his mind is hard to sound. 39 Lack of self-reflection causes a person to speak. They who know the supreme excellence hold their silence. This is the best answer that can be given to your question regarding this truth. 40 Every man, O Rama, speaks of himself as he is, but I am only my conscious self, which is unspeakable in its nature and appertains to the unspeakable one. 41 How can that thing be given a definite term which is inexpressible in words? Therefore I cannot express the inexpressible in words. As I have already said, all words are only fictitious signs.

Rama asked, Sage, you disregard everything that is expressed by words and regard them as imperfect and defective symbols of their originals. Now you must tell me, what do you mean by your statement, lacks all representation and what are you yourself? 43 Vasishta replied: It being so, now hear me tell you, O Rama, who is the best among the enquirers of truth, what you are and what am I in truth, and what is the world in reality. 44 This ego, my boy, is empty consciousness, imperishable in its nature. It is neither conceivable nor knowable and is beyond all imagination. 45 I am the empty sky of consciousness and so you also are the empty sky. The whole world is an entire emptiness and there is nothing else except an everlasting and infinite emptiness everywhere. 46 The soul is identical with pure knowledge. It is free from the knowledge of the senses and beyond conscious knowledge. I cannot call it anything other than the Self or the Soul. 47 Yet it is the fashion of disputants, in order to maintain their own ground or for the liberation of their pupils, to multiply the egoism of the one soul and distribute it into a thousand branches. 48 When a living soul remains calm and quiet in spite of the management of its worldly affairs, when it is as motionless as an egoless corpse, it is said to have attained its perfect state. 49 This state of perfection consists in refraining from external exercise and devotion, persistence in continual meditation, feeling no sensation of pain or pleasure, and being unconscious of ones selfexistence and the coexistence of all else. 50 Freedom from egoism and the consciousness of all other existence brings on the idea of a total nonexistence and emptiness, which is altogether beyond thought and meditation. All attempts to grasp a nothing are as vain as a blind mans desire to see a picture. 51 The posture of sitting unmoved like a stone at the shocks and turn of fortune is truly the state of nirvana or deathless trance of a conscious being. 52 This state of saintly trance is not noticeable by others or perceived by the saint himself, because the knowing sage shuns the society of men in disgust and is enlightened with the spiritual knowledge within himself. 53 In this state of spiritual light, the sage loses sight of his own ego and you and all others and beholds the only one unity in which he is extinct and absorbed in pure and spotless bliss. 54 The process of using conciousness is said to create phenomena. This is the cause of the creation of the world, which is the cause of our bondage and continual sorrows. 55 Dormancy of the intellect or unconsciousness is when the intellect is not employed with phenomena. Then it is called the supremely calm and quiet state of liberation and is free from decay. 56 When the soul is in its state of peaceful tranquility, its ideas of space and time fly away like clouds in autumn. Then it has no thought of anything else for lack of its power of thinking. 57 When the sight of the soul is turned inwards in sleep, it sees the world of its desires rising before its consciousness in their aerial forms. But souls sight directed to the outside in its waking state sees the inner objects of desire presented in the gross forms of the outer world. 58 The mind, understanding and other faculties depend upon the consciousness of the soul. They are of the same nature as the intellect, but being considered in their intimate relation with external objects, they are represented as grossly material. 59 The same intellect is spread over our consciousness of all internal and external feelings and perceptions. Therefore, it is vain to differentiate this one and undivided power by applying different names. 60 There is nothing set apart from the perception of the conscious intellect which is as pure and all-pervading as emptiness and which is said by the learned to be indefinable by words. 61 Being seen very acutely, the world appears hazy in the divine essence, as it were something between a reality and unreality. You also appear as something real and unreal at the same time. 62 In the same way, I am empty air, free from desire, and you also are pure consciousness if you could only restrain your desires. 63 He who is certain of this truth, knows himself in reality.

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Whoever thinks himself as somebody under a certain name is far from knowing the truth. Again, anyone remaining in his unreal body, but relying in his intellectuality, is sure to have his tranquility and liberation. 64 Mans exercise of his intellect improves the love of union with the original Intellect by removing ignorance, just as heat of the fire mixes with primitive heat when wind ceases to blow. 65 Living beings converted to the state of unmoving trees and stones by mental detachment or unconsciousness of themselves, are said to have attained their liberation which is free from disturbance. They are situated in a state without decay. 66 A man having obtained his wisdom through his knowledge is said to have become a muni or sage. But a fool even with teaching, owing to his ignorance, becomes a brute creature or degraded even lower to some plant life. 67 The knowledge that I am Brahman and this other is the world is a gross error proceeding from gross ignorance. But all untruth flies away before investigation, just as darkness vanishes before the advance of light. 68 The wise, with the perception and actions of his outward organs, is simply devoid of inner desires. He does not think or feel about anything in his mind. He remains quite calm and composed in his outward appearance. 69 The samadhi of a wise man is like sound sleep unaffected by dream in which phenomena are buried within himself and he sees nothing but his self or soul. 70 As the blueness of the sky is a false conception of the brain, so the appearance of the world is a fallacy to the silent soul. The world is no more than a mist of error that obscures the clear and empty sphere of the soul. 71 A true sage, though surrounded by the objects of wish, still lacks desire for any. He knows them all to be mere unrealities and false vanities. 72 Know, O intelligent Rama, that all objects of desire in this world are as marvelous as those seen in our imagination, dream, and in the magic of jugglers. Such also are all the objects of our vision, on which you can place no trust or reliance. 73 Know also that there is no pain or pleasure, or any act of merit or demerit, or anything owing to the impossibility of there being any agent or passive agent. 74 The whole universe is a vacuum without any support. It appears like a secondary moon in the sky or a city in ones imagination, none of which has reality in nature. 75 Abide only by the rules of the community or strictly observe your silence, remaining like a block of wood or stone. Be set free in the Supreme. 76 The tranquility and intellectuality of the Supreme Deity do not admit any diversity in his nature. His lack of corporeality does not admit the attribution of a body or any of its parts to him. 77 There can be no nature and no conception that can be attributed to the pure spirit. This Divine Spirit being inherent in all bodies, there can be no nature ever imputed to him. 78 Atheists reason there is no consciousness in the uncreated spirit or, in other words, the nonexistence of a self-conscious Eternal Consciousness. This is not acceptable, for though our knowledge of the container and contained is very imperfect, yet there is someone at the bottom that is ever perfect. 79 O Rama, rely upon that uncreated and indestructible Supreme Being which is ever the same and pure, irrefutable and adored by the wise and good. It is the irrefutable truth on which you should quietly depend for your liberation. Though you may eat and drink and play about like all others, yet you must know that all this is nothing.

Chapter 30 Sermon on Spirituality

Vasishta continued: Egoism is the greatest ignorance, an impassable barrier in the way of our ultimate extinction. Yet foolish people are seen to fondly pursue their final bliss through their egoistic efforts, which are no better than the attempts of a madman. 2 Egoism is the sure indicator of the ignorance of unwise people. No cool headed and knowing man is ever known to have a concept of I or a sense that he is the agent of doing anything. 3 The wise and knowing man, whether embodied or liberated, renounces the impurity of his egotism and relies on the utter nothingness of himself, which is as pure and clear as the emptiness of heaven, free from trouble and anxiety. 4 The autumn sky is serene and clear, and so are the waters of the calm and unperturbed sea. The disc of the full moon is fair and bright. But none of these is as cool, calm and full of light as the radiant face of the wise and knowing sage. 5 The features of the sage and wise are ever calm and steady, like painted figures of warriors in battle array, even in the midst of business and trifles, and even when engaged in the commotion of warfare and fury of fight. 6 All worldly thoughts and desires are nothing to a sage existing in nirvana. They are as imperceptible as the slender lines in a painting, and as lean as the rippling waves on the surface of the sea which are indistinct from its waters. 7 As the rolling waves of the sea are nothing other than its heaving water, so visible phenomena in the world are nothing other than the play of the spirit of Brahman in itself. 8 Hence the soul that is undisturbed by wave-like commotions is freed from all worldliness. It is calm and quiet both inside and outside like the still ocean, and raised above worldly matters in its holy meditation. 9 Ego rises of itself as an uncreated thing in the form of consciousness in the all comprehensive intellect of God, just as waves rise and fall in the waters of the deep and have no difference in their nature. 10 As rising smoke in the sky exhibits various forms of forts, chariots and elephants, and as none of them is anything other than the same smoke, so all these phenomena and ideas are in no way different from the nature of their divine origin. 11 By considering the fallacy of your individual ego consciousness, you will, my royal hearers, get rid of your error. Then you will exult in your knowledge of truth and be victorious over yourself. Do not despair, for you are wise enough to know the truth. 12 As the growing sprout conceives the would be tree with all its future flowers and fruit, so the ignorant man conceives in his vacant mind the false ideas of himself, his soul, his ego and of everything else according to its fancy. 13 The conceptions of the mind are as false as the sight of things, like seeing a circle in the twirling of a lighted torch. Though the presiding soul is always true, yet these thoughts of the mind are as untrue as its fancy of fairies in the orb of the moon. 14 Now my royal hearers, continue to enjoy your peace by considering, at your pleasure, the rise, end, and continuation of the world, and remain free from disease in all places and times. 15 Conduct yourselves with calmness in whatever turns to be favorable or unfavorable. Unless you behave like dead bodies, you cannot perceive the bliss of your final nirvana, the cessation of mental activity. 16 He truly attains the state of supreme bliss in this world who gives up his egoism and egoistic desires from his mind and renounces the animal nature of his life to live a life of consciousness. 17 Living the animal life leads only to sorrows and misery. Men thus bound by the chain of their animal desires are like big boats burdened with heavy loads of cargo. 18 Strangers to reasoning, addicted to the gross thoughts of ignorance, are never blessed with liberation. How is it possible to obtain in this life what is attainable only by the deceased in the next world? 19 Whatever a man fancies in this life and desires to have in the next, he dies with the same and finds them in his
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future life. But where there is no such fancy, desire or hope that is truly the state of everlasting bliss. 20 Therefore be fearless with the thought that there is no such thing as yourself or anyone else. By knowing this truth, you will find this poisonous world turned into a paradise. 21 Examine your whole material body composed of your outer frame and the inner mind. Say, in what part do you find your egoism situated? If nowhere, then accept the truth that you have no ego anywhere. 22 Seeing all and every part up to the seat of your egoism, and finding it seated nowhere, you see only an open space of which no part is ever lost or destroyed. 23 In this (attainment of liberation) you are required to do no more than to exert your courage to renounce your enjoyments, cultivate your reasoning powers, and govern yourself by subduing your body and mind. Therefore, you ignorant men who desire your liberation, delay no longer to practice selfcontrol. 24 The learned explain liberation as meditation upon God without any desire of the heart or duplicity in the mind. They say this is not possible without the assistance of spiritual knowledge. But the world being full of error, it is necessary to derive this knowledge from spiritual works, or else it is very likely to be entrapped in the very many snares which are forever set all about this earth. 25 Knowing full well the unreality of the world and the uncertainty of ones self, ones body, friends, family, wealth and possessions, whoever is distrustful of them and identifies himself with his intelligence and pure emptiness, truly finds his liberation in this and in no other state whatsoever.

Chapter 31 Sermon on the Means of Attaining Extinction

Vasishta said: He who has devoted his whole soul to the contemplation of Consciousness and feels it stirring within himself, knows in his mind the vanity and unreality of all worldly things. 2 By habituating himself to this sort of meditation and seeing the outward objects in his perceptive soul, he sees the external world like an appearance in his dream. 3 All this is truly the form of Consciousness represented in a different garb. Consciousness is more subtle than pure air, but collects and condenses itself as the solid world, then recognizes itself as such. The world is no other than the consolidated consciousness, and there is nothing beside this anywhere. 4 It has no dissolution or decay, nor has it any birth or death. It is neither emptiness nor solidity. It is neither extension nor lack of density, but it is all and the supreme one and nothing in particular. 5 Nothing is lost by the loss of individual ego or this world. The loss of an unreality is no loss at all, just as the loss of anything in our dream is the loss of nothing. 6 Nothing is lost at the loss of an imaginary city, which is altogether a falsity. So nothing is destroyed by the destruction of our egos and this unreal world. 7 Our perception of the world comes from a nothing. If it is granted as such, then there is nothing that can be attributed to it, like a flower growing in the air. 8 After mature thought with regard to this unreality, the conclusion is that you must remain as you are, as firm as a rock in the state in which you are placed and in the conduct appropriate to your station in life. 9 The world is the creation of your fancy as you wish it to be. There are particular duties attached to your station in all your wanderings through life. But all these immediately cease at the moment (of your realization in meditation), and this is the conclusion arrived at (by the scriptures). 10 All this is inevitable and unavoidable in life. It is avoided only by divine meditation, in which case the entire creation vanishes into nothing leaving no trace behind. 11 Unholy souls who view creation before them like the dreams of sleeping men are called sleeping souls. They see the world rising before them like waving waters in a mirage. 12 We do not know what to say about those who consider the unreality of the world as a reality, other than saying they are like the offspring of barren women. 13 The souls of those who have known the true God are as full as the ocean with heavenly delight because they do not look upon or even notice visible objects. 14 They remain as calm as the still air and as tranquil as the unmoving flame of a lamp. They continue to be quite at ease even if they are employed or unemployed in action. 15 As a minute atom makes a mountain, so the sages heart becomes full when it is employed in business. Yet the cold-hearted detachment of the wise seer continues the same as ever before. 16 The wish makes the man, though it is not seen by anyone. It is the cause of the world, though it is not perceived by anybody. 17 What is done by oversight or in ignorance is undone by the knowledge of it, just as, for example, thefts carried on in darkness are undone and disappear before the blaze of daylight. 18 All beings composed of fleshy bodies and the five elemental substances are altogether unreal, mere gross productions of only error. Understanding, mind, egoism and other mental faculties are of the same nature. 19 Leaving aside both the elemental and mental aspects of your body, you attain the purely intellectual state of your soul. This is called your liberation. 20 When attachment to consciousness and adherence to intellectual thoughts are secured, there will be an end to seeing phenomena and there will be no more appearance of any fancy in the mind, or any desire or craving rising in the heart. 21 But he who has fallen into the error of taking phenomena as true, his sight of the unreal prevents him from seeing true reality. In the end he finds that the phenomenal world is only a mirage, never faithful to anybody at any place. 22 He whose soul has risen to enlightenment
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finds the falsity of the world, but whoever happens to have any memory of the world in him comes to fall into the error of its reality again. 23 Therefore avoid your reliance on all worldly objects. Rely only on the one who is simply emptiness. Remember that it is good for you not to remember the world anymore, and that your forgetfulness of it altogether is best for you. 24 In your forgetfulness of the world you will find nothing to be seen or enjoyed in it, and nothing of its existence or nonexistence whatsoever. It is forever well, quiet and still as the calm and undisturbed ocean. 25 The whole visible world is Brahman himself. As such, the ocean of Brahman is to be understood as a positive reality. It is a bubble in his eternity, which is all quiet and calm after the absorption of bubbles and waves. 26 Meek and tolerant men are calm and dispassionate in their worldly transactions. They rest in the Supreme Spirit in their souls. 27 The saint whose soul is extinguished in God has only meekness remaining in him. Being devoid of all desire, he is unfit for all worldly concerns. 28 As long as one is not perfect in the extinction of his soul in God, he may be employed in his every day duties by being devoid of passions, hatred, and fear of anyone. 29 The saint being freed from his passions and feelings of anger, fear and other affections, and getting the tranquility of nirvana extinction in his mind, becomes as cold as snow and remains like a block of stone forever. 30 As the lotus contains the seed of the future flower, so the saint has all his thoughts and desires quite concealed in his innermost soul. He never gives any expression to them on the outside. 31 The mind wanders outside by thinking about the outer world. It remains confined within itself by meditation on the inner soul. Such is the contemplation of the Supreme Being, either as he is thought of or seen in spirit in the inner soul, or viewed himself to be displayed in his works of creation in the outer world. 32 The outer world is nothing other than an external representation of the delusive dream that is inside ourselves. There is not the slightest difference between them, just as there is none in the same milk contained in two different pots. 33 The motion or inertness and the fickleness or steadiness of the one or other are no more than the effects of our lengthened delusion. The state of one being the container of the other makes no difference in them, as there is none between the ocean and the waves it contains. 34 The dreams that we see in sleep are only operations of the mind, though in our ignorance they are supposed to be separate from ourselves. 35 He who remains in the manner of the Supreme Soul, quite calm and tranquil, free from all fancy and desires, becomes (extinct in) the very soul by thinking himself as such. He never becomes so unless he thinks himself to be so. 36 Perfect stillness of the soul is the divine state when there is not even a dream stirring in the mind, but what that state is or isnt is incomprehensible to the mind and inexpressible in words. 37 Yet this state is made intelligible to us by the instructions of our spiritual guides, by entirely removing our error, and by our intense meditation of it. Otherwise, no one can explain what it really is. 38 Therefore it is proper for you to remain entirely extinct in the Eternal One and tranquil as the Divine Spirit by giving up all your fear and pride, your grief and sorrows, your covetousness, and all your other errors. You must also forsake the dullness of your heart and mind, that of your body and all its parts, together with the sense of your individual ego and the distinctions of things from the one perfect unity.

Chapter 32 Sermon Inculcating Knowledge of Truth

Vasishta continued: As soon as the intellects reasoning commences to act, it is immediately attended by the sense of individual ego, the cause of the false conception of the world. This introduces a series of unrealities, just as the stirring of air causes winds to blow. 2 But when the intellects reasoning is directed by knowledge, its fallacy of the reality of the world does not affect us in any manner. We see the world as a reflection, a display of Brahman himself, but we are liable to great error by thinking the phenomenal world to be distinct from Him. 3 As the opening of the eyes receives the sight of external appearance, the opening of the intellects thought receives the false idea of the reality of the phenomenal world. 4 What appears on the outside to be quite distinct from the nature of the inner intellect cannot be a reality. Therefore this unreal show is no more than the dancing of a barren womans son before ones eyes. 5 Consciousness is perceived by its conception of the idea of things, but when we consider the fallacy of its conceptions and its idea of the unreal as real, it appears as a delusion like the appearance of a ghost to children. 6 Our egoism, from the knowledge that I am such a one, serves to bring us misery. But by ignoring this knowledge of myself, that I am not this or that, loosens me from my bondage to it. Therefore I say that our bondage and liberation are both dependent on our own choice. 7 Therefore, meditation which is accompanied with self-extinction and forgetfulness of ones self in samadhi, and remaining moving and quick in the manner of the quiet and dead, is the calm tranquility of holy saints, which is ever the same, unaltered, and without decay. 8 Therefore, O wise men, do not trouble yourself like the unwise with the discrimination of unity and duality and the propriety or impropriety of speech, all which is wholly useless and a painful frivolity. 9 A covetous man with his increasing desires meets with a series of ideal troubles gathering as thickly about him as the thronging dreams that assail his head at night. These proceed from his fondness of outward and visible objects and from his fond desires inwardly cherished within his heart. They grow as thickly upon him as the creations of his wild fancy. 10 But the meek man of moderate desire remains inactive in his waking state. By his freedom from desiring temporary objects, he does not feel the pain or fear the pains of his real evils. 11 Hence desire being moderated and brought under proper bounds resembles our freedom from its bonds. We get rid of our once intense thought of something by our neglect of it over the course of time and changing events. 12 The complete curtailment of desires is sure to be attended with liberation, just as the complete disappearance of frost and clouds from the sky leaves the empty vacuum to view. 13 The means of diminishing our desires is the knowledge of ego as Brahman himself. This knowledge leads to ones liberation, just as the study of science and association with the wise serve to convert ignorant men to discernment and knowledge. 14 In my belief there is no ego other than the one Supreme Ego. This belief is enough to bring men to the right understanding of themselves and make their living souls quite calm, tranquil and dead to the sense of their personality and self-existence. 15 The world appears as a duality or something distinct from the unity of God, just as the motion of the wind seems to be something else beside the wind itself, or breathing as another thing than breath. But this fallacy of dualism will disappear upon reflection of, how can I or anything else be something of itself? 16 That I am nothing is what is meant by extinction. Why remain ignorant? Go and associate with the wise and argue with them and you will come to learn. 17 In the company of those who are acquainted with truth you loosen the bonds of your worldly errors, just as darkness is dispelled by light and night recedes before the advance of
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day. 18 Make it the duty of your whole life to argue with the learned about such topics as, What am I? and What are these visible objects? What is life and what this living soul? How and from where did they come into existence? 19 The world is seen to be full of animal life and I find my egoism is lost in it. The truth of all this is learnt in a moment in the society of the learned. Therefore take yourself to the company of those inspiring men of truth. 20 Resort one by one to all those who are wiser than you in the knowledge of truth, and by investigation into their different doctrines. The demon of your controversy will disappear forever. 21 As the demon of controversy rises before the learned like a ghost appearing before children, so the error of egoism rises before the learned in their attempt to maintain their respective arguments. 22 Therefore let the diligent inquirer after truth attend separately to the teaching of every scholar of particular doctrines. Then, taking them together, let him consider in his own mind the meaning of their different teachings. 23 Let him weigh well in his own mind the meanings of their different sayings to sharpen his own reasoning and to accept the doctrine which is free from the flights of imagination and all earthly views. 24 Having sharpened your understanding by associating with the wise, cut short the growth of the plant of your ignorance by degrees, bit by bit. 25 I you to do so because I know it is possible for you to do so. We tell you people as we ourselves have well known. We never speak about what is improper or impracticable for you. 26 As the gathering or dispersion of clouds in the sky and the rising and sinking of waves in the sea is no gain or loss to either, so the attainment or deprivation of any good whatever is of no concern to the unconcerned sage or saint. 27 All this is as false as the appearance of water in a mirage, while our reliance on the everlasting and all pervading One is firm, secure and certain. By reasoning rightly in yourself, you will discover your egoism to be nowhere. Then how and from where do you create this false phantom of your imagination?

Chapter 33 Sermon on the True Sense of Truth

Vasishta continued: Rama, if a man will not gain his wisdom by his own efforts, by his own reasoning, and by the development of his understanding in the company of good men, then there is no other way to it. 2 If one tries to remove the false creations of his imagination by the prescribed remedies of the scriptures, he will succeed to change and correct himself, just as they remedy one poison with a counter poison. 3 All fancies and desires are checked by un-imagining them, and this un-imagining or lacking desire is the cause of liberation. Renouncing worldly enjoyment is the first step to liberation. 4 First consider well the meanings of words, both in your mind and utterance of them, and all habitual and growing misconceptions will slowly cease and subside of themselves. 5 There is no greater error or ignorance in ones self than the sense of ones own individual ego. Once this error of ego has subsided by disregarding of its accepted sense, then liberation is near. 6 If you have the least reliance upon your body and individual ego, you surely lose the infinite joy of your unbounded soul. But by forsaking the feeling of your personality, you are freed from the bondage of your fondness for anything of this world and become perfected in divine knowledge and blissfulness. 7 Lack of understanding makes all these unrealities appear as real to the ignorant. But we venerate and bow down to the sage who remains as unmoved as a stone at all this. 8 Who, from lack of any sense of external objects, remains as cold as a stone and remains at peace in the Supreme Spirit by meditation on the Divine Mind in his own mind, sees only an empty void both within and all around himself. 9 Whether visible phenomena exist or not, they tend to our misery. Only our thoughtlessness of them leads to our happiness. Therefore it is better to remain unconscious of them by shutting our senses against them. 10 There are two very serious diseases waiting on mankind because of mens cares for this and the next world. Both are attended with intolerable physical and temporal pains to the patients who suffer them. 11 In this world, the intelligent are seen throughout their lives vainly trying to remove their diseases of hunger and thirst by their best medicines of food and drink. But there is no remedy whatever to heal their spiritual illnesses of sin and evil, or to prevent their inevitable fate of death and rebirths in endless succession. 12 The best sort of men are trying to heal their spiritual illnesses and prevent their future fate by means of the ambrosial medicines of dispassion, good company, and improvement of their understanding. 13 Those who are careful to cure their spiritual complaints become successful through their desire to get better and the best medicine of abstinence and refraining from evil. 14 This deadly disease of sin leads men to hellfire in the future. Say, what remedy is left to try after he has gone to the next world where there is no balm to heal the sickly soul? 15 Try all earthly medicines to prevent your life from being wasted away by earthly diseases, and keep your souls pure for the next world by the healing balm of spiritual knowledge in this life. 16 This life is only a breath, like a trembling dew drop hanging at the end of a shaking leaf, ready to fall down. But your future life is long and enduring under all its variations. Therefore heal it for the everlasting future. 17 By carefully attending to the treatment of spiritual diseases at present, you will not only be healthy and holy in your soul in the next world, but you will evade all the diseases of this life which will fly far away from you. 18 Know your conscious soul to be like a microscopic organism which evolves itself into the form of this vast world, just as an atom contains a huge mountain which in time evolves from its core. 19 As the evolution of your consciousness presents the forms that you have in your
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mind to your sight, so does the phenomena of the world appear in the womb of vacuum. They are no more real than a false fantasy. 20 In spite of the repeated deluge and destruction of the visible earth, there is no change or end of the false phantom of our mind where its form is neither destroyed nor resuscitated owing to it being a fantasy without any reality whatever. 21 Should you like to lift up your soul from the muddy pit of earthly pleasures and desires where it is drowning, then you must put forth your human virtues as the only means to this end, without which there is no other. 22 The man of uncontrolled mind and soul is a dull-headed fool fallen in the muddy pit of carnal desires. He becomes the receptacle of all kinds of danger and difficulty, just as the seabed is the reservoir of all the waters falling to it. 23 As boyhood is the first stage in the life of a man, an introduction to later stages for perfection of human nature, so the first step to ones self-extinction is the renunciation of carnal enjoyments which leads to the subjection of passions. 24 The stream of a wise mans life is ever flowing onward with the rising and falling of events, without overflowing its banks or breaking its bounds. It resembles a river drawn in a picture, flowing without the current of its waters. 25 The course of the lives of ignorant people runs with tremendous noise, like the swift currents of rivers. It rolls onward with dangerous whirlpools and flows on with rising and setting waves. 26 Continuous creations and courses of events transpire with the succession of our thoughts. They appear before us like the illusive series of our dreams, the false appearance of two moons in the sky, or the delusion of mirage and apparitions rising to the sight of children. 27 So the constant waves raised by the rising and falling waters of our consciousness appear like an endless chain of created objects, rising in reality to our view but, being taken into mature consideration, false and unreal as they seemed true and real to our false apprehension of them. 28 It is said that there are worlds and cities of gandharva spirits and spiritual masters contained in the hollow vault of the sky. It is supposed that the space of the sky is a reservoir of waters. But all these are only creations of the mind. There are no such things in reality. 29 Worlds are like bubbles of water in the ocean of the conscious mind. They are only the productions of the fanciful mind, things such as they are thought to be. Together with the idea of ego, all are only forms of our varying thoughts. 30 The expansion of consciousness unfolds the world. Closing consciousness conceals phenomena from view. Therefore these appearances are neither inside nor outside of us. They are neither realities nor altogether unreal either. 31 There is one thing alone of the form of Consciousness which is unborn and unknown, and the Lord of all without any decay. It is devoid of substance and property. It is called Brahman or immensity and tranquil spirit, which is as quiet and calm as the infinite void and is rarer than even the empty atmosphere. 32 There is no cause whatever which can be reasonably assigned to the agitation, consciousness, and creations of the spirit of Brahman which, being above nature, is said to have no nature at all. Its agitation is like that of the air whose cause is beyond all conception. 33 Brahman has his thoughts rising in him like waves in the ocean, like our consciousness of dreams rising in our soul. In reality, the nature of this creation is neither as that of his dream or the wave produced from his essence. 34 Only this much can be said of him. There is only an unknowable unity which is ever the same and never as quick as thought or as dull as matter. It is not a reality or unreality, nor anything positive or negative. 35 The yogi who remains in this detached tranquil state of Brahman, unaware of his own consciousness, is said to be the best of sages and saints. 36 Who becomes inactive and inert as a clod of earth, even while he is alive, who becomes unconscious of himself and the outer world and thinks of nothing, is said to be the best of sages and saints. 37 We lose sight of wished for objects by

ceasing to wish for them. We get rid of our knowledge of ourselves and the world by our ceasing to think about them. 38 All things expressed in words have certain causes assigned to them. But the cause of their nature remains inexplicable. Only the knowledge of the cause of this prime nature leads to our liberation. 39 Nothing whatever has a nature of itself unless it is implanted by the intelligence of God, as if by infusion of the moisture of divine intelligence. 40 All our thoughts are agitated by inspiration of the breath of the great Intellect. Therefore know them as proceeding from the vacuum of the entity of the supreme Brahman. 41 There is no difference whatsoever between creator and creation, except the difference between air and its agitation, which are the one and same thing. The thought of any difference is as false as the sight of ones death in his dream. 42 An error continues only as long as the blunder does not become evident by the light of reasoning. When the error is cleared of its falsity, it vanishes into the light and truth of Brahman. 43 Error, being the false representation of something, flies away before a critical insight into it. All things being only productions of our error, like our conception of the horns of a rabbit, they all vanish before the light of true knowledge, leaving only the entity of Brahman. 44 Therefore give up all your errors and delusions and thereby get rid of the burden of your diseases and decay. Meditate only on the One who has no beginning, middle or end, who is always clear and the same, and who is full of bliss and bliss. Assimilate yourself into the nature of the clear sky (in that supreme state of Brahman-space).

Chapter 34 Sermon on the Practice of Spiritual Yoga

Vasishta continued: A man lost in the pleasure or pains that fall to his share in this life is lost forever for the future. But the scriptures pronounce that he who is not lost is imperishable. 2 He who has his desires always rising in his mind is always subject to the changes of fortune. Therefore it is proper to give up desire at first in order to prevent alternating pains and pleasures. 3 The error that this is I and that the world does not attach to the immortal soul which is tranquil and unsupported, quite dispassionate and without decay. 4 That this is I, that is Brahman, and the other is the world, are verbal distinctions that breed error in the mind by giving different names to the one, uniform and unchanging emptiness that is ever calm and quiet. 5 Here there is no ego or world, no fictitious names of Brahman and other. The all pervading One is quite calm and all in all. There is no active or passive agent at all in this place. 6 The multiplicity of doctrines and the plurality of terms used to explain true spirit and the inexplicable One are invalid and refutable. Among them, the word ego in particular is altogether false and futile. 7 A man absorbed in meditation does not see visible phenomena, just as a thoughtless person has no perception of a ghost standing in his presence, and just as a sleeping man does not perceive the dreams occurring to another sleeping by his side, or hear the loud roar of clouds in the unconscious state of his sound sleep. 8 In this manner the courses of spirits are imperceptible to us, though they are continually moving all about us. It is our nature to perceive what you know and never know anything which is without or beyond our knowledge. 9 Knowledge, being like our soul, shows all things like itself. Therefore our knowledge of ego and the world is not separate from the soul and the Supreme Soul. 10 Our knowledge manifests itself in the form of the world before us, just as our dreams and desires represent themselves to us as true. These various manifestations of the inner soul are in no way different from the soul, just as waves and bubbles are nothing but the water in which they arise. 11 In spite of the identity of the soul and its manifestations of knowledge, concept, ideas and others, ignorant thinkers consider them to be distinct things. The learned make no distinction whatever between the manifestation and its manifesting principle. 12 As the indivisible soul becomes a component body by assuming all its organs and limbs, so the eternally undivided spirit of God appears to be multiplied in all parts of the world and in the various works of creation. 13 The intellect contains numberless thoughts in itself, just as a tray holds a great many golden cups. Whenever this intellect is awake, it sees innumerable worlds appearing before it. 14 It is Brahman himself who shines in his brightness in the form of this fair creation. He is dissolved throughout the whole in his liquefied form of Intellect, just as the sea shows itself in the changing forms of its waves. 15 Whatever the mind thinks, it appears in the form of the world. Formless thought takes a definite form. But what is not in the mind never appears to view. 16 The concepts of exercising the intellect and the lack of any thought are both applied to the Supreme Intellect because of its almighty power to assume either to itself. This sort of explanation is for the instruction of others. In reality, there are no such states appertaining to the ever intelligent soul. 17 The world is neither a reality nor an unreality, but exhibits itself as such by using the reasoning of the intellect. But as the world does not appear absent reasoning, the same is taught in this lecture. 18 Reasoning and its absence are like the agitation and stillness of the soul. If both are under your subjection, it is quite easy and never difficult for you to restrain yourself by remaining as still as a piece of stone. 19 An appearance which has neither essence nor substance, nor any assignable cause
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for its existence, is the very nature of this egoism of ours. We know not from where it appeared like an apparition before us. 20 It is very strange that this apparition of your ego, which is no entity in reality, should take such possession of your mind as to make you unconscious of yourself. 21 By accident one happens to observe the ego in the person of the impersonal Brahman, just as a man by deception of his eyesight comes to see a tree in the sky. 22 If my ego and the world are really the same as Brahman, then how can they have their production and dissolution, and what is the cause of our joy or sorrow in either of these cases? 23 This world of thought comes to be visible by the almighty power of God. But the absence of thought prevents its appearance to us. Thoughtlessness of the world avoids its sight. 24 By mere accident the empty mind of Brahman exhibits the ideal world in itself, just as any man dreams a fairy city, or sees the objects of his desire and fancy in his mind. How is it possible to separate the contained from the containing mind? 25 Creation abides in the Divine Mind like waves abide in the sea, a statue abides in the wood from which it is carved, and pots and other things abide in the clay from which they are made. So all things abide in Brahman. 26 As all things appear in their formless state in the insubstantial and transparent emptiness of the mind, so ego and this world also appears in the Divine Mind. 27 As air by its natural inflation breathes out in various sorts of breezes, so the one whose nature is unknown evolves himself in every form of ego of each individual and of the world. 28 As formless smoke presents forms of elephants, horses and the like in empty clouds, so the insubstantial spirit of God represent the formless ego, you and all things beside in itself. 29 Creation is a component part of the unknown body of Brahman, just as leaves and branches are component parts of a tree. Each contains both the others cause and effect. 30 Knowing the impossibility of the existence of the world other than in the self, the ever existent soul, remain at peace within yourself without trouble. Be free from attributes and errors. Remain as free and detached as the free, open and empty space. 31 Know that neither you nor ourselves nor the worlds nor the open air and space are ever in existence. Brahman alone is ever existent in his eternal tranquility, calmness and fullness. 32 Seeing the endless particulars in the universe, remain free from all particularities such as I, myself, you, yourself, and the like. Think yourself to be in the sole and Supreme One and you shall have your liberation. 33 Knowledge of particulars serves only to bind you to them. Your ignorance of particulars lends only to your liberation. Sit as you are and do your business in your state of tranquility totally unaware of everything. 34 Do not let anything visible attract your sight or allow their thoughts to absorb your mind. Thus the world disappears with your thoughtlessness of it. Say what else have you to think about? 35 The absence of the visible and its observer resembles the state of the waking sleeper. It will make the mind as void of thoughts as the autumn sky is devoid of clouds. 36 We distinguish between creation and creator because we assume the action of Divine Consciousness is distinct from the unchanging Brahman. In the same way, our knowledge of the difference between wind and air causes us to think they are different. Therefore, our liberation lies in the absence of making this distinction and the knowledge of the unity of Brahman. 37 The knowledge of the vibration of the Divine Spirit is truly the cause of our knowledge of the world. The absence of this knowledge of differences is called our nirvana or utter extinction in God. 38 As the seed is conscious that the sprout growing out of it is its own kind, so Divine Consciousness knows the world produced from it is the same as itself. 39 As a seed becomes a plant from its conception of the plant in itself, so Divine Consciousness becomes creation from its concept of creation. 40 As thoughts are only various modifications of the mind, so creation is a pattern of Divine Consciousness. All kinds of seeds serve as examples of having products of the same nature. 41 The world is the changeless form of the unchanging essence of one. Know it to be as

unchangeable and without decay as He who is without beginning or end. 42 The Divine Soul is full of its innate will whereby it produces and destroys the world out of and into itself. This form of unity and duality is like the appearance and disappearance of an imaginary city. 43 As you have no distinct idea of the things expressed by the words sky and emptiness, so you must know that the words Brahman and creation bear no distinction from the Divine Spirit. 44 The great Consciousness or omniscience, which is the everlasting form of divine essence, has the knowledge of ego jointly eternal with itself, which men by ignorance assume to themselves. 45 There is nothing that ever grows or perishes in the mundane form of Brahman, but everything rises and falls in it like the waves of the sea, rising and falling in all ways and never to be lost in any way. 46 All things being of the form of Brahman remain in the same Brahman, just as all spaces remain in infinite space and all waves and billows rise and fall in the same sea. 47 Wherever you are placed and whenever you have time, attend but for a moment to the nature of the soul in your consciousness and you will perceive the true ego. 48 The sages, O Rama, have described two states of our consciousness, namely its sensible and insensible states. Now therefore, be inclined to that which you think is for your best good and never be forgetful of it.

Chapter 35 Description of the Supreme Brahma

Vasishta continued: The state of the soul is as calm as an untroubled mind during a journey from one place to another, when it is free from the cares of both places. 2 Therefore, to secure your unchanging composure, be quite unconcerned in all states of your life, whether when you sit or walk or hear or see anything. 3 Being thus devoid of desires and undistinguished in society, continue as steadfast as a rock in the particular conduct of your station in life. 4 Being placed in this manner beyond the reach of ignorance, one is blessed with the light of knowledge in his mind. 5 After ignorance disappears from the mind, there can be no trace of any thought left, nor can the mind think of anything when tranquility arises in it. 6 Brahman is truly one with the world and the same one appears as many to our ignorance which represents the fullness of Brahma as a multitude and his pure spirit as extended matter. 7 The fullness (of creation) appears as an emptiness, and emptiness appears as substantiality, brightness deemed darkness, and what is obscure is brought to light. 8 The unchangeable is seen as changing and the steady appears as moving. The real appears as unreal and unreality as reality, so that seeming as otherwise, and so vice versa also. 9 The indivisible appears as divided and energy appears as inertia. The unthinkable seems to be the object of thought and the undivided whole seems to shine in innumerable parts. 10 Without ego appears as the very ego and the imperishable one appears as perishable. The unstained seem tainted and the unknowable is known as the knowable throughout the known world. 11 The luminous one appears as the deep darkness of chaos and the oldest in time manifests as a new born creation. The one who is more minute than an atom bears the boundless universe in its heart. 12 He the soul of all, yet he is unseen or dimly seen in all these his works. Though boundless and endless in himself, he appears as bounded in the innumerable works of his creation. 13 Being beyond illusion, he binds the world in delusion. Being ineffable light, he centers his brightness in the dazzling sun. Know then, O best of inquirers, that Brahman resembles the endless expanse of the vast ocean. 14 This immense treasure of the universe, so enormous in size, appears as light as a feather when put into balance with the immensity of Brahman. The rays of his illusion, eluding moonbeams in their transparency, are as invisible as the glare of the mirage. 15 Brahman is as boundless and impassable as the vast ocean. He is situated in no time or place or in the sky where he has set forests of star clusters and huge mountains of planets. 16 He is the minutest of the minute, and the bulkiest of the bulky. He is the greatest among the great, and the greatest of the great. 17 He is neither doer, deed nor instrument of doing anything, neither is he the cause of another, nor has he any cause for himself. Being all empty within, Brahman is full in himself. 18 The world which is the great casket of its contents is as empty as a vast desert. In spite of containing countless solid and stony mountains, the world is as flexible as plastic ether and as subtle as rarefied air. 19 All things however time worn appear again every day. Light becomes dark by night, and darkness is changed to light again. 20 Things present become invisible to sight and objects at a distance present themselves to view. The intellectual changes to the material and the material vanishes to the super-physical. 21 The ego becomes the non-ego and the non-ego changes to the ego. One becomes the ego of another, and that other, and the ego becomes something other and different than the ego. 22 The full ocean of the surface of Brahman gives rise to innumerable waves of the world, and these waves like worlds evolve from and dissolve into the ocean of Brahmans breast by their liquid-like and plastic nature. 23 The empty body of Brahman bears a snow-white brightness
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over all its parts, making all creation full of a light as fair as snow and frost. 24 This God being beyond the space of all time and place and without any form, figure or shape whatever, stretches out the unreal figures in the world in space and at all times of day and night, like the unstable waves of the sea. 25 In this light shines the bright filament of worlds in the vast space of the sky. They appear like so many ancient trees standing in a large forest bearing the five elements as their five petal leaves. 26 The great God has spread out this light like a clear mirror before his sight as he wished to see the shadow of his own face represented in the translucent twilight. 27 The unbounded intellect of God produced of its own free will the spacious firmament in which the Lord planted the tree of his creation, which brought forth the luminous orbs as its fruit in various different parts. 28 The Lord created a great many varieties of things, both inside and outside of himself, which appear as internal thoughts in his consciousness, and as all entities and non-entities in his outer or physical world. 29 In this manner, the Divine Mind exhibits the different forms of things in itself and of its own will, just as the tongue displays the varieties of speech within the cavity of the mouth. 30 The flowing of Divine Will forms the worlds. It is the conception of pleasant sensations in the mind that causes these torrents and whirlpools in the ocean of the world. 31 All things proceed from Divine Mind, just as light issues from fire. By lulling the creative mind to rest, the glow of all visible objects is extinguished and put out of sight. 32 All the worlds belong to Divine Consciousness, just as the property of whiteness adheres to the substance of snow. All things proceed from Divine Consciousness, just as cooling moonbeams issue from the moon. 33 It is from the flow of colors from this bodiless Consciousness that the picture of the world derives its variegated colors. This Consciousness alone is known as an infinite extension without deprivation or variation at anytime. 34 This stupendous Consciousness, like a gigantic fig tree of the forest, stretches out its huge branches on the empty air of heaven, bearing the enormous bodies of orbs of worlds like clusters of flowers and fruit. 35 Again this colossal Consciousness appears like a huge mountain firmly fixed in the air, letting down many a gushing and running stream flowing with numberless flowers fallen from the mountain trees. 36 In this spacious theatre of emptiness, the old actress Destiny acts her part to represent worlds in their repeated rotations and successions. 37 In this stage the boy player of Time is also seen to play his part producing and destroying by turns an infinity of worlds in the continued course of kalpa and mahakalpa ages, and in the rotation of the parts of time. 38 This playful Time remains firm in his post in spite of the repeated entrances and exits of worlds in the theatre of the universe, just as a fixed mirror ever remains the same though shadows and appearances in it are continually shifting and gliding. 39 The Lord God is the causal seed of the worlds, whether existing at present or to come into existence in future, in the same manner as the five elemental principles are causes of the present creation. 40 The twinkling of Gods eye causes the appearance and disappearance of the world with all its beauty and brightness. But the Supreme Soul has no outer eye or its twinkle. He is confined in his spirit. 41 The very many great creations and dissolutions of worlds, and the constant births and deaths of the living, all of which are continually going on in the course of the nature, are all the various forms of the one unvaried spirit whose breath, like the inflation of air, produces and reduces all from and into itself. Know this and be quiet and still.

Chapter 36 Sermon on the Seed or Source of the World

Vasishta continued: The false varieties of the world take us by surprise, like whirlpool currents that attract passing vessels, but all variety is found to be of the same nature, like the various waves of the sea. 2 The nature of the whole world is unknowably known to us, just as the universal emptiness which rests in God is imperceptibly perceptible to our eyes. 3 I find nothing in the fancied cities of demons in the air. This really ideal world appears to be in real existence only to the ignorant. 4 The sight and thought of visible appearances are like the visions and memories of objects in dream. This world is only an appearance to sight and a fantasy in the mind. 5 Phenomena and fancy have no place except in consciousness, beside which there is nothing to be had except only an unbounded emptiness. Where then is the substantiality of the world? 6 The error of the world consists in the knowers knowledge of it. Ignorance (of the existence) of the world is free from this error. The knowing or ignoring of it is dependent upon you because the thinking or unthinking of a thing is entirely within your power. 7 The empty intellect is of the form of the transcendent sky or an extended space to which it is impossible to attribute any particular nature or quality whatsoever. 8 The world also is of the form of the intellect, so it also has no particular character or variable property assignable to it. It is seen to exist, but having no particular feature of its own, it is not subject to any variation in its nature. 9 All this being a representation of empty intellect, it has no substantiality whatsoever. It is the substance and not the knowledge of a thing that is subject to any change in its form. Knowledge belongs to the intellect, which is always unchangeable. 10 I see the all quiet, calm, and pure spirit of God. I am without the error of ego, or you and see nothing about me, just like we can never see a forest growing in the air. 11 Know that my voice is the empty air, just like my conscious thought. Know also that my words proceed from my empty consciousness, which likewise resides in empty spirit. 12 What they call the transcendent essence is the eternal and involuntary state of rest of the Divine Soul, and not what it assumes to itself of its own volition. That state of rest is like that of a slab of stone with the figures naturally marked upon it, or like pictures drawn on a plate or chart. 13 The silent sage whose mind is calm and quiet in the management of his ordinary business remains unmoved like a wooden statue without the disturbance of any desire or anxiety. 14 The living wise and detached man sees everything in his lifetime like a hollow reed, all empty within and without, having no core inside. 15 He who is not delighted with the outer world reaps the pleasure of his inner meditations. But he who is indifferent to both is said to have gone over the ocean of the world. 16 Give out words from your lungs like a sounding reed from its hollow pipe. Clear your mind from its thoughts by keeping your body detached from busy affairs. 17 Touch the tangibles as they come to you without desiring them. Remain in your solitary cell without wishing or caring or grieving. 18 You may enjoy the various flavors offered to you. Take them to your mouth with a spoon without wishing for or taking a delight in their sweet taste. 19 You may see all sights that appear before you without desiring or delighting in them. 20 You can smell sweet perfumes and flowers that fall in your way without you seeking them. Take the scents only to breathe them out, just as fragrant winds scatter flowers all around. 21 In this manner, if you enjoy the objects of sense with utter detachment, neither longing after nor indulging yourself in any, you shall have nothing to disturb your peace and content at anytime. 22 Whoever finds his taste for the poisonous pleasures of life increasing day by day casts his body and mind to be consumed in their burning flame and loses his endless bliss.
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Lack of desire in the heart is said to be the dull unconsciousness of the soul, called samadhi by dispassionate sages. There is no other better lesson to secure peace of mind than contentment without any desire. 24 Increasing desire is as painful as living in hellfire, while reducing desires in the mind is as delightful as living in heaven. 25 The feelings of the heart and mind are only desire. Desire moves mankind to practice austerities and penances according to the scriptures. 26 Whenever a man allows his desire to rise in any manner in his heart, he scatters a handful of the seeds of affliction to sprout forth in the fair ground of his mind. 27 To the extent ones craving is lessened by his reason, the pain of his covetous thoughts cease to harm them. 28 The more a man holds fond desires in his mind, the more they boil and rage and wave in his breast. 29 You heal the sickness of your desire by the medicine of your own efforts. I think you will never find a more powerful balm to rid this chronic disease. 30 If you are unable to check to your desires altogether, you must still try to do it by degrees, just as a traveler never fails to reach his destination even by slow paces. 31 He who does not try to diminish his desires day by day is reckoned as the meanest of men, destined to dive in misery every day. 32 Our desire is the causal seed of the crop of our misery in this world. When this seed is fried in the fire of our best reason, it will not sprout in the ground of our breast. 33 The world is the field of our desires and the harmful source of only our misery. The extinction of desires is called nirvana. Therefore never be tempted by the delusion of desire which leads to your utter destruction. 34 Of what use are scriptures dictates or teachers precepts if we fail to understand that our samadhi, our final rest, consists in the extinction of our passing desires? 35 He who finds it difficult to check the desires in his mind will find it hopeless to derive any good from his teachers instructions or scriptures teachings. 36 The poison of greed proves harmful for human life, just as forests full of hunters prove destructive to deer. 37 If one is serious about acquiring self-knowledge, he may learn to lessen his cravings and through lack of sensory perception be led to acquire his spiritual knowledge. 38 Extinction of wish is the eradication of anguish, and this is the bliss of nirvana. Therefore try to reduce your desires, and thereby to cut off your bondage. This will not be difficult for you if you only try. 39 The evils of death and old age and the weeds of continued sorrows are the produce of the secret seed of desire, which is to be burnt speedily by the fires of equanimity and detachment. 40 Wherever there is renunciation, you find liberation from bondage. Therefore always suppress your rising desires, just as you repress your fleeting breath. 41 Wherever there is craving, there is bondage in this world. All our acts of merit or demerit and all our distresses and diseases are the unchanging companions of our worldly wishes. 42 Deprived of its activity and the indifferent saint free from its bondage, desire is made to weep and wail like a man robbed. 43 To the extent a mans desire is decreased in his heart, his prosperity increases leading him onward towards his liberation. 44 A foolish man, ignorant of himself and fostering fond desire for anything, is watering the roots of the poisonous tree of this world only to bring his death by its harmful fruits. 45 The tree of desire grows in the human heart and yields the two seeds of happiness and misery. But the latter, fanned by the breeze of sin, bursts into a flame that burns the other, together with it its possessor.

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Chapter 37 If Will Is within God, Why Lecture against Desire?

Vasishta continued: Rama, listen as I explain more fully what I have already told you in brief regarding the treatment of the disease of desire, which also forms an article in the practice of yoga asceticism. 2 Tell me if the will is anything other than the soul in which it exists? If it is nothing apart from the soul, how do you wish to attribute an agency to it other than that of the soul? 3 Divine Consciousness, more subtle than open air, consequently is without any part and is indivisible. It is an integral whole, one with myself, yourself and the whole world itself. 4 This Consciousness is like an infinite emptiness. It is the knower and the known, the subjective and the objective. Then what is that other which you call the will? 5 There is no relationship between the container and the contained, or between subject and object, or between it and ourselves. We do not know of any saintly man who knows any object of his knowledge (to exist separately). 6 We are at a loss to determine the relationship between our own subjectivity and objectivity. It is just as impossible to determine my egoism and me as it is to see a black moon in the sky. 7 Such is the case with all the triple conditions of knower, known, and knowing. They have no existence of their own in the nature of things. I do not know how they can exist except in the essence of the one soul. 8 All unrealities exist in the reality of the soul. Our individual ego, the subjective, the objective, and all other things liable to destruction become extinct by nirvana in the self-existent and everlasting soul. 9 In nirvana there is no presence of anything, nor is there anything present that becomes extinct. The idea of the simultaneous presence and absence of a thing is as absurd as the sight of light and darkness together in the same place at the same time. 10 Neither can abide together on account of the repugnance of their nature, nor can both be extinct at the same time because we see the presence of the one and the absence of the other before our eyes. So there is no nirvana in the living because one is a state of rest and the other of pain and misery. 11 Phenomena are fallacies and afford no real happiness. Think them as unreal and rely solely upon the uncreated Lord by your extinction through nirvana in him. 12 The pearl shell looks like silver, but you will find none in it. It is of no use or value. Then why do you deceive yourself with such like trinkets of the world? 13 The presence or possession of trinkets is full of misery and their absence is filled with bliss. When you understand absence, thoughts of detachment proves to be a substantive good. 14 Why do the ignorant not come to perceive their bondage in riches? Why do they neglect to lay hold of the treasure of their eternal welfare, which is even now offered before them? 15 Knowing causes, effects and states of things to be full of the presence of the One and nothing else, why do they fail to feel his immediate presence in their consciousness, which spreads alike through all? 16 Mistaken men, like stray deer, seek Brahman in the causes and states of things. They do not know that the all pervading spirit spreads undivided and unspent throughout the whole emptiness of space. 17 But what is the conclusion of the doctrine of causation unless it establishes the Cause as the primary source of all? But how can the force which causes wind or the fluidity inherent in fluids be accounted as the creator of wind and water? 18 It is absurd to say that emptiness is the cause of vacuum, or that creative power is the cause of creation, when only the one God is the cause, effect, state, and all of everything himself. 19 Therefore it is absurd to attribute terms implying causality and creation to Brahman, who is identical with all nature, is unchangeable in his nature, and derives neither pleasure nor pain from his act of the creation of worlds. 20 Brahman, being nothing other than consciousness, can have no will or volition stirring in his nature, just as a toy soldier or painted army is nothing other than the material of which
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it is made without any movement in them. 21 Rama said, If the world and our ego are all unreal and phenomena are nothing other than the unknowable Brahman, then it is the same whether there be any will stirring in the Divine Mind or not, since God is always all in all. 22 Again if the rising will is identical with the nature of God, just as the rising wave is the same as the sea water, then what does it mean to teach the need to control the will? 23 Vasishta replied: O Rama, it is true, as you have understood it, that the Divine Will is nothing other than divinity itself. Those who are awakened to the light of truth know this. But hear me say more on this subject. 24 Whenever a wish arises in the breast of the ignorant, it gives rise to knowledge of the wished for object, just as the gloom of night departs before the advance of sunlight. 25 But in the heart of a wise man, the rising wish sets of itself. When there is understanding, questions about duality vanish from the mind. 26 When desire for anything is dead, no one can wish for anything. Who is free from ignorance sees the pure light of his liberation. 27 A wise man is neither fond of nor adverse to the sight of phenomena. He views the beauties of visible nature as they appear before him without enjoying them in his own nature. 28 If anything offers itself to him by some means or anothers cause, and if he finds it right for him to take it, then he may then have the choice to either accept or refuse it, as he may like. 29 Truly will or desire and the unwillingness of the wise are moved by and proceed from Brahman himself. They have no uncontrollable or inordinate desire, but pursue their own course and have nothing new or unusual to wish for. 30 As wisdom rises on one side, so desires set down on the other side. They cannot combine or dwell together. It is impossible for desire and wisdom to reside together in the mind, just as there is no possibility of light and darkness meeting at the same place. 31 A wise man does not need any exhortation or prohibition for any act because his heart remains quite cool to all desires. There is nobody to tell him anything to any purpose. 32 This is the character of a wise man. His desires are imperceptible in his heart. While he is full of joy in himself, he is unconcerned to all others about him. 33 There is also a shade of heavenly sadness settled in his outward face, and a distaste or detachment to everything in his mind. It is then that the current of desires ceases to flow in his heart, and his mind is elevated with the sense of his liberation. 34 Whose soul is serene and his intellect unclouded by the doubts of unity and duality, his desires turn to detachment and all thoughts remain concentrated in the Lord. 35 He resides calmly in the tranquility of the Supreme Soul whose knowledge of duality has entirely subsided in his intellect, whose belief of unity is not mixed with any other thing, and who is quite at ease without any uneasiness. 36 He has no object to gain by his acts or anything to lose by their omission. He has no concern whatever with any person or thing either for his good or otherwise. 37 He is indifferent to his desire as well as to his coolness. He has no care for the reality or unreality of things. He is not concerned about himself or others. He is not in love with his life or in fear of his death. 38 The self-extinguished soul of the enlightened never feels any desire stirring, and if ever any wish is felt to rise in his breast, it is only an agitation of Brahman. 39 To him there is no pleasure or pain, no grief or joy. He views the world as the quiet and uncreated soul of the divinity manifest by itself. A man who goes on in this manner, like the course of an underground stream, is truly called enlightened and awakened. 40 He who thinks pleasure to be his pain is one who takes bitter poison for his sweet nectar. The wise say that a man who converts evil to good and thinks himself happy in his mind is awakened to his right sense. 41 The world is one with Brahman when we think of ourselves as emptiness in the vacuum of Brahman, quiet as the tranquility of the Divine Spirit, thinking everything rests in the spacious mind

of God. 42 In this manner all consciousness is lost in unconsciousness and the knowledge of the world is lost in the infinity of empty air. The error of our egoism is likewise drowned in the depth of the even and vast expanse of the divine unity. 43 All that is seen here in the forms of moving and inert bodies of the world are as quiet as the motionless, empty sky that contains them, or as a visionary paradise of imagination. 44 As there is a free exchange of thoughts among people without any obstacle to their passage from one mind to another, in the same manner there is the same reflection of this shadowy world in the minds of all at once. 45 Earth, heaven, and sea, with hills and all other things, appear before our empty minds exactly as the false sights of water appear in a mirage to our eyes. 46 The dream-built city of the world appearing visibly before us is as false as a dream and as delusive as a demon appearing in the imaginations of little children. 47 Our egoism, our consciousness of ourselves which seems to be a reality to us, is nothing other than a delusion of our brain and an false conception of the mind. 48 The world is neither an entity nor a nonentity, nor is it completely a substantiality or un-substantiality. It cannot be determined by the senses or explained by speech, yet it exhibits itself as a fairyland in empty air. 49 Here our wish and effort, as well as our lack of both, are all alike in the opinion of the learned. But in my opinion it is better to remain coolly indifferent. 50 The knowledge of I and the world is like that of air in endless emptiness. The vibration of the intelligent soul, like a breath of air in vacuum, causes this knowledge in us, beside which there is no other cause. 51 The aptitude of the intellect of the intelligent soul to its thoughts, which is its longing for external objects, makes it what we call the mind, which is the seat of what is called the world. But the soul released from this aptitude is said to have its liberation. Follow this precept and keep yourself quiet. 52 You may have your desire or not. You may see the world or its dissolution. Ultimately you will come to learn that neither is any gain or loss to you, since there is nothing here in reality and everything is, at best, only the shadowy and fleeting form of a dream. 53 Will and no will, entity and nonentity, the presence or absence of anything, and the feeling of pain or pleasure at the loss or gain of something, are all only ideas and merely aerial fantasies of the mind. 54 He whose desires are decreased day by day becomes as happy as an enlightened wise man and similarly shares in the liberation of his soul. 55 When the sharp knife of keen desire pierces the heart, it produces very painful wounds of sorrow and grief which defy the remedies of mantras, minerals and all sorts of medications. 56 Whenever I look back into the vast multitude of my past actions, I find them all to be full of mistakes. Not even one was done without error, fault or blunder. 57 When we realize that all our past conduct has been in error, we understand all has been done for nothing. How is it possible for us to discern the hearts of others which are like inaccessible hills to us? 58 Our dealing with the unreal world is lost in the twinkling of an eye. For who can expect to hold the horns of a rabbit in his fingers? 59 The belief of our egoism, our personality consisting in our gross bodies, serves to convert the aerial intellect to a gross substance in a moment and make our mind a part of the solid body, just as a raindrop is frozen into a hailstone. 60 Our intellect gives us the concept that our unreal bodies are real, just as the undying principle of the intellect happens to see its own death in our sleep. 61 As the unreal and insubstantial emptiness appears to be the blue sky, so we suppose this creation is attributed to Brahman, which is neither real nor quite unreal. 62 As emptiness is the inseparable property of vacuum, and movement is that of air, so creation is an inseparable attribute of God, one and the same with the essence of Brahman himself. 63 There is nothing produced here as the world, nor is anything lost or annihilated in it. All this is like a dream to a sleeping man, which is a mere appearance and nothing in reality. 64 The nonexistent earth and others are apparent only in their appearance. Then why do you bother to care

or fear about being or not being of this world? The world is no more than a production and subversion of it in the region of Consciousness. 65 The apparent body is no reality made up of the five elements. It is only a formation of the Divine Consciousness situated in the Divine Spirit. 66 The instrumentality of the mind in the causation of the world is also untrue and absurd, owing to the union of two causes in one. 67 All things are uncaused and not consecutive in the Divine Mind where they are eternally present at one and the same time, just as the whole series of the actions of a man from his birth to death appear in an instant of his dreaming states. 68 All things are contained in and are as empty as vacant Consciousness. This spacious earth with her high hills of solid bases and all her peoples with their actions and motions are ever existent in their aerial forms in the knowledge of the aerial intellect of God. 69 The world is a picture painted on the airy surface of the Divine Mind. Its various colors are derived from the intellect of God. It never rises or sets, nor does it ever become faint, nor does it fade or vanish away. 70 The world is a huge wave of fluidity in the water of Consciousness. Nobody can say why it is so or how it is produced or how and when it subsides. 71 When the great emptiness of consciousness is calm and quiet, then the world remains in its form of an empty void. When the soul is quite thoughtless in itself, there can be no rise or fall of any object before it. 72 As we imagine mountains touching the skies and the sky encompassed by mountains, we suppose the presence of Brahman in all things of creation. 73 By the application of a bit of their intelligence, yogis convert the world to empty air or fill the hollow air with the three worlds. 74 As we imagine thousands of paradise cities of the perfected gods situated in the different regions of heaven, so there are numberless worlds scattered apart from one another in the infinite space of Divine Consciousness. 75 Ocean currents whirl apart from one another and seem to make so many seas of themselves though they are composed of the same water. 76 So numerous worlds, revolving separately in the emptiness of the Divine Consciousness, are all of the same nature, and not otherwise. 77 The enlightened yogi views worlds above worlds in his clairvoyance. The sages relate how they can pass to the ethereal regions of the perfected spiritual masters. 78 There are numberless imperishable beings and immortal spirits contained in the Supreme Spirit, just as endless worlds are situated in the hollow sphere of heaven. 79 It is the intrinsic pleasure of the Divine Soul to scatter wandering worlds about it, just as the scented flower diffuses its immanent fragrance and spreads its flying pollen all around. They are not extraneous, but are born within itself like the lines and marks in a diamond or crystal. 80 The fragrance of flowers, though mixed together in the air, are yet separate from one another. So all created bodies exists together in the air, all distinct in their natures. 81 Our fancies make air assume different shapes in the minds of men, such as gross material forms. Holy saints view them in their pure forms in the mind. 82 Neither gross materialists nor pure spiritualists are correct in their conceptions of things. But everyone has to feel according to his particular view and belief of a thing. 83 By thinking the world is contained in the thought of Consciousness, it will be found to be no way different from it, than water is from its liquidity. 84 Know time and the universe, with all the worlds contained in it together with the ego and you and all others, to be the one and very unity, which is the calm and quiet vacuum of the great Consciousness, the unborn and soul of God without decay. Therefore be not subject to passions or affections which do not appertain to the nature of God.

Chapter 38 Disquisition of Nirvana Quietism

Vasishta continued: The intellect sees the world because of the fallacy of its understanding, just as a man sees mountains in the sky because of the delusion of his eyesight. 2 The doctrines that the world is a creation of Brahman or of the mind are both alike in substance in that they regard the world in an immaterial and not physical sense. 3 The world that exists in our consciousness of it is the same as its internal knowledge. It does not exist outside of our consciousness, although it appears to be situated outside. The outward appearance is only our inner thought. 4 In our opinion, there is no difference between the two systems of interior and exterior knowledge of the world. Both rely upon our knowledge of them and both deny any reality to an exterior form. 5 Hence all things are the same as our intellectual knowledge of them. This knowledge is indistinct and unchanging in its nature, so the distinctions of the changing scenes of the world can have no place in it. 6 Therefore I adore that omniscience which is the soul of all, in which all things exist, from where all come to existence, which is all and displays all things in itself and pervades all infinity forever. 7 When the subjective intellectual power becomes united with the objective intelligible world, through intrinsic consciousness, then the organs of sense get the sensation of objects and not otherwise. 8 The intellect alone is both the subjective as well as the objective, both viewer and the view, the seeing and the sight. It comes to the same effect that the knowledge of all these is derived from and dependent upon the main intellect. 9 If the subjective and objective are not alike in the intellectual soul, then the subjective and intellectual soul can have no perception of the objective and material world. 10 Because the objective world is intellectual in nature, it is perceived in the subjective soul, just as a drop of water mixes with the body of waters owing to the similarity of their natures. This comes out of experience, not otherwise. Otherwise there is no combination of them, like two pieces of wood. 11 When there is no homogeneous affinity between two things, such as between intellect and a block of wood, there can be no union between them. Two pieces of wood cannot know one another because they lack intellect. 12 As two pieces of wood have no knowledge of one another owing to their dull unconsciousness, so nothing unconscious can be conscious of anything, except the intellect which has knowledge of only intellectuals. 13 The great intellectual soul beholds the world as one with itself in its intellectual light. It sees material bodies settled like a rock in it, without properties of life or motion. 14 Life, understanding and other faculties are the products of the intellects reasoning. They arise spontaneously in itself. 15 The essence of Brahman exists and exhibits itself in the form of the quiet and unmoving universe. It is personified as the male agent of creation because his seminal seed resembles the minute seed of a fig fruit. 16 First there is a small seed which develops into a tree. But that first seed had another smaller seed from which it was produced. Thus the primary or initial seed is the smallest and is contained within and let out as an emanation of the Supreme Soul. 17 Brahman is the first and minutest soul of all which gives seed to innumerable souls. The inner souls abiding in the spirit of God are known as spirit. The grosser sorts known as things are wrongly considered as other than God, though they are of the same nature with their original. 18 Whether placed above or below, a thing is the same and not different from itself. Everything is the very same Brahman no matter what state or form it may appear to us. 19 As gold in various forms of jewelry is nothing other than gold, so the unchanging nature of the unchangeable spirit of God continues the same in all the changing scenes and varieties
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in nature. 20 As the clouds of shadowy dreams that hang over your mind are in no way related to you, so the great bustle of creation and its dissolution bear no relation to my empty soul, nor do they disturb the even course of my mind. 21 As the blueness and moistness attributed to the empty atmosphere of heaven are nothing in reality, and as the legions of spiritual masters spirits who are supposed to traverse the regions of air are only deceptions of our eyesight, so the spectacle of the world in only empty air and a fallacy of our vision. 22 The desire of the heart and the false fancy of the mind lead out from within us and bring forth the fruit of the world, just as dirty water at the bottom of the earth moistens the seed that in time produces a big tree. 23 A wise man who forgets his egoism becomes one with the Supreme Spirit. By reducing himself like a bit of rotten straw, he becomes a tiny particle of the Divine Soul. 24 I find no one among gods, demigods and mankind in the three worlds who wishes to approach the Great Spirit who has the whole world as a hair upon his body. 25 He who knows the unity of the soul of the universe is free from the thought of a duality in every state of his life and wherever he may be situated. 26 Who has a great soul and views the world and everything in it as a mere emptiness and nothing in reality, how can he have any desire for unspiritual and sensible objects? 27 He who is indifferent and unconcerned with the endless particulars of the world, who views the existent and nonexistent in the same light, is truly a great soul and beyond all praise. 28 There is no living being that lives or has any property forever. It is only the inner consciousness that shows the various appearances in the empty space of the mind. 29 In vain do men think of their life and death in this world of nothingness. Neither is anything in reality. Both are false as the flowing and ebbing of waters in the mirage of life. 30 Upon due examination, this error vanishes together with its cause, then it appears that there is nothing such as life or death outside the existence of the imperishable Brahman. 31 A man is said to have crossed the ocean of the world who has withdrawn from the sight of what can be seen, who is quiet and content with himself, and who while he is living reckons himself with the dead and as nothing. 32 Our nirvana extinction is said to be the cessation of our mental actions, like extinguishing a burning flame. Nirvana is assimilation into the quiescent spirit of God and continuation in the mental tranquility of a holy saint. 33 Again, he is called the liberated who finds no delight either in ideas or phenomena, but remains quiet and aloof from everything that is an intangible emptiness. 34 I speak of my ego because of my lack of reason, but reason proves there is no ego in me. Hence the word ego has no sense to me, and that makes the existence of the world quite invalid and void to me. 35 Intellect is a mere vacuum. Our consciousness gives us knowledge of the nature of our inner understanding. The mind views external appearances agreeably to its internal ideas. 36 The real entity of your soul will become truly blessed in itself when you get the mind freed from all its objects everywhere and always, and by doing every work in the name of God. 37 Whatever you do or eat, anything you give or offer in sacrifice, and whatever you see, kill or desire, know them all to proceed from God. 38 All that we call ourselves or yourselves or any other, what we name as space, time and sky, mountains and the like, all these together with all actions are supported and full of the power and spirit of God. 39 What we see with our eyes and the thoughts of the mind, the world and its three times, and all our diseases, death and decay are phenomena appearing in the emptiness of Divine Consciousness. 40 Remain if you can like a silent sage, unseen and unknown by men and without any desire, thought or effort on your part. Remain as a lifeless thing, and this is the extinction of a living being in Brahman. 41 Be freed from your thoughts and desires and remain fixed in the Eternal One without any care for anything. You may be busy or sit easy, like the air when it breathes or is calm and still. 42 Let your humanity be above feelings of desire or affections. Let your thoughts be directed by the rules of scriptures and your action by the motion of a clock. 43 Look on all beings

without the show of fondness or disfavor to anyone. Be an inconspicuous light of the world, resembling a lighted lamp in a picture, never to be directed by the men of the world. 44 A man who has no desire or any object in view and who has no enjoyment in carnal or sensual enjoyments can have no delight except in his inquiries after truth by the light of the scriptures. He who has his mind purified by the teachings of the scriptures and the precepts of holy men finds the inscrutable truth shining vividly in his consciousness of it.

Chapter 39 Vasishtas Sermon on Peace of Mind

Vasishta continued: The man whose reliance on this world is really lessened, who is free from desire and unobservant of his religious vows, knows them all to be in vain. 2 Our egoism is like the vapor of our breath, falling and sticking on the surface of glass which, when taken under consideration, proves to be a causeless sight and in a moment vanishes to nothing at all. 3 He who is released from the veil of delusion, who has numbed his rising wishes and efforts, whose soul is filled with heavenly nectar, is said to be happy in his very nature and essence. 4 An enlightened mind not shrouded by the mist of doubts or skepticism resembles the full moon by illuminating the sphere of its circle with the splendor of its intelligence. 5 An intelligent man, freed from his worldliness and doubts, who has come out from behind the curtain of ignorance and received the light of truth, is known as the knowing soul, shining in the sphere of the autumn sky. 6 A holy man is like the pure breeze of heaven that blows freely from the region of Brahma, without any aim and without its support. It is cool in itself, cooling and purifying everything by its touch. 7 The desire to have an unreality is to expect something that is a nothing in nature, such as dreaming of heaven or seeking the son of a barren woman. 8 It is the same with belief in this imaginary world, which appears as something in existence. Such also is the nature of our desires which attribute a materiality to an aerial nothing. 9 The world is an unreality even at present, so there can be no reality in a heaven or hell in the future. Yet the use of these words is as false as the negative expression of a barren womans son or the flower of an ethereal tree. 10 The world is truly the form of Brahman himself. It is neither an actual nor an ideal existence, nor does it rest on any support. So we are at a loss to understand what is in reality. 11 By relying on the tranquil nature of the soul and confidence in yourself, you lose your reliance on the natures of things and avoid the troubles accompanying the whole creation and created beings. 12 The sight of the intellect, like the eyesight of men and the light of the stars of heaven, in a moment passes over millions of miles. In the same way, the sight of Divine Consciousness stretches all over the unlimited space of creation in an instant. 13 Divine Consciousness is as inconceivable as the womb of vacuum and as imperceptible as the calm and breathless air of the sky. Yet it is as joyous as a plant in full bloom. 14 The learned know all living beings belong to the nature of that consciousness. Therefore men of good intellect and judgment place no faith in the creation of the world. 15 As we have no knowledge of the dreaming state in our sound sleep, or that of sound sleep in our state of dreaming, so is our error of the worlds creation and annihilation. 16 Error is incidental to the nature of things, and sleeping and dreaming are properties incidental to the material body. Hence neither do these nor the acts of creation and annihilation relate to the omniscient and self-sufficient intellect. 17 Error is the unreal appearance of something. Error flies before examination, vanishing before it can be held. The silver in a seashell is an unreality because you cannot get your expected silver 18 from it. Whatever is unattainable is a nothing. Whatever is wrongly supposed is impossible to be had. A thing that is unobtainable by its very nature is never to be expected. Anything otherwise is contrary to nature. 19 It is the nature of a thing to agree well with itself at all times. The invariability of anything can never admit a variety under any circumstance. 20 All that is natural is attended with ease and delight. But the unnatural is full of pain and misery. Know and consider it well, and do what you think is best. 21 A minute seed containing a large tree is an example that applies to the formless
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spirit of God containing the form of the universe in itself. This is a statement of the Vedas. 22 Hence visual sight and sensations, mental thought and understanding, consciousness of ego or self, and all other properties belonging to intellectual man are the transcendent spirit, just as fluidity is inherent in water. All these intellectual and spiritual properties are of an airy or empty nature. 23 As an embodied being discharges his bodily functions using his physical body, so spirit and spiritual beings conduct their spiritual functions like the air, without actually doing them. 24 It is by force and power of the spirit that we mute creatures are enabled to utter the words I, you, and the like which are mere meaningless sounds, like those emitted by a drum, and bear no sense. 25 An appearance which vanishes upon closer inspection must be held as no appearance at all. So the world of forms and phenomena vanishes into the formless and invisible spirit of God. Nothing is real or substantial of itself. 26 Those who dream this world are dreaming men joined together with their dreams. They are never united with the spirit of God, nor do they join the society of holy spiritual guides like ourselves. 27 All these men are identical with me in spiritual light, being one with Brahman in the tranquil and empty nature of the very same spirit. But physically considered, they are different from me, in as much as they fluctuate in their busy course like vacillating winds. 28 I who am full of the True One appear as a dream or a dreaming man to these day dreamers. While they in reality are as nonexistent and nothing to me as the dream of a man drowned in the depth of his sleep. 29 Whatever be their conduct in life, my business is only with Brahman and my living and reliance are upon only Brahman. Let others think and see whatever they like and do. They are all nonexistent and nothing to me. 30 I am nothing myself, but belong to the all pervading essence of Brahman. By means of Divine Spirit the body appears as something and utters the word I and the like. 31 The soul is pure consciousness, not subject to the contrary sense, with neither its desire for enjoyments or liberation. They who know the Lord have nothing else to desire. 32 The bondage or liberation of men is dependent on their own dispositions. It is foolish to foster a great ambition here, as it is foolish to look for a sea in the hole of a cows hoof on the ground. 33 By restraining our natures and reducing our wants, is possible to obtain our liberation here. Otherwise, no riches or friends or any endeavor can bring about the emancipation we eagerly seek. 34 Consciousness is stretched over all our thoughts about this imaginary world, just as a drop of oil spreads over and diffuses itself in circles upon the surface of water. 35 As scenes seen in a dream seem pleasant in memory upon awakening, so the wise sage sees worldly sights and his egoism also in the same light of a dream. 36 It is only by the practice of yoga meditation that the impressions of the world are so erased from the mind as not to leave any trace behind, save that of an infinite and still emptiness. 37 Whenever the true nature of the soul appears with its solar blaze within us, it dispels the mists of our irrational desires and displays an empty nothingness of all existence. 38 After desires are dead and gone and understanding is cleared of its ignorance, the soul shines forth within us with the light of a burning lamp.

Chapter 40 On the Quiescence of the Soul

Vasishta continued: The sight of things, the actions of the mind, the internal faculties and perceptions of the senses are all of a super-physical nature. The true states of these categories are far removed from our knowledge and present only a faint appearance to us. 2 The minuteness of the super-physical, non-Brahmic nature is extended in the forms of external objects, but this extended appearance of the outer world is a mere illusion. 3 When this external nature disappears and subsides in the inner soul, then this phenomenal world is absorbed like a dream in the sound sleeping state of the soul. 4 Our enjoyments, our greatest ailments, our kindred and relations are our strongest bondages here on earth. Our wealth is for our harm and sorrow. Therefore hold yourself to yourself alone. 5 Know your bliss consists in your communion with yourself and that you lose yourself by your familiarity with the world. Become one with the supreme emptiness. Be calm and quiet like it and do not disturb yourself like the turbulent wind. 6 I know not myself, nor do I understand what this visible and mistaken world may mean. I am absorbed in the calm and quiet Brahman. I feel myself as the sound Brahman himself. 7 You see me as another person and address me with words you and the like in the second person. But I find myself as calm and quiet as the transcendent vacuum itself. 8 You see false appearances in the empty sphere of the Divine Soul. They are produced there by the misconceptions of your mind. These errors continually arise in your mind like the minds own erratic apprehensions. 9 The tranquil soul of Brahman knows no effort of creation, nor does the nature of creation know the quiescent nature of Brahman. It is like a soundly sleeping soul knows no dream, nor does the dreaming man know the state of sound sleep. 10 Brahman is ever wakeful and the world is nothing other than a waking dream. The living liberated man knows each phenomenon as a reflection of the ideal in Brahmans tranquil understanding. 11 An intelligent man well knows the true state of things in the world, and holy men are as quiet in their souls as the autumn sky with a moving cloud. 12 The false conceptions of ones egoism or personality and the existence of the world are like the impression of a battle preserved in ones memory or in his imagination. In both cases, truth and falsehood are found blended together. 13 The phenomena of the world, which is neither exhibited in the Divine Spirit as an intrinsic or subjective part of itself nor has a viewer for itself, which is neither an emptiness nor solid, cannot be otherwise than a false conception of the mind.
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Chapter 41 Repose in Ones Essential Nature

Vasishta continued: It is absurd to find the sense of egoism or self personality so deeply rooted in human nature. Therefore it is right that you should extinguish this unnatural egoism of yours by correcting your own nature. 2 This is done by enlightenment of understanding accompanied by detachment and distaste of the world. Understanding and detachment are associated with one another as the sun with its light. 3 There is no making or maker or act of this world, or any looker, looking or view of it. This stupendous world is altogether inadmissible, being only a picture on the plane of vacuum. 4 There is nothing prominent in it. All is situated on a perfect level, which is the calm intellect of one unvarying Brahman. 5 The Divine Soul exhibits the wonders of its Consciousness in the variegated colors of its imagination. No one can count the pictures of worlds painted on the plane of the infinite space of emptiness. 6 All these aerial bodies are countless like flying atoms. They are continually dancing and playing their parts in the open arena of Brahman, just as players exhibit their various passions, emotions and gestures in a theatre. 7 The seasons dance in circles with their towering heads. The points of a compass turn around with their encircling arms. The lower region is the platform of this stage and the upper sky is the awning stretched on high. 8 The sun and moon are the two playful and rolling eyes, and the twinkling stars are the glistening hair on their bodies. The seven regions of air are the members of the body and the clear and all adorned sky is the clean apparel on it. 9 The seas encircling the islands are like bracelets and wristlets round their arms, and the girding mountains of lands are like girdles around their loins. Fleeting airs are the winds of their breath, constantly breathing to sustain the lives of living beings to support their bodies. 10 Flowers, groves and forests form the wreathed decorations on their bodies. The sayings of the Vedas and Puranas are their script, the ceremonial acts are their action, and the results of their actions are the parts that all have to play. 11 Thus all this is only a dance of puppet show presented before us with the play of waters gliding with the fluidity of Brahman and the vibration of playful breezes. 12 The cause of causes is the cause of unnatural movements of bodies. It is the ever wakeful intellect that remains sleepless in the sleeping state of nature, and the waking awakener of dreams in the non-deep sleep state of man. 13 Rama, remain sleepless in your sleeping state and reflect on the nature of things as you see them in your dream. Be steady when you are awake and never be drowned in your sleep or deceived by your beguiling dreams. 14 The wise say that human liberation is when waking resembles sound sleep and there is no liking or cringing for anything. 15 The living liberated man sees his God diffused throughout the universe, and not as its cause or instrument, nor any witness of its sight. He does not leave to look on outward phenomena, nor does he think of the inner ideal that has displayed the whole. 16 He sees the world shining with the glory of God, and beholds it fair and perfect with the beauty and perfection of God. 17 Viewed in the reality of Brahman, the unreal world becomes a reality. Then it seems to be as tranquil as the nature of God, and creation is seen in himself until at last all is lost in the womb of a void vacuum, as if hidden in the hollow cavern of a rock. 18 The universe is like the womb of a luminous gem. Though it is thickly peopled everywhere, yet it is void like empty air. It is a nonentity and entity at the same time, something and nothing of itself. 19 It is in actual existence and in potentiality to the minds of many, but to one who sees clearly, it appears like an extended reflection of the infinite mind of the One. 20 As an imaginary city never disappears from imagination, so the reflection never
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vanishes from the mind of God in which all things are present at all times. 21 As glistening gold glitters and scatters its rays all around without changing or wasting itself, so Brahman appears to shine in his creation, yet remains quiet and without decay in himself. 22 The phenomenal world continues ever the same, though it is subject to constant productions and destructions of all beings. It appears unproduced and indestructible, as various and variegated as the very many beings in it. 23 Brahman is seated in his impenetrable tranquility in the form of the rising world without ever rising or setting himself. He is as free and void as emptiness and without any nature or property of his own. He is known to enlightened understanding.

Chapter 42 Lecture on Duality within Unity; Worship of God; to Remain Still Is to Be Like God; Mistaken Renunciation Makes Thinks Worse; True Nirvana
Vasishta continued: The mind is as calm and quiet as Consciousness. There can be no difference between them. When the Divine Mind is in its undeveloped and tranquil state, it is impossible to assign creation to it. 2 The burning lamp of understanding being extinguished, the false conceptions of the world vanish into the air. Sight and other mental operations are like waves in the water of consciousness. 3 The world bears the same relationship to the Supreme Soul as the fluctuation of the winds bear to air, and as the radiation of rays bears to light, which have no other causality except in themselves. 4 The world is inherent in the Supreme as fluidity is inherent with water and emptiness is inherent with air. But why and how they are so intimately connected with one another is quite inconceivable to us. 5 The world that is immanent in the vast emptiness of the great Intellect is manifest to our minds like brilliancy in a gem. 6 Therefore the world appertains to the Supreme Intellect in the same manner as liquidity is related with water, fluctuation with air, and emptiness with the infinite void. 7 As wind is related to air, so does the world relate to the Supreme Intellect. There is no reason to suppose a duality of any two to exist in the unity. 8 The world is manifest to the sight of the ignorant, but it is frail and nebulous in the estimation of the intelligent. However, the world is neither manifest nor mysterious to the wise who believe it to be an existence in the being of the self-existent unity. 9 It is well known through knowledge that there is nothing in existence other than the sole Intellect, which is pure intelligence and has no beginning, middle or end. 10 This is the great intellect of some and the holy spirit of others. It is the eternally omniscient Brahman according to some, and the infinite void of the vacuists. It is also called knowledge by the wise. 11 Some people understand this infinite and intellectual spirit in the sense of an intelligible being. Others suppose him to be knowable in themselves, and thus trying to know, become quite ignorant of him. 12 Without the intellect there is no knowledge of what can be sensed or any faculty of reasoning, just as there is no air without space or movement. 13 So it is the shadow of the great Intellect that makes our consciousness perceive the existence of the world. Whether the world is an entity or nonentity, there is no other cause of its knowledge except the intellect. 14 It is owing to the unity of this duality that this sense of their identity is verified. There is no one who can make unity or duality the all pervading emptiness. 15 There is only one universal, whole sphere of the empty sky, and the dualism of air and its winds is only words and nothing in reality. 16 The duality of the universe and its universal Lord is only a verbal and not a real distinction of the one positive unity of God. It is impossible for the self-existent soul to have a counterpart of itself, except its own consciousness. 17 That which has the appearances of the world is no world in reality but a shadow of it. That which is limited by space and time cannot be the infinite and eternal sphere. 18 As the different forms of ornaments are related to the substance of gold, so the world is related to Brahman whose unity admits of no duality or the attribute of cause and effect. 19 If the world is only a creation of the imagination, then it is nothing other than a nothing, the emptiness of space and the fluidity of water. 20 As the sky bears the appearance of the sky, so Brahman presents the sight of the world. Both of them being of the same kind of emptiness,
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there can be no duality or unity of the two in one. 21 Duality and unity are of the like kind, like the vast vacuum of itself. They are identical in their nature with the one all extended and transparent essence of the interminable Consciousness of God. 22 As all pebbles, clay dolls and marble statues have stony substance in them, and as there is no relation of cause or effect in anyone of them, so these varieties of beings have no difference in them from the nature of divine essence. 23 It is impossible for emptiness to be anything other than emptiness, and the reflection of light is no different from the light source, so this creation resides in and radiates from the great Intellect. 24 As images carved in a stone are of the same stone, so O wise Rama, upon insight, all these various forms of things in the world are lost in the substance of the all absorbing Consciousness of the great God. 25 The delusion of your mind presents all this bustle and commotion of the world to your sight. Upon your right inspection of them, they must remain as silent and motionless as a block of wood and as imperceptible as to a man with closed eyes. 26 As things absent from sight appear to be present in ones thought of them, both in waking and sleeping states, so the misconception of the mind presents phenomena to the sight of the open-eyed man. 27 Hallucination of your mind makes you see absent objects as present before you, both when you are awake as well as asleep. But suppress your thoughts and you will be as inert as a stone, as if in the abstracted and sound sleeping states of your mind. 28 However, you must not allow your mind to become as unconscious as a stone. Remain in your natural state and employ it in the service of your adorable object with the best offerings of your reason on all things about you. 29 Adore the Supreme God of nature for the enlargement of your understanding. Worshipped with your right reason and good sense, He will soon reward you with the best boon of your transcendent bliss. 30 The adoration of Indra, Upendra and the other gods, as opposed to that of God in spirit, is like worshipping rotten straw. Offering flowers and sacrifices are nothing compared to cultivation of reason and association with wise and learned men. 31 The Supreme God, the giver of all blessings, being worshipped in the true light of the spirit in ones own soul, confers his best blessing of liberation in an instant. 32 Why does the ignorant man resort to another when his soul is the sole Lord? Associate with the good, have your composure and content, and adore the Supreme Soul with your best reason. 33 The worship of idols, pilgrimages and all sorts of devotion, together with all your charities, are as useless as offering scentless sirisha flowers and as harmful as fire, poison and the wounds of weapons are to the body. 34 The actions of mean minded men are as useless as ash on account of their unreasonableness. Let them act with reason in order to render their deeds fruitful. 35 Why dont you develop the reasoning powers in your mind through knowledge of the true natures of things and concentrate your desires in the Supreme Spirit? 36 Only by divine grace does the mind have the faculty of reasoning. Therefore the power of reasoning is to be cultivated in the mind by sprinkling the ambrosial water of self-control over it. 37 Until the fountain of error in the mind is dried up by the blaze of right knowledge, the tendency towards material things continues to run over it everywhere. 38 Equanimity overcomes the sense of shame, sorrow, fear and envy. The conviction of the nonexistence of the world and all material things removes the possibility of their existence at anytime. 39 If the world is the work of a cause, it must be the self-existent Brahman that is both cause and effect at once, just as the reflection is also the reflector, and the reflected knowledge of a pot or picture is nothing in reality. 40 Know this world to be the shadow of Consciousness, just as ones feature is seen within a mirror, but the idea of the shadow vanishes when one is acquainted with the original. 41 For lack of the objects of objective knowledge, there remains the only unknowable

one who has the form of everlasting bliss. This soul of the immaterial spirit extends all over infinite space in its form of perfect tranquility. 42 All knowledge, knowable and knowing are said to be quite mute and silent in their nature. Therefore it is necessary for you to remain as quite and calm as stones and the caves in rock. 43 Remain like knowing and wise man, both when you are sitting or doing anything, because wise men know the unknown and are the personifications of true knowledge. 44 Remain as clear as the sphere of the sky. Be content with whatever may happen to you, whether you are sitting quietly or moving about or doing anything, and in every state of your life. 45 Wise men do what they have to do and whatever comes in their way, or give up and renounce all and everything and remain with their quiet and peaceful minds at every place. 46 Whether sitting in solitude or in silent meditation, let the wise man remain as quiet as a statue or a picture. Having repressed his imagination, let him see the world as an imaginary city or an airy nothing. 47 The waking wise man sees the rising world as sitting down in his state of sleep. Let him see the manifestations before his eyes like a man born blind who has no sight of anything before him. 48 An ignorant man seeking his nirvana by renouncing the world has more cause for regret than peace of mind. Preaching good ideals serves to increase their ignorance rather than enlighten in the path of truth. 49 An ignorant man who thinks himself wise in his own conceit is deluded to greater ignorance by thinking himself successful with his ill success. 50 A man comes to ill success who strives to grow by improper means. The learned reckon all fanciful steps as no steps at all to success. 51 It is wrong to resort to renunciation because of some transitory mishap that is always happening to humanity. The wise know that true nirvana is when a man has full knowledge of the errors of the world, complete disgust and distaste of all worldly affairs, and is therefore indifferent. 52 Rama, as you delight at the recital of tales, so should you should take pleasure in spiritual instructions with a melted heart and mind. Unless you know the transparent intellect and see it as diffused in the form of the infinite world, you cannot attain your extinction in it. 53 The knowledge of God that you have gained from the Vedas is sheer ignorance and resembles the false notion of the world that is born blind on earth. Trample over that knowledge and do not fall into its errors. Know God in spirit and by your extinction into it, be exempt from future reincarnations.

Chapter 43 On the Infinite Extension of Brahma

Vasishta continued: The internal sense of egoism and the outward perception of the world vanish into unreality upon right inspection. Then the truth of self-consciousness appears and removes even the dullness of the dull headed. 2 He who is freed from the fever of ignorance, whose soul is cooled by the drink of good understanding, is known by the indication that they have no further thirst for worldly enjoyments. 3 It is useless to use many words in philosophical debates when the simple knowledge that ones individual ego does not exist is enough to lead him to nirvana. 4 As waking men do not enjoy the pleasure of things seen in their dream, so wise people feel no enjoyment either for themselves or the world. The wise know they are as false as the sights in their sleep. 5 As one sees the illusion of a magic city in a forest, filled with the families of yaksha demons everywhere, so the living soul looks upon this world and all its contents. 6 As the deluded soul sees demons and their houses as realities and stable in their nature, so it believes its individual personality as a reality and the unreal world as material. 7 As the phantoms of demons are seen with their false shapes in the open desert, so we see all these creatures in the fourteen worlds around us. 8 He who knows himself to be a nothing and that the knowledge of his ego is an error, finds his illusion of a demon to be no such thing in reality. His mind melts into the condition of his intellect. 9 Be as quiet in your mind as you are sitting still before us. Renounce all your fears and fancies, all your giving and taking, together with the suppression of all your desires. 10 Perceptible phenomena are neither in actuality nor in potentiality. The whole extent of the objective world is identical with the subjective spirit of God. Or, if it is impossible for subjective reality to become the objective unreality, then tell me, how can the objective come to exist? 11 The humidity of spring season produces and diffuses itself in the vegetation of the ground. Similarly, the core and essence of intellect fills and exhibits itself in the form of creation. 12 If this appearance of the world is only the reflection of intellect, then why speak of its unity or duality? Know that the world is identical with the sole entity, and hold your peace and tranquility. 13 Be full with empty intellect. Drink the sweet nectar of spirituality. Sit without fear and full of joy in the blissful paradise of nirvana. 14 Why do you men of false understandings wander about in the desert of this earth like vagrant deer? 15 O you men of blinded understandings! Why do you run so hurriedly with your unsatisfied thirst after the mirage of the world, only to be disappointed in your most confident expectations? 16 Why do you, O foolish men, thirst after the mirage of the appearances and fancies of your minds? Do not waste your lives in vain struggles, or fall victims to your desires like deluded deer. 17 Demolish the magic castle of worldly enticements by the stronger power of your reason. See how you can destroy the series of evils which at first sight appear as pleasures. 18 Do not make the mistake of looking at the blue vault of heaven as a reality. It is a mere show amidst the great emptiness of Brahman. You should fix sight on its true empty aspect. 19 O you men who are as frail and fickle and liable to fall down like shaking dewdrops hanging on the edge of a leaf, regardless of your fates, do not sleep in the womb of this frail and mortal world. 20 Remain always, from first to last, in your true nature of calmness, without ever being unmindful of yourself. Remove the faults of the subjective and objective from your nature. 21 The world which the ignorant know as a reality is utterly nonexistent to the wise. That one which is the true reality has no name. 22 Break the iron chains of desire which bind you fast in this world. Rise high above the heaven of heavens, like a lion climbing to the towering tops of mountains by using force to break loose from his imprisoning cage. 23 The knowledge of I and
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mine is an error. Only peace of mind makes liberation. It is the essence of the yogi, wherever and however he may be situated. 24 The tired pilgrim of the world has the following five stages for his rest, namely his self renunciation, his lack of any desire, and the absence of the three sorrows that result from his own fault, those of others, and the course of nature. 25 The wise man is unknown to the ignorant and the ignorant are unknown to the wise. Ignorant and wise see the world in two opposite lights, each quite unknown to the other. 26 Once the fallacy of the world has fallen from the mind, no more worldly things appear before the mind, just as a seafarer seeing one vast expanse of water about him does not see the inland water inlets which gush out of the sea as its offspring. 27 After the error of the world disappears from the awakened mind of the tranquil yogi, he sits quite unconscious of it, as if it had melted into eternity. 28 Like grass and straw burnt to ashes, we do not know where the ashes fly and vanish with the winds of the air. So the nature of the sage being deadened by detachment, his knowledge of the world goes to nothing. 29 It is good to know the world as the imitation of the essence of Brahman. But the meaning of the word Brahman being Universal Soul, it does not apply to the sense of the changing world as the work of God. 30 As the world appears to be everlasting and unchanging to the ignorant lad, so it seems coexistent with its eternal cause to the detached sage. 31 The wakeful sage keeps vigil at night when it is time for all beings to lie down in sleep. Daytime, when all creation is awake, is the night of retired saints. 32 The wise man is active in his mind while he seems to be sitting still and inactive in his body. When he is waking, his organs of sense are as dormant as those of figures in a painting. 33 The wise man is as blind in his knowledge of the outer world as one who is born blind. The wise man has merely a faint idea of the world in his mind where it appears or not at times, like a dream in his slight and sound sleep. 34 All worlds and worldly things lead to the sorrow of the ignorant who are unacquainted with and delight in untruth. They are busy with the objects of the senses and their thoughts about them, just as one with visions in his dream. 35 As a wise man tastes no pleasure in his waking state, so must he remain unconscious of them in his sleep, continuing with undivided attention in the meditation of the Supreme Being. 36 A wise man who has curbed his desire of worldly enjoyments and is liberated from its bonds remains with his cool and composed mind and enjoys the tranquility of nirvana without even his efforts of yoga meditation. 37 As the course of water always run downward, never upward, so the course of the mind is ever toward the objects of sense, and sensible objects are the only delight of the mind. 38 The minds nature, with all its thoughts of internal and external objects, is the same as a great ocean full of its own currents and the streams of rivers that flow into it. 39 As streams combine into the united flow of a river, so all the internal and external, righteous and unrighteous thoughts of the mind run in an unchanging course. 40 Thus the mind appears as a vast and wide extended sea, rolling on with all its indistinct thoughts and feelings, just as the inseparable waters and waves of the sea. 41 In this manner, the absence of one thing causes the extinction of both, just as in the example of air and its winds. If either is lacking, there is neither wind nor its ventilation. 42 The mind and its working being one and the same thing, they are both controlled if one is brought under control. Know this well, to develop ones mind, nobody should hold any earthly desire dear. 43 The mind gets its peace by true knowledge. The mind of a wise man, with all its desires, is destroyed of itself without the aid of 44 austerities. As a man gets free of the fear of an enemys hatred by destroying the image he created himself, so one is able to kill his mind by committing himself to the Divine Spirit. 45 A wise man sees the cosmos and chaos as accompanying with each other, though they appear separate. Birth and

death and prosperity and adversity are mere errors. There is nothing else beside the one infinity. 46 As one has no knowledge of the dream of another sleeping by his side, as an adult man does not have a timid childs fear of a demon, and as a warrior knows no demon, so the wise sees no inanimate world before him. 47 The ignorant think the wise are fools and the barren woman thinks of her child, so one unacquainted with the meaning of a word attempts to explain its sense. 48 Understanding is ever existent, without beginning or end, and nature is known to exist ever since creation has begun. The word mind is meaningless. Mind is undivided and unbounded in its nature. 49 Understanding resembles the water of the sea, and the mind and intelligence are similar to its clear waves. How can this fluid have an end, and what is the meaning of mind, but a shape of this psychic fluid? 50 All error is useless. Live to your nature for your good. Be of the nature of pure understanding and you will become as clear-sighted as the clear autumn sky. 51 After passing through the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep, there is no perception of the mind or mental operation for the withdrawn yogi. The knowledge of endless varieties of unrealities of creation is blown away and lost in the sight of the Everlasting One. 52 Forsake the endless chain of phenomena and be attached to your nature of solid consciousness. All things, whether internal or external, are comprehended under its knowledge. 53 Say, how can you separate objects from the mind as you do seed, branches and fruit from one another? What can be known cannot be known without their knowledge, and knowledge is no known category. 54 The endless varieties and particulars are still and quiet in the Divine Soul, which is the only entity and manifests itself as all. All objects being only ideas in the mind, and the mind being a negative also, they are all only errors of the brain. 55 The mind which is the framer of objective thoughts is a nothingness of itself and an error also. The Eternal Spirit being the solitary soul of all, it is useless to imagine the entity of the mind. 56 The objective, being a false idea, is only a false apparition. Objects also having no cause for their creation also prove the subjective mind to be a falsity. 57 The mind is as fickle as flickering lightning and deludes us by the flashes of things of its own making. 58 The mind is nothing before knowledge of the Self-existent One. With that knowledge of the One, the mind no longer deceives us with its false shows. This world, which is the creation of the mind, disappears before the knowledge of the soul. 59 Men vainly wish to take silver from sea shells and believe the negative world is a positive one, but such is found to be nothing before the light of reason. 60 The error of egoism is opposed to the truth of nirvana, and error is the cause of only misery to mankind. Ego is truly as false as a mirage, a nonentity as emptiness itself. 61 The knowledge of the self or soul removes the error of egoism. By knowing and being full with the knowledge of the soul, one is absorbed with it, both internally and externally. 62 One who is unified with the Universal Soul resembles a wave that mixes altogether with the main water. The Divine Soul sends its essence to all, just as a tree supplies its sap to all parts from root to leaf. 63 There is one unchanging soul that shines far beyond the reach of our knowledge in the same way as the clear vault of heaven appears to be millions of miles away from us. 64 There is only one Unknowable and Infinite Being, and that is far beyond our knowledge of what can be perceived, and is purer and more rarefied than the all pervading emptiness. 65 Therefore know that pure and holy one to be both the states of knowledge and what can be known, just as chilled clarified butter becomes as compact as stone. 66 Divine Consciousness makes itself the object of its thought as a thinkable being. The soul thinks in itself as the mind, from eternity throughout the infinity of space. 67 The unintelligent Nyaya school of philosophy maintains the unity and positive rest of God. Although they may not be mistaken in this position, yet it is wrong to separate omniscience from the being of

Divine Unity. All great minded souls who are free from pride melt away into the inscrutable quiescence of God. Those who are unerring in divine knowledge find their eternal rest in samadhi, the renunciation of themselves to the Supreme Spirit.
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Chapter 44 Growing the Tree of Samadhi; the Deer-Like Mind

Rama said, O holy sage, describe the tree of samadhi in detail, together with all its vines, flowers and fruit which supply holy men with good refreshment throughout their lives. 2 Vasishta replied: Hear me describe the tree of samadhi, which always grows in the forest of holy people and is ever filled with luxuriant foliage and flowers and luscious fruit. 3 The learned say that somehow or the other, whether by culture or its own spontaneity, a dissatisfaction with the wilderness of this world grows in the heart of a reasonable man. 4 Its field is the heart of the wise man, furrowed by the plough of prosperity, watered with delight day and night, whose channel is now flowing with sighs. 5 The hearts regret of the world is the seed of samadhi. It grows of itself in the ground of the humble heart of the wise in the forest land of reasonable men. 6 When the seed of humble reflection falls in the minds of magnanimous men, it must be diligently and untiringly watered with the following articles, namely: 7 the society of pure, holy and detached men, who speak sweetly and kindly for the good of all others, and whose speech serves like the sprinkling of fresh water, milk or dewdrops on the seedlings ground; 8 and by irrigating with the sacred waters of the sayings of the holy scriptures, which serve to grow the seed through their cool and ambrosial moisture. 9 When the magnanimous soul perceives the seed of humble reflection has fallen in the mind, he must try to preserve and cultivate that seed with all diligence. 10 This seed is to be grown by the fertilizer of austerities, by the power of using other means, by visiting and resting in places of pilgrimage and holy shrines, and by stretching perseverance as his fence around the garden of the seed. 11 After the seed has sprouted, the duty of well taught man is to always protect it with the help of his consort, having contentment and cheerfulness. 12 Then he should keep birds off his expectations, protect the seedling from the vultures of his desire and cupidity, and chase away the fowls of his affection for others so they do not dart upon and pick up the seed. 13 Then desirepromoted activity is to be swept away by gentle acts of piety serving as sweepers of vice and unrighteousness. Then the shades of ignorance are to be dispelled from this ground by the indescribable light of the sun of reason. 14 Wealth, women and all sorts of frail and fleeting enjoyments overtake this rising seedling of discrimination, just as darts of lightning issue from the clouds of unrighteousness. 15 Such thunderbolts are prevented by the iron rod of patience and gravity, by the repetition of mantras, by holy ablutions and austerities, and by the trident of the three letter Om. 16 In this manner the seed of meditation, being carefully preserved from neglect, sprouts forth in the seedling of discrimination with its handsome and prospering appearance. 17 The ground of the mind shines brightly with this brilliant seedling of discrimination. It gladdens the hearts of men in veneration of it, just as smiling moonbeams illuminate the sky. 18 This seedling of discrimination shoots forth a couple of leaves that grow out of themselves. One of them is the knowledge of scriptures and the other is the society of the good and wise. 19 Let your fixedness support the stem and height of this tree and make your patience its covering bark. Through your detachment from the world, supply it with the moisture of detachment. 20 The tree of godliness, nourished with the moisture of un-worldliness and watered by the rainwater of scriptures, attains its full height in course of short time. 21 Being thickened by the core of divine knowledge, the foundation of good society, and the moisture of detachment, this tree attains a fixity which is not to be shaken by the apes of passions and affections.
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Then this tree shoots forth in luxuriant branches of wisdom which stretch far and wide with their fresh vegetation and green leaves, distilling their juicy sweets all around. 23 These are the branches of frankness and truth, of constancy and firmness, of equanimity and unchangeableness, of calmness and friendship, and of kindness, self-respect and renown. 24 These branches are adorned with the leaves of peace and tranquility and studded with flowers of good repute and fame. This tree of godliness becomes the parijata tree of paradise to the hermits of the forests. 25 In this manner the tree of divine knowledge, filled with its branches, leaves and flowers, brings forth day by day the best and richest fruits of knowledge. 26 It blossoms in clusters of the flowers of fame and is covered with leaves of bright qualities all over. It flows with the sweets of dispassion and its filaments are full of the dust of intelligence. 27 It cools all sides like clouds in rainy weather and the heat of worldly anxieties, just as moonbeams assuage the heat of sunshine. 28 It spreads the awning shade of harmony, just as clouds cast a cooling shadow below. It stretches a quiet composure over the mind, just as an extensive cloud spreads a still calm in the air. 29 It builds a sound and sure basis for itself like rocks standing on their solid bases. It lays the foundation of future rewards on high and causes all blessings to attend upon it. 30 As the tree of discrimination grows higher and higher, day by day, so it stretches a continuity of cooling shade over the forest of the hearts of men. 31 It diffuses a coldness that pacifies the heat below and makes the plant of the understanding shoot forth like a tender creeper sticking out of snow. 32 The deer-like mind, tired of its wandering about the deserts of this world, takes its rest and refuge under this cool shade, just as a weary traveler, worn out since birth in his journeys among men, comes to take his rest at last. 33 This deer of the mind irritates its mouth by browsing on thorny brambles of the forest for food. It is hunted by its enemies the passions, which lay waiting like hunters to kill the soul, just as they slay the body of the deer for its skin. 34 The deer-like mind, ever impelled by its vain desires, wanders all about the desert lands of this world seeking the poisonous water of the mirage of its egoism. 35 It sees an large green valley at distance, and batters and shatters its body running after its vegetation. Harassed in search of the food and forage for its offspring, it falls headlong into the pit for its destruction. 36 Being robbed of his fortune, put to bodily troubles, led by thirst of gain to the ever running stream of desires, man is at last swallowed up and carried away by the currents of waves 37 Man flies far away for fear of being overtaken by a disease, just as the deer does for fear of a hunter, but man is not afraid of the hunter who is the fate that falls upon him unawares at every place. 38 The timid mind is afraid of the shafts of bad fortune flying from every known quarter, of being hit by stones flung from the hands of enemies on every side. 39 The mind is ever hurled up and down with the ups and downs of fortune. It is continually crushed under the millstone of his rising and setting passions. 40 One who follows after thirst without placing reliance upon the laws taught by the great falls headlong into the delusion of the world, just as one who suffers a scratch may as well be wounded over his body passing through beautiful, thorny vines. 41 Having entered into mans physical body, the mind is eager to fly away from it, but there is the uncontrollable elephant of sensuous desire who stuns it with its loud shrieks. 42 There is also the huge snake of worldly affairs which numbs the mind with its poisonous breath. Women on the face of the earth serve to enslave the mind in love to them. 43 There is also the wildfire of anger, burning like stinging bile in the human breast, inflaming the mind with endless pain by its repeated recurrence in the breast. 44 Desires clinging to the mind are like gnats and fleas biting and stinging it constantly. Its carnal enjoyments, desires and revelries are like jackals shrieking loudly. 45 The mind is led by its actions to wander all about without any rest or profit, driven from place to place by tiger-like poverty staring grimly at its face. The mind is blinded by its affections for children and

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others, and at last it is lost in the hidden pitfall of death. 46 Again, the mind trembles with the sense of honor and its fear of losing it, which like a lion strikes fear in its heart while struck with terror at the glaring of the wolf of death at its face. 47 The mind is afraid of pride, just as a forester dreads dragons coming to devour him, fearing their appetites, open mouths and bloody teeth that threaten to engulf the mind in ruin. 48 The mind should have no less fear of its female companions in youth, whose amorous embraces, like gusts of wind, threaten to hurl it headlong to repeated hell-pits. 49 It seldom happens, O prince, that the deer-like mind finds its rests in the tree of godliness, just as the living beings do when they come from darkness to daylight. 50 O you hearers, let your deer-like minds find that delight in the tree of the peace of samadhi, whose name is not even known to the ignorant who are deluded by their fickle and smiling fortunes that resemble the quivering smiles of flowers.

Chapter 45 The Deer-Like Mind; Climbing the Tree of Life; Meditation in Samadhi
Vasishta continued: O destroyer of enemies, the deer-like mind, having found rest in that sacred tree, remains quite pleased with it and never thinks of going to any other tree. 2 In course of time, the tree of discriminate knowledge brings forth its fruit which ripen gradually with the sweet substance of spiritual knowledge inside. 3 The deer-like mind, sitting under the good tree of its meditation, beholds its outstretching branches hanging downward with loads of the fruit of merit and virtue. 4 It sees people climbing in this tree with great persistence and pains in order to taste these sweet fruit in preference to all others. 5 Worldly people decline to climb the tree of knowledge, but those who have climbed high upon it never think of ever coming down from the high position which they have attained. 6 He who has ascended on the tree of reason and knowledge to taste its delicious fruits, forgets the taste of his ordinary food and forsakes the bondage of his former deserts, like a snake casting aside his old skin. 7 The man who has risen to a high station, looks at himself and smiles to think how miserly he had passed for so long in his past life. 8 Having mounted on the branch of fellow feeling and putting down the snake of selfishness under his feet, he seems to reign in himself as if he were the sole monarch over all. 9 As the digits of the moon decrease and disappear in the dark fortnight, so the lotuses of his distress are lost in oblivion and the iron chains of his greed are rubbed out day by day. 10 He does not pay attention to what is unattainable, nor does he care about what is not obtained. His mind is as bright as a clear moonlit night and the passions and affections of his heart are all quite cold. 11 He sits pouring over pages of the scriptures, meditating in silence on their profound sense. He observes the course of nature with a broad view, from the highest and greatest objects to the mean and most minute. 12 He sits smiling, looking derisively upon the previously described sevenfold grounds of his past errors, full with thick forests of poisonous fruits and flowers. 13 Having fled from the tree of death and descended from that of life, his aspiring mind rises by degrees to its higher branches like a quick flying bird. There he sits like a prince delighted in his elevated station. 14 From there he looks down upon family and friends, wealth and property, as if they were from a former life or visions in his dream. 15 He coldly views his passions, feelings, fears, hopes, errors and honors as actors playing out their various roles in the drama of his life. 16 The course of the world is like that of a rapid river running onward with furious and mischievous currents, laughing with its foaming wave breakers, now swelling high and then suddenly sinking. 17 He does not feel any craving in his breast for wealth, wife or friends who live dead to his feelings like an unconscious corpse. 18 His sight is fixed only on that single fruit on high, which is the holy and conscious soul or consciousness. With that one object in his sight, he climbs up to the higher branches of this tree of life. 19 He remembers the blessings of the preceding steps of his yoga meditation, filled with the ambrosia of contentment. He remains as content at the loss of his riches as he had felt at their gain. 20 He is as displeased and annoyed with the callings of his life, whether private or public, as one who is untimely roused from his wholesome sleep. 21 A weary traveler, fatigued from his long and tiring journey, longs for rest from his labor. In the same way, a man tired of his repeated journeys through life caused by his ignorance requires his rest in nirvana. 22 As a wing lights a fire without the help of fuel, so let him light the flame of his soul within by the breath of respiration and become united with the Supreme Spirit. 23 Let him forcefully check his desires for anything that falls of itself before his sight, although he is unable to prevent his yearning eye from falling upon it. 24 Having attained this great dignity which
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confers the fruits of best blessings on man, the devotee arrives to the sixth stage of his devotion, whose glory no language can describe. 25 Whenever he happens to meet with some unexpected good which fortune may present to him, he feels a dislike for it, like a traveler unwilling to trust a mirage in a barren desert. 26 The silent sage, full with divine grace within himself, attains a state of indescribable bliss similar to the sleep of a weary traveler exhausted from the bustle of the busy world. 27 Having arrived at this stage of devotion, the sage advances towards attainment of the fruit of spiritual bliss, like the aerial spirit of a spiritual master has descending upon Mount Meru, or a bird of air dropping down on top of a tree. 28 There he forsakes all thoughts and desires and becomes as free as the open sky. Then he takes, tastes, eats and satisfies himself feeding freely upon this fruit of spiritual bliss. 29 Attainment of godliness or full perfection in life means day by day leaving every object of desire, living the entire day with perfect composure with ones self. 30 To attain such a state of perfection, do away with all distinctions and differentiations and remain in perfect union and harmony with all and everything. The learned say that this state of mind is the assimilation and approximation of the nature of God, who is ever pure and the one and same in all from eternity to eternity. 31 One disgusted with his desire of the world and its people, having abandoned desire for his wife and family and forsaken his desire to acquire riches, can only find his rest in this blissful state. 32 The ultimate union of both intellect and true knowledge in the Supreme Spirit melts away all sense of distinction, just as the heat of the sun melts frozen snow. 33 One who has known the truth is not like a bent bow which becomes straight after it is loosened. Rather, he is more like a curved necklace which retains its curve even after it is let loose on the ground. 34 As a statue carved on wood or stone is seen in bas-relief, so the world is manifest in the great pillar of the Supreme Spirit without being an existing entity or a non-existing one of itself. 35 We cannot form any idea in the mind how material exists in the immaterial spirit, nor is it proper in our ignorance to entertain any idea of what is the unknowable nature of the Selfexistent One. 36 Whoever has utmost indifference to phenomena is capable of knowing the invisible spirit. But the unenlightened soul is incapable of forsaking and forgetting phenomena. 37 Knowledge of phenomena is utter ignorance. Samadhi means never losing that which is never lost to consciousness and relying upon it. 38 When viewer and view are seen in the same light of identity, and so relied upon by the mind, then it is called the union of both into one. The yogi places his rest and reliance upon this belief. 39 He who has known the truth finds a natural distaste for phenomena. Wise men use the word materialism for ignorance of truth. 40 Fools, ignorant of the truth, feed only upon the objects of sense, but the wise have a natural distaste for them. They who have the taste of sweet nectar cannot be disposed to taste a sour porridge or a bitter drink. 41 A man without desires, content in himself, is quite devoid of the triple desires described before. But a learned man who is not inclined to meditate is addicted to the increase of his wealth. 42 Self-knowledge results from the absence of lust. Whoever loses his self by his corruption has neither his self-possession nor any fixed position to stand upon. 43 A learned man, though he may employ all his knowledge, does not prosper in his meditation because his various desires divide him within, though he was made as the whole and undivided image of his maker. 44 But the soul freed from desires of itself comes to possess endless bliss by being dissolved in the Source through meditation, as if wingless mountains were fixed upon the earth. 45 As the soul becomes conscious of holy light in itself, it loses the sense of its meditation and is wholly lost in that light, just as a drop of clarified butter offered in sacred oblation is burnt away in the sacrificial fire.

The complete renunciation of all objects of sense constitutes the peace and stillness of the mind. He who has accustomed himself to this habit is entitled to our regard as a venerable and holy sage. 47 Truly, the man who has become proficient suppressing his appetite for worldly objects becomes so firm and calm in his holy meditation that not even the combined power of Indra, the gods and demigods can shake him from his meditation. 48 Therefore resort to the strong and firm refuge of meditation. Know that all meditations other than that of knowledge is as frail and fragile as straw. 49 The word world is used to refer to ignorant people. The wise are not the subject of its meaning. The difference between the words ignorant and wise consists in the one forming the majority of mankind and the other their superiors. 50 Let wise men resort to and rest at that place where all meet in union in one self-shining unity, whether it be on the ground of the understanding of saintly spiritual masters or those of enlightened sages. 51 No one has yet been able to explain the unity or duality of the real or unreal. The way to learn it is first by means of scriptures, then by association with wise and holy men. 52 The third and best means to nirvana is meditation, which is arrived at one after the other. Then it will appear that the immense body of Brahman takes upon itself the name and nature of the living soul. 53 The world appears in various forms by the meeting of like and unlike principles. It becomes divided into eighteen regions by the omniscience of God who knows the past and the future. 54 Both the knowledge and the dislike of the world are attained by attainment of either one of them. The thoughts of our mind, flying with the winds in open air, are burnt away by the fire of knowledge. 55 The worlds, like flying cottonwood seeds, flee into the Supreme Soul, but nothing is known about where they end up flying. Mans gross ignorance of man is not removed by knowledge, just as dense snow does not melt from a fire in a painting. 56 Though the world is known to be an unfounded fallacy, yet it is hard to remove this error from the mind. On the other hand, the world increases with ignorance as ignorant men acquire more knowledge of it. 57 As the knowledge of the ignorant tends to increase their ignorance, so a wise man finds ignorant peoples knowledge of the world to be meaninglessness. 58 The existence of the three worlds is known to us only as they are represented in our knowledge of them. They are built in emptiness like aerial cities stretched out before us in the empty dreams of our sleep. 59 Knowledge of the world is as false as fanciful desires in the minds of the wise. For neither the existence of the world or even his own self-existence is perceptible in the understanding of a wise man. 60 There is only the existence of one supremely bright essence which shines in our minds, resembling pieces of wet or dry wood in as much as they are moistened or dried by the presence or absence of divine knowledge. 61 To right understanding, the whole world with all its living beings appears as one with ones self, but men of dull understanding bear no mutual sympathy for one another. The knowledge of duality tends towards differences and disunion among men, but knowledge of oneness leads men to fellow-feeling and union. 62 The wise man possessing a greater share of wisdom becomes as one with the Supreme One. He does not consider the question of the being or nonexistence of the world. 63 A man who has arrived at the fourth stage of yoga takes no notice of mens waking, dreaming or sleeping states. A reasonable man takes no account of the vain wishes of his heart and the false fancies of his mind. 64 Hence the deer-like mind does not choose its annihilation for the sake of its liberation and has no reality in it. 65 Thus the tree of meditation by itself produces the fruit of knowledge which is ripened by degrees and in course of time to its lusciousness. Then the deer-like mind drinks its sweet juice of divine knowledge to its fullness and becomes free from its chains of earthly desire.

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Chapter 46 On Samadhi Meditation

Vasishta continued: After the Supreme Being, the object and fruit of meditation, is known as present in the mind and the bliss of release from flesh is felt within, then all sensations are lost altogether and the deer-like mind becomes spiritualized into the Supreme Essence. 2 Then the mind loses its deer-like quality of browsing thorns, just as the extinguished lamp loses its flame. It assumes a spiritual form and shines with an inexhaustible blaze. 3 In order to attain the fruit of its meditation, the mind assumes a firmness like that of mountains after their wings were mutilated by Indras thunderbolts. 4 Its mental faculties fly away and there remains only pure consciousness which is irrepressible, indivisible and full with the Supreme Soul. 5 The mind, being roused to reasonableness, now rises as the sentient soul and dispenses its clear spiritual light from its identity with the uncreated and endless One. 6 It remains in that state in perfect freedom from all wishes and strivings. It is assimilated into the everlasting spirit of God in its form of eternal contemplation. 7 Until we find that blessed state and know the great Brahman, the mind remains a stranger to meditation because it dwells on other thoughts. 8 After the mind has obtained its union with the Supreme One, we know not where the mind has fled, or where our wishes and actions, our joys and grief, and all our knowledge fly away. 9 The yogi is seen to be absorbed solely in his meditation, sitting steadfast in his contemplation like a wingless and unmoving mountain. 10 Disinterested in sensual enjoyments and numb to all sensibilities, adverse to the various sights and objects of senses, the yogi is pleased only with himself. 11 With his sensations numbed by degrees, his soul resting in tranquility, and his mind dead to the enticements of wealth and sensible objects, the yogi is pleased with himself. 12 All men of right understanding are fully aware of the tastelessness of the objects of sense. They remain like human figures in painting, without showing strong affection or looking upon them. 13 A man who is master of himself, his soul and his mind refuses to look upon earthly treasures because he has no desire for them. He is firmly fixed in his abstraction as if he were compelled to it by anothers force. 14 The soul immersed in meditation becomes as full as a river in rainy season. There is no power that can restrain the mind fixed in meditation. 15 The mind immersed in deep meditation has a cool aversion to all sensible objects and feels an utter detachment to all worldly affairs. Then it is said to be in samadhi. 16 It is a settled distaste for the objects of sense that constitutes the core and essence of meditation. The maturity of this habit makes a man as firm as a diamond. 17 Therefore a distaste for worldly enjoyments is the germ of meditation, while the taste for such pleasures binds a man tightly to the world. 18 Full knowledge of truth and the renunciation of every desire at all times lead men to nirvana meditation and to the infinite joy of the divine state. 19 When there is renunciation of enjoyments, why think of anything else? When there is no such renunciation, what avails any other thought or meditation? 20 The intelligent sage who is free from enjoying phenomena is situated in steadfast meditation and in the enjoyment of continuous bliss. 21 He who is not delighted with phenomena is known as the most enlightened man. He who takes no delight in what can be enjoyed is considered a fully wise man. 22 He who by nature is disposed to tranquility can have no inclination towards enjoyments. It is unnatural to indulge in carnal enjoyments. The subdued nature needs nothing to enjoy. 23 Let men meditate after hearing a lecture, reciting the scriptures, repeating mantras and uttering their prayers. When tired with meditation, let them return to their lectures and recitals. 24 Sitting in meditation in an untiring mood, resting at agreeable ease with freedom from fear and
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care, and remaining in rapturous nirvana with a quiet and composed mind are like the fair autumn sky with its unclouded and serene aspect.

Chapter 47 The First Step towards Liberation

Vasishta continued: Hear now the manner and measures a yogi adopts to obtain release from his heavy burden and troubles of the world. 2 The seedling of discrimination springs first in the mind from contempt for the world. 3 All good people take shelter under the wide stretching shade of this large tree, just as a weary and sunburned traveler rests under the cool shade of trees. 4 A wise man shuns the ignorant at a distance, just as the wayfarer casts aside sacrificial wood because the worshippers of gods observe only the ceremonious rites of holy ablutions, almsgivings, austerities and sacred oblations. 5 In his fair, just, polite and open behavior, and in his calm and pleasing countenance, a wise man resembles the fair moon with her ambrosial beams. 6 He acts with sound wisdom and prudence, is polite and civil in his manners, is prompt in serving and obliging others, is holy in his conduct and humorous in his discourse. 7 He is as clear, cold, soft and pleasing as fresh butter, and his company is delightful to people even at first encounter. 8 The deeds of wise men are as pure for mankind as the dews of moonbeams refresh and cool all of nature. 9 No one sleeps so delighted on a bed of flowers, a flower garden devoid of fears, as he who rests secure in the company of reasonable and pious men. 10 The society of holy and wise men, like the pure waters of the heavenly river, serves to cleanse the sins and purify the minds of the sinful. 11 The society of the holy recluse and liberated men is as cooling as a house filled with ice and flowers. 12 The great delight which a holy sage feels in his heart is not to be enjoyed in the company of apsara fairies, gandharva spirits, the gods, or any ordinary human kind. 13 A pious devotee attains knowledge and clear understanding by continued performance of proper acts. Then the significance of the scriptures is reflected clearly in the tablet of his mind, just as the reflections of objects are seen in a mirror. 14 Good understanding moistened by the instruction of scriptures grows in the mind of a holy man, just as a plantain tree grows in the forest. 15 The mind cleared by good judgment retains the clear impression of everything in it, just as a mirror reflects the images of objects on its surface. 16 A wise man whose soul is purified by the association with holy men, and whose mind is cleansed with the washing of scriptural instruction, is like a sheet of linen cloth flaming with fire. 17 A holy saint shines with the brightness of his presence just like the sun does with his golden beams, diffusing a pure light all around the world. 18 A wise man follows the conduct of holy sages and the precepts of the scriptures to imitate and practice them himself. 19 Thus by degrees, a beginner becomes as good as the great objects of his imitation and as full of knowledge as the scriptures themselves. Having then put down all the enjoyments of life, he appears to come out of a prison by breaking down his chains and fetters. 20 He who has become accustomed to reducing his desires and enjoyments day by day resembles the crescent moon daily increasing in brightness. He enlightens his family just as the moon throws her luster over the stars about her. 21 A stingy miser is always as gloomy as the face of an eclipsed moon. He is never as smiling as the face of a liberal man, which is bright as the face of the moon when freed from eclipse. 22 The liberal man spurns the world as mere straw and becomes famous among the great for his generosity. He resembles the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree of paradise which yields the desired fruit to everybody. 23 Though one may feel some compunction in his mind at the willful abdication of his possessions, yet the wise man is happy with no property at all. 24 Anyone who comes to know what he was and how he now is may laugh at his prior acts, just as a low savage remembering his prior births and comparing them with his present laughs in disgust.
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Even spiritual masters and holy saints look upon a yogi with wonder, full of esteem for him. They see him with delighted eyes like the moon rising over the earth. 26 A yogi, ever accustomed to despise all enjoyment and having attained right judgment, does not esteem anything that can be enjoyed in life, though it presents itself to him in the proper manner. 27 A holy man whose soul is raised and enlightened feels his former enjoyments to become as dull and tasteless as a luxuriant tree becomes dry and withered in autumn. 28 He resorts to the company of holy men for his greatest and lasting good, and becomes as sane and sound as a sick man becomes healthy by his abstinence and recourse to physicians. 29 Being then exulted in his mind, he dives into the deep sense of the scriptures like a big elephant plunging into a large lake of clear water. 30 It is the nature of virtuous men to deliver their neighbors from danger and calamity and to lead them to their well being and prosperity, just as the sun leads people to light. 31 A reasonable man is adverse to receiving anything from another and lives content with what is his own. 32 He hates to taste others delicacies because he is gratified by the nectar drink of contentment and prepares to abandon what he already possesses. 33 He is accustomed to give away his gold and money to beggars and beg his vegetarian food from others. By habitual practice of giving away whatever he has, he is even ready to part with the flesh of his body. 34 Truly a man of subdued mind and holy soul gets over the hidden traps of ignorance with as much ease as a running man leaps over a pothole. 35 A holy man accustomed to despise the acceptance of wealth from others learns speedily to neglect the possession of any wealth for himself. 36 Thus aversion to wealth and others possessions leads a wise and holy man by degrees to be adverse to retaining anything for himself. 37 There is no such trouble on this earth, nor any great pain in the torment of hell, as there is in the punishment of earning and accumulation of wealth. 38 Ah, how little are the money-making fools aware of the cares and troubles they have to undergo in their restless days and nights in their servitude for money. 39 All wealth is only lengthening sorrow. Prosperity brings adversity. All enjoyments are only ailments and thus every earthly good turns to its reverse. 40 One cannot have a distaste for sensual enjoyments as long he thinks on the objects of sense, or as long as he has any craving for riches, which are the springs of all evils and harms in human life. 41 He who has a taste for the highest heavenly bliss looks upon the world as a heap of straw, and riches as the fire that lights them ablaze. Avoid this fire and be cool and quiet. 42 The meaning of wealth is known as the source of all evils in the world and the cause of all wants and disorders and even of diseases and death. It is also the cause of oppression and plunder, of agitation and the like, and their consequent poverty and famine. 43 In this mortal world of death and diseases of living beings, there is only one elixir which gives perpetual health and life to man, and this is contentment. 44 The spring season is charming, and so are the gardens of paradise, moonbeams and celestial ladies, but all combine only in contentment which alone is capable of yielding all delights. 45 The contented soul is like a lake during rains when it is full and deep, clear and cooling as the nectar drink of the gods. 46 An honest man is strengthened by his contentment and flourishes with full joy like a flowering tree is covered with blossoms in flowering season. 47 As a poor ant, in its ceaseless search and hoarding of food, is likely to be crushed under the foot of every passerby, so a greedy and needy man is liable to be spurned for his constant wanderings after worthless gains and money. 48 A deformed and disfigured beggar is like a man plunged into a sea of troubles, buffeting in its waves without finding any support for rest or any prospect of ever reaching the shore. 49 Prosperity, like beauty, is as frail and fickle as the unstable waves of the ocean. What wise man can expect to find his reliance on prosperity or beauty, or have rest under the shade of the hood of a hideous serpent? 50 He who knows the pains that attend gaining, keeping and losing money, but still persists pursuing it, is no better than a brute and

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deserves to be shunned by the wise as unsociable. 51 He who cuts down the growing grass of his internal and external appetites from the field of his heart by the means of the sword of detachment, gets it prepared for reception of the seeds of divine knowledge. 52 Ignorant people take the world for a reality and wise men also conduct themselves under this supposition although they are well aware of its unreality. This is owing to their neglect of practicing what they are taught to believe. 53 The sum of the whole is that renunciation of the world leads men to the society of sages and study of the scriptures. Then by reliance on the holy precepts, one abandons his worldliness. At last, his firm dislike of the temporal leads him to seek his spiritual bliss.

Chapter 48 The Nature of a Yogi; the Worship of the Lord God

Vasishta continued: After a man comes to renounce the world, associates with holy men, has well digested the precepts of the scriptures, and has abandoned his carnal desires and enjoyments, 2 then, having a distaste for worldly objects, he gains the reputation of being a man of integrity, being outwardly an inquirer after truth and inwardly full of enlightenment. 3 He does not long for wealth, but shuns it like one flies from darkness. He gives away whatever he has in hand, just as a man throws away dry, rotten leaves from his house. 4 Everyone is seen worn out with toil and care for the support of his family and friends throughout his life. Yet like a weary traveler laboring under his load, he is rarely found to cast off his burden as long he has strength to bear it. 5 A man in full possession of his senses and sensible objects all about him is yet quite unconscious of them if he is possesses a calm, quiet mind. 6 Wherever he remains, whether in retired solitude remote from his country or in a forest or sea or distant deserts or gardens, he is perfectly at home in every place. 7 He is not in love with any place, nor dwells secure in any state whether it be the company of friends in a pleasure garden or in learned discussions in the assembly of scholars. 8 Wherever he goes or stays, he is always calm and self-governed, silent and communing with the Self. Though well informed himself, yet he is always in search of knowledge in his inquiry after truth. 9 Thus by his constant practice, a holy sage sits on low ground or in water and rests himself in the Supreme One in the state of transcendent bliss. 10 This is the state of perfect stillness, both of inner soul and of outward senses. A yogi remains quite unaware of himself with his consciousness of indisputable truth. 11 This transcendent state consists in the unconsciousness of sensible objects and the consciousness of an emptiness full with the presence of omniscience spirit. 12 The state of highest bliss is first ones concern with the knowledge of unity, and lastly his unconsciousness of himself and everything besides, whether of a void or substance. 13 A saint, mindless of everything and resting in his consciousness, has no desire for anything, but remains like a block of stone amidst the encircling water. 14 The self-conscious person, having attained that state of perfection which shuts out all objective thoughts, remains silent and slow, quite unmindful of everything beside itself. He reposes in his own being like a human figure in a painting. 15 He who has known the one that is to be known sees in his heart all things as nothing. All magnitudes shrink into minuteness and the whole fullness appears like an emptiness to him. 16 The knower of God no longer has knowledge of himself or the world. All space and time and existence appear as nonexistent before him. 17 The seer who has seen the glory of God is situated in the region of light. Like a lighted lamp, he dispels his inner darkness and all his outward fears, hatreds and affections. 18 I bow down before that sun-like sage who is set beyond darkness on every side and is raised above all created things, whose great glory is never liable to be darkened. 19 I cannot describe in words the most eminent state of a divine seer whose soul is filled with divine knowledge, whose mind is quite at rest, and whose knowledge of duality is wholly extinct. 20 Know, O most intelligent Rama, that the great Lord God is pleased to bless him with the bliss of his final nirvana as reward for his serving him day and night with sincere devotion. 21 Rama asked, Tell me, O chief of sages, who is this Lord God? How is he propitiated by our prayers and faith in him? Explain this mystery to me, for you are acquainted with all truth. 22 Vasishta replied: Know, O highly intelligent Rama, that the Lord God is neither at a distance nor
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unattainable. The Lord is the all knowing soul, and the soul is the great God. 23 In Him are all things and from him have come all these. He is all and everywhere with all. He is immanent in and the same with all. He is everlasting and I bow down to him. 24 From him comes out this creation, as well as all its change and dissolution. He is the uncaused cause of all which rise like winds in the hollow vault of heaven. 25 All these creatures, the moving as well as inert, worship Him always, as well as they can and present Him the best offerings that they can find. 26 So men by adoring Him in their repeated births, with all their hearts and minds and in the best manner that they can, at last propitiate the supreme object of their adoration. 27 The great Lord God and Supreme Soul, being thus propitiated by their firm faith, at last sends his messenger to them, with his good will for their enlightenment. 28 Rama asked, Tell me, great sage, how does the Lord God and Supreme Soul send his messenger to man? Who is this messenger, and in what manner does he teach? 29 Vasishta replied: The messenger sent by the Divine Spirit is known by the name of wise discrimination (viveka, wisdom). It shines as coolly in the cave of the human heart as moonlight does in a clear sky. 30 Wise discrimination awakens and instructs the brutish and lustful soul to wisdom and saves the unwise soul from the turbulent ocean of this world. 31 The Vedas and Vedic scriptures call this enlightening and intellectual spirit residing in the human heart the adorable cosmic sound of Om. 32 This Holy Spirit is propitiated daily by men and the naaga tribe, and by gods and demigods, by their prayers and oblations, by their austerities and almsgivings, and by their sacrificial rites and recitals of the scriptures. 33 This Lord has the highest heaven for his crown and the earth and infernal regions for his footstools. The stars glisten like hairs on his body. His heart is the open space of the sky and all material bodies are like the bones of his body. 34 He being the intellectual soul of all, spreads undivided everywhere. He is ever wakeful, seeing and moving everything as if they were his hands and feet, his eyes and ears, and the other organs of his body. 35 The living or sentient soul, being awakened to wisdom by destroying the demon of the sensualistic mind, takes upon a bright spiritual form and becomes a spiritual being. 36 Now shun the various wishes of your heart, which are ever changeful and full of evils, and exert your efforts to exult your soul to the state of meeting with divine grace. 37 The rambling mind resembles a demon buffeted by the waves of the furious ocean that is the world. Only an enlightened soul shines brightly over the dark, dreary and dismal waste of the earth. 38 See your mind is blown away by the gale of its greed to the vast waves of the ocean of the world, hurled to the deep cavity of its whirlpools from whose depth no man can rise again. 39 You have only the strong ship of your divine wisdom to bear you above the waves of your carnal desires and passions and get you across the sea of your ignorance. 40 In this manner the Lord, being propitiated by his worship, sends discrimination as his messenger to sanctify the human soul, and thus leads the living being to his best and most blessed state through the gradual steps of holy society, religious learning, and right understanding of their esoteric and spiritual sense.

Chapter 49 The World as Light from Gems; Total Detachment and Indifference
Vasishta continued: Those who are staunch in their discernment of truth and firm in the abandonment of their desires are truly men of very great souls, conscious of their greatness in themselves. 2 The vast magnanimity of noble minded men and the fathomless depth of their understanding are even greater than the space occupied by the fourteen worlds. 3 Wise men have a firm belief that the reality of the universe is a false conception. They are quite at rest from all internal and external accidents which overtake the ignorant, unaware man like sharks and alligators. 4 What reliance can there be in any hope or desire for anything in this world, which is as tempting and deceitful as the appearance of two moons in the sky, of water in a mirage, and the prospect of an illusory city in the air? 5 Desires are as vain as the empty void owing to the nothingness of the mind in which they arise. Therefore the wise are not led away by their desires which they know have their origin in the unreal and vacant mind. 6 The three states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep are common to all living beings generally. But the state or nature of the Supreme Being is beyond those triple functions. It is all seeing and all knowing without being seen or known. 7 The soul in its enraptured state sees the world as a collection of light issuing from gems of various kinds and the human soul as a reflection of that light, not as a solid or material substance. 8 The phenomenal world that presents its various appearances to eyesight is an empty void. The varieties of light and luminous bodies which appear in it are nothing other than reflections of the rays of the vast mine of brilliant gems which is hidden under it and shoots forth its glare in the open air. 9 Here there is no other substance in reality, neither the vast cosmos nor boundless emptiness itself. All this is the glare of that greatest of gems whom we call the great Brahman, whose glory shines all around us. 10 The created and uncreated all is one Brahman alone and there is no variety or destructibility in these or in him. All these are formless beings. They appear as substantial in imagination only, just as sunbeams paint various figures in empty clouds in the air. 11 Thus when the imaginary world appears to blend with the ethereal void, this solid mass of material world will vanish into nothing. 12 The whole wandering world is seen to be a perfect insubstantiality. It is quite impossible for it to have any property or attribute whatever, although they are usually attributed to it, because there is no probability of any quality belonging to an absolute nothing, just as it is impossible for a bird to find a resting place on a tree rooted in the sky. 13 There is no solidity of anything, nor is there any emptiness at all. The mind itself is a nonexistence, but that which remains after all these is the only being in reality which is never nonexistent at anytime. 14 The soul is one alone and without variation. It has consciousness of all varieties in itself and these are inherent in its nature, just as all the various forms of jewelry are ingrained in a lump of gold. 15 A wise sage who remains in his own essential nature finds his egoism, the consciousness of his mind, and the world all shrink into himself. It is difficult to describe the mind of a wise man which remains identified with the nature of the Self-existent Being. 16 Understanding is perplexed and confounded from observing things whose substance is hidden. Understanding requires slow and gradual knowledge of truth through right reason and argument. 17 By withdrawing the mind from its fascination with phenomena, the production of the god Viraj, and leading it to contemplate the spiritual cause of these works, true knowledge of the author of the present, past and future worlds can be attained. 18 He is known as a wise sage whose well discerning soul has perceived the truth in itself, who has found his rest in the One Unity, and
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who has no perception of the visible world, and all its endless varieties which are attributed to Viraj. 19 All of what has been said here by way of advice is perceived by wise men through their intuition, just as the wise sayings of good people are self-evident. 20 The substance of all this is that there is no size or magnitude of beings in general, nor its absence as an emptiness. Therefore there is neither a gross nor an airy mind, but the One that exists after all is the true and ever existent entity. 21 This entity is Consciousness which is familiar with all phenomena in itself. Its manifestation in the form of our senses is filled with all our sorrows, while its disappearance leads to our bliss. 22 Being developed, it evolves itself into the shape of outward organs and takes the form of the gross body, just as liquid water consolidates by degrees to the bulky forms of islands and huge mountainous bodies. 23 This consciousness, absorbed by ignorance, assumes the gross form of mind and binds itself tightly to the physical body, just like a man seeing his aerial dreams as material substance. 24 In these states in which consciousness is converted to sensation, perception and other faculties, Consciousness remains the same and unchangeable though it is described with different words of human invention. 25 The soul remains the same both in its conception of mental thoughts and ideas, as well as in its perception of outward objects. It is not changed in either case, unlike the mind that sees its dreams within and objects outside. 26 Consciousness resembles an empty substance. It is as unchangeable in nature as that of emptiness and eternity. The objects which present their ideas in the soul are like dreams that appear in the mind. They are nothing in reality. 27 The gross nature of external objects bears no relation to the pure internal intellect. Their impurity touch or pollute the purity of the soul. Therefore consciousness is not subject to the mutability of external nature. 28 Understanding never acquires the mutable state of the objects it dwells upon. It always remains in its immutable nature and is never in any other state or condition. 29 The yogi who has attained extreme purity of understanding in the seventh or highest degree of his perfection becomes identified with consciousness and of the meaning of its presence or absence. 30 The minds of ordinary people are impressed with idea of their materiality because they understand themselves as material bodies. 31 They falsely take their fleeting minds, which are as pure as the clear sky, for a material object. In the same manner, players in a drama take upon themselves the false disguise of pisacha demons. 32 All error is corrected by the habit of unerring wisdom, just as the madness of a man is cured by his thinking himself as not a mad man. 33 The knowledge of ones falseness makes him get out of his error, just as the error of dreaming is lost upon ones coming to the knowledge that all he saw was mere dream. 34 The reduction of our desires lessens our attachment to the world. Desire is a great demon which must be destroyed by the wise man. 35 As the madness of men is increased by their habitual ravings, so the constant practice of abstinence diminishes his giddy insanity. 36 As the passing or subtle human body is mistaken as physical in thought, so it is taken in a spiritual sense by the learned because of their understanding. 37 The passing or subtle body, having taken the form of the living soul, is capable of being converted into the state of Brahman by the intense nurture of its understanding. 38 If anything is produced according to its substance, and if anybody thinks himself according his own understanding, then how is it possible for a material being to take itself in a spiritual sense? 39 A dispute over the use of words increases doubts. Following ones advice, the error is removed, just as evil is removed by chanting mantras rather than knowing their meaning. 40 The world is thought to be identical with the thought it, so it is believed to be an immaterial and bodiless substance until in the end its substance is lost in the emptiness of Consciousness. 41 When the mind is quite at rest from all its internal and external thoughts, the real spiritual nature of the

soul appears to light and manifests itself in the form of the cool and clear sky which must be held for ones rest and refuge. 42 A wise man will perform his sacrifice with knowledge, planting the stakes of his meditation in it, and at the conclusion of his all-conquering sacrifice, he will offer his renunciation of the world as his oblation to it. 43 A wise man is always the same and equally firm in himself, whether he stands under a shower of rain or falling fire stones from above, whether he walks in a deluge storm, travelling all over the earth, or flying in the air. 44 No one who is not practiced sitting in steadfast meditation can attain the station of a detached sage whose mind is tranquil by its lack of desire and has obtained its enclosure within itself. 45 The mind can never derive that perfect peace and tranquility, whether from the study of scriptures, or attending on holy lectures and sermons, or by practice of austerities and selfcontrol, as it does by its distaste for all external objects and enjoyments. 46 The mind, like a bundle of hay, is burnt away by the fire of renouncing all worldly objects. This fire is lit by the breath of abandonment of all things, and fanned by the belief that all prosperity is followed by adversity. 47 The perception of sensible objects casts a mist of ignorance in and all about the mind. Only ones knowledge shines like a brilliant gem within himself. 48 Only Consciousness shines in this gloom, like a star in the sky. It looks over all mankind, naaga snakes, asura demons, and over mountains and in their caves. 49 It is by the infusion of this Consciousness that all things move in the dull womb of the universe. They are whirling in the whirlpool of Consciousness. They are deriving their freshness from the enlivening power of that source. 50 All living beings whirling in the great whirlpool of Consciousness are like weak little fishes encircled by the net of ignorance. They are swimming and gliding in the water of the vast vacuum, quite forgetful of their spiritual origin. 51 It is Divine Consciousness that shows itself in various forms within the sphere of itself, just as air presents the variegated forms of thickening clouds in the wide arena of the sky. 52 All living beings, when they are devoid of their desires, are of the same nature with their spiritual source. Desire makes the different states and causes them to fly about like the dry leaves, rustling in the air like hollow reeds. 53 Therefore you must not remain like the ignorant, but rise above them by raising your mind to wisdom. This is to be done by calling the manly powers to your aid, then overcoming your dullness to suppress the whole band of your rising desires, and next breaking the strong chains and prison-house of this world to devote your attention to your improvement in spiritual knowledge.

Chapter 50 Description of the Seven Kinds of Living Beings; We Are DreamObjects

Vasishta added: The bodies of living beings seen to fill the ten sides of this world consist of the different classes of men, naaga serpents, sura deities, gandharva spirits, mountaineers and others. 2 Of these, some are waking sleepers, and others are waking in their imaginations only and therefore are called imaginative wakers. Some are only wakeful, while there are others who have been waking all along. 3 Many are found to be strictly wakeful, and many also are waking sleepers both by day and night. There are some animals that are slightly wakeful, and these constitute the seven classes of living beings. 4 Rama said, Sage, tell me for my satisfaction. What is the difference among the seven species of living beings? They appear to me to be as different as the waters of the seven seas. 5 Vasishta replied: There have been some men in some former age and parts of the world who are known to have been long sleepers with their living bodies. 6 The dream that they see is the dream of the existence of this universe. Those who dream this dream are living men and called as waking sleepers or day dreamers. [O Rama, in a certain previous world cycle, in a certain corner of creation, some beings remained in a state of deed sleep, though alive. The dreams that they dream are what appears as this universe. They are in what is known as the dream-wakeful state. We are all their dream-objects. On account of the fact that theirs is a very long dream, it appears to be a real and wakeful state to us. And the dreamers continue to be jivas in all this. Because of the omnipresence of omniscient consciousness, everything exists everywhere. Therefore, we exist as the dream-objects of the dreams of those original dreamers. Venkatesananda, Vasishtas Yoga.] 7 Sometimes a sleeping man sees a dream rising of itself before him by reason of some prior action or desire of the same kind arising in the mind. Such is the uncalled for appearance of anything or property to us. Therefore that they are called dreaming men. 8 They who awaken after their prolonged sleep and dream are called awakened from their sleep and dream and are said to have gotten rid of them. 9 I say we are also sleepers and dreamers among those sleeping men because we do not perceive the Omniscient One who by his omnipresence is present everywhere as the all in all. 10 Rama asked, Tell me where those awakened and enlightened men are situated now that those kalpa ages in which they lived are gone along with their false imagination? 11 Vasishta replied: Those who have gotten rid of their false dreams in this world and are awakened from their sleep, pass to some other bodies which they meet with, agreeably to the fancies which they form in their imaginations. 12 Thus they meet with other forms in other ages of the world according to their own peculiar fancies. There is no end to the connections and ideas of fancy in the empty air of the mind. 13 Those who are said to be awakened from their sleep are those who have gotten out of this imaginary world, just as inborn insects come out of an old and rotten fig tree. 14 Hear now about those who are said to be waking in their fancies and desires. They are born in some former age in some part of the world, completely restless and sleepless in their minds owing to some fanciful desire springing in them and to which they were wholly devoted. 15 They also are those who are lost in meditation and subject to the rule of their greedy minds. They
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have lost all their former virtues and become strongly bound to their desires. 16 They whose desires have been partly awake from before and have gradually absorbed all the other better endeavors of their possessors are also said to be wakeful to their desires. 17 They who after their former desires cease, indulge in some fresh wishes again, are not only greedy people themselves, but think that we also are of the same sort. 18 I have already told you about the vigils of their desires. Now know them to be dormant over their desires who bear their lives as they are life beings, dead to their wishes like ourselves. But hear further of those who are ever awake. 19 The first patriarchs produced from the self-evolving Brahma are said to have been ever wakeful because they were immersed in profound sleep before their production. 20 But being subjected to repeated births, these ever wakeful beings became subject to alternate sleep and waking owing to their being subject to repeated work and repose. 21 These again became degraded to the state of trees on account of their distasteful deeds, and these are said to be in a mindless state because of their lack of consciousness even in the waking state. 22 Those who are enlightened by the light of the scriptures and the company of wise men look upon the world as a dream in their waking state, and therefore are called waking dreamers by day. 23 Those enlightened men who have found their rest in the divine state and are neither wholly awake nor asleep are said to have arrived at the fourth stage of their yoga. 24 Thus have I related to you the difference among the seven kinds of beings, such as that among the waters of the seven seas. Now be of that kind which you think to be the best. 25 After all, O Rama, give up your error of reckoning the worlds as real entities of themselves. As you have come to your firm belief in one absolute unity, get rid of the duality of emptiness and solidity and be one with that Primordial Consciousness which is free from unity and duality.

Chapter 51 Admonition to Arrive at the Yoga of Ultimate Rest

Rama said. Tell me sage, what is the cause of mere waking for nothing? How does a living being proceed from the formless Brahman? That is equivalent to the growth of a tree in empty air. 2 Vasishta replied: O highly intelligent Rama, there is no work to be found anywhere which is without its cause. Therefore it is altogether impossible for anybody to exist here who is merely awake for nothing. 3 Like this, it is equally impossible for all other kinds of living beings to exist without a cause. 4 There is nothing that is produced here, nor anything which is destroyed. It is only for the instruction and comprehension of pupils that such words are used. 5 Rama asked, Then who is it that forms these bodies, together with their minds, understandings and senses? Who is it that deludes all beings into the snares of passions and affections, and into the net of ignorance? 6 Vasishta replied: There is nobody who forms these bodies at anytime, nor is there anyone who deludes the living beings in any manner at all. 7 There is only the self-shining soul, residing in his conscious self, which evolves in various shapes like water gliding on in the shapes of billows and waves. 8 There is nothing such as an external phenomenon. Consciousness shows itself as the phenomenon. It rises from the mind, like a large tree growing out of its seed. 9 O support of Raghus race, this universe is situated in this faculty of understanding just as images are carved in stone. 10 There is only one spiritual soul which spreads internally and externally throughout the whole extent of time and space. Know this world is the emanation of Divine Consciousness scattered on all sides. 11 Know this as the next world by suppressing your desire for a future one. Rest calmly in your celestial soul even here. Do not let your desires range from here to there. 12 All space and time, all the worlds and their motions together with all our actions are included under the province of the intellectual soul. The meanings of all these terms are never insignificant or nothing. 13 O Raghava! Only they who are well acquainted with the meanings of Vedic words and those keen observers who have ceased to look upon phenomena can comprehend the Supreme Soul, and not others. 14 It is impossible for those who have light minds buried in the depth of egoism to ever to come to the sight of that light of the Self. 15 The wise look upon the fourteen regions of this world, together with multitudes of their inhabitants, as members of this embodied spirit. 16 There can be no creation or dissolution without its cause, and the work must be consistent with the skill of its maker. 17 If the work is accompanied with its cause, and the work alone is perceptible without its accompanying cause, then it must be an unreality because we have no perception of its cause. 18 The product must resemble its producer, just as the whiteness of the seawater produces white waves and froths. The productions of the most perfect God must bear resemblance to his nature in their perfection. But the imperfect world and the mind not being so, they cannot be said to have proceeded from the all perfect one. 19 Therefore all this is the pure spirit of God, and the whole is the great body of Brahman. In the same manner one clod of earth is the cause of many a pot, and one bar of gold becomes the cause of many ornaments. 20 As the waking state appears as a dream in dreaming on account of the forgetfulness of the waking state, so the waking state seems as dreaming even in the waking state of the wise. 21 If what is seen is understood as a creation of the mind, it proves to be as false as water in the mirage. It proves at last to be a waking dream by the right understanding of it. 22 By right knowledge all material objects, together with the bodies of wise men, dissolve like the bodies of clouds in their proper season.
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As the clouds disappear in the air after pouring their waters in rain, so the world disappears from the sight of men who have come to the light of truth and knowledge of the soul. 24 Like the empty clouds of autumn and the water of the mirage, the phenomenal world loses its appearance as soon as it is viewed by the light of right reason. 25 As solid gold is melted down to liquid by hot fire, so all phenomena melt away to an aerial nothing when they are observed by the keen eye of philosophy. 26 All solid substances in the three worlds become rarefied air when they are put to the test of a rational analysis, just like the stalwart apparition of a demon vanishes into nothing when the child awakes. 27 Endless thoughts of images rise and fall of themselves in the mind. The image of the world is only a concept of the mind. There is no reality in it, nor is there anything which has any density or massiveness in it. 28 Knowledge and ignorance of the world consist only in the conceptions of the mind. When the knowledge of the worlds existence disappears from understanding, then where is the idea of its massiveness anymore in the mind? 29 The world loses its bulk and solidity in our knowledge of the state of our waking dream. Its bulkiness turns to rarity, just as gold melts to liquid when put in fire. 30 Understanding becomes dull and dense by degrees, just as liquid gold when left to itself, becomes solidified in a short time. 31 Thus one who in his waking state considers himself to be dreaming and sees the world in its rarified state, comes to lessen himself with all his desires and appetites, just as a heavy cloud is uplifted in autumn. 32 A wise man sees all the visible beauties of nature set before him to be extremely subtle, like in dreams, so he takes no notice or enjoyment of them. 33 Where is this rest of the soul and where is this struggle for wealth? They abide in the one and same man like the meeting of sleep and wakefulness together, and the union of error and truth in the same person at the same time. 34 He who remains unaffected by the false imaginations of his mind acts freed from his false belief in the reality of the world. 35 Who is it, O high minded Rama, who takes pleasure in an unreality, or satisfies himself drinking the false water of a mirage? 36 The saintly sage who rests in his knowledge of truth looks upon the world an infinite emptiness surrounded by stars that shine like the light of a lamp set behind windows. 37 The waking man knows everything to be void and blank, so the wanderings of his mind cease and he does not long for the enjoyment of anything. 38 There is nothing desirable in that which is known to be nothing at all. For who runs after the gold that he saw in his dream at night? 39 Everybody desists from desiring that which he knows to be only his dream. He is released from the bondage which ties the beholder to the object of this sight. 40 The most accomplished man is not addicted to pleasure and is of a composed mind without pride. He is a man of understanding who is dispassionate and remains quiet without any care or struggle. 41 Distaste for pleasure produces a lack of desire, just as the flame of fire being gone, there is an end of its light. 42 The light of knowledge shows the sky as a cloudless and lighted sphere. But the darkness of error gives the world an appearance of a hazy fairyland. 43 The wise man neither sees himself nor the heavens nor anything besides. His ultimate view is fixed upon the glory of God. 44 The holy seer does not see himself or the sky or the imaginary worlds about him. He does not see the phantasms of his fancy, but sits quite unconscious of all. 45 The earth and other existences, which are gazed and dwelt upon by the ignorant, are lost in the sight of the sage who sees the whole as empty and is unconscious of himself. 46 There comes a calm composure and grace in the soul, resembling the brightness of the clear sky, and the yogi sits detached from all, as a nothing in himself. 47 Unmindful of all, the yogi sits silent in his state of self-seclusion and exclusion from all. He is set beyond the ocean of the world, and the bounds of all its duties and action.

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The great ignorance which causes the minds apprehension of earth, hills, seas and their contents, though these things appear to exist before the ignorant eye, is utterly dissolved by true knowledge. 49 The wise sage stands unveiled before his light of naked truth, his tranquil mind freed from all skeptical doubts, and nourished with the nectar of truth. He is as firm and fixed in himself as a sturdy oak.

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Chapter 52 Description of Brahma

Rama said, Tell me, O sage, where does our knowledge of the world as distinct from God come from? How is this difference removed and refuted? 2 Vasishta replied: An ignorant man takes to his mind all that he sees with his eyes, and nothing that he does not see. He sees a tree with its outward branches and leaves, but does not know the root lying hidden from his sight. 3 A wise man sees a thing by the light of the scriptures and uses it accordingly. But an ignorant fool takes and grasps anything as he sees it without considering its hidden quality. 4 Be attentive to the dictates of the scriptures and intent upon acting according to their teaching. Remain like a silent sage and attend to my words which will be an ornament for your ears. 5 All these visible phenomena are false. They have no real existence. They appear like the flash of light in water and they are known by the name of ignorance. 6 Attend for a moment and for my sake to the meaning of the instruction which I am now going to give you. Knowing this as certain truth, rely upon it. 7 A question which naturally rises of itself in the mind is where did all these come from and what are they. You will come to know by your own reflection that all this is nothing and not in existence. 8 Whatever appears before you in the form of this world, and all its fixed and moveable objects, and also all things of every shape and kind, are altogether impermanent and vanish in time into nothing. 9 The continual wasting and division of the particles of things indicates their unavoidable extinction at last, just as water slowly flowing by drops from a pot make it entirely empty in a short time. 10 Thus all things are perishable, and as all of them are only parts of Brahman, it is agreed by those skilled in logic that Brahman is neither endless nor imperishable, nor even existent at this time. 11 This conceit of atheists is like the intoxication of wine. Atheism cannot overpower our theistic belief because we know phenomena as things in a dream that have no real substance. 12 The phenomenal world is perishable, but not the Spirit which is not matter or destructible. This is consistent with the doctrines of the scriptures, which mean no other. 13 Whether what is destroyed comes to revive again is utterly unknowable to us. All that we can say by our inferences is that the restorations are very much like the former ones. 14 It is impossible to believe that upon its dissolution, matter becomes emptiness. Again if there is an emptiness like before, then there could not have been a total dissolution. 15 If the theory of the identity of creation and dissolution be maintained, then the absence of causality and effect supports our belief that they are one and the same thing. 16 Emptiness being conceivable by us, we say that when everything is annihilated, everything is transformed or hidden in the womb of emptiness. If there is any other meaning to dissolution, let us know what it may be. 17 Whoever believes that things which are destroyed come to be restored again is either wrong to call them annihilated or must accept that others are produced to supply their place. 18 Where is there any causality or consequence in a tree, which is only a transformation of the seed in spite of the difference of its parts, such as the trunk, branches, leaves and fruit? 19 The seed is not inactive as a pot or picture, but exhibits its actions in the production of its flowers and fruit in their proper season. 20 Every system of philosophy maintains that there is no difference in the substance of things. This truth is also upheld in spirituality. Therefore there is no dispute about it. 21 Substance being considered to be an eternally inert form and of a plastic nature, it is understood to be of the essence of emptiness, both by right inference and evidence of scriptures.
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Why the essential principle is unknown to us, and why we still have some notion of it, and how we realize that idea, are what I am now going to relate to you step by step. 23 All these visible spheres are annihilated at the final dissolution of the world. The great gods also become extinct, together with our minds and understandings and all the activities of nature. 24 The sky is also undefined and time shrinks into a divisible duration. The winds also disappear and fire blinds into chaotic confusion. 25 Darkness also disappears and water vanishes into nothing. All things to which you can apply words grow into nothing and become void in the end. 26 There remains the pure entity of conscious soul, completely unbounded by time or space, without beginning or end, decrease or waste, and entirely pure and perfect in its nature. 27 This one is unspeakable and indiscernible, imperceptible and inconceivable, without any name or attribute whatever. This is an utter void itself and yet the principle and receptacle of all beings and the source of all being and non-being. 28 It is not the air or the wind or understanding or any of its faculties. It is neither void nor nothingness. It is nothing and yet the source of everything. What can it be except transcendent emptiness? 29 It is only a notion in the conception of wise. Otherwise, no one can conceive or know anything about it. Whatever definition or description others apply only repeats the words of the Vedas. 30 It is not time or space, or the mind or soul, or any being or anything else that can be said. It is not in the midst or at the end of any space or side, nor is it anything we can ordinarily know. 31 This something is too translucent for common understanding, conceivable only by the greatest understandings by those who have retired from the world and attained the highest stage of yoga. 32 I have left out popular descriptions which the scriptures avoid. The expressions of the scriptures are displayed here like playful waves in the clear ocean. 33 There it is said that all beings are situated in the common receptacle of the great Brahman as the figures are exhibited in relief upon a massive stony pillar. 34 Thus all beings are situated and yet not situated in Brahman, who is the soul of and not the same with all, and who is in and without all existence. 35 Whatever be the nature of the Universal Soul, it is devoid of all attributes. In whatever manner it is viewed, it comes at last to mean the very same unity. 36 It is all and the soul of all, and being devoid of attributes, it is full of all attributes. In this manner it is viewed by all. 37 O intelligent Rama, as long as you do not feel the complete suspension of all your objects, you cannot be said to have reached the fullness of your knowledge, as indicated by your questions until then. 38 An enlightened man who has come to know the great glory of God has clear sightedness in his mind. He remains quiet seeing the inner being of his being. 39 Fallacies of I, you and he, the world and the three times are all lost in his sight of the great glory, just as many gold coins merge together in a lump of gold. 40 Gold produces various kinds of coins. These worlds and their contents are not produced as things of a different kind from the nature of God. 41 The detached soul always looks upon different bodies as contained within itself and remains in relation to this dualism of the world like gold is related to various kinds of ornaments that are produced from it. 42 It is inexpressible by the words implying space or time or any other thing, though it is the source and seat of them all. It comprehends everything, though it is nothing of itself. 43 All things are situated in Brahman like waves in the sea. All things are exhibited by him like pictures drawn by a painter. He is the substratum and substance of all, just as the clay of the pots which are made of it. 44 All things are contained in it. They are and they are not there at the same time, neither distinct nor indistinct from the same. They are ever of the same nature, equally pure and quiet as their origin. 45 The three worlds are contained in it, as uncarved images are concealed in wood, seen with joy even there by the future sculptor. 46 The images become seen when they are carved

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and manifest on the stone pillar. Otherwise the worlds remain in that soul, just as undisturbed waves lie calmly on the surface of the sea. 47 Divine Consciousness, like the sculptor, sees the worlds as divided and distinct when they are still undivided and indistinct before their creation. They appear to be shining and moving when they are dark and motionless on the outside. 48 In this Brahman there is a combination of atoms that composes these worlds and makes them shine so brightly when no particle has any light in itself. 49 The sky, air, time and all other objects said to be produced from the formless God are likewise formless of themselves. The Lord God is the soul of all, devoid of all qualities and change, without decay and everlasting, and named the most transcendent truth.

Chapter 53 Knowing the Nature of Brahman is Nirvana

Rama said, How is there consciousness in conscious beings? How is there durability in time? How is vacuum a perfect void? How does inertness abide in dull material substances? 2 How does fluctuation reside in air, and what is the state of things in the future, and those that are now absent? How does motion reside in moving things, and how do plastic bodies receive their forms? 3 From where comes the difference of different things and the infinity of infinite natures? How is there visibility in what is visible, and how does the creation of created things come to take place? 4 Tell me, O most eloquent brahmin, all these things one by one. Explain them from the first to last in such a way that they may be intelligible to the lowest understanding. 5 Vasishta replied: That endless great emptiness is known as the great and solid consciousness. This cannot be known other than as a tranquil and self-existent unity. 6 The gods Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva and others are reduced to their origin at the last dissolution of the world and there remains only that pure source from where they have sprung. 7 There is no cause to be assigned to this prime cause of all who is also the seed of matter and form, as well as of delusion, ignorance and error. 8 The original cause is quite transparent and tranquil, having no beginning or end. Subtle ether itself is dense and solid in comparison with its rarity. 9 It is not proper to call it nonexistent when it has an intellectual body, nor can it properly be called an existent being when it is completely calm and quiet. 10 The form of that being is as inconceivable as the idea of that little space of time which lies in middle of our thought of the length of a thousand miles, which the minds eye sees in a moment. 11 A yogi, unconscious to the false and delusive desires and sights of objects that intrude upon internal mind and external vision, sees the transient flash of that light in his meditation, just as he wakes amidst the gloom of midnight. 12 A man who sits with quiet calmness of mind without any joy or grief comes to feel the vibration of that spirit in himself, just as he perceives the fluctuation of his own mind. 13 That which is the spring of creation is the source of all plant life and that also is the form of the Lord. 14 He is the cause of the world which is seen to exist in him in all its varieties of fearful forms and shapes, all of which is a manifestation of himself. 15 These having no actual or real cause are no real productions or actual existences. Therefore there is no formal world or a duality coexistent with the spiritual unity. 16 That which has no cause can have no possible existence. The eternal ideas of God cannot be otherwise than mere ideal shapes. 17 Emptiness has no beginning or end and is no cause of the world. Brahman is formless, but the empty sky which presents a visible appearance cannot be the form of the formless and invisible Brahman. 18 Therefore he is that in which the form of the world appears to exist. Hence the Lord himself appears as that which is situated in the emptiness of his consciousness. 19 The world being of the nature of the intellectual Brahman, is of the same intellectual kind with him, though our error shows it otherwise. 20 This whole world springs from that whole intellect and it exists in its entirety in that entire one. The completeness of that is displayed in the totality of this. The completeness of creation depends upon the perfection of its cause. 21 The nirvana of sages is to know that one who is ever even and quiet, who has neither rise nor fall or any form of likeness, but remains in its translucent unity like the vast sky, and is the everlasting all, combining reality and unreality together in its unity.
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Chapter 54 There is no Cosmic Seed; only the Consciousness of God

Vasishta continued: The world is a clear emptiness existing in the entity of the empty Brahman. It is like the visible sky in the empty sky, and it means the manifestation of Brahman. 2 The words I and you refer to the same Brahman seated in his undivided individuality. All things are seated calmly and quietly in him as if they were not seated there, though they shine by the same light. 3 The earth with its hills and mountains resembles the protrusions on the body of Brahman. The whole world remains as dumb as a block of stone in the body of Brahman. 4 He views what is visible as he is no viewer of them. He is the maker of all without making anything, because they naturally exist with their different natures in the Supreme Spirit. 5 This knowledge of the existence of all nature in the essence of God precludes our knowledge of the positive existence of anything else. Our ideas of entities or emptiness, of action and passion, all vanish into nothing. 6 The one solid essence of the everlasting one is diffused through all everywhere, just as the solidity of a stone stretches throughout its parts. All varieties blending into unity are always alike to him. 7 Life and death, truth and untruth, and all good and evil are equally indifferent in that empty spirit, just as endless waves continually rise and fall in the waters of the deep. 8 The very same Brahman becomes divided into the viewer and the view, the one being the intellect and the other the living soul. This division is known in the dreaming and waking states of the living soul when the same is both subject and object in either state. 9 In this manner the form of the world is exhibited as a vision in a dream in the sphere of the Divine Consciousness. From the beginning, the form of the world is manifest as the counterpart or representation of Brahman himself. 10 Therefore know this world and all things in it are exactly of that spiritual form in which they are exhibited in the Divine Spirit. There is no variation in their spirituality owing to their appearance in various forms, just as there is no change in the substance of the moon during her different phases. 11 All these worlds reside and wander amidst the quiet spirit of God in the same manner as waters remain and roll in waves in the midst of the calm surface of the ocean. 12 Whatever is manifest is manifested as the work, and that which is not apparent is the hidden cause of them. There is no difference between them in as much as both are situated in that spirit, their common center. A traveler is always going forward, yet is never moving from the center of the earth. 13 Hence the prime cause of creation is as nothing as the horns of a rabbit. Search for it as much as you can and you will find nothing. 14 Whatever appears anywhere without its reason or cause must be a fallacy of vision and mind. Who can account for the truth of an error which is untrue itself? 15 How and what effect can come to existence without its cause, and what can it be other than an error of the brain for a childless man to say he sees his son? 16 Whatever comes to appearance without its cause is all owing to the nature of our imagination which shows the object of our desire in all their various forms to our view, just as our fancy paints fairylands in our minds. 17 As a traveler passing from one country to another still finds his body standing in the middle of this globe, so nothing departs from its nature. It only turns about that center. 18 Understanding also shows many false and huge objects in its airy and minute receptacle. Examples are the many objects of desire and the notion of mountains which understanding presents to us in our waking and dreaming states. 19 Rama asked, We know well that the future banyan tree resides within the minute receptacle of its seed. Then why dont you say that creation was hidden in the same manner in the un-evolved spirit of God? 20 Vasishta replied:
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The seed in its material form contains the formless big tree in its undeveloped core. The seed develops into gigantic size by aid of auxiliary causalities. 21 The entire creation is dissolved in the end. Tell me, what remains in the form of its seed? What ancillary causes are there to be found which cause the production of the world? 22 The pure and transparent spirit of God has no possible shape or figure in it. If it is impossible for even an atom to find a place in God, what possibility is there for a formal seed to exist in God? 23 So the reality of a causal seed being altogether untrue, there is no possibility of the existence of a real world, nor can you say how, from where, by whom or when it came into being. 24 It is improper to say that the world consisted in a minute particle in the Divine Spirit, and quite absurd to maintain that it remained in an eternal atom. How is it possible that a body as big as a mountain could be contained in a minute thing as small as a mustard seed? It is therefore a false theory of the ignorant. 25 Had there been a real seed from eternity, it is possible for the world to be produced from it by causes inherent in it. But how could a real and formal seed be contained in the formless spirit of God? By what process could the material proceed from the immaterial? 26 Therefore that prime and transcendent principle exhibits itself in the form of the world and there is nothing which is ever produced from or reduced into it. 27 The world is situated in its intellectual form in the emptiness of Consciousness. The human heart portrays it in its material shape. The pure soul views it in its pure spiritual light, but the perverted heart perceives it in a gross and concrete state. 28 It appears in the mind as empty air and fluctuates there with the vibration of the wind. There is no substantiality of the world in the mind, nor even an idea of its creation, as the word creation (sarga) is meant to express. 29 As there is emptiness in the sky and fluidity in water, so there is only spirituality in the soul which sees the world only in a spiritual light. 30 The world is a reflection of Brahman and as such it is Brahman himself, and not a solid or extended thing. It is without beginning or end and quiet in its nature, never rising or setting of itself. 31 As a wise man going from one country to another finds his body to be always situated in the middle of this globe, so the universe with all its remotest worlds is situated in the emptiness of the Divine Spirit. 32 As fluctuation is innate in air and fluidity is inherent in water and emptiness is essential to vacuum, so this world is intrinsic in the Divine Soul without anything accompanying it. 33 The empty phantom of the world is in the emptiness of Divine Consciousness, Divine Intellect. Being thus situated in the Supreme Soul, it has no rising or setting like that of the sun. Therefore knowing all these to be included in that vacuum, and there is nothing visible beside the same, cease viewing the phantoms of imagination and be as the very emptiness yourself.

Chapter 55 The Spiritual Sense of the World

Vasishta continued: Thought and its absence produce the gross and subtle ideas of the world which, in reality, was never created in the beginning for lack of a creator. 2 The essence of consciousness is not material so it cannot be the cause of a material thing. The soul cannot produce an embodied being, like seed bringing forth plants on earth. 3 The nature of man is to think of things according to his own nature. Hence intelligent mankind views the world in an intellectual light, while the ignorant take it in a gross material sense. The intellect is capable of conceiving everything in itself. 4 The ethereal soul enjoys things according to its taste, and the intellect entertains the idea of whatever it thinks upon. The ignorant soul creates the idea of creation just as a drunken man sees many shapes in his intoxication. 5 Whenever the shape of a thing, which is neither produced nor existent, presents itself to our sight, it is a picture of the ideal figure which lies quietly in the Divine Mind. 6 Empty Intellect dwelling in the emptiness of consciousness, as fluidity resides in water, shows itself in the form of the world like water displays itself in the form of waves upon its surface. So the world is the very same Brahman, just as the wave is the very water. 7 Worlds shining in empty air are like clear visions in a dream, or false appearances in the open sky to a dim-sighted man. 8 The mirror of the intellect perceives the spectacle of the world in the same manner as the mind sees things in dream. Hence what is termed the world is only emptiness. 9 The dormant Intellect is said to be awakened in its first acts of creation. Then follows the inaction of the intellect, which is the sleep and night of the soul. 10 As a river continues to run in the same course in which its current first began to flow, so the whole creation moves in the same unchanging course as at first, like the continuous current and rippling waves of rivers. 11 As the waves of river accompany the course of its waters, so the source of creation lying in the empty seed of airy Consciousness gives rise to its constant course, along with its ceaseless series of thoughts. 12 The destruction of a man in his death is nothing more than the bliss of his repose in sleep. The resurrection of his soul in this world is also a renewal of his bliss. 13 If there is any fear or pain in sin, it is equally so both in this life and the next. Therefore, the life and death of the righteous are equally blissful. 14 Those who look on and salute their lives and deaths with equal indifference are men who have an unbroken tranquility of their minds. They are known as men of cool inner being. 15 As conscience becomes clear and bright after its impurity is cleansed and wiped from it, so shines the pure soul which they call the liberated and free. 16 Upon the utter absence of our consciousness, there follows a total disappearance of our knowledge of phenomena. Then our intellect rises without a vestige of phenomena in it and without its knowledge of the worlds existence. 17 He who knows God becomes unified with the divine nature, which is neither thinkable nor of the nature of the thinking principle or intellect, or any thing thought of by the intellect. Being absorbed in meditation, he remains quite indifferent to all worldly pursuits. 18 The world is a reflection in the mirror of the intellect. It is exhibited in the transparent emptiness of the Divine Spirit, so it is in vain to talk of bondage or liberty. 19 The world is produced by the vibration of airy intellect. It is an act of intellects imagination. It is pure airy spirit from where it has risen, and never in the form of the earth or anything else as it appears to be. 20 There is no space or time or any action or substance here, except a single entity which is neither a nothing nor anything that we know. 21 It is only a spiritual substance appearing as a thick mist to our sight. It is not empty or a substance but something purer and more clear than the
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transparent emptiness about us. 22 It is formless with its apparent form, and an unreality with its seeming reality. It is entirely a pure intellectual entity appearing as manifest to sight like an aerial castle in a dream. 23 Nirvana of a man is when his view of this extended, gross and impure world becomes extinct in its pure spiritual form in the emptiness of his mind. The vast and extensive world presenting all its endless varieties has no diversity in reality. It forms an infinite unity, like the empty space of the sky, and the fluidity of waters of the one universal ocean on the globe.

Chapter 56 Story of Vasishtas Search for Seclusion and Hundred Year Meditation
Vasishta added: Having proved that Consciousness is always and everywhere, in every manner the all in all, it becomes evident that it remains like the empty and translucent air in everything in the whole universe. 2 Wherever there is Consciousness, there is also creation. Consciousness resides alike in void and in fullness. All things are full of Consciousness, and there is nothing whatsoever in existence beside this universal Consciousness. 3 Just like all created things appear in their imaginary forms in our dream, so the empty Consciousness alone appears in various forms of existence in our waking dreams. 4 Rama, listen to my story of the stone, which is as pleasant to taste as it is a remedy for ignorance. I will tell you what I have actually seen and done myself. 5 Being anxious to know the knowable one, I was fully resolved in my mind to leave this world and all its false usages. 6 After forsaking all the eagerness and restlessness of my body and mind, I remained a long while in a state of calm and quiet meditation for the sake of solitary peace and rest. 7 Then I thought of taking myself to some seat of the gods and sitting there quietly to continue my survey of the changing and transitory states of worldly things. 8 I thought, I find all things quite tasteless to my taste, though they seem pleasant for a while. I never see anyone anywhere who is always content with his own state. 9 All things create only care and sorrow, with the acutest pains of remorse and regret. All these phenomena produce only evil from their appearance of good to those who see them. 10 What is all this that comes to our view? Who is their viewer and what am I who look upon these phenomena? All this is the quiet and unborn spirit which flashes forth in the empty sky with the light of its own intellect. 11 With thoughts like these, I sought to retire to a proper place where I might confine myself within myself, a place which might be inaccessible to the gods and demigods, and to the spiritual masters and other beings. 12 I sought a place where I might remain unseen by any being, sitting quietly in unalterable meditation, placing my sole reliance on the one transparent soul, and getting rid of all my cares and pains. 13 Where could I find such a place entirely empty of all creatures where my mind would not be distracted by interruptions of the objects of my five external organs of sense? 14 I cannot choose the mountains for my seat. Whistling breezes of the forests, the dashing noise of waterfalls, and the flocking of wild animals serve to disquiet the mind without the capability of being stilled by human power. 15 Hills are crowded with hosts of elephants, valleys are filled with hordes of tribal peoples, and countries are full of hateful men more harmful than the poison of venomous serpents. 16 The seas are full of men and horrible beasts in their depths. Cities are disturbed with the noise of business and the agitation of citizens. 17 The foothills of the mountains and the shores and coasts of seas and rivers are as thickly peopled as the realms of the rulers of men. Even the summits of mountains and the caves of infernal regions are not devoid of animal beings. 18 Mountains sing with the whistling of breezes and trees dance with the motion of their leafy palms. Blooming flowers smile gently in the caves of mountains, in forest grounds and in low lands. 19 I cannot go to river banks where mute fish live like silent munis in their caves, gently shaking water lilies by their giddy flirtation, because these places are also disturbed by the loud noise of whirlpools and roaring whirlwinds. 20 I can find no rest in barren deserts where howling winds raise clouds of dust, nor can I go to mountain waterfalls where the air resounds with the
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stunning noise of constant waterfall. 21 Then I thought of sitting in some secluded corner of a remote region of the sky where I might remain absorbed in holy meditation without disturbance. 22 In this corner, I thought of making a cell in my imagination and keeping myself quite confined by a complete renunciation of all my worldly desires. 23 With these reflections, I mounted high in the blue vault of the sky and found a vast space in its womb that knows no bounds. 24 There I saw spiritual masters wandering in one place and roaring clouds rolling in another. On one side I saw vidyadhara spirits and excellent yakska demons on another. 25 In one place I saw an aerial city and in another a region of rattling winds. I saw rain clouds on one side and raging yoginis in another. 26 There was the city of the Daityas hanging in the air on one side and the place of gandarva spirits appearing in another. The planetary sphere was rolling about in one way and the starry frame revolving at a distance. 27 Somewhere the sky was brushed over by flights of birds and great gales were raging in another part. Somewhere there appeared portents in the sky and elsewhere there were canopies of clouds formed in the heavens. 28 One part of heaven was filled with cities peopled by strange kinds of beings. The car of the sun was gliding on one side and the wheel of the moon was sliding in another. 29 One region of the sky was burning under the hot sun and another part was cooled by moonbeams. One part was intolerable to little animals and another was inaccessible owing to its intense heat. 30 One place was full of dancing demons and another with flocks of flying Garuda eagles. One region was deluged by doomsday rains and another was overrun by tempestuous winds. 31 Leaving these attended parts behind, I passed onward far and further until I reached a region entirely desolate and devoid of everything. 32 Here the air was mild and no being was to be seen even in a dream. There was no omen of good, or anything indicating evil, or any sight or sign of world. 33 I saw myself in a solitary cell with some space, but without any exit, pleasing as a lotus bed. 34 It was not perforated by worms, but was as handsome as the bright disc of the full moon and as lovely as the beautiful features of lily and lotus, jasmine and mandara flowers. 35 This abode of my imagination was inaccessible to all beings except me. I sat there alone with only my thoughts and the creations of my imagination. 36 I remained in lotus posture, quite silent and calm in my mind. Then, after acquiring spiritual knowledge, I rose from my seat after a hundred years. 37 I sat in unwavering meditation absorbed in samadhi. I remained as quiet as the calm stillness of air and as immovable as a statue carved in relief upon the face of the sky. 38 At last I found what I had long been searching for in earnest. At last the breath of my expectation returned into my nostrils. 39 The seed of knowledge which I had sown in the field of my mind came to sprout forth of itself after the lapse of a hundred years. 40 My living soul was awakened to its intuitive knowledge, just as a tree left withered by the dewy season becomes revivified by the renewing moisture of spring. 41 The hundred years which I passed in my meditation glided away as quickly as a single moment, because a long period of time appears a very short space to one who is intensively intent upon a single object. 42 My outward senses had expanded from their contracted state, just as withered trees expand themselves into flowers and foliage by the growing influence of spring. 43 Then vital airs filled the organs of my body and restored my consciousness to their sensations. Soon after I was seized upon by the demon of my egoism, accompanied by its consort of desire, and these began to move back and forth just like strong winds shake sturdy oaks.

Chapter 57 Vasishtas Stirring of Ego Dispelled by Certain Knowledge that All Is a Dream
Rama asked, Tell me, O most wise sage, how it is possible for the demon of ego to take hold of you, who is extinct in God? Please dispel my doubts here. 2 Vasishta replied: O Rama, it is impossible for any being, whether knowing or unknown, to live here without a sense of his egoism, just as it is impossible for the contained to exist without its container. 3 But there is a difference which you must know. The demonic egoism of a quiet minded man is capable of control by means of his knowledge of the scriptures. 4 Childish ignorance raises up this idol of egoism, though it is found to exist nowhere, just as little children make dolls of gods and men, images that have no existence at all. 5 This ignorance is also nothing of substance because it is dispelled by knowledge and reason, just as darkness is driven away by the light of a lamp. 6 Ignorance is a demon dancing in the dark, a fiend that flies far away from the light of reason. 7 In absence of knowledge and reason, we grant the existence of ignorance, yet at best it is only a fiend of delusion, shapeless as the darkest night. 8 The second rabbit [in Indian tradition, the rabbit is considered sacred to the moon] will be seen only when the second moon exists. Similarly creation is only possible when basic ignorance exists. 9 Creation having no other cause, we do not know how ignorance finds a place in it, as impossible as a tree growing in the air. 10 When creation began in its pure and subtle form in the womb of absolute emptiness, how is it possible for the material bodies of earth and water to proceed without a material cause? 11 The Lord is beyond the mind and the six senses, yet it is the source of the mind and senses. But how could that formless and incorporeal being be the cause of material and corporeal things? 12 The seedling is the effect, germinating from the seed as its causal source. But how and where can you expect to see the sprout springing without the productive seed? 13 No effect can ever result without its formal cause. Say, who has ever seen a tree springing and growing from empty air? 14 Only imagination paints these prospects in the mind, just as the vapor of imagination shows you the sight of trees in empty air. So it is the temporary madness of the mind that exhibits these phenomena before your eyes, but which in reality have no substance in them. 15 So the universe when it appeared at its first creation, in the emptiness of Divine Consciousness, was all a collection of worlds swimming in empty air. 16 It is the same as it shines in the spacious intellect of the Supreme Soul. It is divine nature itself which is called creation and which is an intellectual system having proceeded from the intellect, all the same divinity. 17 The vision of the world presented in our dreams, a daily occurrence for us, furnishes us with the best example of this. In the dreaming state we are conscious of the sights of cities and hills all before our mental eyes. 18 The nature of Consciousness is the same as a dream. Consciousness sees the vision of creation like we see the appearance of uncreated creation before our eyes, all in the same manner as it appeared at first in the vast void. 19 There is only one incomprehensible intelligence, a purely unborn and imperishable being that appears now before us in the shape of this creation, as it existed with its everlasting ideas of infinite worlds before this creation began. 20 There is no creation here, or these globes of earth and others. It is all calm and quiet with only one Brahman seated in his immensity. 21 This Brahman is omnipotent because he instantly manifests himself in any manner without forsaking his purely transparent form. 22 As our intellect shows itself in the forms of imaginary cities in our dream, so does the Divine Intellect exhibit itself in the forms of all these worlds at the beginning of their creation. 23 The empty intellect is situated in the transparent and transcendent vacuum of the
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Intellect. Creation is a display of its own nature by an act of its thought in itself. 24 The entire creation exists in the clear emptiness of the Intellect. It has the same nature of spirit situated in the spirit of God. 25 The entire creation is only the diffusion of the same spiritual essence of God. There is no possibility that a material world or ignorance or egoism exists in the creation and pervasive fullness of the Supreme Spirit. 26 Everything have I told you about the ending of your egoism and knowing the unreality of egoism serves to get rid of this false belief, like a child freed from his fear of a ghost. 27 In this manner, as soon as I was fully convinced of the futility of egoism, immediately I lost the sense of my personality. Though I fully retained consciousness of myself, yet I was freed from my selfishness, like a light autumn cloud unloading its watery burden. 28 Our knowledge that a painting of a fire is ineffective to burn us removes the fear of being burnt by it. In the same way, connecting our fallacies of egoism and creation serves to remove the impressions of the subjective and objective from our minds. 29 Thus I was delivered from my egoism and my passions became tranquil. Then I found myself seated in a sky free of clouds in an uncreated creation. 30 I am no egoism, nor is it anything to me. Having gotten rid of it, I have become one with the clear intellectual vacuum. 31 In this respect, all intelligent men are of the same opinion as I am. It is well known to them that our idea of individual ego is as false as the fallacy of fire in a painting. 32 Being certain of the unreality of yourself and of others, and of the nothingness of everything beside, conduct yourself in all your dealings with detachment and remain as silent as a stone. 33 Let your mind shine with the clearness of the vault of heaven, and be as impregnable to the excess of all thoughts and feelings as solid stone. Know that there is only one Intellectual essence from beginning to end, and that there is nothing to be seen except the one God who composes the whole fullness of space.

Chapter 58 There Is Nothing Physical in God Who Is Consciousness

Rama said, O great sage, what an extensive, noble, grand and clear prospect you have exposed to my sight! 2 I also find by my perception that the one and only abstract being fills the whole space at all times and places, and that this essence shows itself alike in every manner and form always and everywhere forever and always. 3 Sage, I still have some moral principles disturbing in my heart. I hope you will please remove them by explaining the meaning of your story of the stone. 4 Vasishta replied: Rama, I will tell you the story of the stone in order to establish that this whole is existent in all times and in all places. 5 This story explains how thousands of worlds are contained within the compact and solid body of a stone. 6 This story will also show you how there are thousands of worlds in the great emptiness of elemental space. 7 From this story you will also find that in the midst of all plants and their seeds, and in the hearts of all living animals, and also in the heart of the elementary bodies of water, air, earth and fire, there is sufficient space containing thousands of productions of their own kinds. 8 Rama asked, If you say, O sage, that all plants and living beings are full with the productions of their respective kinds, then why is it that we do not perceive the numerous productions which abound in the empty air? 9 Vasishta replied: I have already told you, Rama, much about this first and essential truth. The whole of this creation which appears to our sight is empty air, existing only in emptiness. 10 In the first place, nothing was ever produced in the beginning, nor is there anything which is now in existence. All that appears as visible to us is nothing other than Brahman himself. 11 There is no room for even an atom of earth to find its place in the fullness of Divine Consciousness which is filled with its ideal worlds. No material worlds exist in Brahman, who is of the form of pure emptiness. 12 There is no room even for a spark of fire to have its place in the intellectual creation of God which admits of no gap or opening. These worlds do not exist in any part of Brahman who is entirely a pure emptiness. 13 There is no possibility for a breath of air to exist in the compact fullness of the intellectual creation of God, nor do any of these worlds exist except in the purely empty Consciousness of Brahman. 14 There is not even a bit of visible emptiness that finds a place in the intensity of the ideal creation in the Divine Mind, nor is it possible for any of these visible worlds to exist in the compact vacuum of the deity. 15 The five great elementary bodies have no room in the consolidated creation of God, which exists in its empty form in the emptiness of Divine Consciousness. 16 There is nothing created anywhere. Everything is the vacuum in the emptiness of the great spirit of God. 17 There is no atom of the great spirit of God, which is not full of created things. There is no creation, only the void in the emptiness of the Divine Spirit. 18 There is no particle of Brahman distributed in creation because the Lord is spirit, always full in himself. 19 Creation is the supreme Brahman, and the Lord is creation itself. There is not the slightest trace of dualism in them, as there is no duality between fire and its heat. 20 It is improper to say that this is creation and the other is Brahman, and to think them as different from one another, just as it is wrong to consider a tree and it being torn as two things from the difference in the sounds of the words. 21 There exists no difference between Brahman and creation when their duality disappears into unity, and when we cannot have any idea of their difference, unless we support the gross dualistic theory. 22 We know all this as one clear and transparent space, without beginning or end and
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quite indestructible and tranquil in its nature. Knowing this all wise men remain as silent as a piece of solid stone, even when they are employed in business. 23 Look at this whole creation as extinct in God and see the visible world only as a vast void. Look upon your egoism and the world as mere fallacies. Behold the gods and demigods and the hills and everything else as imaginary appearances in our dream which spread their nothingness of delusion over the minds of men.

Chapter 59 Vasishta Seeks the Source of a Sound, Describes Infinite Networks of Alternative Realities
Rama asked, Tell me, O sage, about what you did after you arose from your hundred years of samadhi in the cell of your aerial abode. 2 Vasishta replied: After I awoke from my trance, I heard a soft and sweet sound. It was slow but distinctly audible, clearly intelligible both in sound and sense. 3 It was as soft and sweet as if it proceeded from a female voice, and musical to the ear. It was neither loud nor harsh owing to its feminine quality. I kept watching from where the words were heard. 4 It was as sweet as the humming of the bees, and as pleasing as the tune of stringed instruments. It was neither the chime of crying nor some recitation, but like the buzzing of black bees known to men as the melody in vocal music. 5 Hearing this melody for a long time and vainly seeking its source, I thought, It is a wonder that I hear the sound without knowing its author or from which of the ten sides of heaven it proceeds. 6 This part of the heavens, I thought, is the path of the spiritual masters. On the other side I see an endless emptiness. I passed over millions of miles that way, and then I sat there awhile and reflected in my mind. 7 How could such feminine voice proceed from such a remote and solitary quarter? I see no vocalist with all my diligent search. 8 I see the infinite space of the clear and empty sky lying before me. I find no visible being appearing to my sight in spite of all my diligent search. 9 As I was thinking in this manner, looking repeatedly on all sides without seeing the maker of the voiced sound, I thought of the following plan. 10 I must transform myself into air and be one with the empty vacuum. Then I would make some sound in the empty air, which is the receptacle of sound. 11 I thought of leaving my body in its posture of meditation, as I had been sitting before, and with the empty body of my intellect, mix with the empty vacuum like a drop of water mixes with water. 12 Thinking so, I was about to forsake my material frame by sitting in lotus posture and entering samadhi, shutting my eyes tightly against all external sights. 13 Having given up my sensations of all external objects of sense, I became as void as my intellectual vacuum, preserving only the feeling of my consciousness in myself. 14 By degrees I lost my consciousness also. I became only a thinking principle. Then I remained in my intellectual sphere as a mirror of the world. 15 Then with that empty nature of mine, I became one with the universal vacuum and melted away like a drop of water with common water, and mixed as an odor in the universal receptacle of empty air. 16 Being assimilated to the great vacuum, which is omnipresent and pervades over the infinite space, I became like the endless void, the reservoir and support of all, although I was formless and unsupported myself. 17 In my formless space I began to look into multitudes of worlds and cosmic eggs that lay countless in my infinite and unconscious heart. 18 These worlds were apart from, unseen by, and unknown to one another. They appeared with all their motions and manners as mere space to each other. 19 As visions in a dream appear as solid to a dreaming man and as nothing to other sleeping people, so the empty space abounds with worlds to their observer, but these universes are invisible to each other. 20 Many things are born to grow and decay and die away at last. What is present is reckoned with the past, and what was in the womb of the future comes to existence in numbers. 21 The imaginations of men build many magic scenes and many aerial castles and buildings, together with many a kingdom and palace in empty air. 22 Here there were many buildings with several apartments (idea principles) counting from unit to the digit. 23 There were some structures
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constructed with ten or sixteen apartments (idea principles) and others which had two or three dozen doors attached to them. 24 The entire ethereal space is full of the five primary elements which compose elementary bodies of single or double or triple natures. 25 Some of these bodies are composed of four, five and six elements, and others of seven different elementary principles called the seven great elements. 26 There are many supernatural natures which are beyond the power of your conception, and there are spaces of everlasting darkness without the light of the sun or moon. 27 Some parts of the void were devoid of creation, and others were occupied by Brahma the creator. Some parts were under the dominion of the patriarchs and under influence of various customs. 28 Some parts were under the control of the Vedas and others were ungoverned by regulations of scriptures. Some parts were full of insects and worms and others were peopled by gods and other living beings. 29 In some parts the burning fires of daily oblations were seen to rise, and at others the people observed only the traditional usages of their respective tribes. 30 Some parts were filled with water and others were the regions of storms. Some bodies were fixed in the remote sky and others were continually wandering and revolving. 31 Growing trees were blossoming in some parts and others were bearing fruit and ripening at others. There were grazing animals moving with their face downwards in some place and others were swarming with living beings. 32 The Lord alone is the whole creation and he only is the totality of mankind. He is the whole multitude of demons and he also is the entire multitude of insects and birds everywhere. 33 He is not far from anything, but is present in every atom that is contained in his bosom. All things are growing and grown up in the cell of emptiness, like the layers of a plantain tree. 34 Many things are growing unseen and unknown to each other, never thought of together. Such are the dreams of soldiers which are unseen by others. 35 There are endless varieties of creations in the unbounded womb of vacuum, all of different natures and manners. There are no two things of the same character and feature. 36 All men are of different scriptures, faiths and beliefs from one another, and these are of endless varieties. They are as different in their habits and customs as they are separated from each other in their houses and places. 37 There are worlds above worlds and spheres of spirits over one another. There are a great many big elemental bodies like hills and mountains that come to our sight. 38 It is impossible for understanding like yours to comprehend the unusual things which men like we speak about. 39 We must derive the atoms of spiritual light which proceed from the sphere of emptiness as we feel the particles of mental light which issue from the orb of the sun of our intellect. 40 Some are born to remain just as they are and become of no use to anyone at all. Others become somewhat like themselves as the leaves of forest trees. 41 Some are equal to others and many are unlike them. For some time they are alike to one another and at others they differ in their shapes and nature. 42 Hence there are various results of the great tree of spirituality, among which some are of the same kinds and others of different sorts. 43 Some of these are of short duration and others endure for longer periods. There are some that exist temporarily and others endure forever. 44 Some have no definite time to regulate its course and others are spontaneous in their growth and continuance. 45 Different regions of the sky that lie in the hollow of boundless vacuum exist from unknown periods of time in a state beyond the reach of our knowledge. 46 These regions of the sky, this sun and these seas and mountains which are seen to rise by hundreds to our sights, are the wonderful display of our Consciousness in the sky, like a series of dreams in our sleep. 47 It is from our false notions and the false idea of a creative cause that we take the unreal earth and all other appearances as if they really exist. 48 Like the appearance of water in a mirage and the sight of two

moons in the sky, these unreal phenomena present themselves to our view although they are altogether false. 49 The imaginative power of Consciousness creates these images like clouds in the empty air. They are raised high by the wind of our desire, and roll about with our efforts and pursuits. 50 We see the gods, demigods and men flying about like flies and gnats about a fig tree. Its luscious fruits are seen hanging and shaking with the winds of heaven. 51 It is only from the naturally creative imagination of Consciousness, like the playful nature of children, that cities of fairy shapes are shown in empty air. 52 The false impressions of I, you, he and this are as firmly fixed in the mind as the clay dolls of children are hardened in sunlight and heat. 53 Playful and ever active destiny works all these changes in nature, just as the pleasant spring season makes the forest fruitful with its moisture. 54 Those called the great causes of creation are no causes, nor is creation created all. All is a perfect void. All has sprung of themselves in the emptiness of Consciousness. 55 They all exist in their intellectual form, though they appear to be manifest as otherwise. What is perceptible is all imperceptible, and what exists is altogether nonexistent. 56 The fourteen worlds and the eleven kinds of created beings are all the same in the inner intellect, just as they appear to outer sight. 57 In their true sense, heaven and earth and the infernal regions and the whole host of our friends and foes are all empty nonentities though they appear to be very busy. 58 All things are like inelastic fluid, just like the fluidity of seawaters. They are as fragile as sea waves inside, though they appear as solid substances on the outside. 59 They are the reflections of the Supreme Soul, just as daylight is that of the sun. They all proceed from and melt away into the empty air like gusts of wind. 60 Egoistic understanding is the tree bearing the leaves of our thoughts. They are nonexistent like beings in a dream who seem separate from the dreamer. 61 The rituals and their rewards prescribed in the Vedas and Puranas are like fanciful dreams occurring in light sleep. But they are buried into forgetfulness by them and are led up in the sound sleep like the dead. 62 Consciousness, like a gandharva spirit architect, is in the act of building many fairy cities in the forest of Brahman, lighted with the light of its reason, blazing as the bright sunbeams. 63 In this manner, O Rama, in my samadhi I saw many worlds created and scattered without any cause, just as a blind man sees many false sights in the open air.

Chapter 60 Networks of Alternate Realities, Continued

Vasishta continued: Then I went on forward to find the source of the ethereal sounds, continuing my journey onward in the empty region of my mental thoughts without any interruption from any side. 2 Far beyond me I heard the sound that came to my ears resembling the jingling thrill of the Indian lute. It became more distinct as I approached until I heard the metrical flow of sounds with a measure in it called arya [a two-line meter used in Sanskrit verses]. 3 In my meditation, as I glanced towards the source of the sound, I saw a lady as fair as liquid gold brightening that part of the sky. 4 She had necklaces hanging on her loose garments and her eyelashes were colored with lac dye. With loosened traces and fluttering locks of hair, she appeared like the goddess Lakshmi sitting in the air. 5 Her limbs were as beautiful and handsome as if were made of pure gold. Sitting on the wayside with the bloom of her youth, she was as fragrant as the goddess Lakshmi, beautiful in every part of her body. 6 Her face was like the full moon and she was smiling like a cluster of flowers. Her face was flushed with her youth and her eyelids signified her good fortune. 7 She was sitting under the vault of heaven, the brightness of her beauty blooming like the beams of the full moon. Decorated with ornaments of pearls, she walked gracefully towards me. 8 With her sweet voice, she recited the verses in arya rhythm, smiling as she recited them by my side in a high tone of her voice, saying, 9 I salute you, O sage, whose mind is freed from the evil inclinations of those who are deluded to fall into the current of this world, and to whom you are a support, like a tree standing on its border. 10 Hearing this voice, I looked upon that charming face. Seeing the maiden with whom I had nothing to do, I disregarded her and went on forward. 11 Then I was struck with wonder, seeing the magic display of the mundane system, and was inclined to wander through the air and neglect the company of the lady. 12 With this intention in my mind, I left the ethereal lady in the air and assumed an aerial form to travel through the ethereal regions and scan the fantastic illusion of the world. 13 I went on seeing wonderful worlds scattered about in the empty sky. I found them no better than empty dreams or the fictions in works of imagination. 14 I never saw or heard any of those creations and creatures that existed in former kalpa and great kalpa ages of the world. 15 I did not see the furious pushkara and avarta clouds of the great flood, or the ominous and raging whirlwinds of old. I heard no thunder claps that split mighty mountains and broke worlds asunder. 16 The fires of the end of the world that cracked Kuberas palaces, and the burning rays of a dozen suns were seen no more. 17 The lofty abodes of the gods hurled headlong on the ground, and the crackling noise of the falling mountains were no more to be seen or heard. 18 The fires at the end of the world raged with tremendous roar all about, boiling and burning away the waters of the ethereal oceans, were now no more. 19 There was no more hideous rushing of waters which flooded over the homes of gods, demigods, and men, nor swelling of the seven oceans which filled the whole world up to the face of the sun. 20 People all lay dead and unconscious of the universal flood, like men singing the battle alarm in their sleep. 21 I saw thousands of Brahmas, Rudras and Vishnus disappearing in the different kalpa ages of the world. 22 Then in my mental thoughts, I dived into those dark and dreary depths of time when there were no kalpa or yuga ages, no years and days and nights, no sun or moon, and no creation or destruction of the world. 23 All these I saw in my intellect, which is all in all, to which all things belong, and which is in every place. It is the intellect which absorbs everything in itself and shows itself in all forms. 24 O Rama, whatever you say to be anything, know that thing is only the intellect. This
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thing being rarer than subtle air, know it to be next to nothing. 25 Therefore this empty air exhibits everything under the name of the world. As sound proceeding from empty air melts again into the air, so all things are only aerial and transcendent air. 26 All these phenomena and their sight are simply false and pertain only to the empty intellect, exhibited as leaves of a tree in the sky. 27 Intellect, consciousness and emptiness are identical and of the same nature with themselves, and this I came to understand from the entire absence of all my desires. 28 These worlds linked together in the chain of the universe, lying within the limits of its ten sides, are only the one Brahman. The infinite emptiness, with all its parts of space and time and all forms of things and actions, are only the substance and essence of Brahman. 29 In this manner, in the numerous worlds that manifested before me, I saw many great sages like myself, all sons of the great Brahma and named Vasishta, and other men of great holiness and piety. 30 I saw many revolutions of the Treta Age with as many Ramas in them. I marked the rotation of many Satya and Dwapara Ages of the world, which I counted by hundreds and thousands. 31 From my common sense of concrete particulars, I saw this changing state of created things. But by the powers of my reflection and generalization, I found them all to be only the one Brahman, extended as infinite emptiness from all eternity. 32 Its not that the world exists in Brahman or he in this. Brahman is the uncreated and endless all himself. Brahman is whatever bears a name or is thought of in our understanding. 33 He is like a block of silent stone that bears no name or description. It is of the form of pure light, which is also named the world. 34 This light shines within the sphere of infinite intellect beyond the limit of our finite intelligence. It manifests itself in the form of the world, which is as formless and as unknown to us as anything in our dreamless sleep. 35 Brahman is nothing other than himself. All else is only his reflection. His light is the light of the world, and shows us all things like sunlight. 36 It is by that light that these thousands of worlds appear to view. It is by that light that we have understanding of heat in the moon and of cold in the sun. 37 There are some creatures that see in the dark and not in daylight, such as owls and bats. There are men of the same kind. 38 There are many here who are lost by their goodness, and others who prosper and ascend to heaven by their wickedness. Some come to life by drinking poison, and many die by the taste of nectar. 39 Whatever a thing appears to be by itself, or whatever is thought of it in anothers understanding, the same comes to occur and is presented to the lot of everyone, be it good or evil. 40 The world is a hanging garden in the air, with all its orbs fixed as trees with their firm roots in it, yet rolling and revolving about like the shaking leaves and tossing fruits of this tree. 41 Sand, like mustard seeds crushed under stony oil mills, yield the fluid substance of oil. The tender lotus flower grows out of the clefts of rocks. 42 Moving images carved out of stone or wood are seen in the company of celestial goddesses conversing with them. 43 The clouds of heaven are seen shrouding many things as their vests, and many trees are found to produce fruits of different kinds every year. 44 All terrestrial animals are seen moving upon the earth in different and changing forms with different parts of their bodies and heads. 45 The lower worlds are filled with human beings who are without the regulations of the Vedas and scriptures. They live without any faith or religion and lead their lives like beasts. 46 Some places are peopled by heartless peoples who are without feelings of love or desire. Others are not born of women but appear to be scattered like stones on the ground. 47 There are some places full of serpents that feed only on air. There are other places where gems and stones are taken with indifference, and others where many people are without greed and pride. 48 There were some beings who look on their individual souls and not on those of others, and other beings regard the Universal Soul that resides alike in all.

As the hairs and nails and other parts of a person are parts of his same body, though they grow in different parts, so do all beings pertain to the one Universal Soul, which is to be looked upon in all. 50 The one infinite and boundless vacuum seems like many skies about the different worlds which it encompasses. By exertion of divine energy, these empty spaces are filled with worlds. 51 There are some who are entirely ignorant of the meaning of the word liberation and move about like wooden machines without any sense in them. 52 Some creatures have no knowledge of astronomical calculation and are ignorant of the course of time. Others are quite deaf and dumb and conduct themselves by signs and body movements. 53 Some are devoid of eyesight, so the light of the sun and moon are all in vain to them. 54 Some have no life in them. Others have no sense of smell. Some are quite mute and cannot utter any sound, while others are deprived of the sense of their hearing. 55 There are some who are entirely dumb, without the power of speech. Some have no sense of touch or feeling and are like unconscious blocks of stone. 56 Some have only their sense of conception without the organs of sense. Others manage themselves as foul pisacha demons and therefore are inadmissible in human society. 57 There are some made of one material only and others have no solidity in them. Some are composed of watery substance and others are full of fiery matter. 58 Some are full of air and some are of all forms. All these are empty forms and are shown in the emptiness of understanding. 59 So the surface of the earth, air and water swarm with living beings. Frogs live in the cave of stones and insects dwell in the womb of the earth. 60 There are living beings in vast bodies of water, as in lands, forests and mountains. So there are living creatures gliding in the other elements and air, like fish swimming in the air. 61 There are living things peopling the element of fire, moving in fiery places where there is no water to be had. There they fly and move about like sparks of fire. 62 The regions of air are also filled with other kinds of living beings. These have airy bodies like the bilious flatulency which runs all over the body. 63 Even the region of vacuum is full of animal life. These have empty bodies moving in their particular forms. 64 Whatever animals are shut up in infernal caves, or skip aloft in the upper skies, and those that remain and wander about all sides of the air, these and all those which inhabit and move about the many worlds in the womb of the great vacuum, were seen by me in the emptiness of my intellect.

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Chapter 61 Creation and Destruction Are Only Memory and Forgetfulness of the Intellect
Vasishta continued: Our understandings catch the reflection of this universe from the face of Divine Consciousness, just like the waters of the deep receive the images of the clouds in the upper sky. It is this Consciousness which gives us life and guides our minds. 2 Our living souls and minds are of the form of the clear sky. These countless worlds are productions of empty emptiness. 3 Rama asked, Tell me sage. After the universal annihilation when all kinds of beings were entirely liberated from the bonds of their bodies and their souls, what is created again, and from where is it undone again? 4 Vasishta replied: Hear me describe how at the great destruction or deluge, all things together with the earth, water, air, fire and sky, and the spheres of heaven vanish and are liberated from their respective forms, and how this universe comes to appear again to our imagination. 5 After the destruction, only the indefinable spirit of God remains which the sages call the great Brahman and Supreme Consciousness. This world remains in the heart of that being, from which it is altogether inseparable and indifferent. 6 He is the Lord, and all this that passes under the name of the world is contained in the nature of this heart. By his pleasure he exhibits to us the idea that we have of the world, which is not his real form. 7 Considering this well, we find nothing created or destroyed by him. The supreme cause of all is imperishable by his nature, so we know his heart is also indestructible and the great kalpa ages are only parts of himself. 8 Only our limited knowledge shows us the differences and dualities of things. But upon examination, these are not to be found and vanish into nothing. 9 Therefore there is nothing of anything that is ever destroyed to nothing, nor is there anything which is ever produced from Brahman who is unborn and invisible and always rests in his tranquility. 10 He remains as the pure essence of consciousness in atoms of a thousandth part of the particles of simple emptiness. 11 This world is truly the body of that great Consciousness. Then how can this mundane body come to be destroyed without destruction of the other also? 12 As consciousness awakes in our hearts, even in our sleep and dreams, so the world is present in our minds at all times and presents to us its airy or ideal form ever since its first creation. 13 Creation is a component part of the empty intellect. Its rising and setting is only the airy and ideal operations of the Intellect. There is no part of it that is ever created or destroyed at anytime. 14 This spiritual substance of consciousness is never capable of being burnt or broken or torn at anytime. It is not soiled or dried or weakened at all, nor is it knowable or capable to be seen by those who are ignorant of it. 15 It becomes whatever it has in its mind and, as it never perishes, the idea of the world and of all things in its mind are neither created nor destroyed in any way. 16 It falls and revives only because of its forgetfulness and memory at different times. The rising and setting of an idea gives rise to the ideas of the creation and destruction of the world. 17 Whatever idea you have of the world, you become that yourself. Think it perishable, and you also perish with it. But know it as imperishable, and you become imperishable also. 18 Know then that the creation and great destruction of the world are only recurrences of its idea and forgetfulness, only two phases of consciousness. 19 How can the production or destruction of anything take place in the emptiness of airy consciousness? How can any condition or change be attributed to the formless intellect at all? 20 The great kalpa ages and all periods of time and parts of creation are mere attributes of
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consciousness. Consciousness is only an attribute of Brahman. They all merge into the great Brahman. 21 Consciousness is a formless and purely transparent substance. Phenomena are subject to its will alone. One sees an object appear according to the will or wish that he has in his mind, like the fairylands of imagination. 22 As the body of a tree is composed of its several parts of roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit and other things, 23 so the solid substance of the Divine Spirit, more translucent than the clear sky to which nothing can be attributed in reality, has creation and destruction as the different parts of its own essence. 24 The various states of pleasure and pain, happiness and misery, birth, life and death, and form and formless are only the different parts of the same spirit. 25 The whole body of this spirit is imperishable and unchangeable in its nature, so are all the parts and states of its being also. 26 There is no difference in the nature and essence of the whole and its parts, except that one is more tangible to sight by its greater bulk than the other. 27 Our consciousness is the root of existence of a tree, so our consciousness is the root of our belief in the existence of God. 28 This consciousness shows us the varieties of things as something in one place and another elsewhere. It shows us creation as a great trunk and all the worlds as so many trees. 29 It shows somewhere the great continents like the branches of these trees and their contents of hills and plains as their twigs and leaves. Elsewhere it shows sunshine as its flowers and darkness as the black bark of these trees. 30 Somewhere it shows the concavity of the sky as the hollow of the tree and elsewhere the dissolution of creation as a vast desolation. It shows in one place the council of gods as a cluster of flowers and in another beings, like bushes and brambles and barks of trees. 31 So all these are situated in formless and empty consciousness which is the great Brahman itself, and they all are nothing other than the same nature with Brahman. 32 There was a past world, here is the present one, and in another a would be creation in the future. All are only ideas of our minds known to us by our consciousness of them, which is as unchangeable in its nature as Brahman himself. 33 Thus there is no color or cloud or shades of light or darkness in the moon that can be attributed to the supreme and self conscious soul of Brahman that is as transparent as empty space. 34 How can there be the taint of anything in the transcendent and transparent space? How can first, middle or last, or far and near attach to infinity and eternity? 35 Lack of comprehensive and abstract knowledge is the cause of attributing such and other qualities to divine nature. It is removed by right knowledge of the most perfect one. 36 Ignorance, known as such by recognition of truth, is removed by itself, just as a lamp is extinguished by the air which kindles the light. 37 It is certain that knowledge of ones ignorance causes its removal. Therefore knowledge of the unlimited Brahman makes him known as all in all. 38 Thus Rama, have I explained to you the meaning of liberation. Deliberate on it attentively with your intellect and you will undoubtedly attain it. 39 This network of worlds is uncreated and without its beginning, yet it is apparent to sight by means of the spirit of Brahman manifest in that form. Whoever contemplates the eight qualities of the Lord with the eye of his intellect becomes full with the Divine Spirit, although he is as mean as a straw in his living soul.

Chapter 62 Identity of Intellect with the Intellectual World

Rama asked, Tell me sage, were you sitting in one place or wandering about in the skies when you saw all this with your empty and intellectual body? 2 Vasishta replied: I was filled with the infinite soul that fills and encompasses the whole space of vacuum. Being in this state of omnipresence, how could I be wandering from one fixed place to another? 3 I was neither seated in any place nor was I moving about anywhere. Therefore I was present everywhere in the empty air with my airy spirit, and saw everything in my self. 4 As I see with my eyes all the members of my body composing one body from head to foot, so I saw the whole universe in myself with my intellectual eyes. 5 Though my purely empty and intellectual soul is formless without any part like my body, yet the worlds formed its parts, neither by the souls diffusion in them nor by their being of the same nature and essence in their substance. 6 An example of this is your false vision of the world in your dream. You retain a real memory of the dream though it is an airy nothing. 7 As a tree perceives in itself the growth of leaves, fruits and flowers from its body, so I saw all these rising in myself. 8 I saw all these in me as the profound sea views the various marine animals in its depths and the endless waves and whirlpools and foam and froth continually floating over its breast. 9 In short, as all embodied beings are conscious of their own bodies, I was consciousness of all existence in my all knowing soul. 10 Rama, I still retain the memories of whatever I saw on land and water, and in the hills and valleys, as they are embodied with my body, and I still behold the entire of creation as if it were pressed into my mind. 11 I see the worlds exposed before me lying within and without myself, just as they lay the inside and outside of a house, and my soul is full with all these worlds unified with my understanding. 12 As water knows its fluidity, frost has its coldness, and air its ventilation, so the enlightened mind knows and scans the whole world within itself. 13 Whoever has a reasoning soul in him and has attained a clear understanding is possessed of the same soul as mine. 14 After understanding is perfected by absence of knowledge of subject and object, there is nothing that appears to him except the self same intelligent soul which abides alike in all. 15 As a man sitting on a high hill sees distant objects many miles away, so from my elevation of yoga meditation I saw with my clairvoyance all things situated far and near and within and without me. 16 As the earth perceives minerals, metals and all other things lying inside it, so I saw everything as identical with and nothing other than myself. 17 Rama asked, Be this as it may, but tell me, O brahmin. What became of that bright eyed lady who was reciting the arya verses? 18 Vasishta replied: That aerial lady who recited in the arya meter came courteously towards me and sat beside me in the air. 19 But she being as aerial as myself could not be seen by me in her form of spirit. 20 I was of the aerial spirit and she also had an air-like body, and worlds appeared as empty air in my airy meditation in an aerial seat. 21 Rama asked, The body is the seat of the organs of sense and action of breathing. Then how could a bodiless spirit utter the sounds of articulate words composed in verse? 22 How is it possible for a bodiless spirit either to see or think of anything? Explain to me these inexplicable truths about the facts you have related. 23 Vasishta replied: Seeing sights, thinking thoughts, and uttering sounds are all productions of empty air
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as they occur in our airy dreams. 24 The sight of a thing and the thought of anything depend on the aerial intellect, as they do in our aerial dream. These sights and sounds are impressed in the hollowness of consciousness, both in waking as well as dreaming states. 25 Not only sight, but whatever is the object of any of our senses and the whole world itself are the clear and open sky. 26 The transcendent first principle has the form of unknowable intellect. It exhibits itself in the composition of the universe, which is truly its very nature. 27 What proof do you have of the existence of the body and its senses? Matter is mere illusion, and as it is with another body, so it is with ours also. 28 This is as that one, and that is as this. But the unreal is taken for the real, and the real is understood as an unreality. 29 As the uses that are made of the earth in a dream, its paths and houses, prove to be false upon waking, made in empty air, so the applications made of the words my, your, his and the like made in our waking are all buried in forgetfulness in the state of sound sleep. 30 All our struggles, efforts and actions in lifetime are as false and void as empty air. They resemble the bustle, commotion and fighting of men in dream, which vanish into nothing upon waking. 31 Do you ask where does this phenomenon of dreaming and all its different shapes and varieties come from? To this nothing further can be said other than it is the reproduction or memory of impressions. 32 In answer to this question, it can only be said that there is no other cause of its appearance to you other than the appearance of this world to you. 33 We have the dreaming man presented to us from the very beginning of creation in the person of Viraj. This being is situated in open air with its aerial body in the shape of the dreamer and dream mixed up together. 34 The word dream that I have used and presented to you is an example to explain the nature of the phenomenal world. It is to be understood as neither a reality nor an unreality, but only Brahman himself. 35 Now Rama, I approached that lovely lady who became my loving companion in the form in which I saw her in my consciousness. 36 I conversed with her ideal figure in my clairvoyant state, just as men seen in a dream talk with one another. 37 Our conversation was of that spiritual kind, as between men in a dream. Our conversation was as airy as our persons and spirits. So Rama, you must know the whole world affair is only an airy and fairy play. 38 The world is a dream and the dream is an illusion of air. They are the same emptiness with only their names different. The illusion of waking daytime is called the world and the world of sleeping nighttime is called a dream. 39 This scene of the world is the dream of the soul, or it is empty air or nothing. The clear understanding of God or his own essence is so displayed. 40 The nightly dream needs a dreamer, and to see the I, you, he or anybody else needs a living person. But not so the day dream of the world which is displayed in the emptiness of clear Consciousness itself. 41 As the viewer of the world is the clear emptiness of consciousness, so its view also is as clear as its viewer. The world being like a dream, it is as subtle as the rare atmosphere. 42 The empty dream of the world appears of itself in the empty and formless intellect within the hollow of the mind and has no substantiality. Then how can it be said to be a material substance, when it is perceived in the same manner by the immaterial intellect? 43 When the vision of world in a dream of a physical being such as ourselves proves to be only emptiness, how do you take it for a material substance? It is contained in its immaterial form in the incorporeal spirit and intellect of God. Why not call it an empty air when it resides like a dream in Divine Consciousness? 44 The Lord sees this uncreated world appearing before him as in a dream, something designed without any material cause or support. 45 The Lord Brahma called Hiranyagarbha has framed this creation in air, with the soft clay of his empty consciousness. All these bodies with numerous cavities in them appear created and uncreated at the same time. 46 There is no causality, no created worlds, and no one occupying them. Know there is nothing and nothing at all. Knowing this, go on doing your duties to the end like a mute stone and

care not whether your body may last long or be lost to you.

Chapter 63 Identity of the Universe with the Universal Soul; Dreams within Dreams
Rama asked, O sage, how could you converse with the incorporeal lady? How could she utter the letters of the alphabet without organs of speech? 2 Vasishta replied: Of course, incorporeal bodies have no capability of pronouncing the letters of the alphabet, just as dead bodies are incapable of speech. 3 Should there even be an articulate sound, yet there can be no intelligible sense in it and the sound must be unintelligible to others, just as a dream perceived by the dreamer is unknown to other sleepers in the same bed. 4 Therefore, there is nothing real in a dream. It is really an unreality and the ideal imagery of Consciousness in empty air accompanied with sleep of its own nature. 5 The clear sky of the intellect is darkened by its imageries, like the moon by its blackness and the sky by its clouds. But these are as false as the song of a stone or the sound of a dead body. 6 Dreams and images that appear in the sphere of the intellect are only appearances of itself, just as the visible sky is nothing other than invisible vacuum itself. 7 Like dreams in sleep, this world appears before us in our waking state. In the same way, the invisible vacuum appears as visible. So the form of the lady was a shape of the intellect. 8 The very clever intellect in us exhibits all these varieties of exquisite shapes in itself, and shows this world to be as real and permanent as itself. 9 Rama asked. Sage, if these be only dreams, how can they appear to us in our waking state? If they are unreal, why is it that they seem as solid realities to us? 10 Vasishta replied: Hear how visionary dreams appear as substantial worlds. They are only dreams, never real, solid or substantial in any way. 11 The seeds of our ideas play at random like dust in the spacious sky of Consciousness. Some are of the same kind and others different, producing like and unlike results. 12 Some are contained one under the other, like the skin of plantain trees. There are many others that have no connection with another and are quite unconscious and unknown to others. 13 They do not see each other, nor do they know anything of one another, but as inert seeds they decay and moisten in the same heap. 14 These ideas, being as void as vacuum, are not like shadows in the visible sky nor are they known to one another. Though they are of conscious shapes, yet they are as ignorant of themselves as if under the influence of sleep. 15 Those who sleep in their ignorance find the world appearing to them during the day in the shape of a dream. Then they act according to what they think themselves to be. So asura demigods in their dream think they are fighting and are defeated by the gods. 16 They could not be liberated owing to their ignorance, nor were they reduced to the unconsciousness of stones, but remained dull and inactive within the imaginary world of their dreams. 17 Men laid up in the sleep of their ignorance, seeing the dream of the world before them, act according to their custom and observe how one man is killed by another. 18 There are other intelligent spirits who, being bound tightly to their desires, are never awakened or liberated from their ignorance, but continue to dwell in the imaginary world which they see in their daydream. 19 Rakshasa demons who lie sleeping in the imaginary world of their dreams are placed by the gods in the same state as they were accustomed to be. 20 Say then, O Rama, what became of those rakshasas who were slain in their dreams by the gods? They could neither obtain their liberation owing to their ignorance nor could they be transformed to stones with their intelligent souls.
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Thus this earth and its seas, mountains and peoples seen situated in it are thought to be as substantial as we think of ourselves by our prior ideas of them. 22 Our imagination of the existence of the world is like that of other beings regarding it. They think of our existence in this world in the same light as we think of theirs. 23 To them our waking state appears as a dream and they think that we are dreaming men, just as we think they are. As we view their world to be imaginary, so they see ours as imaginary also. 24 As other people have the idea of their existence only from their memories, so we have ours and they have theirs from the omnipresence of the intellectual soul. 25 As dreaming men think of their reality, so others think of themselves likewise. So you are as real as anyone of them. 26 As you see cities and people in your dream, so they continue to remain there in the same manner to this day because Brahman is omnipresent everywhere and at all times. 27 By your waking from the sleep of ignorance and coming to the light of reason, these objects of your dream will be divested of their substantiality and appear in their spiritual light as manifestations of Brahman himself. 28 He is all and in all and everywhere at all times. So he is nothing and nowhere, not the sky or is he ever anything that is destroyed. 29 He abides in the endless sky and is eternal without beginning or end. He abides in the endless worlds and in the infinity of souls and minds. 30 He lives throughout the air and in every part of it, and in all orbs and systems of worlds. He resides in the heart of everybody, in every island and mountain and hill. 31 He extends all over all districts, cities and villages. He dwells in every house and in every living body. He extends over years and ages and all parts of time. 32 In him live all living beings, those who are dead and gone, and those who have not obtained their liberation. All the detached worlds are attached to him to no end and forever. 33 Each world has its people and all people have their minds. Again each mind has a world in it, and every world has its people also. 34 Thus phenomena having no beginning or end are all only false conceptions of the mind. They are nothing other than Brahman to the knower of God who sees no reality in anything other than Brahman. 35 There is only one consciousness that pervades this earth below and the heaven above, which extends over the land and water and lies in woods and stones and fills the whole and endless universe. Thus wherever there is anything in any part of this boundless world, they all inspire the idea of divinity in the divine, while they are looked upon as objects of the sense by the ungodly.

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Chapter 64 A Beautiful Vidyadhari Complains to Vasishta about Her Uninterested Husband

Vasishta continued: Once I gently looked upon a graceful vidyadhari with lotus-like eyes, her sidelong glances darting like a string of malati flowers. I asked her with tenderness, 2 Who are you sweet lady, who is as fair as the pollen of the lotus flower and comes to my company? Say, whose and what are you? Where do you live and where are you going? What do you desire of me? 3 The vidyadhari replied: It is fitting, O silent sage, that you greet me in this way. I come to you with a grieving heart and I will lay my case confidently before you for your kind advice. 4 This worldly dwelling of yours is situated in a corner of the cell of the great vault of 5 emptiness. This dwelling house of the world has three apartments, namely earth, heaven and the infernal regions. In this house the great architect (Brahma) placed a young girl by name of fancy as a mistress of this dwelling. 6 Here the somber surface of the earth appears as the store-house of the world, encompassed with numerous islands surrounded by oceans and seas. 7 The earth stretches on all sides extending ten thousand leagues with many islands in the midst of its seas and with many mines of gold underneath. 8 It is bright and visible, fair as the vault of heaven. It supplies us with all the objects of our desire and the luster of its gems competes with the starry heaven. 9 It is the pleasure and promenade ground of gods, spiritual masters, and apsara nymphs. It abounds with all objects of desire, filled with all things for our enjoyment. 10 The two polar mountains called the Lokaloka Ranges are at its two ends. The two polar circles resemble two belts at both extremities of the earth. 11 One side of the Lokaloka Mountains is always covered by darkness, like the minds of ignorant people. The other side shines with eternal light, like the enlightened souls of the wise. 12 One side of these is as delightful as society with the good and wise, while the opposite is as dark as company with the ignorant and evil. 13 On one side all things are as clear as the minds of intelligent men. On the other, there is an impenetrable gloom such as hangs over the minds of unlettered brahmins. 14 On one part there is no sunshine or moonlight. One side presents the habitable world and the other shows the vast void and waste beyond the limits of nature. 15 One side abounds with the cities of gods and the other with those of demons. One side lifted its lofty summits on high, the other bent below towards the infernal regions. 16 Somewhere eagles hover over valleys and at others, lands appear charming to sight, mountain peaks appearing to touch the celestial city of Brahma on high. 17 Somewhere there appears a dismal and dreary desert forest with loud blasts of death hovering over them. At others there are flower gardens and groves with the vidyadharis of heaven sitting and singing in them. 18 In one part there is a deep infernal cave containing horrible Kumbhanda demons. In another are beautiful Nandana pleasure gardens with the hermitages of holy saints. 19 On one part hang eternal clouds roaring loudly like furious elephants, while rain clouds shower on the other. There are deep and dark caves in one part and thick forest trees on another. 20 Laboring woodmen cut down the trees of woodlands inhabited by evil spirits on one side, driving away the devils by felling the woods where they haunt. The other is full of inhabited tracts with men more polished in their manners than the celestials of heaven. 21 Some places are laid desolate by their inhabitants and by driving and whirling winds. Others, secure from every harm, flourish in their produce. 22 Somewhere there are great and desolate deserts, dreary wastes dreadful with howling winds. In some places there are rippling lakes of lotus with rows of noisy cranes
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gracing their shores. 23 In some places gurgling waters can be heard, and in others the growling of clouds. In others gay and merry apsara nymphs, turned giddy with their swinging, can be heard. 24 On one side the landscape is troubled by horrible demons and is shunned by all other beings. On the other, the happy spirits of spiritual masters, vidyadharas and others are seen sitting and singing by the side of cooling streams. 25 Somewhere rain pouring from clouds cause ever flowing rivers to encroach upon the lands. And there were light and flimsy clouds also, flying like sheets of cloth driven here and there by gusts of wind. 26 There are lotus bushes on one side with swarms of humming bees fluttering about their leafy faces. Rosy reddish teeth of celestial damsels can be seen blushing with the stain of betel leaves on the other. 27 In one place there is a pleasant gathering of people pursuing their various callings under the shining sun. In another is an assembly of hideous demons dancing in their demonic revelry in the darkness of night. 28 Somewhere the land and its people are laid waste by devastations and portents befalling on them. Elsewhere the country is smiling with rising cities under the blessings of a good government. 29 Sometimes a dreary waste distracts, and at others a beautiful population attracts the sight. Sometimes deep and dark caves occur to view and at others a dreadful abyss appears. 30 Some spot is full of fruitful trees and luxuriant vegetation and another is a dreary desert devoid of water and living beings. Somewhere you see bodies of big elephants and at others groups of great and greedy lions. 31 Some places are devoid of animals and others peopled by ferocious rakshasa demons. Some places are filled with the thorny karanja thickets and others are full of lofty palm forests. 32 Somewhere lakes are as large and clear as the expanse of heaven, and at others there are vast barren deserts as void as the empty air. Somewhere there are tracts of continually driving sands, and at others there are excellent groves of trees flourishing all seasons of the year. 33 This mountain has many a peak on its top, as high as ordinary hills elsewhere. Kalpa clouds are perpetually settled upon them, blazing with the radiance of gems by the colors of heaven. 34 There are forests growing on milk-white and sunny stones of this mountain, serving as homes for foresters and always resorted to by lions and monkeys. 35 There is a peak on the north of this mountain, with a grotto towards the east, and this cave affords me a secluded home in its hard and stony interior. 36 There I am confined, O sage, in that stony prison-house, and there I have passed a series of yuga ages. 37 Not I alone, but my husband also is confined in the same cave with me. We are doomed to remain imprisoned there, like bees closed up at night within the cup of a closing lotus flower. 38 My husband and I have continued to live in the stony dungeon for a very long period of many years. 39 It was our own fault that we do not obtain our release even now, but continue to remain there as prisoners forever. 40 But sage, it is not only we who are confined in this stony prison-house. All our family, friends, and dependants are enslaved in the same stronghold without end. 41 An ancient person, my twice-born brahmin husband, is confined there in his dungeon. Though he has remained there for many an age, yet he has never moved from his seat. 42 He is employed in his studentship and living as a celibate since boyhood. He listens to recitals of the Vedas and is steadfast in his observances without deviation. 43 But I am not so, O sage. I am doomed to perpetual distress because I am unable to pass a moment without his company. 44 Hear now, O sage, how I became his wife and how there grew a sincere affection between us. 45 When my husband was still a boy, he acquired a little knowledge by remaining in 46 his own house. He thought in himself, Ah, I am a Vedic brahmin. Can it be possible for me to

have a suitable partner? 47 Then, out of himself, he produced me with this beautiful figure, just like the bright moon causes moonlight to issue out of his body. 48 Being thus produced from the mind of my husband, I remained as his mental consort and grew up in time like blossoms in spring, as beautiful as a mandara plant in bloom. 49 My body became as bright as the face of the sky by its nature. All my features glittered like the stars in heaven. My face was as fair as the full moon and attracted all heart towards it. 50 My breasts were swollen like flower buds and luscious like juicy fruit. My arms and the palms of my hands resembled two tender vines with their red leaflets. 51 I became the delight and captor of the hearts of living beings. The side long glances of my stretched antelope eyes infatuated all minds with a maddening passion of love. 52 I was prone to the allurements and dalliance of love, and prompt in jokes, impulsiveness and disguised smiles and glances. I was fond of singing and music and was unsatisfied in my joy. 53 I was addicted to the enjoyment of all bliss, both in prosperity and adversity, both of which are alike friendly to me. I was never tempted by the delusive temptations of the one and never frightened by the threatening persecution of the other. 54 I do not sustain the household of my brahmin lord alone, but I support the mansions of the inhabitants of all the three worlds because by being a mental being, I have access to all places far and near. 55 I am the legal wife of the brahmin, fit to propagate and support his offspring, and also fit to bear the burden of this house of the triple worlds. 56 Now I am a grown young woman with swollen breasts. I am as giddy with my youthful gaiety as a cluster of flowers swaying in the air. 57 My husband, owing to his natural disposition of procrastination and studiousness, is employed in his austerities. In expectation of getting his liberation, he is delaying marriage to me to this day. 58 But I am advanced in my youth and fond of youthful dalliance. I burn in the flame of my passion for him, like a lotus flower in a fiery furnace. 59 Though I am always cooling myself with the breezes of brooks and lotus lakes, yet I constantly burn throughout my body, like sacrificial embers reduced to ashes in the sacred fire place. 60 I see gardens covered with flowers falling in showers from shady trees, but I burn as the land under the burning sands of a burning desert without shade. 61 The soft gurgling of waters, the gentle breeze of lakes full with blooming lotuses and lilies, and the sweet sounds of cranes and water fowls are all rough and harsh to me. 62 Though decked with flowery wreaths and garlands and swinging upon my cradle of flowers, yet I think I am lying down on a bed of thorns. 63 Sleeping on beds made of the soft leaves of lotus and plantains, I find them dried under the heat of my body, powdered to ashes by the pressure of my body. 64 Whatever fair, lovely, charming, sweet and pleasant things I come to see and feel, I am filled with sorrow at their sight and my eyes are filled with tears. 65 My eyes steam with tears from the heat of my inner bosom. They trickle and fall from my eyelids like dew drops on lotus leaves. 66 Swinging with my playmates on the hanging branches of plantain trees in our pleasure gardens, I think of the burning grief in my heart and burst out in tears. I cover my face with my hands. 67 I look at our gardens of cooling plantain leaves, scattered with snow all over. But fearing them as bushes of thorny brambles, I fly far away from them. 68 I see the blooming lotus of the lake and the fond crane showing affection with its stalk-like arm, then begin to despise my youthful bloom. 69 I weep at seeing whatever is handsome and keep quiet at what is moderate. I delight in whatever seems ugly and I am happy in my utter unconsciousness of everything. 70 I have seen the fair flowers of spring and the hoarfrost of winter and thought them all to be only heaps of the ashes of lovelorn ladies, burnt down by the flame of love and scattered by relentless winds on all sides. 71 I have made beds from the blue leaves of lotuses and other plants and covered myself with wreaths of snow white flowers. But I found them

turning pale and dry by their contact with my body. So pity me, that my youthful days have all gone in vain.

Chapter 65 The Vidyadhari Explains Her Frustration and Prays to Vasishta

The vidyadhari continues speaking to Vasishta: 1 After the lapse of a long time, I found my passions diminishing and I grew as detached to my susceptibilities as tender greens become juiceless and dry after autumn is over. 2 Seeing my husband grown old and divested of all his receptivity and vigor, sitting quietly in his steadfast tapas with an unwavering mind, I thought my life is useless to me. 3 I thought that early widowhood, even premature death or rather a lingering disease or lasting misery is preferable to a woman living without a loving husband. 4 It is the blessing of life and a womans greatest good fortune to have a young and loving husband who is of good and pleasant temperament and yielding in his manners. 5 A woman is given for lost who does not have a sweet and lovely spouse, just as understanding is lost when it is not filled with learning. Prosperity is in vain when she favors the wicked, and a woman lost to shame is in vain. 6 She is the best of women who is obedient to her husband. That is the best fortune which falls into the hands of the virtuous and good. That understanding is praised which is clear and ample, and that goodness is good which has a fellow feeling and equal regard for all mankind. 7 Neither disease nor calamity, nor dangers or difficulties can disturb the minds or afflict the hearts of a loving pair. 8 The prospect of the blossoming pleasure garden of Nandana and the flowery paths of paradise appear like a desert land to women who have no husbands, or husbands who are wicked and rude in their behavior. 9 A woman may forsake all her worldly possessions as having little value to her, but she can never forsake her husband, even for any fault on his part. 10 O chief of sages, you see all these miseries to which I have been subject these very many years of my puberty. 11 But all this fondness of mine is gradually turning to indifference. I am pining and fading away as fast as a frost beaten lotus flower shrinks and shrivels for lack of its sap. 12 Being now indifferent to the pleasure of my enjoyment of all things, I come to seek the bliss of my nirvana. I stand in need of your advice for my salvation. 13 Otherwise, for those unsuccessful in desires and ever restless and perplexed in their minds, buffeting and carried by the waves of deadly troubles, it is better to die than live in this world. 14 My husband, desirous of obtaining his nirvana, is now intent day and night upon subduing his mind by the light of his reason, just as a king is roused to conquer his foe in company with his princes. 15 Now sage, please dispel both his as well as my ignorance by your reasonable advice which may revive our memory of the soul. 16 My lord meditating solely on the soul, without my company or any thought about me, has created an indifference in me and a complete distaste for all worldly things. 17 I am now set free from the influence of worldly desires. I have equipped myself with the Khechari Mudra magic charm whereby I am able to fly through the air. 18 I have acquired the power of flight by means of this magic charm, and it is by virtue of this power that I am able to associate with spiritual masters and converse with you. 19 Having equipped myself with this magic charm, I have acquired the power to see all past and future events even though I remain in my house on earth, which is the basis and center of all the worlds. 20 Having seen within my mind everything relating to this world, I have come to survey the outer world. I have seen as far as gigantic Lokaloka Mountain. 21 Before this, O sage, neither I nor my husband ever had any desire to see anything beyond our own home. 22 My husband, completely occupied with meditating on the meanings of the Vedas, has no desire whatever to know anything relating to the past or future. 23 For this reason my lord has not been able to succeed to any station in life. It is only today that both of us desire to be blessed with the best state of humanity.

Therefore we ask you, O venerable sage, to grant our request, as it is never in the nature of noble persons to refuse the prayer of their suppliants. 25 I have been wandering in the ethereal regions among hosts of perfected spiritual masters. I have not found anyone except you, O honorable sage, who may burn the thick gloom of ignorance. 26 The nature of good people is to do good to others, even without knowing the reason to have pity for their suppliants. So you, O venerable sage, should not refuse the petition of your suppliant.

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Chapter 66 The Vidyadharis Description of the Inside of Her World inside Stone
Vasishta said: Then, seated as I was in my imaginary seat in the sky, I asked the lady who was also sitting like me in the imaginary air, 2 Tell me, O gentle lady. How could an embodied being like you live inside a block of stone? How could you move about within that impervious substance? What was caused you to live there? 3 The vidyadhari replied: Wonder not, O sage, at this kind of home which is as habitable to us and inhabited by other creatures as the open and spacious world in which you live. 4 There are the snakes and reptiles living and moving about the interior of the earth. There are huge rocks deeply rooted underground. Waters run in the bottom of the ground with as much freedom as winds flying in the open air. 5 Oceans flow with the fullness of their waters and fish move slowly beneath and above their surface. There are infinite numbers of living creatures constantly born and dying in them. 6 Waters glide inside the cavity of the mundane stone just like winds fly above. Here celestials move and wander in the air, and the earth and planets revolve with their unmoving mountains and other inert materials. 7 There are also gods, demigods and human beings moving in their respective circles within the womb of this stone. From the beginning of creation, waters of rivers run like those of the oceans. 8 Again, since the beginning of creation the sun has been sending his beams from above and scattering them like lotuses on the lake-like land, while the dark clouds of heaven hover over them like a swarm of black bees fluttering upon those blooming blossoms. 9 The moon spreads her light on all sides like sandal paste and thereby erases the darkness of night and covers the face of the evening star. 10 Sunlight is the lamp of his light in heavenly mansion, scattering its rays on all ten sides of the skies, conducted by means of the air. 11 The wheel of the starry firmament continually revolves in the air by the will of God, like a threshing mill turning about its central axle by means of a rope. 12 This circle of celestial bodies, revolving about its axis of the pole, kills all things under its clouds that look like two doors between heaven and earth, just as the wheel of fate grinds them to dust. 13 The surface of the earth is full of hills and mountains and the bosom of the sea is filled with rocks and islands. The upper sky contains celestial abodes and demons occupy the lower regions below the ground. 14 The orbit of this earth resembles the earring of Lakshmi, goddess of the three worlds. The green orb of this planet is like the hanging gem of her ringlet, continually fluctuating with its people. 15 Here all creatures are impelled by their desires to their mental and bodily activities, as if moved to and fro by flying winds, and thus are led to repeated births and deaths. 16 The silent sage sits in calm meditation, just as the sky is unmoved with its capacity of containing all things within itself. But the earth is shaken and wasted by dashing waves, fire is put down by its blazing flame, and everything is moved about by the wind of its desires like a monkey. 17 All living beings abounding in earth and water, and those flying in the air, as well as those who live in hills or on trees, together with gods and demons are all alike doomed to death and rebirth, just like short lived insects, worms and flies. 18 Time, the greatest slaughterer, destroys gods, giants, gandharva spirits and all else with its many arms of ages and yugas, and of years, months, days and nights, just like a herder kills the cattle he has reared himself. 19 All these rise and fall in the eventful ocean of time. Having leapt and jumped and danced a while, they sink in the abyss of the fathomless whirl of death from which none can rise again. 20 The gust of death carries away all
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sorts of beings living in the fourteen spheres of the world like dust and ashes to the hollow womb of air where they disappear like empty clouds in the autumn sky. 21 The high heaven, ever clad in the clean and clear attire of the atmosphere and wearing the framework of stars like crown on its head, holds the two lights of the sun and moon in either hand and shows us the works of gods in the skies. 22 It remains unmoved forever, never changing its sides composed of the four quarters of heaven in spite of changes in the sky, the rushing of winds, the tremors of earth, the roaring of clouds, and the intense heat of the sun. 23 All things continue in their destined course, whether they are conscious or unconscious of these changes in nature, whether meteors and portents appear in the sky, the clouds roar, planets eclipse, or the earth trembles below. 24 The undersea fire sucks up the overflowing waters of the seven great oceans on earth in the same way as all-destroying time devours creatures in all the different worlds. 25 All things continue in their course like the continued motion of currents in the air. Namely, all earth-born worms move on and return to the earth, the birds of the air move and fly on all sides of the sky, fish swim and glide all about the waters, beasts return to their caves in earth and hills, and such is the case with the inhabitants of all continents and islands lying in the womb of this world.

Chapter 67 The Vidyadhari Praises Continued Practice, the Force of Habit

The vidyadhari continued, If you, O sage, have any doubt about any part of my story, then please walk with me and see that home. There you will see many more wonders than what I have described. 2 Vasishta said: Upon this, I said, well and traveled with her on an aerial journey, just as the fragrance of flowers flies with the winds to an aerial nothing in which they are both lost forever. 3 As I passed far and wide in the regions of air, I met with multitudes of ethereal beings and saw their celestial abodes. 4 Passing over regions traversed by celestials in the upper spheres of heaven, I arrived at a blank, white sky above the summit of Lokaloka Mountain. 5 Then I passed into this pale sky and at last came out of it, just as the fair moon appears under the white canopy of heaven. Above me I saw the bright belt of the zodiac containing the golden spheres of the seven planets. 6 As I was looking at that belt of the zodiac, I found it was like a crystal marble burning with fire. I could not discern any of the worlds that it encompassed. 7 Then I asked my lovely companion to tell me where were the created worlds, together with the gods and planetary bodies and stars, and the seven spheres of heaven. 8 Where were the oceans and the sky with all its different sides? Where were the high and heavy bodies of clouds, the starry heaven, and the ascent and descent of the rolling planets? 9 Where, I asked, are the rows of lofty mountain peaks and the marks of the seas upon the earth? Where are the circles and clusters of islands? Where are the sunny shores and dry, parched grounds of deserts? 10 There is no reckoning of time here, nor any account of actions of men. There is no delusive appearance of a created world or anything whatever in this endless and empty void. 11 There are no different races of beings, such as the gods, demigods, vidyadharas, gandharvas, and other races of mankind. There is no sage or prince or of anything that is good or evil, or any heaven or hell, or day or night and their divisions into watches and hours. 12 There is no calculation of time and no knowledge of merit or demerit. It is free from the hostility between gods and demigods and the feelings of love and hatred. 13 While I had been talking in this manner in my amazement, that excellent lady who was my guide in this maze spoke to me, her eyeballs rolling like a couple of fluttering black bees. 14 The vidyadhari said: I also do not see anything here in its former state. I find everything presenting a picturesque form in this crystal stone, like image in a mirror. 15 Because of my preconceived ideas eternally engraved in my mind, I see the figures of all things in this. Your lack of preconceptions causes you to be blind to them. 16 Your habit of thinking regarding the unity or duality of the sole entity, and your forgetfulness of our pure spiritual and intellectual bodies, made you were blind to the sight of reality, while I had a dim glimpse of it. 17 By my long habit of thinking, I have learnt to look upon this world like a vine in the sky. I never see it as you do to be a reality, but as a dim reflection of the ideal reality. 18 Before, the world appeared conspicuously to my sight. Now I find it indistinct, like a shadow of it cast upon a glass. 19 Our prejudice in favor of an old false belief in the personality of the body makes us miss the ease of relying upon the spiritual body, and thus we have fallen into the deep darkness of delusion. 20 Whatever we are habituated to think in our minds, the same grows and takes deep root in the heart under the moistening influence of the intellectual soul. The mind becomes of that nature, like the force of early habit forms a youth. 21 There is nothing likely to be brought about by the lessons of the best scriptures or the dictates of right reason unless they are applied and
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constantly practiced. 22 Your false speech regarding the nonexistence of the world in this empty space proceeded only from your constant habit of thinking the reality of the false world, which was about to mislead me also. Now be wise that you have overcome your previous prejudice and known the present truth. 23 Know, O sage, that your habitual thinking of a thing as such makes it appear so to you, just as a mechanic masters art is by his constant practice under the direction of his teacher. 24 The false conceptions of this thing and that, and of the existence of the material world, and the reality of ones egoism and personality, are all prevented by the culture of spiritual knowledge and by force of a constant habit of seeing all things in their spiritual light. 25 I am only a weak and young disciple to you, and yet I see the stony world too well which you with your all-knowingness do not perceive. This is because of my habit of thinking it other than you are used to do. 26 See the effect of practice which makes a dunce into a learned man and reduces a stone to dust. Look at the force of an inert arrow hitting a distant mark. 27 In this manner the gloom of our ignorance and the disease of false knowledge are both dispelled by right reasoning and deep thinking, both of which are the effect of habit. 28 Habit produces an enjoyment in the tastes of particular articles of food. Some have a taste for what is sour and pungent, while others indulge in what is sweet and tasty. 29 A stranger becomes friendly by his continued stay in ones company, and so is a friend alienated by his living in an alien and distant land. 30 Our spiritual body, perfectly pure, aerial, and full of intelligence, is converted to and mistaken for the gross material body by our constantly thinking of our materiality. 31 The impression of being a material body will fly away like a bird flies off in the air as soon as you come to know yourself to be a spiritual and intellectual soul, but it is the habit of thinking yourself as such that makes you really so. 32 All our meritorious acts are destroyed by a slight offensive act of demerit, and our prosperity flies away at the approach of adversity, but there is nothing which can remove our habit from us. 33 All difficult matters are made easier by practice. Enemies are won over to friendship and even poison is made as delectable as honey by virtue of habit. 34 He is reckoned as too mean and evil who does not accustom himself to practice whatever is good and proper for him. Without practice, he never acquires his object, but becomes as useless in the family as a barren woman. 35 Whatever is desirable and good for one is to be gained with repeated effort all through ones lifetime, just as ones life, which is his greatest good in the world, is to be preserved with care until the approach of death. 36 Whoever neglects to practice any act or art that is conducive to his welfare is prone to ruin and the torments of hell. 37 Those inclined to meditation of the spiritual soul easily cross over the swollen rivers of this world, although they may be attached to it in their outward and bodily practices. 38 Practice is the light that leads one on the path of his desired object, just as the light of the lamp reveals a lost pot or cloth. 39 The tree of repeated effort bears fruit in its time, just as the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree yields all the fruits of our desire, and as the hoarded capital of the rich is attended with great profit and interest. 40 Habitual inquiry into spiritual truth serves as the sunlight to enlighten the nature of the soul. Otherwise our soul lies hidden in the darkness of the sunless night. 41 All animal beings are in need of certain food for the support of their lives, and these they have to obtain by continued search, never without it. Therefore the force of habit prevails in all places like the powerful sunshine. 42 All fourteen kinds of living beings have to live by habit of their respective activities. It is impossible for anyone to get its desired object without real activity. 43 The repetition of the same action takes the name of habit, and habit is ones personal effort. It is impossible for anybody to do anything without any effort. 44 Constant habit of action, joined with

bodily and mental energy, is the only way to accomplish anything, and not otherwise. 45 There is nothing impossible for the power of habit, which is as powerful as the strong sunbeams which give growth to everything on earth. Only habitual energy gives prosperity and courage to the brave on earth and water and mountains, and in forests and deserts.

Chapter 68 Vasishta in Samadhi Sees the Pure Ideals from which Intellect Fabricates the Unreal World
The vidyadhari continued: The habit of long practice, combined with the understanding and reflection, makes one proficient in a subject. So these applied to meditation of the spiritual and pure soul will cause the material world to vanish in the stone. 2 Vasishta said: After the celestial vidyadhari had spoken in this manner, I retired to a cave in a rock where I sat in lotus posture and became absorbed in samadhi. 3 Having given up all thoughts of corporeal bodies and continuing to think only of the intellectual soul according to the holy teachings of the vidyadhari, as I have related. 4 Then I saw a clear and fair intellectual void in me resembling the clarity of the empty vault of heaven in autumn. 5 Through my intense application to meditate on the true one, my false view of phenomena entirely vanished within me. 6 The intellectual sphere of my mind was filled with a transcendent light which knew no rising or setting but was always shining with a uniform radiance. 7 As I looked into and through the light that shone in me, I could find neither the sky nor that great stone which I sought to find. 8 Then I found the clear and thick blaze of my spiritual light seizing my outward sight, just as it had enraptured my inner vision. 9 As a man dreams seeing a huge stone in his house, so I saw the vast emptiness like a crystal globe situated in the clear atmosphere of consciousness. 10 A dreaming man may think he is another person, but after he is awakened, he comes to know himself. 11 Those who dream themselves to be headless beings and remain so in this world can be of no good or use to themselves, though they have a little knowledge afterwards. 12 A man drowned in utter ignorance comes to right understanding in the course of time and in the end comes to know that there is no real entity except the essence of God. 13 Thus, when I saw the solid and transparent light which appeared like a crystal stone lying in the emptiness of Brahman, I could see no material thing like the earth or water or anything whatever in connection with it. 14 Everything bore the same pure and spiritual form in which they were presented at their first creation in our ideas of them. 15 All these bodies of created beings are only forms of Brahman considered in their primordial and spiritual and natural natures. The mind gives them the imaginary shapes of materiality in its fabricated dominion of the visible world. 16 The spiritual form is the true essence of all things. All that is perceptible to the senses is mere fabrication of the original inventive mind. 17 The prime creation was in the abstract and imperceptible to the senses. It was perceptible to the mind in the form of the ideals which the ignorant converted to phenomena. 18 A yogi, like knowing minds, sees all things in the abstract and in a general view. But the ignorant who are deprived of the power of abstraction and generalization fall into the errors of concrete particulars and deceptive phenomena. 19 All sensation is only a temporary perception and presents a wrong impression in the mind. Know all conscious perceptions to be false and deluding. The concepts in the mind of a yogi are the true realities. 20 O, the wonder of taking phenomena for invisible truth when we know that concepts, which are beyond the senses, are the true realities. 21 The subtle form of a thing first appears before the mind. Afterwards it is represented in various false shapes before us, and this is true of all material things in the world. 22 Whatever has not been before, has never been afterwards. As different ornaments of gold are nothing but gold itself, so pristine subtle ideas cannot have any gross material form.
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O the great ignorance of men that takes error for truth and falsehood as true. There is no way for the living soul to discern true and false except by right reasoning. 24 The material body cannot be maintained by correct reason, but its immaterial essence is indestructible, both in this world and in the next. 25 The error of materiality in the incorporeal, spiritual body presided over by the intellect is like the fallacy of a vast sea in the shining sands of a sandy desert. 26 Consciousness of materiality, which one has in his spiritual and intellectual form, is like seeing the figure of a human body in a mountain peak. 27 The false supposition of materiality in the spiritual entity of our being is like the error of seeing silver in the shells on the seashore, or sunshine on sands for water, or a second moon in the mist. 28 O the wonderful effectiveness of error that represents the unreal as real and vice-versa. O the great power of delusion which springs from the unreasonableness of living beings. 29 A yogi finds spiritual force and mental activity to be the two immaterial causes of all action and motion moving everything in both the physical and intellectual worlds. 30 Therefore a yogi relies only on his internal perception and rejects those of his external senses. By comparison, common people run giddy drinking the vapors of the mirage of senses. 31 That which is commonly called pleasure or pain is only a fleeting feeling in the mind of men. It is of short duration. Genuine and lasting peace of mind, which has neither its rise or fall, is called true happiness. 32 Infer the super-conscious from what can be sensed and see the true source of your sensations manifest in your presence. 33 Reject the sight of this triple world which your perception presents to your imagination, because there can be nothing more foolish than taking a delusion for truth. 34 All these bodies and beings carry only their immaterial forms of mere ideas. Only the demon of delusion causes us to suppose their materiality. 35 Whatever is not produced or thought of in the mind cannot present its figure to our sight. That which is no reality of itself cannot be the cause of anything else. 36 When phenomena are nonexistent and unreal, what else is there that may be real? How can anything be said to be real whose reality is by the unreal and delusive senses? 37 Phenomena being proved unreal, there can be no reality in perceiving or thinking about them. It is impossible for a spider to maintain its web before a storm that blows away an elephant. 38 So likewise, visual evidence being proved false, there is no proof of any object of vision anywhere. There is only one unchanging entity in all nature whose solidity depends upon the consolidation of Divine Consciousness, like sea salt in solidified seawater. 39 Like a dreamer dreams of a house on high hill in its ideal form, which is unknown and unseen to others sleeping with him in the same house, so we thought of that stone we have been talking about, and which is nothing other than the intellect. 40 The intellectual soul exhibits a great many ideal phenomena within itself, such as this is a hill and this is the sky and this is the world and these are me and you, all of which are as insubstantial as empty air. 41 Only men of enlightened souls can perceive these phenomena of intellect in themselves, not the unenlightened soul. It is like a person who listens to a lecture understands it, but not one who dozes through it. 42 All these false sights of the world appear true to an unenlightened person, just as the still trees and mountains seem to be dancing to an inebriated man. 43 A yogi beholds one irrepressible form of God in all places, manifest before him in the form of his intellect. But the ignorant are deceived by their false guides to place their reliance on the objects of senses, in spite of their frail nature.

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Chapter 69 Vasishta and the Vidyadhari Awaken the Brahmin; He Explains Who Is the Vidyadhari
Vasishta added: The world is without any form or substance, though it presents the appearance of such. It is seen in the light of the pure and imperishable essence of God through the keen sight of transcendental philosophy. 2 The world is that quintessence which exhibits in itself the rare show of the cosmic mirror of Consciousness. The forms of hills and rivers are seen like pictures in a panorama, or like apparitions in empty air. 3 Then the vidyadhari entered that cosmic block by resistless efforts. Curious, I also penetrated it after her. 4 After that untiring lady made her way into the cosmos of Brahma, she took her seat before a brahmin and shone supremely bright in his presence. 5 She introduced him to me saying, This is my husband and supporter with whom I have made my betrothal in my mind a long time ago. 6 He is now an old man and I also have attained my old age. Because he has delayed his marriage with me until now, I have become utterly indifferent about it at present. 7 He also has grown adverse to his marriage and desires to attain that supreme state in which there is no view or viewer, and which is also no airy emptiness. 8 The world is now approaching its dissolution and he has been sitting in meditation as silently and as immovable as a stone. 9 Therefore, O lord of saints, please awaken both him and me also. Enlighten and confirm us in the way of supreme bliss until the end of this creation and the recreation of a new one. 10 Having said this to me, she awakened her husband and spoke to him saying, Here, my lord, is the chief of saints who has come today to our home. 11 This sage is the offspring of Brahma in another apartment of this worldly dome. He deserves to be honored as worthy guest according to the proper rite of hospitality. 12 Arise and receive the great sage offering worship and water to him, because great persons deserve the highest regards and respects one can offer. 13 The holy devotee awoke from his samadhi. His consciousness rose in himself like a whirlpool rises above the sea. 14 The courteous sage opened his eyes slowly, as flowers open their petals in spring after winter is over. 15 His returning senses slowly allowed him to move his limbs, just as the returning moisture of plants in spring makes new sprouts and branches shoot forth. 16 Gods, demigods, spiritual masters, and gandharvas immediately assembled around him from all sides, just as swans and cranes flock to a clear lake blooming with full-blown lotuses. 17 He looked upon me, the fair vidyadhari lady, and everyone else standing before him. Then in the sweet tone like the sound of Om (pranava), he addressed me as the second Brahma himself. 18 The brahmin said, I welcome you to this place, O sage who sees the world like a ball placed in the palm of your hand and who resembles the great ocean in the vast extent of his knowledge. 19 You have come a long way to this far distant place. You must be tired from your long journey. Please sit in this seat. 20 As he said these words, I saluted him saying, I salute you my lord. Then I sat on the jeweled seat which he pointed out to me. 21 Then he was praised by the assembled gods and holy spirits standing before him, and received their worship, presents and adorations according to the rules and rites of courtesy. 22 Then as the praises and prayers of the assembled host ended, I approached the venerable brahmin and spoke to him. 23 How is it, O venerable sage, that this vidyadhari nymph has turned to me and tells me to enlighten you both with true knowledge? You are acquainted with whatever is past and all that is to take place. 24 You sage are lord of all, fully acquainted with all knowledge. What does this silly woman want to learn from me and what do I want to learn from you? 25 Why did you produce
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her to become your spouse when you remained indifferent and never took her in wedlock? 26 The brahmin replied: O Saint, hear me to tell you how it came to be so with us, because it is right and fit to explain everything in full to the wise and good. 27 There is an unborn and imperishable entity from all eternity and I am only a spark of that ever sparkling and brilliant intellect. 28 I am of the form of empty air or vacuum, situated forever in the Supreme Spirit. I am called the self-born in all the worlds that were to be created afterwards. 29 But in reality, I am never born, nor do I ever see or do anything in reality but remain as the empty intellect in the intellectual emptiness of the very same entity. 30 Addressing one another in the first and second persons is nothing but the sounds of waves of the same sea dashing against each other. 31 I who was of this nature became disturbed in time by feeling some desire rising in me and seeing that lady within the blaze of my intellect. 32 I thought of her as myself, though she appears as another person to you and others. Though she is manifest before you, yet she lies hidden in me as my very self. 33 I find myself to be that imperishable entity which abides in me as I abide in the Supreme Soul. I find my soul to be imperishable in its nature and delighted in itself as if it were the lord of all. 34 Though I was thus absorbed in meditation, yet the memory of my former state produced in me a desire to reproduce, and over there, that vidyadhari is the incarnate divinity presiding over my will. 35 She is the presiding divinity over my will who is standing here manifest before you. She is neither my wife nor have I betrothed her as such. 36 It is from the desire of her heart that she considers herself the wife of Brahma. For that reason she has undergone troubles before she got rid of her desires.

Chapter 70 Words of the Brahmin Who Created the Worlds in Mundane Stone
The brahmin related: Now as the world is approaching to its end, I am going to take my rest in the formless void of consciousness. This is why this divinity of worldly desires is drowned in deep sorrow. 2 I am about to forsake her forever. It is for this very reason, O sage, that she is so very sorry and sick in heart. 3 Being of an aerial form, when I become one with the Supreme Spirit, all my desires end and the great dissolution of the world takes place. 4 That is why she pursues me with deep sorrow. For who is there so senseless that does not follow the giver of her being? 5 Now the time has come to end the Kali Yuga and the cycle of four ages. The dissolution of all living beings, Manus, Indras and other gods is near at hand. 6 Today is the end of the kalpa and the great kalpa age. This day puts an end to my energy and will and makes me merge with the eternal and infinite emptiness. 7 Now this personification of my desire is about to breathe her last, just like when a lake dries out, its lotus beds are also lost in the air. 8 The quiet soul, like the calm ocean, is always at a state of rest unless it is agitated by fickle desires, like the sea troubled by its fluctuating waves. 9 An embodied being naturally has a desire to know the soul and to be freed from its prison. 10 Thus this lady, being filled with spiritual knowledge and long practiced in meditation, has seen the world you inhabit and the four different pursuits of its inhabitants. 11 Traversing through the regions of air, she has come to see the previously mentioned ethereal stone above Lokaloka Mountain which is our celestial home and the pattern for your world. 12 Both that world of yours and this home of ours rest on a great mountain which carries upon it many other worlds. 13 With our discriminating eyesight, we also do not see them separately from one another, but behold them all combined in one in our abstract view of yoga meditation. 14 There are numberless worlds of creations in earth, water, and air and everything else under the sky, as if they were compressed or carved in the body of a huge block of stone. 15 What you call the world is a mere fallacy. It resembles your vision of a fairy city in dream. It is a false name applied to an object that exists nowhere outside consciousness. 16 They who have come to know the world as an airy vision of the mind are truly called wise men who are not liable to fall into error. 17 By application and practice of yoga contemplation, some come to attain their desired object, such as this lady succeeded to gain your company. 18 Thus the illusory power of the intellect displays these material worlds before us. Thus the everlasting Divine omnipotence manifests itself. 19 There is no action or any creation ever produced from anything or ever reduced to nothing. But all things and actions, together with our ideas of space and time, are only the spontaneous growth of consciousness. 20 Know that the ideas of time and space, of substance and action, as well as of the mind and its faculties, are the lasting figures and marks on the stone of consciousness, ever prominent in it without setting or being shaded at anytime. 21 This consciousness is the very stone, either at rest or rolling on like a wheel. The worlds pertain to it as its properties and accompany it as motion does the wind. 22 The soul, being provided with its full knowledge of all things, is considered to be the solid world itself. Though the soul is infinite in time and space, yet it is thought of as limited owing to its appearance in the form of the bound and embodied mind. 23 The unbound intellect appears as bound by its limited knowledge. Although it is formless, yet it appears in the form of the mind representing the worlds in it. 24 As the mind sees the form of an aerial city in its dream, so it finds itself in the form of this stone, with the worlds marked upon it in the daytime. 25 There is no rolling of planets in this universe and no running of streams here. There is no object existing in
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reality anywhere. They are all mere representations of the mind in empty air. 26 There are no kalpa or great kalpa ages in eternity. There is no substantiality of anything in the emptiness of our consciousness. There is no difference between the waves and bubbles from the waters of the sea. 27 The worlds that appear to exist in the mind and before the eyes are, in reality, utterly nonexistent in the intellect which spreads alike everywhere as the all pervading and empty vacuum. And as all empty space in every place is alike and the same with infinite emptiness, so the forms of things appearing to the limited understanding are all lost in unlimited consciousness. 28 Now Vasishta, go to your place in your own world. Have your peace and bliss in your own seat of samadhi. Give over your aerial worlds to empty air, while I myself go to the supreme Brahman.

Chapter 71 Vasishta Describes a Final Dissolution of the World (1)

Vasishta added: So saying, the brahmin Brahma sat in lotus posture and resumed his intense meditation in samadhi, as did his celestial companions also. 2 He fixed his mind on the pause placed at the end of half syllable m, the final letter of the holy mantra of omkara, and sat quietly with steady attention like an unmoved picture in a painting. 3 His lustful consort, Desire, also followed his example. She sat reclined at the end of all her endless wishes, an empty and formless emptiness. 4 When I saw them growing thin for lack of their desires, I also reduced myself by means of my meditation until I found myself one with all pervading Intellect in the form of endless emptiness. 5 I saw that as the desires of Brahma were drying up in himself, so I found all nature to be fading away with the contraction of the earth and ocean, together with the diminution of their hills and islands. 6 I saw trees and plants and all sorts of vegetables fading away with the decay of their growth. All creation seemed to come to its end in a short time. 7 It seemed that the stupendous body of Viraj containing the whole universe was sick in every part. The great earth carried in his body was falling unconsciously into decline and decay. 8 She was stricken with years, grown dull and dry without her mild moisture, wasting away like a withered tree in the cold season. 9 As the unconsciousness of our hearts numbs our bodies, so did ones loss of sensation produce the lack of consciousness of all things in the world. 10 The world was threatened by many a portent and ill omen on all sides, and men were hastening to hellfire, burning in the flame of their sins. 11 The earth was a scene of oppression and famine. Troubles, disasters and poverty waited on mankind everywhere. As women trespassed the bounds of behavior, so men sinned against the bounds of order and conduct. 12 The sun was hidden by mist and frost resembling gusts of ash and dust. People were greatly and equally afflicted by excess heat and cold, two opposites they did not know how to prevent. 13 Low caste shudras were tormented by burning fires on one side and floods of rainwater on the other. Wars being waged devastated entire provinces. 14 Tremendous omens were accompanied by falling mountains and cities and the loud cries of people upon the destruction of their children and many good and great men. 15 The land burst into deep ditches where there had been no water channels before. Peoples and the rulers of men indulged themselves in promiscuous marriages. 16 All men lived like travelers and all paths were full of tailor shops. All women were engrossed with their hair and promiscuity. All rulers imposed head taxes on their people. 17 All men lived by hard labor, farmers living only upon litigation. Women lived in impiety and impurity and the rulers of men were addicted to drinking. 18 The earth was full of unrighteousness, its people misled by heretical doctrines and vicious scriptures. All wicked men were wealthy and fortunate and all good people in distress and misery. 19 The evil non-aryans (foreigners) were the rulers of earth and respectable and learned men had fallen into disrepute and disregard. People were all guided by their evil passions of anger, greed, hatred, envy, malice, and the like. 20 All men were apostates giving up their religion, inclined to the faith of others. Brahmins were despised for their sermons and the evil inhabitants of border regions persecuted others. 21 Robbers infested cities and villages, robbing temples of gods and the houses of good people. There were parasites pampered with others delicacies, but short lived and sick with their gluttony. 22 All men indulging themselves in idleness and luxury and neglected their rituals and duties. All quarters of the globe presented scenes of dangers and difficulties, sorrows and 23 grief. Cities and villages were reduced to ashes and districts were laid waste on all sides. The sky appeared to be weeping with vaporous clouds and the air disturbed by whirling tornadoes. 24 The
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land resounded with the loud crying and wailing of widows and unfortunate women. Those who remained were compelled to live by beggary. 25 The country was dry and destitute of water, lying bare and barren in all parts. The seasons were unproductive of seasonal fruits and flowers. So every part of this earthly body of Brahma was out of order and painful to him. 26 Upon her approaching dissolution, there was a great famine on earth. The body of Brahma grew senseless owing to the loss of the watery element in all its canals of rivers and seas. 27 The spirit of Brahma being disturbed, there occurred a disorder in the course of nature. It brought on a transgression of good manners, as when the waters of rivers and seas overflow their boundaries. 28 Then furious water surges began to break down their shores and run madly upon the ground, flooding the land and laying waste to woodlands. 29 Whirlpools whirled with harsh noise, turning about on every side with tremendous violence. Huge surges rose high to wash the face of heavy clouds in the sky. 30 Mountain caves were resounding to the loud roar of huge clouds on high and heavy showers of rain fell in torrents from the sky, flooding mountain tops far and near. 31 Gigantic whales rolled along with the whirling waves of the ocean. The bosom of the deep appeared like a deep forest with huge bodies of the whales floating on heaving waves. 32 Mountain caves were scattered with the bodies of marine animals killed there by hungry lions and tigers. The sky glittered with marine gems carried on high by the rising waters. 33 The dashing of rising sea waves against the falling showers of the sky and the dashing of the whales against the clouds on high raised a huge uproar. 34 Elephants floating on flood waters washed the faces of the stars with the waters spouted from their trunks. Their jostling against one another hurled hills to the ground. 35 The loud surges of the sea dashed against the rocks on the shore let out a noise like the loud roar of elephants resounding in mountain caves. 36 The nether sea invaded the upper sky. Its turbulent waves drove the celestials from their homes just like an earthly ruler attacks another and his triumphant host dispossesses the inhabitants with loud outcry. 37 Floodwaters covered the woods, both in the earth and air. Waves spread over the skies like the winged mountains of times past. 38 Loud winds broke the waves of the sea, driving them ashore like fragments of mountains. Splashing waters dashed against the rocks on the shore washing fossil shells on the coast. 39 Twisting whirlpools sucked huge whales inside and flowed over falling rocks in their fathomless depth. 40 Huge whales were carried with the torrents and drowned in the depths of caves on mountain tops, and these they attempted to break with their hideous teeth. 41 Tortoises and crocodiles hung from trees, their full length extended. The vehicles of Yama (buffalo) and Indra (elephant) stood terrified with erect ears. 42 They listened to the fragments of rocks falling with hideous noise on the seashore and saw fish with their broken fins tossed up and down by the falling stones. 43 The forests shook no more in their dancing mood, and the waters on earth were all still and cold. But the marine waters were flaming with an undersea fire emitting a dismal glare. 44 The whales, afraid of the marine fires, fell upon the waters on mountain tops and competed with the earthly and mountainous elephants. 45 Rocks carried away by the rapid current looked as if they were dancing on the tops of the waves. There was a loud concussion of swimming and drowned rocks as they dashed against the mountains on land. 46 Men and wild animals sought protection on large mountains and in woods. Herds of wild elephant roaring loudly at a distance like trumpets. 47 The infernal regions were disturbed by torrents of water, as by the infernal demons. The elephants of the eight quarters raised loud cries with their uplifted trunks. 48 The nether world emitted a growling noise from their mouths of infernal caves. The earth, fastened to its polar axis, turned like a wheel on its axle. 49 The overflowing waters of the ocean broke their bounds with as much ease as they tear marine plants apart. Breathless skies resounded to the roaring of the clouds all around. 50 The

sky was split into pieces and fell down in fragments. The regents of the skies fled far away with loud cries. Comets and meteors were hurled from heaven in the forms of whirlpools. 51 Fires and firebrands were seen burning on all sides of the skies, earth and heaven, flaming and flashing like liquid gold and luminous gems, and like vermilion colored snakes. 52 Many flaming and flying comet portents with burning crests and tails were seen flashing all about in the heaven above and earth below, flung by the hands of Brahma. 53 All the great elementary bodies were disturbed and put out of order. The sun and moon and the gods of air (Pavana) and fire (Agni), together with the gods of heaven (Indra) and hell (Yama), were all in great confusion. 54 Even the gods seated in the abode of Brahma were afraid of their impending fall when they heard the huge trees of the forests falling headlong with a tremendous crash. 55 Mountains standing on the surface of the earth were shaking and tottering on all sides. A great earthquake shook the mountains of Kailash and Meru to the very bottom of their caves and forests. 56 Ominous tornadoes at the end of the kalpa period overthrew mountains cities and forests, and overwhelmed the earth and all in general ruin and confusion.

Chapter 72 Description of Viraj as God in the Form of Creation

Vasishta continued: Now the self-born Brahma, having compressed his breath in his form of Viraj, the atmospheric air carried on the wings of wind, lost its existence. 2 The atmospheric air, the very breath of Brahma, being thus compressed in his breast, what other air could there remain to uphold the starry frame and the system of the universe? 3 The atmospheric air, compressed with the vital breath of Brahma, meant that creation was about to come to its ultimate extinction. 4 The sky, being no more upheld by its support of the air, gave way to fiery bodies of meteors falling down on earth like starry flowers from the tree of heaven. 5 The stars of heaven, being unsupported by the intermediate air, fell on the ground like the unfailing and impending fruits of our deserts, or the flying fates falling from above. 6 The gross desire or the crude will of Brahma was now at its end at the approach of dissolution. There was an utter stop to the actions and motions of the spiritual masters, just like the flame of fire before its extinction. 7 World-destroying winds blew in the air like thin, flying scraps of cotton. Then the spiritual masters fell down mute from heaven after losing their strength and power of speech. 8 The great fabrics of human wishes fell down with the cities of the gods. Mountain peaks were hurled headlong by shocks of tremendous earthquakes. 9 Rama asked, Now sage, if the world is only a representation of the ideas in the mind of the great god Brahma or Viraj, then what difference do earth, heaven and hell make to him? 10 How can these worlds be said to be the members of his body? How can it be thought that God resides in them with his stupendous form? 11 I well know that Brahma is the willful spirit of God and has no form of himself. So I take this world to be a formless representation of the will or idea in the Divine Mind. Please sage, explain this clearly to me. 12 Vasishta replied: In the beginning this world was not in existence and not in nonexistence either. There was the Eternal Consciousness which absorbed all infinity in itself, and the whole emptiness of space with its essence. 13 This emptiness is known as the thought. The intellect, without forsaking its form, becomes the power of using the intellect itself. 14 Know this power of using the intellect to be the living soul which, being condensed, becomes the gross mind. But none of these essences or forms of existence have any form whatever. 15 The emptiness of the intellect remains as the pure vacuum in itself forever. All this which appears as otherwise is nothing without the very same soul. 16 The very soul assumes to it its egoism, and thinking itself as the mind, becomes soiled with its endless desires in its empty form. 17 Then this intellectual principle thinks itself to be the air by its own volition. By this false supposition of itself, it becomes of an aerial form in the open air. 18 Then it thinks of its future gross form, and immediately finds itself transformed to an aerial body by its volition (sankalpa). 19 Though the soul, spirit and mind are empty in their natures, yet they can assume aerial forms to themselves by their will, just as the mind sees imaginary cities. So the Lord takes upon any form it pleases. 20 As the knowledge of our minds is purely of an aerial nature, so the intelligence of the all-intelligent Lord is likewise of an intellectual kind. He takes and forsakes any form as he supposes and pleases for himself. 21 As we advance in the knowledge of hidden truth, so we come to lose the perception of size and extension and know this extended world is a mere void, though it appears as a positive entity. 22 By knowledge of real truth, we get rid of our desires. By our knowledge of the unity and the absence of our egoism or personality, we obtain our liberation. 23 Such is he, the supreme one. Brahman is the entity of the world. Know Viraj, O
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Rama, to be the body of Brahman, the form of the visible world. 24 Desires or will and the false conceptions which rise in it have the form of empty vacuum. The same give birth to the world, which is then called the cosmic egg. 25 Know all this is nonexistence. The forms you see are only the formation of your fancy. In reality there is nothing in actual existence. You and egoism are no entities at anytime. 26 How can the gross world ever be attached to the simple Consciousness which is of the nature of a void? How can a cause or secondary cause ever be produced in or come out from a mere void? 27 Therefore all this production is false and all that is seen is a mere falsity. All this is a mere void and nothing, falsely taken for something. 28 It is only Consciousness that exhibits itself in the forms of the world and its productions, in the same manner as air creates its vibrations as winds in the very calm air itself. 29 The world is either as something or a nothing at all, devoid of both unity and duality. Know the whole to lie in the empty emptiness of Consciousness, void and transparent as Consciousness. 30 I am extinct to all these endless particulars and distinctions. Whether you take them as real or unreal, or be with or without your egoism, it is all nothing to me. 31 Be without any desire and quiet in your mind. Remain silent without fickleness in your conduct. Do whatever you have to do, or avoid it without anxiety. 32 The Eternal One, ever existent in our idea of him, is manifest also in phenomena which is no other than himself. But our imperfect idea of God has many things in it which are unknown to us and beyond our comprehension. Such is also with phenomena that are so perceptible to us.

Chapter 73 More Description of Viraj, the God of Nature

Rama said, Sage, you have talked at length about our bondage and liberation, and also about our knowledge of the world as neither a reality nor an unreality, and that it neither rises nor sets but always exists as at first and ever before. 2 I have well understood all your lectures on these subjects, yet wish to know more for my full satisfaction with the ambrosial drops of your speech. 3 Tell me sage, how is there no truth or untruth to either a false view of the creation as a reality, or its view as a mere vacuum? 4 In such a case, I well understand what is the real truth. Yet I want you to say more about this for my comprehension of the subject of creation. 5 Vasishta replied: All this world visible to us, with all its moving and unmoving creatures, and all things with all their varieties occasioned by differences of country and climate, 6 together with the gods Brahma, Indra, Upendra, Mahendra, and the Rudras, are subject to destruction at the great dissolution of the world. 7 There remains something alone which is unborn and uncreated and without beginning which is ever calm and quiet in its nature. To this no words can reach, and of which nothing can be known. 8 As a mountain is larger and more extended than a mustard seed, so the sky is much more than a mountain. But the entity of emptiness is the greatest of all. 9 Again as the dust of the earth is smaller than a great mountain, so the stupendous universe is a minute particle compared to the infinite emptiness of God. 10 After the long lapse of unmeasured time in the unlimited space of eternity, and after the dissolution of all existence in the transcendent vacuum of the Divine Mind, 11 the great empty Consciousness, unlimited by space and time, quite tranquil by being devoid of all desire and will, sees the minute world in aerial state in itself by its memory. 12 The intellect inspects this unreality within itself as it were in its dream. Then it thinks on the sense of the word Brahman and beholds the expansion of these minute ideas to their intellectual forms. 13 It is the nature of consciousness to know the minute ideas contained in its sensations. Because it continues to look upon them, it is called their looker. 14 As a man sees himself dead in his dream, and the dead man sees his own death, so consciousness sees minute ideas in itself. 15 Hence it is the nature of consciousness to see its unity as a duality within itself, and to remain of its own nature as both subjective and objective by itself. 16 Consciousness is of the nature of emptiness and therefore formless in itself. Yet it beholds the minute ideas to rise as phenomena before it, and thereby the subjective viewer becomes the duality of the objective view also. 17 Then it finds its minute self springing out distinctly in its own conception, just as a seed is found to sprout forth in its seedling. 18 Then it has a distinct view of space and time, and of substance and its attributes and actions. But as these are yet in their state of internal conceptions, they have not yet received names. 19 Wherever the particle of consciousness shines is called place, whenever it is perceived is called time, and the act of perception is called action. 20 Whatever is perceived is said to be the object. The sight of it is the cause of its perception, just as the light of a luminary is the cause of eyesight. 21 Thus endless products of consciousness appear before it, distinct from one another by their time, place, and action. All these appear as true, like the various colors in the sky. 22 The light of consciousness shines through different parts of the body. The eye is the organ whereby it sees, and the other organs of sense allow different sense perceptions. 23 The intellectual particle, shining at first within itself, has no distinct name except that of tanmatra or its inward perception, which term has no more significance than empty air.
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But the shadow of minute consciousness falling upon empty air becomes the solid body which shoots forth into the five organs of sense owing to its inquiry into their five objects of form and the rest. 25 The intellectual principle, in need of retaining its sensations in the brain, becomes the mind and understanding. 26 Then the mind being moved by its vanity, takes upon it the name of egoism and is inclined to make imaginary divisions of space and time. 27 Thus the atomic consciousness (the jiva) comes to make distinctions of time by giving them different names of present, past and future. 28 Again, with regard to space, it calls one place as upper and another as lower and goes on giving different names to the sides of the one unchanging space in nature. 29 It then comes to understand the meanings of words, and invents words signifying time and space, action and substance. 30 Thus consciousness, having an empty form in the primordial vacuum, became the spiritual or subtle body of its own accord until it was diffused all over the world. 31 Having long remained in that state as it thought, it took the completely concrete material form through which it was transfused. 32 Though formed originally of air and perfectly pure in its nature, yet being incorporated in the false corporeal form, it forgot its real nature, just as solar heat in association with sand is mistaken for water. 33 It then takes upon itself, and of its own will, a form reaching to the skies to which it applies the sense of word head to some part and feet to another. 34 It applied to itself the sense of the words breast, sides to other parts by adopting their figurative sense and rejecting the literal ones. 35 By thinking constantly on the forms of things, such as this is a cow and that is a horse, and their being bounded by space and time, it became familiar with the objects of different senses. 36 The same intellectual particle likewise saw the different parts of its body which it called its hands, feet and the like as its outward members, and the heart and the like as the inner members of the body. 37 In this manner the bodies of Brahma, Vishnu, the Rudras and other gods are formed. The forms of men and worms are also produced from the conception of them. 38 But in fact there is nothing that is really made or formed. All things are now as they have ever been. All this is the original vacuum and primeval Consciousness. All forms are the false formations of fancy. 39 Viraj is the seed producing the plants of the three worlds, which are productive of many more, just as one root produces many bulbs. Belief in creation puts a lock on the door of salvation. The appearance of the world is as that of a light and fleeting cloud without rain. 40 This Viraj is the first male, rising unseen of his own will. He is the cause of all actions and acts. 41 He has no material body, no bone or flesh, nor is he capable of being grasped by anyones hand. 42 He is as silent as a sleeping man who does not hear the roaring sea and clouds, the loud roar of lions and elephants, or the uproar of battle. 43 He remains neither as a reality nor entirely as an unreality, but like an awaken mans idea of a warrior seen fighting in his dream. 44 Although his huge body stretches millions of miles, yet it is contained within an atom together with all the worlds that lie hidden in every pore of his body. 45 Though thousands of worlds and millions of mountains compose the great body of the unborn Viraj, yet they are not enough to fill it completely, just as a large quantity of grain is not sufficient to fill a winnowing basket. 46 Though innumerable worlds are stretched in his body, yet they are only an atom compared to the infinity of Viraj, and all is contained in his body. Yet it occupies no space or place, but resembles a baseless mountain in a dream. 47 He is called the self-born and Viraj. Though he is said to be the body and soul of the world, yet he is quite empty himself. 48 He is also called Rudra and Sanatana, and Indra and Upendra also. He is likewise the wind, the cloud, and the mountain in his person. 49 The minute particle of Consciousness, like a small spark of fire, inflates and spreads itself at first, then by thinking its greatness, takes the form of the thinking mind which with its selfconsciousness becomes the vast universe. 50 Then being conscious of its inspiration, it becomes the

wind in motion, and this is the air form body of Viraj. 51 Then it becomes the vital breath from the consciousness of its inspiration and expiration in the open air. 52 Then it imagines an fiery particle in its mind, just as children fancy a ghost where there is none, and this spark assumes the forms of luminous bodies in the sky. 53 The vital breath of respiration is carried by turns through the respiratory organs into the heart from where it is carried on the wings of air to sustain the world, which is the very heart of Viraj. 54 This Viraj is the first principle of all individual bodies in the world and in their various capacities forever. 55 All individual bodies have their rise according to their different desires from this Universal Soul. As desires differ from one another in their outward shapes, so they are different also in their inner natures and inclinations. 56 As the seed of Viraj first sprang forth in the nature and constitution of every individual being, it continues to do so in the same manner in the heart of every living, agreeably according to the will of the same causal principle. 57 The sun, moon and the winds are like the bile and phlegm in the body of Brahma. The planets and stars are like the circulating breath and drops of that gods spit. 58 The mountains are his bones and the clouds his flesh. But we can never see his head and feet, nor his body and skin. 59 Know, O Rama, this world is the body of Viraj, an imaginary form by his imagination only. Hence the earth and heaven and all their contents are only the shadow of his Intellectual emptiness.

Chapter 74 The Cosmic Body of Viraj, Continued

Vasishta continued: Now hear more about the body of Viraj, which he assumed to himself of his own will in that kalpa epoch, together with the variety of its order and division and its various customs and usages. 2 The transcendent empty sphere of consciousness makes the body of Viraj. It has no beginning, middle or end and it is as light as an aerial or imaginary form. 3 Brahma, who is without desire, saw the imaginary cosmic egg appearing about him in its aerial form. 4 Then Brahma divided this imaginary world of his in two. It was of a luminous form, from which he came out as a luminary, like a bird matured in its egg. 5 He saw one half of this egg rising high in the upper sky and the other half making the lower world, both of which he considered as parts of himself. 6 The upper part of Brahmas egg is called the head of Viraj. The lower part is called his footstool. The middle region is called his waist. 7 The middle part of the two far separated portions is of immense extent and appears like a blue and hollow vault all around us. 8 Heaven is the upper roof of this hollow, similar to the palate of the open mouth. The stars which cover it resemble the spots of blood in it. The breath of the mouth is like the vital air which supports all mortals and the immortal gods. 9 Ghosts, demons and ogres are like worms in his body. The cavities of the different worlds are like the veins and arteries in his body. 10 The nether worlds below us are the footstools of Viraj. The cavities under his knees are like the pits of the infernal regions. 11 The great basin of water in the middle of the earth and the surrounding islands are like the navel and its pit in the center of the body of Viraj. 12 The rivers with their swirling waters resemble the arteries of Viraj, with purple blood running in them. Asia is like his lotus petal heart, with Mount Meru as its outer layer. 13 The sides of his body are like the sides of the sky. The hills and rocks on earth resemble the spleen and liver in the body of Viraj. The collection of cooling clouds in the sky is like the thickening mass of fat in his body. 14 The sun and the moon are the two eyes of Viraj. The high heaven is his head and mouth. The moon is his essence and the mountains are the filth of his person. 15 The fire is the burning heat and bile in his bowels. Air is the breath of his nostrils. 16 The forests of kalpa trees and other woods and the serpent races of the infernal regions are the hairs and tufts of hairs on his head and body. 17 The upper region of the solar world forms the head of Virajs body. The zodiacal light in the curved hollow beyond the mundane system is the crest on top of Virajas head. 18 He is the Universal Mind itself. He has no individual mind of his own. Being the sole enjoyer of all things, there is nothing in particular that forms the object of his enjoyment. 19 He is the sum of all the senses. Therefore there is no sense beside himself. The soul of Viraj being fully conscious of everything, it is a mere fiction to attribute the property of any organ of sense to him. 20 There is no difference between the property of an organ and its possessor. The mind, in the person of Viraj, perceives all organic sensations without the medium of organs. 21 There is no difference between the doings of Viraj and those of the world. His will alone acts with many forces, both in their active and causal forms. 22 All actions and events of the world are same as his. All our lives and deaths in this world conform to his will. 23 The world lives by his living and so it dies with his death. Like air and its motion, so is the world and Viraj. They act or subside together. 24 The world and Viraj are of the same essence, like air and wind. That which is the world is Viraj. What Viraj is, the very same is the world. 25 The world is Brahma and Viraj. The names are synonyms according to its successive stages. They are only forms of the will of the pure and empty Consciousness of God. 26 Rama asked, Be it so that Viraj is the personified will of God and has the form of
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emptiness. But how is he considered in his inner person as Brahma himself? 27 Vasishta replied: As you consider yourself as Rama and situated in your body, so Brahma, the great father of all, is the willful soul in his body. 28 The souls of holy men also are full with Brahma and their material bodies are like mere images of him. 29 As your living soul is capable of fixing its residence in your body, so the self-willed soul of Brahma is far more able to reside in his body of the universe. 30 If it is possible for a plant to reside in its seed and for animal life to dwell in the body, it must likewise be even more possible for the spirit of Brahma to dwell in a body of its own imagination. 31 Whether the Lord is in his consolidated form of the world or in his subtle form of the mind, he is the same in his essence, though the one lies inside and the other outside of us in his inward and outward appearance. 32 The holy hermit who is delighted in himself, remaining silent like a log of wood and quiet like a block of stone, remains with his knowledge of I and you fixed in the Universal Soul of Viraj. 33 A holy and God knowing man is passionless under all persecution, just like an idol made with ropes of straw and string. He remains as calm as the sea after its howling waves are hushed. Though he may be engaged in a great many affairs in the world, yet he remains as calm and quiet in his mind as a stone is unperturbed in its heart.

Chapter 75 Vasishta Describes a Final Dissolution of the World (2)

Vasishta continued: Then, sitting in my meditation of Brahma, I cast my eyes around and saw a region before me. 2 It being midday, I saw a secondary sun behind me, appearing like a fire over a mountain on the horizon. 3 I saw the sun in the sky like a ball of fire and another in the water burning as an undersea fire. I saw a burning sun in the southeast corner and another in the southern quarter. 4 Thus I saw four fiery suns on the four sides of heaven, and as many in the four corners of the sky also. 5 I was astonished to find so many suns all at once in all the sides of heaven. Their fires seemed to burn down their presiding divinities, Agni, Vayu, Yama, Indra and others. 6 As I was astonished looking at these unnatural appearances in the heavens above, suddenly there appeared a terrestrial sun before me, bursting out of the undersea regions below. 7 Eleven of these suns were like reflections of the one sun seen in a prismatic mirror. They rose out of the three suns of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva in the emptiness of the different sides of heaven. 8 The same form of Rudra with its three eyes shone forth in the forms of the twelve burning suns of heaven. 9 In this manner the sun burnt down the world like fire burns the dry wood of the forest. The world was dried up of its moisture, as in the parching days of summer. 10 The solar fire burnt away the woods without any literal fire or flame. The whole earth was dry as dust by this fireless heat. 11 My body became hot and my blood boiled from the heat of a wild fire, so I left that place of torrid heat and ascended to the remoter and higher regions of air. 12 I saw heavenly bodies hurling like tops flung from the string held by a mighty hand. From my aerial seat I saw the rising of blazing suns in heaven. 13 I saw the twelve suns burning the ten sides of heaven, and I also saw the extensive spheres of the stars whirling with incredible velocity. 14 The waters of the seven oceans were boiling with a gurgling noise, and burning meteors were falling over the cities in farthest worlds. 15 Flames with splitting noise flashed upon distant mountains, making them flare with red color. Continuous lightning flashed upon great buildings all around, putting the canopy of heaven in a flame. 16 Falling buildings emitted a cracking and crackling noise all around and the earth was covered with columns of dark smoke like thick clouds and mists. 17 Fumes rose like crystal columns appearing as small towers and spires upon the towers on earth. The loud noise of wailing beasts and men raised a gurgling sound all over the ground. 18 Cities falling upon men and beasts made a hideous noise and huge heaps of debris on earth. Falling stars from heaven scattered fragments of gems and jewels over the earth. 19 All human houses were in flames, bodies of men and beasts burning in their respective homes and houses. Noiseless outskirts of villages and towns were filled with the stink of dead and burning bodies. 20 Marine animals were burnt under the warm waters of the seas. The cries of people within cities were hushed by the howling of the surrounding flames. 21 The elephants of the four quarters of heaven fell down and rolled upon the burning ground, lifting hills with their tusks. 22 Burning hamlets and houses were crushed and smashed under falling stones and hills, which made the mountain elephants yell aloud with their dying groans and agonies. 23 Heated by the sun, all living beings rushed and splashed the hot waters of seas. Mountain vidyadharas fell down into the hollow bosom of mountains bursting from their volcanic heat. 24 In some places, some grew tired of crying. Others resorted to yoga meditation and remained quiet. Serpent races were left to roll on burning cinders below and upon the earth. 25 Voracious marine beasts like sharks and whales baked in drying channels and were driven to the whirlpools of the deep. Poor fishes attempting to evade the fire flew into the air by thousands and
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thousands. 26 Burning flames rising high in the air, as if clad in crimson apparel and dancing, caught the garments of apsara nymphs in heaven. 27 The devastating kalpa fire, wreathed with its flashing flames, began to dance all around with the loud sound of bursting bamboos and cracking trees, like the beating of drums and tambourines. 28 The playful fire danced like an actor on the ruined stage of the world. 29 The fire ravaged all lands and islands and desolated all forests and forts. It filled all caves and the hollow vault of sky until at last it reached the tops of the ten sides of heaven. 30 It blazed in caves and over cities and in all sides of valleys and lands. It blazed over hills and mountain tops, the seats of the spiritual masters, and on the seas and oceans. 31 Flames flashing from the eyes of Shiva and the Rudras boiled the waters of lakes and rivers, burned the bodies of gods and demons, and those of men and serpent races. A harsh whispering sound arose from everywhere. 32 With columns of flaming fire over their head, people began to play by throwing ashes upon one another, like playful demons flirting with dust and water. 33 Flames flashed forth from underground caves on earth and all things around them were reddened by their light. 34 All sides of heaven lost their blue color under the vermilion color of the clouds hanging over them. All things lost their respective colors and assumed the rosy tint of the red lotus. 35 The world appeared covered under a crimson canopy from the burning flames which spread all around, resembling the evening sky under the parting glories of the setting sun. 36 Covered with spreading, burning fires, the sky appeared like a hanging garden of blooming asoka flowers, or like a bed of the red kinsuka blossoms hanging in the sky. 37 The earth looked like it had been scattered with red lotuses and the seas seemed to be sprinkled with red dye. In this manner the fire blazed in many forms, with its tails and crests of smoke. 38 The conflagration raged with its youthful vigor in the forest where it glared in many colors, like a burning scenery shown in a painting. 39 The natural changes of sunrise and sunset disappeared from the Vindhyan Hills because of the constant burning of woods upon its summit. 40 Flying fumes emitting flashes of fire appeared like the luster of the gems in the blue Sahya Mountain in the south. 41 The blue vault of the sky looked like a greenish blue lake, decorated with lotus-like firebrands all over. Flames of fire flashed over the tops of the cloudy mountains in air. 42 Flames of fire, with smoky tails that resembled the tail of a comet, danced about on the stage of the world like dancing actresses with loosened and waving hair. 43 The burning fire burst the parched ground and flung its sparkling particles all around, like fried rice flying all about the frying pan in various colors. 44 Rocks and woods, burning with a bursting and splitting noise, exhibited a golden color on the surface of the earth. 45 All lands were crushed together with the cry of their inhabitants and all seas dashed against one another with foaming froths in their mouths. 46 Waves shone in their faces with the reflection of the shining sun upon them. They clashed against each other as if they were clapping their hands, and dashed with such force against the land that they broke down the rocks on the seashore. 47 The raging sea with his wavelike arms grasped earth and stone, as foolish men do in their anger, and devoured them in his hollow cell with a gurgling noise, as fools swallow their false hopes with vain weeping. 48 The all destroying, harsh sounding fire melted rivers with their banks and the rulers of the spheres fell before the jets of heated water. 49 The ten sides of the compass were out of order and confounded together. All mountains, together with their woods, houses and caves, were reduced to liquid fire. 50 By degrees enormous Mount Meru dissolved into snow by the heat of fire, and soon after the same fire melted down great Mount Himalaya like black lac-dye. 51 All things were cold and pinched in themselves, as good people are melted by the fear of the wicked, except Malaya Mountain which yielded its fragrance even in that state. 52 A noble minded man never forsakes his nobleness, though he is exposed to troubles, because the great never afflict another, though they are deprived of their own joy and happiness. 53 Burn sandalwood,

yet it will diffuse its fragrance to all living beings. The intrinsic nature of a thing is never lost or changed into another state. 54 Gold is never consumed or disfigured, though it is burnt in fire. Thus there are two things, namely aura and emptiness, that cannot be consumed by all destroying fire. 55 Those bodies are above all praise which do not perish at the destruction of all others. Emptiness is indestructible on account of its omnipresence, and gold is not subject to any loss owing to its purity. 56 The property of goodness alone is true happiness, and not passion or inertia. Then the fiery clouds moved aloft as a moving forest, sprinkling ash showers of vivid 57 flame. Mountainous clouds of fire accompanied with flames and fumes poured liquid fire around, burning away all bodies already dried up from heat and lack of water. 58 Dried leaves of trees floating high in the air were burnt away by flames instead of the rain of heavy clouds. 59 The encompassing and gorgeous flames passed by Kailash Mountain without touching it, knowing it to be the seat of the dreaded god Shiva, in the manner of wise men flying from the mud and mire of sin. 60 Then the god Rudra growing furious at the final destruction of the world, shot the dreadful flame of his fiery third eye and burnt down sturdy trees and robust rocks to ashes with stunning cracklings. 61 The foothills of mountains, crowned with flames of fire, moved forward as if to fight the fire with their stones and clubs made of tree clumps. 62 The sky became like a bed of full blown lotuses and creation became a mere name like that of Agastya who departed and disappeared from sight forever. 63 The suffering idiot, on remembering the great dissolution, took the world to be at an end, as the fire consumes all objects like the unreality of the world. 64 Falling thunderbolts pierced all bodies and glittering flames consumed all trees and plants. The winds blew with fiery heat burning everything, even scorching the bodies of the gods. 65 Wild fires raged loose among the trees in the forest. There were clouds of hot ash flying in the air. Smoky mists emitted red hot embers and fiery sparks. Darkness rose upward with fagots of fire falling from within. Gusts of wind blew with speed and force to help the destructive fire.

Chapter 76 Vasishta Describes a Final Dissolution of the World (3)

Vasishta added: Destructive winds blew and shook mountains by their force, filling the seas with tremendous waves and tearing the skies with cyclonic storms. 2 The force of winds made seas break their boundaries and run to the limitless oceans, just as poverty drives poor people to run to the rich. 3 The earth, fried by fire, went under the overflowing waters and joined with the infernal regions lying below the waters of the deep. 4 Heaven disappeared into nothing and the entirety of creation vanished into air. Worlds were reduced to emptiness and sunlight decreased to that of a star in the starry sphere. 5 From some opening in the sky appeared some hideous clouds called pushkaravarta and others in the forms of dreadful demons, roaring with tremendous noise. 6 The noise was as loud as the bursting of the mundane-egg or the hurling down of a large building, and like the dashing of waves against one another in a furiously raging sea. 7 Loud sound resounding through air and water reechoing off city towers, deafening and stunning to the ear. Swelling on mountain tops, it filled the world with uproar. 8 The sound, swelling as if in the conch-shell of the cosmic egg, echoed with triple clanging sounds from the vaults of heaven, sky and the infernal world. 9 The supports of all distant sides swayed at their base. The waters of all seas mixed together as if to quench the thirst of the all devouring doomsday. 10 The doomsday advanced as the god Indra mounted on the back of his elephantine clouds roared aloud amidst the waters contained in the ethereal ocean from the beginning. 11 The great doomsday was attended with a noise as loud as that of the churning of the ocean in olden days, or as that emitted by the revolving world or a hydrostatic engine of immense force. 12 Hearing this roaring of clouds amidst the surrounding fires, I became quite astonished at the harsh creaking noise and cast my eyes on all sides to see the clouds. 13 I saw no trace of a cloud in any part of the heavens. I only heard their roar and saw flashes of lightning in the sky with showers of thunderbolts falling from above. 14 The flaming fire spread over millions of miles on all the sides of earth and heaven, burning everything in a horrible devastation. 15 After a little while, I discovered a spot at a great distance in the sky and felt cool air blowing on my body. 16 I observed kalpa clouds appearing and gathering at a great distance in the sky, where there was no trace of the living fire perceptible to the naked eye. 17 Then kalpa airs blew from the watery corner or western side of the sky, burning at last in blasts capable of carrying away the great mountains of Meru, Malaya and Himalaya. 18 These winds blew away the mountainous flames and burning cinders like birds. The winds carried down the spreading sparks and drove away the fire from all sides. 19 Clouds of fire disappeared from the air, like evening clouds. Then clouds of ash rose into the sky and the atmosphere was cleared of every particle of fire. 20 The air was blowing with fire passing everywhere and melting down the golden strongholds on flying Mount Meru. 21 The mountains on earth burning, their flames spread all about like the rays of the twelve suns. 22 The waters of oceans boiled with rage and the trees and leaves of the forest were burning with the blaze. 23 Cities and celestials, sitting on their happy seats in the highest heaven of Brahma, fell down with all their inhabitants of women, young and old people, all burnt by the flames. 24 The end of period (kalpanta) fire of dissolution was mixed with the water of the lake of Brahma. 25 Strong winds uprooted deep rooted mountains and rocks and plunged them headlong into the fiery swamp of the infernal regions. 26 Chaotic clouds advanced like a troop of dark colored camels, moving slowly in the blue sky with a grumbling noise. 27 They appeared from a corner of the sky, like a huge mountain flashing with lightning of gorgeous flames, filled with the waters of the seven oceans. 28 These clouds were capable of tearing the great vault of the world with
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their loud uproar, splitting all sides of heaven standing upon their solid snow white and impregnable walls. 29 The doomsday was like a raging ocean. The planets were the rolling islands in the whirlpools of their orbits. Quickly moving lightning strikes were like its shifting aquatic animals and the roaring of clouds was like the howling of its waters. 30 The moon, being devoured by Rahu and burned away by the fiery comet, rose to heaven again and assumed the colder form of a cloud to pour down more moisture than her nightly beams and dews. 31 Lightning, like golden spheres in the frigid shapes found in the Himalayas, held all paralyzed waters, woods and hills. 32 After the clouds split the vault of heaven with their harsh crackling and thunder, they dropped down solid snow at first, which then melted to the form of liquid rain. 33 There was a jarring of discordant sounds that rubbed upon the ear and proceeded from the bursting of woods by wildfire, and the harsh shrill sound of thunderclaps in the bellowing air, and the cracking and crackling and dashing and crashing of everything in the shattering world. 34 There was a sharp and shrill noise arising from the warring winds blowing in a hundred ways, and drifts of bleak cold showers of driving snow covered the face of heaven. 35 The vault of heaven, supported by the blue and sapphire-like pillars of blue skies on all sides, shattered the earth and its props of the mountains with big and heavy showers of flooding rain. 36 The earth was bursting and splitting from the blazing furnaces of fires on all sides. The hearts of all living beings were torn by the loud rattling of thunderbolts from heaven. 37 The rain that ruled long over the realm of the fiery earth was now going upward in the form of steam which the burning earth heaved from her surface like her sighs towards heaven. 38 Now the vault of heaven appeared to spread with a network studded with red lotuses of the flying fires on high. Dark showers appeared like swarms of black bees, the raindrops like their fluttering wings. 39 All sides of heaven resounded to the mingled clatter of hailstone and firebrands falling down simultaneously from mixed clouds of terrible and dreadful appearance. The scene all around was as dreadful to see as the mingled warfare of two dreadful forces with deadly arms and mixed bloodshed.

Chapter 77 Vasishta Describes a Final Dissolution of the World (4)

Vasishta continued: Hear now about the chaotic state of the world brought on by conflict of earth, air, water and fire with one another, and how the three worlds were covered by the great antediluvian floodwaters. 2 Dark clouds flying in the air like pitch black ash spread over the world like a great ocean with whirlpools of rolling smoke. 3 The dark blaze of fire glimmered amidst flammables and converted all of them into heaps of ash which flew and spread over all the world. 4 The swelling sound of hissing showers rose as high as if they singing a song of their victory. 5 All five kinds of clouds assembled and all of them poured their waters profusely upon the ground. These were the ashy clouds, the grey clouds, the antediluvian clouds, the misty clouds, and the showering clouds. 6 Howling breezes shook the foundations of the world. The strong wind rose high to heaven and filled all space, carrying flames to burn down the cities of the gods on every side. 7 Winds dived deep into the depths of water, carrying and dispersing their frigidity in all directions, numbing the senses and deafening ears. 8 A loud noise filled the world raised by the constant fall of rain in columns from the vault of heaven, and by the roaring and growling of the kalpa fire. 9 The entire earth became one ocean filled with water falling like waterfalls from the clouds of heaven, resembling the torrents of Ganges and the currents of all rivers. 10 The canopy of antediluvian clouds, pierced by shining sunbeams above them, appeared like the leafy tuft at the top of a blackish palm tree, with clusters of lurid flowers peeping through the dark leaves. 11 The all destroying tornado carried away the broken fragments of trees and rocks and the tops of towers and castles, dashing them against sky covered mountains, breaking them into pieces. 12 Swift stars and planets clashed with rapid comets and meteors, striking sparks of fire and flame from their impacts, burning like fiery whirlpools in the air. 13 Raging, rapid winds raised the waves of seas as high as mountains that struck against rocks on the seashore, breaking and hurling them down with tremendous noise. 14 Deep dusky and showering clouds joined with wet antediluvian clouds cast bright sunlight into shade and darkened the air with their dark shadows. 15 Seas overflowed their beds and banks, bearing down broken fragments of rocks under their depths. They became dreadful and dangerous from the rocks falling and rolling down with their currents. 16 Huge sea surges carried fragments of rocks on their waves, raised aloft by cloud-tearing winds. They dashed against and broke down shores with deep and tremendous noise. 17 The antediluvian cloud then broke the vault of heaven asunder and split the ceiling of the sky with its loud rattling, then clapped together its oak-like hands to see the universal ocean which it had made. 18 Earth, heaven and infernal regions were torn to pieces, tossed and lost in the all devouring waters. All of nature was reduced to its original emptiness, as if the world was a vast depopulated desert. 19 Now the dead and half-dead, the burnt and half-burnt bodies of gods and demigods, of gandharva spirits and men saw one another in the general ruin. They fled and fell upon each other with their lifted arms and weapons and the speed of the winds. 20 Antediluvian winds were flying like funeral ashes from the piles, or like the arjunavata disease of bile drives a person up and down in the air like a column of ash. 21 Heaps of stones collected in the air fell forcibly on the ground, breaking whatever they struck, just as falling hailstones from heaven clatter out of season and shatter everything where they fall. 22 Rustling breezes howling in mountain caves resounded with a rumbling noise from the fall of the mansions of gods of every side. 23 Winds growled with harsh sounds resembling the jarring noise of demons. Winds blowing in the woods appeared to be passing through windows.
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24

Cities and towns burned with the demonic fire, and the mountains and homes of the gods were blazing with solar flashes, sparks in the air flying like swarms of gnats. 25 The sea roared with its whirling rain waters on the surface and boiling with undersea fire below, destroying great mountains below and the homes of the gods above. 26 The conflict between waters and rocks demolished the cities of the rulers of earth and hurled down the homes of gods and demons, spiritual masters and gandharva spirits. 27 Stones and all solid substances were pounded to powder. Firebrands were reduced to ash when flying winds blew them all about like dust. 28 Homes of gods and demons being hurled down, their walls smashing together emitted a noise like that of clouds crashing or the jarring sound of metal upon metal. 29 The sky was filled with people and buildings falling from the seven regions of heaven. The gods themselves were whirling in the air, like something fallen in a whirlpool of the sea. 30 All things whether burned or not were swimming up and down in the ethereal ocean, like dry leaves tossed about by winds. 31 The air was filled with jarring and jingling sounds from fallen buildings hitting various metals and minerals in all the worlds. 32 Then the smoky and ashy clouds all flew upward, while the heavy, watery clouds lowered upon the earth. Again swelling waves rose high upon the water and the hills and all other substances sank below. 33 Whirlpools wheeled against one another with gurgling noises. The old ocean was rolling on with gigantic mountains floating on it like clumps of leaves and shrubs. 34 The good deities were wailing loudly and weary animals moved slowly. Comets and other portents flew in the air and the universe appeared dreadful and horrible. 35 The sky was full of dead and half-dead bodies carried by the breezes into its broad expanse. It presented a grey and dingy appearance, like that of dry and discolored tree leaves. 36 The world was full of water falling in profuse showers from the mountain peaks. Hundreds of streams flowed down the sides of mountains, carried all about by the breeze. 37 Fire now ceased to rage with its hundred flames and the swelling sea ran over its boundary shores and overflowed its banks. 38 A mass of grassy plants mixed with mud and mire appeared like a large island. Intellect appeared in the far distant emptiness, like lighting over a forest. 39 The rains stopped, having extinguished the fires, but the rising fumes and smoke filled the air and hid heaven so that the existence of the prior world and the former creation was altogether forgotten from memory. 40 Then there rose the loud cry of the extinction of creation and there remained only the one being who is exempt from creation and destruction. 41 Now the winds that had been constantly struggling to upset the world, continually filling the universe with their particles, like an unceasing supply of grain, also stopped. 42 The bodies of comets clashing against one another were reduced to sparks of fire resembling gold dust. These extinguished at last to ashes, filled the vault of heaven with powdered dust. 43 The orb of the earth and all its contents was shattered to pieces, rolling in large masses together with the fragments of the infernal worlds. 44 Now the seven regions of heaven and those of the infernal worlds, being mixed up in one mass with the shattered mass of the earth and its mountains, filled the universal space with chaotic waters and antediluvian winds. 45 Then the universal ocean was swollen with the waters of all its tributary seas and rivers. There was a loud uproar of rolling waters resembling the clamor of enraged madmen. 46 Rain began to fall in the form of fountains and cascades, then it assumed the shape of falling columns or water spouts. At last it took a figure of a palm tree, pouring down its showers in torrents. 47 Then it ran like the current of a river, flooding on all sides. Raining clouds made the surface of the earth one extended sheet of water. 48 The flaming fire at last subsided, just like some very great danger in human life is averted by observing the precautions given in the scriptures and

the advice of the wise. 49 At last the vast vault of the mundane world became desolate of all its contents and submerged in water, just as a bael fruit loses its substance by being tossed about in play by the hands of children.

Chapter 78 Vasishta Describes a Final Dissolution of the World (5)

Vasishta continued: The rainstorm, falling hail and snow shattered the surface of the earth. The violence of the waters increased like the oppression of kings in the Kali Yuga. 2 Rainwater falling on the ethereal Ganges made it run in a thousand streams flowing with huge torrents higher than the mountains of Meru and Mandara. 3 Here waves rose to the path of the sun and there waters sank down and lay dull in mountain caves. The dull element made the universal ocean, just as a fool made the sovereign lord of earth. 4 Great mountains were hurled down like straw into the deep and broad whirlpools of water. The tops of huge surges reached the far distant sphere of the sun. 5 The great mountains of Meru, Mandara, Vindhya, Sahya and Kailash dived in the waters moving like fish and sea monsters. The melted earth set like its soi, and large snakes with their lotus-like hoods floated on the waters like plant stalks. 6 Half-burned wood and floating plants were like its moss and bushes and the wet ash of the burned world was like the dirty mud underneath the waters. 7 The twelve suns shone like so many full blown lotuses in the large lake of the sky. The huge and heavy pushkara cloud, with its dark showers of rain, seemed like a blue lotus bed filled with the dark leaves. 8 Raging clouds roared aloud from mountain sides, like foaming waves of the ocean. The sun and moon rolled like two pieces of sapphire over cities and towns. 9 The gods, asura demons and people at large were blown up and carried into the air until at last they flew up and fell into the disc of the sun. 10 Clouds rained in torrents with loud clattering noise, their currents carrying floating rocks into the distant sea as if they were mere bubbles of water. 11 Deluging clouds rolled in the air after pouring their water in floods on earth, as if they were in search of other clouds with their open mouths and eyes. 12 Rushing tornados filled the air with uproar and with one gust of wind, blasted the boundary mountain from its bottom into the air. 13 Furious winds collected the waters of the deep to the height of mountains, which ran with a great gurgling noise all about in order to flood the earth under them. 14 The world was torn to pieces by the clashing of bodies driven together by tempestuous winds which scattered and drove millions of beings over against one another in mingled confusion. 15 Hills floated on waves like bits of straw. Dashing against the disc of the sun, they broke it into pieces as if by throwing stones. 16 The great void of the universe, spread with the great net of waters in its vast space, caught the great hills resembling big eels caught in fishing nets. 17 Big animal bodies and whales, living or dead, rose, floated and plunged in the deep from the currents made by whirlpools. 18 Those still alive floated about the tops of sinking mountains resembling the floating froths of the sea. Gods were fluttering over them like gnats and flies. 19 The spacious firmament, filled with innumerable raindrops shining like bubbles of water in the air, appeared as the thousand eyes of Indra looking on the rains below. 20 Indra, the god of heaven with his body of the autumn sky and his eyes of bubbling raindrops, looked on the floating clouds in the midway skies flowing like the currents of flooded rivers. 21 Pushkara and avartaka clouds with their world floods joined together in embrace, like two winged mountains flying in the air and clashing against one another. 22 These clouds, at last satisfied having devoured the world under their all swallowing waters, were now roaring loudly and flying lightly in the air, as if they were dancing with uplifted hilly arms. 23 Clouds were poured their floods of water and mountain tops were aflame in the midway sky. The huge snakes that had supported the earth were now diving deep into the mud of the infernal regions. 24 The constant showers filled the three regions, like the triple stream of Ganges
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running in three directions. They drowned the highest mountains, whose tops floated like froth in the universal ocean. 25 Floating mountains struck against the sphere of heaven and broke it into fragments. The vidyadharis of heaven floated like pretty lotuses on the surface of waters. 26 The universe was reduced to a universal ocean which roared with a tremendous noise. The three worlds, split to pieces, were carried away into the waters of the endless deep. 27 There remained no one to save another. There was no one who was not swept away by the flood. For who can save us when all devouring time grasps up in his clutches? 28 There remained neither sky nor horizon. There was no upside or downward in infinite space. There was no creation or creature anywhere. All were submerged under one infinite sheet of water.

Chapter 79 After Dissolution, Vasishta Sees the Gods in Nirvana; Creation Linked to Desire
Vasishta resumed: Seeing the end of all, still I retained my seat in infinite emptiness. My eyes were captured by the sight of a glorious light shining like the suns morning rays. 2 While I was looking at that light, I saw the great Brahma sitting like a statue carved in stone, intent upon his meditation of the Supreme One, surrounded by his transcendent glory. 3 I saw a multitude of gods, sages and holy persons: Brihaspati and Sukra, the preceptors of gods and demigods; the gods of wealth (Kubera) and death (Yama); 4 the gods of water (Varuna), fire (Agni) and others, and companies of rishis, spiritual masters, sadhyas, gandharvas and others. 5 They were all sitting in meditation, like figures in a painting. They all sat in lotus posture and appeared as lifeless and immovable bodies. 6 Then the twelve suns met at the same center and they sat in the same lotus posture of meditation as the other gods. 7 Then after a while, I saw the lotus-born Brahma as if I saw the object of my dream after waking. 8 Then I lost the sight of the gods assembled in the world of Brahma, just as when great minded men lose sight of the most important objects of their desire. Nor did I see the aerial city of my dream upon my waking. 9 Then the entire creation, which is only a pattern of the mind of Brahma, appeared like an empty desert to me, the earth as a barren waste upon the ruin of its cities. 10 Gods and sages, spiritual masters and vidyadhari spirits were nowhere to be seen. They all had blended in the same void everywhere. 11 Then, seated in my ethereal seat, I came to know by my perception that all of them had obtained their nirvana extinction. 12 With the extinction of their desires, they also became extinct, just as sleeping dreamers come to themselves after they are awakened from their illusory vision. 13 The body is an aerial nothing appearing as a substantial something because of our desire. It disappears with the removal of our desire for it, like a dream vanishing from the sight of a waking man. 14 The aerial body appears as real like any other image in our dream. Nothing remains of it when we know its unreal nature and the vanity of our desires. 15 When we are awake in samadhi, we also have no consciousness of either our spiritual or physical bodies. 16 I use the example of something seen in our dream being false because it is well known to children and everybody and it is used in the Vedas and Puranas. 17 Only a great imposter would deny the falsity of his ideas in dreams and support the reality of visible sights. Such a one deserves to be shunned, for who can wake the waking sleeper? 18 What causes the physical body? Not the dream, because the bodies seen in a dream are invisible to the naked eye. This being true, it follows that there is no solid body in the next world. 19 Should there be other bodies after the loss of the present ones, then there would be no need of repeated creation of bodies if the original bodies were to continue forever. 20 Anything having a form is, of course, perishable. The position that there was another kind of world before is likewise untenable. 21 If you say that the world was never destroyed and that understanding is produced of itself in the body in the same way as spirit is generated in fermented liquor, 22 then your position is inconsistent with the doctrines of the Puranas, the Vedas, and other scriptures, which invariably maintain the destructibility of all material things. 23 Should you, O intelligent Rama, deny the acceptance of these scriptures, like the Charvakas, then tell me. What faith can be placed in the scriptures of those heretical teachings, which are as false as the offspring of a barren woman? 24 The wise do not favor these heretical doctrines because of their destructive tendencies. There are many discrepancies in them, as you shall know from the few that I am going to point out to you.
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If you say the human spirit is like the spirit of liquors, then tell me what makes the departed spirit of a person who dies in a foreign country revisit his friends at home in the shape and form of a fiend? 26 To this they answer that the apparition is only a false appearance. Granting such, why not recognize our own appearances to be equally false? 27 It being so, how can you believe that the departed souls of men assume bodies in the next world, as said in the scriptures? 28 There is no truth in the proof of a ghost, just as there is no proof of spirit in liquor. Hence if the supposition of the former is untrue, what faith is there in a future body in the next world? 29 If the existence of spirits is granted from the common belief of mankind in them, then why not accept as true the doctrine of a future state of the dead, upon the testimony of the scriptures? 30 If belief that a person is suddenly possessed by an evil spirit is any ground for reliance, why then should he not rest his belief in his future state, which is confirmed by the dogmas of the scriptures? 31 Whatever a man thinks or knows in himself, he supposes it to be true at all times. Whether his belief be right or wrong, he knows it correct to the best of his belief. 32 A man well knowing that the dead will live again in another world relies fully upon that hope and does not care to know whether he shall have a real body there or not. 33 Therefore the nature of men is to have a preconceived opinion about their future existence. This with their growing desire to have certain forms of bodies for themselves, leads them to the error of seeing several shapes before them. 34 Abstaining from this desire removes the disease of the errors of looker, looking, and the look. Retaining this desire leads us to see this apparition of the world always before us. 35 So the feeling of desire led the Supreme Spirit of Brahma to create the world. But its abandonment causes our nirvana, while its retention leads us to the error of the world. 36 This desire first sprang in the Divine Mind of Brahma and not in the immutable spirit of Brahma. I feel this desire rising now in me, seeing the true and supreme Brahman in all and everywhere. 37 All this knowledge that you derive here is said to form nirvana by the wise. That which is not learnt here is said to constitute the bondage of the world. 38 True knowledge is to see God everywhere. It is self-evident in our innermost soul and does not shine without it. 39 Selfconsciousness of our liberation is what really makes us so. The knowledge that we are bound to this earth is the source of all our sorrows and it requires great pains to remove it. 40 The awakening of our consciousness of the world is the cause of our being enslaved to it. Our highest bliss is the dormancy of such awareness in the trance of samadhi. By being awake to the concerns of the world, you find the unreal appearing as real to you. 41 Lying dormant in holy trance, without the sluggishness of unconsciousness, is called our spiritual liberation. Our wakefulness to the outer world is said to be our state of bondage to it. 42 Now let your nirvana be devoid of all desire, trouble, care and fear. Let it be a clear and continuous peace without consideration of unity or duality. Let it be like the spacious firmament, ever calm, clear and undisturbed.

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Chapter 80 Vasishta Describes a Final Dissolution; Appearance of Adipurusha (Rudra, Shiva); Various Numbers of Voids
Vasishta continued: Afterwards the celestials who were present in the heaven of Brahma vanished and became invisible like a lamp with its burnt out wick. 2 The twelve suns disappeared in the body of Brahma. Their burning beams burnt away the heaven of Brahma, just as they had burnt down the earth and other bodies. 3 Having consumed the seat and home of Brahma, they fell into the meditation of the Supreme Brahman and became extinct in him like Brahma, like a lamp extinguished for lack of oil. 4 Then the waters of the universal ocean invaded the celestial city of Brahma, flooding its surface like the shade of night fills the face of the earth with darkness. 5 Now the whole world was filled with water, from the highest seat of Brahma to the lowest pit of hell. All was as full of water as a ripe grape is swollen with its juice. 6 Waving waters rising like mountain tops blended with the flying birds of air and washed the seats and feet of the gods hovering over them. They touched the antediluvian clouds, which deluged rain over them. 7 In the meantime, from my aerial seat, I saw a dreadful appearance in the skies which horrified me altogether. 8 It was a deep and dark chaos that embraced the entire sky in its grasp and appeared like the gloom of night accumulated from the beginning to the end of creation. 9 This dark form radiated bright beams of millions of morning suns, resplendent like three suns together, steady lighting flashing. 10 Its eyes were dazzling and its face flashed with the blaze of a burning furnace. It had five faces, three eyes, and ten hands, each holding a trident of immense size. 11 It appeared before me with its body outstretched in the air, standing transfixed in the sky like a huge black cloud extending all over the atmosphere. 12 It remained on the visible horizon, below and out of the universal ocean of waters, the position and features of hands and feet and the rest of its body indistinctly marked in the sky. 13 The breath of its nostrils agitated the waters of the universal ocean like Vishnus arms churning the Milky Ocean after the great flood. 14 Then from the antediluvian waters arose a male being who would later be called the First Male, Adipurusha. He was the personification of collective ego, the causeless cause of all. 15 He rose out of the ocean like a huge mountainous rock, then flew into the air with his big flapping wings extending over and enclosing the whole space of infinite emptiness. 16 From his triple eyes and trident, I knew him to be Lord Rudra himself. I bowed down to him as the great god of all. 17 Rama asked, Sage, why did Lord Rudra have that form? Why was he so gigantic and dark? Why did he have ten arms and hands, and five faces and mouths? 18 Why did he have three eyes and such a fierce form? Was he absolute in himself or delegated by any other? What was his errand and what did he do? Was it a mere shadow of its substance? 19 Vasishta replied: This being is named Rudra because he is the sum total of Egoism. He is full of selfpride and the form in which I saw him was clear emptiness. 20 This lord was of the form of vacuum and the color and brightness of emptiness. On account of being the essence of empty consciousness, he is represented as the blue sky. 21 Being the soul of all beings and being present in all places, he is represented in his gigantic form. His five faces represent his five internal organs of sense. 22 The external organs of sense and the five members of his body are represented by ten arms on both sides of his body. 23 This lord of creation and all living bodies and mankind is absorbed in the Supreme One at the final dissolution of the world. When he is let out to pass from the unity, he appears in this form.
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He is only a part of the Eternal Soul. He has no visible body or form of his own. He is thought of in this form I have described by the false conception of men. 25 Having proceeded from the emptiness of Consciousness, Lord Rudra is set in the material vacuum. He also resides in the form of air in the bodies of living beings. 26 The aerial Rudra becomes exhausted in course of time, then by forsaking animated bodies, he returns to the reservoir of eternal rest and peace. 27 The three eyes of Rudra are the three qualities, the three times, the three intellectual faculties of the mind, understanding and egoism, the three Vedas, and the three letters of the sacred syllable of Aum. 28 The trident of Rudra is his scepter, held in his hand to imply his dominion over the three worlds. 29 He is represented as having a living body and soul to indicate his personality and personification of the egoism of all living beings, and that there is no living body apart from himself. 30 His nature and business is to provide for all living creatures according to their wants and deserts. Therefore he manifests in the form of Shiva, which is Divine Consciousness in the form of air. 31 This lord, having destroyed and devoured the whole creation at the end, rests in perfect peace and becomes of the form of pure air and the blue sky. 32 After affecting the destruction of the world, he drinks the universal ocean. Then being quite satisfied, he rests in perfect peace and inaction. 33 Afterwards as I saw him drawing the waters of the ocean into his nostrils by the force of his breath. 34 I saw a flame of fire flashing out from his mouth and thought it was the flash of the latent fire of the water drawn in him by the breath of his nostrils. 35 Rudra, the personified Ego, remains in the form of latent heat in undersea fire and continues to suck up the waters of the ocean until the end of a kalpa epoch. 36 The waters then enter the infernal regions like snakes entering holes beneath the ground, and the antediluvian winds entered his mouth in the form of the five vital airs, just as the winds of heaven have their recess in hollow sky. 37 Lord Rudra then goes on to swallow and suck up the marine waters, just as bright sunlight swallows the gloom of the dark night. 38 At last there appears a calm and quiet emptiness in the blue sky, resembling the wide ocean filled with flying dust and smoke, devoid of any being or created thing, and stretching from the world of Brahma to the lowest abyss of hell. 39 I described four different spheres of empty void, bearing no vestige of anything moving or stirring in them. Listen to me, O son of Raghu, and you will hear what they were. 40 One of these lay in the middle of the air and was sustained in it without any prop or support, like particles of fragrance floating in the air. This was Rudra in the form of the blue sky. 41 The second was lying far away and appeared like the curved, hollow vault of the sky over this earth. It was a part of the mundane system and below the seven spheres of the hell regions. 42 The third was a region above the mundane sphere. It was invisible to the naked eye owing to its great distance beyond the blue sky. 43 Then there was the surface of the earth with its lower hemisphere of the watery regions. It was traversed by the great Himalaya Mountain which was the seat of the gods and surrounded by islands, sands and shores surrounded by sea. 44 There is another sphere, lying at the furthest distance from the other circles of the world, which comprises the infinite space of emptiness. It extends unlimited like the unbounded and transparent spirit of God. 45 This was the remotest sphere of heavens that I could observe. There was nothing else observable on any side, beside and beyond the limits of these four spheres or circles. 46 Rama asked, Tell me, O venerable sage, is there any sphere or space beyond what is contained in the mind of Brahma? Then tell me what and how many of them are there? What are their boundaries and how are they situated and to what end and purpose? 47 Vasishta replied: Know Rama, that there are ten other spheres beyond this Brahmanda world. Of these,

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the first is the sphere of water lying beyond the two parts of the earth. It is ten times greater than the land which it covers, just as the shadow of evening spreads over the sky. 48 Beyond that is the sphere of heat, which is ten times greater in extent than that of water. Far from this is the region of the winds, whose circle is ten times larger than that of solar heat and light. 49 Next to these is the sphere of air, which is ten times as wide as the circuits of the winds. It is the highest sphere of transparent air and is said to comprise the infinite emptiness of the Divine Spirit. 50 Afar and aloft from these, there are some other spheres also, whose circles extend to the distance of ten times above one another in the vast infinity of space. 51 Rama said, Tell me, O chief of sages, who holds up the water of the deep below and supports the air of the sky above the world? How they are held up? 52 Vasishta replied: All earthly things are upheld by the earth, as water supports the leaves of lotuses upon it. Every part depends upon the whole, just as a child depends upon its mother. 53 Hence everything runs to and is attracted by whatever is larger than it, and situated nearer to it than others, just as the thirsty man runs to and is attracted by the nearby water. 54 So all metallic and other bodies depend upon the close union of their parts, which being joined together, are as inseparable from one another as arms and legs are attached to a persons body. 55 Rama asked, Tell me sage, how do the parts of the world exist together? How are they joined together? How are they separated from one another and destroyed in the end? 56 Vasishta replied: Whether the world is supported by someone or not, and whether it remains fixed or falls off, in reality it is an insubstantial form, like a city in a dream. 57 What falls away or remains fixed on some support? It is seen in the same manner as our consciousness shows it to us. 58 The world is contained in and shown by the intellect in the same manner as wind is contained in and let out of air, and as the sky presents blueness and other airy appearances. 59 These habitable worlds forming the universe are only imaginary cities and creations of Consciousness. They are only airy representations of the airy mind, just as the formless sky is represented in empty emptiness, and appearing in various forms to us. 60 The nature of our intellect is to give many things to our consciousness and to make us unconscious of their disappearance by day and night. 61 An innumerable series of thoughts are constantly employing our minds when we are sitting and at rest, and so they are flying off and returning to us by day and night. 62 All things appear to approach their dissolution to one who knows their destructibility and their ultimate extinction at the end of a kalpa period. All things seem to be always growing in the emptiness of the mind of one who is familiar with only their growth. 63 All our thoughts appear in the vacuum of our minds like the vaporous chains of pearls seen in the autumn sky. They are both as false and fleeting as the other, and yet they press so very thick and quick on our sight and minds that there is no counting them.

Chapter 81 The Dance of Kali, Bhairavi

Vasishta related: Afterwards, O Rama, I saw the same Rudra standing in the same sky dancing with a hideous form. 2 This body became so big as to fill the whole atmosphere, and as deep and dark black as to cover the ten sides of the sky under the shadow of its dark appearance. 3 Its three eyes flashed with the flaming lights of the sun, moon and fire. His body, black as the fumes of a dark flame, was as silent as the ten sides of the naked sky. 4 The eyes blazed with the flame of the undersea fire and the arms were as big as the huge surges of the sea. The blue body seemed like the consolidated form of waters rising from the blue universal ocean. 5 As I was looking upon this enormous body, I saw a form like that of its shadow rising from it, jumping about as if dancing. 6 I was thinking in my mind, How could this shadow appear in this dark and dreary night when the heavens were hidden under darkness and there was no light shining in the sky? 7 As I was reflecting in this manner, in the foreground of that ethereal stage I saw a strong phantom of a dark dingy female with three eyes, prancing and dancing and glancing all about. 8 She was of a large and lean stature with dark black complexion. Her flaming eyeballs burned like fire. She covered with wild flowers all over her body. 9 She was as inky black as pasted pitch and as dark as the darkest night. Her body of darkness looked like the image of primeval night. 10 With her horrid and wide open jaws, she seemed to view the spacious vacuum of air. With her long legs and outstretched arms, she appeared to measure the depth and breadth of open space on all sides. 11 Her frame was faint, as if reduced by long enduring fast, and it stooped lower and lower as if pressed down by hunger. It was wavering to and fro, like a body of dark clouds is driven backward and forward by driving winds. 12 Her stature was so lean and long that it could not stand by itself. Like a skeleton, it was supported by bands of ribs and arteries to keep it from falling. 13 In a word, her stature was so tall and towering that it was by my daily journey in the upper and lower skies that I came to see the top of her head and the base of her feet. 14 After this I saw her body. Held together by its complicated bands of tendons and arteries, it looked like a bush of tangling thickets and thistles. 15 She was wrapped in vests of various colors and her head was decorated by luminaries, like a headdress of lotus flowers. She was encompassed by the pure light of heaven and her robe flashed like fire enflamed by the breath of winds. 16 The lobes of her long ears were adorned with rings of snakes and earrings of human skulls. Her knee bones were as prominent as two dried gourd shells and her two dark mammary glands hung loosely upon her chest. 17 The braid of hair on the top of her head was adorned with feathers of young male peacocks and defied the crowned head of the lord of the gods and the circle of his discus. 18 Her moonlike teeth cast their luster like moonbeams. They glistened amidst the dark ocean of chaotic night, just as moonbeams play upon the surface of waves of the dark blue deep. 19 Her long stature rose like a large tree in the sky. Her two limbs resembled two dry gourds growing upon it and as she turned about in the air, these clattered like the rustling of a tree by a breeze. 20 As she danced about in the air, her dark arms lifted on high, they resembled the rising of the waves of the dark ocean of eternity. 21 Now she lifts one arm and then many more, and at last she displays her countless hands to play her part in the playhouse of the universe. 22 Now she shows only one face and then another, and afterwards many more without end in order to represent her various and infinite parts in the vast theater of the world. 23 Now she dances on one foot, then instantly on both feet. She stands on a hundred legs in one moment and on her numberless feet at another.
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I understood this person to be the figure of chaos. The wise name her Goddess Kali or eternal night. 25 The sockets of her triple eyes flashed with a flame like that of the furnace of a fire engine. Her eyebrow was as glaring and flaring as burning Indranila Mountain. 26 Her cheek bones were as frightful as two high hills projecting over her hideous open mouth, which appeared like a mountain cave capable of swallowing the whole world. 27 Her shoulder blades were as high as two mountain peaks piercing the starry frame where they were decorated by clusters of stars, like strings of pearls. 28 She danced with her outstretched arms resembling the waving branches of trees. She displayed the brightness of her nails, like that of blooming blossoms upon them, or like so many full moons shining under the blue sky. 29 As she turned and tossed her dark hands on every side, she looked like a dark cloud moving in the sky. The luster of her nails appeared to shed the splendor of stars all around. 30 The face of the sky resembled a forest filled the black trees of her two dark arms. Her outstretched fingers, looking like the twigs of trees, were covered by the blossoms of their pearly nails which waved like flowers in the blue sky. 31 With legs taller than the tallest palm and tamara trees, she stalked over the burning earth and put to shame the largest trees that grew upon it. 32 The long and flowing hairs on her head reached and spread over the skies. They formed black coverings for the dark elephantine clouds moving about in the empty air. 33 From her nostrils she breathed a rapid gale of wind which carried mountains aloft in the air and blew great gales in the sky resounding with loud sounds of thunder from all sides of its boundless spheres. 34 The breath of her nostrils and mouth blew in unison all about the circle of the universe and kept the great sphere in its constant rotation, as if with regular harmonic tones of progression. 35 Then, as I looked on her attentively, I saw that her stature was enlarging with her dancing, until at last I found it to fill the whole space of the air and sky. 36 As long I continued to observe her dancing, I saw great mountains hanging all about her body like a string of jewels. 37 Dark antediluvian clouds formed a black costume about her body, and the phenomena of the three worlds appeared as the various decorations that adorned her body. 38 The Himalaya and Sumeru Mountains were like her two silver and golden earrings and the rolling worlds looked like ringing bells and belts about her waist. 39 The ranges of the boundary mountains were like the chains and flower wreaths upon her body, and cities, towns, villages and islands were like the leaves of trees scattered about her. 40 All the cities and towns of the earth appeared as adornments on her body, and all the three worlds and their seasons and divisions of time were as ornaments and garments upon her body. 41 She had the streams of the holy Ganga and Yamuna Rivers hanging down like strings of pearls from the ears of her other heads. The virtues and vices decorated her ears. 42 The four Vedas were her four breasts which flowed with sweet milk like her sweat. The doctrines of other scriptures flowed like milk from their nipples. 43 Her armor and arms, the various weapons such as sword, shield, spear and club which she carried, decorated her body like wreaths of flowers. 44 The gods and all fourteen kinds of animal beings were situated like lines of hair on her body in her form of animated nature itself. 45 Cities, villages and hills situated in her body all joined in their merry dance with her in the expectation of being restored to life in the same forms again. 46 The unstable moving creation which rested in her appeared to me as if situated in the next world, dancing with joy in the hope of its restoration of life. 47 Chaotic Kali, having devoured and assimilated the world in herself, danced with joy like a peacock with a snake in its belly that it has greedily eaten at the appearance of a dark cloud. 48 The world continued to remain and exhibit its real form in her wide extended figure like the

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shadow of a thing seen in a mirror, and the locations of countries shown on a map. 49 I saw her sometimes standing still, with the whole world and all its forests and mountains moving and dancing in her body, and all forms repeatedly reduced and produced from her. 50 I saw the harmonious vibration of the whole in the mirror of that body. I saw the repeated rising and setting of the world in that circle, without its utter extinction. 51 I marked the revolution of the stars and the rising of mountains within its perimeter, and I observed the host of gods and demigods assembling and dispersing on her in time, just as flights of gnats and flies are driven to and fro by the winds in open air. 52 All these heavenly bodies and these islands in the ocean were moving around her like the flying wheels of a broken war-car. They whirled up and down about her like rocks and wood in a whirlpool. 53 She was clad in the robes of blue clouds, rolled up and folded by the breezes of air. The cracking of wood and bones under her feet answered the sound of her footsteps and anklets. 54 The world filled with the noise of the concussion and separation of its objects, and the tumult of worldly people appeared like passing shadows in a mirror, or like the entrance and exits of actors in a play on stage. 55 The high-headed Meru and the long armed boundary mountains seemed to be dancing about her like moving clouds, and the forest trees seen in the clouds seemed to perform their circular dance all around. 56 High-swelling seas heaved their waves to heaven, carrying with them the uprooted woods from the coasts on high, then throwing them down and sinking them in the waters below. 57 Cities were seen rolling with a tremendous noise in the waters below. No traces of houses or towers or any human homes were found beneath. 58 As chaotic night was thus wandering at random, the sun and moon, with their light and shade, found shelter in the tops of her nails where they sparkled like threads of gold. 59 She was clad in the blue covering of the clouds, adorned with necklaces of frost and icicles. Worlds hung about her like the trickling dewdrops of her perspiration. 60 The blue sky formed a veil about her head, the infernal region her footstool, the earth her bowels, and the several sides were so many arms on her. 61 The seas and their islands formed the cavities and pimples on her body. Hills and rocks made her rib bones and the winds of heaven were her vital airs. 62 As she continued her dancing, huge mountains and rocks swung and reeled about her gigantic body like her attendant satellites. 63 Mountain trees turning around her appeared to weave garlands and dance about, congratulating her for commencing a new kalpa cycle. 64 Gods and demigods, hairless serpents and worms, and all hairy bodies are only component parts of her body. Being unable to remain motionless while she is in motion, they all turned round with her. 65 She weaves the three-fold cord of the sacred thread, consisting of acts, sacrifices and knowledge, which she proclaims aloud in the thundering voice of the triple Vedas. 66 Before her, there is no heaven or earth. One becomes the other by its constant rotation like the wheel of a vehicle. 67 Her wide open nostrils constantly breathe out harsh currents of her breath which give rise to the winds of air and their loud roaring and whistling. 68 Her hundred-fold arms revolving in all four directions give the sky the appearance of a forest filled with the tall heads of trees and their branches, shaken by a furious tornado in the air. 69 At last my steady eyesight grew tired seeing the varieties of productions from her body and their movements resembling the manners of an army in warfare. 70 Mountains were seen rolling as if by an engine and the cities of the celestials fell downward. All these appearances were observed to take place in the mirror of her person. 71 Meru Mountains were torn and carried away like branches of trees and the Malayas were tossed about like flying leaves. The Himalayas fell down like dewdrops and all earthly things were scattered like straw. 72 Hills and rocks fled away and the Vindya Mountains flew like aerials in the air. Forests rolled in whirlpools and stars floated in the sea of heaven like swans and geese in lakes below. 73 Islands floated like straws in the ocean of her body and seas were worn like a bracelet on her. The homes of the gods were like lotus

flowers blooming in the large lake of her person. 74 As we see the images of cities in our dream and a fair sky light in the darkness of night, so I saw all things in her dark body as vividly as if shining in broad daylight. 75 All things, even immovable such as mountains, seas and trees, appeared moving and dancing in her body. 76 Wandering worlds danced in the great circle of her spacious body as if they were mere straw in the vast ocean of creation. Thus the sea rolled on mountains and high hills pierced the hollow of heaven above. This heaven, with its sun and moon, turned below the earth. The earth with all its islands, mountains, cities, forests and flower gardens danced in heaven around the sun. 77 Mountains wandered in the surrounding sky and the sea passed beyond the horizon. Cities and all human houses traversed the skies. Rivers and lakes passed through other regions like objects reflecting themselves in different mirrors or like a storm-tossed branch is hurled far away. 78 Fish glided in the desert air as they swam in the watery plain. Cities were situated in empty air as firmly as if fixed on solid earth. Clouds raised waters to heaven, then were driven back by winds to pour their waters on mountain tops. 79 Groups of stars wandered about like lights from a thousand lamps in the sky. They seemed to shed gems with their rays as they rolled, or scatter flowers from all sides on the heads of gods and aerial beings. 80 Creations and destructions accompanied her like fleeting days and nights, or like jewels of brilliant black gems on her body. They were like two fortnights resembling her white and black wings. 81 The sun and moon were the two bright gems on her body and clusters of stars formed her necklaces of lesser gems. The clear sky was her white dress and flashes of lightning formed the brocaded fringes of her garment. 82 As she danced her giddy dance of destruction, she threw worlds together under her feet like anklets, making a jingling sound like that of her trinkets. 83 In her warfare with the jarring elements, rolling on like waves of the ocean and darkening the daylight as by the waving swords of warriors, she listened to the tumult of all the worlds and their peoples. 84 The gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, together with the rulers of sun, moon and fire and all other gods and demigods who shine in their respective offices, were all made to fly before like a flight of gnats with the speed of lightning. 85 Her body is a collection of conflicting elements and contrary principles: creation and destruction, existence and non-existence, happiness and misery, life and death, and all injunctions and prohibitions. 86 The various states of production and existence, and the continuance of action and motion and their cessation which appear to take place in her body, as they do in all physical beings, together with the earths revolution and all other worlds in empty air, are all only false delusions of our minds because there is nothing in reality except a boundless emptiness. 87 Life and death, peace and trouble, joy and sorrow, war and truce, anger and fear, envy and enmity, faith and distrust and all other opposite feelings accompany this worldly life. They dwell together in the same body like gems stored in a chest. 88 The intellectual sphere of her body abounds with ideas of multifarious worlds which appear like phantoms in the air, or like fallacies of vision to a dim sighted man. 89 Whether the world is unmoving in the intellect or a passing phenomenon of outward vision, it appears both as stable and as moving, like the reflection of objects in a revolving mirror. 90 All worldly objects fluctuate like the changing shows in a magic play. They forsake their forms and assume others as quickly as the fickle desires of whimsical children are ever shifting from one object to another. 91 Combinations of causal powers cause the production of bodies. Their separation effects their dissolution. In the same way, accumulation of grain makes a granary and their removal tends to its disappearance. 92 The goddess now appears in one form, then in another. Now she becomes as small as a thumb, then in a moment she fills the sky. 93 That goddess is all in all. She is changed through

everything in world. She is the cosmos itself and also the power of the intellect. She fills the whole curved hallow vault of the sky with her form of pure emptiness. 94 She is the intellect that embraces all, whatever is contained in the three worlds and in all three times. She expands the worlds contained in her, like a painter draws figures pictured in his mind. 95 She is the all comprehensive and plastic nature or form of all things. Being one with the intellectual spirit, she is equally as calm and quiet as the other. Being thus uniform in her nature, she is changed to endless forms in the twinkling of her eye. 96 All these phenomena appear in her like lotuses and carved figures marked in a hollow stone. Her body is the hollow sphere of heaven. Her mind is full of all forms appearing like waves in the depth of sea, or like objects reflected in a crystal stone. 97 The very furious goddess Bhairavi, the consort of the dreaded god Bhairava, the lord of destruction, was thus dancing about with her fierce forms filling the whole firmament. 98 On one side the earth was burning with fire issuing from the eye on the forehead of all destroying Rudra. On the other was his consort Rudrani, dancing like a forest blown away by a hurricane. 99 She was armed with many weapons, such as a spade, a mortar and pestle, a club, a mace, and others which adorned her body like a garland of flowers. 100 In this manner, she danced and scattered the flowers of her garlands all around in her acts of destructions and recreation. 101 She hailed god Bhairava, the ruler of the skies, who joined her dancing with his form as big and tall as hers. 102 May god Bhairava with his associate goddess Kalaratri (Chaotic Night) preserve you all in their act of heroic dance, with the beating of loud drums and the blowing of their buffalo horn, as they drink their bowls of blood and are adorned with wreaths of flowers hanging down from their heads to the breasts.

Chapter 82 All Phenomena Are Void; Shiva

Rama asked, Sage, who is this goddess dancing her act of destruction? Why does she carry pots and fruit like flower garlands on her body? 2 Are the worlds completely destroyed at the end, or do they become extinct in the goddess Kali and reside in her body? When does her dance come to an end? 3 Vasishta replied: Neither is he male nor female, nor was there dancing by one or a duality of the two. Such being the case and the nature of their action, neither has any form. 4 That which is without beginning or end is the Divine Consciousness alone which in the manner of infinite emptiness is the cause of all causes. 5 The uncreated and endless light exists from eternity and extends over all space. This calm and quiet state of ethereal space is known as Shiva or tranquil, and its change to confusion at the end is called Bhairava or the dreadful. 6 It is impossible for pure and formless consciousness to remain alone and aloof from its association with plastic nature, just as it is unlikely to find any gold existing without some form or other. 7 How can intellect exist without its intelligence, or pepper without its pungency? 8 Consider whether there can be any gold without a form of a bracelet or something else, or how a substance can exist without its substantial property or nature? 9 Say, what is the extract of the sugarcane unless it has sweetness? You cannot call it sugarcane juice unless you taste sweet flavor. 10 When the intellect is devoid of its reasoning, you can not call it the intellect. Nor is the empty form of the intellect ever liable to any change or annihilation. 11 Emptiness admits of no variety. It only retains it identity as emptiness. In order to assume diversity, the void must remain a void. 12 Therefore the unchanged and undisturbed essential essence must be without beginning and unlimited, full of all potency in itself. 13 Therefore the creation of the three worlds and their destruction, the earth, the firmament and the sides of the compass, together with all acts of creation and destruction are the random phenomena of emptiness. 14 All births, deaths, delusions and ignorance, being and not being, together with knowledge and dullness, restraint and liberty, and all events whether good or evil, 15 knowledge and its want, the body and its loss, temporariness and long durations in time, together with mobility and inertia, and egoism and you and all other things are That alone. 16 All good and evil, goodness and badness, ignorance and intelligence, together with durations of time and space, substance and action, and all our thoughts, fancies, and imagination, 17 the sight of the forms of things and the thoughts of the mind, the action of the body, understanding and senses, the elements of earth and water, fire, air and vacuum extending all about us, 18 these and all others, proceed from the pure intellectual emptiness of the Divine Spirit which resides in its empty form in everything and is always without decay and decrease. 19 All things exist in pure emptiness and are as pure as emptiness itself. There is nothing beside this empty air, though they appear as real as a mountain does in our hollow dream. 20 The intellectual spirit, which I have described as transcendent void, is the same as what we call soul (jiva), the everlasting, and Rudra, the eternal. 21 He is adored as Vishnu by some and as Brahma the great progenitor of men by others. He is called the sun and moon, and Indra, Varuna, Yama, Kubera and Agni also. 22 He is the wind, the cloud and sea, the sky, and everything that there is or is not, whatever manifests itself in the empty sphere of Consciousness. 23 In this manner all things appear under different names and are taken to be true by the ignorant eye. They all vanish into nothing in their spiritual light which shows them in their pure intellectual natures. 24 In the understanding of the ignorant, the world appears separate from the spirit. But to the intellectual soul, the emptiness of the intellect is known to be situated in the Divine
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Spirit. Therefore there is no distinction of unity and duality to the knowing mind. 25 The living soul is tossed about like a wave in the ocean of the world. It runs the course of repeated births and deaths until it comes to know the nature of the Supreme Spirit, when it becomes as immortal and perfect as the eternal soul and the same with it. 26 By this knowledge of the Universal Soul, the human soul attains its perfect tranquility. It no longer sees itself as a fluctuating wave in the ocean of the world, but sees itself and everything else to be as calm and quiet as the eternal and infinite spirit of God.

Chapter 83 All Is Shiva

Vasishta added: I have already told you that Shiva is the representation of empty consciousness and that Rudra is dancing all about. 2 The forms attributed to them are not real, only representations of the grosser aspects of intellectual emptiness. 3 With my intellectual and clear vision, I saw that sphere of intellect in its clear, bright and clear light. But it did not appear so to others who, in their ignorance, saw it as dark as the black complexion of the associate goddess. 4 At the end of the kalpa cycle, I saw the two apparitions of delusion appearing before me. One was furious Rudra and the other ferocious Bhairava. I knew them both to be only delusion, creatures of my mistaken fancy. 5 The great deep opening seen to exist in the empty sphere of the Consciousness is supposed to be a vast void represented as dreadful Bhairava. 6 We can have no conception of anything without knowing the relation, the significant term and its meaning. For that reason I related this to you, as I found it to be. 7 Rama, know that whatever idea is conveyed to the mind by a words meaning, the power of delusion presents the very same like a magical appearance before the outward sight. 8 In reality there is no destruction and no destructive power of Bhairava or Bhairavi. All these are only false conceptions floating in the empty space of the intellect. 9 These appearances are like those of cities in dream, or warfare shown in our imagination. They are like the paradise realms of ones imagination, or our feelings upon some pathetic and ear-stirring description. 10 As the dream city in the sky is seen in the field of fancy and strings of pearls seen hanging in the empty air, and as mists and vapors darken the clear atmosphere, so there are troops of fallacies flying all about the firmament of the intellect. 11 But the clear sky of pure intellect shines of itself in itself. When it shines in that state, it shows the world in itself. 12 The soul exhibits itself in its intellectual sphere in the same manner as a figure seen in a picture. The soul also manifests in the raging fire of final destruction. 13 I have told you about the formlessness of the forms of Shiva and his consort Shivani. Now listen as I tell you about their dance, which really was no dancing. 14 Sensation cannot exist anywhere without the action of the power of the intellects reasoning, just as it is impossible for anything to be a nothing or appear other than what it is. 15 Therefore the powers of sensation and perception are naturally united with all things, just as Rudra and his consort who are blended together like gold and silver in one and the same metal. 16 Whatever is sensation and wherever it exists, it must be a sensible object and have motion as its natural property. 17 Whatever is the action of the Intellect, whose consolidated form is named Shiva, that is also is the cause of our motions. As these are moved by our will and desires, they are called the dance of the intellectual power. 18 Therefore the furious form and dance of Rudra which Shiva assumes at the end of a kalpa is the vibration of Divine Intellect. 19 Rama asked, In the sight of the right observer, this world is nothing in reality. Anything that remains in any sense is destroyed at the end of the kalpa. 20 Then how does it happen at the end of the kalpa, when everything is lost in the formless void of emptiness, that this consolidated form of intellect known as Shiva remains and thinks in itself? 21 Vasishta replied: O Rama, if you entertain such a question, then hear me tell you how you can get over the great ocean of your doubts regarding the unity and duality of God. 22 The subjective soul then thinks of nothing, but remains quite tranquil in itself resting in the solid emptiness of its omniscience, just like and unmoving and mute stone. 23 If it reflects at all on anything, it is only on itself because it is the nature of consciousness to dwell calmly in itself.
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As consciousness appears to itself like an inner city that it sees within itself in a dream, so there is nothing in real existence anywhere except the knowledge that is inherent in consciousness. 25 The Divine Soul, knowing everything in its empty intellect, sees the manifestation of the universe at the time of creation by the simple development of itself. 26 The intellect develops itself of its own nature, within its empty cell at first, then in a moment envelops this false universe in itself, and at his will at the time of its destruction. 27 The intellect expands itself in itself in its natural state of vacuum. It transmits itself likewise into its conceptions of I and you and all others. 28 Therefore there is no duality or unity, or any empty emptiness either. There is neither an intelligence nor its lack or both together. There neither I (subject) nor you (object). 29 There is nothing that ever thinks of anything, or anything whatever that is thought of that has its own nature. Therefore there is nothing that thinks or reflects, but all is quite rest and silence. 30 The unalterable steadiness of the mind is the ultimate samadhi of all scriptures. Therefore the living yogi should remain in his meditation like the silent and immovable stone. 31 Now Rama, remain to discharge your ordinary duties as they are required upon you by the rules of your race. But continue to be quiet and steady in your spiritual part by renouncing all worldly pride and vanity. Enjoy a peaceful composure in your mind and soul, like that of the serene, calm and clear hollow vault of the sky.

Chapter 84 Description of Kali, Shiva and Shakti; All Ideas Are Real
Rama asked, Tell me sage, why is Goddess Kali said to be dancing about? Why is she armed with axe and other weapons and decorated with wreaths of flowers? 2 Vasishta replied: The vacuum of consciousness is called both Shiva and Bhairava. It is this intellectual power that is called Kali and its consorting mind. 3 As wind is one with its vibratory energy, and fire is identical with its heat, so consciousness is identical with its vibratory energy. 4 As wind is invisible even in its act of vibratory motion, and heat is unseen even in its act of burning, so consciousness is imperceptible in spite of its acting. Therefore consciousness is called Shiva, the calm and quiet. 5 It is because of the wonderful power of Shivas vibration that he is known to us, and without which we could have no knowledge of his existence. Know this Shiva is the all powerful Brahman, who is otherwise a motionless being, unknowable even by the learned. 6 His vibration is the power of his will which has spread out this visible appearance, just as the will of an embodied, living man builds a city according to his thought. 7 The will of Shiva creates all this world from its formless state. This creative power is the Intelligence of God and the intellect of living being. 8 This power also takes the form of nature in her formation of creation. She is called creation she assumes on herself the representation of the phenomenal world. 9 She is represented with a crest of undersea fire on her head and to be dry and withered in her body. She is said to be a fury on account of her furiousness, and called the lotus form from the blue lotus-like complexion of her body. 10 She is called Jaya and Siddha because she is accompanied by victory and prosperity at all times. 11 She is also called Aparajita (invincible), Virya (mighty) and Durga (inaccessible). She is also called Uma because she is composed of the powers of the three letters of the mystic syllable Aum. 12 She is called the Gayatri hymn because it is chanted by everybody, and Savitri also from her being the progenitor of all beings. She is also named Saraswati because she gives us an insight into whatever appears before our sight. 13 She bears the name of Gauri because of her fair complexion and Bhavani because she is the source of all beings and because of her association with the body of Bhava, or Shiva. She is also called the letter A in Aum to signify her being the vital breath of all waking and sleeping bodies. 14 Uma also means the digit of the moon on the forehead of Shiva which enlightens the worlds. The bodies of God Shiva and Goddess Uma are both painted blue and black because they represent the two hemispheres of heaven. 15 The sky appears dark and bright from the two complexions of these gods who are situated in empty forms in the space of the great emptiness itself. 16 Though they are formless as empty airs, yet they are conceived as the first-born of the void. They are figuratively attributed with more or less hands and feet and holding as many weapons in them. 17 Now know the reason why they attribute many weapons and instruments to the goddess. It is no more than showing her as the patron of all arts and their employments. 18 She is identical with the Supreme Soul. She is its power of self meditation from all eternity. She assumes the shapes of the acts of sacred ablutions, religions, sacrifices, and holy gifts as her primal forms in Vedas. 19 She is of the form of the blue sky, comely in appearance. She is the beauty of phenomena. She is the motion of all objects and the varieties of their movements are the various modes of her dancing. 20 She is the agent of Brahma in his laws of the birth, decay and deaths of beings. All villages, cities, mountains and islands hang on her agency like a string of gems about her neck.
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She holds together all parts of the world by her power of attraction and infuses her force as momentum as if into the different parts of her body. She bears the various names of Kali, Kalika and others according to her various functions. 22 As the one great body of the cosmos, she links together all its parts like her limbs to her heart and moves them all about her, though this formless body of force has never been seen or known by anybody. 23 Know this ever vibrating power is never different or unconnected from the quiet motionless spirit of Shiva the changeless god. The fluctuating winds are never apart from the calm vacuum in which they abide and vibrate forever. 24 The world is a display of the glory of God, just as moonlight is a manifestation of the brightness of the moon which is otherwise dark and obscure. So the Lord God is ever tranquil and quiet without any change or decay in his works. 25 There is not the least shadow of fluctuation in the Supreme Soul. It is the action of this agency that appears to be moving us. 26 The tranquil spirit of the god Shiva is that which returns itself from action and reposes in its understanding apart from its goddess, the active energy which possesses the intellect. 27 The intellect resting in its natural state of understanding is called Shiva. The active energy of intellectual power is what passes under the name of the great goddess of action. 28 That bodiless power assumes the imaginary forms of these worlds with all the peoples that are visible in daylight. 29 This power supports the earth with all its seas and islands, and its forests, deserts and mountains. It maintains the Vedas, scriptures, sciences and the hymns with its limbs. 30 It ordains the injunctions and prohibitions and gives the rules of auspicious and inauspicious acts and rites. It directs sacrifices and sacrificial fires and the modes of offering cakes and oblations. 31 This goddess is adorned with sacrificial implements, like the mortar and pestle, and the post and ladle. She is also carries many weapons of warfare such as the spear, arrows, lance, 32 mace and many throwing weapons, accompanied by horse and elephants and valiant gods. In short she fills the fourteen worlds and occupies the earth with all its seas and islands. 33 Rama said, I ask you sage, to tell me now whether the thoughts of creation in the Divine Mind existed in the Divine Soul, or they were incorporated in the forms of Rudra and which are false and fictitious? 34 Vasishta replied: Rama, she is truly the power of the Intellect, as you have rightly said. Everything that she thinks is all true as her thoughts. 35 Thoughts that are subjective and imprinted in the inner intellect are never untrue, just as the reflection of our face cast in a mirror cannot be a false shadow. 36 Those thoughts are false which enter into the mind from without, such as the physical body. These fallacies are removed upon our right reflection and by means of our sound judgment. 37 But in my opinion, the firm belief of the human soul in anything whatever is reckoned as true by everyone. The picture of a thing in a mirror, the representations of things seen in a dream, and the creatures of our imagination are all taken as true and real by everyone for the time, and for their usefulness to him. 38 But you may object and say that things that are absent and at a distance from you are no way useful to you. Yet they cannot be said to be nonexistent or unreal because they come to use when they are present before us. 39 As the productions of a distant country become of use when they are presented before us, so the objects of our dreams and thoughts are equally true and useful when they are present in view. So also every idea of a definite shape and meaning is a certain reality. 40 As an object or its action seen by anyone is believed to be true by its observer, whatever thought passes in his mind is thought to be true by him. But nothing seen or thought of by another is ever believed by someone else as true to him. 41 Therefore, the embryo of the creation is contained forever in the power of Divine Consciousness. The entire universe is ever existent in the

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Divine Soul and it is wholly unknown to others. 42 All that is past, present, and ever to be in future, together with all desires and thoughts of others forever really exist in the Divine Spirit, else it would not be the Universal Soul. 43 Only adepts in yoga practice acquire the power of looking into others hearts and minds, just as others come to see different countries by traveling over the barriers of hills and valleys. 44 As the dream of a man fallen into deep sleep is not disturbed by moving his bed, so the fixed thought of anyone is never lost by his moving from place to place. 45 So the movements of Kalis dancing body cause no fluctuation in the world that is contained within it, just as the shaking of a mirror makes no alternation in the reflection which is cast upon it. 46 The great bustle and commotion of the world, though seeming real to all appearance, yet is only a mere delusion in sober reality. It was delusion whether it moves or not. 47 When is the city seen in our dream said to be a true and when is it pronounced as false? When is it said to exist and when destroyed? 48 Know the phenomenal world exposed before you is only mere illusion. It is your sheer fallacy to see unreal phenomena as sure realities. 49 Know that your conception of the reality of the three worlds is as false as the aerial castle of your imagination or the air-drawn city of your fond desire. It is like the vision in your dream, or any conception of your error. 50 The endless error that tightly binds the mind forever is I the subjective and the other is the objective world. It is a gross mistake like that of the ignorant who believe the endless sky to be bounded and take it for blue. The learned are released from this blunder.

Chapter 85 Relation of Shiva and Kali

Vasishta continued: Thus the goddess was dancing with her outstretched arms, which with their movements appeared to make a shaking forest of tall pines in the empty sky. 2 This power of the intellect, which is ignorant of herself and ever prone to action, continued to dance with her decorations of various tools and instruments. 3 She was arrayed with all kinds of weapons in her thousand arms, such as the bow and arrows, the spear and lance, the mallet and club, the sword and all sort of missiles. She was familiar with all things whether in being or not being, and was busy at every moment of passing time. 4 She contained the world in the vibration of her mind, just as airy cities exist in the power of imagination. She herself is the world, just as imagination itself is the imaginary city. 5 She is the will of Shiva, as fluctuation is innate in the air and as air is still without its vibration. So Shiva is very quiet without his will or volition. 6 The formless volition becomes the formal creation in the same manner as the formless sky produces the wind which vibrates into sound. So does the will of Shiva bring forth the world out of himself. 7 When this volitional energy of Kali dances and plays in the emptiness of the Divine Mind, then all of a sudden the world comes out, as if by union of the active will with the great void of the Supreme Mind. 8 Being touched by the dark volitional power, the Supreme Soul of Shiva is dissolved into water, just as an undersea fire is extinguished by its contact with seawater. 9 No sooner did this power come in contact with Shiva, the prime cause of all, the same power of volition is inclined and assumes the shape of nature, converted to some physical form. 10 Then forsaking her boundless and elemental form, she took upon herself the gross and limited forms of land and hills, then beautiful gardens and trees. 11 She became like the formless void and became one with the infinite emptiness of Shiva, just like a river with its impetuous velocity enters into the immensity of the sea. 12 Then she became as one with Shiva by giving up her title of Shiva, and this Shiva the female form became the same with Shiva the Purusha who is the formless void and perfect tranquility. 13 Rama asked, Tell me sage, how can sovereign goddess Shiva obtain her quiet by coming in contact with the supreme god Shiva? 14 Vasishta replied: Rama, the goddess Shiva is the will of god Shiva. She is called nature and famed as the great Illusion of the word. 15 This great god is said to be the lord of nature and Purusha also. He is of the form of air and is represented in the form of Shiva, which is calm and quiet like the autumn sky. 16 The great goddess is the energy of the Intellect and its will also. She is ever active as force put in motion. She abides in the world in the manner of its nature and wanders all about in the manner of the great delusion. 17 As long as she is ignorant of her Lord Shiva, she ranges throughout the world who is ever satisfied with himself, without decay or disease, without beginning or end or a second to himself. 18 But as soon as this goddess becomes conscious of herself as the same as the god of self-consciousness, she is joined with her Lord Shiva and becomes one with him. 19 Nature coming in contact with the spirit forsakes her character of gross nature and becomes one with the sole unity, just as a river joins the ocean. 20 A river falling into the sea is no longer a river but the sea. Its water joining with seawater becomes the same salty water. 21 So a mind inclined to Shiva is united with him and finds its rest there, just as iron becomes sharpened by returning to its quarry. 22 As the shadow of a man entering into a forest is lost amidst the shade of the wilderness, so the shades of nature are all absorbed in the shadow of the Divine Spirit. 23 But the
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mind that remembers its own nature and forgets that of the Eternal Spirit has to return again to this world and never attains its spiritual bliss. 24 An honest man dwells with thieves so long as he knows them not as such. But as soon as he comes to know them as so, then he is sure to shun their company and fly from the spot. 25 So the mind dwells with unreal dualities as long as it remains ignorant of the transcendent reality. But as it becomes acquainted with the true unity, he is sure to be united with it. 26 When the ignorant mind comes to know the supreme bliss that attends the state of its self-extinction or nirvana, it is ready to rest it like an inland stream runs to join the boundless sea. 27 The mind roaming remains bewildered in its repeated births in the tumultuous world so long as it does not find its ultimate bliss in the Supreme, to whom it may fly like a bee to its honeycomb. 28 Who would forget his spiritual knowledge having once known its bliss? Who forsakes the sweet having had once tasted its flavor? Say Rama, who would not run to enjoy the delicious nectar, which pacifies all our sorrows and pains, prevents our repeated births and deaths, and puts an end to all our delusions in this darksome world?

Chapter 86 Vasishta Describes the Stone: Creation as Images in Unchanging God; All Things Are Repetitions of Themselves
Vasishta added: Rama, hear how this whole world resides in the infinite void and how the airy Rudra which rises from it is freed from his deluded body and finds his final rest in it. 2 As I stood looking upon that block of stone, I saw the aerial Rudra and the two upper and nether worlds marked over it, remaining quiet at rest. 3 Then in a moment, that airy Rudra saw the two partitions of the earth and sky within the hollow of vacuum, his eyeballs blazing like the globe of the sun. 4 Then in the twinkling of an eye and with the breath of his nostrils, he drew the two partitions to him and threw them into the horrible abyss of his mouth. 5 Having devoured both divisions of the world as if they were a morsel of bread, he remained alone as air and one with the universal air about him. 6 Then he appeared like a piece of cloud, then the size of a small stick, and afterwards the size of a thumb. 7 I saw him become transparent like a piece of glass which at last became as minute as to melt into the air and vanish altogether from my microscopic sight. 8 Being reduced to an atom, it suddenly disappeared from view and, like an autumn cloud, became invisible. 9 In this manner did the two gates of heaven disappear from my sight, the wonders of which I had been viewing with so much concern and delight. 10 The cosmos being thus devoured like grass by a hungry deer, the firmament was quite cleared of everything. It became as transparent, calm and quiet as the serene vacuum of Brahman himself. 11 I saw only one vast expanse of intellectual sky without any beginning, middle or end. It resembled the dreary waste of ultimate dissolution, a vast, desolate desert. 12 I also saw the images of things drawn upon that stone as if they were the reflection of things in a mirror. Then remembering the heavenly vidyadhari and seeing all these scenes, I was lost in amazement. 13 I was amazed, like a clown coming to a royal city, to see that stone again far clearer than ever before. 14 This I found to be the body of goddess Kali in which all the worlds seemed to be inscribed like on a slab of stone. I saw these with my intellectual eyes, far better than they appear to the supernatural sight of the gods. 15 On that stone I saw everything that ever existed in any place, though it seemed to be situated at a distance from me. Yet I recognized it as the very stone (Divine Consciousness). 16 I saw only this stone. There was nothing of the worlds it contained so clearly. The stone remained forever in the same unchanging state, with all worlds lying concealed in it. 17 It was stainless and clean, fair and clear as an evening cloud. I was struck with wonder at the sight, then started my meditation again. 18 I looked to the other side of the stone with my contemplative eye and found the bustle of the world lying dormant at that place. 19 I saw it full of the great variety of things, as described before. Then I turned my sight to look into another side of it. 20 I saw it abounding with the very many creations and created worlds, accompanied with their tumults and commotions as I had seen before. Whatever place I thought of and sought for, I found them all in the same stone. 21 I saw fair creation as if it were a pattern cast upon a mirror. I felt a great pleasure exploring the mountainous source of this stone. 22 I searched in every part of the earth and traversed through woods and forests until I passed through every part of the world, as it was exhibited in that stone. 23 I saw them in my understanding and not with my visual organs. Somewhere I saw the first born Brahma, the lord of creatures. 24 Then I saw his arrangement of the starry frame, the spheres of the sun and moon, and the rotations of days and nights and of seasons and years. I also saw the surface of the earth
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with its population here and there. 25 I saw level land somewhere and the great basins of the four oceans elsewhere. I saw some places quite unpopulated and unproductive and others abounding with sura and asura races. 26 Somewhere I saw assemblies of righteous men, with their manners and conduct as those of the pure Satya Yuga. Elsewhere I saw the company of unrighteous people following the practices and usages of the corrupt Kali Yuga. 27 I saw forts and cities of demons in certain places, with fierce and continuous warfare going on all along among them. 28 I saw vast mountainous tracts without a pit or pool in them anywhere. I saw elsewhere the unfinished creation of the lotus-born Brahma. 29 I saw some lands where men were free from death and decay, and others with moonless nights and bare headed Shivas in them. 30 I saw the Milky Ocean unchurned, filled with the dead bodies of gods, and the ocean horse and elephant, the Kamadhenu cow, the physician Dhanvantari and the goddess Lakshmi, together with the undersea poison and ambrosia, all lying hidden and buried therein. 31 I saw in one place the body of gods assembled to baffle the attempts of the demons and the devices of their leader Sukra. In another I saw the great god Indra entering into the womb of Diti, the mother of demons, and destroying the unborn brood inside. 32 It was on account of the unchangeable course of nature that the world was brilliant as ever before, unless some things were placed out of their former order. 33 The everlasting Vedas ever retain their same force and sense, and never did they feel the shock of change by the revolution of ages or even at the kalpanta dissolution of the world. 34 Sometimes the demons demolished parts of the heavenly abodes of gods and sometimes the paradise of Nandana Garden resounded with the songs of gandharvas and kinnaras. 35 Sometimes a friendship was formed between the gods and demons. In this manner I saw the past, present and future commotions of the world. 36 Then I saw in the body of the great soul of the worlds (Paramatma) the meeting of Pushkara and Avarta clouds. 37 There was an assembly of all created things in peaceful union with one another in one place. There was a collision of gods, demigods and sovereigns of men in the one and same person. 38 There was the union of the sunlight and deep darkness in the same place, without their destroying one another. There were dark clouds and their flashing lightning also in the same place. 39 There were the demons Madhu and Kaitabha residing together in the same navelstring of Brahma. There were the infant Brahma and the lotus bud in the same navel of Vishnu. 40 In the ocean of the universal deluge, where Krishna floated on the leaf of a banyan tree, chaotic night ruled the along with him and spread its darkness over the deep. 41 There was only one vast void in which all things remained unknown and undefined, as if they lay buried and asleep in the unconscious womb of a stony grave. 42 Nothing could be known or inferred of anything in existence. Everything seemed to be submerged in deep sleep everywhere. The sky was filled by darkness resembling the wingless crows and wingless mountains of old. 43 On one side the loud sounds of thunder were breaking down the mountains and melting them by the fire of flashing lightning. In another, floodwaters were sweeping away the earth into the deep. 44 In certain places there were the wars of the demons like Tripura, Vritra, Andha, and Bali. In others there were terrible earthquakes owing to the shaking of the furious earth supporting elephant in the regions below. 45 On one hand the earth was shaking on the thousand hoods on the infernal serpent Vasuki, which trembled with fear at the kalpanta deluge of the world. On the other the young Rama was killing rakshasa demons and their leader Ravana. 46 On one side was Rama frustrated by his adversary Ravana. I saw these wonders, now standing upon my legs on earth, then lifting my head above the mountain tops. 47 I saw Kalanemi invading one side of the sky where he stationed the demons by ousting the gods from their heavenly seats. 48 In one place I found asura demons defeated by the gods who preserved the people from their terror. In another the victorious son of Pandu, Arjuna, with the aid of lord Vishnu, protected the world from the oppression of Kauravas. I saw also the

slaughter of millions of men in the Mahabharata war. 49 Rama asked, Tell me sage, how I had been before in another age, and who were these Pandavas and Kauravas who existed before me? 50 Vasishta replied: Rama, all things are destined to revolve and return over and over again as they had been before. 51 As a basket is filled repeatedly with grains of the same kind, or mixed sometimes with some other sorts, so the very same thoughts and ideas with their same or other associations recur repeatedly in our minds. 52 Our ideas occur to us in the shape of their objects as often as the waters of the sea run in their course as waves beating upon the banks. Thus our thoughts of ourselves, yourselves and others frequently revert to our minds. 53 No thought ever comes to mind which has not been a previous thought in the mind. Though some seem to appear in different shapes, it is simply owing to our misapprehension of them, just as the same seawater seems to show various shapes of its waves. 54 Again, a delusion presents us with many appearances that never come to existence. This shows us an infinite series of things coming in and passing and disappearing like magic shows in this illusive world. 55 The same things and others of different kinds appear and reappear to us in this way. Thus they move around in cycles. 56 Know all creatures are like drops of water in the ocean of the world. They are composed of the period of their existence, their respective occupations, understanding and knowledge, and accompanied by their friends and properties and other surroundings. 57 All beings are born with every one of these properties at their very birth. But some possess them in equal or more or less shares, compared with others. 58 But all beings differ in these respects, according to the different bodies in which they are born. Though some are equal to others in many of these respects, yet they come to differ in them in course of time. 59 Being at last harassed in their different pursuits, all beings attain either to higher or lower states in their destined times. Then being shackled to the prison houses of their bodies, they have to pass through endless varieties of births in various forms. Thus the drops of living beings have to roll about in the whirlpool of the vast ocean of worldly life for an indefinite period of time, which nobody can gainsay or count.

Chapter 87 Vasishta Describes the Infinity of the World Shown in His Material Body
Vasishta continued: Afterwards as I directed my attention to my own body for a while. I saw the undecaying and infinite spirit of God surrounding every part of my material frame. 2 Pondering deeply, I saw the world was seated and shooting forth within my heart, just as grains sprout in a granary from rainwater dropping into it. 3 I saw the formal world, with all its sentient as well as insensitive beings, rising out of the formless heart resembling the shapeless embryo of the seed. 4 As the beauty of phenomena appears to view as one awakens after sleep, so only the intellect gives sensation to one who is waking from his sleep. 5 So there is conception of creation in the same soul before its formation or bringing into action. The forms of creations are contained in the emptiness of the heart, and in no other separate emptiness whatever. 6 Rama asked, Sage, your assertion of the emptiness of the heart made me understand it in the sense of infinite space of emptiness, which contains the whole creation. Please to explain to me more clearly, what do you mean by your intellectual emptiness which you say is the source of the world? 7 Vasishta replied: Hear Rama, how once in my meditation I thought myself as the self-born (svayambhu) god in whom existed the whole. There was nothing born except by and from him. I will also describe how I believed the unreal as real in my revelry, like an air-built castle in my dreaming. 8 As I had been looking at that sight of the great kalpa dissolution with my aerial spiritual body, I found and felt the other part of my body was infused with the same sensibility and consciousness. 9 As I looked at it for a while, with my spiritual part, I found it purely aerial and endowed with a slight consciousness of itself. 10 The empty intellect found this elastic substance to be of a subtle and rarefied nature, such as when you see external objects in your dream, or remember the objects of your dream upon waking. 11 This ethereal air, having its primary powers of intellect and consciousness (chit, samvid), becomes the intellects process of understanding and consciousness. Then from its power of reflection, it takes the name of reflection. Next from its knowledge of itself as air, it becomes the airy egoism. Then it takes the name of understanding (buddhi) because of its knowledge of itself as plastic nature and its forgetfulness of its former spirituality. At last it becomes the mind, from its minding many things that it wills. 12 Then, from its powers of perception and sensation, it becomes the five senses, to which are added their fivefold organs upon the perversion of the subtle mental perceptions to grossness. 13 As a man roused from his sound sleep is subject to flimsy dreams, so the pure soul, losing its purity upon its entrance in the gross body, is subjected to its accompanying miseries. 14 Then the infinite world, appears all at once to those who say it is an act of spontaneity, or as a sequence of events by others. 15 I conceived the whole in the minute atom of my mind. Being myself like empty air, I thought the material world was contained in me in the form of intelligence. 16 The nature of emptiness gives rise to the currents of air. So it is natural for the mind to assign a form and figure to all its ideas, by the power of its imagination. 17 Whatever imaginary form our imagination gives to a thing at first, there is no power in the mind to remove it. 18 Hence I believed myself as a minute atom, although I knew my soul to be beyond all bounds. Because I had the power of thinking, I thought myself as the thinking mind, and no more. 19 Then with my subtle body of pure intelligence, I thought of myself as a spark of fire. By thinking so for a long time, I became at length of the form of a gross body. 20 Then I felt a desire
1

to see all that existed about me and I had the power of sight immediately supplied to my gross body. 21 In this manner I felt other desires and had their corresponding senses and organs given to me. Now I will tell you, O race of Raghu, their names and functions and objects as they are known among you. 22 The two holes of my face through which I began to see are called the two eyes with their function of sight. They have the visible phenomena of nature for their objects. 23 When I see is what I call time and how I see that is called its manner. The place where I see an object is simple emptiness and the duration of the sight is governed by destiny. 24 The place where I am situated is said to be my location. When I think or affirm anything, I say the present time. As long I feel the shining of my intellect, so long do I know myself as the intellectual cause of my action. 25 When I see anything, I have its perception in me. I also have my conviction that what I see with my two eyes is not empty emptiness, but of a substantial nature. 26 These two eyes are the organs with which I saw and felt the world in me, the keys to the visible world. Then I felt the desire to hear what was going about me. It was my own soul which prompted this desire in me. 27 Then I heard a swelling sound, like that of a loud sounding conch, reaching me through the air, where it is naturally carried and through which it passes. 28 The organs by which I heard the sound are my two ears. The sound is carried by the air to the ear where it enters the ear-holes with a continuous hissing. 29 Then I felt a desire to feel. The organ whereby I came to it is called the skin. 30 Next I came to know the medium whereby I had the sensation of touch in my body. I found the air conveyed that sense to me. 31 As I remained conscious of the property of feeling or touch in me, I felt the desire to taste, then had the organ of taste given to me. 32 Then my empty self contracted the property of smell by the air of its breath. Thereby I had the sense of smell given to me through the organs of my nostrils. Being thus furnished with all the organs of sense, I found myself to be imperfect still. 33 Being thus confined in the net of my senses, I found my sensual desire increasing quickly in me. 34 The physical sensations of sound, form, taste, touch and smell are all formless and untrue. Though they appear to be actual and true, yet they are really false and untrue. 35 As I remained ensnared in the net of my senses and considered myself a conscious being, I felt my egoism in me, that with which I am now addressing you. 36 The sense of egoism growing strong and compact takes the name of understanding. This being considered and mature comes to be called the mind. 37 Being possessed of my external senses, I pass for a sentient being. Having my spiritual body and soul, I pass as an intellectual being in an empty form. 38 I am more rare and empty than the air itself. I am as the emptiness itself. I am devoid of all shapes and figures and I am irrepressible in my nature. 39 As I remained at that spot, with this conviction of myself, I found myself endowed with a body and it was as I now look. 40 With this belief, I began to utter sounds. These sounds were as empty as those of man dreaming he is flying in the air. 41 This was the sound of a new born babe uttering the sacred syllable Aum. From them it has become the custom to pronounce this word at the beginning of sacred hymns. 42 Then I uttered some words like a sleeping person. These words are called the Vyahrites which are now used in the Gayatri hymn. 43 I thought that I had become like Brahma, the author and lord of creation. Then with my mental part or mind, I thought of creation in my imagination. 44 Finding myself containing the mundane system within me, I thought I was not a created being at all because I saw the worlds in my own body and nothing besides without it. 45 Thus the world being produced within my mind, I turned to look minutely into it. I found there was nothing in reality except an empty void. 46 So it is with all these worlds that you see. They are mere void, nothing other than your imagination of them. There is no reality whatever in the existence of this earth and all other things that you see.

The worlds appear as the waters of the mirage before the sight and to the knowledge of our consciousness. There is nothing outside the mind. The mind sees everything in the pure emptiness of the Divine Mind. 48 There is no water in the sandy desert, and yet the mind thinks it sees it there. So the deluded sight of our understanding sees the baseless objects of delusion in the burning and barren waste of infinite void. 49 Thus there is no real world in the Divine Spirit, yet the erring mind of man sees it falsely to be situated there. It is all owing to the delusion of human understanding that naturally leads us to groundless errors and fallacies. 50 The unreal appears as the real extended world to the mind in the same manner as an imaginary utopia appears before it, and as a city is seen in the dream of a sleeping man. 51 One knows nothing of the dream of another sleeping by his side, without being able to penetrate his mind. The yogi sees it clearly by his power of looking into the minds of others. 52 One knows this world who can penetrate the mundane stone where it is represented as the reflection of something in a mirror, which in reality is nothing at all. 53 Although the world appears as an elemental substance to the naked eye, yet when it is observed in its true light, it disappears like Lokaloka Mountain hidden under everlasting darkness. 54 He who sees creation with his spiritual body and his eyes of discernment finds it filled with the pure spirit of God which comprehends and pervades throughout the whole. 55 The eyes of perception see the extinction of the world everywhere because they see only the presence of the Divine Spirit and nothing that is not the spirit, and therefore nothing. 56 What the clear-sighted yogi perceives through his conclusive reasoning is that transcendent truth which is hard to be seen by the triple-eyed Shiva, or even by the god Indra with his thousand eyes. 57 But as I looked into the emptiness of the sky filled with its multitudes of luminous bodies, I saw the earth full with the variety of its productions. Then I began to reflect that I was the lord of all below. 58 Then thinking that I was master of the earth, I became joined with the earth as if it were one with me. Having forsaken my empty intellectual body, I thought myself as the sovereign of the whole. 59 Believing myself as the support and container of this earth, I penetrated deep into its bowels and thought all its hidden mines were parts of me. So I took whatever it contained both below and above it to be the same with me. 60 Being thus endowed in the form of the earth, I became changed to all its forests and woods, which grew like hairs on its body. My bowels were full of jewels and gems and my back was decorated by many a city and town. 61 I was full of villages and valleys, of hills and dales, and of infernal regions and caves. I thought I was the great mountain chain connecting the seas and their islands on either side. 62 The grassy vegetation was the hairy cover of my body and the scattered hills as pimples on it. The great mountain tops were the crests of my crown, or the hundred heads of the infernal snake Shesha. 63 This earth was freely joined by all living beings, came to be parceled by men, and at last oppressed by belligerent kings and worsened by their lines of fighting elephants. 64 The great Himalaya, Vindhya and Sumeru Mountains had all their tops decorated with the falling streams of Ganges and others, sparkling like their pearly necklaces. 65 Caves and forests, the seas and their shores furnished it with beautiful scenes. Desert and marsh lands supplied it with clean linen garments. 66 The ancient waters of the deluge receded to their basins and left the pure inland reservoirs decorated by flowery banks and perfumed by the scented dust of trampled flowers. 67 The earth is ploughed daily by bullocks and sown in the dewy and cold season. It is heated by solar heat and moistened by rainwater. 68 The wide level plains are its broad breast. The lotus lakes are its eyes, the white and black clouds are its turbans, and the canopy of heaven is its dwelling. 69 The great hollow under Lokaloka Mountain forms its wide open mouth and the breathing of animated nature makes the breath of its life. 70 It is surrounded all about and filled inside by beings of various kinds. It is peopled by gods and demons and men on the outside, and

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inhabited by worms and insects in its inner parts. 71 In the organic poles and cells of its body, it is infested by snakes, asura demons, and reptiles. Aquatic animals of various kinds populate all its oceans and seas. 72 It is filled in all its various parts with animal, plant and mineral substances of infinite varieties, and it is plenteous with provisions for the sustenance of all sorts of beings.

Chapter 88 Further Description of the Earth within Vasishta

Vasishta related: Hear you men what I conceived afterwards in my consciousness as I was looking in my form of the earth and considered the rivers running in my body. 2 I saw in one place a number of women lamenting loudly on the death of somebody. I also saw the great rejoicing of certain females on the occasion of their festive rejoicing. 3 I saw a terrible scarcity and famine in one place, with the seizing and plunder of the people, and I saw the profusion of plenty in another and the joy and friendliness of its people. 4 In one place I saw a great fire burning down everything before me, and in another a great flood over the land drowning its cities and towns in one common ruin. 5 Somewhere I saw a busy body of soldiers plundering a city and carrying away their booty and fierce rakshasa demons bent on afflicting and oppressing the people. 6 I saw reservoirs full with water running out to water and fertilize the land all around. I saw also masses of clouds issuing from mountain caves, tossed and carried by the winds afar and aloft in the sky. 7 I saw the outpourings of rainwater, the uprising of vegetation, and the land smiling with plenty. I felt within myself a delight which made the hairs on my body stand upright. 8 I also saw many places, hills, forests and homes of men, and also deep and dreadful dens with wild beasts and bees in them. Here there were no footprints of human beings. They avoid those places for fear of falling in those terrible caves. 9 In some places I saw wars waged between hostile hosts and others where armies were sitting at ease in glad conversation with one another. 10 I saw some places full of forests and others of barren deserts with tornadoes howling in them. I saw marshy grounds with repeated cultivations and crops in them. 11 I saw clear and swirling lakes frequented by cranes and herons, smiling with blooming lotuses. I saw barren deserts with heaps and piles of grey dust collected together by winds. 12 I saw some places where rivers were running, rolling and gurgling in their play, and at others, the grounds were moistened and sown and shooting forth in buds and sprouts. 13 In many places I also saw little insects and worms moving slowly in the ground. They appeared to me to be crying out, O sage, save us from this miserable state! 14 I saw a big banyan tree rooting its surrounding branches in the ground. I saw many parasite plants growing on and about these rooted branches. 15 In some places huge trees were growing upon rocks and mountain tops, embracing one another with their branching arms shaking like the waves of the sea. 16 I saw the raging sun sending his drying rays and drawing the moisture from shady trees, leaving them to stand with their dried trunks and withered, leafless branches. 17 I saw the big elephants living on the summits of mountains, piercing sturdy oaks with the strokes of their tusks which, like the bolts of Indra, broke down, felled and hurled them below with hideous noise. 18 In some places many tender sprouts grew with joy as the green blades of grass, or like the erect hairs rising on the bodies of saints, enrapt in their reveries and sitting with their closed eyelids. 19 I saw the homes of flies and leeches and gnats in the dirt, and of bees and black bees on the petals of lotus flowers. I saw big elephants destroying lotus bushes, just as the ploughshare overturns the furrows of earth. 20 I saw the excess of cold when all living beings were shriveled and withered in their bodies, when waters froze to stone, and keen and cold blasts chilled the blood of men. 21 I have seen swarms of weak insects crushed to death under the feet of men, and many others diving and swimming and gliding in the waters below, and others to be born and growing therein. 22 I saw how water enters seeds and moistens them in the rainy season, and these
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put forth their hairy shoots on the outside, growing as plants in the open air. 23 I smile with the smiling lotuses when they are slightly shaken in their beds by the gentle winds of heaven. I parade with the gliding of rivers to the ocean of eternity for final extinction.

Chapter 89 Phenomena as Reproductions of Memories

Rama said, Tell me sage. In your curiosity to observe the changes of earthly things and affairs, did you see them in their earthly shapes with your physical body or in their ideal forms in the imagination of your mind? 2 Vasishta replied: It was in my mind that I thought I became the great earth. All the things that I saw were only the simple conceptions of the mind. They could not possibly have a material form. 3 It is impossible for the surface of the earth to exist without its conception in the mind. Whatever you know as either real or unreal, know them all to be the work of your mind. 4 I am the pure empty consciousness which is the essence of my soul. The expansion of this intellectual soul is called its will. 5 Will becomes the mind and the creative power Brahma, and it takes the form of the world and this earth also. This empty mind is composed of its desires and assumes to itself whatever form it likes. 6 In this way my mind stretched itself at that time and put forth its desires in all those forms as it liked. From its habitual capacity of containing everything, it evolved itself into the shape of the wide-stretched earth. 7 Hence the sphere of the earth is nothing other than the evolution of the mind. It is only an unintelligent counterpart of intelligent consciousness. 8 Being empty itself, it remains forever as such in infinite emptiness. But by being considered as a solid substance by the ignorant, they have altogether forgotten its intellectual nature. 9 The knowledge that this globe of earth is stable, solid and extended is as false as the general impression of blueness in the clear and empty sky, and this is the effect of a deep-rooted bias in the minds of men. 10 It is clear from this argument that there is no such thing as the stable earth. It is of the same ideal form as it was conceived in the mind at the first creation of the world. 11 As a city in a dream and consciousness in emptiness, so the Divine Consciousness dwells in the form of the creation within emptiness. 12 Know the three worlds in their intellectual light. They are like the aerial palace of childish fancy and hobby. Know this earth and all visible appearances to be the creatures of imagination. 13 The world is a copy or reproduction of the intellectual Spirit of God. It is not a different kind of production of the Divine Will. In fact it has no real or positive existence at all, although it may appear as solid and substantial to the ignorant. 14 The unreal visible world is known only by the ignorant who are unacquainted with its real intellectual nature. Only he who is acquainted with its true nature knows well what I have been preaching to you all this time. 15 All this is the thinking of Divine Consciousness, the manifestation of the Supreme Self in itself. The visible world which appears as something other than the Supreme Soul is inherent in that same Soul. 16 As a sparkling stone exhibits the various colors of white, yellow and others without their being infused in the stone, so Divine Consciousness shows this creation in all its various aspects within its empty sphere. 17 The spirit does not do anything or change its nature. Therefore this earth is not a mental or a material production. 18 Empty Consciousness appears as the surface of the earth. But of itself it has no depth or breadth. It is transparent on its surface. 19 Its own nature shows itself as anything wherever it is situated. Though it is clear like the open air, yet it appears as the earth by its universal inherence and permeation in all things. 20 This globe of land and water appearing as something other than the Great Consciousness is in the very same form as it is pictured in the mind, like the shapes of things appearing in our dream. 21 The world exists in empty spirit, and the Divine Spirit also being empty, there is no difference in them. The ignorant soul makes the difference, but it immediately vanishes
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before the intelligent soul. 22 All material beings that have been or are to be in the past, present and future are mere errors of vision, like the false appearances in our dreams and the air-built cities of imagination. 23 The beings that now exist and are to come into existence and the earth itself are of the same nature of a universal fallacy, instead of the Divine Spirit pervading the whole. 24 I and all others who are included in this world have the visible perceptions of all things as they are preserved in our memory. 25 Rama, know only Divine Consciousness, as the Supreme Soul and essence of all existence without decay which sustains the whole in its person without forsaking its spirituality. Knowing the whole world is contained within you, which is not different from the Supreme Soul, you shall be exempt and liberated from all.

Chapter 90 Description of Water in Creation

Rama said, Tell me sage, what else did you see on the surface of the earth? Vasishta replied: With my waking soul, I thought as if in sleep that I was assimilated to land. I saw many groups of lands scattered on this earth. I saw them in my mysterious vision, then I reflected on them in my mind. 3 As I saw those groups of lands lying everywhere before my intellectual vision, the outer world receded from my sight. All dualities were quite lost and hushed in my tranquil soul. 4 I saw those groups like so many places lying in the expanded spirit of Brahman which was a perfect void, quite calm and unresponsive to all agitations. 5 Everywhere I saw large tracts, great and solid as the earth itself. But I found them in reality to be nothing more than empty dreams appearing in the vacant mind. 6 Here there was no diversity or uniformity, nor was there any entity or nothingness either. There was no sense of my egoism also, but all blended in an indefinite void. 7 Though I conceived myself to be something in existence, yet I perceived it had no personality of its own and its entity depended on that one sole Brahman who is uncreated and ever without decay. 8 Thus these sights were like appearances in dream in the empty space of consciousness. It is unknown how and in what form they were situated in the Divine Mind before they were exhibited in creation. 9 Now, as I saw those tracts of land in the form of so many worlds, so I also saw large bodies of water. 10 Then my active spirit became like the inert element of water called seas and oceans in which waves lay and played with a gurgling noise. 11 These waters constantly flowed bearing loads of grass and straw, and bushes of plants and shrubs and trunks of trees which float like bugs and leeches crawl and creep on your body. 12 These are carried by whirling waters like small insects and worms into the crevices of caves, and from there thrown into the womb of whirlpools whose depth is beyond all comparison. 13 Currents of waters flowed with leaves and fruits of trees in their mouths while floating vines and branches served as necklaces. 14 Drinkable water, taken by the mouth, went into the hearts of living beings producing different effects on the humors of animal bodies according to their properties at different seasons. 15 Water descended in the form of dew sleeping on leafy beds in the shape of icicles, shining under moonbeams everywhere and always without interruption. 16 Water ran with irresistible course to many lakes and brooks. It flowed in the currents of rivers unless stopped by some embankment. 17 The waters of the sea, like ignorant men on earth, ran up and down in search of its proper course, but failing to find it, they tumbled and turned about in whirlpools of doubts. 18 I saw water on mountaintops which, though it rested on high, yet fell owing to its restlessness in the form of waterfalls where it was dashed into a thousand splashes. 19 I saw water rising from the earth in the form of vapor on high, then mixing with the blue ocean of the blue sky, or appearing like blue sapphires among the twinkling stars of heaven. 20 I saw waters ascending and riding on the backs of clouds, there joining with lightning as their hidden consorts, shining like the blue god Vishnu mounted on the back of the ancient serpent Shesha. 21 I found this water both in atomic and elementary creations, as well as in all gross bodies on earth. I found it lying unperceived in the very grain of all things, just as omnipresent Brahman inheres in all substances. 22 This element resides in the tongue which perceives the flavor of things from their particles and conveys the sense to the mind. Hence I believe the feeling of taste relates to the soul and its perception, and not to the physical senses. 23 I did not taste this spiritual
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taste by means of the body or any of its organs. It is felt only in the inner soul and not by the perceptions of the mind which are misleading and therefore false and unreal. 24 There is this flavor scattered everywhere in the taste of seasonal fruits and flowers. I have tasted them all and left the flowers to be sucked by bees and butterflies. 25 Again the sentient soul abides in the form of this liquid, in the bodies and limbs of all the fourteen kinds of living bodies. 26 It assumes the form of rain showers and mounts on the back of driving winds. Then it fills the whole atmosphere with a sweet aromatic fragrance. 27 Rama, remaining in my state of sublimated trance withdrawal, I perceived the particulars of the world in each individual and particular particle. 28 Remaining unknown and unseen by anybody, I perceived the properties of all things with my physical senses, as I marked those of water appearing as gross matter. 29 Thus I saw thousands of worlds repeatedly rising and falling like the leaves of plantain trees. 30 Thus did this material world appear to me in its immaterial form as a creation of Consciousness presenting a pure and empty aspect. 31 Phenomena is nothing. We have only the mental perception of this world. This also vanishes into nothing when we know this all to be a mere void.

Chapter 91 Description of Fire in Creation; Astral Travel

Vasishta related: Then I believed I was identical with light. I saw its various aspects in the luminous bodies of the sun and moon, in the planets and stars, and in fire and all shining objects. 2 This light by its own excellence becomes the light of the universe. It is as brilliant as the mighty monarch before whose all surveying sight the thievish darkness of night flies at a distance. 3 This light, like a good prince, takes upon the likeness of lamps and reigns in the hearts of families and houses in a thousand shapes to drive off the thievish night and restore the properties of all before their sight. 4 Being glad to lighten all worlds, it brightens the globes of the sun, moon and stars who with their rays and beams dispel afar the shade of night from the face of the skies. 5 It dispels the darkness that bereaves all beings from their view of the beauties of nature. It dispenses useful light which brings all to the sight of visible phenomena. 6 It is an axe to the root of the black tree of night. It adds a purity and value to all things. It gives value to all metals and minerals and makes them so dear to mankind. 7 It reveals all sorts of colors, such as white, red, black and others. It is light that causes colors like parents cause children. 8 This light is in great favor with everyone upon this earth. Therefore it is protected with great fondness in all houses, just like they protect their children in homes with earthen walls. 9 I saw a slight light even in the darkness of hell. I saw it partly in the particles of dust which compose all bodies on the surface of the earth. 10 I saw light, the first and best of Gods works, to be eternally present in the homes of the celestials. I saw it as the lamp of the mansion of this world, which before had been a great deep of waters and darkness. 11 Light is the mirror of the celestial gods in all the quarters of heaven. Like the winds, it scatters the dust of frost from before the face of night. It is the essence of the luminous bodies of the sun, moon and fire, and the cause of the red and bright colors of the face of heaven. 12 It exposes grain fields to daylight and ripens their grain by dispelling darkness from the face of the earth. It washes the clear bowl of heaven and glitters on its dewy waters. 13 Because light gives existence and brings all things to view, it is said to be the younger brother of the transcendent light of Divine Consciousness. 14 The light of the sun revives the lotus bed of the actions of mortals and is the life of living beings on earth. It is the source of our sight of the forms of all things, just as the intellect is that of all our thoughts and perceptions. 15 Light decorates the face of the sky with numberless gems of shining stars. Sunlight divides the days, months, years and seasons in the course of time, and makes them appear like passing waves in the ocean of eternity. 16 This immense universe bears the appearance of the boundless ocean in which the sun and moon revolve like rolling waves over the scum of this muddy earth. 17 Light is the brilliance of gold and the color of all metals. It is the glitter of glass and gems, the flash of lightning, and the vigor of men in general. 18 It is moonshine in the nocturnal orb and the glittering of glancing eyelids. It is the brightness of a smiling face and the sweetness of tender and affectionate looks. 19 It gives significance to gestures of the face, arms, and eyes and the frowning of eyebrows. It adds a blush to maiden faces from the sense of their invincibility. 20 The heat of light makes the mighty spurn the world like bits of straw, break an enemys head with a slap, and strike the heart of a lion with awe. 21 This heat makes hardy and bold combatants fight each other with drawn and jangling swords, clad in armor clanking on their bodies. 22 It gives the gods their antagonism against the demons and makes the demonic races antagonistic to the gods. It gives vigor to all beings and causes plants to grow. 23 All these appeared to me like a mirage in a desert. I saw them like apparitions in my mind. This scene of the world was situated in the womb of emptiness. These scenes, O bright eyed
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Rama, appeared to me like an optical illusion. 24 Then I saw the glorious sun above, stretching his golden rays to all ten sides of the universe, flying like a garuda bird in the sky. I also saw this speck of the earth looking like a country estate surrounded by the walls of its mountains. 25 The sun turned about and lent his beams to the moon and to the undersea fire beneath the dark blue ocean. The sun himself stood like the great lamp of the world giving daylight on the stand of the meridian. 26 I saw the moon rising as the face of the sky, a lake of cooling and sweet nectar inside. Moonlight appeared like the soft and sweet smile of the dark goddess of night, and like the glow of the nightly stars. 27 The moon is compared to all beautiful objects in the world. The moon is companion of the evening star and the most beloved night object for women and the blue lotus. 28 I saw twinkling stars like clusters of flowers in the tree of the skies, delighting the eyes and faces. They appeared to me like flocks of butterflies flying in the fair field of the firmament. 29 I saw many shining gems washed away by waters, tossed about by the waving arms of the ocean. I saw many jewels in the hands of jewelers, balanced in their scales. 30 I looked into the undersea fire lying latent in the sea, and the currents moving silvery shrimp in whirlpools. I saw the golden rays of the sun shining like the filaments of flowers upon the waters, and I also saw lightning flashing among clouds. 31 I witnessed the auspicious sacrificial fire blazing with indescribable light. I noted its burning flame, splitting and cracking sacred wood with a crackling and clattering noise. 32 I saw the luster of gold and other metals and minerals, and I found how they are reduced to ashes like learned men overpowered by ignorant fools. 33 I observed the brightness of pearls, which gave them a place in the form of necklaces on womens breasts, as on the necks and chests of men and demons, and of gandharva spirits and chiefs of men. 34 I saw the firefly with which women adorn their foreheads with bright spots, but which are trod upon as worthless by ignorant passers. Hence the value of things depends on their situation and not their real worth. 35 I saw flickering lightning in unmoving clouds and fickle shrimp gliding upon the waters of the calm ocean. I also heard the harsh noise of whirlpools in the quiet and noiseless sea and marked how restlessness consorted with calmness. 36 Sometimes I saw soft flower petals used as lamps to light bridal beds in inner apartments. 37 Being then exhausted like an extinguished lamp, I became as dark as black pigment and slept silently in my own cell, like a tortoise with its limbs contracted. 38 Being tired with my travel throughout the universe at the kalpanta end of the world, I remained fixed among the dark clouds of heaven, like the elephant of Indra living there in company with his lightning. 39 At the end when the worlds were dissolved and waters absorbed by the undersea fires, I kept myself dancing in the ethereal space, which is devoid of its waters. 40 Sometimes I was carried on high by burning fire with its teeth of sparks and flaming arms, its flying fumes resembling the disheveled hairs on its head. 41 The fire burnt down straw-built houses, fed upon animal bodies, and consumed the eight kinds of wood ordained in sacrificial rites. 42 I saw sparks of fire emitted from the red hot iron hammered by the strokes of blacksmiths. They were rising and flying about like golden brickbats to hit the hammerer. 43 In another place I saw the whole universe lying invisible for ages in the womb of a stony, cosmic egg. 44 Rama said, Tell me sage. How did you feel confined in the stone? Was it was pleasure or pain to you and the rest of beings? 45 Vasishta replied: A man falls into sleep with the dullness of his senses, yet he has his airy intellect fully awake in him. In the same way that outward unconsciousness is filled with intellectual consciousness. 46 The great Brahman awakens the soul when the body lies as unconscious as the dull earth. So the sleeping man remaining in his lethargic state has his internal soul full with the

Divine Spirit. Because the earthly or physical body of man is truly a falsity without reality, it appears like a visual phantom to the sight of the spectator. But in reality it is one with unchanged spirit of God. 48 Knowing this certain truth, whoever views these all as an undivided whole sees the five elements as one essence, and the subjective and the objective as the same. 49 Having assimilated myself into the pure spirit of Brahman, I viewed all things in and as Brahman because there is none beside Brahma that is or can be or do anything from nothing. 50 When I saw all these visible phenomena as manifestations of the same Brahman, then I left myself also situated in the state of Brahman himself. 51 On the other hand, when I reflected myself as combined with the fivefold material elements, I found myself reduced to my dull nature, incapable of intellectual reflection and the conception of my higher nature. 52 I thought as if I was asleep in spite of my power of reasoning intellect. Being thus overtaken by my sleepy unconsciousness, how could I think of anything of a transcendental nature? 53 He whose soul is awakened by knowledge loses the sense of his physical body and raises himself to his spiritual form by means of his purer understanding. 54 A man having his sentient and spiritual body, either in the form of a minute particle or larger size as one may wish, remains perfectly liberated from the chains of his body and his bondage in this world. 55 With his intelligent and spiritual body, a man is able enter the impenetrable heart of a hard stone, or to rise to heaven above or descend to the regions below. 56 Hence, O Rama, having my intelligent and subtle body, I did all that I told you with my essence of infinite understanding. 57 In my entrance into the hard stone and my passages up and down the high heaven and the nether world, I experienced no difficulty anywhere. 58 With my subtle and intelligent body, I passed everywhere and felt everything as I used to do with my physical body. 59 A person going of his own accord in one direction and wishing to go in another immediately finds himself then and there by means of his spiritual body. 60 Know this spiritual and subtle body to be no other than your understanding. Now through your own intelligence you can well perceive yourself to be of that imperishable form. 61 Thinking ones self as empty Consciousness abiding in the sun and all visible objects, the spiritually minded person comes to know the existence of only his self. All else beside himself is nothing. 62 But how is it possible to see the visible world as nonexistent? The answer is that it appears as real as the unreal dream to the sleeping person, but vanishes into nothing upon his waking. Reliance on the nonexistent world is the belief of ignorant man in falsehoods. This reliance is confirmed by habit, although it is not relied upon by others who know the truth. 63 This reliance is as vain as the vanity of our desires and the falsity of our aerial castle building, all of which are as false as the marks of waves left on the sands of beaches, or the marking of anything with charcoal, which is neither lasting nor perceptible to anybody. 64 We see woodlands blooming with full blown flowers and blossoms. But these sights are as deluding as the sparks of fire presenting the appearance of a flower garden in fireworks. 65 These fireworks, prepared with so much labor, burst suddenly at the slight touch of fire, then are blown away as soon as the prosperity of cheats. 66 Rama, I saw the growth of the world to be as false and fleeting as the appearance of light in particles of dust. All these appearing like so many things of themselves are in fact nothing other than the appearances of hills and cities in the emptiness of the mind in our dreams at sleep.
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Chapter 92 Description of Air in Creation, the Universal Spirit

Vasishta continued: Now in my curiosity to know the world, I thought myself as transformed into the form of the current air, and by degrees extended my essence all over the infinite extent of the universe. 2 I became a breeze with a desire to see the beauty of lovely plants all about me and to smell the sweetness of the fragrant blossoms of kunda, jasmine and lotus. 3 I carried about the coolness of falling rains and snows and dew drops, with a view to restore freshness to the exhausted limbs of tired and weary laborers. 4 My spirit in the form of the current winds carried about the essences of medicinal plants and the fragrance of flowers, and carried away loads of grass, herbs, vines and plant leaves all around. 5 My spirit travelled as the gentle warm breeze in the auspicious hours of morning and evening to awaken and lull lovely maids to sleep. Again, it took the tremendous shape of a tornado in storms, breaking down rocks and carrying them away. 6 In paradise it is covered with the reddish pollen of mandara flowers. In the mountains it is white with white frost and snows. In hell it burns in infernal fires. 7 In the sea it has a circular motion with swelling waves and revolving whirlpools. In heaven it carries aloft and moves the clouds, both to cover and uncover the mirror of the moon hidden behind them. 8 In heaven it has the name of prabha air and it holds up the starry frame and guides the course of legions of stars and the cars of their commanding generals, the post of gods. 9 It is considered to be the younger brother of thought owing to its great velocity. It is formless but moves over all forms. Though intangible, yet its touch is as delightful as cooling sandalwood paste. 10 It is old with the white frost it bears on its head, it is youthful spreading the fragrance of spring flowers, and it is young when it is quiet and still. 11 Here it travels at large, loaded with the fragrance of Nandana Garden. There it moves freely carrying the perfumes of the grove of the gandharva Chitraratha to tired persons and worn out lovers. 12 Though fatigued with its work of raising and moving the constant waves of the cooling and purifying stream of Ganges, yet it is ever alert to lull the work of others, being quite forgetful of its own weariness. 13 It gently touches its brides of spring plants bending down under the load of their full blown flowers, ever shaking their leafy hands, flitting eyes of fluttering bees resisting its touch. 14 The fleeting air, after drinking dew drops flowing from the moon and being fanned by the cool breath of lotuses, buried its weariness in its soft bed of clouds. 15 Like the swiftest steed of Indra, he carries the powder of all flowers to him in heaven and becomes a companion with Indras elephant, who is giddy with the fragrance of his ichor. 16 Then blew the winds with the soft breath of shepherds horns, driving clouds away like cattle, blasting showering raindrops that set down the dust of the earth. 17 It is perfumed with the fragrance of flowers flying in the air. It is the birth brother of all sounds which proceed from the womb of emptiness. It runs in the blood and humors, within the veins and arteries of bodies, and is the mover of the limbs of persons. 18 It dwells as life within the hearts of human bodies and is the only cause of all their vital functions. It is ever on its wing. Being omnipresent throughout the world, it is acquainted with the secrets of all the works of Brahma. 19 It is the plunderer of the rich treasure of scents and the supporter of ethereal cities. It is the destroyer of heat and, as the moon, darkness. This air is the Milky Ocean that produces the fair and cooling moon. 20 It forms islands and preserves the machine of living bodies by conducting the vital airs. 21 It is always present before us, yet it is invisible in itself, like an imaginary palace or oil in palm seeds or chains on the legs of infuriated elephants. 22 It blows away all the mountains at the end of the world in a moment. It marks waves
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with their whirls and collects the sands of rivers. 23 It is false in appearance as water in a cloud of smoke, or a whirlpool in it. It is as invisible as the streams above the sky and lotuses growing in the lakes of the blue ethereal sky. 24 In its form of wind gusts it is covered with bits of rotten grass. It opens lotus blossoms by its gentle breeze and showers down rains in its form of sounding blasts. 25 Its body is like a wind instrument at home, and like an elephant in the forest of the sky. It is a friend to the dust of the earth and a wooer of flowers in woods and gardens. 26 It is always busy in its various acts of solidification and drying, of upholding and moving, and of cooling the body and carrying perfumes. It is constantly employed in these six-fold functions to the end of the world. 27 It is as fleet as light and skillful in extracting juices like penetrating heat. It is ever employed in the acts of contraction and expansion of the limbs of bodies, at the will of everybody. 28 It passes unobstructed through the avenues of every part of the city of the body. By its circulation in the heart, distribution of bile, and blood vessels, it preserves the functions of life. 29 It is expert in repairing the losses of the great citadel of the living body by removing its excrements and replacing its gastric juices, and the formation of its blood and fat, and flesh, bones and skin. 30 I looked through every particle of the body by means of circulating air, just as I viewed every part of the universe by means of the encompassing air. I conduct this body of mine because of my vital airs. 31 The winds carry innumerable particles on their back, as if they were so many worlds in the air. In fact, nothing is carried by them when there is nothing but an utter negative emptiness everywhere. 32 I saw all bodies including those of the gods like Hari and Brahma and the gandharva and vidyadhara celestials. I saw the bright sun and moon, of fire and Indra and others. 33 I saw seas, oceans, islands and mountains stretching as far as the visible horizon. I also saw other worlds and the natures and actions of their inhabitants. 34 I saw heaven and earth and the infernal regions and noted their peoples and their lives and deaths. 35 I saw various kinds of beings composed of the five elements. In the form of air I traversed throughout the universe like a bee entering the petals of a lotus flower. 36 In my aerial form, I passed through bodies of all physical beings composed of earth, water, air and fire. I sucked the juice of all animal bodies and drank the moisture of trees drawn by their roots. 37 I passed over all cold and solid bodies and liquid sandalwood paste. I rested in the cool lunar disc and lulled myself on beds of snow and ice. 38 I tasted the sweets of all seasonal fruits and flowers in the tree gardens of every part of this earth. I drunk my fill in the flower cups of spring and left shelters for the honey drink of bees. 39 Then I rolled on the high and soft beds of clouds spread out in the wide fields of the sky, and I slept on soft and downy wings of clouds like a place bedded by heaps of butter. 40 I rested on flower petals, green tree leaves of trees, and on the soft bodies of heavenly nymphs without any lust on my part. 41 I played with lily and lotus blossoms in their beds and bushes. I joined with cackling geese and swans in their pleasure lakes. 42 I moved with the flow of streams and the rippling waters of lakes and channels. I carried the globe of the earth on my back, all her mountains like hairs upon my body. 43 The wide extent of hills and mountains and long streams falling from them, together with all the seas and oceans, were all like pictures reflected in the mirror of my body. 44 All the terrestrials and celestials that lived and moved at large upon my body appeared to be moving and flying about me like lice and flies. 45 By my favor the sun received the various colors with which he shines and which he diffuses to the leaves of trees in the different colors of red, black, white, yellow and green. 46 The earth is situated with the seven seas surrounding the seven great continents, like so many bracelets on mens wrists. 47 I was delighted at the flight of celestial vidyadhari maidens, just as I see gladness

within myself. 48 The earths rivers of pure water and its solid hills and rocks were like the veins and blood, and flesh and bones of my body. 49 I saw innumerable elephantine clouds and countless suns and moons in the starry frame of the sky, just as I see flights of gnats and flies in the emptiness of my mind. 50 In my minute form of the intellect, O Rama, I held the earth with its footstools of the nether regions upon my head. 51 I remained in my sole empty and spiritual state in all places and things at all times and as my own free agent, and yet without my connection with anything whatsoever. 52 In this state of my spirituality I had the knowledge of both the intellectual and material worlds, and of all finite and infinite, visible and invisible, and formal and formless things. 53 I saw a thousand worlds and mountains and seas in my own spirit. They appeared like carved statues and engravings in the empty tablet of my mind. 54 I carried many hidden and visible worlds in my spiritual body. They showed themselves as clearly to my innermost soul as if they were reflections of real objects in a mirror. 55 So in my empty soul I perceived the four elemental bodies of earth, air, fire and water in the same manner as we see the delusive objects of our dream in the emptiness of our intellect. 56 In that state of my trance, I also saw innumerable worlds rising before me in each particle of matter, appearing to fly before me in the hollow space of vacuum. 57 I saw a world in every atom flying in empty air, just as we see many creations of our dreams, and many creatures in those dreams. 58 I myself became the globe of the earth and the clusters of islands as their pervading spirit, though my spirit never comes in contact with anything at all. 59 With my earthly body I suck rainwater and the waters of the seas in order to supply moisture for trees to produce juicy fruits for the food of living beings. 60 When I came to pure understanding and the clairvoyance of my intellectual sight, I found that the millions of worlds and worldly things disappeared from my view and united in a single unity. 61 This is a miracle of the intellect that strikes wonder in us, that the miracles of the inner mind manifest themselves as external sights before our eyes. 62 I felt it painful to think of the existence of nothing anywhere. But I found out the truth, that there is nothing in reality except one spiritual substance which displays all these wonders in itself. 63 There is only one Universal Soul without decay and the continuous cause of all producing and living throughout the whole. As my soul awakened to knowledge, I saw this whole in the soul of Brahman. 64 Awakened to the knowledge of the Universal Soul as the all and everywhere, omnipresent and all supporting, I became unconscious of all objects and was myself lost in the all subjective unity. 65 Continuous creations appear to rise in the empty, wide vastness of pure Divine Spirit. But the extinction of these extinguishes the burning flame of worldliness in the mind and extends the knowledge of all these ideal particulars into that of one infinite and ever existent entity.

Chapter 93 A Siddha Master Comes to Vasishtas Aerial Home

Vasishta continued: As my mind was turned from the sight of phenomena and employed in meditation of the only One, I found myself suddenly transported to my holy cell in the air. 2 There I lost the sight of my own body. I did not know where I was sitting. Suddenly the sacred person of a spiritual master, an aerial siddha saint, appeared sitting in front of me. 3 He sat in deep meditation, entranced in his thought of the Supreme Spirit. His appearance was as bright as the sun and his body shone like flaming fire. 4 He sat quiet and steadily in lotus posture, absorbed in meditation, having no idea of his body and no thought of anything in his mind. 5 His body was smeared with ash and his head was erect upon his shoulders. He sat quietly with great ease, his face bright and his posture stable. 6 The palms of both his hands were lifted up and set open below his navel. Their brightness caused his lotus petal heart to be as full blown as sunshine expands lotuses in lakes. 7 His eyelids were closed and his eyesight was weak in that he saw all phenomena only in one light of whiteness. His eyes seemed to be sleepy like closing petals of a lotus at the close of the day. 8 His mind was calm in all its thoughts, like the sides of the horizon in their stillness, and his soul was as unperturbed as the serene sky freed from a storm. 9 I could not see my own body, yet I could plainly see that of the saint placed before me. Then I reflected with the clear-sightedness of my discernment. 10 I find this great and perfect siddha saint in this solitary part of the firmament and I believe him to be as absorbed in his meditation as I am at ease in this lonely spot. 11 It is very likely that this saint, being earnest in his desire for deep meditation and finding my secluded hut favorable, has come here of his own accord. 12 He thought that I had cast off my mortal body and because of his deep attention, could not perceive that I had returned to it. So he threw away what he thought was my dead body and took up residence in this hut of mine. 13 Seeing the loss of my body here, I thought of going back to my own home (Saptarshi Mandalam, the world of the Seven Rishis). As I was attempting to go there, I renounced my attachment to the lonely hut. 14 This hut had dilapidated over time, leaving only an empty void. The saint who had taken my place inside also lost his place for lack of the hut and fell downward in his meditative mood. 15 Thus I lost that lonely hut together with the loss of my fond desire for it, just as an imaginary city vanishes with the dream and desire which presented it to view. 16 The meditative saint then fell down from it, like rain falling from a cloud, or winds blowing a small cloud in empty air, or like the moon traversing the sky. 17 He fell on the earth like a heavenly spirit falls to earth after the reward for his meritorious acts, and like an uprooted tree falls to the ground. 18 So when wishing for a stable life and home, we see both ending suddenly, as it happened to the falling siddha. 19 Seeing the falling siddha, I felt a kind of concern for him. In the flight of my mind, I came down from heaven in my spiritual form to that spot on earth where he had fallen. 20 He fell on the wings of air currents which conveyed him whirling like in a whirlwind beyond the limits of the seven continents and their seven-fold oceans, to a place known as the land of gold and the paradise of the gods. 21 He fell from the sky in the same lotus posture in which he had been sitting, his head and upper body erect owing to the upward motion of his prana and apana breaths. 22 Though hurled from such height and carried such distance, yet he did not wake from the mental inactivity of his samadhi, but fell down unconscious like a stone and as lightly as a bale of cotton. 23 I was greatly concerned for his sake and in my anxiety to waken him, I roared loudly from my place in the sky like a cloud, and I also showered a flood of rainwater on him. 24 I threw hailstones, flashing like lightning, to waken him. I succeeded to bring him to sense like
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clouds rouse the peacock in rainy season. 25 His body flushed and his eyes opened like a blooming flower. The drizzling rains enlivened his soul, as the driving rain makes the lotuses of lakes bloom. 26 Finding him awake and sitting before me, I cast my calm look upon him and very politely asked him about the prosperity of his spiritual concerns. 27 I said, Tell me, O great sage, who are you? Where do you live and what do you do here? How is it that you are so unaware of your state, in spite of your fall from such a great distance? 28 Being addressed by me in this manner, he looked steadfastly at me, then remembering his visit at my hut, he replied to me in a voice as sweet like that of a chataka cuckoo to loud sounding clouds. 29 The sagely siddha said, You sage, shall have to wait awhile until I recollect myself and my former state. Then I will relate the latter incidents of my life. 30 So saying he fell to the recollection of his past incidents, then having them in his memory, he related the particulars to me without any reserve, as if they happened that same day. 31 Then he spoke to me in a voice as soft and cooling as sandalwood paste and moonbeams. The words were as blameless and well spoken, pleasing to my ears and captivating of my soul. 32 The siddha said: Now I come to know you, sage. I greet you with reverence and beg you to pardon my intrusion, as it is the nature of the good to forgive others faults. 33 Know me, O sage, to have long enjoyed the sweets of the gardens of the gods in the form of a butterfly, like a bee sucking honey from lotus flowers in a lake. 34 I fluttered over a running stream and found it swelling with sounding waves at pleasure. Then seeing it whirling with horrid whirlpools, I began to reflect with sorrow in my mind. 35 Such is the sight of the troubles in this ocean of the world. The sight overwhelms me with sorrow and grief. I have become like a thirsty and grieving swallow that wails aloud at a lack of rainwater. 36 I find my chief delight consists in consciousness. I perceive no pleasure in worldly enjoyments. Therefore I must rely only upon my intellectual speculations and abide without any anxiety in the unclouded sphere of my spiritual bliss. 37 I see there is no real pleasure here, only what is derived from our sensations of the sensible objects. I find no lasting delight in these, that I should depend upon them. 38 All this is either the emptiness or fabrications of the intellect. Why should I be deluded by these false appearances, as a madman or a deluded mind is apt to do? 39 The phenomena of the senses are like poison that causes unconsciousness, like women delude men and provoke their passions. All sweets are only bitter and all pleasures are only a sort of pleasing pain. 40 This body which is subject to sickness and decay, its mind as fickle as a shrimp, is hourly watched by relentless death, just as an old crane lurks after swimming fish for his prey. 41 The frail body, being subject to instant extinction, is like a bubble of water in the ocean of eternity. It also resembles the flame of a lamp burning brightly before us but which can be extinguished in a moment. 42 What is life other than a stream of water running between the two shores of birth and death? It flows with the currents of passing joys and grief, swells with the waves of incidents, and whirls with the whirlpools of dangers and difficulties. 43 It is muddied by the pleasures of youth and whitened with the hoary froths of old age. It casually emits a few bursting bubbles of joy and gladness which float for a fleeting moment. 44 It runs with the rapid torrent of custom making a harsh noise of current choices. It is overcast by the roaring clouds of envy and anger and overflows the earth in its liquid form. 45 The expression stream of life is as pleasing to the ear as the expression stream of water is soothing to the soul. But its waters are constantly boiling with the heat of the triple sorrows and abounding with whirlpools of illusion and greed that carry us up and down for ever more. 46 The course of the world is like that of a river which carries away present things on its back and brings with its current what was unforeseen and unexpected. It is thus full of these

events. 47 All that was present before us is lost and carried away. It is vain to regret their loss. Whatever was never thought of before comes to pass. But what reliance can we have on any of them? 48 The waters of all the rivers on earth continually pass away and are filled in turn from their sources. But the water of life in the river of the body, once gone, is never replenished from any source. 49 Changes in fortune are constantly turning like a potters wheel over the destinies of people, affecting some person or another at every moment in this ocean of the world. 50 A thousand thieves and enemies of our estate are constantly wandering about to rob us of our properties, and nothing helps whether we sleep or wake to ward them off. 51 The particles of our lives are wasting and falling off every moment. Yet it is a wonder that nobody is aware of the loss of the days of his life, as long as he has only a little while to live. 52 The present day is reckoned as ours, but it soon passes like previous past ones. Ignorant of the flight of days, nobody thinks about the duration of his life until he comes to meet with his death. 53 We have lived long to eat and drink, to move about from place to place, and to travel in foreign lands and woods. We have felt and seen all sorts of happiness and sorrow. Say what more is there that we can expect to have for our share? 54 Having well known the pain and pleasure of grief and joy and experienced their changes and the reverses of fortune, I am fully impressed with the idea of the impermanence of all things and therefore keep from seeking anything. 55 I have enjoyed all enjoyments and seen their impermanence everywhere. Yet I found no satisfaction or distaste for anything, nor felt my cool renunciation for them anywhere. 56 I wandered on the tops of high hills and travelled in the airy regions on the summits of Mount Meru. I travelled to the cities of many rulers of men, but met with nothing of any real good to me anywhere. 57 I saw the same woody trees, the same kind of earthly cities, and the same sort of fleshy animal bodies everywhere. I found them all frail and transitory, full of pain and misery as never to be liked. 58 I saw that no riches or friends, and no relatives or enjoyments of life were able to preserve anyone from the clutches of death. 59 Man passes away as soon as rainwater glides down mountain glades. He is carried away by the hand of death as quickly as a heap of hollow ash is blown away by the wind. 60 No enjoyment is desirable to me. The attraction of prosperity has no charm for me when I find my life is as transient as the passing glance of a loving woman. 61 How and where and whose help shall we seek, O sage, when we see a hundred evils and imminent death hanging over our heads every day? 62 Our lives are as frail as falling leaves upon the withered woods of our bodies. The moisture they used to derive is soon dried up and exhausted. 63 I passed my life in vain desires and expectations and derived nothing that is of any intrinsic good or profit to me. 64 My delusion is at last removed and I see it is useless to carry the burden of my body any longer. I find it better to place no reliance upon it rather than lowering ourselves by depending on it. 65 All prosperity is only adversity because of its transitory and illusive nature. Therefore the wise, accounting it as such, place no reliance on the vanities of this world. 66 Men are sometimes led by the directions and prohibitions of the scriptures, like objects carried by rising and falling waters. 67 The poisonous air of worldliness contaminates the sweet scent of reason in the mind of man. Worldliness is harmful to a person like a caterpillar in a flower bud corrodes the future flower. 68 The vanities of the world are usually taken for realities, as all other unrealities in nature are commonly taken for actualities. 69 Men are moving about with their bodies upon earth with as much haste as rivers running to the seas. Thus the great mass of mankind here is seen in pursuit of the sensible objects of desires. 70 The desires of our hearts run to their objects with the speed of arrows flying from an archers bow. But they never return to their seat in the heart or the bowstring, like ungrateful friends

forsaking us in our adversity. 71 Our friends are our enemies, like blasts of wind that blow us away. All our relations are our bonds and chains and our riches are only causes of our poverty. 72 Our pleasures cause our pains and prosperity is the source of adversity. All enjoyments are sufferings and in the end all fondness tends towards distaste and dislike. 73 All prosperity and adversity tend only to our temporary joy and misery. Our life is only a prelude to our extinction. All these are the display of our unavoidable delusion. 74 As time glides on, its shows a man various sights of joy and misery. The poor creature lives only to see the loss of his friends and to complain at his hapless and helpless longevity. 75 Enjoyment of pleasures is like playing with the fangs of a deadly serpent. They kill you as soon as you touch them and they disappear from your sight whenever you look at them. 76 Life is spent without any attempt to attain that perfect state which is obtained without any pain or struggle. Instead, life is employed every day in the hardships of acquiring perishable, worthless things. 77 Men bound to their carnal desires are exposed every moment to shame and the insults of the rich, like wild elephants tied with strong chains at their feet. 78 Our fortunes and favorites are not only as frail and fickle as passing waves and bubbles, they also are deadly like the fangs of a snake. Who is there so silly as to take rest under the shadow of the hood of enraged serpent? 79 Granted, the objects of desire are pleasing and the gifts of prosperity are very charming. Still, what are they and this life other than the fickle glances of a mistress eyes? 80 Those who enjoy pleasures now must come to feel them quite tasteless at the end and fall into the hell-pit at last. 81 I take no delight in riches worshipped only by the vulgar, always subject to disputes, earned with labor, kept with great care, and yet as unstable as the winds. 82 Fortune which is so favorable for a while, turns to misfortune in a moment. She is very charming to her possessor, but she is as fickle by nature as the fleeting flash of lightning. 83 Riches are like flatterers, very flattering at first and as long as they last, but as fleeting as those deceitful cheats who mock us upon their loss. 84 The blessings of health, wealth and youth are as impermanent as the fleeting shadows of autumn clouds. The enjoyments of sensual pleasures are destructive at the end. 85 Say, who has remained the same to the end of his journey in this world, even among the great? The lives of men are as fleeting as dew drops trickling on the edges of tree leaves. 86 Our bodies decay in time, our hair turns grey with age, and teeth fall off. All things in the world wear out except our desires which know no decrease or decay. 87 Carnal enjoyments, like wild beasts, end up decaying us in the forest of the body. But the poison plant of our desire growing in that forest is always flourishing. 88 Our boyhood passes as quickly as our infancy and our youth passes as quickly as our boyish days. Here there is an equal impermanence seen in both the comparison and the object compared. 89 Life melts away as quickly as water trickling out of our palms. Like the current of a river, it never returns to its source. 90 The body passes away as hurriedly as a hurricane sweeps in the air. It vanishes even before we see it, like a wave or a cloud, or as fast as the flame of a lamp. 91 I have found unpleasantness in what I thought to be very pleasant, and found the unsteadiness of what I believed to be steady. I have known the unreality of what I took to be real and hence I have become distrustful and disgusted of the world. 92 The ease and rest that attend the soul and the cool detachment of the mind can never be obtained in any enjoyment that the upper or nether world can ever give anybody. 93 I find the pleasurable objects of my senses still allure me to their trap, just as a fruit or flower entices the foolish bee to fall upon it. 94 Now after a long time, I am quite released from my selfish egoism. My mind has become indifferent to the desire of future rewards and heavenly bliss. 95 I have long found rest in my solitary bliss of emptiness. I have come here, like you, to this ethereal cell. 96 Afterwards I learned that this cell belonged to you. But I never thought that you would return to it. 97 I saw a lifeless body

and thought it to be the frame of a spiritual master and saint who, having left his mortal body, became absorbed in his nirvana. 98 Sage, what I have just told you is my story. I am seated here as I am and you can do whatever you may like with me. 99 Until a spiritual master sees all things in his mind and considers them well in his clear judgment, he is incapable of seeing the past, present and future in his clairvoyance, even though he be as perfect as the nature of the lotus-born Brahma himself.

Chapter 94 Conclusion of Siddha Story; Vasishta Travels like a Pisacha; Description of Pisachas, Origin from Brahma
Vasishta continued: Now as we were at a place of great extent, as bright as the golden sphere of heaven, I spoke to the siddha as a friend. 2 I said, Sage, it is true what you said, that it is the lack of due attention which prevents our comprehensive knowledge of the present, past, and future. But it is a defect not only of yours and mine, but of the minds of all mankind in general. 3 I say so from my right knowledge of the defects and fallibility of human nature. Or else sage, you would not have to fall from your aerial seat. But pardon me, I am equally fallible also. 4 Therefore, rise from this place and let us go to the aerial abode of the siddha spiritual masters where we were seated before, because ones own seat is the most pleasant to man and self-perfection is the best of all perfections. 5 So saying, we both got up and rose as high as the stars of heaven. We directed our course in the same way as a flying traveler or a stone flung in the air. 6 Then we took leave of each other with mutual farewells and each of us went to the place that was desirable to him. 7 I have now related to you fully the whole of this story, whereby you may know, O Rama, the wonderful occurrences that happens to us in this ever changeful world. 8 Rama said, Tell me sage, how and with what form of body did you did travel about the regions of the spiritual masters when your mortal frame was reduced to dust? 9 Vasishta replied: Ah! I remember it, and I will tell you the details about how I wandered throughout these worlds until I arrived at the city of the Lokapala (Guardians of the World) gods and joined with the hosts of spiritual masters traveling in the regions of the midway sky. 10 I travelled in the regions of Indra without being seen by anybody because since losing my material frame, I was passing in my spiritual body. 11 O Rama, I had become of an aerial form in which there was neither receptacle nor recipient beside the nature of empty and intellectual soul. 12 I was neither the subject nor the object of perception by persons like yourself, who dwell on material objects alone. Nor did I make any reckoning of the distance of space or succession of time. 13 The soul (the aerial form) is concerned with the thinking principle of the mind, not the various material objects composed of earth and the other elements. The soul is like the meditative mind or ideal man that meddles with no material substance. 14 It is not pressed or confined by material things, but is always busy with its reflections. The soul deals with beings in the same way as men in sleep do with the objects of their dream. 15 Rama, know that the simile of dreaming to explain the doctrine of the reasoning intellect is quite irrefutable, although it is refuted by others. 16 As the sleeping man thinks he is walking and acting in his dream, without such actions being perceived by others, so I thought that I walked before and saw the aerial beings without their seeing me. 17 I saw all other terrestrial bodies lying manifest before me. But nobody could see me hidden from their sight in my spiritual form. 18 Rama asked, Sage, if you were invisible to the gods, owing to your bodiless, empty form, then how could you be seen by the siddha in the Kanaka land? How could you see others without having eyes of your own? 19 Vasishta replied: We spiritual beings view all things by means of our inner knowledge of them, just as other people see the things they desire to see and nothing for which they have no desire. 20 All men, though possessed of pure souls, forget their spiritual nature by being too deeply engaged in worldly affairs and unspiritual matters.
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I wished that this siddha person could have sight of me. So according to my wish, I was observed by him, because every man obtains what he earnestly desires. 22 Men being negligent in their purposes become unsuccessful in their desires. But being strong to my purpose and never swerving from my pursuit, I succeeded in gaining my desired object. 23 When two persons are engaged in the same pursuit, or one of them is opposed to the views of the other, the effort of the stronger effort is crowned with success and that of the weaker effort meets with failure. 24 Then I travelled in my spiritual body through aerial regions of the Lokapala regents of the sky. Passing by the celestial city of the siddha spiritual masters, I saw people with manners quite different from my former habits. 25 Then I began to observe their strange manners in ethereal space and being unseen by anyone there, I distinctly saw everybody there and their mode of life and dealings. I was amazed. 26 I called them aloud, but they neither heard nor gave heed to my voice. They appeared to me like empty phantoms, like the images of our dreams and visions. 27 I tried to lay hold of some of them, but my hands could grasp none. They evaded my touch, just like the ideas of images in the human mind. 28 Thus Rama, I remained like a demoniac pisacha spirit in the abode of the holy gods. I thought I had been transformed into a pisacha spirit in the open air. 29 Rama asked, Tell me sage. What kind of beings in this world are pisachas? What are their natures and forms? What are their states and occupations? 30 Vasishta replied: I will tell you, Rama, what sort of beings the pisachas are in this world, because it is rude on the part of a teacher not to answer the questions of the audience. 31 The pisachas are a sort of aerial being with a subtle body. They have hands and feet and other body parts like you do, and they see all things as you do. 32 Sometimes they assume the form of a shadow to terrify people. At other times they enter peoples minds in an aerial form in order to mislead them to error and wicked purposes. 33 They kill weak bodied people, eat their flesh, and suck up their blood. They lay a siege about the mind and destroy mens vitals, internal organs, strength and lives. 34 Some of them have aerial forms, some have the form of frost, and others are like imaginary men with airy forms that we see in our dreams. 35 Some have the form of clouds and others a nature like the winds. Some carry illusory bodies. But all of them possess mind and understanding. 36 They do not have any tangible form that we can hold or that they can use to hold anyone else. They are merely empty airy bodies, yet conscious of their own existence. 37 They are susceptible of feeling the pain and pleasure occasioned by heat and cold. But they are incapable of the actions of eating, drinking, holding, or supporting anything with their spiritual bodies. 38 They possess desire, envy, fear, anger and greed, and they are also liable to delusion and illusion. They are capable of being subjugated through the spell of mantras, the charm of drugs, and through other rites and practices. 39 It is likewise possible to see and control some of them by means of incantations, captivating exorcisms, amulets, and spirit chanting invocations. 40 They are all the progeny of fallen gods. Therefore some of them carry the forms of gods also. While some have human forms, others are like serpents and snakes in appearance. 41 Some have forms similar to dogs and jackals, and some are found living in villages and woods. There are many that reside in rivers, mud and mire, and hell pits. 42 I told you all about the forms and homes and doings of pisachas. Now hear me now tell you about the origin and birth of these beings. 43 Know that an omnipotent power of its own nature exists forever. It is unintelligible Consciousness itself and it is known as Brahman the great. 44 Know this as the living soul, which being condensed becomes ego. The condensation of egoism makes the mind. 45 This Divine Mind is

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called Brahma, which is the empty form of the Divine Will. Brahma is the insubstantial origin of this unreal world, which is as formless as the hollow mind. 46 So the mind exists as Brahma, whose form is that of formless emptiness. It is the form of a person seen in our dream, which is an entity without reality or physical body. 47 It was devoid of any earthly material or elemental form, and existed only in an immaterial and spiritual form. For how is it possible for the principle of will existing in empty air to have a material body? 48 Rama, as you see an aerial city in the imagination of your mind, so the mind of Brahma imagines itself as Virinchi, the creator of the world. 49 Whatever one sees in his imagination, he considers it to be true for the time. Whatever is the nature and capacity of any being, he knows all others to be of the same sort as himself. 50 Whatever the empty soul sees in its empty sphere, the same it knows to be true, just as the spirit and the mind of Brahma exhibit this ideal world as a reality. 51 Thus the contemplation of the present spectacle of the world as ever existing at all times strengthens the belief in its reality, like that of a protracted and romantic dream. 52 The long meditation of Brahma in his spiritual form of the creative power, presented to him the ideas of multitudes of worlds and varieties of creations, of which he became the creator. 53 The ideal, being perfected, grew compact and took a tangible form which afterwards was called the world and all the many varieties of which it is composed. 54 This Brahma, the creative mind, is the same as Brahman the Supreme Soul. These two are forever identical with the uncreated soul and body of the universe. 55 These two (Divine Spirit Brahman and mind Brahma) are always one and the same being, like the sky and its emptiness. They forever abide together in unity, like the wind and its movement. 56 The Divine Spirit sees the phenomenal world as a phantom, nothing real, just as you see the unreality of a figure of your imagination. 57 This Brahma then displayed himself in the form of a material body named Viraj consisting of the fivefold elements of earth, water and the rest as the five solid and liquid parts of his person. 58 As this triple nature (soul, mind and material frame) of the god is no more than the variation of his will, so it represented itself as the one or the other in its thought only, and not in reality. 59 Brahma himself is empty consciousness. His will consists in the emptiness of consciousness. Therefore the production and destruction of the world resemble the rise and fall of figures in the dreaming state of the human mind. 60 As the Divine Mind of Brahma is a reality, so its parts and contents are also real and its acts or productions of the sun, moon, and stars, as well as their rays, the Marichis, are also real. 61 Thus the existence of the world and all its contents is called the dominion of the mind which is only an unsupported emptiness, like the emptiness of the unsupported sky on high. 62 As a city seen in dream is insubstantial and a hill formed in imagination is a mere void, so both Brahma and his world are like the transparent sky, having no shape or substance of them. 63 So the world is only a reflection of Divine Consciousness. It is ever existent without decay. Belief in a beginning, middle or end of creation is as false as the sight of the ends and midpoint of skies. 64 Tell me, Rama, whether you find any material substance growing in the empty space of your mind or any other persons mind. If you find no such thing there, then how can you suppose it to exist in the emptiness of Divine Consciousness and in the emptiness of the universe? 65 Then tell me why and from where feelings and passions, such as anger, affection, hate and fear, take their rise? All these are of no good to anybody, but rather harmful to many. 66 In truth I tell you that these are not created things, yet they seem to rise and fall of themselves, like our wrong notions of the production and destruction of the world. These are only eternal ideas, equally eternal with the eternal mind of God. 67 The vast extent of infinite void is full with the clear water of Divine Consciousness. But being soiled by our imaginary conceits, this produces the dirt of false realities. 68 The boundless space of Divine Consciousness is filled with the empty spirit of God which, being the primary

productive seed of all, has produced these multitudes of worlds scattered about and rolling like stones in the air. 69 There is really no field and no seed which is sown there in reality. Nor is there anything which is ever grown or produced. But whatever there is exists forever as the same. 70 Now among the scattered seeds of souls, there are some that grow mature and put forth in the forms of gods. Others are of a bright appearance and become intelligences and saints. 71 Those that are half mature become human beings and naaga races. Still others are put forth in the forms of insects, worms and vegetables. 72 Those seeds which are bloated and choked and become fruitless at the end, these produce the wicked pisachas, which are bodiless bodies of empty and aerial forms. 73 It is not that Virinchi or Brahma made them so of his own accord or will. They became so according to the desire which they created in themselves in their prior existence. 74 All existent beings are as insubstantial as the Consciousness in which they exist. They all have their spiritual bodies which are quite separate from the material forms in which you behold them. 75 It is by your long habit that you have contracted the knowledge of their materiality, just as it has become habitual with us to think ourselves to be waking in our dreaming state. 76 All living bodies are accustomed to think of their physicality and to live content with their frail and base material forms. In the same way, pisachas are habituated to pass gladly in their ugly forms. 77 Some men look upon others and know them as well as villagers know and deal with their fellow villagers. But they resemble people living together as seen in a dream. 78 Some meet with many men, like in a city constructed in dream, and are quite unacquainted with one another because of their distant homes and different nationalities. 79 In this manner, there are many races of beings of whom we are utterly ignorant, such as pisachas, kumbhandas, pretas, yakshas and others. 80 As the waters on earth collect only in the lowlands, so pisachas and demons dwell only in dark places. 81 Should a dark pisacha dwell in bright midday light, upon a sunny shore or open space, it darkens that spot with the gloominess of its appearance. 82 Even the sun is unable to dispel that darkness. Because a dark demon is so delusive and evades human sight, no one can discover the place where he makes his home. 83 As the sun and moon and the furnace of a burning fire appear bright before our eyes, so on the contrary the home of pisachas is ever hidden by impenetrable darkness which no light can pierce. 84 The pisachas are naturally of a wonderful nature that vanishes like sparks of fire in daylight and become lighted again in the dark. 85 Now Rama, in the course of this discourse I have fully described the origin and nature of the pisacha race, and how then I had become like one of them in the regions of the regents of the celestials.

Chapter 95 Description of Vasishtas Bodies

Vasishta continued: Having my ethereal intellectual body, which was quite free from the composition of the five elements, I travelled about in the air like a pisacha ghost, seeing all and seen by none. 2 I was not perceived by the sun or moon or by the gods Hari, Hara, Indra and others. I was quite invisible to the spiritual masters, gandharvas, kinnaras and apsaras of heaven. 3 I was astonished to realize, like any honest person who is a stranger in anothers house, that the residents of the place did not perceive me, though I advanced towards them and called them to me. 4 Then I thought to myself that as these ethereal beings were seekers of truth like me, it was right that they should see me among them in their ethereal abode. 5 Then they began to see me standing before them. They felt astonished at my un-thought appearance, just as the spectators are startled at the sudden sight of a jugglers trick in some magic show. 6 Then I managed myself as I should in the house of the gods. I sat quietly in their presence and addressed and approached them without any fear. 7 Those who saw me and were unacquainted with the details of who I was, thought that I was only an earthly being known as Vasishta. 8 When I was in sunlight by the celestials in heaven, they took me for the enlightened Vasishta, who is well known in the world. 9 As I was seen afloat in the air by the aerial spiritual master siddhas, they called me by the name of the aerial Vasishta. 10 The watery sages who rose from amidst the waters of the deep saw me and called me the watery Vasishta, from my birth in the water. 11 I came to be known under different names by different sets of beings. Some called me the earthly Vasishta, and others named me the luminous, the aerial, and so forth according to their own kind. 12 Then in course of time, my spiritual body assumed a material form which sprang from within me and of my own will. 13 That spiritual body and this material form that I have were equally aerial and invisible because it was only in my intellectual mind that I perceived the one and the other. 14 Thus my soul, the pure intellect, appears sometimes as emptiness and at others shining as the clear sky. It is transcendent spirit without any form. It takes this form for your benefit. 15 The liberated living soul is as free as the empty spirit of Brahman, although it may deal with others in its physical body. The liberated bodiless soul remains as free as the great Brahman himself. 16 As for myself, I could not attain the station of Brahma, though I practiced the rules to obtain my liberation. Being unable to attain a better state, I have become the sage Vasishta that you see before you. 17 Yet I look upon this world in the same light of being immaterial as the sage sees the figure of a person in his dream. It appears to him to have a material form, though it is a formless nonentity in reality. 18 In this manner the self-born god Brahma and others, and the whole creation at large, present themselves as visions to my view, without their having any entity in reality. 19 Here I am the self-same empty and aerial Vasishta appearing as an imaginary shape before you. I am habituated to believe myself over grown, as you are accustomed to think of the density of the world. 20 All these are only empty essences of the self-born Brahma, and as that god is no other than the Divine Mind, so is this world nothing more than a production of that mind. 21 The appearance of me, you and others, together with that of the whole world, proceeds from our ignorance. It is like the apparitions of empty ghosts before deluded children, appearing as solid realities to your sight. 22 Being aware of this truth, it is possible for you to grow wise in course of time. Then your delusion is sure to disappear, just as our worldly bonds are cut off by renouncing our desires
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and affections. 23 Our knowledge of the density and reality of the world is dispelled by true wisdom in the same way our desire of a jewel in a dream is dispelled upon waking. 24 The sight of phenomena immediately vanishes from view as we arrive to the knowledge of truth, just as our desire of deriving water from a mirage disappears with our knowledge of the falsity of the view. 25 Reading this Vasishta Maharamayana is sure to produce the knowledge of selfliberation in its reader, even during his lifetime in this world. 26 The man whose mind is addicted to worldly desires and thinks its vanities are his real good leads a life of misery like those of insects and worms. He is unfit to be born as a human being in spite of all his knowledge of this world and all his holy devotion. 27 The liberated man, while he lives, considers the enjoyments of his life to be no enjoyment at all. But the ignorant person only values his temporary enjoyments instead of his everlasting bliss. 28 By reading this Maharamayana, there arises a coldness in the mind resembling a frost falling on spiritual knowledge. 29 Liberation is the cold detachment of the mind and our bondage consists in the passions of our minds and hearts. Yet the human race is quite opposed to cold detachment and, in their foolishness, men diligently pursue only temporal welfare, much to the astonishment of the wise. 30 Here all men are subject to their senses and addicted to the increase of wealth and family, all to the injury of each another. Yet it is possible for them to be happy and wise, if they will only reflect well upon the true meaning of spiritual scriptures. 31 Valmiki says: After the sage had said these words, the assembly broke with the setting sun and mutual salutations to perform their evening devotion. They made their ablutions as the sun sank down into the deep, and again went back to the court with the rising sun at the end of the night.

Chapter 96 Summation of the Story of the Stone; Nothing Exists or Does Not Exist
Vasishta resumed: O intelligent Rama! I have described at length the story of the stone which shows you plainly how all these created things are situated in the emptiness of Divine Consciousness, 2 and how nothing whatever exists at anytime or place or in the air except the one undivided intellect of God which is situated in itself, like salt and water mixed together. 3 Know Brahman as Consciousness which presents many imaginary shows of itself in the dream which is inseparable from itself. 4 God being the Universal Spirit and creation full of manifestations, it is not inconsistent to the nature of the universal and immutable soul to contain endless varieties of manifestations in the infinite emptiness of Divine Consciousness without any change in itself. 5 There is no self-born creative power as Brahma or its creation of the world. The world is only a production of the dreaming intellect. It is situated in our consciousness, just as the dreams are imprinted in the memory. 6 As the city seen in your dream is situated intellectually in yourself, so the entire universe, from its creation to its annihilation, is situated in Divine Consciousness. 7 As there is no difference between gold and the gold mountain of Meru, or between the dreamed city and the mind, so there is no difference whatever between the intellect and its creation. 8 Only consciousness exists and not the world of its creations, just as the mind exists without the gold mountain of its dream. 9 As the mind shows itself in the form of the formless mountain in its dream, so the formless Brahman manifests itself as the world of forms, which is nothing in reality. 10 Consciousness is all this vacuum, uncreated, unbounded and endless, neither produced nor destroyed in thousands of the great mahakalpa ages. 11 This intellectual vacuum is the living soul and Lord of all. It is the ego without decay and embraces all the three worlds in itself. 12 The living body becomes a lifeless carcass without this aerial form intellect. Consciousness is neither broken nor burnt with the fragile and burning body, nor is there any place to extract the empty intellect from the body. 13 Therefore there is nothing that dies and nothing that ever comes to being. Consciousness being the only being in existence, the world is only a manifestation of itself to the mind. 14 Consciousness alone is the embodied and living soul and should it ever be supposed to die, then the son would be thought to die by the death of the father because the one is only a reproduction of the other. 15 Again the death of one living soul would involve the wholesale death of all living creatures, and then the earth would be void of all its population. 16 Therefore, O Rama, no ones intellectual soul has ever died anywhere up to this time. Nor has there ever been any country devoid of a living soul. 17 Knowing that I am one with the Eternal Soul and the body and its senses are not mine, I do not know how I or anyone else could ever die at anytime. 18 He who knows that he is the purely intellectual soul, and yet ignores it and thinks to himself that he is dying like a mortal being, truly is the destroyer of his soul and casts himself into a sea of troubles and misery. 19 If I am the intellectual soul, without decay and everlasting, as transparent as the open air, then tell me, what is life or death to me, and what does my happiness or misery mean in any state? 20 Being the empty and intelligent soul, I have no concern with my body. Anyone conscious of his soul who forgets to believe himself as such is truly a destroyer of his soul. 21 The wise consider a foolish man who has lost his consciousness of being the purely empty soul to be a living dead body.
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The knowledge that I am the intelligent soul and the bodily senses are not essential to me is what leads me to attain to the state of pure spirituality, which neither death nor misery can deprive. 23 He who remains firm, relying upon the pure intellectual soul, is never assailed by disasters, but is unaffected by sorrow as a block of stone to a flight of arrows. 24 Those who forget their spiritual nature and place their trust in the body are like foolish people who ignore gold and collect ashes. 25 The belief that I am the body, its strength and its perceptions falsifies my faith in these and destroys my reliance on the spirit. But my trust in the spirit confirms my faith in spirit by removing my belief in the body and its senses. 26 The belief that I am pure empty consciousness, quite free from birth and death, is sure to dispel all illusions of feelings and passions and affections. 27 Those who neglect the sight of empty consciousness, unable to see their bodies in the light of the spirit, deserve the name of physical beasts and are receptacles of only physical desires and passions. 28 He who knows himself to be unbreakable and unburnable like a solid and impenetrable stone, not in his unreal body but in his consciousness, cares little for his death. 29 O the delusion that spreads over the sight of clear-sighted sages who fear total annihilation at the loss of their bodies. 30 When we are firmly settled in our belief in the indestructible nature of empty consciousness, we are led to regard the fire and thunder of the last day of destruction in the light of a shower of flowers over our heads. 31 I am imperishable consciousness and nothing that is perishable. Therefore the wailing of a man and his friends at the point of death appears as a ridiculous comedy to the wise. 32 That I am my inner intelligence and not the outer body or its sensations, is a belief that serves as an cure against the poison of all grief and sorrows. 33 That I am empty consciousness without any annihilation and that the world is full of intelligence, is a sober truth which can never admit any doubt. 34 Should you suppose yourselves to be anything other than consciousness, then tell me, you fools. Why do you vainly talk of the soul and what do you mean by it? 35 Should the intelligent soul be liable to death, then it is dead with dying people every day. Then tell me how you live and are not already dead with the departed souls of others? 36 Therefore the intelligent soul neither dies nor comes to life at anytime. It is only a false idea of the mind to think it is living or dying; it never dies. 37 As the intellect thinks to itself, so it beholds the same within itself. It goes on thinking in its habitual mode. It is never destroyed in its essence. 38 It sees the world in itself, and is likewise conscious of its freedom. It knows all that is pleasurable or painful without changing from its unalterable nature at anytime or place. 39 It is liable to delusions through knowledge of its embodiment, but by knowledge of its true nature, it becomes acquainted with its own freedom. 40 There is nothing whatever that is produced or destroyed at anytime or in any place. Everything is contained in the sole and self-existent Consciousness, displayed in its clear and empty sphere. 41 There is nothing real or unreal in the world. Everything is taken in the same light as it is displayed by Consciousness. 42 Whatever the intelligent soul thinks to itself in this world, it retains the ideas of them in the mind. Everything is judged by ones consciousness of it. Something which one thinks to be poison, another believes to be nectar.

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Chapter 97 Different Beliefs Lead to the Same Unity; Examples of Selfrealized

Vasishta continued: The world is only a vision of the Supreme Soul situated in the emptiness of the Divine Mind. The world appears in our consciousness as the idea of Brahman. 2 The delusion of the visionary world, being too tangible to our view, has kept the Supreme Spirit out of our sight, just as the spirit of the wine is kept hidden in the liquor, though it can never be lost. 3 Our belief in the endless emptiness and in the absence of any positive existence in reality, necessarily results because we discard unreal phenomena as delusion and we recognize the real as incomprehensible. 4 The principal source is that the embodied Consciousness, called the soul, is the supreme cause, and the world proceeds from the unknown principle. The truth of this view of the creation rests wholly upon the opinion of the philosopher Kapila. 5 The Vedantists believe that the visible world is the form of the all pervasive spirit of God. This opinion regarding the formal world and its inherent principle depends solely upon the conception of these philosophers. 6 The position of the Positive and Atomic philosophers of the Nyaya system is that the world is a collection of particles. All these doctrines are relied upon and maintained by the best belief of every party. 7 Some believe that both present and future worlds are as they are seen and thought to be. The spiritually minded person looks upon the world neither as an entity nor a nonentity. 8 Others acknowledge only the outer world and nothing which is beyond their eyesight. These Charvaka atheists do not believe even in the existence of the intelligent soul within their bodies. 9 There are others who, seeing the constant changes and fluctuations of things with time, attribute omnipotence to time and have become concerned with time with a belief of the vanishing away of the world. 10 The belief of foreigners regarding the resurrection of the soul from the grave, which is built on the analogy of a sparrow flying away from its imprisonment, has gained a firm ground in the minds of men in these countries, and is never doubted by any of them. 11 The tolerant sage looks at all apparent differences alike and takes them in equal light. They know that all these varieties in the world are only manifestations of the one all pervading and unchanging soul. 12 The nature of the world is to go on in its course, so it is natural for the wise to entertain these various opinions regarding the world. The truth, however, is quite mysterious and hard find by inquiry. But it is certain that there is an all-creative power guided by intelligence and design in all its works. 13 That there is one creator of all is the truth arrived at by all godly men and truthful minds. Whoever is certain of this truth is sure to arrive at it without any obstruction. 14 That this world exists and a future one also are the firm beliefs of the faithful, and that their sacred ablutions and oblations to that end never go for nothing. Such assurance on their part is sure to lead them to the success of their object. 15 Reality is an infinite emptiness. That is the conclusion arrived at by the Buddhist. But there is nothing to be gained by this inquiry, nor any good to be derived from a void nothingness. 16 It is Divine Consciousness that everyone seeks, just as they seek a priceless gem or the kalpa, wish fulfilling tree of life. This fills our inner soul with the fullness of the Divine Spirit. 17 The Lord is neither emptiness nor non-emptiness. It is not a nonentity as some maintain. He is omnipotent, and this omnipotence does not abide in him, nor is it without him, but is the same as he. 18 Therefore let everyone rely upon his own belief until he arrives to the true and spiritual knowledge of God. By doing so he will obtain the reward of his faith and therefore he must refrain from fickleness. 19 Therefore consult with the learned and judge with them about the right course. Then
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accept and follow what is best and correct and reject all what proves to be otherwise. 20 A man becomes wise by knowledge of scriptures, by practicing the conduct of the good, and by associating with the wise and good, wherever such persons may be found. 21 He who serves and attends upon the preachers of sacred scriptures and those who practice good and moral conduct is deemed a wise man, and his company also is to be resorted to by the wise. 22 All living beings are naturally impelled towards whatever tends to their real good, just as the nature of water is to seek its own level. Therefore men should choose the company of the good for their own best good. 23 Men are carried away like bits of straw by the waves in the eventful ocean of the world. Their days pass as rapidly as dew drop falling from blades of grass. 24 Rama asked, Tell me sage, who are those far seeing persons who, sensing this world to be full of weeds and thorns, come at last by their right judgment to rest in the state of indescribable bliss? 25 Vasishta replied: Scriptures state that among all classes of beings, there are some such persons whose presence sheds a luster as bright as broad daylight. 26 Beside them are others who are quite ignorant of truth, tossed about and whirled up and down like straw by the whirling waters of the dangerous whirlpool of ignorance in the dark and dismal ocean of this world. 27 These are drowned in their enjoyments, lost from the bliss of their souls. They are ever burning in the flames of worldly cares. Some such are among the gods who are burning on high like mountain trees inflamed by wildfire. 28 Proud demigods were vanquished by hostile gods, cast down into the abyss by Narayana like big elephants into the pit with the ichor of their giddiness. 29 Gandharva songsters show no sign of right reason in them. Being giddy with the wine of melody, they fall into the hands of death just like silly stags caught in a snare. 30 Vidyadharas are mad with their knowledge and do not esteem the esoteric and grand science of divinity for their liberation. 31 Yakshas, impregnable themselves, are ever apt to injure all others on earth. They exercise their harmful powers chiefly upon helpless infants, old men, and other weak and infirm people. 32 Then there are the huge and elephant-like rakshasa demons who have been repeatedly destroyed by Vishnu and will be utterly eradicated by you like a herd of sheep by a powerful lion. 33 Pisacha cannibals are always in quest of human prey. They devour their bodies like fire consumes offerings. Therefore they are in utter darkness of spiritual knowledge. 34 The naaga race that dwells underground resembles stalks of lotuses drowned under the water, or tree roots buried in the earth. Therefore they are quite unconscious of truth. 35 Those of the asura race dwelling in underground cells are like worms and insects groveling in dark underground, utterly ignorant of any knowledge or discrimination. 36 And what must we say of foolish mankind who like the poor ants, are moving busily by night and day in search of a morsel of bread? 37 All living bodies are running up and down in vain expectations, unconsciously gliding over them like drunken men indulging in bad desires, vices and actions. 38 The knowledge of pure truth never enters into the mind of men, just as dust flying over the surface of water never sinks in the water. 39 The holy vows of men are blown away by the blasts of their pride and vanity, just as the husks of rice are blown off by the wind of the threshing mill. 40 Other people without true knowledge are like sorcerers and shudra lower castes. They are addicted to the carnalities of eating and drinking and roll like insects in stink, stench, mud and mire. 41 Among the gods, only Yama, Surya, Chandra, Indra, Rudras, Varuna and Vayu, are said to live liberated forever. So are Brahma, Hari, Brihaspati and Shukra. 42 Among the patriarchs, Daksha, Kasyapa and others are said to be living liberated. Among the seven sages, Narada, Sanaka and the goddess-born Kumara are liberated forever. 43 Among the Danava demons, there were also some who had their emancipation. These were Hiranyaksha, Bali, Prahlada and Sambara, together with Maya, Vritra, Andha, Namuchi, Kesi, Mura and others. 44 Among rakshasas, Vibhisana,

Prahasta and Indrajit are held as liberated, as are Sesha, Takshaka, Karkotaka and some others among the naaga serpent race. 45 The liberated are entitled to dwell in the worlds of Brahma and Vishnu, and in the heaven of Indra. There also are some ancestral spirits of the pitris, siddhas and saddhyas who are reckoned as liberated. 46 Among the human race, there are some who are liberated in their lifetime. There are a few princes, saints and brahmins whose names are preserved in the sacred records. 47 There are living beings in multitudes on all sides of us in this earth, but very few are enlightened with true knowledge. There are unnumbered trees and forests growing all around us, bearing their fruit and flowers and foliage to no end. But there is scarcely a desire-yielding kalpa tree to be found among them.

Chapter 98 Praise of Good Society

Vasishta continued: Those among the judicious and wise who are indifferent and unconcerned with the world, and have surrendered to God resting in His state of supreme bliss, have all their desires and delusions stopped and their enemies lessened in this world. 2 Such a man is neither gladdened nor irritated at anything, nor does he engage in any matter or employ himself in the accumulation of earthly effects. He does not annoy anybody, nor is he annoyed by anyone. 3 He does not bother his head about theism or atheism, nor torment his body with religious austerities. He is agreeable and sweet in his behavior and pleasing and gentle in his conversation. 4 His company gladdens the hearts of all, just as moonlight delights the minds of men. He is prudent in all affairs and the best judge in all matters. 5 He is without any anxiety in his conduct, polite and friendly to all. He patiently manages all his outward business, but remains quite cool in his inner mind. 6 He is learned in the scriptures, taking delight in their exposition. He knows all people both past and present. He also knows what is good and bad and is content with whatever comes to pass on him. 7 The wise act according to the established custom of good people and refrain from what is opposed to it. They gladden all men with their free advice, just as the warm breeze entertains them with the freely given scent of flowers. They afford a ready reception and table to the needy. 8 They treat the needy that come to their doors with respect, just as the blooming lotus entertains the bee that rests on it. By their endeavors, they attract the hearts of people to save them from their sins. 9 They are as cold as any cooling thing, like the clouds of rainy season, and are as quiet as rocks. They are capable of removing the disasters of people by their meritorious acts. 10 They have the power to prevent impending dangers of men, just as mountains keep the earth from falling at an earthquake. They support the failing spirit of men in their calamitous circumstances and congratulate them on their prosperity. 11 Their faces are as pleasant as the fair appearance of the moon and they are like the well wishers of men, like loving consorts. Their fame fills the world like flowers of spring in order to produce fruit for the general good. 12 Holy men are like the spring season. Their voices are like the notes of kokila nightingales, delighting all mankind. Their minds are like profound oceans, undisturbed by turbulent waves or whirlpools of passions and thoughts of other people. 13 They pacify others troubled minds by their wise counsel, just as cold weather calms turbulent seas and puts their noisy waves to rest. 14 They resemble robust rocks on the seashore, withstanding the force of the dashing surges of worldly troubles and afflictions that overwhelm and bewilder the minds of mankind. 15 Only good people seek out these saintly men in times of utmost danger and distress. These and the like are the signs whereby these good hearted people are distinguished from others. 16 Let the weary traveler, in his tiresome journey through this world that resembles the rough sea filled with huge whales and serpents, rely only upon his maker for his rest. 17 There is no other means to pass over this hazardous ocean without the company of the good which, like a sturdy vessel, safely carries him across. There is no reasoning required to prove it so. It must be so. 18 Therefore do not remain like a dull bear in its den, vainly worrying over your sorrows. Seek refuge in the wise man who possesses any of these virtues. That is your remedy and leave all other concerns. 19 Mind not his fault but respect his merit. Learn with all diligence, beginning in your youth, to discern the good and bad qualities of men. 20 First of all, improve your understanding by all means and by the company of the good and by careful study of the scriptures. Serve all good people without minding their faults. 21 Shun the society of men who are conspicuous
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for some great and incorrigible crime. Otherwise it will change the sweet composure of your mind to bitterness and disturbance. 22 This I know from my observation, the righteous turning to unrighteousness. This is the greatest of all evils, when the honest turn to dishonesty. 23 This change and falling off of good men from their moral righteousness have been seen in many places and at different times. Therefore it is necessary to choose the company of only the good for ones safety in this and salvation in the next world. 24 Therefore no one who is to be regarded with respect and esteem should live far from the society of the good and great. The company of the good, though slightly sought, is sure to purify the newcomer with the flying fragrance of their virtues.

Chapter 99 Consciousness in Plants, Insects and Animals

Rama asked, Truly we have a great many ways to relieve our pains, such as our reason, the teachings of the scriptures, the advice of our friends, and the society of the wise and good. There are also the applications of mantras and medicines, charitable giving, performances of religious austerities, going to pilgrimages and resorting to holy places. 2 But tell me. What is the state of brute creations such as worms and insects, birds and flies, and the other creeping, crawling and bending animals? Like us, are they not also susceptible to pain and pleasure? What means do they have to remedy their pains and evils? 3 Vasishta replied: All creatures, whether animal or vegetable, are destined to partake of the particular enjoyments that are allotted to their respective shares, and they are ever tending towards that end. 4 All living beings, from the noble and great to the mean and minute, have their appetites and desires like us. The difference lies in their lesser or greater proportion compared to us. 5 Great Virat-like big bodies are moved by their passions and feelings. So also little puny tribes of insects are fed by their self love to pursue their own ends. 6 See the unsupported birds of the sky, flying and falling in the air. They are quite content wandering in emptiness without seeking a place for their rest. 7 Look at the constant efforts of the little ant in search of its food and hoarding its store like we do for the future provision of our families, never resting content for a moment. 8 Little mollusks, minute as atoms of dust, yet are quick in quest of its food like a swift eagle in pursuit of its prey in the sky. 9 As we pass our time in the world thinking of ourselves our egoism and mine and of this and that so it goes on with every creature having its selfish thoughts and cares for its own kind. 10 The lives of filthy worms are spent like ours in their struggle and anxious care for food and provisions, at all places and all times for the duration of their lives in the world. 11 Plants and trees are somewhat more awakened in their state of existence than mineral productions, which continue dead and dormant forever. But worms and insects are as awakened from their dormancy as men in order to remain restless forever. 12 Their lives are as miserable as ours upon this earth of sin and pain. Their deaths are as desirable as ours in order to set us free from misery after a short-lived pain. 13 As a man sold and transported to a foreign country sees with wonder all things that are not his own. So it is with brute animals that see all strange things in this earth. 14 All animals find everything on earth to be either as painful or as pleasant to them as they are to us also. But they do not have the ability like us to distinguish what is good from what is harmful to them. 15 Brute animals are dragged by their bridles and nose-strings like men sold as slaves to labor in distant lands have to bear all sorts of pains and privation, only animals are not able to communicate or complain to anybody. 16 Trees and plants and their seedlings are subject to pains and troubles like us, when our thin-skinned bodies are annoyed by stormy weather, or assailed by gnats and bugs while trying to sleep. 17 And as we mortals on earth have our knowledge of things, and the wisdom of forsaking a famine-stricken place for our welfare elsewhere, so it is with the animals and birds to migrate from lands of scarcity to those of plenty. 18 The delightful is equally delectable to all. The god Indra as well as a worm are both inclined towards what is pleasurable to them. This tendency to pleasure proceeds from their own choice. This freedom of choice is not denied to any but is irresistible in all. He who knows his free will is altogether free and liberated. 19 The pleasure and pain arising from passions and feelings and from enjoyments in life, as well as the torments of diseases and death, are alike to all living beings. 20 The exceptions
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are the knowledge of things and that of past and future events and the arts of life. All the various kinds of animals are endowed with all other animal faculties and inclinations like those of mankind. 21 The drowsy plant kingdom, the dormant mountain, and other unconscious natures are fully conscious within of an empty intellectual power on which they exist. 22 But there are some who deny the consciousness of an intellectual spirit in the dormant and fixed bodies of trees and mountains, and they allow the consciousness of the empty intellect in only a very slight degree in moving animals and in the majority of the living and ignorant part of mankind. 23 The dense state of mountains and the sleepy nature of the plant creation, being devoid of the knowledge of dualism, have no sense of the existence of the world except that of a nonentity or mere emptiness. 24 Knowledge of the world is accompanied with utter ignorance of its nature, or with agnosticism. For when we do not know ourselves or the subjective, how is it possible for us to know the objective world? 25 The world is ever situated in a state of dumb sluggishness, like a dull block of wood or stone. It is without beginning or end and without an opening in it. It is like the dreaming wakefulness of a sleeping man. 26 The world exists in the same state as it did before its creation. It will continue to go on forever even as now because eternity is always the same both before and after. 27 It is not the subjective or the objective, not the full or emptiness, and not a mute substance or anything whatever. 28 Remain as you are and let me remain as I am. Freed from pleasure or pain in our state of emptiness, we find nothing existent or nonexistent here. 29 Say, why do you forsake your state of absolute nothingness? What do you get from your imaginary city of this world? It is all calm and quiet without, just as your empty consciousness is serene and clear within you. 30 The lack of right knowledge causes our error of the world, but as soon as we come to detect this false knowledge of ours, this error flies away from us. 31 The world being known as a dream without any reality, it is as vain to place any reliance on it as it is to place ones affections on the son of a barren woman, or to confide in such a one. 32 Even in a dream we can recognize that we are dreaming of a false world, so what faith or confidence can we place in the world on coming to know its nothingness upon waking? 33 What is known in the waking state could not be otherwise in sleep. Whatever is known in the later hour of coming to its knowledge, the same must have been its previous state also. 34 There are the three times of present, past and future. Our knowledge of these proceeds from our ignorance of endless duration, which is the only real tranquil and universal substratum of all. 35 As waves crashing against one another do no harm to the waters of the sea, so the destruction of one body by another does no injury to the inner soul which is ever impregnable and also indestructible. 36 The empty Consciousness within us gives rise to the false conception of our bodies. Therefore the loss of the body or its false conception affects neither our intellect nor ourselves. 37 The waking soul sees the world situated in the emptiness of Consciousness, as it were in its sleep. This of creation in the mind, being devoid of materiality, is very much like a dream. 38 The ideas of material things are produced in the beginning of creation from their previous impressions left in the intellect. The world being only a dream or work of imagination, it is an error of the brain to take it for a reality. 39 Traces of prior dreams and reminiscences are preserved in the memory or mind and appear and reappear in it, representing their aerial shapes as substantial figures. 40 This error has taken possession of the mind in the same manner as the untrue is taken for truth. Meanwhile the transcendent and clear truth of the omniform soul is rejected as untrue. 41 In reality there is only Divine Consciousness that has existed forever. The most certain truth is that Brahman is all in all, therefore the doctrine of memory and forgetfulness goes to

nothing. 42 Sheer ignorance devoid of this spiritual knowledge views things only in their material light, and in this realization lies true knowledge which breaks open the door of ignorance. 43 At last nothing remains after expulsion of the error of materiality, only the pure spirit of God who is both the viewer and the view, and the subjective and objective in himself. 44 As the reflection of anything falling on a mirror shows itself within itself, so the world shines of itself in the emptiness of Divine Consciousness, the reflection of anything else being ever cast upon it. 45 As the reflection of a thing exhibits itself in its manifestation, though nobody is there to look at it, so the world is shown in Divine Consciousness, though the same is invisible to everyone. 46 Whatever is found as true, both by reason and proof, must be the certain truth. All else is mere semblance of it, and not being actual can never be true. 47 Though the knowledge of the material world is proved to be false and untrue, yet it is found to mislead us, just as the act of sleep walking does in our sleep and dreaming state. 48 The light of the Divine Luminary casts its reflection into Consciousness and displays the intellectual sphere supremely bright. Tell me therefore, what are we and this spectacle of the world anymore than a rehash or a print of that archetype? 49 If there is a rebirth after our death, then what is it that is lost to us? Should there be no rebirth after death, then there is a perfect tranquility of our souls by our utter extinction and emancipation from the pains of life and death. Or if we have our liberation by the light of philosophy, then there is nothing here that is the cause of any sorrow in any state whatsoever. 50 Only an ignorant man knows the state of the ignorant. The wise are quite ignorant, just as only fish know the perilous state of a deer that has fallen amidst the waves and whirling currents of the sea. 51 It is only the open sphere of Divine Consciousness that represents the diverse images of I, you, he and this and that in its hollow space, just as a tree shows the different forms of its leaves, fruit and flowers in its all producing body or stem.

Chapter 100 Refutation of Atheism, Material Determination

Rama asked, Please tell me, sage, what are your arguments for relieving the miseries of this world against the position of others who are attached to it? 2 They say that a living being is happy as long as the fear of death is out of his view, and there is no reappearance of the dead who are reduced to ashes. 3 Vasishta replied: Whatever certain belief one has, he finds it in his consciousness. That he feels and conceives accordingly is a truth well known to all mankind. 4 As the sky is firm, quiet and omnipresent, so also is the omnipresence of Consciousness. They are considered to form a duality by the ignorant dualist, while the wise take them as the one and same thing from the impossibility of conceiving the coexistence of two things from eternity. 5 It is wrong to suppose the existence of a chaos before creation began. That would be assigning another cause to creation when it has proceeded from Brahman, who is without cause and is diffused in his creation. 6 Those who do not acknowledge the meaning of the Vedas and the final great dissolution are known as men without a revelation and religion. We consider such men to be like dead. 7 We agree with those whose minds are settled in the undisputed belief of the scriptures, that all this is Brahman or the varied God himself. 8 As our consciousness is ever awake in our minds without any intermission, so Brahman that constitutes our consciousness is ever wakeful in us, whether the body lasts or not. 9 If our perceptions produce our consciousness, then man must be very miserable indeed because the sense of a feeling, other than that of the ever blissful state of the soul, is what actually makes us so. 10 Knowing the universe to be the splendor of intellectual emptiness, you cannot suppose the knowledge of anything, or attach the feeling of any pleasure or pain to an empty nothing. 11 Hence men who are quite certain and conscious of the entirety and pure unity of the soul can never find feelings of sorrow or grief arising in any way, like the dust of earth rising to the sky filling its sphere with foulness. 12 Whether the consciousness of unity is true or not in all men, yet the common notion of it, even in the minds of children, cannot be discarded as untrue. 13 The body is not the soul or any other thing of which we have any conception. Consciousness is everything and the world is as consciousness conceives it to be. 14 Whether it is true or not, yet we have the conception of our bodies by means of this. It gives us conceptions of all things in earth, water, and heaven independent of their material forms, as we see the aerial forms of things in our dreams. 15 Whether our consciousness is a real entity or not, yet it is this power which is called the conscious soul. Whatever is the conviction of this power, the same is received as positive truth by all. 16 The authority of all the scriptures rests upon the proof of consciousness. The truth which is generally arrived at by all must be acknowledged as quite certain in my opinion also. 17 Therefore the consciousness of atheists, corrupted by their misunderstanding but later purified by right reasoning, likewise produces good results. 18 But a perverted conscience or corrupt understanding is never reproved by any means, whether by performance of pious acts at anytime or place, or by study of Vedas, or by pursuit of other things. 19 Errors of understanding reoccur in an unprincipled man as often as they are corrected from time to time. Say therefore, what other means can there be to preserve our consciousness from fallacy? 20 Self-consciousness is the soul of man. In proportion to its firmness or weakness, the happiness or misery of man increases or decreases accordingly. 21 If there is no consciousness in men, including those who are conscious of the Divine Essence and are sought by the pious for their liberation from the bonds of the world, then this world would appear like a lifeless, dumb block of
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stone, or a dark and dreary desert. 22 The knowledge of nature or gross materialism which rises in the mind of man because of his lack of self-consciousness is like the dark ignorance one has in his sleep. 23 Rama asked, Sage, what about the atheist who denies the end of the ten sides of heaven, who does not believe in the destruction of the world, but believes only in what exists without thought of what does not exist, 24 who does not perceive the perfect wisdom displayed throughout the universe, but sees only whatever is visible, without knowing their destruction? 25 Tell me sage, what are their arguments about relieving the evils of the world? Remove my doubts to increase of my knowledge in this important truth. 26 Vasishta replied: I have already given my reply to your question regarding the nonbelievers. Now hear me reply with regard to your second question touching the salvation of the soul. 27 O best of men, Rama, you have said that the human soul is made of consciousness alone. 28 This intelligence is indestructible, so it is not destroyed with the destruction of the body. It is joined with the Divine Consciousness without fail. If the (subtle) body is indestructible, then there is no cause for sorrow at its temporary loss. 29 Intelligence is said to be divided into various parts in the souls of men and the different parts of their bodies. If it is so, then intelligence is destroyed with the destruction of individual souls and the physical body. 30 The self-conscious soul that is liberated in the living state does not have to return to earth after death. But consciousness which is not purified by divine knowledge cannot be freed from its reincarnation. 31 Those who deny the existence of consciousness are doomed to the gross ignorance of stones for this disbelief. 32 As the knowledge of sensible objects keeps the mind in utter darkness, so the death of such persons is calculated as their final bliss because they no longer have to feel or see the visible world anymore. 33 Men of pure understandings who have lost the sense of their corporeality are never to be reborn on earth anymore. But those of dull understandings become like gross physical bodies immersed in impenetrable darkness. 34 To intellectual philosophers who view the world as an aerial city in his dream, the world presents its aspect as a phantom and nothing else. 35 There are some who maintain the stability and others who assert the frailty of the world and everything else. But what do they gain by these opinions? The knowledge of either does not increase human happiness or lessen mortal misery. 36 The stability or instability of the greatest or least of things makes no difference in any of them whatever. They are all like the radiating rays of the intellect, though they appear as extended bodies to the ignorant. 37 Those who hold that the essence of consciousness is unlimited, but unconsciousness is limited, and maintain the permanence of the one and the impermanence of the other, talk mere nonsense like the babbling of children. 38 They are the best and most venerable of men who know the body to be the product of and encompassed by the intellect. They are the meanest among mankind who believe the intellect to be the product and offspring of the body. 39 Consciousness (personified as Hiranyagarbha or Brahma the Divine Spirit) is distributed into the souls of all living beings. The infinite space of emptiness is like a network or curtain in which all animals live, flying within its ample expanse like gnats and flies, rising up and sinking below or moving about like shoals of fish in an endless ocean. 40 As this Universal Soul thinks of creating various species, so it conceives them within itself, like seeds conceive future plants in themselves which later develop. 41 Whatever a living being thinks of or conceives, the same quickly springs forth from it, and this truth is known even to children. 42 As vapors fly in the air and waters roll in the ocean, forming whirlpools and waves of various kinds, so the lives of living beings are continually floating in the vacuum of Divine Consciousness. 43 As the emptiness of Consciousness presents the sight of a city to a man in his

dream, so the world presents its variegated aspects since its first creation to the sight of the day dreaming man. 44 There were no supporting causes of material bodies at the first formation of the world. It rose spontaneously of itself as the empty sights appear in our dream. 45 As in a city seen in dream, its houses and their apartments, come to appear gradually to sight, so the dream becomes enlarged and expanded and divided by degrees to our vision. 46 All this creation is only the emptiness of Consciousness. There is no duality or variety in it. It is one even plane of intellect, like the open sky, without any spot or place attached to it. 47 The moonlight of Consciousness diffuses its coolness on all sides and gladdens the souls of all beings. It scatters the beams of reasoning intellect all around, and casts its reflections in the image of the world. 48 The world, as it is now visible to us, lies forever in the mind of God in the same empty state as it was before its creation. It is to be reduced to nothing upon its final destruction. It is the twinkling, or the opening and closing of the intellectual eye, that this empty shadow of the world appears and disappears amidst the universal vacuum of the Divine Mind. 49 Whoever views this world in any light, it appears to him in the same manner. As the world depends only upon Consciousness, it is shown in various forms according to the fancy of its observers. 50 The minds of the intelligent are as pure as the clear sphere of the summer sky. Pure hearted and holy people think themselves as nothing other than their intellects, or only as intellectual beings. 51 These pious and holy people are free from ignorance and the faults of society. They share the gifts of fortune as it falls to them by the common lot of mankind. They continue in the conduct of their worldly affairs like some working machine.

Chapter 101 Consciousness Is Self-Evident; No Reason to Fear Death

Vasishta continued: Consciousness is the soul of the body and is situated everywhere in the manner as I have described. There is nothing so self-evident as Consciousness. 2 It is the clear expanse of the sky and it is the vision of the viewer and the viewed. It composes and encompasses the whole world, therefore there is nothing to be had or lost without it. 3 The philosophers of the atheistic school of Brihaspati do not believe in a future state because they are ignorant of it. They believe in the present from their knowledge of it. Thus knowledge or consciousness is the basis for their belief, so we bear no favor or disfavor to their doctrine. 4 The world is only a name for the dream produced in the vacuum of our hidden knowledge. Tell me. What is the need for a disputant to argue his one-sided view of the question? 5 Our consciousness well knows internally what is good or bad and therefore acceptable or not. The pure soul is manifest in the clear emptiness of air where there is neither this or that view of it exhibited to anyone. 6 The conscious soul is immortal, O Rama. It does not have any form like a rock or tree or any animal. Consciousness is a mere void. All being and not being are like the waves and whirling waters in its ocean of eternity. 7 We are all floating in the vacuum of consciousness you, I and he as well as any other. None of us is ever liable to die, because consciousness is never susceptible of death. 8 Consciousness has nothing to be conscious but of itself. Therefore, O lotus eyed Rama, where can you get a duality, except the single subjectivity of Consciousness? 9 Tell me, O Rama, what is the product or offspring of the empty Intellect? Tell me also if that Intellect could die, from where could we and all others proceed? 10 Tell me what sort of beings are these atheistic disputants, the Saugatas, Lokayatikas and others, if they are devoid of their consciousness, which they so strenuously deny and disallow? 11 This empty consciousness is the same as what is called Brahman. Some call it knowledge and others an empty vacuum. 12 Some call it the spirit, like that of alcoholic liquors, and others use the term embodied spirit (purusha). Others call it the empty Intellect, and Shaivites give it the names of Shiva and the soul. 13 Sometimes it is called only the Intellect, which makes no difference between it and other attributes. The Supreme Soul is ever the same in itself regardless of the name expressed by the ignorance of men. 14 Be my body as big as a hill or crushed to atoms like dust, it is no gain or loss to me in any event because I am the same intellectual body and being forever and ever. 15 Our sires and grand sires are all dead and gone, but their intellects and intellectual parts are not dead and lost with their bodies. For in the case of their death, we would not have their rebirth in us. 16 The empty intellect is neither generated nor destroyed at any time. It is uncreated and imperishable at all times. Say how and when could the eternal void disappear from existence? 17 The infinite and indestructible sphere of Consciousness displays the scene of the universe in its ample space of emptiness. It is without the changes of rising or setting and is ever existent in the Supreme Soul. 18 The Intellect represents the reflection of the world in its clear sphere, like a crystal mountain reflects a wildfire in its translucent space. The Intellect rests forever in the vacuum of the Supreme Soul which is devoid of beginning, middle or end. 19 As the shades of night obscure the phenomena from sight, so the clouds of ignorance darken the bright aspect of the universe as it is represented in the soul divine. 20 As the waters of the ocean roll of themselves in the forms of waves and currents, so does the Intellect exhibit the spectacle of the universe of itself and in itself from all eternity. 21 The Intellect itself is
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the soul of the body, and like air is never extinct or wanting anywhere. Therefore it is vain to be in fear of ones death at anytime. 22 It is a great joy to pass from one into another body. Therefore you fools, why do you fear and grieve to die when there is every cause to rejoice at it? 23 If there is no rebirth after death, then it is a completion devoutly to be wished because it eases and releases from heart-burning disease and dread of being and not being, and their repeated sorrows and miseries. 24 Therefore life and death are neither for our happiness or sorrow because neither is anything in reality, only the representations of the intellect. 25 If the dead are to be reborn in new bodies, it is a cause of rejoicing and sorrowing. The death or destruction of a decayed body for a sound one is considered a change for better. 26 If death conveys the meaning of the ultimate dissolution of a person, it is desirable even in that sense because our pains cease altogether. Or if death is used to mean ones rebirth in a new body and life, then it must be a cause of great rejoicing. 27 If death is dreaded for fear of the punishment awaiting vicious deeds, then this is no different from life where we suffer penalties for our guilt here. Therefore refrain from doing evil for your safety and happiness in both worlds. 28 You all are always crying for fear that you will die, but none of you is ever heard to say that you are going to live again. 29 What is the meaning of life and death, and where are the lands where these are seen to take place? Do they not occur in our consciousness alone, and turn about in the vacuum of the mind? 30 Remain firm with your conscious souls. Eat and drink and act your part with detachment. For being situated in the midst of emptiness, you can have nothing to ask or wish for. 31 Being carried away in the reverie of your dream, and enjoying the gifts of time and changing circumstances, live content with what is got without fear, and know this to be the holiest state. 32 Regardless of the intervening evils that overtake us in every place and time, the holy sage conducts himself with equanimity throughout the tumults of life, like a sleeping man. 33 The holy sage is neither sorry at his death nor glad of his life and longevity. He neither likes nor hates anything, nor does he desire anything whatever. 34 The wise man, who knows all that is knowable, manages to live in this world like an ignorant simpleton. He is as firm and fearless as a rock, and reckons his life and death as rotten and worthless straw.

Chapter 102 The Life of the Awakened; Feigning Wisdom

Rama asked, Tell me sage. After a holy man is acquainted with the supreme essence that is without beginning or end, what perfection does he seek? 2 Vasishta replied: Hear the high state arrived at by a holy man after he has known the knowable, and how such a man conducts his life throughout the whole course of his existence. 3 He lives apart from human society in his solitary retreat in the woods. The stones of the valleys, the trees of the forest, and young antelopes are his friends, family and associates. 4 He considers the most populous city to be a lonely desert. His disasters are his blessings and all his dangers are celebrations to him. 5 His pains are his pleasure and his meditations are like musings to him. He is silent in all his dealings and quiet in all his conduct through life. 6 He is as asleep in his waking hours and remains as if dead to himself while he is living. He manages all his affairs with a coolness, as if he were engaged in nothing. 7 He is pleasant without tasting any pleasure. He is friendly to his fellow beings without any selfish interest of his own. He is strict with himself but always kind to others. He is has no desire for anything, but has a full desire for the common welfare. 8 He is pleased with others conduct without having any course of action for himself. He is devoid of sorrow, fear and care, yet he is always seen wearing a sad appearance. 9 He afflicts nobody, nor is he afflicted by anybody. Though full with his private afflictions and privations, he is ever pleasant in company. 10 He is neither delighted with his gain nor depressed at his loss nor desirous to get anything. Though there may be causes for him to feel joy and sorrow, yet they are never visible on his face. 11 He sympathizes with the unhappy and congratulates happy people. But his collected mind is always invincible in every circumstance of life. 12 His mind is not inclined to acts other than those of righteousness, as is the habit of noble-minded men by their nature, and not any effort on their part. 13 He is not fond of pleasantry nor is he addicted to dullness. He does not run after wealth, but lacks desire and is finished with all cravings. 14 He abides by the law and acts accordingly, whether he is pinched by poverty or rolling in riches. He is never dejected or elated at the unforeseen good or bad events of life. 15 Wise men are seen joyful or sorrowful at times, without changing the quietness and serenity of their nature at anytime. They act the part of players on the stage of the earth. 16 Those who know the truth bear no affection for greedy relatives and false friends, as if they were looking at bubbles of water. 17 Without the affection of the soul, they bear full affection in their hearts for others. The wise man remains quite possessed of himself, while showing his paternal affection to all. 18 The ignorant are like winds passing over running streams. They slightly touch the poisonous pleasures of their bodies, like winds touching the rising waves, and at last are drowned in the depths of their sensuality. 19 But the wise man outwardly deals alike with all with perfect coolness and stillness of his soul within. He seems outwardly to be engaged in business, but his inner mind is wholly disengaged from all worldly concerns whatsoever. 20 Rama asked, But how can a true sage of such nature be distinguished from the many pretended ones, and the ignorant also, who falsely assume such a character only to beguile others? 21 Many hypocrites wander about like horses, wearing the false costume of devotees, pretending true devotion to religion. 22 Vasishta replied: Rama, I say that such a nature, whether it is real or pretended, is the best and highest perfection of man. I know that the learned in Vedic knowledge always view this state as the model
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of perfection. 23 Those who are dispassionate and unconcerned with acts still manage to conduct their secular affairs and actions, like those who are moved by their passions. Though they are adverse to criticism, yet they cannot help but criticize the ignorant because of their compassion towards them. 24 Visible phenomena are all imprinted in the mirror of their minds, like the reflected shadows of buildings. They look upon phenomena with full knowledge of their shadowiness, just as they perceive the fallacy of laying hold of a lump of gold in a dream. 25 There is a coolness pervading their minds, altogether unknown to others, just as the sweet fragrance of sandalwood is unperceived by brutes at a distance. 26 Only those who know the knowable and are equally pure in their minds can distinguish hypocrites from other people, just as only a snake can trace the course of another snake. 27 They are the best of men who hide their good qualities from others. For what man is there who will expose his most precious treasure in the market with the raw produce of his land? 28 The reason to conceal rare virtues is to keep them unnoticed by the public. The wise who lack desire for reward or reputation have nothing to gain or expect from the public. 29 Rama, know that solitude, poverty, disrespect and disregard of men are more pleasing to the peaceful sage than mankinds most valuable gifts and honors. 30 The indescribable delight which attends on the wise man from his conscious knowledge of the knowable is inexpressible in words and is invisible to others, as is its knower also. 31 The egoist wishes men to know his qualification and honor him for it, and not those who are beyond egoistic feelings. 32 It is possible even for the ignorant to reap the results of their practices, such as rising and moving about in the air by means of mantras, and the power of certain drugs that are adapted to those ends. 33 He who can makes effort for any particular end succeeds in accomplishing that end whether he is a clever or ignorant man. 34 Tendencies towards good or evil are implanted in the bosom of man as results of the acts of their past lives. These come to display themselves in action at their proper time, just as sandalwood emits its latent fragrance in its season all around. 35 He who is prepossessed with the knowledge of his individual ego, coupled with his desire for enjoyment of phenomena, takes up the practice of khechari yoga [the practice of placing the tongue above the soft palate and into the nasal cavity] whereby he ascends in the air and gains the reward of his action. 36 The wise man who has nothing to desire knows such practices to be as false as empty air. He refrains from displaying his actions, which he knows at best is only casting to the winds. 37 He derives no good from observing practical yoga, nor does he lose any of his holiness by not observing them. He has nothing to gain from anybody and loses nothing at the loss of anything. 38 There is nothing in earth or heaven, or among the gods or anywhere else, which may be desirable to the magnanimous or to one who has known the Supreme Soul. 39 What is this world to him who knows it to be only a heap of dust and who considers it no better than straw? Then what can be in the world which could possibly be desirable to him? 40 The silent sage, whose soul is full of knowledge and whose mind is quite at rest without fondness for human society, remains content in the state as he is, quite satisfied with whatever occurs to him. 41 He is always cool within himself and reserved in his speech. Eternal truths form the ground work of his mind which is as full and deep as the ocean, and whose thoughts are as bright as daylight. 42 He is full of cool composure in himself, like a pleasant lake resting with its clear waters. He also gladdens all others about him, like the fair face of the full moon cheers the spirits of all. 43 The mandara groves of Nandana paradise, with their woodlands scattered with the dust of their blossoms, do not delight the soul as much as the wise sayings of pundits cheer the spirit. 44 The moon diffuses its cooling beams and the spring season scatters its fragrance

around. The concise sayings of the wise and great scatter their sound wisdom all about, serving to elevate and enrich all mankind. 45 The substance of their sayings proves the appearance of the world to be as false as a magic show. They inculcate the prudence of wearing out worldly cares day by day. 46 The wise saint is as indifferent to the suffering of heat and cold in his own body as if they were disturbances in the bodies of other men. 47 In his virtues of compassion and charity, he resembles the fruitful tree which yields its fruits, flowers, and all to the common use, and exists itself only upon the water it sucks from the ground or receives from heaven. 48 This tree gives to all whatever it possesses of its own body. By virtue of its unsparing munificence to all creatures, this tree lifts its lofty head above them all. 49 One seated in the palace of knowledge has nothing of sorrow for himself, but he pities the sorrows of others, just as a man seated on a rock takes pity on miserable men groveling in the earth below. 50 A wise man is tossed about like a flower by the rolling waves in the eventful ocean of this world. He is set at rest as soon as he gets over it and reaches the shore on the other side. 51 He laughs with the calmness of his soul at the same unvaried course of the world and its people. He smiles to think on the persistence of men in their habitual error and folly. 52 I am amazed to see these deviant men wandering in the mazes of error, fascinated by the false appearances of the phenomenal world as if they were spell-bound to visible phenomena. 53 I have learnt to spurn the eight kinds of prosperity as mere straw. They are of no real good, but rather are causes of evil to men. Though I am inclined to laugh at them, yet I refrain from my habitual disposition of tolerance and patience. 54 I see some men living in mountain caves and others frequenting holy places. Some live at home with their families and others travel as pilgrims to distant shrines and countries. 55 Some roam about as vagrants and mendicants and others remain in their solitary hermitage. Some continue as silent sages, observing their vow of silence, and others sit absorbed in meditation. 56 Some are famous for their learning and others as students of law and divinity. Some are princes and others their priests, while some are as ignorant as blocks of stone. 57 Some are adept in their exorcism of amulets and collyrium, and others are skilled in sorcery with the sword, rod and magic wand. Some are practiced in their aerial journey, others in other arts, and some in nothing like ignorant low caste shudras. 58 There are many who are employed in ceremonial observances and others have abandoned rituals altogether. Some are fanatical in their conduct and others indulge themselves in wandering and travel. 59 The soul is not the body or its senses or powers. It is neither the mind nor the mental faculties, nor the feelings and passions of the heart. The soul is Consciousness which is ever awake and never sleeps or dies. 60 It is never broken or consumed, not soiled or dried up. It is immortal and omnipresent, ever steady and immovable, infinite and eternal. 61 The man who has his soul awakened and enlightened is never contaminated by anything, regardless whatever state or wherever he may happen to be. 62 Whether a man goes down to hell or ascends to heaven, or traverses through all the regions of air, or is crushed to death or pounded to dust, the immortal Consciousness which abides in him without decay never dies with his body or suffers any change with the changes of the body. He remains quite as quiet as still air, which is the uncreated deity itself.

Chapter 103 Consciousness Creates Both Knowledge and Ignorance; Praise for the Yoga Vasishta; Impossibility of Causation or Materiality
Vasishta continued: Consciousness, without beginning or end, the indescribable light and its reflection shining forever serenely bright, is never destroyed or extinguished in any way. 2 Such is Consciousness and such is the soul which is also indestructible. For if it were destroyed at all at anytime, there could be no recreation of the world or any rebirth of human souls. 3 All things are subject to change and have many varieties. But not so Consciousness, which is ever immutable and always perceived to be the same in all individuals. 4 We all feel the coldness of frost, the heat of fire, and the sweetness of water, but we have no feeling of any kind regarding Consciousness, except that we know it to be quite clear and transparent like open air. 5 If the intellectual soul is destroyed with the destruction of the body, then why should you lament its loss? Why not rejoice at its annihilation which releases you from the pains of life? 6 The loss of the body involves no loss on the empty intellect. Living friends can see the departed souls of savages hovering as ghosts over cemeteries. 7 Should the soul exist for the same duration as the body, then why does a dead body, while it is still not rotten and is entire, not move about? 8 If seeing ghosts is a feeling inherent within the mind, then tell me. Why does a man not often see ghosts, except on the occasion of the death of his friends? 9 Should it be a misconception inborn with the mind to see the ghosts of departed friends, then tell me. Why dont you see the ghosts of friends who die in a distant country, but only of those who die before your eyes? 10 Hence Consciousness, being the soul of all and everywhere, is not confined in any place. It is known to be of the same nature as everyone thinks it to be. 11 It is unconfined and unrestrained anywhere, and is of the nature of one compact consciousness that is felt by all, and is the cause of our knowledge of all things. 12 There can be no other which may be supposed to be the prime cause of all at the beginning of creation. Should there be any other that is supposed to be such, let the philosophers now declare it before me. 13 There was nothing uncreated before creation, nor was there anything created in the beginning. The duality that now presents itself in the form of the universe is only a reflection of unity. 14 Phenomena are no more than reflections or copies of ideas and our impression of phenomena being a visible something is as false as all other false sights mistaken for true reality. 15 Phenomena are a wonderful display of almighty power exhibited in the sphere of Divine Consciousness. Wakeful understanding sees these visible phenomena as one sees sights in dream, but never in the ignorance of sound sleep. 16 Even knowledge and ignorance amount to the same thing because the difference is only verbal and not real. Nothing visible to the eye is substantial in its essential nature. 17 Whatever was thought and said to be seen by others is the effect of their error and lack of reason. Now if they are disproved by right reason, where can you find the visible anymore? 18 Therefore employ your reasoning to investigate spiritual knowledge. Your diligent and persevering inquiry will secure to your success in both worlds (knowledge and ignorance). 19 Inquiry into spiritual knowledge will dispel your ignorance, but you will never be successful without constant practice. 20 Leave aside all anxieties and their causes and devote every bit and moment of time observing ones sacred vows day by day. The study of sacred scriptures with due attention leads a man to his welfare in both worlds. 21 Whether one is proficient or not in his spiritual knowledge, he may still improve on it by constant discussion of the subject with his superiors. 22 Whoever requires this precious treasure must exert effort to attain it, or else he must
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leave off altogether if he tired in his pursuit. 23 He must keep from reading heretical works and study authentic scriptures. Then he will gain peace of mind as one obtains victory in warfare. 24 The course of the mind, like that of a stream of water, runs in the channels of wisdom and of folly, forming a lake wherever it runs more rapidly, and settling as in its bed. 25 There was never a better scripture than this, nor is any like this now in existence or likely to be in fashion in the future. Therefore let the student reflect well upon its teachings to improve his understanding. 26 Whoever studies it well will find his mind instantly elevated with superior knowledge, unlike the effect of a curse or blessing which comes too late upon its recipient. 27 Knowledge of this scripture is calculated to do you more good than you can derive from the tender care of a father or mother or the efficacy of your pious actions. 28 Know, O gentle Rama, that this world is the prison of your soul and its bondage is the poisonous pain of your mind. There is no release or relief other than through the knowledge of your soul. 29 The dark illusion of gross ignorance has misled you to a sense of your individual ego. Only by reflecting upon the meaning of the scriptures can you can be freed from your deplorable state. 30 The world is a hollow cave in which the horrible snake of illusion lies in ambush. Illusion feeds on the empty air of vain enjoyments that appear pleasant to taste at first, but prove to be as fleeting as empty air in the end. 31 It is a pity that your days fly past as quickly as the wind and you are unaware as they come and go. While you are occupied with your activities, you are fostering your own death with your negligence. 32 We all live in death, our lives sustained by alternate hopes and fears until the few days of our lives end in death. 33 The approach of death is attended with extreme pain and remorse. The inner parts of the body are separated from the outer, and the outer must be smeared with dust such as sandalwood paste. 34 They who purchase wealth and honor at the expense of their lives are grossly ignorant and false. They avoid gaining their permanent bliss by the teachings of the scriptures. 35 Why should a man bear the feet of his evil enemies on his head when he can attain his highest station of divine bliss in the sphere of his intellect, and with little or no pain? 36 O men, forsake your vanity and ignorance, your persistence in the course of your baseness, then by the knowledge of the great soul you will gain your redemption from the sufferings of the world. 37 I am preaching to you constantly, day and night, only for the sake of your own good. Take my advice to turn your souls to the eternal soul by forsaking the knowledge of your egoism for that of your souls. 38 If now you neglect to take steps to cure the evil of your impending death, then O silly man, what preparation can you make for the hour of death when you are on your sickbed? 39 There is no other work for true knowledge of the soul except this. Therefore this must be acceptable to you as well as we accept collecting sesame seeds for their oil. 40 This book will light your spiritual knowledge, just as a lamp lights up a dark room. Drink it deep and it will enliven your soul. Keep it by your side and it will please you like a consort. 41 A man having selfknowledge, but untaught in the scriptures, has many things unintelligible and doubtful which he will find clearly expounded here in the sweetest language. 42 This is the best among the principal works of the scriptures. It is easily intelligible and delightful. There is nothing new here, only what is well known in spiritual philosophy. 43 Let a man read the many stories contained in this book with delight. He undoubtedly will find this book the best of its kind. 44 Whatever has not yet been explained in full light, even to scholars learned in all the scriptures, will be found clearly explained in this book, just as they find gold appearing amidst sand. 45 The authors of scriptures are not to be despised at anytime or in any country, but the reader should employ his reason and judgment to dive into the true meaning of the writing. 46 Those who are led by their ignorance or envy, or moved by their pride and delusion to disregard and

neglect this scripture through their lack of judgment, are to be regarded as killers of their souls, unworthy of the company of the wise and good. 47 I know you well, Rama, and I know my audience and each of your capacities to learn and my capacity to instruct you. I like to teach you these things because of my compassion for you, as I am naturally communicative and kindly disposed to my listeners. 48 I see your understanding develop and therefore I am interested in communicating my knowledge to you. I am a man and not a gandharva or rakshasa. Therefore I bear a fellow feeling towards you all. 49 I see you all as intelligent beings, pure in your souls. I have become this friendly to you because of these merits in you. 50 Now my friends, learn speedily to realize the truth of your detachment to everything that you see in this world. 51 Whoever neglects to remedy his diseases of death and hell fire in this life, what will he do to avert them when they are irremediable and when he goes to a place where no remedy is to be found? 52 Until you feel a distaste for everything in this world, you will not find an end to your desires. 53 O great intellects, there is no other means to elevate your soul other than subjugating your desires to the minimum. 54 If you think there is anything in this world that is of any good to you, it will only serve, at best, to bind your soul, and then it will disappear like the horns of a rabbit. 55 All earthly goods seem to be good when they are untried and least understood. But whatever seems something in the end proves to be no such thing, or tends to your ruin. 56 All worldly existences prove to be nothing by right reasoning. But how they are real and what they are, whether self-existent or made, or permanent or temporary, cannot be rightly known. 57 To say all worldly existences are self-existent because we can assign no cause to them, or because they were already created in the beginning, proves that all existence is the uncreated and ever lasting Supreme Being itself. 58 There is no cause for consciousness in the Being that is without and beyond the senses. The mind is not the cause of objects that are sensed because the mind is only the sixth organ. 59 How can the one unspeakable Lord be the cause of these varieties of things passing under various names? How can reality have these unrealities in itself, and how can the Infinite Void contain these finite solid bodies? 60 The nature of a plastic body is to produce something plastic, just as the seeds of fruit bring forth only their own kind. But how is it possible for an amorphous void to produce solid forms from its emptiness, or the solid body to issue forth from a formless mind? 61 How can you expect to derive a solid seed from a void nothing? Therefore it is a deception to think that the material world is produced from the immaterial and formless void of empty consciousness. 62 There are no conditions of creator or creation in the Supreme Being. These states are the fabrications of many words and reveal the ignorance of their inventors. 63 The lack of supporting causes that are coexistent with the prime cause disproves the existence of an active agent and his act of creation. This truth is evident even to children. 64 Knowing that only God is the cause, but acknowledging causes for of the earth and other elements, is as absurd as saying that the sun shines and yet it is dark. 65 To say that the world is formed of atoms is as absurd as believing in a bow made from the horn of a rabbit. 66 If the meeting and arrangement of dull, inert and unconscious material atoms form the world, then it would of its own accord make a mountainous heap here and a bottomless deep there in the air. 67 The particles of this earth and the atoms of air and water are constantly flying about from place to place in the forms of dust and humidity. Why do they not yet form a new hill or lake anywhere again? 68 Invisible atoms are never seen or known from where or how they are, nor is it possible for formless atoms to unite together and form an idea. 69 The creation of the world cannot be the work of an unintelligent cause. Nor can this frail and unreal world be the work of an intelligent maker because only a fool makes something for

nothing. 70 Unconscious air, composed of atoms with a motion of its own, is never moved by reason or sense, nor is it possible to expect air particles to act wisely. 71 We are all composed of the intellectual soul and all individuals are made of empty selves. They all appear to us like the figures of people appearing in our dream. 72 Therefore there is nothing that is created and this world is not in existence. The whole is the clear void of the intellect which shines with the glare of the Supreme Soul in itself. 73 The empty universe rests completely in the vacuum of Consciousness, just as force, fluidity and emptiness rest respectively in wind, water, and open air. 74 The form of the intellectual vacuum is like that of the airy mind which passes to distant climates in a moment, or it is like that of consciousness which is seated in the hollow of the heart, and yet is conscious of everything in itself. 75 Such is the empty nature of all things. They are perceived in their intellectual forms only in intellect. So the world is an empty idea that is only imprinted in the intellect. 76 The revolving nature of Consciousness exhibits the picture of the universe on its surface. Therefore the world is identical with the empty nature of the intellect, and nothing else. 77 Therefore the world is the counterpart of the intellectual sphere. There is no difference in the empty nature of both the world and the intellect. They are both the same thing presenting two aspects, just as the wind and its vibrations are one and the same thing. 78 As a wise man going from one country sees all varieties around him, yet he knows he is the same quiet and unvaried soul everywhere. 79 A wise man remains aware of the true nature of the elements. Hence the true nature of the elements is never forgotten from the mind of a wise man. 80 The world is only an empty sphere of reflections resembling a curved, hollow reflector. It is a formless void in its nature, unimpaired and indestructible in its essence. 81 There is nothing that is born or dies in it. There is nothing which having come to being, is ever annihilated anywhere. The world is not separate from the emptiness of Consciousness, and Consciousness is as empty as the insubstantial world itself. 82 The world never is, nor was, nor shall ever be in existence. It is only a silent appearance passing in the intellectual emptiness of the Supreme Spirit. 83 Divine Consciousness alone shines forth in its glory as the mind exhibits its images of cities and the like in dream. In like manner, our minds show us the image of world like day dreams in our waking state. 84 If there is no physical body in the beginning, how could any physical body exist at any time? Therefore there was no corporeality whatever except in the dream of the Divine Mind. 85 The Supreme Consciousness first dreams of its self-born body, and that we have sprung from that body and have ever afterwards continued to see dream after dream to no end. 86 It is impossible for us with all our efforts to turn our minds to the great God because our minds are not of the nature of Divine Consciousness, but born in us like swellings on the thyroid only for our own destruction. 87 The god Brahma is not a real person, only a fictitious name for Hiranyagarbha, the totality of souls. But ever since he is regarded as a personal being, the world is considered as body and he the soul of all. 88 But in truth all is unreal, from the highest heaven to the lowest pit. The world is as false and frail as a dream which rises vainly before the mind and vanishes in a minute. 89 The world rises in the emptiness of Consciousness and sets therein like a dream. When it does not rise in the enlightened intellect, it is like a dream disappearing from the waking mind and flying before daylight. 90 Although the world is known to be false, yet it is perceived and appears to us as true. In the same manner, the false appearances in our dreams appear true to our consciousness at the time of dreaming. 91 As the formless dream presents many forms before the mind, so the formless world assumes many shapes before our sight. All these are perceived in our consciousness, which is as minute compared to infinite space and sky as an atom of dust is small compared to

Mount Meru. But how can this consciousness, which is only another name for Brahman, be any bit smaller than the sky? How can the empty world have any solid form when it has no cause with form to form it so? 93 Where was there any matter or mould, and where from this material world was it molded and formed? Whatever we see in our waking minds during daylight is similar to the baseless dreams we see in the empty space of our sleeping minds in the darkness of the night. 94 There is no difference between waking and sleeping dreams, just as there is none between empty air and sky. Whatever is pictured in the sphere of the intellect, the same is represented as an aerial castle in the dream. 95 As the wind is the same as its vibration, so the rest and vibration of the spirit are both alike, just as air and emptiness are one and the same thing. 96 Hence it is only the intellectual sphere which shows the picture of the world. The whole is a void without any support. It is the splendor of the light of the intellect. 97 The whole universe is in a state of perfect rest and tranquility, without rising or setting. It is as a quiet and indestructible as a block of stone, ever shining serenely bright. 98 Therefore tell me, from where and what are these existent beings? From where does this understanding of their existence come? Where is there a duality or unity? From where do ideas of egoism and distinct personalities come? 99 Be ever prompt in your actions and dealings, with an utter indifference to everything and an unconcern about unity or duality. Preserve an even and cool disposition of your inner mind. Remain in the state of nirvana with your extinguished passions and feelings, free from disease and anxiety. Be aloof from the visible and remain in pure Consciousness only. 100 This chapter is a lecture on entity and nonentity and the establishment of the spirituality of the universe.
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Chapter 104 The Process of Production Is Indescribable Except as a Dream

Vasishta continued: The sky is the receptacle of sound and air is perceptible to feeling. Their friction produces heat and the removal of heat causes cold and its medium of water. 2 The earth is the union of these, and in this way they combine to form the world that appears to us like a dream. How else is it possible for a solid body to issue forth from the formless vacuum? 3 This progression of productions leads us too far beyond our comprehension. But it being so in the beginning, it brings no blemish upon the pure nature of the empty spirit. 4 Divine Consciousness is also a pure entity that manifests in the same spirit. The same is said to be the world and this is the most certain truth of truths. 5 There are no material things and no five elements of matter anywhere. All these are mere unrealities, yet they are perceived by us like the false appearances in our dreams. 6 As a city and its various sights appear very clearly to the mind in our dreams during sleep, so it is very pleasant to see the dream-like world shining so brightly before our sight during our waking hours. 7 I am of the nature of my empty consciousness, and so this world is also of the same nature. Thus I find myself and this world to be of the same nature, like a dull and unconscious stone. 8 Hence the world appears like a shining jewel, both at its first creation and in all its following formations, because it always shines with the brightness of Divine Consciousness. 9 Whether the body is something or nothing in its essence, its lack of pain and the happiness of the mind are forms of its state of moksha or liberation. Its rest with a peaceful mind and pure nature is reckoned as its highest state of bliss.
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Chapter 105 Waking and Sleeping Dreams Are Alike

Vasishta continued: The Intellect conceives the form of the world of its own intrinsic nature, then fancies itself in that very form as if it were in a dream. 2 It pretends to be asleep while it is awake and views the world either as solid stone or as void as the empty air. 3 The world is compared to a dream of a country adorned with a great many cities. There is no reality in the objects of dream, so there is no reality in anything appearing in this world. 4 All the three worlds are as unreal as the various sights in a dream. They are only daydreams to us although we may be awake. 5 Whether waking or sleeping, there is nothing that we name the world. It is only an empty void and, at best, only an air-drawn picture in the hollow of the Intellect. 6 It is a wonderful display of Consciousness in its own hollowness, like an array of hills and mountains on the horizon of the sky. In the minds of the wise, the sense of the world is like a waking dream. 7 This world is nothing material, nor is it anything of the form of Consciousness. It is only a reflection of Consciousness. The emptiness of the intellectual world is only an empty nothing. 8 The triple world is only a reflection and like the sight of something in dream, it is only an airy nothing. The empty air becomes diversified and remains entirely bodiless, though seeming to be embodied in our waking state. 9 The inventive imagination of men is ever busy even in the hours of sleep and dreaming. It presents us with many creations that were never created and many unrealities appearing as real. 10 The universe appears to be an extensive substantiality implanted in the space of endless emptiness. But this huge body, with all its mountains and cities, in reality is nothing other than the original emptiness. 11 The howling of the sea and the clattering of clouds on mountains, though so very tremendous to a man awake, are not heard by the person sleeping soundly by his side. 12 As a widow dreams bringing forth a son in her sleep, and as a man thinks he is ever living by forgetting his past death and rebirth, so are men unmindful of their real state. 13 The real is taken for the unreal and unreal for the real, just as a sleeping man forgets his bedroom and thinks he is somewhere else. So everything turns to be otherwise, just as the day turns to night and the night changes to day. 14 The unreal soon succeeds the real, like night, and the impossible becomes possible, as when a living person sees his own death in his sleep. 15 The impossible becomes possible, just as the supposition of the world in the empty void. Darkness appears as light, as the nighttime seems to be daylight to the sleeping and dreaming man at night. 16 Daylight becomes the darkness of night to one who sleeps and dreams in the daytime. The solid ground seems to be hollow to one who dreams of being cast into a pit. 17 As the world appears to be a unreal when we sleep at night, so it undoubtedly appears real when we are awake. 18 The two suns of yesterday and today are the one and the same, and two men are of the same kind, so doubtless the waking and sleeping states are alike. 19 Rama asked, That which is subject to objection and exception, of course, cannot be admissible and reliable as true. The sight of a dream is only momentary and falsified upon our waking. Therefore it cannot be the same as the waking state. 20 Vasishta replied: The disappearance of dreamed objects upon waking does not prove their falsity or make any difference between the two states of dreaming and waking because dream objects are like what a traveler sees in a foreign country. They are lost upon his return to his own country, and the foreign sights are soon lost upon his death. Hence both are true for the time being and both are proved equally false and fleeting at last.
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A dead man is separated from his friends, like from those he saw in his dreams. Then the living are said to be awakened when a sleeper awakes from his slumber. 22 After seeing the delusions of happiness and misery, witnessing the rotations of days and nights, and feeling many changes, the living soul at last departs from this world of dreams. 23 After the long sleep of life, there comes an end when the human soul becomes assured of the untruth of this world and that the past was a mere dream. 24 As the dreamer perceives his death in the land of his dream, so the waking man sees his waking dream of this world when he meets with his death, in order to be reborn in it and to dream again. 25 The waking beholder of the world finds himself dying in the same manner in his living world, where he is doomed to be reborn in order to see the same scenes and to die again. 26 He who in his waking state dies in the living world comes to revisit this earth in order to see the same dreams which he believed to be true in his former births. 27 Only the ignorant believe their waking sights to be true. The firm conviction of the intelligent is that all these appearances are only daydreams at best. 28 Taking the dreaming state for waking and the waking one for dreaming are only verbal distinctions implying the same thing. Life and death are meaningless words for the two states of the soul, which is never born or dies. 29 He who sees his life and death in the light of a dream is said to be truly awake. The living soul who considers itself to be awake or dying is quite the opposite. 30 Whoever dwells upon one dream after another, or wakes to see a waking dream, is like one who wakes after his death and finds his waking also to be a dream. 31 Our waking and sleeping are both like events of history to us. They are comparable to the past and present histories of nations. 32 The dream-sleep seems like waking, and the waking-dream is no other than sleeping. In fact, both are only unrealities, the mere rehash and reflections of the intellectual sky. 33 We find moving and inert beings on earth and innumerable creatures all around us. But in the end, what do they all prove to be other than the representations of the eternal ideas in Divine Consciousness? 34 As we can have no idea of a pot without that of the clay of which it is made, so we can have no conception of blocks of stone unless they were represented to our minds from their prints in Divine Consciousness. 35 All these various things which appear to us in waking and dream states are nothing other than the ideas of blocks which are represented in our dreams from their original models in Consciousness. 36 Now tell me, O intelligent Rama, what else must this Consciousness be other than the infinite and empty essence which acts in us, both in our dreaming and waking states? 37 Know that this Consciousness is the great Brahman who is everything in the world. It is as if the world were the divided forms of his essence, yet Brahman is the figure of the whole world, as if he were the undivided whole himself. 38 As a clay pot is not conceivable without its substance of clay, so the intellectual Brahman is inconceivable without his essence of Consciousness. 39 Again, as a stone jar is beyond our conception except with the idea of its stony substance, so the spiritual God is beyond our comprehension without our idea of spirit. 40 As water is a liquid substance that cannot be conceived without its fluidity, so Brahman is conceived as composed of only his Consciousness or Intellect, without which we can have no conception of him. 41 So also we have the conception of fire by means of its heat, without which we have no concept of it. Such also is our idea of God; that he is Consciousness and beside this we can form no idea of him. 42 We know wind only by its movement and by no other means whatsoever. So God is thought as Consciousness or Intelligence itself, beside which we can have no idea of him. 43 There is nothing that can be conceived without its property, just as we can never conceive vacuum to be without its emptiness, or have any conception of earth without its solidity. 44 All things are composed of empty Consciousness, just as a pot or painting appearing in the mind is composed of the essence of consciousness only. So the hills and other objects

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appearing in a dream are only representations of Consciousness. 45 We are conscious of the aerial sights of hills and towns presented to our minds in dream. In the same way we know all things in our consciousness in our waking. Both in our sleep and waking, there is a quiet calm emptiness in which only our intellect is ever busy showing itself in endless shapes before us.

Chapter 106 Description of Intellectual Emptiness; the Impossibility of Material Creation

Rama said, Tell me again, O venerable sage, about that intellectual emptiness which you say is Brahman. I am never satisfied listening to the holy words distilling like ambrosia from your lips. 2 Vasishta replied: I have fully explained to you that the two states of sleeping and waking mean the same thing. The twin virtues of composure and self-control are both the same, though they are differentiated by two names. 3 In reality there is no difference, as there is none between two drops of water. They are both one and same thing, as the empty essence of Brahman and Consciousness. 4 As a man travelling from country to country finds his self consciousness to be the same everywhere, Consciousness is the same, dwelling within himself in its empty form which is called the intellectual sphere. 5 This intellectual sphere is as clear as the ethereal sky in which earthly trees display their greenness by drawing the moisture of the earth through their roots. 6 Again, the intellectual sphere is as calm and quiet as the mind of a man who is free from desires and is at rest in himself, and whose composure is never disturbed by anything. 7 Again, the intellectual sphere is like the quiet state of a man who is rid of his busy cares and thoughts and reposes himself at ease before he is lulled to the unconsciousness of his sleep. 8 As trees and plants growing in their season rise and fill the sky without being attached to it, such also is intellectual sphere, filled by rising worlds after worlds without being touched or related to any. 9 Again, the intellectual sphere is as clear as a cloudless sky and as vacant as the mind of a saintly man wholly purified from the impressions of visible phenomena and from its thoughts and desires about anything in the world. 10 The intellectual state is as steady as those of stable rocks and trees, and when such is the state of the human mind, it is then said to have attained its intellectuality. 11 The intellectual emptiness, devoid of the three states of the view, viewer, and viewed, is also said to be devoid of any attribute and all change. 12 The intellectual sphere is where thoughts of various kinds of things rise, last and set in turn without any effect of change on its immutable nature. 13 The intellectual sphere is that which embraces all things, which gives rise to and becomes everything itself, and which permeates throughout all nature forever. 14 That which shines resplendent in heaven and earth, and inside and outside of everybody with equal blaze, is said to be the emptiness of the intellect. 15 It extends, stretches and bends through all, connected by its lengthening chain to infinity. The emptiness of the intellect envelops the universe, whether we see the universe as an entity or nonentity. 16 The intellectual vacuum produces everything and at last reduces all to itself. The changes of creation and dissolution are all the workings of this emptiness. 17 The emptiness of the intellect produces the world, just as the sleeping state of the mind presents its sights in our dreams. And as dreams are dispersed in deep sleep, so the waking dream of the world vanishes from view upon dispersion of its fallacy from the mind. 18 Know that the Intellectual Vacuum possesses its process of understanding and is quiet and composed in its nature. Its mere thought, in the wink of an eye, makes the world exist and disappear by turns. 19 The Intellectual Vacuum is found in the discussions of all the scriptures to be what is neither this nor that nor anything, and yet as all and everything in every place and at all times. 20 As a man traveling from country to country retains his consciousness untraveled in himself, so the intellect always rests in its place though the mind travels far in an instant. 21 The
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world is full of the intellect, both as it is or had ever been before. Its outward sight is dependent on its ideas within the mind, giving it the forms and figures as they appear to us. 22 In a slight winking of its eye, it assumes and appears in varied shapes, though the intellect never changes its form or alters the clarity of its empty sphere. 23 Look on and know all these objects of sense with your external and internal organs without any desire for them. Be ever wakeful and vigilant observing them, but remain as in a deep sleep with regards to them. 24 Be without desire for anything and indifferent in your mind when you speak to anyone, take anything, or go anywhere. Remain as deadly cold and quiet as long as you have to live. 25 But it is impossible for you to remain without desire as long as your eyes and mind are fixed upon the visible before you, and as long as you continue to see the mirage of the world and look upon its duality like two moons rising in the sky. 26 Know that the world is no production from any beginning. The lack of a prior cause precludes any such sequence and it is impossible for a material creation to proceed from an immaterial cause. 27 Whatever appears as existent before you is the product of a causeless cause. It is the appearance of the Transcendent One that appears visible to you. 28 The world as it stands at present is nothing other than its very original form. The same non-dual and undivided pure soul appears as a duality, just as the disc of the moon and its halo create the appearance of two moons. 29 Our false notion of duality has given us a strong bias towards the error of believing in the false and taking the shadow of a dream for reality. 30 Therefore the phenomenal world is no real production, nor does it actually exist or is likely ever to come into existence. Likewise it is never annihilated because it is impossible for a nonexistent to be nothing again. 31 Hence that which is only a form of serene vacuum must also be quiet calm and serene. This exhibits itself in the form of the world, but necessarily remains of its own nature quite clear and steady, imperishable through all eternity. 32 Nothing we see before us, nothing that is visible, is ever reliable as real. There is never any viewer because there is nothing separate to be viewed. 33 Rama asked, If this is so, then O most eloquent sage, explain the nature of the visible, their view, and viewer. What are these that appear to our view? 34 Vasishta replied: There being no assignable cause for the appearance of the visible, their vision can only be a deception. The hypothesis of scholars is that this is true. 35 Whatever appears as visible to the sight of the viewer is all fallacy, the offspring of the great delusion of Maya. The world in its concealed sense is only a reflection of the Divine Mind. 36 The intellect is awake in our sleeping state and shows us the shapes in our dreams like the sky shows changes and differences in its ample garden. Thus the intellect manifests itself in the form of the world and in itself. 37 Hence there is no formal cause or self evolving element since the first creation of the world. That which sparkles anywhere before us is only the great Brahman Himself. 38 It is the sunshine of the Intellect within its own hollow sphere that manifests this world as a reflection of his own being. 39 The world is an exhibition of the quality and unqualified emptiness of the Intellect, just as existence is the quality of existent beings, emptiness is the property of vacuum, and form is the attribute of a material substance. 40 Know that the world is the concrete counterpart of a distinct attribute of the transcendent glory of God. The world is a very reflection of God visibly exposed to the view of its beholders. 41 But in reality, there is no duality whatever in the unity of God. He is neither the reflector nor the reflection. Say, who can ascertain what he is, or tell whether he is a being or not being, or a something or nothing? 42 Rama asked, If it is how you describe, that the Lord is neither reflector nor reflection, and neither viewer nor the viewed, then tell me. What is the difference between cause

and effect? What is the source of all these? If they are unreal, why do they appear as realities? 43 Vasishta replied: Whenever the Lord thinks on the manifestation of his Consciousness, he beholds the same at that same moment, then becomes the subjective beholder of the objects of his own thought. 44 The intellectual vacuum itself assumes the form of the world, just as the earth becomes a hill by itself. But it never forgets itself for that form, as men do in their dreams. Moreover, there is no cause to move it to action except its own free will. 45 As a person changing his former state to a new one retains his self consciousness, so Divine Consciousness retains its identity in its transition from prior emptiness to its subsequent state of fullness. 46 The thought of cause and effect and the sense of visible and invisible proceed from errors of the mind and defects of vision. False imagination frames these worlds and nobody questions or upbraids himself for his error. The states of cause and effect and those of visible and invisible are mere phantoms of error rising before the sight of the living soul and proceeding from its ignorance. Then its imagination paints these as the world and there is nobody who realizes his error or blames himself for his blunder. 47 If there is another person who is the cause, beholder, and enjoyer of phenomena, then tell me who it is and what are these phenomena? That is the point in question. Is it liable to proof? 48 The state of our sleep presents us only with the indiscernible emptiness of Consciousness. So how is it possible to show one soul as many without being blamed for it? 49 Only the self-existent soul presents the appearance of the world in the intellect. The ignorance of this truth has led to the general belief of the creation of the world by Brahma. 50 Ignorance of this intellectual phenomenon has led mankind to many errors called by various names of illusion, ignorance, phenomena and, finally, the world. 51 Manifestations in the intellectual vacuum take possession of the mind like a ghost. The unreal world appears as a reality, like the false phantom of a ghost takes a firm hold on a childs mind. 52 Although the world is an unreality, yet in our empty consciousness we have a notion of it as something real. This is nothing more than the embodiment of a dream which shows us the forms of hills and cities in empty air. 53 Consciousness represents itself as a hill or a Rudra, or as a sea or as the god Viraj himself, just as a man thinks in his dream that he sees hills and towns in his empty mind. 54 Nothing that has any form can be the result of a formless cause. Hence the impossibility that the solid world exists, that the world is formed of atomic elements, that it was annihilated before its creation, or that there will be any world dissolution. Therefore it is evident that the world always and only exists in its ideal form in the Divine Mind. 55 The world is a mere uncaused existence inherent in its empty state in the empty Mind. What is called the world is nothing other than an emptiness appertaining to the empty Consciousness. 56 The minds of ignorant people are like glassy mirrors receiving the dim and dull images of things set before their senses. But those of reasoning men are like clear microscopes that spy the vivid light of the Divine Mind that shines through all. 57 Therefore, the best of men shun the sight of visible forms. They view the world in the light of intellectual emptiness, remaining as firm as rocks in the meditation of the steady Intellect, placing no faith or reliance on anything else. 58 Consciousness shows the revolution of the world in itself by its constant act of airy reasoning, just as the sea displays its circular movement throughout the watery world by the continual rotation of its whirlpools. 59 As the figurative tree of our desire produces and yields our wished-for fruits in a moment, so Consciousness instantly presents everything before us that is thought of. 60 As the mind finds its wished for gem and the fruit of its desire within itself, in the same manner the internal soul instantly meets with its desired objects in its empty self.

As a man passing from one place to another rests calmly in between, such is the state of the mind in the interval between its thoughts, when it sees neither the one nor another thing. 62 It is only the reflection of the Consciousness that shines clearly in variegated colors within the cavity of its own sphere. Though devoid of any shape or color, yet it exhibits itself in color like the blue in the emptiness of the sky. 63 Nothing unlike can result from empty Consciousness, only that which is empty as itself. A material production requires a material cause, which is lacking in Consciousness. Therefore the created world is only a display of the Divine Mind, like the appearance of dreams before our sleeping minds.

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Chapter 107 Formless Cannot Create Form; All Is Subjective (Ideal)

Vasishta continued: The world is the subjective Intellect and inborn in it, and not the objective which is perceived from without. It is the empty space of Consciousness-Intellect which displays ideas in itself, and here the triple state of the thinking principle, its thinking and thoughts combine together. 2 In its ample exhibition, all living beings are displayed as dead bodies. I and you, and he and it are all represented like lifeless figures in a picture. 3 All persons engaged in active life appear in Consciousness-Intellect as motionless blocks of wood, or as cold and silent bodies of the dead. All moving and unmoving beings appear as empty air. 4 The sights of all things are exposed here, like the glare of the crystal surface of the sky. They are to be considered as nothing, for nothing substantial can be contained in the hollow mind. 5 Bright sunbeams, splashing waves, and the gathering vapors in the air present us with forms of shining pearls and gems. But never does anyone rely on their reality. 6 So this phenomenon of the world, which appears in the emptiness of Consciousness and seems to be true to the appearance of all, yet should never be relied upon by anyone. 7 Consciousness is entangled in its false fancies and dwells on the errors of unreal material things rising like smoke before it, just like a child entranced in his own hobby. 8 Say men of ignorance, what reliance can you place on mine and yours that you say this is I and that is mine? Ah, well do I now perceive that it is the pleasure of ignorant people to indulge themselves in their imaginary flights. 9 Knowing the unreality of the earth and other things, men are yet prone to pass their lives in those vanities and in their ignorance of truth. They resemble miners who, instead of digging the earth in search of gold, expect it to fall upon them from heaven. 10 The lack of any prior or supporting cause proves a priori the impossibility of the effect. The lack of any created thing proves a posteriori the nonexistence of any causal agent. 11 They who deal with all the unreal shadows of persons and things in this uncreated world are like ignorant fools who nourish their unborn or dead offspring. 12 Where does this earth and all other things come from? Who made them and how did they spring to sight? It is the representation of the Intellectual emptiness that shines in itself, and is quite calm and serene. 13 The minds of those addicted to imagine themselves, a causality and its effect, and time and place, are inclined to believe that the earth exists. But we have nothing to do with their childish reasoning. 14 The world, whether considered material or immaterial, is only a display of intellectual emptiness which presents all these images to our minds like dreams, and like the empty sky that shows its colors and figures to our eyes. 15 The form of empty consciousness is without form. We have knowledge of it only through our perception. It is the same which shows itself in the form of the earth and other phenomena. The subjective soul appears as the subjective world to our sight.
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Chapter 108 Story from Another World of a Besieged King (Vipaschit)

Rama asked, He whose mind is bound by ignorance to the bright vividness of visible phenomena sees the perceptible scenes of thoughts as mere idle dreams, as imaginary as empty air. 2 Now, O sage, please tell me again about the nature and manner of this ignorance of the true nature of things as thoughts. To what extent and how long does this ignorance of the spiritual bind a man? 3 Vasishta replied: Know Rama, that those who are infatuated by their ignorance think this earth and the elementary bodies are as everlasting as they believe Brahman to be. Now, O Rama, listen to a story on this subject. 4 In some corner of infinite space there is another world with its three worlds of upper, middle and lower regions, like here in this world. 5 In that other world there is a piece of land as beautiful as our own called the plateau level land, where all beings had their free range. 6 In a city of that place there ruled a king well known for his learning who passed his time in the company of the learned men of his court. 7 He shone as handsome as a swan in a lake of lotuses and as bright as the moon among the stars. He was as dignified as Mount Meru among mountains and he presided over his council as its president. 8 The strain of poets fell short reciting his praises, and he was a firm patron of poets and bards, like a mountain supports those seeking refuge. 9 The prosperity of his valor flourished day by day and stretched its luster to all sides of the earth, just as the blooming beauty of lotus blossoms, under the early beams of the rising sun, fills the landscape with delight every morning. 10 That respectable king of brahmin faith adored Agni as the lord of the gods with his full faith and did not recognize any other god as equal to Agni. 11 He was surrounded by a conquering army consisting of cavalry, elephants and foot soldiers. He was surrounded by his councilors like the sea is surrounded by its whirlpools and rolling waters. 12 His vast and unflinching forces were employed in the protection of the four boundaries of his realm, just as the four seas serve to surround the earth on all its four sides. 13 His capital was like the hub of a wheel, the central point of the whole circle of his kingdom. He was as invincible a victor of his foes as the irresistible discus of Vishnu. 14 Once a shrewd messenger appeared to the king from the eastern borders of his state. The messenger approached the king in haste and delivered a secret message that was not pleasing to him. 15 Lord, may your realm be never detached, which is bound fast by your arms as a cow is tied to a tree or post. But hear me tell you something which requires your consideration. 16 Your chieftain in the east is snatched away from his post by the relentless hand of a fever. He seems to have gone to the regions of death, to conquer, as it were, the god Yama at your command. 17 Then as your chief in the south proceeded to quell the borderers in that region, he was attacked by hostile forces who poured upon him from the east and west and he was killed by the enemy. 18 Upon his death, the chieftain of the west proceeded with his army to seize those provinces from the hands of the enemy. 19 On his way he was met by the combined forces of the hostile princes of the east and south who put him to death. 20 Vasishta continued: As he was relating in this manner, another messenger driven by his haste entered the palace with the great a rush of a floods current. 21 He said, O lord, the general of your forces on the north is overpowered by a stronger enemy and is defeated and driven from his post, like an embankment broken down and carried away by rushing waters.
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Hearing so, the king thought it useless to waste time and leaving his royal apartment, he commanded as follows. 23 Summon the princes and chiefs and the generals and ministers to appear here immediately in their full armor. Open up the arsenal and get out the destructive weapons. 24 Put your armor of metal link plates on your bodies. Set the infantry on foot, number the regiments, and select the best warriors. 25 Appoint the leaders of the forces and send the messengers all around. Thus said the king in haste, and such was the royal command. 26 Then the watchman appeared before the king and lowly bending down his head, he sorrowfully expressed, Lord, the chieftain of the north is waiting at the gate and expects like the lotus to come to your sun-like sight. 27 The king answered, Go quickly and bring him to my presence so that I may learn from his report the genuine events of that quarter. 28 Thus ordered, the watchman introduced the northern chief to the royal presence. The chief bowed down before his royal lord, who saw the chieftain in the following condition. 29 His entire body, every part of it, was full of wounds and scars. He breathed hard, spouted out blood, and supported himself with difficulty. 30 With due obeisance and faltering breath and voice, his limbs contorted, he delivered this hasty message to his sovereign. 31 The chieftain said, My lord, the three chiefs of the other three quarters, with numerous forces under them, have already gone to the realms of Yama (death) in their attempt to conquer enemies at your command. 32 Then the clansmen, finding my weakness defending your realms alone on this side, assembled in large numbers and poured upon me with all their strength. 33 With great difficulty I have very narrowly escaped from them to this palace, all gory and gasping for life as you see. I implore you to punish the rebels who are not invincible before your might. 34 Vasishta continued: As the yet alive and wounded chieftain was telling his painful story to the king in this way, there suddenly appeared another person entering the palace after him who spoke to the king in the following manner. 35 O sovereign of men, the hostile armies of your enemies, like the shaking leaves of trees, have all surrounded the outskirts of your kingdom in great numbers on all its four sides. 36 The enemy has surrounded our lands like a chain of rocks. They are blazing all about with their waving swords and spears, and with the flashing of their forest-like maces and lances. 37 The bodies of their soldiers, with flags flying and weapons shaking on them, appear like chariots moving upon the ground. Their rolling war cars seem like sweeping cities all about. 38 Their uplifted arms appear like forests of fleshy trees rising in the sky. The loud sounding phalanx of big elephants seemed like huge bodies of rainy clouds roaring on high. 39 The ground seems to rise and sink with the bounding and bending of their snorting horses. They give the land an appearance of the sea, sounding harshly under lashing winds. 40 The land is moistened and whitened by the thickening froth fallen from the mouths of horses, bearing resemblance to the foaming sea, full with its salt spray. 41 Groups of shining armor and weapons in the field resemble the warlike array of clouds in the sky and are like huge surging waves rising upon the surface of the sea, troubled by the gusts of the deluge. 42 The weapons on their bodies, their armor and crowns, shine with a flash that equals the flame and fire of your valor. 43 Their battle array, in the forms of circling crocodiles and long stretching whales, resemble the waves of the sea that toss these marine animals upon the shore. 44 Columns of their lancers are advancing with one accord against us, flashing with furious rage and fire, uttering and muttering their abusive insults to us. 45 It is for this purpose that I have come to report these things to my lord, so that you will consider proceeding in battle array to the borders and drive these insurgents like weeds from the outskirts. 46 Now my lord, I take leave of you, with my bow and arrows and club and sword as I came, and leave the rest to your best discretion.

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Vasishta added: Saying so, and bowing lowly to his lord, the messenger immediately went out, like waves of the sea disappear after making a gurgling noise. 48 Upon this, the king with his honorable ministers, his knights and attendants and servants, together with his cavalry and charioteers, men and women and all the citizens at large were struck with terror. The sentinels of the palace trembled with fear as they shouldered their arms and held their weapons, which resembled a forest of trees shaken by a hurricane.

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Chapter 109 King Vipaschit Immolates Himself in Sacred Fire, Producing Four Copies
Vasishta continued: In the meanwhile, the assembled ministers advanced before the king, just as the sages of the past sought the help of celestial Indra when they were invaded by the Daitya demons. 2 The ministers said, Lord! We have consulted and determined that because the enemy is irresistible by any of the three means (peace, dissension, and bribe) they must be quelled by force or due punishment. 3 When the proposal of friendship is of no avail and the offer of hostages also fails, it is useless to propose any other term for reconciliation. 4 Evil enemies who are base and barbarous from different countries and races, great in number and opulence, and acquainted with our weakness and weak parts are hardly conciliated by terms of peace or bribes of subsidy. 5 Now there is no remedy against this insurrection other than showing our valor to the enemy. Wherefore let all our efforts be directed towards the strengthening of our gates and ramparts. 6 Give orders to our brave soldiers to rush out to the field and command the people to worship and implore the protection of the gods. Let the generals give the war alarm with loud sounding drums and trumpets. 7 Let warriors be well armed and let them rush to the field. Order soldiers to rush upon the plains in all directions like dark flood clouds inundating the land. 8 Let outstretched bows rattle in the air and bowstrings twang and clang all around. Let the shadows of curved bows hide the skies like clouds. 9 Let bowstrings flash like flickering lightning in the air and the loud war whoops of soldiers sound like growling clouds above. Let flying darts and arrows fall like showers of rain and make combatants glare with sparkling gold rings in their ears. 10 The king said, All of you proceed to battle and promptly do all what is necessary on this occasion. I will follow you directly to the battlefield, after finishing my ablution and the adoration of the fire god Agni. 11 In spite of the important affairs which waited on the king, yet he found a moments opportunity to bathe by pouring pots full of pure Ganges water upon himself, in the manner of a grove watered by a shower of rainwater. 12 Then he entered his fire temple and worshipped the holy fire with the reverence commanded in the scriptures. Then he began to reflect in the following manner. King Vipaschits thoughts: 13 I have led an untroubled and easy life, passing in pleasure and prosperity. I have kept the security of all the subjects of my realm stretching to the sea. 14 I have subdued the surface of the earth and reduced my enemies under my foot. I have filled the smiling land with plenty under the arc of the sky everywhere. 15 My fair fame shines in the sphere of heaven like clear and cooling moonbeams. The plant of my renown stretches to the three worlds like the three branches of the Ganges. 16 I have lavished my wealth upon friends and relatives and respectable brahmins in the same way as I have amassed treasures for myself. I quenched my thirst with the waters of coconuts growing on the edges of the four oceans. 17 My enemies trembled before me for fear of their lives. They groaned before me like croaking frogs with distended pouches. My rule extended over and marked the mountains situated in islands in distant seas. 18 I have wandered with bodies of spiritual masters over the nine regions beyond the visible horizon. I have rested on the tops of bordering mountains, like flying clouds that rest on mountain tops. 19 With my full knowing mind and my perfection in divine meditation, I have acquired my dominions entire and unimpaired through my goodwill for public welfare. 20 I have bound lawless rakshasa demons in strong chains. I have kept my cares for religious duties, and
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those for my treasures and personal enjoyments, within proper bounds without letting them clash with one another. 21 I have passed my lifetime in the uninterrupted discharge of my triple duties. I have enjoyed my life with great satisfaction and renown. But now hoary old age has come upon me, like snow and frost fallen upon withered leaves and dried straw. 22 Now old age has come and blasted all my pleasures and efforts. After all this, these furious enemies have overpowered me and are eager for war. 23 They have poured upon me in vast numbers on all sides and victory is doubtful. Therefore it is better for me to offer myself as a sacrifice to the god of this burning fire, which is known to crown its worshipper with victory. 24 I will pluck this head of mine and make an offering of it to the fire god Agni as a fit fruit to offer, and say, O fire god, I make here an offering of my head to you. 25 I give this offering, as I have ever before given my oblations to fire. Therefore accept this also, O god, if you are pleased with my former offerings. 26 Let the four vessels of your fiery furnace yield four forms of me with brilliant and strong bodies, like that of Narayana with his mighty arms. 27 Thus, with my four bodies, I will be able to meet my enemies on all four sides and be invulnerable like you, by keeping my thought and sight ever fixed in you. 28 Vasishta continued: So saying, the king took hold of a dagger and separated his head from his body with one stroke, like children uses their nails to tear a lotus bud from its stalk. 29 As the head became an offering to the fire of dusky fumes, the headless trunk of the self-immolated sovereign also sprang and flew upon the burning furnace. 30 The sacred fire, fed with the fat and flesh of the royal carcass, yielded four such living bodies from amidst its burning flames. It is the nature of the good and great to make an instantaneous gift fourfold of what they receive in earnest. 31 The king sprang from the fire in his fourfold forms of royal appearance. These were as bright with light as the radiant body of Narayana when it first rose from the formless deep. 32 The kings four bodies shone brightly, adorned with their inborn decorations of the royal crown and other ornaments and weapons. 33 They wore armor, crowns, helmets, bracelets and fittings for all and every part of the body. Necklaces and earrings hung upon them as they moved along. 34 All four princes were of equal forms and of similar shapes and sizes in all the parts of their bodies. They were all seated on horseback, like so many Indras riding on their Uchaisrava 35 horses. They had long and ample quiver, full of arrows with golden shafts. Their heavy bows and bowstrings were equally long and strong with the god of war. 36 They also rode on elephants and steeds and were mounted on their chariots and other vehicles in their warfare. They were alike impregnable by the arms of the enemy, both themselves as well as the vehicles they rode. 37 They sprang from the pit of the sacred fire, nourished by the offerings poured on it, like flames from an undersea fire rise in the ocean. 38 Their flowery bodies on jeweled horses shone light on all sides like four smiling faces of the moon. Their good figures looked like Lord Vishnu, as if they have come out from fire and water.

Chapter 110 Description of Battle

Vasishta continued: In the meantime the battle raged in full fury between the royal forces and the hostile bands that had advanced before the city gates. 2 Here the enemies were plundering the city and villages, and there they set fire to houses and hamlets. The sky was hidden by clouds of smoke and dust and the air was filled by loud cries of havoc and wailing on every side. 3 The sun was hidden by the thickening shadow of a network of arrows spread over the skies. The disc of the sun now appeared to view and was then lost to sight the next moment. 4 The burning fire of incendiaries set flame to the leaves of forest trees. Firebrands of burning wood were falling loosely all around and iron sheets of arrows were hurling through the air. 5 The flame of the blazing fire added a double luster to burnished and waving weapons. The souls of the great combatants falling in battle were carried aloft to the regions of Indra where heavenly apsara nymphs took care of them. 6 The thundering sounds of fierce elephants excited the bravery of warriors. Missile weapons of various kinds were flung about in showers. 7 The loud shouts and cries of combatants depressed the spirits of treacherous cowards. The white clouds of dust flying in the air appeared like elephants intercepting the paths of the midway skies. 8 Chieftains eager to die in the field wandered about with loud shouts. Men were falling in numbers here and there as if stricken by lightning on the battlefield. 9 Burning houses were falling below and fiery clouds dropped from above. Flying arrows in the form of rocks were rolling on high and descending upon and dispatching to death numbers of soldiers who were ready to die. 10 Galloping horses in the field made it appear like a wavy ocean from far away. The crashing of the tusks of fighting elephants crackled like clashing clouds in air. 11 Arrow shafts filled the forts and its strongholds, their flashing on roofs making a glare of fire around. 12 The dashing of one another passing to and fro tore their garments into pieces. The furling of flags in open air and the clashing of shields between combatants made a pat-pat noise all around. 13 The flash of elephant tusks, the crash of weapons dashing on stony rocks, and the loud uproar and clamor of the battlefield invited the elephants of heaven to join in the fight. 14 Flights of arrows ran like rivers into the ocean of the sky. Flying lances, swords and discuses flung into the air resembled sharks and alligators swimming in the ethereal sea. 15 The impact of the armor of the clamorous combatants and the clashing of arms in commingled warfare were like the sound of the ocean crashing against islands. 16 Foot soldiers feet trod down the ground into a muddy pool. Blood issuing from arrow wounds in their bodies ran like rivers carrying down broken chariots and slain elephants in its rapid course. 17 The flight of winged arrows and the falling of battle axes resembled waves of a sea of missiles in the air. Broken arms of the vanquished floated upon it like sea animals. 18 The sky was set on fire by flames issuing forth from the clashing arms. The celestial regions were filled with the deified souls of departed heroes, now released from the chains of their wrinkled and decaying frames of earth. 19 Clouds of dingy dust and ash filled the sky with flashes of lightning flaming like arches amidst them. Missile weapons filled the air, as the drawn out arms occupied the surface of the earth. 20 Contending combatants hooted at one another and broke and cut their weapons in mutual contest. Cars were split by clashing at each other and chariots were destroyed by dashing together. 21 Here the headless trunks of the kabandhas (man eating cannibals) mingled with the gigantic bodies of vetala demons. It was disastrous on every side as demonic vetalas plucked hearts for their tasty meal. 22 Warriors tore the arteries of the slain, breaking apart their arms, heads and
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thighs, while the uplifted and shaking arms of kabandhas made a moving forest in the air. 23 Demons moving about with open and jeering mouths made their stomachs and jaws into caskets for carrion. Soldiers passing with their helmets and crowns looked fiercely on all around. 24 To kill or die, to slay or to be slain, was the soldiers final glory in the field. Their greatest shame was to retreat giving or receiving wounds. 25 He makes death happy who dries up the boast of soldiers and chieftains, who drains the flowing ichor of ferocious elephants, and who is entirely bent on destruction. 26 Loud applause was given to the victory of modest and unknown heroes, and great censures were poured upon nameless and treacherous cowards. 27 Rousing the sleeping virtues of bravery is as glorious to the great and strong as the laying out of treasures for the protection of their protgs. 28 Elephant trunks were broken in conflicts of elephant riders and charioteers, stopping the flow of fragrant ichor fluid from their front lobes. 29 Elephants left loose by their flying leaders fell into lakes and cried like shrill storks. Here they were pursued and overcome by men who inflicted terrible wounds upon them. 30 In some place unprotected people, abused and half dead in their fight against each other, fled and fell at the feet of their king, just as daytime takes shelter under the shining sun. 31 Maddened by pride and the force of giddiness, they became subject to death, just as millionaires and traders seek a better place in fear of their life. 32 The red coats of soldiers and the red flags lifted upon their arms like a forest of trees spread a reddish color all around, like the adoration of the three worlds. 33 White umbrellas, resembling the waves of the Milky Ocean when churned by Mandara Mountain, covered the weapons of the soldiers and made the sky appear like a garden of flowers. 34 Eulogies sung by bards and gandharvas added to the valor of the warriors. Flowing juice from tall palm trees infused a vigor to their veins, like that of Baladeva. 35 There was the clashing of arms of the rakshasa demons who fought together in bodies big as lofty trees, taking bodies to fill their mountain caves so they could feed on the carcasses. 36 On one side there was a forest of spears rising in the sky with the severed heads and arms of the slain attached to them. There were flying stones on another side, flung from the slings of combatants and covering the ground below. 37 There was the clapping of hands and weapons of champions, resembling the splitting and bursting of great trees. The loud wailing of women was also heard echoing amidst the lofty buildings of the city. 38 Flights of fiery weapons in the air resembled flying firebrands on high, with a hissing and whistling sound. People fled from them, leaving their homes and treasures all behind. 39 Onlookers fled to save their heads from arrows flying all about, just as timid snakes hide for fear of the devouring garuda bird flying upon them from the sky. 40 Brave soldiers were ground under elephant tusks as if pounded under the jaws of death, or like grapes crushed in pressing mills. 41 Weapons flying in the air were repelled and broken by stones flung by machines. The shouts of champions resounded like the echoing yells of elephants issuing out of ragged caverns. 42 Hollow sounding mountain caves resounded to the loud shouts of warriors who were ready to expose their dear lives and dearly earned vigor in the battlefield. 43 The burning fire of firearms and the flames of incendiaries flashed on all sides. These conflicts and chariot fighting went on unceasingly all around. 44 The battlefield was surrounded by surviving soldiers who were as brave hearted as Mount Kailash with the strong god Shiva seated therein. 45 Brave men who boldly expose their lives in battle enjoy a lasting life by their death in warfare. But they die in their living state by their flight from the battlefield. 46 Big elephants were being killed in the battlefield like lotus flowers immersed into the waters of lakes. Great champions were seen to stalk over the plains like towering storks strutting on the banks of lakes. 47 Showers of stones fell in torrents with a whizzing sound. Showers of

arrows were flying with a whistling noise around. The uproar of warriors growled in the skies. Flying weapons hurled through the air, and the neighing of horses, the cries of elephants and the whirling of chariot wheels, together with the hurling of stones from the height of hills, deafened the ears of men all about.

Chapter 111 The Four-fold King Lets Loose His Weapons and the Enemy Flees
Vasishta continued: Thus the war waged with the fury of the four elements in their mutual conflict on the last doomsday of the world. Forces on all sides were falling and flying in numbers in and about the battlefield. 2 The sky was filled with the harsh sound of the fourfold noise of drums and conch shells and the rattling of arrows and clattering of arms. 3 Furious warriors violently dashed against one another. Their steel armor clashed and split in two with a clattering noise. 4 The ranks of the royal forces were broken in the struggle. They fell fainting in the field, chopped off like leaves and plants, mown down like straw and grass. 5 At this time the trumpets announced the kings advance with a sound that filled the quarters of the sky. Cannons thundered with a treble roar resounding with the uproar of kalpa doomsday clouds. 6 They tore apart the sides of the highest hills and mountains and split rocky shores and banks everywhere in two. 7 Then the king issued forth on all four sides with his fourfold forms, like the four regents of the four quarters of the sky, or like the four arms of Narayana stretching to so many sides of heaven. 8 Followed by his fourfold forces (cavalry, elephants, chariots and foot soldiers), he rushed out of the confines of his city of palaces and marched to the open fields lying outside town. 9 He saw the thinness of his own army and the strong armament of his enemies all around. He heard their loud clamor all about, like the wild roar of the surrounding sea. 10 Flights of arrows flying thickly through the air appeared like sharks floating in the sea. The bodies of elephants moving in the wide battlefield seemed like huge waves of the ocean. 11 Battalions wheeling in circular formations seemed like the whirling currents in the sea. Racing chariots with flags waving appeared like sailing ships with their unfurled sails. 12 Uplifted umbrellas were like sea foam and the neighing of horses was like the frothing of whales. The glare of shining weapons appeared like flares of falling rain under sunshine. 13 Moving elephants and sweeping horses seemed like huge surges and swelling waves of the sea. Dark barbarians babbled like the gurgling bubbles of sea waters. 14 Big elephants with towering and dark bodies seemed like they were mounting from the heights of mountains and breaking their hollow caves, howling with rustling winds. 15 The battlefield looked like a vast expanse of water in which slain horses and elephants seemed to be swimming like fragments of floating rocks, and where moving legions appeared like the rolling waves of the sea. 16 The field presented a dismal appearance of an untimely dissolution. It appeared like an ocean of blood stretching to the borders of the visible horizon. 17 Fragments of shining weapons sparkled like gems in the womb of the sea. The movements of forces resembled the casting of projectile stones into it. 18 Falling weapons were like showers of gems and snow from above, presenting the appearance of evening clouds in some place and fleecy vapors in another. 19 Seeing the ocean-like battalions of the enemy, the king thought of swallowing it up like sage Agastya had sucked up the ocean. With this intent, he remembered his airy instrument which he thought to employ on this occasion. 20 He got the Vayavya airy weapon and aimed it at all sides, just as when the god Shiva set the arrow to his bow on Mount Meru to slay the demon Tripura. 21 The king bowed to his god Agni, then let his mighty missile fly with all his might to repel the raging fire and protect his own forces from destruction. 22 He hurled his airy Paryaya arrow, together with its accompaniment of cloudy Vayavya arms, both to drive off as well as to set down enemy fire. 23 From these weapons propelled from his crossbow, eight beings emerged into a thousand horrible weapons which ran and filled all four quarters of the sky. 24 Then from these there issued forth an abundance of darts and arrows, currents of iron spears and tridents, and volleys of
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shots and rockets. 25 There were torrents of missiles and mallets, as well as currents of discs and battle axes. 26 There were streams of iron clubs, crowbars and lances, and floods of bhindipalas, short arrows thrown from the hand or through tubes, and splashes of spring nets and air instruments of incredible velocity. 27 There was a pouring out of fire-bolts and a flowing of lightning, as also showers of falling rains and swift movements of flying swords and sabers. 28 There were fallings of iron arrows, javelins and spears of great force and strength, and fallings of huge snakes found in mountain caves that grew there for ages. 29 In no time the force of these flying arms blasted the ocean of hostile forces. They fled in full haste and hurry in all directions, like heaps of ash before a hurricane or whirlwind. 30 The thunder showers of arms and the driving rain of weapons were driven away by impetuous winds. Invading hosts hurried to all sides like the torrent of a river in the rains breaks its embankment and flows over the land. 31 The four bodies of enemy troops (horse, elephant, chariots, and foot-soldiers) fled defeated from the battlefield to the four directions, just as mountain waterfalls rapidly move down on all sides during rains. 32 Lofty flags and their posts were torn, broken and hurled down like large trees in a storm. Forests of uplifted swords were broken to pieces and scattered on the ground like the petals of marichi flowers. 33 Sturdy bodies of strong soldiers rolled like stones on the ground, smeared with blood gushing out of their wounds, while the groans of their agony broke down the stoutest hearts. 34 Large elephants rolled upon the ground with their tusks sticking up like trees. They roared aloud with crackling sounds as loud as thunder and roaring clouds. 35 The clashing of the weapons against one another was like the crashing of tree branches. Horses clashing on one another sounded like the clashing of waves of the sea. 36 The crackling of war cars and their huge wheels sounded like the rattling of a hailstorm from high, and the mingled noise of the clashing of carriages, horse, elephants and foot soldiers sounded like the crashing of rocks. 37 The harsh sound of war hoops and shouts was loud on all sides. Cries of dying soldiers, We die! We are slain! swelled in the air all around. 38 The army appeared like a sea and their march was like the whirling of an whirlpool with its gurgling sound. Blood shed on their bodies exhibited the roseate color of the evening sky. 39 Waving weapons appeared like a dark cloud moving upon the shore. The ground smeared in blood looked like the fragment of a purple cloud. 40 Lancers, mace bearers and spearmen looked as if they were carrying tall palm trees in their hands. Cowardly crowds of men were seen crying aloud like timid deer in the plains. 41 The dead bodies of horses, elephants and warriors lay on the ground like the fallen leaves of trees. The rotten flesh and fat of bruised carcasses were trodden down to mud and mire in the field. 42 Their bones were pounded to dust under the hoofs of horses. The impact of wood and stones under driving winds raised a rattling sound all around. 43 The clouds of doomsday roared and the winds of desolation blew. The rains of the last day were falling and the thunders of destruction were clapping all about. 44 The surface of the ground was all muddy and miry and the face of the land was flooded all over. The air was chilly and bleak and the sky was drizzling through all its pores. 45 Huts and hamlets and towns and villages were all in a blaze. People and their cattle, with all the horses and elephants, were in full cry and loud uproar. 46 Earth and heaven resounded with the rolling of chariots and rumbling of clouds. The four quarters of heaven reverberated to the twanging of the kings fourfold bow on all the four sides. 47 Forked lightning played with the friction and clashing of clouds. Showers of arrows and missiles fell profusely from them, with thunderbolts of maces and darts of spears. 48 The armies of the invading chiefs fled in confusion from all four sides of the field. Fleeing forces fell in numbers like swarms of ants and troops of gnats and flies. 49 The armies of the border tribes were burnt amidst the conflagration of fiery arms, pierced by the fiery weapons falling like thunderbolts

upon them from the darkened sky. The fleeing forces resembled marine animals of the deep, disturbed by the perturbed waters of the sea, plunging into an undersea fire.

Chapter 112 Catalogue of Fleeing Foreign Foes

Vasishta continued: The Chedis of Deccan, who were as thickly crowded as the sandalwood of their country, and clothed with girdles resembling the snakes about those trees, were felled by battle axes and driven far away south to the Indian Ocean. 2 The Persians fled like the flying leaves of trees. Striking against one another in their madness, they fell like vanjula leaves in the forest. 3 Then the demon-like Daradas, who dwell in the caverns of the distant Dardura Mountains, were pierced in their breasts and fled from the field with their heart-rending sorrow. 4 Winds blew away the clouds of weapons that poured down torrents of missile arms, shattering the armor of warriors, glittering like twisting lightning. 5 Elephants fell upon one another, piercing their bodies and goring each other to death with their tusks. They became heaps of flesh like the lumps of food with which they filled their bellies. 6 Another people of the Raivata Mountains, fleeing from the battlefield by night, were waylaid by fierce pisacha ghosts who tore their bodies and devoured them with a huge appetite. 7 Those who fled to palm and spice forests, and to the old woods on the banks of Dasarna River, were caught by crouching lions and tigers and were throttled to death under their feet. 8 The Yavanas living on the coasts of the western ocean, and those in the land of coconut trees, were caught and devoured by sharks in the course of their flight. 9 Sakas warriors, unable to endure the painful touch of black iron arrows, fled in all directions. Ramatha people were blown away and broken down like a lotus bed by blowing winds. 10 Routed enemy flying to Mahendra Mountain covered its three peaks with their armor of black metal-link plates, making them appear as if covered by the dark clouds of rainy weather. 11 Legions of these hostile forces, broken down by the arms of the king, were first plundered of their clothing by highway robbers, then killed and devoured by the night cannibals and demons of the desert. 12 The surface of the land was converted to the face of the sky with broken fragments of weapons glistening like the stars of heaven twinkling in large multitudes above. 13 The caverns of the earth, resounding to the noise of the clouds above, were like a grand orchestra sounding the victory of the king both in earth and heaven. 14 Peoples inhabiting islands lost their lives under whirling discs, as those dwelling in watery marshes perish on dry lands for want of rain. 15 The defeated islanders fled to the Sahya Mountains and, having halted there for a week, departed slowly to their respective places. 16 Many took shelter in the Gandhamadana Mountains, while multitudes took refuge in the Punnaga forests. Retreating gandharvas became refugees in the sanctuaries of vidyadhara maidens. 17 Huns, Chinese and Kiratas had their heads struck off by the kings flying discuses. These were blown away by opposing winds like lotus flowers by the blast. 18 The Nilipa people remained as firm as trees in a forest, and as fixed in their places as thorns on stalks and brambles. 19 Beautiful pastures of antelopes, woodlands and hilly tracts on all sides were desolated by showers of weapons and the rush and crush of the forces. 20 Thorny deserts became the asylum of robbers after they deserted their homes to be overgrown by thorns and thistles. 21 Persians who were abundant in number got over to the other side of the sea. They were blown away by the hurricane, like stars blasted by the storm of final desolation. 22 Winds blew as on the last day of destruction, breaking down woods and forests all about and disturbing the sea by shaking its hidden rocks below. 23 The dirty waters of the deep rose on high with a gurgling noise. The sky was invisible from the clouds of weapons which hid its face on all sides. 24 Howling winds raised a clapping and flapping sound all about. Showers of snow also fell which flowed on earth like the waters of the sea.
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The charioteers of Vidura country fell down from their cars with the loud noise of waves and were driven to fall into the waters of the lake, like bees from lotuses. 26 Defeated foot soldiers were as numerous as the dust of the earth and well armed from head to foot. They were so overpowered under the showers of arrows and discs that they were blinded by the tears of their eyes, unable to beat their retreat. 27 Huns were buried with their heads and heels in their flight over the sandy deserts of the north. Others were as muddied as dirty iron from being stuck in the swampy shores of northern seas. 28 The Sakas were driven to a cardamom forest on the bank of the eastern shores. There they were confined for some time, then released without being dispatched to the regions of death. 29 The Madrasis were repulsed to the Mahendra mountains, from where they lightly descended on the ground as if fallen from heaven. There they were protected by great sages who preserved them there with care as tender as they bear for the deer of their hermitage. 30 Fugitives flying to the refuge of the Sahya Mountains instead found their imminent destruction in the underground cell, the twofold gain of their present and future good. Thus it comes to pass that many times good issues out of evil where it was least expected. 31 Soldiers flying to Dasarna, at the meeting of the ten rivers, fell into Dardura Forest like the fallen leaves of trees. There they lay dead all about by eating the poisonous fruits there. 32 The Haihayas who fled to the Himalayas drank the juice of visalya-karani pain-killing plants by mistake, and thereby became as violent as vidyadharas and flew to their country. 33 Then the people of Bengal, who are as weak as faded flowers, showed their backs to the field and fled to their homes, from which they dare not stir even to this day, but remain like pisacha ghosts all along. 34 But the people of Anga or Bihar who live upon the fruits of their country are as strong as vidyadharas and play with their mates as if in heavenly bliss. 35 The Persians, defeated in their bodies, fell into palm and spice forests where, by drinking their intoxicating extracts, they became as giddy as drunk men. 36 The light and swift spirited elephants of the dark skinned Kalingas pushed against their fourfold armies in the field of battle, where all lay slain in haphazard heaps. 37 The Salwas, passing under the arrows and stones of the enemy, fell into the waters which encircled their city. They perished there with the whole of their hosts that are still lying there in the form of heap of rocks. 38 There were numbers of hosts that fled to different countries in all directions. Many were driven to distant seas where they drowned and were carried away by the waves. 39 But who can count the countless hosts that fled and lay dead unnoticed in every part of the wide earth and sea, on fields and plains, in forests and woods, on land and water, on mountains and valleys, on shores and coasts and on the hills and cliffs. So there is nobody who can tell what numbers of living beings are dying every moment, in their homes in cities and villages, in caves and dens, and everywhere in the world.

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Chapter 113 Combatants Exhausted; Description of the Ocean

Vasishta continued: The four Kings Vipaschit pursued the fleeing hostile forces for a great distance, as said before. 2 These four forms of almighty power, and of one soul and mind, went on conquering the four regions on every side with one intent and purpose. 3 They chased retreating enemies to the shores of the seas on all sides without giving them any rest, just as river currents keep on their course to the coast of the far distant ocean without rest. 4 This long course of royal forces and the enemies they chased soon put an end to all their provisions and ammunition. All their resources and strength were exhausted at last, like a stream lost under sands before it reaches a lake. 5 At the end, the king saw his forces and those of his enemies to be as exhausted as the merits and demerits of a man upon his ultimate liberation. 6 Weapons ceased to fly about, as if they were resting having done their part in the sky, and as the flames of fire subside of themselves for lack of combustible fuel. 7 Horses and elephants went under their shelters and weapons stuck to trees and rocks. They seemed to fall fast asleep like birds upon their tree branches at nightfall. 8 As waves cease to roll in a dried up channel, as snow falls under cloudy sky, as clouds fly before a storm, and as the fragrance of flowers is carried by the wind, 9 so flying weapons were submerged like fish under showers of rain, and dripping drops of darts were thwarted by thickening showers of snow. 10 The sky was cleared of whirling discs that had been hurled by the hundreds in the hazy atmosphere. It was swept clean by gathering clouds that were soaring up in surges and pouring down floods of rain. 11 The sky appeared like an immense ocean composed of a vast void and containing sparkling gems of stars in its bosom, and the burning undersea fire of the sun in its midst. 12 The great vacuum appeared as extensive, deep, bright, serene, and devoid of the dust of pride as the minds of great men. 13 Then they saw the oceans, lying like junior brothers of the skies, being of equal extent and clarity, stretching to the utmost limits of the horizon. 14 These with their deep sounding waves and foaming froths are as gratifying to the minds of people as roaring clouds with their showers of snow captivate human hearts. 15 Having fallen down from high heaven, stretching wide their huge bodies on the earth below, they seem to be rolling grievously on the ground with deep groaning and breathing, raising up their wavelike arms to lift themselves on high. 16 They are gross and dull bodies, yet full of force and motion. Though they are mute and dumb, yet they are full of noise and howling in their hollow cavities. They are full of dreadful whirlpools, as is this world with all its dizzy rounds. 17 Gems sparkling on banks add to the brightness of sunbeams. Winds blowing in conch shells resound all along the coast. 18 Huge waves growl like big clouds roaring loudly on high. Circling currents whirl around scattering shattered coral branches. 19 Harsh snorting of sharks and whales howl in the bosom of the deep, their tails lashing water sounding like oars splashing. 20 Dreadful sharks and alligators devour mermaids and sailors in numbers. A thousand suns shine their reflections on rising waves. 21 Fleets of ships float on the surface of the waters, rising aloft on the tops of the waves, driven forward by blowing winds howling horribly through the furling sails and cracking ropes. 22 The ocean with his hundreds of arms of heaving waves handles the globes of the sun and moon and displays varieties of sparkling gems with reflections of their light rays. 23 Shoals of sharks glide over the foaming ocean. Water spouts rise to the skies like columns of elephants trunks and like a forest of bamboo. 24 In some places, rippling waves glide like twisting creepers with hairy tufts and frothy blossoms. In other places, little rocks resembling the backs of elephants
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and bearing spring flowers are scattered in the midst of the waters. 25 Somewhere are heaps of froth and frost and hills of icebergs resembling the homes of gods and demigods. Elsewhere are groups of sparkling little waves that laughed to scorn the clusters of shining stars in the skies. 26 Here are branches of rocks concealed in its depth, like little gnats hidden in underground hollows. There are huge wave surges that make dwarfs of the high hills on earth. 27 Its coasts are spread over with sparkling gems, like flower beds on the ground. Glistening pearls burst out of their silvery shells and sparkle in the sand. 28 The sea seems to weave a vest of silk with its cloudy waves, decorating it with floating gems and pearls. Rivers flow into it from all directions, serving to color it with their various waters. 29 Coasts studded with gems and pearls of various colors display the beams of a hundred moons in the multicolored nails of its feet. 30 The shadows of tall forests on the shores fall on the swelling waves of the sea imbued with the colors of marine gems. They appear like moving trees with their variegated foliage, fruits and flowers. 31 Shadows of different fruit trees reflect in the waters gliding below, rising up and falling down with their reflections in the moving waves and billows. False and falling shadows gathered numbers of marine beasts under them, gorging themselves on the falling fruit. 32 Greedy fish gather, leaping to catch the birds sitting on the fruit trees and seen in their reflections on the waves. 33 There are many sea monsters that break the embankments and randomly wander about in the watery maze, like birds flying freely in the empty air. 34 The ocean, being a formless deep, bears the image of the three worlds impressed on its bosom. It also bears the image of pure emptiness, as it bore the image of Narayana in its breast. 35 Its great depth, clarity and immeasurable extent give it the appearance of the majestic sky which is reflected in its bosom, as it were impressed upon it. 36 It bears the reflection of the sky and flying birds as if they were the images of aquatic fowls swimming on its surface, or resembling black bees fluttering about its lotus-like waves. 37 Its boisterous waves are carried to the skies by violent winds, washing the skys face with their salty spray. The deep sounding ocean, resounding from its hollow rocks, roars aloud like the clouds of the world flood. 38 The gurgling noise of whirlpools resembles the loud thunder claps of heaven. The undersea fire is sometimes seen to burst out of the deep, like the latent flame of the sage Agastya that consumed the waters of the ocean. 39 The watery maze presents the picture of a vast wilderness with its waves like the waving trees, its surf like as blossoms, and foam and froth like flowers. 40 The high heaving surges with great numbers of fish gliding and skipping appear like fragments of the sky fallen below, carried away by gliding waters. 41 Thus the hostile forces were driven far away to the shores of the salt seas extending far and wide and bounding the earth on every side. Lofty mountains, rising to the skies with their green tops, intercepted the sight on all sides.

Chapter 114 The Kings Companions Praise Nature in India

Vasishta continued: Then the royal army saw whatever was on all sides of them, namely forests, hills, seas and clouds, foresters and hill people, and the trees of the forest. 2 They said: Behold, O lord, that high hill which lifts its lofty top to the sky and invites the clouds to settle upon it, while its midmost part is the region of the winds and its base is composed of hard and rugged stones. 3 See, O lord, how they abound with fruit trees of various kinds, and groves whose fragrance is blown around by gentle winds. 4 The sea breaks down peninsulas with its battering breakers, dispersing rocks on its banks. It shatters bordering forests with its wavy axes, scattering their fruit and flowers all over the waters. 5 Behold the sea breeze blowing away clouds, settling on tops of mountains, shaking and dancing over the leafy branches of trees like men blowing smoke away with fans. 6 Here are trees on its coasts, like the trees in the Nandana garden of paradise, whose branches are as white as the conch shells growing in the full moon tide, and whose fruit are as bright as the moon. 7 These trees with their wives, the vines, are honoring you with offerings of flowers from the rosy palms of their red leaves. 8 There is Rikshavanta Mountain, howling like a ferocious bear, devouring huge sharks and swallowing waves in its cavern-like mouth and under its stony teeth. 9 Mahendra Mountain growls at roaring clouds with a loud uproar, like a stronger champion hurling defiance at his weaker rival. 10 There enraged Malaya Mountain lifts his lofty head, decorated with sandalwood forests, threatening the loud ocean below, rolling with its outstretched arms of waves on the shore. 11 Celestials on high look upon the ocean rolling constantly with its sparkling waves on all sides, as if carrying away the earths treasured gems. 12 Wild hillocks, woods and ruddy rocks on the tops, wave with the blowing gales looking like huge serpents creeping with their crescent gems and inhaling the breeze. 13 Huge sharks and crocodiles move and grapple with each other upon the surges. This sight delights the minds of men like that of a rainy and light clouds opposing and pursuing one another. 14 There an elephant has fallen in a whirlpool, unable to raise itself up. It left its trunk on the water and dies sputtering water from its trunk on all sides. 15 High hills and low seas are all equally filled with living beings. As the oceans abound with aquatic animals, so all lands and islands are full of living beings. 16 The sea, like the earth and all worlds, are full of whirlpools and things revolving, and all these are mere falsities that are taken and viewed as realities. 17 The ocean bears liquid waves in its bosom that are inert in themselves, yet appear to be in constant motion. So Brahman contains innumerable worlds which seem to be solid without any substance. 18 When the gods and demons of the past churned the ocean, they stole all of its bright and hidden treasures which since have fallen to the lot of Indra and the gods. 19 Therefore, the ocean has adopted wearing the reflections of the greatest and brightest lights of heaven as its false and fictitious ornaments. These are seen even from the nether worlds, and of these no one can deprive it. 20 Among them is the shining sun whose image the ocean bears in its bosom with equal splendor as it is in heaven. This bright gem is daily thrown like a deposit in the western sea to give its light to the nether world. It is called the gem of day because it makes day wherever it shines. 21 There is a coming together of all waters from all sides. This assemblage in its reservoir gives it a clamorous sound, like that of crowds of men in a mixed procession. 22 Here is a continuous conflict among marine monsters, just as currents and torrents of the waters of rivers and
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seas jostle at the mouths of gulfs and bays. 23 There large whales roll and dance on rising waves, spurting forth water from their mouths, shedding showers of pearls carried aloft and scattered by the winds. 24 Streams of water, flowing like strings of pearls bearing bubbles like brilliant pearls, adorn the breast of the ocean like necklaces, whistling by their impacts. 25 Sea winds serve to refresh the spirits of the siddha spiritual masters and sadhya classes of spirits who dwell in the caves of Mahendra Mountains and traverse the howling regions of the sounding main. 26 Again, winds exhaled from the caves of Mahendra Mountains gently shake the woods growing upon it, stretching a cloud of flowers over its tablelands. 27 Here is Mount Gandhamadana full of mango and kadamba trees. There fragments of clouds enter its caves like deer eyes flashing like lightning. 28 Winds issuing from the valleys of the Himalaya Mountains, passing through the encircling bowers of creeping plants, scatter the clouds of heaven and break the waves of the sea. 29 The winds of Gandhamadana Mountain exhale the fragrance of kadamba flowers growing upon it, agitating the surface of the sea with whirling waves. 30 After twisting fleecy clouds into the forms of curling locks of hair on the peaks of Kuberas Alaka residence, winds pass by the valleys of Gandhamadana groves, forming a canopy of flowers at this place. 31 Here scented airs creep slowly in the alleys bearing the sweet burden of fragrant flowers and moistened by a mixture of icy showers. 32 See there, nalikera vines diffusing their sour scent to the breezes, which being made acid by their sourness, turn towards the regions of Persia. 33 Here winds blow the scents of Shivas flowery forests on Kailash Mountain. There they breathe the perfume of lotuses from mountain lakes and blow away camphor white clouds from the face of the sky. 34 Liquid ichor flowing from the frontal trunk of elephants is dried and stiffened by breezes issuing out of the caverns of Vindhya Mountain. 35 The women of the Savara foresters, their bodies covered with the dry leaves of trees and accompanied by their dark skinned males in leafy apparel, have been making a town of their jungle by eradicating wild animals with their iron arrows. 36 Behold, great lord, these seas and mountains, these forests and rivers, and these clouds on all sides look as if they are all smiling under your auspices, as under the brightness of sunbeams. 37 Flower beds designed by vidyadharas on mountain and forest paths and the footprints from the shores suggest that man is tired of making love so the woman has gone on top of the man to continue the act of love making.

Chapter 115 The Kings Companions Continue to Praise Nature in India

The royal companions related: Hear, O high minded lord, the kinnara women enjoying themselves singing their songs in their homes in leafy tree branches. Kinnara men, enraptured by the music, listen attentively and forget their business of the day. 2 There the Himalaya, Malaya, Vindhya, Krauncha, Mahendra, Mandara, Dardura and other mountains, from a distant view, appear to be clothed in robes of white clouds, or like heaps of stones covered with the dry leaves of trees. 3 Those distant and indistinct chains of boundary mountains appear to stretch themselves like the walls of cities. Those rivers seen falling into the ocean with their gurgling noises appear like the warp and woof threads of a broad sheet of ocean waters. 4 The ten sides of the sky spread over mountain tops appear like royal consorts looking at you from their lofty palaces, smiling gladly at your success. The many colored and roaring clouds in the sky resemble the variegated birds of air, warbling their notes on high. Rows of trees dropping showers of flowers from high appear like the arms of heavenly apsara nymphs showering their blessings upon your head with their hands. 5 High hills overgrown with rows of trees stretching all along the seashore appear like ramparts. These hills, beaten by surges of waves, seem like mere moss gathered on the coast. 6 O! the extensive, all sustaining and wonderful body of the ocean that supported the body of Vishnu sleeping upon it. It contained the unrighteous creation at the great deluge and it covered all the mountains and rocks and undersea fires under it. 7 There is the northern ocean into which the Jambu River pours all the gold from Mount Meru. It contains numerous cities and forests and mountains and countries. It washes the face of the sky and all its lights and therefore is adored by gods as well as men. 8 Mount Meru reaches the sun, presenting the trees on its top like its cloudcapped head. May the earth extending to this mountain all be yours, and may this mountain which hides the sun under its clouds not obstruct the expansion of your realm. 9 In the south is Malaya Mountain growing fragrant sandalwood which converts all other woods into its own nature. Its sweet paste decorates the bodies of gods, men, and demons and is put as a spot on the forehead like Shivas third eye. It is sprinkled over the body like perspiration on womens bodies. 10 The waves of the ocean continually wash the coast overgrown with sandalwood forests and encircled by folds of snakes. Meanwhile, woodland vidyadhari nymphs wandering on this mountain throw a luster about it by the beauty of their bodies. 11 Here is the hill called Krauncha, its groves vibrating with the sound of cuckoos cooing, its rugged caves and rivers resounding harshly to one another. Meanwhile, bamboo cracks as they rub against each other. Bumble bees hum and we hear the warbling of migrating cranes on high and the loud screams of peacocks that are terrifying to snakes. 12 Behold here, O great lord, the play of woodland vidyadhari nymphs in the groves of their soft leafy bushes. Listen to the tinkling sound of their bracelets, so sweet to the ears. 13 There behold the dripping ichor exuding from elephants foreheads and making swarming bees giddy with the drink, which has made the sea melt in tears on account of being neglected by them. 14 Behold there the fair moon with his retinue of celestial stars, playing in their reflections in the lap of his father the Milky Ocean, from which it was churned as its froth. 15 See there the tender vines dancing merrily on the tablelands of Malaya Mountain displaying their red petals like the palms of their hands, winking their eyes formed of fluttering bees. Blooming flowers speak of their spring festivity and warbling cuckoos fill the groves with their festive music. 16 Here raindrops produce a pearly substance in the hollows of bamboos, the frontal pearl in elephants heads, and large pearls in the womb of pearl shells. So the words of the wise
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produce different effects in different people, 17 and so gems produce various effects depending on their settings, whether decorating men or stones, in seas and forests, in frogs, clouds, and elephants. They gladden and distract the mind, cause fear and error, fever, death, and many other supernatural effects. 18 Behold here the city smiling under the rising moon and singing the praises of that ambrosial luminary through all its windows, doorways and openings, as it were from the mouths of its women, as if responding to the praises sung by Mandara Mountain from the many mouths of its caves and caverns, and the pipes of hollow bamboo. 19 Wondering women of the siddha spiritual masters behold with astonished and uplifted faces and eyes a large cloud carried away by winds. They wonder whether it is a mountain peak carried away by the winds, or a forest of the snowy mountain flying upward in the air, or a column to measure the distance between earth and sky, or a balance to weigh their weight. 20 See the plains at the foot of Mandara Mountain. How cool they are with breezes blowing the coldness of the waves of Ganges. See its foothills inhabited by fair vidyadhara spirits. Behold its flowery woodlands all around, topped by shady clouds of flowers. 21 See forests, groves and thickets scattered with mens huts, hamlets and homes. Look at the holy shrines and the sacred brooks and fountains lying in them. Their very sight disperses our sorrows, poverty and iniquities. 22 There are mountain crags and ridges on all sides of the horizon. Valleys, groves and caves are overshadowed by clouds. Still lakes resemble the clear sky. Such sights are sure to melt away masses of our crimes. 23 Behold here my lord, the ravines of Malaya Mountain scented with the odor of the aromatic sandalwood. There are the Vindhyan Hills abounding with infuriated elephants, Mount Kailash yielding the best kind of gold in its olden poetic tradition, and Mount Mahendra filled with its mineral ores. The summits of the snowy mountain are plenteous with the best kind of horses and medicinal plants. Every place is found to abound with richest productions of nature. What a pity that man complains in his time worn cell, like an old and blind mouse in its dirty hole. 24 Behold the dark rain cloud on high, appearing like another world to submerge the earth under its flood, threatening it with its flashing and forked lightning, and swimming like frisky shrimp in the ethereal ocean. 25 O the bleak, rainy winds blowing with the keen icy blasts of frozen snows, poured down profusely by the raging rainy clouds on high. They are howling aloud in the air, chilling the blood and shaking the body with hairs rising erect. 26 O the cold winds of winter are blowing with the dark clouds of heaven, scattering clusters of flowers from the branches of trees. Drizzling raindrops drop in showers upon thick forests scented with the fragrance of kadamba blossoms. 27 Winds bear the fragrance of the breaths of longing females as if it were the celestial odor of ambrosia, stolen and carried on the wings of warm breezes. 28 Here gentle breezes breathe with the breath of freshly blooming lilies and lotuses of the lake, sweeping their tender odors to the land. Blasts of wind burst the flakes of folded clouds, blowing perfumes from the gardens and groves. 29 Beyond, mild airs calm our struggles, cooled by their contact with the evening clouds of heaven, and resembling servant gardeners perfumed all over from picking flowers from the royal gardens. 30 Some are perfumed with the scents of different flowers, and others with the fragrance of lilies and lotuses. In some places they scatter showers of blossoms and in others they shed pollen. Somewhere the air blows from hoary mountains of frost and at others from those of blue, black, and red minerals. 31 The sun scatters his rays like firebrands in some places, spreading a fire with a loud noise in the woods, like an unruly crowd in the country. 32 Winds, like the suns wicked attendants, spread the fire caused by the sun and carry their clattering noise far away. 33 Cooling winds blowing from the woods, moistened by the gentle moonbeams, though cheering others souls, appear as fiery hot to separated lovers.

Behold here, O lord, how Sabara women on the lowlands of the eastern sea are covered with their rude and rough leafy garments, wearing their noisy bracelets of brass. See how they strut about in the giddiness of their prime of youth. 35 See how these newly loving ladies cling to the bodies of their mates for fear of darkness of the approaching night, like timid snakes twining about the trunk of sandalwood trees. 36 Struck with fear by the alarm given by the bell at daybreak, the loving consort leans on the bosom of her lover as darkness lingers in the enclosed room. 37 There is a shrub of kinsuka flowers blooming like firebrands on the border of the southern sea which is continually washing them with the watering of its waves, as if it wanted to extinguish them. 38 Winds blow their smoking powder flying upwards like mists of hazy clouds to heaven. Flowers fall like flames of fire. Birds and black bees hover over them like extinguished cinders of fire. 39 Behold, there on the other side, real flashes of living wildfire blazing in the forests on the east. Their flames are carried above the mountain tops by the flying winds of the air. 40 See the slow moving clouds shrouding the lowlands lying at the foot of Krauncha Mountain. Observe crowding peacocks dancing under them, screaming aloud with their grave and shrill cries to the clouds. Behold there the gusts of rain-winds rising high, blowing fruit, flowers and leaves from trees afar on all sides. 41 Behold the sun-setting mountain in the west, with its thousand peaks of glittering gold shining amidst the dusky color of the evening sky. See the sloping sun descending below, his chariot whirling down with rattling wheels in the rustling of evening winds. 42 The moon rises upon the eastern peak of Mount Meru like a full blown flower in order to give light to the darkened mansion of this world. The moon itself is accompanied by its black spots, sitting like black bees upon a blossom. Hence there is no good thing in this perverted world which is free from fault or frailty. 43 Moonlight shines like the laughter of the god Rudra in his dome of the triple world. Moonlight is like a whitewash over the great hall of the universe, or like the milky fluid of the Milky Ocean in the night sky. 44 Look on all sides of the sky, tinged with evening twilight and the variegated colors of mountain tops, filled with milky moonbeams churned from the Milky Ocean by Mount Mandara. 45 Look there, O incomparable lord, those hosts of Guhyaka ghosts, hideous as large palm trees. See those puny vetala-ghost younglings pouring upon the ill-fated dominions of the Hunas, devouring troubled inhabitants at night. 46 The face of the moon shines brightly like the beautiful face of a lady, as long as it does not appear out of its nighttime home. But in daylight, the moons beams are cut off and it appears like a piece of fleecy cloud, just as the ladys face becomes disgraced b y appearing out of her inner apartment. 47 Look at the lofty peaks of the snowy mountain covered with the fair vesture of bright moonbeams. See its crags washed by floods of the falling Ganges. Behold its head capped by perpetual snow, surrounded by creepers of snowy whiteness. 48 Behold there Mandara Mountain touching the sky, crowning the forest with its lofty ridges. Here winds blow the cradle chimes of apsara nymphs, and there the mountainous mines sparkle in various colors. 49 See high hills all around abounding with blooming flowers like offerings to the gods. See thickening clouds around their loins, resounding harshly within their hollows, while the starry heaven shines over their heads. 50 There is Mount Kailash to the north, contending with the sky in its brightness. Below it there is the hermitage of Skanda and the moon shines in her brilliance above. 51 Behold, the god Indra has let loose his winds to break the branches of trees and demolish the huts on the ground, carrying their fragments afar. 52 Winds blow the profuse fragrance of flowers after the rains, filling mens nostrils with their odors. Meanwhile, flights of bees float like clouds in the blue sky. 53 I think goddess Lakshmi has chosen the blooming flowers in the forests, the clear waters in marshy grounds, and villages abounding in fruitful trees and flourishing fields for her home. 54 Windows are overgrown with creeping vines in the rains and house tops are decorated with the

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flowers of the climbing creepers upon them. The ground is scattered with flowers up to the heels. Breezes blow flower pollen all about. All these have made the woodlands the homes of the forest gods. 55 The rains have converted a rustic village into a romantic paradise with blooming champaka flowers, rural nymphs swinging in their cradles made of flowering vines, the warbling of birds and gurgling of waterfalls, the blossoming of the tall palm trees in the outskirts, tender vines blooming with clusters of snow-white blossoms, peacocks dancing on roof tops, borders shaded by trees, and rain clouds hanging over the village and its neighboring hills. 56 Again, soft and sweet breathing breezes, the variegated leaves of plants and creepers, the vegetation of the village, the cries of cranes and other fowls, and the wild notes of foresters, together with the merriment of the shepherds and other pastoral people over their plenty of milk, curd, butter and ghee, and their joy in their peaceful abodes, add a charm to this hilly tract.

Chapter 116 The Kings Companions Continue: Praise of Sky and Air as Metaphors for God; a Beautiful Valley; Men Are Dirtier than Dogs; Nasty Crows and Pleasing Cuckoos
The companions added: Look lord, the field of battle stretching to the bordering hills. Look at the heaps of shining weapons and the scattered forces of elephants, cavalry, infantry and chariots. 2 Look at the slain and their slayers, combatants attacking their rivals, and how their dying souls are carried in heavenly cars by celestial apsara nymphs to heaven. 3 The victor finding his adversary defeated in war should not slay him unjustly unless he is justified to do so by the laws of warfare, like love making in youth. 4 As health, wealth and prosperity are good for men when they are rightly gained, so it is right to fight for those by whom one is supported. 5 When one kills his opposing rival in combat, without violation of the laws of warfare, he is justly styled a heavenly champion. Not so one who takes undue advantage of his enemy. 6 Behold there, the bold champion waving his sword as if he were swinging a blue lotus in his hand, casting a dark shadow of the evening dusk on the ground. Lakshmi would court such a hero for her wedlock. 7 Look at those flourishing weapons, flaming like the flying embers of a wildfire in a mountain forest, or like the dreadful serpents of the sea dancing on land with hundreds of flashing hoods and heads. 8 Look at the sky on one side, resembling the sea with its watery clouds, shining with strings of its stars on another. See how it is covered by dark clouds on one side and brightened by moonbeams on the other. 9 Look at the sky filled with multitudes of revolving planets resembling the rolling chariots of warriors, crowded by multitudes of moving stars like soldiers on the battlefield. Yet the error of the ignorant is to think it an empty vacuum, an error which is hard for the wise to remove. 10 The sky with its clouds spread all over, its fiery lightning, its thunderbolts that break down mountains, its starry display, and the battle of gods and demigods that took place in it is still as mysterious in his nature as the solid minds of the wise whose magnitude no one can measure. 11 O wise man, you have been constantly observing the sun, moon, and all the planets and stars in the sky, together with all the luminous bodies of comets, meteors and lightning. Yet it is astonishing that your ignorance will not let you see the great god Narayana in it. 12 O dark blue sky brightened by moonlight, you retain your blackness like the black spots on the bright face of the moon. Such is the wonder with ignorant minds, that with all their enlightenment, they never get rid of their inner bias and prejudice. 13 Again the clear sky, full with endless worlds, is never contaminated by their faults, nor ever changed in its essential state. It resembles the vast and pure mind of the wise, full with its knowledge of all things and devoid of all their pollutions. 14 O profound sky, you are the receptacle of the most elevated objects of nature. You contain lofty clouds and trees and summits in your womb. You are the recipient of the sun, moon and the aerial spirits that move about in you. Yet you are inflamed by the flames of the fiery bodies that rise in you, to our great regret, in spite of your greatness, which helps them spread themselves high in heaven. 15 O sky, you are filled with pure and transparent light. You are great giving quarters to all the great and elevated objects of nature. But it is greatly to be pitied that the dark clouds, to whom you give room to rise under yourself, trouble us like base upstarts, throwing their hailstones at random. 16 Again O dark sky, you are the witness of all lights, just as the touchstone is the test of gold. You are a void in your essence, yet you support the substances of stars and planets of clouds and winds and all real existences at large.
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You are the daylight at daytime, the purple red of evening, and turn black at night, yet remain devoid of all color of yourself. You exhibit all colors in yourself. Hence it is impossible even for the learned to understand correctly your nature and its convertible conditions. 18 As a helpless man can achieve his purposes through patient perseverance, so the empty sky has risen above all by means of its universal spread. 19 The sun persisting in his accustomed course rises to the vertical point in time, but unmoving straw and trees, dormant hills and places, and stagnant pools and ponds are ever lying low on the ground. 20 The night invests the sky with a dark dress, sprinkles fair moonlight over it like the cooling dust of camphor, and decorates it with stars like clusters of flowers. The day covers the sky with bright sunbeams. The seasons serve to cover it with clouds and snows and in the flashing attire of spring flowers. Thus Time is always busy decorating the heavenly paths of his lords, the sun and the moon, the two time keepers by day and night. 21 The sky, like a magnanimous mind, never changes the firmness of its nature, even though it is constantly assailed by disturbances of smoke and clouds of dust and darkness, of the rising and setting sun and moon and their dawns and dusks, and the coming together of stars and combats between gods and demons. 22 The world is an old and decayed home of which the four directions are its walls, the sky its roof above, and the earth its ground floor below. The hills and mountains are its pillars and columns and cities and towns are its rooms and apartments. All the various classes of animal beings are like the ants of this home. 23 Time and action reside in this mansion from age to age. All its ample space presents the aspect of a smiling garden. Every day there is fear that it will be blown and blasted away, yet the wonder is how this frail flower last so longs and forever. 24 I think the air puts a stop to trees and hills growing taller for, though it does not actually restrain their growth, yet its influence, like the authority of noble men, puts a check to the rise of aspiring underlings. 25 O pity for that learning which calls air void and empty, seeing how the air contains millions of worlds in its bosom, producing and reducing countless beings in its boundless bosom. 26 We see all things born in air and return to it. Yet we see the madness of men who reckon the all containing and all pervading air is something different from God. 27 We see the works of creation continually being produced, existing and extinguishing in air, like sparks of fire. I believe this pure and sole air to be God, without beginning, middle or end, the universal source and end of all, without any other distinct cause. 28 Emptiness is the vast reservoir for the three worlds bearing the innumerable productions of nature in its vast space. I understand infinite emptiness as the body of Consciousness, that transcendent being in which this false conception of the world has its rise and fall. 29 There, in the woodlands on mountain tops, a solitary forester chants his charming strains amidst his woodland retreat, attracting the heart of a lonely passerby who lifts up his head to listen to the rapturous times. 30 Listen O lord, to the sweet music coming from the thick groves on that distant lofty mountain, emitted with the heart rending strains of lovelorn vidyadhari nymphs. See the lonely passerby whose lovesick heart, smitten by the sound, has neither the power to go forward or backward from the spot, or even utter a word. 31 I hear a lovelorn vidyadhari lady singing her love song in the woods of the hill, her sighs heaving and tears flowing profusely from her eyes. She sang saying, Lord, I well remember the day when you led me home holding my chin and kissing me on the cheeks with your smiling face. Now the pleasing memory of that glad moment has left me deploring its loss for years. 32 I heard her tale, O Lord, which the forester related to me when I passed by. He said, Her former young lover was cursed by a relentless sage to become a tree for a dozen years. Since his ill fated change, she has been leaning on that tree singing her mournful song to it. 33 Now observe the wonder. As I approached, the tree-like lover was released of his sad curse. Shedding a shower of flowers upon her, he changed his form and clasped her to his arms with his face smiling

like his blooming flowers. 34 Hilltops are decorated with flowers like the heads of elephants are painted with white dye. The sky is whitened with stars and falling meteors, like a mountain summit is bleached with white frost and snow. 35 Behold, the beautiful stream of Cauvery River gliding along with a great number of fish swimming in its waters. Its noisy waves resound with the cries of shrill and clamorous cranes. See its banks covered with garments of flowers, its shores freely grazed by timid deer without any fear. 36 Look at Survela Hill, washed by the waves of the sea god Varuna. Its stones shine like gold under sunlight and sparkle like marine fires washed by waves. 37 Look at the homes of Ghosha shepherds at the foot of the mountain constantly shrouded by clouds. Behold the beauty of blossoming palasa and patala trees there. 38 Look at the plains, whitened by full-blown white flowers. See mandara trees with twining and flowering vines. Look at the banks crowded with cranes and peacocks. Look at those villages and the waterfalls, sounding like music from the mouths of mountain caves and forests, evoking joy among the happy inhabitants of the valley. 39 Here buzzing bees play around the new blown petals of plantain flowers, inspiring fond desire in the breasts of Pamara foresters. They enjoy a bliss in their rustic pastures and hidden hilly caverns which, I believe, is not attainable by the immortal gods in their celestial gardens. 40 Behold the black bees playing and swinging in their cradles of flowery vines of the forest, and the Pulinda forester singing to his beloved, his eyes fixed upon her face. Mark also the sportive Kirata, forgetting to kill the deer wandering beside his lonely cave. 41 Here a weary traveler is refreshed by the sweet scent of various full blown flowers, his body cooled by the fragrant pollen blown by the breeze from flowering vines. Meanwhile, moisture bearing winds wash the valley on all sides, rendering the place more delightful than the spotted disc of the moon. 42 Here are unceasing gliding of waters, the constant waving of palm trees, the dancing of blossom-bearing branches, and the shaking of the spreading vines in the air. A forest of lofty sala trees in the borders and clouds hanging over the foothills all combine to add a charm to this village of the valley, like that of gardens in the planet of the moon. 43 Lightning flashing, clouds roaring deeply, peacocks dancing merrily with loud shrieks and screams, and their trailing retinue displayed in the air decorate the valley with a variety of multicolored gems. 44 The bright moon appearing on one side and dark clouds rising like huge elephants on the other serve to adorn the village in the valley and the hills in its outskirts with a beauty unknown in the heavenly kingdom of Brahma 45 O, how I long to live in a mountain cave among the fragrant trees of beautiful Nandana forest, among the delightful groves of blooming santanaha blossoms where busy bees continually flutter over mandara and paribhadra groves. 46 O, our hearts are attracted by the cries of tender deer browsing green and delightful vegetation, and by blooming blossoms on hills and in valleys, as they are by the sight of the cities of mankind. 47 Look at that far off village in the valley where the waterfall appears like a column of clear crystals and peacocks merrily dance about the cascading waterfalls. 48 See how the happy peacocks and joyful vines, bending down under the burden of their blossoms, are dancing delightfully beside the swirling waters of the waterfall. 49 I believe the lusty god of desire, Kama, plays at his pleasure in this village of the valley protected by hills all around. He is playing with handsome green harita birds in green groves beside crystal lakes resounding with the sweet singing of water fowl. 50 O most prosperous and magnanimous raincloud lord who is the center of all virtues and the highest and gravest of men, you are like a towering mountain, mankinds refuge from heat and the cause of their plenty. 51 O who bathes in holy waters, exalted above all earthly beings, choosing to live in hills and wildernesses like holy hermits, and who is silent like them from the pure holiness of your nature, you also appear fair when you are emptied of your waters in autumn.

All this is good in you. But say, why do you rise in your fullness with lightning flashing in your face and thunder roaring in your breast, like lucky upstarts of low origin? 52 All good things being misplaced turn to badness, just as water ascending to the clouds turns to hoarfrost and cold ice. 53 O, wonder that drops distilled by clouds fill the earth with water, and that this water supports all beings and makes the poor grow with plenty of harvest. 54 Ignorant people are like dogs in their unsteadiness, impudence, impurity and wayfaring. Hence I know not whether the ignorant have derived their nature from dogs or these from them. 55 There are some people who, in spite of all their faults, are yet esteemed for certain qualities, just as some dogs are taken into favor because of their valor, contentment and faithfulness to their masters. 56 We see all worldly people like madmen pursuing worldliness, pushing in the paths of business at the sacrifice of their honor, and likely to tumble down with fatigue. I find them flying to and fro like trifling straw. I do not know whether their will, madness or stupidity has made them chose this foolish course. 57 Among brute creatures, the brave lion hears tremendous thunder claps without shuddering, while the cowardly dog trembles and shuts his eyes with fear at the sound. 58 I believe, O vile dog, that you have been taught to bark at your fellows and to wander about the streets by some arrogant and stupid fellow. 59 The Divine Creator, who has ordained varieties in all his works, has made the nasty breed of his daughter Sarama, the bitch of the gods, all equally filthy. These are the dogs that dig holes in dirt for their kennels, feed upon filth and carrion, copulate in public places, and carry an impure body everywhere. 60 Who is there lower than you? asks a man of his dog. To which the dog answers, You, the silly man, is the lowest of all. Dogs combine the best qualities of valor, fidelity and unshaken patience. These are hard to find among humans who grovel in the darkness of their ignorance amidst greater impurities and disasters. 61 A dog eats impure things and lives in impurity. He is content with what it gets, feeds upon dead bodies, and never hurts the living. Yet men are fond of throwing stones at dogs everywhere. Thus men make dogs playthings, contrary to the will of God. 62 Look there, at the crow flying with the offerings left for the Shivalinga on the farther bank. There it is, in clear sight telling its story to everyone, saying; Behold me on high, with my degrading sin of stealing from the altars of the gods. 63 You croaking crow who crows so harshly and treads the marshy lake, no wonder you annoy us with your cries that drown out the sweet buzz of humming bees. 64 We see the greedy crow ravenously devouring dirty filth in preference to the sweet lotus stalk. No wonder that from long habituated taste, some would prefer sour to sweet. 65 A white crow, sitting in a bush of white lotus flowers and their snowy filaments, was at first taken for a swan or a heron, but as it began to pick up worms, it came to be known as a crow. 66 It is difficult to distinguish a crow from cuckoos, both having similar dark feathers, unless the one makes itself known by giving out its own vocal sound. 67 The crow sitting on a forest tree, a mound of clay or a tall building looks on all sides for its prey, just as a nightly thief climbs a chaitta tree and sits watching the ways of people. 68 It is impossible for a crow to live with cranes and storks by the side of a lake that abounds in lotus flowers diffusing their somber pollen all about. 69 For shame that the noisy crow should have a seat on the soft lotus bed in company with silent swans and play his disgraceful tricks among them. 70 You crow who cries with the sound of a grating saw, say, where have you lost your former reserve today? Why do you brood over the young cuckoo, whose sweetness of voice you can never attain and who you can not retain as your young? 71 On seeing a dark crow sitting like a black goose in a bed of white lotuses, crowing aloud with delight at that place, a person said to him, It is better for you, O clamorous crow, to use

your cracking voice to grab the ears of those who are not tired of splitting others heads with their crafty words. 72 It is good that the cunning keep company with the cunning, like a crow and a crab meeting at a pool, or a crow joining with an owl in a tree. The two rogues, though seemingly familiar, will not fail to frustrate each another by their natural hatred. 73 The cuckoo associating with the crow and resembling him in figure and color is distinguished by his sweet notes, just as a learned man makes himself known in the society of the ignorant by his speech. 74 A blossoming branch is well able to bear the cuckoo plundering its flowers, but it will not suffer the association of crows and cranes, and cocks and vultures upon its twigs. 75 How delightfully do people listen to the sweet notes of the cuckoo uniting separated lovers. But who can tolerate listening to the jarring cries of the crow or the hooting of the owl without disgust? 76 When the sweet notes of the young kokila nightingale serve to entertain the ears of listeners with the glad tidings of spring season, the grating cry of the crow immediately intrudes upon their ears, demanding the melodious cuckoo to be its foster child. 77 Why and what have you been cooing so long, O you tender cuckoo, with so much joy and joy in that distant grove? Behold, your pleasant spring season is too soon over with its fading flowers. Behold the stern winter approaching fast to blast blossoming trees with its icy breath, bidding you hide your head in your nest. 78 A separated mistress seeing a sweet kokila nightingale pour forth his notes to the tender blossoms of the spring season thus addressed to him saying, Say, O sweet cuckoo, who taught you to say that spring season is for you and your enjoyment? This is truly a sorrowful lie you told me. Instead of saying It is mine and yours, you are enjoying your companion. 79 The cuckoo sitting silent in an assemblage of crows, appears as one of them in its form and color of its feathers. The graceful gait of the cuckoo makes it known from the rest, as the wise man is marked in the company of fools. Hence everybody is respected by his inner talents and outward behavior more than by outer form and feathers. 80 O brother kokila nightingale, you coo so sweetly but in vain when there is none to appreciate its value. Therefore, when flocks of crows are crying so loudly and when it is time for dew to fall and not spring flowers, it is far better that you sit quietly in your secluded concealment under shady leaves. 81 It is a wonder that a young cuckoo forsakes its mother for a fostering crow that begins to prick it with its bills and claws. As I reflect on these, I find the young cuckoo growing into the likeness of its mother. Hence I conclude that the nature of a person prevails over his training.

Chapter 117 Description of a Lotus-Lake, Bees and Swans

The companions said: Behold there, O lord! The lotus lake on the tableland of the mountain reflects the sky in its bosom and resembles the pleasure pond of Kama. Behold there the beds of white, red and blue lotuses with their protruding stalks. Listen to the mingled sounds of water fowls playing there. 2 See the full blown lotus standing on its stalk with its thousand petals and the royal swan resting on its petal. It is crowded by double streaked bees and birds of various kinds, as if it were the home of the lotus-seated Brahma himself. 3 Mists and fearful frost are everywhere. The red pollen of full blown flowers and lotuses have been flying all about. Bees and birds, giddy with the scents spread around, hum and warble their tunes and notes in the open air. Clouds are spread above like an aerial canopy. 4 There is the lashing sound of the breaking waves beating against the shore. Here is the rumbling noise of humming bees contending with one another. Somewhere the silent waters are sleeping in the deep. Elsewhere the fair lotuses of the lake are lying hidden in the bushes. 5 Pearly particles of water lull heat away from people. Wild beasts prowl on the bank overgrown with wild thickets. Waves wash the stones on the bank. The land appears like the clear sky on the earth. 6 The bosom of the lake displays lightning flashes from the red clouds bearing flower pollen. One side is hidden by a dark rain cloud while the other side shows the variegated rays of the evening skies above it. 7 There is a fragment of autumn cloud carried aloft by driving winds, appearing like a part of the sky supported upon air. 8 Waves of the lake rippling by gentle breeze and moist humming bees fluttering over a lotus lake make a noise all around like flowers falling from trees on the river bank. 9 Large lotus leaves are waving like fans made of palm leaves, foaming froths puffing like the snowy chowry fans of princes. Buzzing bees and cooing cuckoos sing in praise of the lake which lies like a lord in the assembly of lotuses resembling the consorts of his harem. 10 Behold the chorus of black bees singing their charming chimes before him. The yellow pollen of lotus flowers scatter his waters with dust of gold. Yellowish froth float like fragments of its gold colored flowers. The flowery shrubs on the bank decorate the lake like its headdress. 11 The deep fountain, having beautiful lotuses on its bosom, enjoys their sweet fragrance like princes derive from an assembly of talented men in their courts. 12 The translucent lake, reflecting the clear autumn sky on its surface, resembles the mind of a wise man which is ever clear and composed with the light of the true scriptures. 13 The clear lake is little discernible in winter when the keen blasts have covered it with hoarfrost and converted its blueness to white. 14 So the world appears to the wise like a vast sheet of the glory of God. All these distinct forms of things, like waves on the sea, are lost at last in the bright element of Eternity. 15 Everyone should try to raise himself above the sea of error by his own effort. Or else he must continually whirl in the whirlpool of blunder, like all other ignorant men. 16 As the waters of wells, tanks, lakes and seas differ from one another in their quality, so men and women are different from each other in their respective dispositions. 17 Who can count the aquatic plants and lotuses growing in the lakes as plentifully as the passions and desires spring in the fountain of the human heart, carried away by the waves of accidents, or hurled into the whirlpool of perdition? 18 O the wonderful effect of bad company, that the lotus growing in the company of aquatic plants loses its fragrance in the waters and shows its thorny stalks to view. 19 The good qualities of a person, like those of the lotus, are lost in the company of vicious faults, just like the pores, hollowness and too fine and fragile fibers of the lotus
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stalks make them entirely useless to anybody. 20 But the lotus which adorns its native waters and fills the air with its fragrance is like a nobleman born with the noble qualities of a noble family, and whose virtues are impossible for Sesha, the hundred hooded serpent, also to describe. 21 What can equal the lotus in praise, which in the form of Lakshmi, rests on the bosom of Hari and graces his hand like a bouquet of flowers? 22 Both white and blue lotuses are esteemed for their quality of sweet scent, though they differ in their color. Hence one is sacred to the sun and the other to the moon. 23 The blooming beauty of a lotus bed cannot be compared to full blown flowers of the forest. Nor does a lotus lake bear compare with the starry heaven. They are to be compared with the comely and smiling face of a dancing girl in her entertainment. 24 Blessed are bees that have all along enjoyed their lives reveling with the sweets of flowers without having anything else to care about. 25 Blessed are bees and cuckoos that feast upon the flavor of mango fruit and entertain themselves with the fragrance of their flowers. All others not so blessed are born only to bear the name of the species. 26 Bees filled with honey and giddy with the flavor of lotuses in the lake where they play laugh to scorn others of their tribe that led humble lives on the common powder of flowers. 27 The black bee buzzing to the lotus, living and playing in their company and sleeping in their honey cups at night, was in trouble at the approach of autumn, not knowing what flower to choose for its fare and rest. 28 A black bee sitting on an unopened flower bud looks like Andhaka placed over a trident by Shiva. 29 O you unsatisfied bee, ever wandering over hills and dales and sucking the sweets of all kinds of flowers, why do you still wander, unless it were for your restless discontent? 30 You soft bodied bee, raised on sweets and feeding upon pollen, it is better for you to resort to the lotuses of the lake than bruise your body in thorns and thistles. 31 O bumble bee, if stern winter deprives you of sweet flowing food and your fair diet of pollen, still you should repair like wise men do, as may suit your taste, and be congenial to your nature rather than be mean and debase yourself by attending upon the base and mean. 32 Look there, O lord, an assembly of milk-white swans swimming in the lake, feeding upon the silvery fibers of lotus stalks and making gurgling sounds as gravely as those who chant the Sama Veda. 33 Here the gander, pursuing geese sitting in their cradles of lotus bushes, thinks the clear lake to be the blue sky, and the lotus cradle as a cloud, and stops his pursuit. 34 Let nobody be so unfortunate, O lord, as this gander in pursuit of the shadows of geese. 35 The sweet music of the swan is unmatched by the crow or crane, although they are taught to learn it for many years in its society. 36 Although the swan and drake are both of the same kind, of like form and figure living upon the same sort of food, yet they differ widely from one another in their respective species and qualities. 37 The swan soaring in the sky, his snow white wings and feathers, appears like the hoary lotus sitting upon its stalk. Then it gladdens the minds of men, like the full moon with her icy beams. 38 The elevated stalks of lotuses, rising like the lofty stems of plantain trees, with lotuses sitting like the goddess Lakshmi upon them, afford delight only to swans and to no other bird. 39 Behold how the lake is adorned like a beautiful lady with waves like her waving bracelets, ripples like her necklaces, and aquatic plants and flowers as wreaths and garlands on her bosom. 40 Strings of fluttering bees are like streaks of black spots on her body. The swelling of cranes and storks are like the tinkling of her anklets and rippling waves are the glances of her eyes. 41 The lake is graced, like a lady, by young swans crying by her side as her young ones, looking up to the mountain as her lord for a fresh supply of fresh water from his flowing waterfall. 42 Dont you, O harmless swan, reside with malicious water fowls and birds of prey in one and the same lake? It is better that you remain with your own kind who can help you in distress. 43 Look to your end, O silly bee, now so giddy with your drink of sweet honey, treading on the

heads of elephants to sip and suck their flowing ichor and wandering at large among blooming lotuses. The winter of scarcity is fast approaching when you shall be forced to live upon dewdrops drizzling on blades of grass or dripping from stones. 44 O lord, the milk-white swan with wide stretched wings enters into the lotus bush to look after his young ones. On seeing him, they begin to cackle like a child seeing his father. The young ones said, O father, it is all delusion, like a white pearl in silver and seeing an overcast of fog over his head at midday. 45 The swan silently floats over the clear waters of the lake like the bright moon gently glides along the translucent atmosphere of the sky. As it passes through lotus beds, the swans wings bruise the blossoms, causing them to distil their fragrant fluid which is gulped by fish like the holy water of the Ganges.

Chapter 118 Descriptions of Cranes, Herons, Deer & Travelers

Some companion said: Behold the crane which, despite lacking all good qualities, has one special instinct of uttering the sounds imitating the rain. 2 O crane that resembles the swan in the color of your feathers, you might well be taken for a young swan if you were without the rapacity of the kingfisher. 3 There is a line of kingfishers expert in diving amidst deep waters and catching fish in their wide extended beaks. Now they are sitting idly on the shore, not venturing into the water for fear of sharks floating there with open mouths and wide stretched jaws. 4 Thus murderers also dive upon men like kingfishers and cry out saying, This kingfisher is our instructor in killing. 5 Seeing a white heron with its long neck and uplifted head sitting silently and watching on the shore, people first took it to be a swan. But afterward, finding it catch a shrimp from the marsh water, they came to know it as a heron. 6 A woman saw a crane sitting on the shore for the entire day like a devotee. Meanwhile, in reality it was watching for prey until the evening shade, like day laborers do for their bread. 7 Look there, says a wayfaring woman to her companion, how these rustic women pluck lotuses from the frosty lake. If you like, you can follow them, but I will fall back from you. 8 Look there, O lord, says the companion to the king, how that traveler appeases his angry mate and leads her to the flowery bower of the weedy bush. 9 Look then, O lord, at the dalliance of the lady, and at her smiling face mixed with her frowning looks, and listen to her speech to her associate. 10 The crane, kingfisher and other rapacious birds that live together in the same place are all of the same mind and purpose. But the fool and wise man can never agree, though they live together in the same society forever. 11 As a cricket caught in a woodpeckers bill whistles to his face, so the retribution of our past misdeeds unfolds and flies like a flag before us. 12 As long as the cruel crane of fate keeps clucking upon the tall tree on the shore, the fearful shrimp keep itself concealed in the bog with its inner fear. Hence there is no rest of the body or soul until the ultimate release of both. 13 The bodies of animals, devoured by rapacious beasts and birds, then disgorged unhurt and entire out of their bowels, resemble their rising from the lap of sleep or a state of profound trance. 14 The fear that overtakes fish in their native waters at the sight of rapacious animals is far greater than those of thunderclaps or thunderbolts falling upon them. This I know from my memories of my past life as a fish, and it cannot be denied by the wise. 15 See there a herd of deer resting in rapture on a bed of flowers under the shade of trees on the borders of the lake. Look also at the hive of the bees about the new blown flowers of the grove. 16 Look at the high minded and lofty headed peacock craving and crying aloud for rainwater to the great god of the clouds and rains. In return, the god Indra pours floods to fill the whole earth with water, for the greatness of gods looks to the general and individual good. 17 Peacocks, like suckling infants, attend on the clouds as their wet nurses. Or it may be that the black peacocks are the offspring of dark clouds. 18 Behold the wanderer looking with wonder on the eyes of the antelope and finding they resemble those of his dear one at home, remaining stupefied like a statue at the sight of the objects exposed to his view. 19 The peacock, instead of drinking water from the ground, forcefully snatches a snake from underneath. Wherefore I am at a loss to know which of these to blame for its malice. 20 Why is it that the peacock shuns to drink from the large lake, which is as generous as the minds of great men? It is content to swallow drops of rainwater, spit out and poured by clouds. It refuses to drink from the large lake for shame of having to stoop down his head. 21 See the peacock dancing, displaying his flashy feathers to the clouds and shaking their starry plumage in the rain as if they were the offspring of the rainy season. 22 A rainy dark cloud, carried by the wind from the bed of the
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ocean, appears over the forest lake and meets with the joyful dancing peacock below. 23 It is better for you, O chataka cuckoo, to pick up blades of grass for your food, drink water from fountains, and rest in the shady plantain grove of the forest. You should not have to dwell in the hollow cave of a withered tree in sultry heat because of your pride of never stooping down for your existence. 24 Think not, O peacock, that this cloud is a sea and home for sharks. Know it is a watery cloud, born of the smoke of wildfire and the vapors of mountains ascending to the sky. 25 The peacock, seeing a cloud full of rain even in autumn, sometimes becoming so scant of its supply as not even to fill a tank, sustains its thirst with patience, in gratitude to the clouds past favors. It does not blame its former supporter for failing or consider drinking any other earthly water like common people. 26 The peacock, accustomed to drinking crystal drops from clouds, would not stoop to drink dirty water from a ditch, though pressed and pinched by drought and thirst. The sweet memories of his past drink supports him from fainting, and the expectation of fresh drinks preserves him from dying. 27 Travelers lessen the struggles of their journey by conversation on the way, just as the ignorant who are unable to be with themselves communicate their thoughts with others to hide the dullness of their lives. 28 Look there, O lord, at the slender stalks of lotuses supporting the burden of the water on the lotus leaves like distant tender ladies carrying water pots on their heads. 29 Asked why they were carrying those of lotus flowers and leaves and for what use, they replied, to make cooling beds for reducing the fever heat of the love sick wives of travelers from their homes. 30 These impassioned ladies, with swollen breasts and youthful amorous play and the motions and gestures of their bodies, served to excite the memories of separated brides left behind by the travelers in their far distant homes. 31 Ah surely, says a traveler, my dear one must be weeping and wailing in my absence, or falling down and rolling on the ground seeing that distant dark cloud in the sky. 32 Behold there, lines of black bees fluttering on lotus cups and little bees giddy with the sweet nectar of flowers. Gentle breezes blow on all sides, blowing the fragrance of the opening blossoms. Meanwhile the leaves of trees are dancing to the tunes of the rustling winds.

Chapter 119 A Lovelorn Traveler Talks to a Cloud and Is Almost Cremated

The kings companions continued: The traveler having returned home and finding his beloved one by the trees of Mandara Mountain, began to relate to her the pains of his extended separation. 2 Listen to my marvelous tale, said he, and what happened to me one day when I tried to send someone to you with my tidings. 3 In my painful separation, I sought long in vain to send someone to you at this my house. But where can one be found in the world who would take a severe interest in anothers affliction for the sake of charity or mere friendship? 4 Then I saw a big cloud on the top of a mountain resembling the steed of Indra. It appeared cheerfully before me, accompanied by swift lightening as his precursor. 5 I advanced before him and addressed him, saying, Ah brother cloud, you carry the rainbow of Indra like a collar about your neck and are graceful in your course. Have pity on me for a moment. Please go to my dear one and tell her my tidings with your low voice, sympathetic tears and breath of sighs. Because the tender form of a yielding vine is unable to bear your loud uproar. 6 I know not, O dark cloud, to what dwelling to direct you to find my beloved one, who is pictured in my heart by the pencil of my mind and is forever situated in my heart. 7 But now, O my friendly cloud, my distracted mind has lost that figure of my beloved in my heart, together with her sight from my eyes. Now having lost the freedom of my body in a foreign country, I have become only a wooden framework without my love, which is its living soul. For what living body can bear the pangs of separation? 8 People thought I was dead and with tears in their eyes, they began to prepare my last rites and collect wood for my funeral. 9 I was carried away to be burnt on a dreadful funeral pile, which was horribly crackling with cracking wood from the blazing fire on the burning ground. 10 There, O my lotus eyed love, I was laid on the pile by some persons with eyes weeping. The pyre was surrounded by a number of men who stood as spectators of the horrible sight. 11 At that time the twisting smoke of the pyre began to enter my nostrils like the stalks of lotus plants and like the dark and lengthy body of a curved snake enters a hole in the ground. 12 But in all this, I was defended by the strong armor of my firm love for you, just as the unborn son of the god Brahma was defended from the showers of darts of an entire army of demons. Thinking myself to be plunged in the cooling pool of your love within my heart, I was untouched by the flames of fire burning all about me. 13 All this time I lay in the ecstasy of my love for you, and I felt raptures of joy rising in my breast as I imagined being with you. I deemed myself drowned in an ambrosial lake while I was in that state of rapture. I thought sovereignty of the whole world was too insignificant before my ecstatic transport. 14 I thought I felt raptures of inexpressible delight fill my whole soul at the thought of all your flattery and graces, and in the allurements of your speech, sweet smiles and side glances, and all your gestures and motions that spread an ambrosial charm all around me. 15 I imagined we embraced in amorous holds until exhausted with excess, I lay upon a cool soft bed as if I were drowned in the cold and icy ocean of the moon. 16 At this moment as I lay in my bed, moistened with cool sandal paste and the cooling beams of the full moon, I heard a thundering noise accompanied with flames of fire rising from the burning pile of woods under me, like undersea fire from the Milky Ocean where I was lying. 17 The kings companions resumed: When the husband had said this much, his wife cried out aloud, Ah me! I am dead, I am gone! She was afraid she would hear the sad ending and fell into a swoon, senseless. 18 The husband finding her fainting, began to fan her with lotus leaves sprinkled with water and taking her
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up to his bosom, tried to restore her to her senses. 19 She wanted to hear him finish his story, so he began to tell the rest holding her chin with his hand. 20 As I felt the pain of the burning flame touching my body, I cried out and groaned. The spectators hastened to extinguish the blazing pile, delighted to find me alive. 21 With loud shouts of joy like the sound of drums and with garlands of flowers, attendants raised and embraced me to their bosoms. They went on shouting and singing and dancing and laughing with exultation. 22 Then I saw the funeral ground that looked like the formidable body of Bhairava, the god of destruction. It was covered with ashes, wreathed with snakes, and studded with human skulls. Bones scattered over the ground looked like the rays of the moon crowning the head of Shiva. 23 Howling winds blew from the funeral piles, like from the burning fire on Haras head, bearing the burnt ashes of dead bodies like a dark mist. They bore stink of rotten bones and carried the rustling noise of bones jostling against one another. 24 Burning piles, their flashing flames and flying sparks, and the fiery winds scorching trees and grass gave that place the appearance of the playground of the gods of wind (Vayu) and fire (Agni) and of the sons of the Sun god (Yama and Saturn). 25 Thus I saw the funeral ground full of terrors, covered with skeletons of half-burnt bodies and putrid carcasses. It was infested by hungry dogs, howling jackals, and other voracious beasts, and ravenous ravens and vultures. It was a place where vetala and pisacha demons played with fearful shrieks and jarring sounds. 26 I saw the coffins of dead bodies carried by their mourning friends with loud cries and lamentations that filled the air all about. I saw beasts and birds tearing the bodies entrails and arteries, yet moist with blood, and I saw the ground scattered with half burnt logs of wood and bushes. 27 In some places, the glaring pyres gave a gloomy light, and in others the tufts of hair were heaped like spots of clouds. In one place the ground was smeared with blood and looked like a lurid sheet of cloth. Elsewhere clouds roared as the sun set below the horizon.

Chapter 120 Description of Breezes & Winds, Flowers without Fragrance, Celestial Gardens, and other Various Objects on All Sides
The kings companions continued: Thus the loving pair, after taking to one another in the aforesaid manner, began to sip their delicious wine. And now attend, O lotus eyed lord, to the other things of things of this place. 2 Lo, there the winds, shaking plantain leaves and clusters of their flowers, blowing pollen from various flowers everywhere. 3 Breezes are loaded with scents exhaled by the flowers of the forest. Gentle breezes blow perfumes stolen from the locks of their favorite ladies. 4 Here blasts blow from the salt sea on the south, driving as fast as a stern lion rushes into woods and mountain caves, with the force of fierce demons attacking the gods on the top of Mount Meru. 5 There a strong wind plays and shakes tall spice, palmyra and other palm trees. Meanwhile, gentle gales softly glide over waves blowing their moisture to tender plants below. 6 Soft breezes wander with pollen thrown out by flowers. Meanwhile gentle warm breezes move about like princes amidst trees and flower gardens. 7 There the wind god Vayu plays his sweet woodland pipe in the holes of hollow bamboo, like female sweet musicians tuning their reeds in the city of Hastinapura. 8 Here every plant is filled with bees, except the karnikara flower which they avoid because that flower disregards the wind god Vayu by withholding tribute scent and pollen. 9 The palm tree, rising high as a column but yielding no fruit or flower to the hungry passerby owing to its inaccessible height, is as disgraceful as an uncharitable rich man. 10 Ignorant and unworthy people build their pride on an outward show, just as the kinsuka flower displays the beauty of its color but lacks fragrance. 11 Look at the karnikara flower, blooming only to decay because its lack of fragrance makes it worthless and despicable, like unworthy and ignorant men disregarded by all. 12 So the tamara tree with its blushing blossoms beguiles the thirsty chataka cuckoo by its false appearance of a rainy cloud. So the fair, outer appearance of the fool deceives the unwise by his inward foulness. 13 Look at these robust, woody, shady and cloud capped hills that afford shade and shelter to others. They are possessed of many more qualities befitting the kings of men and are standing like lofty bamboo. 14 Look at the distant cloud on the mountain top, resting as it were upon the seat of its tableland of bright gold and twirling its yellow covering of lightning, appearing like the god Vishnu in his garment of golden yellow. 15 Look at the blooming kinsuka flowers with fluttering bees and birds about them, appearing like fighting warriors pierced by flying arrows and smeared with crimson blood. 16 Behold the golden mandara flowers touching the orange colored clouds of heaven. They appear like giddy gandharva lads lying on top of Mahendra Mountain. 17 Behold the weary wayfarers, laying and lulling themselves to rest under the shade of kalpa trees in the Nandana garden of paradise. Meanwhile siddha spiritual masters and vidyadhara spirits are sitting at ease, singing their songs to the tune of their stringed instruments. 18 Behold celestial ladies stretched at ease, laughing and singing in the groves of kalpa trees in the celestial garden. 19 There is the silent home of the great sage Mandapala famed in legends, and the cave of the celebrated eagle Jarita said to be his wife. 20 See there, the line of hermitages of the ancient sages where the envious animals forget their mutual hatreds and live together in perfect concord and friendship. 21 There are coral plants growing with other shrubs and bushes by the sea coast. Drops of water trickling upon them glisten like gems from the sun. 22 Waves roll with precious gems on the bosom of the ocean, like playful ladies rocking with their ornaments on the breasts of their lovers. 23 We hear the jingling of the jewelry of celestial ladies traveling in the celestial regions to the infernal homes of serpents.
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Mountain caves whistle with a sound resembling the buzzing of wild bees falling down giddy from drinking the ichor flowing from the forehead of elephants. 25 Behold the sea ebbing with the waning moon during the dark fortnight of the month, and the receding tides leaving the linear marks of their regression upon the sands on the shore. 26 Behold the woodland decorated like a beauty with clusters of flowers hanging like wreaths and garlands on every side, breathing fragrance all about and attired in the robe of its cooling shade. 27 Variegated foliage form its partycolored dress and waterfalls seem like its sweet smiles. Scattered flowers appear like the flowery bed of a happy woodland goddess. 28 High-minded sages and hermits are as highly delighted with their quiet woodland retreats as the celestials are joyous in gardens of Nandana. 29 The tranquil and indifferent minds of sages are equally delighted with these solitary woodlands as the restless and impatient minds of lovers and worldly people. 30 The waters of the sea, whether running into the land or washing the foot of a rock on the seashore, are equally shinning and sounding as their tinkling anklet ornaments. 31 Punnaga flowers blooming on mountains appear like golden mines. Gold finches flying over them look like winged gods in the aerial path. 32 Mountain forests appear to be on fire with their full blown champaka flowers. Bees and clouds hover over them like smoke. Meanwhile, winds spread their pollen and petals like sparks of fire. 33 Behold the kokila nightingale swinging and singing on his seat on the topmost branch of a karavira tree. His mate comes and embraces him there and sings in response to his songs with her clamorous chattering. 34 See the salt waters of the salty ocean roaring aloud against the shore. But the coast lands are kept in subjection under the hands of their able masters. 35 O lord, please make this earth stretching to the four seas as your footstool. Establish your rule over the remaining kings who have escaped the brunt of your valor. Appoint rulers over all provinces on all sides. Provide them with the force and arms necessary to keep them in order. Continue to govern your realms with mercy and moderation.

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Chapter 121 King Vipaschits Companions Settle by the Ocean and Pray to Agni
Vasishta related: Then King Vipaschit and his companions sat on the seacoast and did whatever was necessary to establish his sovereignty. 2 They chose spots for their homes at that place and made houses for themselves according to their positions. They settled the boundaries of the provinces and set guards for their defense. 3 At last they went down into the ocean, then proceeded to the other side of the world to show Vipaschits glory to other parts of the world. 4 Then dark night came in the form of an all-shading cloud and all people, after finishing their daily works and rituals, sank into the lap of sleep. 5 The companions were amazed to think how they had been led so insensibly over such a great distance in so short a space of time, meeting the ocean-like currents of rivers falling into it. 6 They said, It is a wonder we have come so far without any attempt on our part. Therefore this great speed must be attributed to the swiftness of the vehicles of the great god Agni. 7 Lord! they say, how extensive is the view before us stretching from one end of Asia to its other extreme of the vast salt ocean, and thence again to the islands in it, and other lands and seas beyond them. 8 There are islands and seas beyond these, and others again beyond them. How many such and many more may there be of this kind, and how inscrutable is the delusion which is thus spread before our minds? 9 Therefore let us pray to the fire god Agni that we may see at once everything on all sides by his favor and without any effort or pain on our part. 10 So saying and thinking in this manner, they all reflected on the fire god Agni with one accord, and meditated on him as they sat in their respective places. 11 The fire god Agni appeared to them in his tangible form and spoke to them, Ask my sons, what favor you desire of me? 12 They said, O lord of gods who abides beyond this visible and elemental world, ordain that by means of Vedic mantra and our purified minds we may know in our minds what is knowable. 13 Give us, O fire god, this great and best boon that we ask of you, that we may know by your light whatever is knowable by the external senses, mind or self-consciousness. 14 Enable us to see with our eyes, O lord, the paths which lead the spiritual masters and yogis to the sight of the invisibles. Make us also perceive in our minds the things that are imperceptible to them. 15 Let not death overtake us until we have reached the ways of the spiritual masters. Let your grace guide us in the paths where no embodied being can pass. 16 Vasishta said: So be it, said the fire god Agni, and instantly disappeared from their sight, just like an undersea fire bursts forth and immediately vanishes in the sea. 17 Dark night appeared as the fire god Agni disappeared. After a while, the night also fled and sunshine returned with the reviving wishes of the king and his men to survey the wide ocean lying before them.
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Chapter 122 King Vipaschit and His Companions Walk on the Ocean
Vasishta related: Rising in the morning, they regulated the affairs of the state according to the rules prescribed by law. They were eager to see the sea, as if impelled by some supernatural force which nothing less than the power of ministerial officers could restrain. 2 So exasperated by their mad ambition, they forgot their affections for family to undertake their perilous sea voyage, leaving them all weeping. 3 They said, We will see what there is on the other side of the sea, then return instantly to this place. Saying so they muttered the invocatory mantras of the fire god Agni, who inspired them with the power of walking with feet dry over the sea. 4 All the representatives of the king, followed by their companions on all sides, proceeded to the borders of the various seas, walking over the watery maze. 5 They walked upon the waters as if they were walking upon the ground. All four bodies of the fourfold king met together in one place. Immediately afterwards they separated with all their forces. 6 Marching on foot over the vast expanse, they surveyed all that was in and upon the sea, then disappeared from the sight of people on the shore, like a cloud vanishes in autumn. 7 The forces traveled on foot over the watery path of the ocean with as much fortitude as the kings elephants tread patiently on land when bound on a distant journey. 8 They mounted high and went down along rising and lowering waves, like men climbing and descending steep mountains, or like one galloping on horseback, or like Vishnu floating upon ocean waves. 9 They paced over whirlpools like straw floats on water. They walked about as gracefully among waves as the beautiful moon passes through clouds. 10 The brave soldiers, so well armed with weapons and so well protected by the power of their mantras and amulets, were discharged from the bowels of sharks as often as they came to be devoured by them. 11 Pushed onward by waves and driven forward by winds, their bodies were carried many leagues in a moment. 12 Huge wave surges lifted them to great heights, like the enormous elephants on which they used to mount and ride about in their native land. 13 The vast expanse of water is like the empty space of the sky. Its successions of heaving waves are like the folds of gathering clouds in heaven, emitting lightning as they dash against one another. 14 Loose, loud surges of the sea resembled elephants loose on the battlefield. Though they dashed against the shore with all their force, yet they were unable to break them down, like elephants baffled in their attempt to break down a stone rampart. 15 Surging waves reflect the rays of brilliant pearls and gems borne from shore to shore. They resemble eminent men who, though they pass alone from place to place, are accompanied by their train and glory everywhere. 16 The surf tramples over masses of hoary froth with contempt, like a snowy white swan treads upon the bed of white lotuses with contempt. 17 The loud ocean, even louder than roaring clouds and waves, has no terror to those who stand like rocks thereon. 18 The cloud-kissed waves of the ocean, rising above the mountains then falling low at their feet, were likely to touch the sun and then sink into the nether worlds. 19 The companions were not afraid of the rising waters. They passed over the sea like upon a sheet of cloth, shrouded by drizzling clouds that formed a canopy over them. 20 Thus the kings companions crossed the ocean full of sharks, alligators and tremendous whirlpools. They were sprinkled with water like showers of flowers and adorned with marine gems and pearls. They crossed on foot, as others do in fleets of ships.
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Chapter 123 King Vipaschit Wanders in Various Continents

Vasishta related: Thus they proceeded to explore visible phenomena exposed before them by ignorance. They continued to walk over the watery maze and the islands it contained. 2 They passed over the ocean to some island, then from that island to the sea again. In this manner they walked over many mountains and wildernesses in endless succession. 3 Then as the king proceeded towards the western ocean, he was seized and eaten by a voracious fish, like the undying breed of Vishnus fish, and as fleet as a boat in the stream of Bitasta Beyah. 4 The fish fled to the Milky Ocean with the king in his belly. Finding him too hard digest, he carried him in his bowels over a great distance in another direction. 5 He was carried to the Sugar Ocean on the south. There he was cast on the island of yaksha demons where he was overpowered by love for a female yaksha fiend by her art of enchantment sorcery. 6 Then he went towards the east and passing by the Ganges, he killed a shark that had pursued him, and arrived at last at the district of Kanyakubja. 7 Then proceeding towards the north, he came to the country of Uttara-kurus where he was elevated by his adoration of Shiva and became freed from the fear of death, in all his wanderings on all sides of the earth. 8 In this way, travelling long and far, both by land and sea, he was often attacked by wild elephants on the boundary mountains, and repeatedly gorged and disgorged by sharks and alligators in the seas. 9 Then proceeding towards the west, he was picked up by a garuda bird and set upon his back. The bird took to his golden wings and carried him in an instant to Kusa-dwipa across the ocean. 10 From there he passed to Krauncha-dwipa on the east where he was seized and devoured by a rakshasa demon of the mountain, but who he later killed by ripping up his belly and its entrails. 11 Then wandering in the south, Daksha, the king of that part, cursed him to become a yaksha demon. After some years he was released from that state by the King of Sakadwipa. 12 Then he passed over the great and smaller seas lying in the north and after passing over the great frigid ocean, he arrived at the country of gold where he was changed into a stone by the spiritual masters of that place. 13 He remained in that state for a hundred years until by the grace of his god Agni, he was released from the curse of the spiritual master who received him again into his favor. 14 Then travelling to the east, he became king of the country of coconuts. After reigning there for a full five years, he was restored to the memory of his former state. 15 Then passing to the north of Meru Mountain, he dwelt for ten years among the apsara nymphs in the groves of kalpa trees living on coconuts. 16 Afterwards he went to Salmali-dwipa in the west, which abounds in trees of the same name. He lived with the birds for many years, having been instructed in their language when he had been carried away by the garuda. 17 From there, journeying in a westerly course, he reached Mandara Mountain which abounded in vegetation and madara forests. Here he resided for a day in company with a kinnara female named Mandari. 18 Then he journeyed to the Nandana garden of the gods, which abounded in wish-fulfilling kalpa trees rising as tall as the waves of the Milky Ocean. He remained in the company of the woodland gods for a seventy years, sporting with apsara nymphs in their amorous play.
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Chapter 124 Fourfold State of King Vipaschit

Rama said, Tell me sage, how was it that the fourfold Vipaschit entertained different desires though one person with a single consciousness? 2 Vasishta replied: Any person conscious of his self identity and its invariability and indivisibility may still think himself to be another person doing different things, just as a man does in his dream. 3 Again, the clarity of the soul shows abstract images of things in itself, as it did in the soul of the wise King Vipaschit, and as a mirror reflects the discrete figures of objects, and of the sky and sea, in its clear and empty space. 4 As reflectors made of the same metal reflect one another in themselves, so all things, which in reality are of an intellectual nature, reflect themselves in the intellect. 5 Hence whatever object presents itself to the senses of anyone is nothing other than the solidification of his intellectual idea of it. 6 The one and the same thing appears as many, and varied ones in reality are only the unchanging one. There is no positive variety or uniformity in existence because all apparent variety is positive unity. 7 Hence whatever part of the king was conscious of anything that presented itself at anytime, the same is said to be the state of his being during that time. 8 It is possible for a yogi who sits secluded in one place to see all present, past and future events simultaneously. In the same way, it is possible for a king sitting retired in his palace to manage all affairs of his whole domain and much more, for King Vipaschit delegated to his viceroys as if they were members of his body. 9 A cloud stretches itself to all the quarters of the sky and at the same time performs the different functions of quenching the parched earth with its water and of growing vegetables and fructifying trees. Similarly, a man boasts of doing several acts at the same time. 10 So also are the simultaneous acts of the Lord God and those of the lords of men and yogis who design and perform at the same time the multiple acts relating to the creation, preservation and management of the world. 11 So the one Vishnu, with his four arms and as many forms, acts many parts independently, such as the preservation of the world on the one hand and the enjoyment of his fair consorts on the other. 12 Again though a persons two hands are enough to discharge the ordinary affairs of life, yet it is necessary to have many arms to use many weapons in warfare. 13 In the same manner, the one monarch was situated with his fourfold persons in all four sides of the earth where, though each was impressed with the consciousness of the one identity, each acted his part distinctly from the others. 14 They were all similarly conscious of the pains and pleasures of lying down on bare ground, passing to distant islands, and travelling to various forests, groves, and desert lands. 15 They all remembered their journeys over hills and mountains, as well as their voyages by water and air. They knew how they floated on the seas and rested on clouds. 16 They knew how they mounted upon waves of seas and rode on the back of flying wind, and how they lay on seashores and at the feet of mountains. 17 Again, the king proceeding to Saka continent on the east passed into an enchanted city of yaksha demons lying at the foot of the eastern Udaya-giri mountain where, being spellbound by their sorcery, he lay asleep for a full seven years in the woods of leafless mansasija trees. 18 Afterwards, rising from his drowsiness, he was converted to the dull state of a stone by drinking some mineral water and was condemned to remain for seven more years with the mineral substances of the earth. 19 Then he was confined in a cave in western Astachala Mountain which reaches to the region of clouds and is shrouded by darkness. There he became enamored of the company of pisacha and apsara females.
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Then he arrived at a region free from fear where a high mountain rose with waterfalls on all sides. Here the king was lost in the forest of Haritaki having myrobalan fruits and become invisible for years. 21 The king that had before been spellbound by the yaksha afterwards travelled to the frigid climate. There, being transformed to a lion, he wandered about Raivata Hills for ten days and nights. 22 Then being deluded by the black art of pisachas, he was changed into the form of a frog and lived in that state in the caves of the golden mountain for a hundred years. 23 Afterwards, travelling to the country of Kumarika, he dwelt at the bottom of the northern ridge of Black Mountain. Then going to the Saka country, he was transformed into a hog and lived in a dark hole in that shape for a hundred years. 24 He lived for fourteen years in the land of Maribaca when the western form of the king was turned into a vidyadhara by virtue of his skill in learning various mantras. 25 There he enjoyed sexual intercourse to his full satisfaction under scented gardens of cardamom trees and passed his time in amusement.

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Chapter 125 Each Body of the King Helps the Other; On Yogis; None but Yogis Can Know the Mind of Another; Indifference to Fate
Vasishta continued: Now of the four bodies of the king, one was transformed into a tree in a valley called the vale of fearlessness in Saka continent. It supported itself by drinking the cascading water flowing down from the rocks above. 2 Then the western body of the king, by the power of its mantra incantations, came to the relief of the eastern part and released it from its seventy-year long curse of a vegetable state. 3 Then the western body of the king that had traveled to the frigid climate was transformed into a stone by curse of the chief of a pisacha tribe. He was released from that state by the southern body offering meat food to the carnivorous pisacha. 4 At another time, as this western body was settled beyond the western horizon, it was changed into the form of a bull by a female fiend that had assumed the form of a cow, and was freed from that state by the southern body. 5 Again, the southern body of the king was doomed to live as a demon in a tree on a mountain in Kshemaka and was liberated from it at last by the yaksha prince. 6 Then again, the eastern body of the king was transformed into the shape of a lion on a mountain in the province of Vrishaka. He was delivered from his transformation by the western body. 7 Rama asked, Sage, how can the one king, confined in one place like a yogi, be present everywhere at the same time? How could he simultaneously perform various acts at different times and in different places by the all comprehensive universality of the mind? 8 Vasishta replied: O Rama, let the unenlightened think whatever they may regarding this world, but you attend to what I say regarding the meaning in which it is viewed by enlightened yogis. 9 According to the wise, there is no other essence except the one Universal Consciousness. Phenomena are an utter nonexistence. The creation or uncreated entity of the world blends into nothing. 10 This Universal Consciousness is the eternal residence of and is the same as the eternal and Universal Soul and constitutes the essentiality and universality of the Supreme Soul at all times. 11 Say, who can obstruct the course of the great mind anywhere or by any force? It is omnipresent and all comprehensive, exhibiting itself in various forms in the endless varieties of its thoughts. 12 What can we call ours when all these sights are exhibited in the Supreme Soul or Consciousness in all places and times, and all that is present, past and future are comprised in that all-comprehending mind? 13 The far and near, a moment and an age, are the same to Consciousness which is never altered in its nature. It is both near and afar. It is the past, present and future. 14 All things are situated in the soul, yet through creations illusion and ignorance, they appear to be placed outside as we see them with our naked eyes. 15 The soul is the substantial omniscience of empty form. It exhibits the three worlds in its emptiness without changing its emptiness. 16 The Universal Soul appears in the universe as both viewer and the view, or as the subjective and objective in its same nature. How is it possible for the inherent soul of the apparent world to admit of a visible form in any way, unless it be by the delusion of our understanding to think it so? 17 But tell me, O sage who knows the truth, what is impossible for God for whom all things are possible at all times and places? So also to wise King Vispaschit who was conscious of his self identity in all his four forms. 18 The enlightened intellect of a yogi who has not yet arrived at his transcendent state of unity with God and retains the sense of its individuality, can yet readily unite itself with the souls
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of others in all places. 19 There is nothing impossible for the Supreme Soul. But the half-enlightened soul that lingers between knowledge and ignorance and has not attained transcendent wisdom is confounded in its intellect regarding the true knowledge of things. 20 The soul that is somewhat advanced in its knowledge is said to have partly progressed towards its perfection. Hence the four parts of Vipaschit situated on the four sides made up a perfect whole. 21 These four parts were like so many states of perfection which happened on Vipaschit like the rays of heavenly light. These states helped and healed each other, just as the different parts of the body assist and supply to the defects of one another. 22 Rama said, Tell me, O venerable brahmin, why the fourfold King Vipaschit ran on all sides like brutes if he was so enlightened in every part? Why he did not sit collected in himself as he was? 23 Vasishta replied: What I have told you about enlightenment applies only to yogis who, though they are combined of many parts in their minds, yet remain tranquil in themselves in the same state. 24 The four Vipaschitas were not wholly enlightened like holy yogis, but being partly enlightened, they remained in the middle state between the two, as if hanging between the states of enlightenment and ignorance at the same time. 25 They carried the marks of both at once: discretion and discernment on the one part, and passions and affections of their minds on the other. These two parts led them two different ways of liberation as well as of bondage. 26 Those who are ever vigilant in the discharge of their pious acts, wavering between their temporal and eternal concerns such as the Vipaschitas, continue in their course of action. Such persons cannot be perfect, esoteric yogis in this life. 27 Devotees devoted to a particular god, as the Vipaschitas were devoted to the god of fire, are called concentration yogis. Only if they attain transcendental knowledge are they called transcendent yogis. 28 The learned yogi does not see any mist of ignorance obstructing his sight of the light of truth. But the ignorant devotee is blind to truth, though he may be received into the favor of his favorite god. 29 The four Vipaschitas were all subject to ignorance. They rejected knowledge of the true soul by their attachment to gross material bodies which are, at best, only vain unrealities. Therefore listen to what I will now tell you about those who are liberated from their grossness even in their lifetime. 30 Yogis, of course, retain their knowledge of the material as they conduct the external affairs of life. Liberation is the virtue of the mind, consisting of its freedom from subjugation to gross materials. Liberation exists only in the mind and not in the body or its consciousness. 31 But, as the bodily properties are inseparably connected with the body, and as consciousness cannot be separated from the body, therefore a liberated soul is not attached to the body, nor does a yogi ever take any heed of the body in his mind. 32 The mind of a liberated yogi is never reunited with his body, anymore than pollen ever returns to its parent stalk. The physical properties of the body of a living liberated yogi always remain the same as those of worldly persons. 33 All can equally perceive the bodies of both yogis and worldly people, but not the minds which are hidden in them. A liberated soul cannot be seen by others, but the imprisoned spirit is known to all by its addiction to the discharge of its bounded duties. 34 A person can well recognize self-liberation in oneself, just as his perception of the sweetness of honey and the taste of other things are well known to him. One is well acquainted with his liberation and bondage from his consciousness of pleasure and pain from the one or the other. 35 Thus ones inner perception of his liberation is why he is called liberated. It is also the inner coolness of his soul and the detachment of his mind that constitute his liberation even in his lifetime. 36 Neither bondage nor liberation of the soul, nor the pleasure or painfulness of ones mind can be known to another, whether you divide the

body into pieces or place it upon a royal throne. 37 Whether laughing or crying, the liberated soul feels no pleasure or pain because in either state he remains situated in the unalterable spirit of God. 38 The minds of liberated persons are settled in the Divine Spirit and nowhere else, even when they are receiving or doing anything with their bodies. But learned men of the different schools are seen to be quite otherwise because they are unacquainted with liberation. 39 The bodies of liberated persons are not affected by external events. Though such a one may appear to be weeping, yet he never weeps in grief, nor does he die with the death of his mortal body. 40 A great man who is liberated in his lifetime does not smile though he has a smiling face. He is not affected by or angry at anything, though he seems to be moved by affections and anger. 41 Without any delusion, he sees the delusions of the world. Unseen by any, he sees the failings of others. All pleasure and pain seem as ideals to him. 42 Everything is like nothing to a liberated sage, like flowers growing in the garden of the sky. The existence of the world is nonexistence to he who sees only unity in all existence. 43 The words pleasure and pain are like flowers in the sky to the liberated who are indifferent to them. They have become victorious over their feelings by their liberation from all sensations in their lifetime. 44 They who have known the truth are unchanged in their nature, just as the mouths of Brahma are unflinching in the recital of Vedas. 45 Shiva, with the nail of his finger, ripped the upper head of Brahma like a lotus bud. Brahma neither resented it nor grew another head, which he was well able to do. So the meek yogi does not resent any harm done to him. 46 Of what use is the upward looking face to he whose inner, intellectual eye shows him the emptiness of all things around. Hence, possession of the external organ of sight is useless to he who sees everything within himself. 47 Everyone gets what allotted to him by his fate in retribution of his past actions. Fate affects not only mortals, but also binds the god Shiva to the sweet embraces of Gauri, as well as to his somber contemplation forever. So also, the Milky Ocean bears the ambrosial moon in his ample bosom. 48 Good minded men are seldom seen to abandon their passions, though they are capable of doing so in their lifetime. But they become quite dispassionate upon their death when the five elemental principles of their bodies are burnt away upon the funeral pile. 49 But the living liberated man gains nothing by doing anything, nor does he lose anything by doing nothing. He has no concern with any person or interest whatever with anything here on earth. 50 What avails ones passion or dispassion in this world? What is fated in this life cannot be averted by any means. 51 Vishnu, who is liberated in his life, does not cease from his work of slaying asura demons or to have them slain by the hands of Indra and others. He becomes incarnate to die himself or by the hands of demons. He is repeatedly born and grows up to become extinct at last. 52 No one can immediately give up his alternate activity and rest, nor is there any good to be reaped by his attachment to the one or his renunciation of the other. 53 Therefore let a man remain in whatever state he may be, without having any desire of his own. So Vishnu is without any desire in himself, being only the form of pure Consciousness and Intelligence. 54 Changing time changes and moves the steady soul on every side like a ball, just like it makes the fixed sun appear turning around the world. 55 The lord of the day is not able to restrain his body from its apparent course, though he is seated in his nirvana as he is, without any desire to change his place. 56 The moon also appears to be waning under his wasting disease, though he remains always the same in all kalpa ages of the world. So the soul of the liberated person continues the same, though his body is subject to decay with age. 57 Fire also is ever free and liberated in itself because nothing can extinguish its latent heat at anytime. Though it was suppressed for a while by the sacrificial butter of Marutta and the seminal liquid of Shiva, yet it revived again as it was before. 58 Brihaspati and Shukra, the

preceptors of gods and demigods, were liberated in their lifetime and with all their ambitious views of predominance, they acted like dull and miserable persons. 59 The sagely King Janaka is perfectly liberated in his mind, yet he is willing to rule over his kingdom and defeat his enemies in battle. 60 The great Kings Nala, Mandhata, Sagara, Dilipa, Nahusa and others were all liberated in their lives, yet they reigned and ruled over their kingdoms with all the vigilance of sovereigns. 61 A man acting wisely or foolishly in life is neither bound nor liberated in this world. His ardent desire or apathy to worldliness is what constitutes his bondage or liberation. 62 The demon Kings Vali, Namuchi, Vritra, Andhaka, Mura and others lived quite liberated in their lives, yet they acted as unwisely as if they were elated by their ambition and passions. 63 Therefore the existence or disappearance of passions in anyones conduct makes no difference to his spiritual character. Pure vacancy of the human soul and mind constitutes his liberation in this world. 64 Being possessed of the knowledge of God as pure vacuum, the living liberated person is assimilated to the likeness of emptiness itself. He is free from the duality of thinking himself to be other than the Divine Spirit. 65 He is conscious of the fallacy of phenomenal appearances, which he knows to be no more than like the variegated rainbow reflected in empty air. 66 As the various colors are seen shining in a rainbow in the field of empty air, so these countless brilliant worldly bodies are only empty particles appearing in infinite space. 67 This world is an unreality that appears like a reality. It is unborn and uncreated, yet it is irresistibly conspicuous to our sight, like the appearance of the empty sky. 68 It is without beginning or end and yet appears to have both. It is a mere void seeming to be a real substantiality. It is uncreated, yet thought to be a created something. It is indestructible, though thought to be subject to destruction. 69 Its creation and destruction are phenomena occurring in the empty essence of God, just as the structure of a wooden post and statue takes place in the substance of the wood. 70 The mind freed from its imagination and drowned in deep samadhi, as in the state of a sleepless sleeper, comes to the sight of an even intellectual emptiness, absorbing the sights of all the worlds as if absorbed in it. 71 As a man passing from one place to another is unmindful of the intermediate scenes, so when attention is directed solely to the sight of the intellectual void, the thought of the world and other existences is wholly lost. 72 The thought of duality is lost in unity in this state of intense meditation. This idea of oneness disappears in that of a vast void which ends in a state of conscious bliss. 73 In this state of mental sameness, the duality of the world is lost in the nothingness of emptiness. The knowledge of self personality is decreased by spirituality. All future presents itself clearly to the view of the clairvoyance of the enrapt yogi. 74 The perfect yogi remains with his mind as clear as the empty sky, enveloping phenomena in its ample sphere. He sits silently, still and cold as a stone. He views the world in himself and remains quiet in rapturous amazement at the view.

Chapter 126 Death and Further, Varied Consciousness of the Four Vipaschitas
Rama said, Now tell me sage, what did the four Vipaschitas do, being cast in seas, islands and forests in the different parts of the earth? 2 Vasishta replied: Rama, now hear about the four Vipaschitas and their wandering in forests of palm and tamara trees, upon the hills and in the islands in all directions. 3 One of the Vipaschitas, wandering about the westerly ridge of a mountain in Kraunchadwipa, was crushed to death by the tusk of an elephant, just as when it tears a lotus in the lake. 4 Another was smashed in his contest with a rakshasa, who carried his mangled body aloft in air, then cast it amidst an ocean fire where it was burnt to ashes. 5 The third was taken up by a vidyadhara to the region of the celestials. There he was reduced to ashes by curse of the god Indra who was offended at the kings lack of respect for him. 6 The fourth, the one that went to the farthest edge of a mountain in Kusadwipa, was caught by a shark on the seashore which tore his body to eight pieces. 7 In this manner, all four lost their lives. They all fell as sorrowfully as the regents of the four quarters at the destruction of the world on doomsday. 8 After they were reduced to the state of emptiness in the vast vacuum, their empty and self-conscious souls were led by memories of their former states to see the earth. 9 They saw the seven continents with their belts of seven oceans and the cities and towns with which they were decorated everywhere. 10 They saw the sky above with the sun and moon forming the pupils of its eyes. They also saw clusters of stars hanging like chains of pearls about its neck and billowy clouds that formed its folded vest. 11 With their intellectual eye, they saw the stupendous bodies that rose out of chaos at the revolutions of past kalpa cycles, filling the vastness of the sky and all sides of the horizon with their gigantic forms. 12 Being possessed of consciousness in their spiritual forms, they descended to observe the manners of elemental bodies that were exposed before them. 13 All four Vipaschitas were moved by their previous impressions to inquire into the measure and extent of the ignorance that led people to the belief that the body is the soul, for their lack of knowledge of the spiritual soul. 14 They wandered from one continent to another to observe in which part of this ideal planet of the earth was this ignorance most firmly seated so as to give it the appearance of a visible substance. 15 Passing over the seven continents and oceans, the western Vipaschit happened to meet with the god Vishnu standing on a parcel of firm land. 16 From the god, Vipaschit received the incomparable knowledge of divine truth and remained in samadhi trance at that spot for a full five years. 17 Afterwards, finding his soul to be full of the divine presence, he renounced even his spiritual body. He fled like his vital breath to the transcendent vacuum of final nirvana. 18 The eastern Vipaschit was carried to the region of moon where he sat beside that fully bright globe. But the king, though placed in the exalted sphere of the moon, continued to lament the loss of his former body. 19 The southern king, forgetful of his spiritual nature, thought he was ruling in Salmalidwipa and employed himself investigating external objects of the senses. 20 The northern one, living in the clear waters of the seventh ocean, thought he had been devoured by a shark which held him in his belly for a thousand years. 21 There he fed upon the bowels of the shark, which killed the animal in a short time. Then he came out of its belly as if the shark had given birth to a young shark. 22 Then he traveled over the frigid ocean of snows and its icy tracts stretching eighty thousand leagues in dimension. 23 He arrived at a spot of solid gold which was the home of gods and stretched to ten thousand leagues. Here he met with his end. 24 In this land King Vipaschit attained the state of a godhead in the same way a piece of wood is turned to fire
1

in a burning furnace. 25 Being one of the principal gods, he went to Lokaloka Mountain which surrounds the earth like an aqueduct surrounds the base of a tree. 26 The mountain rises to the height of fifty thousand leagues and has the inhabited earth on one side of it which faces the sunlight, and eternal darkness reigning on the other. 27 He ascended to the top of Lokaloka Mountain which pierced the starry sphere. As he was seated upon it, he was seen in the light of a star by the beholders below. 28 Beyond that spot and far away from this highest mountain lay the deep and dark abyss of infinite void. 29 Here was the end of this earth. Beyond it was the emptiness of the sky of fathomless depth and full of impervious darkness. 30 There reigns a darkness of the color of a swarm of black bees and like the shade of black tamara trees. There is neither the dark earth nor any moving body under the extended sky. This great void is devoid of support, nor does it support anything whatever at anytime.

Chapter 127 Cosmology of the Universe

Rama said, Please tell me sage. How is this globe of the earth situated? How and where does Lokaloka Mountain stand upon it? Do the stars revolve about it? 2 Vasishta replied: As children build their fancied castles in empty air, so this world is the creation of the imagination of the mind of Brahma, and no more than this. 3 As a dim sighted man sees the shadow of the moon and other false sights before his eyes, so in the beginning, the creative power (Brahma) sees the phantoms of the phenomenal world in the emptiness of its Intellect. 4 As an imaginary city is situated in the mind and is invisible to the eye, so the notion of the world is assumed in the intellect and not exhibited in actuality. 5 Whenever there is a reflection of anything in the mind arising spontaneously of its own nature, the same presents itself, even then and in that state, before sight as in a dream. 6 As a dim sighted eye sees false sights in the sky, so the deluded mind sees the earth and heavenly bodies. 7 As the currents of water flow on the surface of rivers, and there resides a latent fire underneath, so the notions of things presenting themselves as dreams of the mind are manifested as real ones before sight. 8 Hence, as thoughts and ideas of things continually occur and settle in the mind, so the earth and heavenly bodies constantly appear to revolve in their spheres. 9 The world is entirely nonexistent to dull and inanimate beings. It is visible to those who have physical sight but utterly invisible to the blind and altogether unknown to those who are born blind. It is imperceptible to the insensible and perceptible only in the same manner as it is presented in the mind. So it is only in the power of the mind to represent it in some form or other to ones self. 10 Thus it is according to mental conception that the bodies of stars are considered to be as large as the earth and the unreal world is believed to be a real entity. 11 The world has both light and darkness owing to the presence or absence of the sun. Beyond this there is a great abyss of emptiness, a vast expanse of darkness except where there is a glimpse of zodiacal light. 12 The polar circle is called Lokaloka Mountain from the bulging of the poles at both ends. It is also called Lokaloka because it has a light and a dark side, owing to the course of the sun towards or away from it. Its distance from the starry circle also deprives it of zodiacal light. 13 Beyond Lokaloka Mountain and far away from the sphere of the sky, there is the sphere of the starry frame which revolves around them at a great distance on all the ten sides. 14 This starry zodiacal belt encircles the sky up and down, from the heavens above to the infernal regions below, in the vast emptiness of space extending to all sides. 15 The starry belt of the zodiac turns round Lokaloka Mountain on earth and its nether regions, as it appears to our imagination and not otherwise as fixed and motionless. 16 The sphere of zodiacal stars is twice as distant from the poles as they are distant from the middle of the earth, in the same way as the shell of a ripe walnut is distant from the sheath of its seeds. 17 Thus the starry belt is settled at double the distance from the poles, as Lokaloka Mountain is situated from the equator. It turns all about the ten sides, like a bael fruit whirling in the sky. 18 The aspect of the world is according to the pattern situated in the imagination of Brahma, and as reflected from its original model in the Divine Mind. 19 There is another sphere of the heavens, far away from the starry frame and twice in its extent. This is lighted by the zodiacal light and beyond it there reigns a thick darkness. 20 At the end of this sphere there is the great circle of the universe, having one half stretching above and the other below and containing the sky in the middle. 21 It extends millions of leagues and is compact with all its contents. It is a mere work of imagination, formed of emptiness in the immensity of vacuum. 22 The sphere of light turns on every side of the great circle of emptiness, with all the
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radiant bodies of the sun, moon, and stars in its circumstance. There is no upside or downward in it, but are all the same. 23 There is no actual ascending, descending or standing of any planetary body. They are merely manifestations of the intellect which exhibits these variations in the workings of the mind.

Chapter 128 Endlessly Wandering in the Vacuum of Brahma; Everything We Perceive Is through God
Vasishta speaking: 1 Rama, I have told you all this from my own personal perception and not by any guesswork. Through their purely intelligent bodies, yogis like ourselves have come to the clear sight of these things in nature which are otherwise unknowable to the material body or mind. 2 Thus the world of which I have spoken appears to us as in a dream, and not in any other aspect as it is viewed by others. 3 Now whether the world is seen in the light of a dream or any other thing is of no matter to us. It is the business of the learned to speak of its situation and what it relates to. 4 There are the two Meru poles situated at the utmost extremities of the north and south of the world. It is the business of the learned to inquire into the endless kinds of beings lying between them. 5 These varieties are well known to the people of those particular parts, but not to us here where they do not appear in their native beauty. 6 The two poles standing at the farthest extremities limit the earth with its seven continents and seas, and stretch no farther beyond them. 7 Now hear, O Rama, that the whole body of water on earth is ten times as much as the extent of the two continents that are surrounded by it. 8 The two continents attract the encircling waters around them, just as a magnet attracts iron needles. The water upholds the continents just like the wish-fulfilling kalpa tree supports the fruit upon it. 9 All things on earth are supported by it, just as the fruit of a tree is supported by its stem. Therefore everything on earth falls down on it, like fruit falling upon the ground. 10 Far below the surface of the water there is a latent heat which is always burning without any fuel. This latent heat is as still as the air and as clear as the flame of fire. 11 At a distance of ten times from it, there is the vast region of air. As many times far away from that, there is the open space of transparent emptiness. 12 At a great distance from that, there is the infinite space of the emptiness of Divine Spirit. It is neither dark nor bright, but full of Divine Consciousness. 13 This endless emptiness of the Supreme Spirit is without beginning, middle or end. It is called the Universal Soul, the great Intellect, and perfect bliss. 14 Again there are numberless globes in the distant parts of these spheres that appear and disappear from view by turns. 15 But in reality, there is nothing that appears or disappears in the uniformly bright soul of Brahman where everything continues in the same manner throughout all eternity. 16 I have thus related to you, Rama, all about the phenomenal worlds that are perceptible to us. Now hear me tell you about what became of Vipaschit in Lokaloka Mountain. 17 Being led by his former impressions and accustomed habit, he kept wandering about the top of the mountain. But afterwards he fell down in a dark and dismal pit. 18 He found himself lying as dead when the birds of air, as big as mountain peaks, descended upon his dead body, which they tore to pieces and devoured. 19 But as he died on the holy mountain, he still had a spiritual body. He did not feel the pains which are inevitable upon the loss of the physical body, but retained his clear consciousness all along. 20 Yet as his self-consciousness did not attain the transcendent perceptivity of his soul, he remembered the grossness of his past acts and deeds and was conscious of them, as any living body. 21 Rama asked, Sage, how is it possible for the disembodied mind to perform the outward actions of the body? How can our spiritual consciousness have any kind of perception of anything? 22 Vasishta replied: As desire drives a householder man from his house, and as imagination leads the mind

to many places and objects, so the mind of this king was led from place to place. 23 As the mind is moved or led by delusion, dream, imagination, error or misapprehension and recital of stories, so the mind of the king was led to believe whatever appeared before him. 24 It is the spiritual, intellectual body that is subject to these fallacies, but the human mind forgets its spiritual nature in course of time and thinks on its materiality. 25 Upon disappearance of these fallacies, like the mistaken idea of a snake in a rope, only the spiritual body appears and not any physical one. 26 Consider well, O Rama, that the spiritual body is the only real substantiality. All that appears to exist beside consciousness does not exist at all. 27 The mind of a man going from one place to another passes quietly over intermediate places and is quite unconscious of them. Such is the case with the intellect, which passes to endless objects without ever moving from its support or changing itself to any other form. 28 Therefore tell me. Where is there a duality? What object is there that deserves your friendship or hatred when all this totality is only one Infinite Deity known as transcendent understanding? 29 Transcendental understanding is that calm and quiet state of Consciousness which is without the workings of the mind. Though King Vipaschit was settled in his spiritual body, he had not yet attained that state of transcendental knowledge. 30 Lacking this perception, he saw a vastness in his mind. With his spiritual body, he saw a dark gloom, like what appears to a fetus confined in the embryo. 31 Amidst this gloom, he saw the cosmic egg split in two, and then perceived the surface of the earth situated in its lower hemisphere. It was a solid substance, bright as gold and extending millions of leagues. 32 At the end of this he saw the waters eight times in extent as that of the land. These, in the form of crusts of the oceans, formed the two hemispheres of the earth. 33 After passing over this, he reached the region of light, blazing with the sun and stars emitting flames of fire issuing from the vault of heaven. 34 Having passed that region of fire, without being burnt or hurt in his spiritual body, he was led by his mind to another region where he thought and felt himself carried by the winds to his former home. 35 As he was carried in this manner, he felt himself to be of a spiritual body. For what other than the mind can lead anybody from one place to another? 36 With this conviction of himself, the patient king passed over the region of the winds. At last he got to the sphere of vacuum, which was ten times in extent to that of the former. 37 Passing over this, he found the infinite space of the emptiness of Brahman in which all is situated and from where all had proceeded, which is nothing and yet something, of which nothing can be known or attributed. 38 Moving along this empty air, he was carried far and farther onward in his aerial journey until he thought in his mind that he could see all the other spheres of earth and water and fire and air which he had passed over before. 39 There were formations of worlds and their repeated creations and dissolutions to be seen. There were retinues of gods and men, and those of hills and all other things going on in endless succession. 40 There was a recurrence of the primary elements, and their assumption of substantial forms, and repetitions of creations and reappearances of worlds and the sides of the compass. 41 Thus the king is still going on in his journey through the infinite void of Brahman, finding successions of creations and their dissolutions to no end. 42 He has no cessation from his wanderings owing to his conviction and habit of thinking the reality of the world. Nor does he get rid of his ignorance, which also is from God. 43 Whatever you see in your waking or in your dream is the discernment of the Divine Soul which ever displays these sights in itself. 44 This world is an apparition of our ignorance, like the phantoms that are seen in deep darkness. But know that the transparent intellect of God represents it so and will ever do the same. 45 Both the dark sight of the gross world and the clear light of its transparency proceed from the same mind of God. So it is impossible to conceive whether it is the one or the other, or both alike. 46 Hence, O Rama, this king, uncertain of the

transparency of the Divine Spirit, has been wandering forever in the dark maze of his preconceived worlds, just like a stray deer wanders in the tangled wilderness.

Chapter 129 Identical Self Develops Different Desires from Different Circumstances; Ignorance Is Identical with Brahma; Vipaschit the Stag Is Brought to the Court
Rama asks, 1 You said two Vipaschits were liberated by the grace of Vishnu. What became of the other two brothers who have been wandering all about? 2 Vasishta replied: Of these two, one learned by long habit to subdue his desires. He wandered in many islands and at last settled in one of them and obtained his rest in God. 3 Having renounced the sight of the outer garments of the world, he saw millions of globes rolling in emptiness and is still enrapt with the view. 4 The second one was released from his personal wanderings by remaining close to the moon. There his constant association with the deer-like mark on the face of that luminary changed his form to that of that animal, which he still retains in his situation upon a hill. 5 Rama asked, How is it sage, that the four bodies of Vipaschit, having only one mind and the same desire and aim in view, could differ so much in their acts that brought upon them such different results of good and evil? 6 Vasishta replied: The habitual desire of a person becomes varied in course of time according to the various states of his life and in different places. It becomes weaker and stronger in degree, though it is never changed in its nature. 7 According to circumstances, the same desire of a person is modified in different forms. Whatever is greater in intensity takes precedence over others and comes to pass in a short time. 8 In this divided state of their desires, the four bodies of the king arrived at four different states in their modes in life. Hence two of them were immersed in their ignorance, the third became a deer, and the last gained his liberation at last. 9 The two former have not yet arrived at the end of their ignorance. They have been groveling in darkness by their blindness to the light of truth which can hardly dispel the darkness that is continually spread by ignorance. 10 Only the light of knowledge is able to drive the gloom of ignorance. Then ignorance, however deep rooted, flies far away like the darkness of night is dispersed before the light of day. 11 Now listen to what this Vipaschit did in the other world, where he was cast across the far distant ocean of sweet waters onto a coast of gold which he mistook for this habitable earth. 12 Beyond this he saw a globe in the emptiness of Brahma, which was how he thought of the emptiness of the great Brahman. 13 Here he was led by his excellent virtues to the company of the learned. From them he learned to see this visible world in its true light and he was merged into the state of Brahman. 14 As soon as he arrived at that state, his ignorance and his body disappeared from him, like a sea in a mirage vanishes before closer view, and like falsehood flies before truth. 15 Thus I have described all about Vipaschit and how ignorance is as eternal as Brahman because it is contemporary with him. 16 Millions of years have passed in eternity, but the mind by its nature is quite unmindful of their course and number. 17 As the knowledge of horses is said to be false when known, so the knowledge of the world is a falsity. But being truly known, it is found to be Brahman himself. 18 There is no difference between ignorance and the essence of Brahman because one exists in the other. Brahman is the perfect Consciousness that shows the difference in the modes of reasoning intellect. 19 Another Vipaschit, who was wandering all around the universal sphere, could not come to the end of his ignorance in his course of several yuga ages. 20 Rama said, How was it, sage, that he could not reach the utmost limit of the

universe, nor could he pierce its vault to get out? Please explain this fully to me, which you have not yet done. 21 Vasishta replied: When Brahma was first born in the cosmic egg, he used both hands to break the shell into upper and lower halves. 22 The upper hemisphere rose too far upwards from the lower half. So the lower hemisphere descended as far below the upper part. 23 Then there are the circles of earth, water and air which are supported upon these hemispheres, while these two serve as bases for the support of other spheres. 24 In between is the empty sky, infinite in its extent, which appears to us as the blue vault of heaven. 25 It is not bounded by the circles of earth and water, but is a pure void, the basis of all other spheres that rest upon it. 26 He passed by that way into the infinite void, just like the circles of the starry frame revolve in the same void. He went on in order to examine the extent of ignorance and to obtain his release from it, as he was taught to find. 27 But this ignorance exists and grows with Brahma, so it is as infinite as God himself. She (avidya, ignorance) is as unknowable as God and no one has been able to know her nature. 28 Vipaschit, continuing to rise far away and higher in the heavens, found the nature of ignorance to have the same boundary as the extent of the worlds, through which he traversed on high. 29 Now see how one of these persons was liberated and another grazed about as a deer. See the other two fast bound to their former impressions, forced to wander about the worlds which they took for realities in their ignorance. 30 Rama said, Tell me kindly, O sage, where and how far and in what sorts of worlds have these Vipaschitas been still roaming, with getting their final release? 31 How far away are those worlds in which they are born over and over again? All this is very strange to me, as you have described it. 32 Vasishta said: The worlds where the two Vipaschitas have been carried and where they have been wandering are quite invisible to me, in spite of all my efforts to look into them. 33 The place where the third Vipaschit is wandering as a deer is also a land known to no one on earth. 34 Rama said, Sage, you said that the Vipaschit who is transformed into a deer has been wandering on a hill. Therefore tell me, O most intelligent seer, where is that hill and how far away is it? 35 Vasishta answered: Hear me tell you how far away that world is from here, the world where Vipaschit entered after passing through the vast emptiness of the Supreme Spirit and where he has been wandering in his form of a deer. 36 It is somewhere between these three worlds. All these worlds are spread at great distances from one another in the vast emptiness of the Divine Spirit. 37 Rama asked, How is it consistent, sage, to say with good reason that Vipaschit was born and died in this world, and is still wandering as a deer in it? 38 Vasishta replied: As the whole must well know all the parts of which it is composed, so I know everything everywhere that is situated in the all comprehensive soul of God in which I have assimilated myself. 39 I know the absent and all that is destroyed, as well as all forms of things, whether small or great. They are all interwoven together and exhibited before me as if they were produced of this earth of ours. 40 Hence all that I have told you, O Rama, regarding the adventures of the king was the work of his imagination and took place in some part of this world where he lived and died. 41 The Vipaschitas all wandered about other worlds in empty air. All this was the work of their imagination, which is unrestricted in its flight through boundless space. 42 One of these has

happened to be born here as a deer. It is in a mountain valley somewhere upon this earth. 43 The place where the king is reborn in the form of a deer, after all his wanderings in other spheres were over, is in this earth globe. There he is placed on a certain spot by an act of unaccountable chance. 44 Rama said, If it is so, then tell me sage, in what region of this earth, on what hill and in what forest of it, is this deer placed at present? 45 What is he doing now, and how does he nibble the grass in the green plain? How long will it be before that experienced seer may come to remember his former state and past actions? 46 Vasishta replied: It is the same deer which was presented to you by the ruler of the province of Trigarta. It is kept close in your pleasure garden for your amusement. 47 Valmiki said: Rama was quite surprised, as were all the people sitting at the court, to hear the sage say this. Rama ordered his attendants to bring the deer immediately. 48 The brute deer was brought and placed before the open court, when the court-people found it plump and fat, quite tame and gentle. 49 Its body was spotted all over as with the stars of heaven. Its eyes were as outstretched as the petals of lotus flowers and by far more handsome than the eyes of beautiful ladies. 50 It looked with timid glances at the blue sapphires which decorated the court. It ran to bite them with its open month, thinking them to be blades of grass. 51 Then, as it fearfully gazed at the assembly with its neck raised, ears alert and eyes staring, people raised their heads, lifted up ears, and looked upon the animal with open eyes for fear the deer would leap and jump upon them. 52 The king with his ministers and courtiers were all amazed at the sight of the animal and thought that what they saw before them was all magic. 53 The wondering eyes of the assembled people and the shining gems adorning the bodies of princes made the court hall appear as if it were studded with full blown lotuses all around.

Chapter 130 Vipaschit the Stag Enters Fire, Is Restored and Becomes Bhasa
Valmiki related: Rama then asked Vasishta to tell him how Vipaschit could be released from his animal shape and restored to his human form. 2 Vasishta said: The way by which a person has had his rise is the only way that leads to his success, welfare and happiness in life. 3 Vipaschit had been a worshipper of the fire god Agni. So only through his return to the refuge of that god that his deer form may be altered and the king restored to its former figure of bright and unalloyed gold. 4 I will try the means of his restoration in your presence, so you all may witness it with your open eyes. This deer will of itself enter into the fire before your sight. 5 Valmiki related: Saying so, the benevolent sage touched his water pot with his hand and muttered his mantras upon it in the proper form. 6 He thought intently upon the god of fire with his flashing flames all around him. Immediately upon the sages reflection on Agni, a blaze of fire manifested in the royal hall. 7 This was a pure flame, burning with a rumbling noise but without any coal or fuel, or any smoke or soot. 8 Brighter and brighter it burned in its beauty, shining like a dome of gold and shedding a golden light all about. The light was like a blushing kinsuka blossom, glowing like the evening clouds of heaven. 9 Seeing the spreading flame, the assembled host moved backward but the deer, on seeing its adored deity manifest, became flushed with the passion of its former faith. 10 As it looked on the fire with its ardent desire, he got rid of his sins as if they were burnt away by its flames. Then advancing slowly towards the fire, the deer suddenly jumped into the blaze like a lion springing upon his prey. 11 At this moment, the muni moved his mind to meditation and found the kings sins had been burnt away from his soul. Then he addressed the fire god, saying, 12 O lord who carries the sacrificial butter to the celestials, recall the past acts of the king in your mind and his faith in you. Kindly restore him to his former handsome figure again. 13 As the sage was praying in this manner, he saw the deer released from the flame and running towards the assembled princes with the speed of an arrow flying towards its mark. 14 Having been in the burning fire, he appeared like a flaming body. The assembly saw him in this form as bright as the appearance of an evening cloud. 15 Thus the deer was changed to the form of a man before the sight of the assembled princes, just as a spot of cloud is seen to assume another figure in the face of the bright vault of heaven. 16 Within the flames, he assumed a figure like pure gold, then after he emerged, he took the form of a man of handsome shape and appearance. 17 He appeared like the orb of the sun, like the disc of the moon in the sky, like the god Varuna in the waters of the deep, or like the evening cloud or rising moon. 18 There was the reflection of the sun in the pupils of his eyes, just as the sun reflects on the surface of water or on a mirror or bright gem. The fire of his faith blazed serenely deep within his eyes. 19 Shortly, this blaze of light disappeared from the court, just as the light of a lamp is blown away by the breath of wind, or as the colors of evening clouds vanish under the shade of night. 20 Then the man stood in the hall as plainly as the idol of a deity is seen to stand in a ruined temple, or as an actor is seen behind the scene without his dress. 21 He stood silently holding prayer beads in his hand, his sacred thread hanging down a chain of gold about his neck. He wore a robe of pure white bleached by the fiery heat. He appeared like the bright moon rising before the assembly.
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On seeing the brightness of his body and clothing, the courtiers all and everyone cried out saying, O, such radiance (bha)! Because he shines (bhasa) as brightly as daylight, everyone called him Bhasa. 23 The courtiers also confirmed it by saying, Because he is as bright as brightness itself, let him be called Bhasa, which name he bore ever afterwards. 24 He sat in the hall in his meditative mood and remembered all the incidents of his past life and former body. 25 The assembly was struck with wonder and remained quite motionless and speechless, absorbed in thought as Bhasa reflected upon the adventures of his past life. 26 Then after a short while, the king rose from his reflections. He advanced towards the assembly under his newly obtained title of Bhasa, the light. 27 He first advanced towards Vasishta and saluted him with delight, saying, I bow down, sage, before you, as the giver of my life and light of knowledge of myself. 28 Vasishta raised him by touching his head with his hand, saying May your protracted ignorance, O prince, disappear this day and forever after. 29 Victory to Rama, said Bhasa, and bowed down to King Dasharata who, rising a little from his seat, approached him smilingly. 30 Dasharata said, You are welcome, O prince! Be seated on this seat. You have wandered through many difficulties of the world. Now take your rest here. 31 Valmiki related: Thus approached by the king, the prince now bearing the name of Bhasa, after making his salutations to the venerable sages Vishwamitra and others, took his seat on a cushion. 32 Dasharata exclaimed, O the pains that Vipaschit has so long undergone under the bondage of Ignorance, like a wild elephant tied by his feet in fetters by ruthless huntsmen. 33 O to what miseries is man exposed owing to his lack of precise understanding, and by his false knowledge of the reality of these worlds seen revolving in empty shape. 34 How wonderful are these worlds, so extensive and remote, through which Vipaschit has traversed, and how incredible are the pains through which he has passed for so long. 35 O how wonderful is the nature and glory of the empty Intellect of the empty spirit of the Supreme that exhibits the blank thoughts of his all comprehensive mind in empty air as substantial ones.

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Chapter 131 Vishwamitra Lectures on Endless Phenomena; Bhasa Describes His Lives Searching for the End of Ignorance
Dasharata said, I understand that Vipaschit has acted unwisely taking so much pains in his wanderings for a knowledge of the spheres. It is all in vain to inquire into unrealities and useless matters, and it was his ignorance alone that led him to the search. 2 Valmiki related: At this moment, the sage Vishwamitra, who was sitting beside the king, opened his mouth and said on the subject now under consideration. 3 Vishwamitra said: O king, there are many such men who, without a good understanding and for want of best knowledge, are apt to think it possible for them to know all things. 4 Hence the sons of King Vatadhana have been wandering all over this earth for very many years in search of true knowledge without ever being able to arrive at it. 5 They have ceaselessly struggled to explore the limits of this earth, like a river runs in its constant course forever. 6 This great world is situated like an globe in the air, like a childs imaginary tree growing in the sky, or like a toy ball of playful Brahma rolling about in empty air. 7 As ants crawl around a sugar ball without falling off, so do all living bodies move about on their support of this earth sustained in empty air. 8 Those who are situated on the lower surface of this globe are moving about as erectly as those who are on its upper side. 9 The sun, moon, and planets, together with the starry frame and the heavenly stream are attracted to turn round it constantly, without ever coming in contact with it. 10 The sky encircles and surrounds it on all sides, though the sky appears to be above our heads and the earth below our feet. 11 Living beings below the earth are moving downward or flying upward, just like the beasts and birds on the upper side. The region to which they fly is called the upper sky. 12 On some part of this earth there is a warrior race named Vatadhanas. In days of the past, three princes were born to this royal family. 13 Like Vipaschit, they were firmly intent to know the limits of the visible world. They set out in their journey to explore with a firm and unfailing resolution. 14 They passed from land to water, and from waters to other lands again. Thus they passed many lives and ages in their repeated inquiries with new bodies in repeated births. 15 Wandering forever all about the earth, like ants moving on a sweet cake, they found no end to it. They never reached any spot beyond the earth even in their thought of another one. 16 They are still turning around the world in the air, like busy ants on sugar. They are still in the same search without being tired of it. 17 Because whoever stands on any part of the globe thinks it to be the uppermost, and all other places to be lower. So people living below, on the opposite point on the globe, think they are uppermost. 18 Then the three princes said to themselves that if they could not find the end of the earth after all their struggle, they must give up the pursuit and go elsewhere. 19 So it is with this world, O king, which is no more than display of the thoughts of Brahma. It is a work of creation only in the mind, a delusion like that of an extended dream. 20 The mind is the Supreme Brahman and Brahma is same as his mind. They both are in the form of consciousness and there is no difference between them, as there is none between open air and the sky. 21 Consciousness operates in itself, like waters running in whirlpools. As the whirling currents and bubbles are nothing other than the water, so the operations of the mind are modifications of the mind itself. 22 The sky, which is only emptiness and was a void in the beginning, shows itself in the form of the world which is neither created nor ever destroyed. 23 Whatever the intellect suggests, the mind obeys and is inclined in the same way, and continues to view the outer world as it has
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always existed in thought. 24 The visible world has the same form and is equally imperishable as the intellectual. Eternal God manifests himself in this manner, which is otherwise nothing of itself. 25 There is an atom of Divine Consciousness, an infinity of minute atoms in the shape of ideas, just as there are innumerable stones in the body of a rock. They reside in the spirit of God and are as translucent as the Divine Spirit. 26 They abide in their own natures in the unexpanded spirit of God. But they do not live independently of themselves as there is nothing separate from the Supreme Spirit. 27 Therefore this world is said to be the manifestation of the Divine Mind. The learned arrive at this conclusion through logical consideration of the antecedent and subsequent arguments. 28 Therefore, it is strange that the human soul should sorrow for its degradation and think itself a different thing when it is inseparable from the one Universal Soul. 29 Now let the so called prince Bhasa, otherwise known by his former name as the mighty monarch Vipaschit, tell us what other strange things he remembers to have seen during his wanderings through worlds. 30 Bhasa replied: I have seen many sights, wandered without tiring through many regions, and remember having felt various changes in my life. 31 Hear O king, how much I have known and felt in my course through remote regions in the spacious sky on high. Know the joys and grief that I have enjoyed and suffered in my mind for such a long time during my reincarnations in different bodies and distant worlds. 32 By favor of the god of fire and by the good and bad turns of fate, I have seen a great many scenes in my various forms and lives, like the revolving waters in a whirlpool, with a calm and constant and resolute mind. 33 Moved by past memories and misled by a mistaken view of phenomena in the different forms and changes of my body, I was compelled by my firm zeal to inquire into all worldly things. 34 I was a tree for a thousand years, having my senses undeveloped and feeling the hardships of all climates and seasons within myself. I had no mind or mental action except those of drawing moisture from the earth through my roots and expanding myself into fruits and flowers. 35 I was a mountain deer for a hundred years, with skin of golden color and ears as flat as leaves of trees. I fed on blades of grass, was charmed by all kinds of music and, being the weakest of all animals of the forest, I could do no injury to anyone. 36 I lived for fifty years as a Sarabha animal with eight legs. I dwelt in the caves of Krancha Mountain and brought on my death by falling down from a crag while attempting to fight with rain clouds on high. 37 Once I was born as a vidyadhara and lived on the tableland of Malaya Mountains in the happy forests of mandara trees, smelling the sweet scent of sandalwood and kadamba flowers. There I breathed sweet air perfumed by kalaguru trees and enjoyed the company of celestial vidyadhari ladies. 38 I was born the son of the swan of Brahma and tasted the honey of golden lotuses for more than a hundred years, playing on the banks of the heavenly stream of Mandakini and on the celestial Mount of Meru. 39 For a hundred years I remained by the side of Milky Ocean, feeling the cooling breezes blowing the moisture of its waves and the fragrance of forests, listening to the songs of the songsters of spring which vanish the infirmities and sorrows of life. 40 Once I was born as a jackal in the woods of Kalenjara Mountains and wandered about blossoming gunja and karanja forests. There I was trodden upon by an elephant and was about to die when I saw a lion kill that elephant in his turn. 41 At one time I was transformed into the form of a celestial nymph and cursed by a spiritual master to live alone in some other world. There I lived for the period of half a yuga upon Sahya Mountain, smiling with the blooming blossoms of santanaka trees. 42 Next I lived as a valonika bird of raven color in a nest among Indian oleander plants growing in marshy ground at the foot of a mountain. There I passed my solitary life of a hundred years with a fearless heart and ceaseless scrambling on dreary rocks. 43 Afterwards I saw a level

plain somewhere, with shady bowers of forest creepers under the shade of sandalwood trees. I saw some females playing and swinging like fruit on the branches of trees, then seized and away by passing spiritual adepts. 44 At another time, I passed my days as a hermit under the shade of kadamba trees at the foot of a mountain. There I lived meditating upon the single object of my devotion and thus foolishly met my end with the pain of not meeting my object. 45 I saw this universe full of beings everywhere, like fish in the ocean. The air, sky and light are all inhabited by beings, as well as this earth of ours. 45 There is another wonder which fills this universe, just as the shadow of the sky fills the ocean on all sides. It pervades the air, water, sky and light, as well in all forms of things on earth. 46 I also saw another wonder in a woman who contains the three worlds in her ample womb. She is pictured with the forms of hills and all things, resembling their reflections in a mirror. 47 I asked her, O you big bodied and big bellied one! Tell me who you are. To which she replied, Sage, know me to be the pure and clear Consciousness that contains all these worlds within herself. 48 She added, O sage, as you see me so wonderful in form, so must you know that all things in the world are of the same kind. But people who see things in their ordinary forms find them otherwise. When they look at things in their spiritual light, the gross forms vanish into nothing. 49 Even without the directions of the Vedas and scriptures, innumerable beings on earth continually hear a warning voice arising from some part of their bodies bidding them what is right or wrong for them to do. 50 Nature reigns over all elements like the eternal cosmic vibration. The elements appear immovable at sight but, in fact, they possess inherent mobile forces. No one can assign any cause over them except delusion. 51 Once I went to a place where there were no females to be found, nor had those people any desire for them. Yet many among the living there were quickly passing away, and many others were newly coming to existence. 52 I have seen the wonder of some portentous clouds in the sky charging against each other with a jarring noise, pouring down their rain with fragments of things on all sides which were picked up by men and used as weapons. 53 I saw another wonder somewhere that these earthly cities and buildings were passing in their aerial course amidst a mist of thick darkness. Then I saw them vanish into the air, returning to be your homes here below. 54 Another wonder I saw was that all these men and gods and reptiles, having left the differences of their species, came to be of one kind with all other beings. Because all things first proceed from vacuum, and to this they return at last. 55 I also saw a place full of light that shone brightly without light from sun, moon or stars. I remember well that brilliant glory, before which there was neither darkness nor day and night and nothing else in existence. 56 I also saw a place never seen before which was devoid of gods or demons, men or animals of all kinds. It was without plant life with no home of any kind of being. It was a world where the present and future and all worlds blend into eternity. 57 In short, there is no place which I have not seen nor any side where I have not been. There is no act or event which I have not known. In a word, there is nothing unknown to me that is unknown to the knower of all. 58 I remember hearing the jingling sound of Indras armlets which resembled the noise of the rattling clouds on high, or like the jangling jar of the jewels that glisten on the peaks of Mandara Mountain in fear of churning the Milky Ocean.

Chapter 132 Bhasa (King Vipaschit) Describes His Reincarnations and Experiences
Bhasa (King Vipaschit) continued: Once I lived as a siddha spiritual adept at the foot of Mandara Mountain under shady branches of mandara trees. I had been sleeping in the sweet embrace of an apsara named Mandara when the current of a river carried us both away like straw down in its course. 2 I held up my partner floating on the water and asked her to tell me how could it happen to be so. Then she with her quivering eyes answered me saying, 3 This mountain is sacred to the moon. Full moon causes flash floods to rush out as rapidly as ladies run to meet their consorts at moonrise. 4 I was enraptured by your company, so I forgot to tell you about this. Saying this, she lifted me up and fled with me into the air, like a female bird flies into the sky with her young. 5 I was taken to the top of that mountain where I remained seven years with my dried and unsoiled body, like a bee remains unsullied on the petal of a lotus flower growing in the bed of the Ganges River. 6 Then I saw some other worlds beyond the starry circle which were encircled by another like the coatings of a plantain tree. They were bright by their own light and peopled by luminous bodies. 7 There were no distinctions or directions or divisions. There were no scriptures or rules of conduct or Vedas for religious guidance. There was no difference between gods and demigods, but the whole was bright with its own light. 8 Next I was born as a vidyadhara and lived for fourteen years as an ascetic under the name of Amarasoma. I lived in a grove of kadamba trees at the foot of a cloud-capped mountain frequented by aerial cars of the celestials for their pleasure, play and diversion. 9 Then I was carried with the speed of wind far away to the ethereal regions on high. From there I saw numberless elephants, horses, lions, deer, and woods and forests filled with beasts and birds, all moving along in the form of clouds below. 10 In this way, by favor of the god of fire and the passion of my desire to see the extensive range of the delusion of ignorance, I rose from earth to heaven with the force of the garuda bird of heaven and passed through infinite space spread all around. 11 Once I felt myself falling away and far from the solar world. It seemed to be an ethereal ocean inhabited by stars, amidst which I was situated as one with the consciousness of my fall and course of time. 12 With only the consciousness of my fall from the sky, I felt in myself a sense of falling fast asleep from fatigue. Then in that state of my bodys sound sleep, I thought I saw the sensible world in my mind, as if it were in my waking state. 13 I saw the same world within the horizon and the same Mandara Mountain of the gods. Meanwhile I had been fluttering in the midst of its abyss, like a bird sitting on a slender twig is shaken and tossed about by blowing wind. 14 With my eyes I saw to the utmost extent of the sensible world. Again and again I was led to the sight of all that is visible to enjoy only that which can be sensed. 15 Thus I passed a long series of years, seeing visible and invisible objects and passing through passable and impassable paths. 16 Nowhere could I find any limit to this ignorance. I found only phenomena. It is a fallacy that has taken the possession of our minds, just as the apparition of a demon takes a deep root in the heart of a child. 17 These and those phenomena are not realities. This is the firm conviction of all in their right reasoning. Yet the false sight of this and that as a reality is never removed from anybody. 18 We find our pleasures and pains occurring to us every moment with the changes of time and place. Their course is as constant as the currents of rivers ceaselessly succeeding one another. 19 I remember having seen a world with all kinds of moving and unmoving beings. In the middle I saw a green mountain top rustling with the breeze and shining of itself without the light of the luminaries. 20 This mountain peak is delightful to solitary recluses. It is quite free, alone and
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unlimited, beyond all fear of change or decay. In this bright world, I have never seen a glory comparable to this divine brightness.

Chapter 133 Bhasas Story of the Wonderful Carcass

Vipaschit (Bhasa) said: In some part of some other world, I saw another great wonder which I will now describe to you. It was a horrible sight that attends sin, and which I had to see by my blind attachment to ignorance. 2 Somewhere in the vast emptiness there is a wonderfully bright world which is quite impassable for you. It is situated in an emptiness like this of ours, but so different, just as a city in dream differs from one in waking life. 3 I wandered in that world searching everywhere for the object that I had in my heart. I saw a huge and unmoving shadow, like that of a body of locusts spread over the earth. 4 I was astonished at what I saw, and looked all around to see what it was. I found the mountainous form of a man falling fast from the sky, hurling down upon the earth like a whirlpool. 5 I thought, Who can be this person? Is it Lord Viraj with his mountainous body, or a mountain falling from the clouds? It fills the sky and the whole space of heaven, hiding the light of the day under its all developing shadow. 6 As I was watching, thinking about what this portent might mean, I saw the bulky body of the sun falling down from heaven. It seemed to be hurled down by the hurricane of desolation, hitting with a hideous crash against the backbone of the cosmic egg of Brahma. 7 As this hideous and enormous body fell down on the earth, it filled its whole surface covering the face of the seven continents and oceans. 8 With that impact, I feared for my imminent destruction, together with that of entire earth. I was determined to enter into the ever burning fire by my side. 9 Then the fire god Agni, the source of Vedas and my adored divinity in a hundred repeated births, manifested before me in his cooling, moonlike form and said, Fear not. No evil will betide you. 10 Then I addressed the fire god, saying, Be victorious, O my lord and adored one in repeated births. Save me from this untimely desolation which is now impending on all. 11 Thus invoked by me, the fire god replied with the same words, Fear you not, but rise, O sinless one, and follow me to my region of the highest heaven. 12 Saying so, he made me sit on the back of his parrot vehicle. He flew with me up to heaven by burning through a part of the falling body. 13 Getting to the upper sky, I found the huge, falling body as if it were made of wood. It was this that had created so much terror below, like that attending a terrible omen. 14 Then, as the huge body fell down with full force, the earth shook beneath its weight, with all trembling waters and tottering mountains and shaking woods and forests. Mountains burst forth in waterfalls which flooded the land creating horrible holes and chasms. 15 The earth groaned from inside and the sky roared on all its four sides. The heavens resounded to the roar and mountains growled with the fearful howling of all beings, like at the approach of their last doom. 16 The earth groaned under the burden and all the quarters trembled with fear. The emptiness was filled with the echo of cries rising from the earth and garuda birds were in flight shaken by fear. 17 There arose a harsh and hideous uproar on high from the loud shattering of mountains below. It was like the crashing and clattering of dark and dense flood clouds when they are shattered and scattered by the blasts of howling winds during the world deluge. 18 The earth trembled and roared at the impact of the fall of the hideous carcass and the sky roared to the sound from its hundred mouths. Mountains burst on all sides, their falling fragments hurried headlong and were buried under the ground. 19 Its fall was like the breaking down of a mountain peak, smashing the tops of lower hills, rending and splitting the ground, and leveling all things on earth with the dust. 20 It disturbed the waters of the deep and hurled hills down to the ground. It crushed all living beings and gave ample range to the play of the agents of destruction. 21 The sun fell upon the earth and hid the face of the continents under him. There was the crushing
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of mountains and a breaking down of towering cities. 22 The celestials saw all these from above this earth which forms one half of the cosmic egg, turning to a vacuum form. 23 As I was looking at that mountainous body of flesh, I observed that the ample space of all the seven continents of the earth was not enough to contain this single body. 24 Seeing this, I applied to the good grace of the god of fire and asked him, Lord, what is this and what does it mean? 25 Why did the sun down from heaven with that corpse? How is it that the entire earth and all its oceans do not have sufficient room to contain it? 26 The god of fire replied, Hold your patience, my son, for a while until this portentous event passes away. Then I will explain this marvelous matter fully to you. 27 As soon as the god had said these words, an assembly of celestials gathered all around us. It consisted of all kinds of beings that are born and move about in the aerial regions. 28 There were siddhas, sadhyas, apsaras, daityas, gandharvas and kinnaras among them, together with munis, rishis, yakshas, Pitris, Matris and gods with them. 29 All these celestials bowed down their heads in veneration. All joined with their prostrate bodies to praise the dark goddess of night, who is the refuge and resort of all. 30 The celestials said, May that goddess who is stainless and incomparable protect us, her supplicants. She has the grey braids of Brahmas hairs tied at the top of her sword and the heads of the slain Daitya demons strung to the neck-chain hanging on her breast. She wears the feathers of garuda on her head. After devouring the world, in the end she swallows all beings and worlds. May that goddess be compassionate and protect us.

Chapter 134 The Story of the Carcass Continued: Goddess and Demons Devour It; Celestials Lament the Loss
Vipaschit (Bhasa) continued: All this time I was looking at the carcass that had fallen from above and covered the whole surface of the earth under it. 2 I distinguished that part of the body that was the belly. Inside it the whole earth, with all its seven continents and immeasurable mountain, was hidden. 3 Then the god of fire told me that there was no limit to its arms or thighs or the extent of its head, and that it had fallen from beyond Lokaloka Mountain, which is inaccessible to mankind. 4 The goddess who is so much praised by the celestials is the manifestation of emptiness. She appeared in the sky with a dry and lean body. 5 She is represented as accompanied by vetala and dakini spirits. She was followed by demons and demons that walk in her retinue and shine like stars and meteors in the night sky. 6 Her long and muscular arms stretched to the skies like the tall pines of the forest. Her eyeballs flashed with living fire and scattered sunbeams all around. 7 She brandished weapons in her hands that jangled in the sky. Her missiles darted like flocks of birds flying from their aerial nests. 8 Her flaming body and flashing eyes and limbs glistened with the glare of dry reeds set on fire, or like the sparkling of a flight of arrows midway in the air. 9 Her glittering teeth shed the light of the beaming moon and brightened the faces of the four quarters of heaven with a milk white splendor. Her tall slender stature reached and touched the sky. 10 She stood without any support, like clouds stretched over the evening sky. She was mounted on a dead body as if she were resting on the blessed seat of Brahma. 11 She shone in her brilliant form like the crimson clouds of evening. She added the burning blaze of an undersea fire to the ocean of the ethereal expanse. 12 She flaunted her decorations of human skeleton and bones. She was swinging her weapons of the club and others, darting her arrows all around like a mountain scatters its flowers all about. 13 She flew into the air with her necklace of human skulls sounding with a harsh clattering noise that resembled the rattling of stones falling down a mountain with the rains. 14 The gods then prayed to her saying, O Mother Goddess, we make an offering of this carcass to you. Please join with your adherents, take this corpse for your food and make an end of it. 15 Upon this prayer of the gods, the goddess with her inhaling breath began to draw the blood and core of the carcass into her bowels and intestines. 16 As the goddess was absorbing the dead blood by breathing it in, the red fluid rushed into her wide open month, like the entrance of the evening clouds into the cavity of the western mountain. 17 The ethereal goddess drank the blood drawn in by her breath. Her lean skeleton-like frame grew fat from being well fed. She stood acknowledged in her form of the goddess Chandika. 18 Being thus filled and fattened by full drinks of the bloody drink, she had the appearance of a blood red cloud with flashing lightning shooting from her eyes. 19 The pot bellied goddess, giddy with her bloody drink, became loose in her dress. She began to move her ornaments and swing all her weapons in the empty air. 20 She began to dance and toss about in the air which was almost filled by the bulk of her body. Meanwhile the gods kept watching her movements from their seats on distant mountains. 21 Immediately upon this, the whole host of her female ghosts and demons, composed of rupikas and others, flew upon the carcass, just as rain clouds alight upon mountains. 22 The mountainous carcass was grabbed by the clutches of kumbhandas and torn to a thousand pieces. Meanwhile, the rupikas pierced its belly and the yakshas gored its back with their elephantine tusks. 23 But they could not get or break its arms, shoulders or thighs because these members of its body stretched far beyond the limits of the solar system. 24 Therefore they could not be reached by the
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ghosts who are confined within the limits of this world. They could not go beyond where those parts rotted away of themselves. 25 As the goddess was dancing in the air and her demons were prancing over the carcass, the celestials remained sitting on mountain tops looking on this dreadful scene. 26 They saw disgusting morsels of putrid flesh. The stench of the rotten carcass filled the air and blood red clouds shrouding the scene. It seemed like burning bushes forming the fuel of the furnace. 27 The chopping of fetid flesh raised a sap-sap sound. The breaking of its hard bones sent forth a kat-kat noise. 28 The gathering of demons caused a clashing sound like the impacts of rocks and mountains colliding against one another. 29 The goddess devoured mouthfuls of flesh roasted in the fire that flashed forth from her mouth. Waste material and fragments fell down and covered the earth below with filth. Meanwhile, drops of blood from the draughts she drank reddened the sky with tints of vermilion color. 30 The celestial spectators saw a universal ocean of blood within the visible horizon over the surface of the continents of the earth. 31 All the mountains on earth were covered with blood that reflected their redness to the cloud on high. It gave the appearance of a red covering veil spreading over the faces of the female regent deities of all sides of heaven. 32 The sky below blazed with the flash of weapons waving all around in the hands of the goddess. There was no trace of any city or house to be seen on earth. 33 It was an incredible sight to see. All the moving and unmoving objects of nature were absorbed into the bodies of the ghosts of insatiable death. 34 Dancing demons were waving their arms in air as if they were weaving nets to snare birds. They were lifting and dropping them up and down as if measuring the height and depth of the sky. 35 They stretched out the victims entrails from the earth below to the circle of the sun above. They appeared to measure the distance with lines and cords. 36 The gods saw the earth endangered by the ominous carcass, its surface converted to an ocean of blood. 37 They felt dismayed and distressed sitting in their seats on Lokaloka Mountain beyond the boundary of the seven continents where the stench of the putrid carcass could not reach their nostrils. 38 Rama asked, How is it sage, that the stench of the carcass could not reach the gods in their seats on Lokaloka Mountain when the dead body is said to extend even beyond the limits of the mundane system? 39 Vasishta replied: It is true, O Rama, that the dead body stretched beyond the limits of the mundane sphere, but its belly lay within the boundaries of seven continents and its head, thighs and feet extended beyond. 40 But from its breasts, two sides and its loins and waist, which lay out of this sphere, one could have a clear view of the polar circle, as well as that of its mountainous top. 41 Sitting in those parts and places, the gods could well see the peaks of the mountain which were surely bright to sight, and as white as the rainless clouds of the skies. Presumably, Bhasa continues: 42 Then the Matris (mother goddesses) of heaven danced on the wide spread dead body. Meanwhile hosts of ghosts devoured the flesh as the corpse lay with its face turned downwards. 43 Seeing streams of reddish blood running around and the putrid stink of rotten body spreading on all sides, the gods all felt sorrowful at heart and grieved among themselves, exclaiming as follows: The gods lament: 44 Ah alas! Where has the earth disappeared with all the bodies of waters upon her? Where have all those multitudes of men fled, and where are the mountains swept away from its surface? 45 Alas for those forests of sandal, mandara and kadamba woods which had so ornamented the earth! What sorrow for the flower gardens and the happy groves of the Malaya Mountains!

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Where are those uplands of the lofty and gigantic snowy mountains of the Himalayas which now appear to be reduced by anger to lurid clay with the red hot blood of the bloody ghost of the carcass? 47 Even the gigantic kalpa trees that grew below the Krauncha Mountains in Krauncha Continent, trees which had spread their branches up to reach the world of Brahmaloka, are now reduced to dirt. 48 O you lordly Milky Ocean, where are you now? You had produced the moon and the goddess Lakshmi from your bosom. In the past you yielded the parijata flower and the celestial nectar of the gods. 49 O you Ocean of Curd, what has become of you who was full with waving forests of billows rising as high as mountains, carrying sweet butter with their foaming froth? 50 O you sweet Sea of Honey, bordered by mountains studded with coconut trees whose fruit gave sweet liquor for the drink of goddesses, where have you and they fled? 51 O Krauncha Continent that did abound in kalpa trees inseparably clasped by twining ivy of golden color, say, where have you hidden with your towering Krauncha Mountain? 52 O Pushkara Continent, where are you now with your clear fountains, always decorated with beds of lotus bushes where the silvery swans of Brahma used to play? 53 O, where have your kadamba groves gone, with their outstretched branches on all sides, whose sheltered coverings were frequented by aerial apsara nymphs for their secluded amusements? 54 O where has Gomedha Continent gone with its springs of sweet waters, and flowery gardens by its holy places? Where are those valleys beautified by kalpa trees and their golden creepers? 55 Ah, where is Saka Continent with its forests of heavenly evergreen trees? The very memory of them raises a sense of holiness and sensations of heavenly bliss. 56 Ah! Where are those tender plants that waved their leaves at the gentle breeze? Where are those blooming flowers that had brightened the scene all around? 57 The devastation of all these beautiful landscapes fills our minds with pity and grief. We do not know how much more piteous and painful it must be to the majority of mankind. 58 Ah, when shall we again see sugar-cane fields by the sea of sugar waters and hardened sugar candy on the dry lands about? When shall we see candy made of molasses and confectionary dolls of sugar? 59 When shall we again sit on our golden seats on Mount Meru and see the merry dance of beautiful apsaras daubed with sandal paste in their palm and tamara tree grooves, blown by the cooling breeze of kadamba and kalpa trees on woodland mountains? 60 Ah, we remember the memorable Jambuvati River flowing with the sweet juice of jambu fruit, passing through Jambu Continent to its boundary ocean. 61 I often remember, said one, the giddy song and dance of celestial apsaras in the thick and shady groves of sailendra trees and in the shelter of mountains beside the heavenly stream. It tears my heart. like the lotus flower as it opens its petals in the morning. 62 Another one said, Look at this ocean of blood, sparkling like melted gold on the top of the golden mountain of Meru, brightening the beams of the rising and setting sun, or as moonbeams spread over the face of all sides of heaven. 63 Alas, we know not where the earth has gone, with all her encircling oceans about the continents. Nor do we know where that high hill of Himalaya has fled, which was the resort of many rainy clouds and yielded lotus flowers on its summit. 64 We do not know where those rivers, forests and groves which had decorated the earth have gone. We have pity for the cities and villages and their people that are now seen no more.

Chapter 135 The Carcass Disappears and Used to Recreate the World
Vasishta resumed and said: After the corpse had been partly devoured by the demons, the gods who had been sitting on Lokaloka Mountain with Indra at their head spoke to one another in the following manner. 2 Lo, the voracious demons have not yet wholly devoured the corpse. They have thrown its fat and flesh into the air to test the paths of vehicles of vidyadharas which, being blown away and scattered about by the winds, appear like huge masses of clouds spreading over the skies. 3 See the demons also throwing away traces of their food and drink over the seven continents and oceans of the earth, making it reappear to view. 4 Alas, that the once delightful earth is now polluted by impure carrion and blood and covered under blankets of its forests, just as the sky is overshadowed by clouds. 5 The big bones of its bulky body form the mountains of this earth. What is this high Himalaya but the huge backbone of the gigantic skeleton? 6 Vasishta said: As the gods were speaking in this manner, the demons were employed constructing the earth anew with the materials of the carcass. After this they flew in the air and kept on dancing and moving wildly there. 7 As the ghosts were playing in their giddy dance in the air, the god commanded the liquid portion of the dead body to be collected together in one great basin of the ocean which was the home of whales and sharks. 8 As this ocean was made from the pleasure of the gods, it is thereafter called the ocean of wine. 9 The demons, having danced in wild uproar in the air, came down to drink full draughts of that dark bloody pool. After that they returned to their aerial home to dance again. 10 Demonic elemental beings are still accustomed to indulge themselves drinking from that bloody pool and to dance in their airy circles in company with their attendants. 11 Because the earth was smeared with the fat and flesh of the corpse, it is thereafter called Medini or corpus. 12 At last after the disappearance of the dead body of the demon, the succession of day and night appeared again. Then Prajapati, the lord of creatures, having formed all things anew, restored the earth to its former shape.
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Chapter 136 Story of the Asura Cursed to Become a Gnat: He Becomes a Deer and a Hunter
Bhasa said: O lord of the earth (King Dasharata), now hear what I then said to the god of fire as I sat under the wing of his riding parrot, and the gods answer to my question. 2 I said, O Lord of the sacrificial fire and sacrifice, please explain the mystery of the carcass and the accompanying events. 3 The god fire replied: Listen, O prince, and I will explain everything that has happened about the carcass, as it is well known in all the three worlds. 4 Know there is an eternal formless and transcendent Consciousness in the form of boundless and formless emptiness in which there are countless worlds existing as minute atoms in endless space. 5 This intellectual void, which contains all and everything in itself, happened of its own spontaneity to be conscious of its contents in course of time. 6 By its innate knowledge, it conceived the abstract idea of fiery particles in itself, just as you find yourself traveling in your dream by thinking of it in your state of waking. 7 It was thus that Divine Consciousness saw particles of fire, like in the unconscious state of its dream, and like one sees lotus dust before him in his imagination. 8 Then, as this Consciousness reflected on the expansion of these particles of fire, it became assimilated with them. In its thought, it evolved itself into the shape of the powers and organs of sense in those particles of its body. 9 Then it saw the sense organs as receptacles of their particular faculties. It saw the world with all its beings appearing before it as in its dream, just as we see a city in our dreaming state. 10 An asura among those living became haughty and proud of his dignity. He was vain and addicted to vanities. He had no parents or forefathers of his own. 11 Being elated with giddiness, he once entered into the holy hermitage of a sage and destroyed and defiled the sacred asylum in his anger. 12 The sage pronounced a curse upon him saying, Because you have demolished my home with your gigantic figure, die immediately and be born as a contemptible gnat under my curse. 13 The anger of the sage created a burning fire which immediately reduced the asura to ashes on the spot, just as a wildfire consumes woods, and as an undersea fire dries up a channel. 14 Then the asura became like air, without form or supporting body. His heart and mind became as unconscious as in a swoon. 15 His consciousness fled from him and became mixed with the ethereal air. They were hurled up and down by the course of flying winds. 16 They existed in the form of the intelligent and airy soul, which was to become the living soul that is connected to the body composed of particles of the undivided elements: earth, fire, water, and air (and space). 17 The quintessence of five elements, being joined with a particle of the intellect, creates a motion of their own accord just like the empty sky produces wind by its breath and of its own nature. 18 At last, the particle of intellect is awakened in the airy soul, just as a seed, in course of time, germinates when it contacts earth, water and air. 19 The understanding of the asura became obsessed with the thought of the sages curse of becoming a gnat. It brooded over thoughts about its body becoming a gnat, and the asura became a gnat, 20 a tiny, short-lived insect born in dirt by daylight and blown away by the breath of wind. 21 Rama asked, If living animals are only creatures of our dream, as you said before, how can they be born from other sources? Please tell me, are they really born or is it otherwise? 22 Vasishta replied: Rama, know that all living beings, from the great Brahma to the small animal and
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vegetable below, have two kinds of birth. The first is that they are all full of Brahman. The other is that they are the creatures of our errors. 23 The false but deeply rooted knowledge of the previous existence of the world, and of all creatures besides, leads to the belief of the reincarnation of beings from memories of the past. This is called the false conception of births in the visible world. 24 The other is seeing the image of Brahman in all things appearing to exist in this nonexistent and unreal world. This is called the pantheistic view of the world, and not as a production either by birth or creation. 25 Thus the gnat, produced by its delusive knowledge of the world and continuing in that same blunder, did not allow itself to see the one Brahman in all, but led to different views and attempts, as you shall hear just now. Presumably, Bhasa continues to relate the story narrated to him by Agni, but it becomes Vasishtas story to Rama about the unnamed sages story to the asura reincarnated as a hunter : 26 It passed half a day of its lifetime whistling its faint voice among the humming gnats in the bushes of reeds and long grass. It merrily drank their juice and dews, and played and flew all about. 27 The next day it kept fluttering over a pool of mud and mire, in company with its female partner. 28 Then being tired of its swinging, it rested on a blade of grass some place. There it was trodden upon by the foot of a deer, which killed him on the spot, as if a rock had fallen upon it. 29 Now, because it died looking at the face of a deer, it was reborn in the shape and with the senses of a deer. 30 The deer was grazing in the forest when it was killed by a hunters arrow. As the deer saw the face of the hunter in its dying moment, it came to be born next in that same form. 31 The hunter was roaming in the forest when he happened to enter into the hermitage of a hermit, by whom he was rescued from his wickedness and was awakened to the light of truth. 32 The muni said, O foolish man! Why did you roam so long, afflicting the innocent deer with your arrows? Why do you not rather protect them and observe the law of universal benevolence in this transitory world? 33 Life is only a breath of air in the shadow of clouds of disasters, frail as a drop of falling water. Our enjoyments are a series of clouds interspersed by fickle and flickering lightning. Youth is fleeting and its pleasures are like gliding waters. The body is as transient as a moment. Therefore, O my child, attain your happiness while in this world, and look for ways to free yourself from the bondage of the world and attain nirvana at the end.

Chapter 137 An Unnamed Sage Teaches the Hunter; Travel through Breath into a Students Body to Investigate the States of Waking, Sleeping, Dreaming and the Fourth State
The hunter said, Instruct me now, O sage, on the way from misery to my salvation. Teach me the best mode of conduct, which may neither be too difficult nor too easy to practice. 2 The sage replied, Now be submissive to me and throw away your bow and arrows. Bring yourself to the silence and conduct of sages. Be free from trouble and live here. 3 Vasishta related: Being thus advised by the sage, the hunter threw away his bow and arrows. Bringing himself to the conduct of sages, he remained still even without asking for food. 4 In the course of a few days, his mind turned to the investigations of scriptures, just like a full blown flower enters into the minds of men by means of its far smelling fragrance. 5 Once, O Rama, he asked his teacher to tell him how and in what manner outward objects come to be seen within us in our dream. 6 The sage said: This very question, my good fellow, how these shadows of things beyond us arise like the bodies of clouds in the sphere of our minds during sleep, has been asked of me before. 7 I applied myself to meditation and practiced concentration into this matter. I steadily sat with legs folded in lotus posture, intent upon investigating this matter. 8 Sitting like this, I stretched my thought all about and afar, then retracted them into the recess of my mind, just as the rising sun stretches out his beams in the morning and afterwards draws them back into its disc in the evening. 9 I sent forth my breaths in quest of knowledge, and then called them back to myself. I continued exhaling and inhaling my breaths, as flowers let out and contract their fragrance by turns. 10 My mind being connected to my breath, it rested in the air before me. Then my mind was with the air inhaled by the student sitting before me. Then it entered into his nostrils. 11 Thus, my breath mixed with his entered into his heart, like a snake is drawn in by the breath of a bear sitting with his wide open mouth at the entrance of his den. 12 Thus I entered into his heart through the vehicle of my breath. My folly of following my breath into his heart placed me at risk of being stuck there. 13 I passed through arteries and aorta, and was led through all the channels and blood-vessels of all the nerves and veins, both large and small and inside and outside the body. 14 At last I was confined within both sides of the rib cage. I had fleshy masses of liver and spleen presented before me. This was the painful home for my living soul and these were like pots full of meat set before it. 15 My intestines coiled within me with a hissing sound. They were surrounded by a flood of red hot blood continually flowing and boiling, like the waves of the ocean heated under hot sunshine. 16 I had fresh supplies of sweet scents constantly carried to my nostrils by the blowing breeze. These tended to infuse life to my body and consciousness to my soul. 17 But then I was tormented in my dark, dismal prison as in hell by boiling blood, bile and phlegm. 18 The free and slow passage of the vital airs through the lungs regulates the circulation of blood in all parts of the body. This determines the state of the bodily humors, a derangement of which tends to create future diseases. 19 The vital airs, pushing against each other, burst and explode within their cavities. Meanwhile, the digestive fire burns like an undersea fire through the tubular stomach, resembling the hollow pipe of a lotus stalk. 20 The external air carries particles of things through the outer organs of sense into the body. These then enter into the mind, either in their gross or pure state, like thieves enter a house at night. 21 Internal winds carry the blood with digested body juices through the intestines to all parts of the body, just as the outer air
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carries feint and loud sounds of songs in all direction. 22 Then I entered his heart, which is difficult to access. I passed inside with as much jostling as a strong man making his way in a densely crowded group of men. 23 Soon afterwards I found the sight of some shining substance at a distance from the heart, just as a man scorched by sunshine finds the sight of the cooling moon in the gloom of night. 24 It was the spiritual light which, like a mirror, reflects all these triple worlds in itself. It throws its rays upon all things. It is the essence of whatever there is in existence, and the receptacle of all living souls. 25 The scriptures say that the living soul or life pervades the whole body, just as a flowers fragrance runs through all parts of it. Yet life chiefly resides in the heat of the heart, just as a flowers fragrance dwells in the pistils after the blossom is expanded by the solar heat. 26 Then I crept unperceived into that heat, which was the cell of the living soul. There I was preserved from extinction by the vital airs, like a lamp burning in a lantern is protected from being blown out by its interior airs. 27 I entered into that heat-like fragrance passing through air, or like a hot wind pushing cold air, or like water rushing into a pot. 28 I passed into the second sheath which is as bright as moonlight and as clear as a spot of white cloud. Thereafter I ascended to the fair sheaths known by the names of the cells of butter, sweets, and milk-white water. 29 Being tired with my difficult passage through these sheaths, I returned and rested in the genial warmth of my heart, where I saw the full view of the world appearing like a dream before my sight. 30 It showed the images of the sun and moon and pictures of seas and hills with the shapes of gods and demigods and human forms. It also presented the sights of cities and countries and the face of the sky on all sides around. 31 It also exhibited oceans with their islands, the course of time and seasons, and all moving and unmoving objects to my view. 32 This vision of my dream continued steadfast and quite alike even after I was awake. I remained in the same state after my sleep as I had been when sleeping. What I saw in my waking state was what I had seen in my sleep. 33 Now listen to me, O hunter, what I did then. I said to myself, What is this waking dream that I see before me? As I was thinking in this manner, I had this knowledge of it awakened in me. 34 Truly it is the representation of Divine Consciousness. It is the manifestation of God himself. All these objects under different names are only manifestations of the Divine Spirit in various shapes in the world. 35 Wherever there is the substance of Consciousness, impressed upon it is the cosmic image of God in its empty form, which it never forsakes. 36 Ah! now I understand, I thought to myself, that all these appearances passing under the names of the world are mere representations of Consciousness in the form of a passing dream. 37 What we call a dream is a little expansion of the essence of Consciousness. A greater expansion is what we call waking, but both dream and waking are displays of the very same intellectual essence. 38 A dream is said to be dream in the waking state, and not while one continues in his dream state when it appears as waking. So our waking is only a dream, and the two states are waking dream and sleeping dream. 39 Even our death is a dream that continues with our consciousness even after our death. The consciousness that resides in the body does not die even in a hundred deaths of the body. For who has ever heard of the death of anyones soul? 40 This consciousness is a void and empty substance, dwelling in and expanding with the body. It is infinite and undivided, and remains indivisible and indestructible, both with as well as without the destructible body. 41 The empty particle of consciousness, indestructible by nature, shines forth eternally and without limit by itself. It has the so-called world for its core and sap and is ever attached to itself. 42 The emptiness of consciousness contains the minute particles of ideas within its space, each of which represents a part of the great variety of objects that compose its totality. 43 The soul, when separated from consciousness of visible phenomena, rests in its receptacle of heart. It sees various

sights in its dream which consciousness unfolds before it. 44 Again, the soul is inclined to the outer mind of sights exposed before it by its own intellect. It comes to see visions of external objects which we call the world of phenomena. 45 In the same state, the soul sees in itself the sights of all things both within and without it, such as this earth and sky, the winds and waters, the hills and cities, and all things spread on all sides. 46 As the sun situated in the heaven above also appears reflected in full blaze in waters below, so the soul is situated both inside and outside in the form of the world. 47 Therefore knowing that the intellectual soul sees the internal dream and the external world in itself, whoever abstains from craving anything is surely blessed. 48 The soul cannot be cut into parts or burned away. Whoever says otherwise must be betrayed by the delusion of duality, like a child deceived by a deceitful yaksha demon. 49 He who knows his inner soul sees the world internally in itself is said to be dreaming in himself. Whoever finds his soul looking outwardly on the external world is said to be waking. 50 Having come to this realization regarding dreaming and waking states, I was curious to know about the state of sound sleep. I continued my investigations. 51 I thought, What good is the sight of the visible to me? Better remain quiet in myself because thoughtless forgetfulness and consciousness of Self is true detachment or the sleep state (sushupti). 52 As we never think of the hair and nails of the body, though they are well known to belong to and to be attached to it, so the mind, in its state of sound sleep when it rests in its self consciousness alone, is quite unconscious of all material and immaterial objects in nature. 53 Tired with the wanderings and sights of my waking and dreaming states, I sought my quiet rest in the state of thoughtless self consciousness. This is the sole aim and end of sound sleep. There is no other meaning of the sleep state (sushupti). 54 It is possible to have this sound sleep state (sushupta) even in the waking state by our determination of thinking of nothing except that of sitting quietly in the abstracted trance state. 55 The state of abstraction is called sushupti (sound sleep), but when sleep is light (vikshepa) it is called sleep or dream (swapnam). 56 Having settled by mental inactivity into the trance-like sushupti state, I was resolved to seek after the turiya or fourth state of supreme bliss. With this resolution, I set out in search of it with my best introspection and diligence. 57 I tried my utmost, but I could get no indication of its true form and feature. In the end I found that it was not to be had without our clear-sightedness, just as sunlight is imperceptible to the dim sighted eye. 58 Clear sightedness is when our view of the world is utterly lost. Then we see from the perspective in which the world exists in the Divine Mind. 59 Therefore the three states of waking, dreaming and sound sleep are all included under this fourth state. In that fourth state, the world is seen as it exists, in the light of a nothingness. 60 This, then, is the turiya or ultimate view of the world: that it is produced by no cause from nothing. It is Brahman himself that exists from all eternity in this state of tranquility. 61 The impossibility of preexistent or primordial causes precludes the possibility of anything being produced or created. It is only the reasoning of the intellect that gives rise to the conception of creation, just as it is the nature of water to assume its fluidity and exhibit its expansion.

Chapter 138 The Unnamed Sage Describes Entering the Students Consciousness, Seeing Double, then Realizing All Is One; Vasishta Describes the Process of Brahman, Brahma and Creation
The (unnamed) ascetic sage continued: Then I thought of being united with his consciousness and I breathed out the breath of my life to be joined with his, like a ripe mango sends out its flavor to mix with the fragrance of lotus flowers. 2 I did not forsake my vital heat until I entered his intellect. I began by infusing my outward sensations into the organs of his external senses. 3 Then I used the internal consciousness of my heart to attract my outward sensations. I mixed them with those of his, like a drop of oil mixes and dissolves in water. 4 As my consciousness intermingled with his sensations, I became aware of a double feeling of all external objects. Objects appeared to my senses in duplicate forms. 5 All things everywhere seemed to be doubled about me, and I saw two suns and two moons. Heaven and earth appeared in double forms before me. 6 As one face is seen as two in some mirror reflections, so all things presented their double forms to the mirror of my eyes. All these double shapes seemed to be as closely united as the world. 7 As the intellect resides in the same form of oil in two sesame seeds, so with my intellect united with his in his body, I saw two worlds mixed up together. 8 Though my consciousness was united with his in the same body, yet it was not wholly assimilated with his. Each saw the world in different lights, like milk and water. 9 Yet as I continued to looked into his consciousness and compared and measured it with mine, I found both were the same thing and of the same essence. 10 My consciousness was joined with his in the same way as one season joins with another, or as two rivers run together, or as smoke mixes with clouds, or as wind carries the fragrance of flowers. 11 Thus, as our consciousness continued being mixed together, the double view of the world became one, just as the false sight of two moons in the sky is soon changed to one upon correct understanding. 12 My power of discernment, which was in his person, became finer and finer without wholly losing itself in his. It resided together in his body. 13 Afterwards, I saw the faculties of his mind which resided in his heart were directed to observing external objects, taking delight noticing the occurrences of the day. 14 After taking his meal and drink, he rested from his weariness. He felt drowsy and inclined to sleep, like a lotus flower shutting its petals at nightfall after sucking the nectar-like liquid of the lake. 15 He withdrew his mind from observing the events that circulated all about the busy scene of the external world, just as the setting sun retracts his rays from the face of the world as he goes to take his rest in the evening. 16 The functions of his senses receded into heart. The operations of his mind retired to his brain and remained hidden there like the limbs of a tortoise drawn inside its shell. 17 His eyelids were closed as his heart had shut up. He remained as dead as a lifeless block, or as a figure in painting or statue. 18 I also followed the course of his mental faculties and settled with them in his mind. My senses being under the direction of the mind were set in the recess of his heart. 19 Then unconscious of all outward perceptions and their conceptions, I remained with that spirit in me, like sleeping on a soft bed, perceiving nothing but a void all about me. 20 As the breathing of our vital breath was neither obstructed in the aorta nor passed rapidly through the lungs, as it does when eating and drinking in excess and fatigue, it passed evenly through the nostrils. 21 Then our souls remained in the heart with the Supreme Soul, keeping the course of the naturally uncontrollable mind under subjection. 22 Then the soul is employed in its consciousness of supreme bliss. It takes
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no notice of others actions. In that state of sound sleep, the body rests in perfect bliss. 23 Rama asked, Tell me sage. If the vital breath, the cause of the minds operations while awake, is subjugated, then what does the mind do? The mind has no form other than breath. How can it exist without the breath? 24 Vasishta replied: Even so, there is no body other than ones own idea of it. Only the minds imagination makes the body, just as the dream causes a mountain and other things to appear. 25 As there is no mind without the idea of it, and as there is nothing with a thought of it, so there is no production of the visible world for lack of a cause at the beginning of creation. 26 Therefore all these are forms of Brahman because he is the soul of all. The world itself is nothing other than the image of God. 27 Both mind and body are Brahman to those who know the truth, even though mind and body appear otherwise to ordinary knowledge. 28 O intelligent prince, I will now explain how the triple world is Brahman, and how he is the soul of all these varieties. 29 Only pure Consciousness exists forever. It has the form of infinite emptiness. It alone shows itself always in all forms, without being either the world itself or its visible appearance. 30 The Lord being omniscient, took the form of the character or substance of the mind upon himself, without forsaking his nature of pure consciousness free from disease or decay. 31 Then, as the Lord thought upon the movement of his mind, he assumed the relationship of the vital breath upon himself. O Rama, know that the best of men knows the knowable, that these are only forms of the very same being of God. 32 Now as this expansion of air appears to be a model form of the Divine Essence, so sensations and bodily perceptions and the entities of space and time are only various modifications of the same being. 33 Thus the whole world is entirely the formation of the Divine Mind. As this mind is the very intellect of the Supreme Brahman, so the totality of creation is only the expansion of the mind of Brahman himself. 34 The formless Brahman, without beginning or end, who has no reflection of himself and is free from disease and decay, is the quiet intellect. The quiescent entity of Brahman has the whole universe for its body. 35 The Supreme Being is omnipotent, so the mind also retains its power everywhere, though it remains like empty air. 36 The will of the mind is called Brahma. Volition immediately produces whatever it wills at anytime in itself. The minds ability to reproduce whatever is in it is a truth well known, even to children. 37 Now behold, O Rama, the almighty power of the mind which first became a living being by breathing. Then it became an intelligent being by its power of thinking. Next it became the living soul with its body. It made the three worlds and became the Purusha in the form of Brahma. It became embodied from its aerial form in the shape of Viraj. Thus it created everything in itself of its own will, as men produce all things in their imagination and see the cities of their fancy in dream.

Chapter 139 Vasishta Explains the Relationship between Mind and Prana; the Unnamed Sage Describes Being Taken in by His Students Dream of Universal Flood
Vasishta related: Whatever the mind (chitta) wills regarding the creation of the world, the same immediately appears before it, whether producing something nonexistent to view, annihilating something that once existed, or the representing one as another. 2 The mind is said to be subject to the vital breath (prana, subtle energy, life force) whenever it fancies itself as the vital breath, and can neither exist nor do anything without it being moved by the air of respiration. 3 It thinks it cannot live long without the association of respiration, and it must come back to its life and its living action of thinking with the return of breathing. 4 Again, as the mind fancies that it is accompanied by vital breath in some living body, it finds itself instantly joined with such breath. It beholds the world rising to view like an enchanted city. 5 The mind thinks of the convenience of its union with the vital breath and body. With this thinking it is pleased to remain forever as a triple being, combining intellectuality, vitality and materiality. 6 Know that false knowledge keeps the mind in suspense and is the cause of great sorrow to mankind. There is no way of getting rid of it except by the true knowledge of the Self. 7 He who thinks there is a distinction between his self and another can have no correction from his error except by spiritual knowledge of the only spirit. 8 There is no way to true knowledge except by inquiry into liberation. Therefore be employed with all diligence to inquire into the means of liberation. 9 Truly the very conceptions of individual ego and I and another are false and proceed from utter ignorance. There is no other means to remove them except through liberation. 10 Hence any thought which is habitual to the mind comes to be firmly impressed upon it in time. Therefore the idea that the vital breath is ones life and all makes his mind dependent upon the breath. 11 So also, when the body is in a healthy state with its vitality, the mind is dependent on it and has its free play. But being in bad health, it feels its life embittered and forgets to know itself in its true nature. 12 When the respiration is quick in discharging the duties of the body and the mind is engaged in its busy thoughts; then neither is capable of meditation unless they are repressed in the heart. 13 These two, mind and respiration, are related to one another like car and driver. What living being is there who is not driven along by them? 14 The Supreme Spirit ordained the mind and vital breath in this way at the very beginning of creation. Therefore, this law of their cooperation continues unaltered to this day. 15 Hence the mind and vital airs act in concert in all living bodies, conducting them at all times in all places in their stated course of action. 16 The equal course of both serves the regular conduct of the functions of life. But their unequal course produces dissimilar effects, like that of dreaming when the mind alone is active. The inactivity of both causes the inertness of the body and soul in the state of sound sleep. 17 When the intestines are blocked or controlled by the digestive juices of food taken into them and the breathing becomes dull and slow, then the mind also becomes calm and quiet. Then follows the blissful state of sound sleep. 18 When the stomach is filled with food and the lungs are weak with weariness, then breathing remains shallow, bringing on a state of sweet state of deep sleep (sushupti). 19 Again when the intestinal parts are cool and phlegmatic, or exhausted by loss of blood owing to some sore or wound, and breathing is stopped in the body, there comes the state of numbness of sleep.
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The ascetic said: Then I had entered into his heart. It became all dark to me as night. He fell into a sound sleep from his satisfaction with the fullness of his food. 21 I was assimilated into his mind and lay in deep sleep with him without any effort of my own. 22 Then as the passage of his lungs reopened, after his stomach digested the food, his breathing resumed their natural pattern and he began to breathe slowly and softly in his slumbering state. 23 After the sound sleep had become light and airy, I saw a sunny world arising out of my heart and manifesting before me in my dream. 24 This world seemed to rise out of a troubled ocean and be filled with water on its surface. The water was released from the dark flood clouds which had enveloped the world like mists hanging over oceans. 25 There was a hurricane blowing over it, carrying rocks and stones in its whirling and uproarious course. It was carrying away uprooted trees with shrubs and grassy turf with them. 26 It was carrying away and hurling fragments of the last conflagration of desolation. It was blowing down pieces of celestial cities from high. 27 Then as I was looking at a certain place, I found myself situated with my wife in one of the houses of a splendid city rising at that spot. 28 As I was sitting in company with my wife and children, attended by my friends and servants and supplied with dishes and cups of food and drink, suddenly I was carried away by the waves of flood waters. 29 The deluge swept me away, together with the houses and the city in which we were situated. We were floating on the tops of mountainous waves, buffeted in the water. 30 There arose a loud dashing noise louder than the roaring sea. I was stunned by the harsh vibrating sound, unaware of the fate of my family. 31 Men were driven away and hurled down into whirling currents of water and buried deep in dreadful mud, wailing , crying loudly, and beating their breasts. 32 Houses and huts were breaking and cracking, their beams and posts splitting, pillars and supports bursting. Roofs were falling down while women were looking out fixed at the windows. 33 As I was looking at all this, affected by the sight and weeping sorrowfully, I saw the entire house falling down on the ground. 34 All four walls broke down, burying old and young and women occupants under them. Then these were carried away by the waves in the same way that an impetuous waterfall carries away shattered and scattered stones to a hundred different places. 35 Then I was blown away into the waters of the flood, leaving my family and friends behind and accompanied only by my mind and vital breath. 36 I was tossed about by waves and carried away hundreds of leagues. I was thrown upon a floating forest which roasted me by their burning wildfire. 37 I was dashed against floating planks and timbers and slashed in many parts of my body. Then falling into a whirlpool I was hurled into the depths of hell. 38 For a long time I was tossed all about, hurled up and down, buffeted by waves and waters and their gurgling, roaring and rumbling sounds. 39 Then I was buried under mud released by the friction between drowned mountains. Then I was again lifted upward like an elephant by another flood of water. 40 As I rested on a hill covered with foam and froth, immediately I was run over by a rush of water, like a man overtaken by his enemy. 41 Being overwhelmed by water and carried away wherever the waves and currents pleased, I lost sight of whatever I was seeing and was greatly dejected in my mind. 42 At this moment, I remembered that a certain silent sage was going to give a public lecture, that Vasishta was going to teach Rama. 43 I remembered my former state of samadhi and exclaimed, O, I was an ascetic in another world. 44 I have entered the body of another person in order to see the sights in his dreams. All that I am now seeing is nothing more than a dream, a mere error of the mind and falsehood. 45 It is from our habitual bias to believe in what is present before us that I believed these falsehoods as true. In the dream I was troubled to see myself carried away by the flood. Now I feel happy to find it was only a dream.

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What I saw as water was whirling currents in the ocean of the universal flood, as false as water in a mirage. The hills and woods and cities and towns that were swept away by the flood were as false as any visual deception. 47 There were gods and aerials, men and women, and huge snakes carried away by the flood. Great cities and mansions of the rulers of men were all floating upon the waters. 48 I saw mountains merged and mixed up with the waters, battered and shattered by waves. I saw within myself the approaching dissolution of the world. 49 Even Lord Shiva with his three eyes was swimming upon and swept away like straw on the waves. O what a shame and pity that there is nothing impossible for destiny. 50 Fragments of houses floating upon the waters looked like lotus flowers displaying themselves under the sunbeams. 51 It was astonishing to see the bodies of gandharvas, kinnaras, men and naagas floating on the waters, like swarms of bees fluttering over lotus beds in a lake. 52 Fragments of the splendid palaces of the gods and demigods and others, decorated with the ornamental works of vidyadharas, were floating like golden vessels on the wide expanse of the ocean. 53 Lord Indra was floating on the clear water as if he were lying in his crystal palace. He mounted over waves as if riding on his elephant. He was swinging on waves like a cradle. 54 Waves rising to the sky washed the faces of the stars. Winds were scattering them all about, like flowers from the garden of Meru drop down on the mansions of the gods, or like men scattering flowers on the ground. 55 Waves as high as mountains rose to the sky. Breakers flying aloft like stones flung from slings fell upon the lotus seat of Brahma, turning it about with the god sitting upon it in deep meditation. 56 Clouds roared loudly with deep and appalling thunder and waves flashed like frightful lightning in the air. Elephants, horses and ferocious lions wandered in the atmosphere and forests as large as the earth floated in the sky. 57 Dark blue waves of overflowing waters pushed against one another with force so violent that it seemed as if the god of destruction was pushing them in an act of utter annihilation. 58 Gods, men and naagas, together with their homes in heaven, earth, and the regions below, were pulled down into the deep waters. 59 The irresistible flood covered all sides of earth, heaven and hell. The bodies of gods and demigods were all floating together like great numbers of fish. Their heavenly cars and vehicles were swimming on the surface of the waters like in a field of battle. 60 The dark blue waters resembled the blue form of Krishna. Their foaming froth resembled the milk white calves about Krishna. It became the reason for their being swept off to sea. 61 The waves pushed one another with a terrible sound that drowned everything. The women of both gods and demons wailed and howled loudly. 62 The loud cries raised by all at the destruction of their houses echoed over the waters on all sides. The clouds moving over the rolling waves appeared like the covers of fallen, floating domes. 63 Ah, it was pitiful to see how the whirling currents hurled down even the gods into the deep, and how Indra, Yama and Kubera breathed their last breaths in the form of flying and flimsy clouds. 64 Learned and saintly persons were carried away with the ignorant like dead bodies devoid of their pride. The cities of the gods Brahma, Vishnu and Indra were swept away, all broken and crushed to pieces. 65 The bodies of weak women were washed and carried over by the waves. There was nobody left to save them from the grasp of death which devoured them under his horrid jaws. 66 The floods which at first flowed with serpentine crooked courses into the caves of mountains, in the end flooded them to their tops. The cities of the gods which at first floated like boats upon the waters by the mountain tops, in the end were hurled to the bottom. 67 Gods and demons and all other beings, together with their homes in heaven and on the continents and mountains of earth, were all submerged and shattered like lotus beds by the waters. The three worlds were turned into a universal ocean and all their grandeur and splendor were swallowed up by

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time, together with all the sovereign powers of earth and heaven.

Chapter 140 The Unnamed Sage Describes His Life as a Brahmin in the Body of Viraj; His Escape through the Mouth of Viraj; Finding His Own Life; then Trying to Find Where He Had Been
The hunter said, Tell me sage, how could a sage like you be deluded by a dream of a flood? Why did your meditation not deliver you from your mistake? 2 The sage replied: At the end of the kalpa age, all kinds of beings meet with their destruction. Thus there is a termination of the false forms of the worlds and a cessation of the luminous bodies in the heaven. 3 Sometimes the dissolution at the end of a kalpa takes place gradually. At others, it comes suddenly with simultaneous turmoil and disorganization everywhere. 4 So when everything was flooded, the gods fled to Brahma, the first cause of all, for protection but they were all swept away by the overflowing tide. 5 Moreover, O forester, know that time is the most mighty destroyer of all things. Everything must occur in its time, as it is predestined at the beginning. 6 The time of ones dissolution being near, there follows a destruction in the strength, intellect, and energy of everybody. Not even the great are left out. 7 I have also told you, O fortunate forester, that everything seen in a dream is mere dreaming. Nothing of it comes to take place in reality. 8 The forester responded, Sage, if the dream is a mere falsity and error of imagination, then what was the good of you describing all this dream? You know well what is good and useful for mankind. 9 The sage replied: There was much value for me to tell you all this, O intelligent hunter, to improve your understanding. As you come to know that what can be seen are all as false as sights in sleep, you shall know what is real and true. 10 Now as long as the flood waters lasted, I remained seated in the heart of the medium, the student as I had mentioned, and saw some other false sights in his dream. 11 I saw the flood waters recede to the unknown region from where they had come. The huge waves disappeared altogether, as when winged mountains flee from fear of Indras thunder. 12 By my good fate, I was carried to some distant shore where I was seated as firmly as upon the peak of a high and solid mountain. 13 From there I saw the waters settle down in their basins. The stars of heaven were shining upon them, like sparkling particles of splashing waves or their foaming and floating froth. 14 The reflections of stars in water seemed like jewels shining in the heart of the ocean. The stars that shone above in the sky appeared like nightly flaming bushes on the tops of mountains. 15 The sky studded with bright stars appeared like an island beaming with gold. The blue sky seemed wrapped with the blue garments of celestial ladies. 16 The blue flood clouds floating in the sky resembled a bed of sky blue lotuses in an ethereal lake. The lightning that flashed in the bosoms of the clouds resembled the yellow powder of flowers flying all about the sky. 17 Masses of mountain-like clouds, flushed with frost, poured down showers of rain on all sides. The floods rolled down with their reflections, bearing huge kalpa forests in their bosom. 18 Afterwards the basin of the universal ocean dried up and turned into an empty and dry hollow. The peaks of Mandara and Sahya hills had been drowned under the waters and were left melted down to mud or washed away by the receding flood. 19 Here the sun and moon were found sunk in the mud hole. There the gods Yama and Indra were hidden under soil. Somewhere the serpents and Takshaka naagas were rolling in the mire. Elsewhere kalpa trees lay buried with their
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tops and branches under the mud. 20 In some places, peoples heads and hands were scattered over the ground and looked like lotus buds and flowers torn from their stalks and scattered about the bare and barren land. 21 In one place there were vidyadhara women drowned up to their necks in slime, crying with their piteous shrieks. In another, there were the huge bodied buffaloes of Yama lying, resembling the huge bodies of dead elephants appearing in a dream. 22 In some place lay the bulky body of Garuda, bulging out like the huge mountain of the gods. In others, the embankments were swept away as if they were slashed by the mace of Yama falling upon the ground. 23 There were the remains of the dead swan of Brahma, stuck in the mire somewhere. The footprints of Indras elephant Iravata were stuck in the mud in another place. 24 In the meanwhile, I found some flat land in one place. There I rested from my weariness and was overtaken by sound sleep. That unconscious state quickly stole upon me. 25 Then waking from my sound sleep, I found myself seated in the heart of the hunter. Retaining possession of my awareness, I was led by my innate desire to see similar sights of desolation as before. 26 Upon my waking, I saw the flat land where I was situated was in the heart of the hunter. I was seized with great grief and sorrow at my sight of the spectacle. 27 I saw the rising of the bright and beautiful sun on the next day. That light revealed the worlds, the sky, this earth and its hills. 28 But I soon found that the earth, sky, air, hills and rivers were all only the reproductions of my mind, like leaves shooting forth from trees. 29 On seeing these things, I began to view them in a ordinary way as I had somewhat forgotten their right and proper use. 30 After my birth, I passed sixteen years at that place and had the knowledge of this man as my father and that woman as my mother and that place as my home. All this knowledge arose spontaneously from my self-reflection. 31 Then I saw a village with the home of a brahmin. There I saw a house and found a friend, and many more other places. 32 Thus I remained with friends in village huts. I passed many days and nights in repeated watchfulness and returning sleep. 33 Remaining in this company over the course of time, I came to lose the light of the understanding I had attained before. I forgot myself and became one of them through my habitual mode of thinking, as if a man had forgotten himself and become a fish. 34 In this manner, I remained a village brahmin for a long time, relying only upon my body as begotten by a brahmin and quite forgetful of other things. 35 I believed in my identity only as my material body and only my wife as my partner. I understood the essence of my soul to be only my desires and thought that riches only were the sole object to be gained in life. 36 My only treasure was an old cow and my only provisions were the greens of my garden. My only possessions were the sacred fire and sacrificial animals and my only utensil was a water pot. 37 My hopes were as frail as perennial plants. My conduct was the same as that of other men. The state of my living was as mean as the mud with which my hut was constructed. 38 I passed my days pruning and weeding the garden of my greens and performing my daily ablutions in the streams and rivulets reckoned as holy by men. 39 I was employed providing my food and drink and procuring fuel and cow dung for fire. I remained entangled in the snare of scrutinizing what was right or wrong for daily observance. 40 In this way a life of an entire hundred years passed away at that place. Then it happened one time that a holy hermit from far away passed by and became my guest in my humble home. 41 Being welcomed and honored by me, he entered in my hut and took rest after washing and bathing himself. Then after his meal he sat on his bed and began to tell his story as night approached. 42 He spoke of many places and countries and of many lands and mountains. He talked about their different customs and manners, which were pleasant to hear and related to various

subjects. 43 All these, he said, are the display of the one Consciousness which is infinite and immutable in its nature. It manifests itself in the form of cosmos and is forever present with it as it is now seen to be. 44 Being thus enlightened by him, I was filled with a flood of light. I listened attentively to whatever he said on this and other subjects. 45 I also heard about my own story from him. I learned that the person who contained me within its womb is no less than the body of Viraj himself. I was eager to come out of that body. 46 As long as I did not know that the mouth of Viraj is the only way out from that body, I kept moving through it, as if wandering in the vast extent of earth and oceans. 47 Then I left that place, surrounded as it was by my friends and relations. I entered into his vital part to make my exit with the vital breath. 48 I intended to see both the inside and outside of Virajs body in which I had been housed. I continued to mark the process of its outer movements and inner thoughts. 49 I fixed my attention upon my own consciousness and remained settled in one place without moving. Then I breathed out with his breath, like the fragrance of flowers accompanies the wind. 50 Then rising with his respiration, I reached the opening of his mouth. Then mounting on the vehicle of the wind, I went forward and saw all that lay before me. 51 In the distance I saw the hermitage of a sage situated in the grotto of a mountain. I found it full with hermits, myself sitting in lotus posture among them. 52 These hermits stood before me as my pupils. They were employed in their duty of taking care of my body in its state of samadhi. 53 After a while, I saw the student among them in whose heart I had been staying. He was resting, lying flat on his back after taking some food which he got in the nearby village. 54 Seeing this wonder, I remained quiet and did not speak anything about it to anybody waiting upon me. Then I reentered my body for my own amusement. 55 I got to the region of vitality situated within the heart. I had a my lasting desire to see the friends I had before, the ones I had left behind. 56 As I was looking around, I saw the end of the world approaching with its dreadful aspect, changing the course of nature together with the positions of the world. 57 Mountains appeared altered and changed to another state. The sky presented another face. The whole world seemed to be dislocated from its place. 58 I could find no trace of my former friends or hut. I could not find where that land had been. All seemed swept away by winds and I could not know where they had been taken. 59 Then I found the world appearing in another form, presenting a sight altogether different from what it had been before and quite fresh to view. 60 I saw the twelve suns of the twelve signs of the zodiac shining all at once and burning in all the quarters of heaven and melting down high mountains, heat melting snows and icebergs to water. 61 Volcanic fire spread from mountain to mountain and fire leapt from forests to forests. The earth was parched with all the gems in her bowels. No trace remained except in the memory of men. 62 The seas were dried up and the earth was full of burning embers everywhere. A strong gale rose which blew away all the ashes. 63 Underground, terrestrial and ethereal fires began to issue forth in flames and flash on all sides. The face of the whole universe flushed with a blaze glistening like the glowing clouds of the evening sky. 64 I entered into this burning sphere like a flying moth falls into a flame. I was confined within its cave, like a wandering bee is closed up in a shutting lotus, yet I was quite unscathed by the burning flames. 65 Then I then flew among the flames as freely as in air, flickering like a flash of lightning in a cloud. I sometimes hovered over the burning fire, as a light winged butterfly flies over a lotus.

Chapter 141 The Unnamed Sage Describes His Own Dream of Universal Fire
The sage continued: Though repeatedly burning in those fires, yet I was neither consumed nor felt the least pain. Though falling from one fire into another, I remained thinking that all this was a dream in my dreaming. 2 Fires flew aloft and filled the vault of heaven with flames. I was flying like a firebrand amidst and all about. 3 As I was wandering with my spiritual light and unwearied soul in this universal conflagration, suddenly a tremendous hurricane arose. 4 It howled and growled loudly like the roaring of clouds on high. It blew fiercely, bearing down and carrying away everything before it. 5 The whirling and howling hurricane raged with redoubled force in the forest. It lifted large tracts of woods in the form of clouds, mixing them with rolling firebrands resembling the revolving suns above. 6 Flames of fire flashed above like the evening clouds of heaven blazing like hundreds of fiery pools on high. The earth with the homes of men, demons and gods burned like burning mountains everywhere. 7 Burnt, un-burnt and half-burnt devils and demons wandered together throughout the heated air, grasping each other in the ethereal streams. 8 Gods and goddesses fell down like flames of fire. The homes of the celestials melted in showers of fire. 9 Flashes of fire flickered like lightning from the burning vault of heaven. Clouds of dark smoke hid the face of the high sky in darkness. 10 The faces of earth and sky and all sides of heaven were covered with a flaming veil like that of an evening cloud. The whole universe with its seven spheres appeared like a massive mountain of flaming fire. 11 On one side the sparks of flaming fire flashed overhead. On another, a huge mountainous mist of smoke hid the hemisphere from sight. In the midst there appeared a mountainous body of fire like that of Shiva, the god of destruction, dancing amidst the destructive winds of the Rudras blowing on all sides.
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Chapter 142 The Sage Continues: There Is No Karma; Pure-Born Souls; Religious Acts Useless
The sage resumed and said: Continuing in this journey of my false imagination, I was led to many such painful sights. Eventually they raised feelings of sorrow and sorrow in me and my curiosity gave way to weariness. 2 Then I thought in my mind that it was merely a dream in the mind of another person which I had come to see from my seat within his heart. Therefore, I should refrain from such sights and curb my useless sorrow for them. 3 The hunter asked, You entered the body of another person to investigate the nature of dream. Tell me then, what did you learn and how were your questions answered? 4 How did you come to see the ocean in the heart which never existed there? How did you see the fire in the heart and the tornado in the bowels which are never to be found in any of those places? 5 You said you saw the earth and sky and rivers, mountains and many other things in the mind. But how can these and the world itself be situated in the mind in any manner? 6 The sage replied: All these things and the world itself are all mere nonentities as there was no preexistent material cause for the production of the world before it came into existence. Therefore neither the term creation nor its sense is in any way applicable to this world or the way we see it. 7 Hence the world creation and its meaning proceed from ignorance of the Supreme Soul, which is immutable in its nature. Ignorance of this truth produces the false knowledge of creation. 8 Therefore I say, O you fortunate one, that after you come to your knowledge in this respect, your ignorance of his supremely pure nature is removed. 9 Like me, you will no longer believe in the false impression of your consciousness. But you must come to know that this causeless and uncreated world is only the expanded reflection of your own mind. 10 Where is the body and the heart and where are these elements of water and the like? What is this dream and what are these conceptions and perceptions? What is life or death or anything else? 11 There is only one transparent Intellect everywhere, before which the subtle ether is gross and the biggest mountain is small. 12 Of its own nature, this intellectual emptiness reflects on something in its thought and sees the same as its body of air. This is what is called the world. 13 Because it is only our intellect that reflects itself in various forms in our dream, and because there is nothing other than the intellect that presents itself to our view, therefore this world is nothing other than the aerial form of the intellect. 14 This universe is a quiet emptiness without any stir or shadow of anything in it. The dimness of the blind eye of the intellect presents these false shapes to sight, like blind men seeing black spots in the clear sky. 15 To my sight the world is neither an entity nor a nonentity. It is not a mere void or the shadow or reflection of anything. It is only the formless infinity of empty Consciousness. 16 In the state of our sleep, pure consciousness sees itself in the various forms of its dream, without any cause whatsoever. In the same way, it sees everything in its own emptiness in the waking state also, without any external objects of sight or its act of seeing them. 17 It is something inexplicable, without beginning or end. It is an appearance of its own conceptions which are one with it. There is no duality in its nature. 18 As there is only one endless duration embracing the periods of creation as well as annihilation. As a tree comprehends all its parts, blossoms, and fruit, so Brahman is the Soul of all. 19 As ones great building appears as an empty space to another, and as ones sight of a castle in a mirage appears as nothing to another, so this visible world of waking people is the dream of sleeping persons rising on the ground of their imagination. 20 From time to time the transparent
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emptiness of consciousness exhibits itself in itself. We see things in our dream as we see them when we are awake, and we see things awake like we see them in our dreams. 21 As the fragrance of flowers lies hidden in the invisible air, so the world lies concealed in the invisible intellect which sees through every opening. 22 By shutting out thoughts of anything and everything from your mind, you may be quite pure in yourself. Only then can your infinite soul have its everlasting peace and rest, when it is freed from all cares, both within and without. 23 The hunter said, Tell me sage, how can men get rid of their thoughts and cares of life when they are invariably accompanied by the acts and memories of their past lives? Tell me, what kind of men are subject to the tendencies of their past conduct and what kind are released from them? 24 The sage replied: Those souls who are full of intelligence and have their spiritual bodies are never subject to renewed births or the consequences of their past actions. Such were the bodies of Brahma, Kapila and others who became manifest of themselves. Such also were the supernatural bodies of the gods and divine incarnations. 25 Their bodies were not of this world and were not subject to its dualistic illusory imaginations. They were forms of pure intelligence and of a subtle and spiritual nature. 26 In the beginning of creation, there was no primordial act of anybody to fashion his form or frame of mind. Only the sole and self-existent Brahman existed who manifested himself in the form of the world. 27 As the great Brahma and others were the manifestations of the supreme Brahman in the beginning, so there have been many thousands more who manifested from the same divine essence and are known as pure intelligences and a superior orders of beings. 28 But those who are deluded by their ignorance of truth to think they are other than Brahman, dull and unintelligent beings separate from the nature of God, 29 are born again because of their past actions. They are accompanied with the results of those acts, whereby they are confined in their unintelligent bodies in order to lead their unspiritual lives, quite forgetful of their divine nature and subjected to the false belief of their materiality. 30 But those who preserve the purity of their divine character by thinking themselves as inseparable from the Divine Soul are known here as uncontaminated by their former acts, like the divine trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. 31 All those who know the true nature of the soul remain with its purity in the spirit of God. But those who understand the soul in the light of a mere individual living spirit (jivatma) live in themselves as if detached from the Divine Soul. 32 Whenever one thinks he is merely a living being, he certainly is accompanied by ignorance. The soul takes the name of animal spirit or life, which means having knowledge only of the world in which it is situated. 33 But in course of time, as he comes to know the true and divine nature of his soul, he is reinstated in his real spiritual state and becomes one with the Supreme Soul of all. 34 As the fluidity of water in some waters exhibits itself in the form of whirlpools, so Divine Consciousness shows the nonexistent world as existent to those understandings who are ignorant of the nature of the Supreme Soul. 35 The world is the reflection of omniscience and not the representation of our dreaming or waking states. Therefore, when it is nothing in reality, it can have no action or property of itself. 36 In fact neither the knowledge of the world nor ignorance of it, or its action or motion or any of its properties, is anything in reality. All these are the results of our thoughts that represent the unreal as real to us. 37 Brahman, being the very creation or the great cosmos itself, is truly the soul of all beings. Therefore it is useless to suppose our prior acts as the cause of our births. That God is the creator of the universe is a mere assumption made from his omnipotence. 38 It is impossible for anyone to be bound by the chains of his prior acts at his first creation in the world. It only

afterwards, through his ignorance, that he fabricated a fate or causality of his actions to himself for results in later lives. 39 Tell me, does the whirlpool of the sea have any action of its own? It is only whirling water, as Brahman himself is apparent in the form of this seeming world. 40 As people appearing in our dream have no prior acts for their appearance, so living beings when first formed are endowed with only pure understanding. 41 It is a mere supposition that they had a cause at first creation, and that ever since all living beings have been wandering bound fast by the chain of their prior acts. 42 This creation is no act of creation but truly the manifestations of Brahman himself. Such being the case, tell me, what can acts mean? From where do they proceed and where are they? 43 Only the ignorance of the Supreme Soul binds us to the bondage of acts. But its chains fall off from the believer of Brahman by his knowledge of truth. 44 Know the outward acts of faith proceed from ignorance of the universe. But as the wise man advances in his knowledge, he frees himself from the bondage of all religions and ceremonial acts and observances. 45 External acts of faith are entirely devoid of any substantial merit, so it is not difficult to get rid of them at once. Only our spiritual bond is our chief concern, beside which there is no bond whatsoever. 46 As long as there is fear of the dreadful illusion of this world, you do not attain wisdom. As long as you exhibit your wisdom, you do not fall into the whirlpool of worldly affairs. Therefore, you men of pure hearts and soul, always try to acquire wisdom and learning. There is no other way you can fly from the fears of the world, except by means of your right understanding.

Chapter 143 The Philosophy that All Is within God Is Compatible with All Beliefs, but It Is Wrong to Confuse God to Be like the World; Various Thoughts Create Various Worlds
The (unnamed) sage continued: A wise man investigates the duties of religion and ceremonial acts and serves the welfare of men in both worlds. He shines in the assembly of the learned, just as the sun illuminates an assembly of lotuses. 2 Learned and wise men attain heavenly bliss through spiritual knowledge. Compared to this ocean of bliss, even the wealth of Indra vanishes like rotten straw tossed by waves. 3 I find nothing anywhere in the three regions of this earth, heaven above, or the netherworld which is comparable with the bliss and wealth of learning and wisdom. 4 The learned see the true state of all things as clearly as moonlight gives a clear view of the sphere of stars in a cloudless sky. 5 The visible world soon vanishes from sight and turns into invisible Brahman by the knowledge of the wise, just as a rope, at first appearing to be a snake, upon inspection is soon found to be a rope. 6 Brahman, the God ever situated in his Godhead, is a truth evident by itself. His nature gives rise to the words creation, destruction, body and others. 7 He to whom the existence of the world is nonexistent has no concern for acts or duties which are no more than meaningless words to him. 8 It is possible to believe that the material world was produced from something if there were such a prior material cause. But without a prior material cause, there can be no material world. Therefore, without cause, the world itself is nonexistent and void. 9 It is only the reflection of Brahman that takes the names of earth and all other things. It is not necessary for mere reflections to have any cause at all. 10 Men seen in a dream have no real cause other than the dreamers imagination. The same is true of men seen in our waking dreams. They are only mere reflections of our imaginations and not the products of their parents. 11 There is no causality of prior acts for the appearance of people in our dreams. Neither is there any actual cause for people seen in waking dream assuming the garb of humanity. 12 Neither prior acts nor desires are causes of living beings in different shapes in repeated births, just as prior acts or desires do not cause the production of people seen in our dreams. 13 Men appear as dreams and their impressions in the course of their births and deaths. They are conscious of this state or that as they think themselves either as the one or the other. 14 People appear to be as they think they are from their own consciousness of themselves. Their purpose and actions appear the same in dreams and when awake. 15 The desires and sensations of a dreaming man are like those when he is awake. The only difference is that a dream is dimmer and being awake is more distinct. A dreaming man derives the same satisfaction as an awake man obtaining the object of his wish, though the dream is more concealed and being awake is more of a manifest nature. 16 When our pure consciousness of things shines forth of its own nature in either of its two states of clearness or faintness, the reflection of one takes the name of waking and of the other is known as dream. 17 As long as consciousness continues to shine in anyone, from his first creation until his final emancipation, he is said to be a living being with repeated births and deaths. 18 The meaning of the words waking and dreaming is not at all different from that of consciousness. The irrepressible reflection of consciousness constitutes the essence of both states, just as light is the quality of heavenly bodies. 19 As heat is the essence of fire, motion is the quality of wind, fluidity of water is the quality of the waves, and coolness the essential nature of breeze, so consciousness is the essence our waking and dreaming states.
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The whole universe is an undisturbed chasm and an unchanging unreality. The seeming reality of the world is united with its negative sense of nonexistence. 21 Brahman, in its external sense, is both the creation and the destruction of the world. The visible form and the idea of the world are equally alike. But being viewed in its inner meaning, it is seen only as pure Consciousness, the one alone that is forever calm and quiet and without decay in itself. 22 Whatever thought of causality or effect passes in the mind of Brahman at anytime, the same comes to take place immediately, just as men construct their houses in cities as they please. 23 The entire creation abides in the mind of God just like the city you dream is in your thought. Their cause and effect are the same in each case. 24 Both cause and effect are contained in the womb of dense Consciousness. These are exerted to create the world in the same way you construct your imaginary castle. 25 Divine Consciousness employs its will to cause its intended creation, just like you form a plan to construct your building. Thus causality and its effect are combined together in the one and the same mind. 26 The Divine Mind develops itself into the form of the sky and the world that is forever situated within. Then the mind is called the creation residing in the expanse of that sky. 27 The light which the sun of our consciousness is cast upon the imaginary city in the mind. What is called cause and effect is this light. 28 The forms in which the mind first displayed itself continues to exist in the same state ever since. These are called time, space, and the rest. 29 Whatever names are given to things exhibited in the emptiness of Consciousness, they are seen as realities, some under the names of causes and others as their effects. 30 Creation is first miraculously displayed in Consciousness in its ideal form as mere ideas. Afterwards, it receives the name of the world. 31 This triple world is an empty form. It is situated in the emptiness of Consciousness just as clear air innately contains its blowing vibration. 32 As vapors and clouds covering the face of the sky give the appearance of blueness to it, so the dizziness of ignorance misrepresents the clear Intellect in the form of the gross world. 33 But on receiving the true reflection of the spirit in the Intellect, by means of intense meditation, the idea of creation turns into that of non-creation, as the false sight of a snake in a rope is changed to that of the rope upon its realization. 34 The dead find a future world like what they used to see in their dreams. But that world, as well as this, are equally as formless as the vacuum of the Intellect. 35 The hunter said, Tell me sage, why are men reborn in new bodies to suffer and enjoy future births? Tell me also, what are the principal and accompanying causes for our rebirths in this world? 36 If pious or impious acts done in our present destructible bodies destine us to their later retributions, then tell me. Why should our indestructible souls be brought to feel their results in other bodies? This seems to be very absurd to me. 37 The sage replied: The words piety and impiety mean the same as our desires and acts. They mean causation, framing the living soul according to its own impressions. But these are mere suppositions. They are not the true causes of the doubts in our souls or the modes of our lives. 38 The mind is situated in the empty intellect. The mind has the power of thinking and it imagines various states of things and gives names to them accordingly. 39 The conscious soul, by means of its intellect, comes to know its own body in its empty self. After death it sees its body existing as in its dream or imagination. 40 The knowledge of the dead in the next world is also like a dream. Because this dream state of the soul continues for a long time, he assumes it to be real. 41 If another person frames a new body for a deceased person to enter, then how does the new born body have any memory of the past? How does this body be what the dead person had been before? As for his intellect, it is a mere emptiness and cannot pass from one body into another. 42 Therefore no one who is dead is born again or is to be reborn afterwards at anytime. It is only an

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idea of the mind that I was so and am reborn as such. It is a vain wish in emptiness to be born again in some form or other. 43 By nature and habits of thinking, men are impressed with the belief of rebirth, both by popular belief and scriptural evidence of a state of future retribution, which is altogether false and fanciful. 44 The soul is an aerial and empty substance that gives rise to the phantoms of visible phenomena in the forms of shadowy dreams in its spacious emptiness. The soul is forever seeing its births and deaths in this world in endless repetitions. 45 It sees every particular object in the illusive network spread in its ample sphere. It seems to see and act and enjoy everything without being in the actual enjoyment of anything. 46 In this manner millions and millions of worlds are constantly rising before its sight. They appear to be so many visible phenomena in its ignorance. But when viewed in their proper light, they prove to be the display of only one, all pervading Brahman. 47 No phenomenon ever occupies any space, nor does any ever exist anywhere in reality. There is only that one Brahman that spreads undivided though all and knows all these as an undivided whole, and yet everyone of them forming a world of itself. 48 Now all beings in these worlds are connected with one another in a common link. They appear as realities to the false sight of people, but when seen from the true perspective, they prove to be identical with the unborn one. 49 To the knower of the knowable, the one without decay is known as the true reality. What an enlightened sage understands to be unreal is believed to be true by the ignorant. 50 It is enough to reconcile these opposite parties by believing in one common faith, a universal philosophy of the one reality, that all things everywhere are real because they are all reflections of the same one reality. 51 Or, to determine whether the world as one sees it is real or unreal, let one consult his own consciousness and rely on its verdict whether the world is real or otherwise. 52 Who can doubt the evidence of consciousness with regard to the difference or identity of things, or their unity or duality? 53 Knowledge of the knowable God, in as much as we know it to be correct, establishes the identity of the knowable one with his knowledge. But it is false and mistaken to believe that the world of phenomena is the same as the unknown and invisible God. 54 The knowable one is not distinct from knowledge of him. But being seated in finite understanding, the ignorant have no knowledge of the knowable one who is then quite unknown to and apart. 55 The knowable one is known in proportion to our knowledge of him. But it is not so to those who are ignorant of him. As our knowledge increases, so the knowable soul spreads of itself over our souls. 56 Hence I know nothing about the unreal worlds that appear of themselves as real before the eyes of the ignorant. They are nonexistent and nothing to my sight. 57 Being rightly understood, all things are only forms of the one Intellect and equally void as the Intellect. The Intellect appears in a thousand different shapes to the understanding of the ignorant. 58 An intellectual soul assumes many forms to itself in its dreams, then absorbs them all again into one, single form of unity in sound sleep. In the same way, the Divine Soul appears in one or more forms to our intellects. 59 Thus God, though one and same, appears to our consciousness in various forms according to the various apprehensions of men, whether empty or with form, as our dreams and works of our imagination. 60 Men give the name of world to their consciousness of the dreams they have in the vacuum of their minds. But in deep sound sleep, the mind is unconscious of anything and that state is called the extinction or trance of the mind. This comparison applies equally to them. 61 This substantial totality of existences is only a mere perception of the mind. Whatever appears in any manner in any thought at anytime or place, the same seems to present itself in reality before us, even then and there. 62 It was only thought that first manifested itself in the forms of the primary elements of fire and water and earth at the beginning of creation. All this arose

in the mind like dreams and the phantoms of its imagination. 63 Again the inner impressions of these things are preserved in the empty space of our consciousness. They unite of themselves and exhibit this world to us in the form we see it in our presence. 64 Our consciousness appears to us in both its transient and permanent states. In reality, it is no temporary thing, but continues with us even at the end of all transitory things and our transient lives. 65 Our consciousness accompanies us forever wherever we stay or go. Think about the example of traveling east or west. You see many things and cities on your way, but can never lose your memory of the past or the consciousness of yourself as you proceed onward. 66 Anything that the mind has seen or willed or is long practiced to do or think upon is never erased from consciousness, unless it be from numbness or unawareness of Consciousness. 67 You may wander wherever you please, either to the east or west, and you will find your consciousness continuing the same, never changing with the change of your location. 68 We have seen how a man of steady consciousness, by his firm perseverance, attains the object or state of his wish. By comparison, an unsteady mind is sure to lose both. 69 A man of steady consciousness is possessed of both the object or state of his wish regardless whether he goes to north or south. But one who is unsteady in himself and his purpose is deprived of both himself and his object. 70 The man of firm purpose who thinks he is both in heaven and earth has them both by fixing his mind upon one [heaven] while his body is placed in the other [earth]. In the same way, a man may travel both east and west by walking one way and thinking of the other. But the man of unsteady purpose is neither for this world nor the other. He neither walks one way nor the other. 71 By steadfast belief in the One, we find that only Intellect pervades the whole emptiness of space. But this One appears as many, many thousands to the understanding of ignorant skeptics. 72 Whether the body is destructible because of its materiality or indestructible because it is only a reflection of Divine Consciousness, in either case it is all merely appearance in the dream of the living soul, whether in this or in the future world. 73 Wizards invoke ghosts and spirits of foreigners and make them relate the incidents of their past lives. It is evident from these examples that mens souls do not die with their bodies. 74 Men in foreign countries, long dead and burnt to ashes, disappeared with their living souls, are known to reappear before people and deliver their messages. 75 If it is impossible for departed souls to reappear like the living, which is what the Charvakas say, then let me ask them, why do they not believe their absent friends to also be dead and unable to return? 76 If the property of action is true of the living, why should it not be equally true of the dead? 77 The doctrine of the imaginary dream of the world is the established and irrefutable truth of Vedic scriptures. It is quite compatible with the doctrine of eternal ideas maintained in Indian philosophy. 78 These worlds are equally true as they are false, just as seeing shapes in the moon which appear real to the person seeing them although the shapes have no substance to them. 79 The subjective world is real because all its objects are parts of the true entity. The subjective mind is a reality, although it is composed of only pure ideas. The Intellect is true only as a reflection, and so they are all true without having any reality of themselves. 80 All these are immutable and quiet, lying unmoving in the emptiness of Divine Consciousness. They are unmovable and inconspicuous of themselves, lying immanent in the Divine Soul. 81 Steady consciousness is conscious of whatever it is fixed upon at anytime or place. It shows all things real or unreal that are inbred or inherent in it. 82 Let our bodies rise or fall, and let our destinies overtake us as they will. Let happiness or misery befall us as they are decreed. They cannot affect the serenity of the indifferent soul. 83 Hence it makes no difference to us whether these are realities or not, or whether it may be so or not so. Avoid your desire for anything. Be wise and at rest after all your wanderings.

Chapter 144 The Individual Mind is a Microcosm of Brahman; Dreams and Creations; the Rules for the Dreams (Destiny) Are Inherent in Brahman
The sage continued: The visible world is something in nothing, an entity based upon nonentity. It resembles our consciousness of things seen only in our dreams. As all things are eternally situated in the Divine Mind, there can be no meaning in our being bound to or liberated from them. 2 These worlds appearing to move before us are seen like specks of dust flying about in sunbeams. They are only impermanent phantoms in the air that appear like stable bodies in the minds of the ignorant. 3 Whatever is seen placed before us in any form or state is soon found to change its mode and manner. In the same way, all things here are in constant change, continually revolving like water in a whirlpool. 4 The earth, air, water, and other elements are the materials that combine to form frail bodies that are doomed to decay and dissolve in a short time. Yet the ignorant expect it to last for kalpa and yuga ages. 5 The world is a dream and the totality of existence a mere nothing. Yet the idea of existence that is had of this nonexistence is no other than a reflection of the one Eternal Intellect. 6 There are hundreds and thousands of other worlds to be seen in the skies like this solar world of ours, and we can believe that others have the same ideas about other peoples. 7 We see seas and lakes swarming with living beings of various kinds, and find pools and bogs full of frogs everywhere. But none of them know anything about reservoirs or their inhabitants other than their own. 8 A hundred men sleeping in the same room see as many different air-built castles in their dreams. In the same way, different worlds appear in the airy intellects of some which are unseen and unknown to others. 9 Just like many men sleeping in the same room dream as many different aerial cities, so these aerial worlds appear in the empty sphere of our minds. They are said to be in being and not being at the same time. 10 The sky is a miracle of the mind and a phenomenon of itself. It is visible without its form, appears as limited without its limitation, and as created without its creation. 11 The emptiness bearing the nature of the empty mind is vainly called the physical sky. It presents the forms of fleeting objects to sight as understanding represents its ideas and passing thoughts to our knowledge. 12 The memory of a thing is the cause of its dream by night, just as the desire of something (samskara) causes its conception in the mind, and as the apprehension of ones death comes from seeing it in others. 13 In the beginning of creation, the world appears as an image in the mind. It is only a flash or reflection of Divine Consciousness. No other name can be properly given to it other than a thought in Divine Consciousness. 14 The saying that Brahman shines like world does not mean that he shines anew in the form of the world, but that this form eternally exists in his omniscience. 15 It is said that cause is identical with the effect because the common cause of all is specialized in its form of the effect. An action initially confined in the cause afterwards evolves into the germ of creation. 16 When things we have not seen or known before occur in the mind in dreams, they are called pristine impressions in the mind and not the external objects of sense which are not innate in the mind. 17 These mental impressions or memories are perceptible to us in our dreaming and not in the waking state. Yet they are not lost as long as we retain those impressions in the mind. They naturally appear in the soul in dreaming, just as visible phenomena appear to sight in the waking state. 18 Thus the Vedantist comes to know the nonexistence of the outer world, and by knowing the knowable one, they come to attain their object. 19 The impressions of the waking state which occur in the state of dreaming are the
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newly made imprints of the waking hours on the memory. These make the sleeping hours seem like waking to the dreaming soul. 20 These recent ideas fluctuate in the mind like the breath of the wind. They occur and reoccur of themselves without the agency of pristine impressions. 21 There is only one Consciousness that possesses many multitudes of airy dreams. Being dispossessed of them at last, it remains solely by and in itself. 22 The consciousness that we have of the dreams, ranging at large in the empty sphere of our intellect, is truly what we call the world. The lack of this consciousness in our sound sleep is what we call the extinction of the world. This comparison applies equally to the nature of the self-existed One. 23 There exists only the infinite sphere of one eternal Intellect (chidakasa). In that Intellect appears an infinity of shapes, perpetually rising and setting in its open space like dreams. These are born of its own nature, are called the world, and bear the same intellectual form with itself. 24 Thus the atomic particle of the Intellect contains the form of the entire cosmos within its open space. This cosmos is an exact pattern of its original model, just as the reflection in a mirror is the true representation of the original. 25 The opening of the Intellect contains consciousness diffused in it like an atom being stretched. It extends throughout without beginning or end and this is called the cosmos. 26 The emptiness of Intellect extends to all infinity. Connected with it is the appearance of the cosmos which is immanent and identical with itself at all times. 27 Intellect is identical with the cosmos, therefore all minds and intellectual beings such as I and you are also worlds or microcosms. This is why the great macrocosm of the world is said to be comprised in the womb of an atom of consciousness in the mind. 28 Therefore I, who is a minute soul, also have the form of the whole world. Hence I abide everywhere likewise, even in the midst of an atom. 29 Being in the form of the minute atom of the intellect, I am also as great as the Universal Soul, and as expanded as the open air all around. I also see all three worlds wherever I live or move. 30 I am an atom of the intellectual soul. I am joined with the intellectual soul of the universe. When I see the Supreme Spirit in my meditation, I am lost in it like a drop of water is lost in the ocean. 31 Having entered into the Divine Spirit and feeling its influence in me, I am filled with its consciousness. I behold the three worlds within me, just as the seed lies hidden within its husk. 32 I see the triple world expanding within myself, beside which there is no outer world on the outside of anybody. 33 Whenever the world appears in any form, whether in gross or subtle form, such as in the states of our waking or dreaming, all these interior or exterior worlds are to be understood as reflections of the ideal one imprinted in the intellect. 34 When the living soul indulges itself dreaming of sights of the world, it is to be understood as a reflection of the expanded particle of the intellect. The sleeping soul delights to show fondness upon such reflections. 35 The hunter said, If the visible world is causeless or without its maker, then how could it come into existence? If it is a caused or created exterior world, then how could we have any knowledge of it during sleep when the soul is dreaming? 36 The sage replied: All this is without a cause. The world proceeded at first without any causality whatever. 37 Truly it is impossible for gross and perishable bodies and transient beings to come to being without a cause. But that which is only a copy of the original model of the eternal mind cannot possibly have any cause at all. 38 It is Brahman himself that shines brightly by nature of his intellectual brightness. Hence the worlds creation and destruction are utterly inapplicable to what is without beginning or end. 39 Thus uncaused creation abides in the substance of the great God and shines forth with divine glory to all infinity. The appearance of gross bodies appears only to gross minds that are prejudiced with the grosser ideas of materiality. 40 What numberless varieties appear in the unchangeable Brahman! What unnumbered

diversities of shapes and forms are seen in the formless One that is ever unchanged and imperishable! 41 Brahman is formless in his person, yet because he is the mind, he exhibits himself in many forms. There he represents his spiritual self in all the various forms of moving and immovable bodies. 42 He makes gods, sages, and seers in his likeness, and also directs them to their different degrees and duties. He establishes the laws and prohibitions of conduct and appoints the acts and observances at all times and places. 43 All existences and privations, productions and destructions, whether of moving or unmoving bodies, or great or small ones, are subject to his decree. None can ever transgress any of his general laws. 44 Ever since the general decree, nothing takes place without its proper special cause, just as you can never expect to extract oil from sand. 45 The destined decree of providence leads all events in the world. It is like one part of Brahmans body curbs the other part of himself, like we restrain the action of one hand by the other. 46 This unavoidable destiny overtakes us, despite our prudence and will, like the sudden fall of a fruit on a flying crow. Destiny drives us along with its course, just as the tide carries waters with it. 47 The preordination of certain effects from certain causes is called destiny. Without that, there would be only disorder and disturbance, and not even Brahman can abide that. Therefore destiny is the imperishable soul of all existence. 48 Therefore destiny is the cause of all. Although it is unseen and unknown, yet it acts on everything as it is destined for them ever since their very production. 49 The uncausing Brahman causes nothing. Yet the ignorant, through their error in judgment, mistakenly believe Brahman to be the cause of creation. 50 However, a wise man seeing the sudden appearance of the world before him, like the rotation of a wheel, considers its causes as such and such or this and that, just as they have been determined by their preordained destiny. 51 All existent bodies have their special causes in their primordial destiny, which determines their subsequent lots in endless succession. Hence occurrences in our waking state, resembling visions in our dreams, are never without their antecedent causes. 52 I dreamed the destruction of the world caused by impacts of elements and waters. I dreamed this way because of its cause inbred in me. I had memories of the great deluge that I had heard in traditional stories. 53 In this manner we see the reflections of almighty power in all things, just as we see crystals and shellfish shining with their intrinsic brightness. May this Omnipotent power that is the ever-living soul of souls, known to us in our imperfect notion of him, be glorified forever and ever.

Chapter 145 Concentration Expands Ideas; Descriptions of Body Fluids Affecting the Quality of Dreams
The sage continued: The living soul perceives the dream of the outer world by means of the external organs of sense, and that of the inner world by the internal senses. But the quickness of both the internal and external senses gives the sensations of both these worlds to the soul. 2 When the outer senses are busily employed with outward objects, then the perceptions of mental objects and inner functions become faint and fainter by degrees. 3 When the external senses are all directed to the inside and the inner senses are concentrated in the mind, then the object of thought and the idea of the world, however minute they had been before, gradually assume a more expanded form and present their extended appearances to the soul. 4 In this manner the world which is nothing in reality, being once thought upon as something however small in its idea, expands itself in the mind to an enormous size, which at last also casts its reflection on the external organs of sense and make it appear so big and vast to sight. 5 When the eyes and senses of a living person are occupied with outer objects, then the soul only beholds the intellect in the form of the exterior world. 6 The intellectual and intangible soul is composed of a collection of all outward sensations, namely hearing, touch, seeing, smelling and taste, as well as the four internal sensations of will. 7 Therefore the living soul is always present at every place accompanied by all the senses. Hence the airy intellect is always unobstructed, knowing and seeing everywhere. 8 When the body fluids fill the veins and arteries of a living person, then the soul is lulled to sleep to see false visions in its dream. 9 It seems to swim in a sea of milk and soar in the moonlight sky. It thinks it sees a clear lake about it, filled with full blown lotuses and their blooming buds. 10 In itself it sees the flowery gardens of spring season covered in clothes of flowers, contending with the star-sparkling sky, and resounding with the warbling of birds and the buzz of humming bumble bees. 11 It sees all merriment and festivity stirring in its mansion and the merry dance of playful ladies sporting in its compound. It views its courtyard filled with provisions of food and drink. 12 It beholds flowing streams like adolescent maidens running playfully to join the distant sea, encircled with swimming flowers and smiling with their flashy foams, darting about their fickle glances in flitting motions of shrimp fluttering on the surface of the water. 13 It sees palaces and towers rising as high as the summits of the Himalayan Mountains and the tops of icebergs with their white washed walls appearing as if they were varnished with moonbeams. 14 It sees the landscape covered by the dews of the dewy season, or as hidden under the mists of winter, and shrouded by the showering clouds of rainy weather. It views the ground below overgrown with herb-bearing plants and muddy marshes grown over with blue lotuses. 15 The woodlands are seen covered with flowers, herds of deer and weary travelers resting there that halted under the cooling shade of the thickening foliage of the forest, soothed by soft breezes of the woodland spot. 16 The flowery tree groves had all its gardens and vaulted places scattered with the flaring powder of flowers. The crimson dust of kunda, kadamba and mandara blossoms blush and cover the scenery all around. 17 Lakes are clothed in blue with blue lotuses and the ground wears the flowing floral garment of flowers. Woodlands are clear of clouds and the sky is clear and cold under the autumn sky. 18 The mountain range is crowned with rows of kunda, kadamba and kadali plantain trees. These trees wave their leafy fans on their exalted heads, which appear to nod at the dancing of the leaflets. 19 Tender vines shake without care, buds and blossoms upon them. They appear like young
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ladies dancing gracefully with strings of pearls on their slender bodies. 20 It sees a royal palace and regal assemblies shining as brightly as a blooming lotusbed in a lake. It also sees white chowry fans waving over them, like feathered birds flapping their wings over the floral lake. 21 It also sees running streams softly gliding in a playful mood with curling vines and flowers wreathed with their currents, murmuring along with the mixed music of birds on the branches beside them. 22 The earth is filled and flooded by torrents of water falling from mountain waterfalls. All sides of heaven are hidden by showers of rain and snow falling all about its vault. 23 When the internal channels of the body are filled with bile fluid, the soul remains with its internal vigor as an atom in its cell, then sees the dreams of the following nature in itself. 24 It sees flames of fire about it and red kinsuka flowers upon its withered trees, blasted by the winds. It also sees the forms of red lotus flowers burning like flames of fire before it. 25 The inner nerves and veins became as dry of gastric juice as when clear streams turn to dry sandbanks. Then flames of wildfire appear and dark smoke flies over the darkened face of nature. 26 Fire appears to be burning all around and the disc of the sun seems to dart its burning rays. Wildfires are seen in forests. Withered and dried ponds emit a poisonous gas instead of their clear waters. 27 The seas are seen with boiling waters turning into beds of hot mire and mud. The horizon is filled with hot winds and the forests with flying ashes, while the deserts appear quite desolate all about. 28 Moving sands spread about fly in the air like flights of storks. The landscape appears different than in the previous example. The former greenness of the trees no longer comes to sight. 29 The soul sees the fearful wayfarer covered by the burning sands of a parching desert. He is looking longingly on the distant tree by the wayside, spreading its cooling ambrosial shade over the parched ground. 30 It sees the earth burning like a flaming furnace with all its lands and places hidden under ashes, and a dark cloud of dust covering the face of the sky on all sides. 31 The world appears in flames everywhere. All its planetary bodies, cities and seas, hills and forests and the open air are seen burning in a blaze. 32 It sees the empty clouds of autumn, spring and hot seasons serving to favor the fires instead of quenching them. It beholds lands below covered with grass and leafy vines that entrap them as coverings of clouds. 33 It sees the ground glittering like gold everywhere and the waters of lakes and rivers, and even snowy mountains all lukewarm or hot. 34 When the channels of the body are dried up for lack of gastric juice, they are filled with wind and gas. The soul, retaining its vigor, sees various dreams of the following description. 35 Disturbed by the wind in its dream, understanding sees the homes of men, the forests and the earth quite differently from how they appeared before. 36 The soul sees itself flying in the air with hills and hilly lands all around. It hears a rumbling noise like that of the whirling of chariot wheels. 37 It seems to be riding about on horseback, or upon a camel or eagle or on the back of a cloud, or riding in a chariot drawn by swans. 38 It sees the earth, sky, cities and forests appearing before it, trembling like bubbles in water as if in fear. 39 It finds itself fallen in a blind ditch, or in some great danger, or as mounting in the air upon a tree or hill. 40 When the arteries of the body are filled with a combination of all three fluids of phlegm, bile and gas then the soul is led by the windy quality to see several dreams of the following nature. 41 It sees rainfall flowing down mountains and hailstones, to its terror, hurling down its sides. It hears hills and buildings bursting and sees trees moving about. 42 Woods and forests appear to encircle the distant horizon which is overcast by huge clouds and traversed by big elephants and lions. 43 Palm and tamara trees appear to be burning all around. Hollow caves and caverns appear to resound with the harsh noise of flashing fires and falling trees. 44 Mountain crags seem to be

clashing and crashing against one another and caves resounding to their harsh crackling sounds. 45 Mountain tops seem to clash against each other, emitting a harsh and hideous noise. Streams running among them appear to be wearing necklaces of the loosened vines and bushes which they carry away. 46 Fragments of rocks are seen carried away by mountain streams to the ocean. They carry torn bushes which seem to spread as far as the utmost pole. 47 Craggy hills seem to crash each other with their sharp edges, crashing and splitting themselves with their harsh and hideous sounds. 48 Forest leaves with vines are scattered all around by the strong wind. Broken stones from mountains make their bed over the moss below. 49 Tall palm trees fall to the ground with a crushing sound, like the wars between gods and demons of the past. All birds fly with a harsh scream, like the crying of men on the last day of the destruction of the world. 50 All wood, stones and earth mix together as one mass, like the jiva soul in dream surrounded by soldiers of air. 51 Silence reigns like a worm underneath the earth, or a frog under a stone, or an embryo within the womb, or a seed within the fruit, 52 like boiled rice and solidified liquid in a bowl, or a doll carved in the wall of a wooden pillar. 53 Vital air ceases to blow and all things get stalled as if they are encased within the hollow of the earth. 54 Deep darkness reigns there and deep sleep (sushupti) appears like a deep dark well within a mountain cave. 55 As heavy food is digested by the body and becomes a separate juice with new energy, so the vital air which once disappeared makes its appearance again. 56 After digestion a certain kind of juice appears within the body in the shape of vitality, so the jiva soul experiences stones which begin to fall within. 57 As fire increases and creates more fire, a little adds a little more, so the combination of the three body fluids composes the inner and outer essence of the body. 58 Thus the living soul, confined within the bonds of the body and led by force of the three body fluids, sees the dreams of the absent world as it sees visions of visible phenomena, with its external organs of sense. 59 The mind is liable to see its internal visions, in a greater or lesser degree, according to the greater or lesser excitement of the senses by the greater or lesser irritations of its body fluids. But if the action of the body fluids is uniform, then the course of the mind runs in an even course. 60 The living soul, surrounded by irritated body fluids, looks out over the wide world and sees the earth and sky and mountains turning round and flames of fire issuing from burning piles. 61 It finds itself rising and moving in the skies with the rising moon and mountain ranges. It sees forests of trees, hills, and floods of water washing the face of heaven. 62 It thinks it is diving and floating on water, or wandering in heavenly abodes, or in forests and hilly places, or floating in the sky upon the backs of white clouds. 63 It sees rows of palms and other trees ranged in the sky, and sees the false sights of hell punishments, such as the sawing and crushing of sinful bodies. 64 It fancies itself hurled down by a turning wheel and rising instantly into the sky again. It sees the air full of people and thinks it is diving in waters upon the land. 65 It sees the business of daytime carried on everywhere at night, the sun shining at night as in daytime, and a thick darkness spreading over the face of the day. 66 Mountainous terrain is seen in the skies. The land is seen full of holes and ditches. Rows of buildings are seen in the air. Friendship is found combined with hatred. 67 Relatives are thought of as strangers and wicked people are taken for friends. Ditches and valleys are viewed as level land. Flats and plains appear as caves and caverns. 68 White mountains of milky whiteness and crystal gems appear sounding with the melody of birds. Clear lakes are seen gliding below, their water as sweet as butter. 69 Forests of various trees appear and houses adorned with women appear like lotuses filled with bees. 70 The living soul thinks that it lies hidden within and is closed within itself, yet it perceives all these sights outside as if it were awake to them. 71 In this manner, the work of impaired body fluids represents many such sights of external objects in the forms of dream to the minds of

people. 72 It is usual with men of disordered body fluids to see many extraordinary sights and fearful appearances, both within and without. 73 When the internal organs are steady in their action, then the course of nature and the conduct of people appear in the usual state. 74 Then the situations of cities and countries, and the positions of woods and hills, are seen in the same calm, clear and unperturbed state as they are known to exist agreeably to the natural order of things, such as cool and clear streams, shady forests, and countries and paths traversed by travelers. 75 Days and nights decorated with pleasant sunbeams, moonbeams and starlight, and all other appearances, however unreal in their nature, appear as wonders to the sight and other senses. 76 The perception of phenomena is as inherent in the mind as movement is inherent in wind. The essential property of the minds nature is to see the unreal as real, to see the intrinsic, or what is derived from within the mind, as separate and extrinsic or derived from without the mind. 77 The calm and quiet spirit of Brahman gives rise to all things which are equally calm and quiet. The world is mere emptiness without having any reality in it. The empty mind represents endless varieties of forms in the sphere of its own emptiness as the endless reflections of its empty person.

Chapter 146 Brahman Does not Sleep, Dream or Awake

The hunter said, Tell me, O great sage, what did you do and see afterwards, from your seat in the false spirit of that person? 2 The sage replied: Hear me tell you what I did and saw afterwards, by my union and sitting within the spirit of that infatuated person. 3 As I resided in the dark cave of his heart, in the confusion of the last doomsday, I thought a hurricane arose which blew mountains away like straw on the day of the final desolation of the world. 4 It was soon followed by outpourings of rainwater from mountain tops which carried away woods and hills in its torrents. 5 As I dwelt in that opening in union with the vitality of that individual, even in that state of my spiritual minuteness, I perceived rain and hailstones falling from mountain tops. 6 Then I was enfolded within the vitality (ojas) of that person and fell into a state of sound sleep. I felt a deep darkness envelop me all over. 7 Having laid down in sleep for some time, I gradually woke up from my sleepy state, just as the closed lotus of the night unfolds its petals in the morning. 8 Then, as a man lying in darkness comes to see some circular discs appearing to sight, so I saw some flimsy dreams flying about and hovering over me. 9 Being released from the chain of sleep, I fell into a series of dreams. I saw a hundred shapes of things arising in my spirit, like shapes of unnumbered waves and billows rising on the surface of the sea. 10 Very many forms of visible things appeared in the cell of my consciousness, just as a great many flying things are seen moving about in the still and motionless air. 11 As heat is inherent in fire, coldness is inherent in water, fluidity is characteristic of liquids, and pungency is immanent in pepper, so is the world inherent in Brahman. 12 The nature of Consciousness being uniform and the same in itself, the phenomenal world is engrained in it, just as the dream of a new born child presents itself to the sight of a sleeping man. 13 The hunter asked, Tell me sage. How is it possible for Consciousness to have the sight of anything in its state of sound sleep, since dreams never occur in the mind except in the state of light sleep? 14 Again, when both you and the person in whose heart you merged were both in the state of sound sleep, how could the sight of the creation appear to you? 15 The sage replied: Know that creation is expressed by words, namely jayati is born, bhati appears, and kachati shines. These words are applied indiscriminately to all material things, such as pots and pictures as well as the world itself. All these words are used by men whose brains are heated with duality to express a duality. 16 Know that the word born means only being and its synonyms are manifestation, which is derived from the root bhu to be. 17 Now the meaning of bhu is being, which word also expresses the sense of being born. The word sarga means production or creation. It is the same as being. 18 With us learned men, there is nothing made or born or destroyed. All is one calm and quiet unborn being. 19 The whole and soul of this entity is the one Brahman. The totality of existence is called the cosmos, the macrocosm, or the world. Say then, what substance or insubstantiality is there that can be positively affirmed or denied of the One which is uniformly alike? 20 That which is called the active energy of God literally resides in the Divine Spirit, but not as a free or separate power of itself. All power exists in omnipotence, which is identical with Brahman, and not as an attribute or part of him. 21 According to the reflection of men learned in divine knowledge, the properties of waking, sleep and dreaming do not belong to the nature of God because God never sleeps or dreams
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or wakes in the manner of his creatures. 22 Neither sleep nor the airy visions of dreaming nor anything else that we know or have any idea about can have any relation to the nature of the Inscrutable One, any more than the impossibility of our having any idea of the world before its creation. 23 It is the living soul that sees the dream and imagines creation in itself. Pure Consciousness is quite unintelligible in its nature. It remains as clear as either in the beginning of creation. 24 Consciousness is neither the observer nor enjoyer. It is something as nothing, perfectly quiet and utterly unspeakable in its nature. 25 In the beginning there was no cause of creation and creative agent of the world. It is only an ideal of the Divine Mind, existing forever in the same state like a vision in a dream or an airy castle of imagination. 26 The unwise apprehend individual intelligence as a duality, but never the intelligent. An ignorant men, like silly infants, is afraid of a tiger or snake that is painted upon his own body. But the intelligent, knowing them too well to be marked upon their own bodies, never suspect them as anything other than their own body. 27 The one unchanging and translucent soul, without beginning, middle or end, appears to be varying and various to the unreflecting dualist and polytheist. But the whole which appears so changeful and noticeable to sight, is in itself a perfect calm and quiet and serene appearance.

Chapter 147 The Sage Awakens within His Student, Becomes Absorbed in His Own Memories, and Forgets Himself; Unless One Cultivates Knowledge, One Relapses into Forgetfulness and Ignorance
The sage continued: Hear me now, O strong armed archer, how I awoke from my sound sleep and saw the sight of the world in my dream, just a man rising to the surface from the depth of the sea surveys the heavens above him. 2 I saw the heavens as cut out of the ethereal vacuum. I saw the terrestrials as sculptured out of the earth. I found them all to be fashioned out of the Divine Mind, or framed in that manner by my organ of sight. 3 The world appeared like an early blossom of the tree of the eternal mind, or like the ceaseless waves of a vast ocean, or like phantoms of my deluded eyesight. 4 It seemed to appear from the space of the sky above, or to have proceeded from all sides of heaven. Moreover, it seemed like masonry carved out of the mountains of all quarters of the sky, and also like a prodigy rising out of the earth. 5 It also seemed to have sprung out of the heart like any of its feelings or affections. It appeared to have filled all the space of emptiness, just like the all pervading clouds of heaven. I also thought it was like the produce of a large forest, or like seeds or grains growing out of the earth. 6 As pictures of houses with apartments are painted upon the planes of level plates, so the figures of living beings are drawn upon the smooth flatness of Consciousness, together with all the limbs and organs of their bodies. 7 These worlds appear to have sprung in some unknown part of Infinity, and to have presented themselves to our view like flying herds of distant regions coming to our sight, or as presents are brought to a prince from different lands, or as the retributions and rewards of ones good or bad deeds in this life meet him in following reincarnations. 8 The world is only a blossom of the great tree of Brahman, or a little wave in the vast ocean of eternity. It is a carving on the colossal pillar of Consciousness without being carved or cast. 9 Space is an ample field filled with an infinity of worlds that appear to be our earthly homes in an empty city of air. Like an infuriated elephant, the mind randomly wanders everywhere with an airy empty life as fickle and fleeting as a breath of air. 10 The building of the world has no foundation and is unsupported by any walls. The sky appearing so bright and variegated has no color or tint of its own. The magical power of the great magician displays these wonders and spreads a curtain of delusion over the ignorant and infatuated world. 11 Though creation always seems so exuberant everywhere, yet it is quite quiescent, unbounded by any limitation of space or time. Though it appears as having great variety, yet it is a single unity. Though seemingly having great diversity, yet is all only one unchanging uniformity. 12 A gandharva fairyland, for example, is exactly the same as this world in that both are unreal. The error that occurs to us in our dreams is the same that possesses us in our waking state of dreaming. 13 Only the reflection of the mind represents the absent past and future as already present before it, whether they relate to anything of time or place, or substance or action, or anything relating to its creation or its destruction. 14 There are numberless beings contained among every species of animal, which contain others without limit in their ovaries, bearing microscopic organisms like seeds of pomegranate fruit. 15 Rivers, forests, and mountains are seen surrounded by clouds of the sky and studded with the shining stars of heaven. The sea is heard to resound with the loud alarm of battle drums raised by warring winds with conflicting currents. 16 Then before me I saw a visible sphere in which I saw the village of my prior dream.
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I recognized my former home. 17 I saw all my former friends and relatives in the same place and of the same age as I had seen them before. I saw my wife and my children sitting in the very same house. 18 Seeing my fellow villagers and my former village scenes, my heart wished to meet them as violently as the sea waves swell to meet the shore. 19 I began to embrace all my relatives, feeling happy with our reunion. Being absorbed in my desire to see more and more, I utterly lost all my memory of the past. 20 As a mirror receives the reflection of whatever is present before it, so the mirror of the mind is wholly occupied with the objects of its future desires, and becomes unmindful of the past. 21 It is the emptiness (chidakasa) of Consciousness that has the knowledge of everything. There is no other principle of understanding beside Consciousness which ever exists by itself. 22 He who has not lost his pure understanding and his memory of himself is never misled by the demons of dualism and doubt to think of a duality. 23 He whose understanding is awakened by his constant inquiry into truth and divine knowledge, and by his study of good scriptures and attendance on divine sages, does not forget his enlightenment anymore. 24 He who is imperfect in his divine knowledge and whose mind is bound by worldly desires is liable to lose his good understanding, as if by the influence of an unfavorable planet or inauspicious star. 25 Know, O hunter, that your understanding, which is not yet cultivated by association with the wise, is liable to fall into the error of duality and thereby involve you in repeated difficulties. 26 The hunter answered, It is all very true, O sage, that in spite of all your lectures, my understanding does not find its rest in the knowledge of the only true One. 27 My understanding still hangs in doubt as to whether it is so or not. Though I rely upon my conception of the truth as you have declared, yet my mind finds no peace in it. 28 Ah, though I fix my faith on the doctrine you have preached, yet I cannot rest secure in it as long as my ignorance reigns supreme in me. 29 Unless understanding is enlightened in the company of wise men by attending the doctrine of the best scriptures and due examination of their teachings, there can be no end to the errors of the world, nor any rest for the weary soul wandering continually in a maze of errors.

Chapter 148 No One Can Say Whether Dreams Are Real or Unreal; Certainty Makes Things Real; There Is No Other Law of Dreaming
The hunter said, If the sight of the world is no more than a vision in dream, then O great sage, tell me, where lies its truth or falsehood? This is a matter of great doubt and difficulty to me. 2 The sage replied: That dream which rises in our consciousness under the conditions of proper place and time, and right actions and things, is true and actually happens. 3 A dream caused by the use of some gem or drug, or by effect of some mantra or amulet, actually happens, whether favorable or not to the dreamer. 4 When a mans earnest desire presents itself in the shape of a dream before his mental sight, it comes to happen by accident, by the law of chance. 5 Whatever we believe with certainty in our consciousness, the same is sure as fate. We are sure to see and become the same. 6 Certainty removes uncertainty. If anyone reaches certainty, uncertainty falls down 7 absolutely. No object is ever situated inside or outside of anybody. Only consciousness assumes the various forms of worldly things and remains in the same state as it knows itself to be. 8 The certainty arrived at by evidence of the scriptures, that phenomena are like appearances in a dream, makes it believed indeed. But a disbelief in this belief makes one a skeptic who wanders about in his doubts forever. 9 If one gains his object by any means other than certainty, in spite of his belief in that the world is a dream, that gain is reckoned as imaginary only. 10 Whatever is determined to be true in the world by the strong consciousness of anybody in his waking state, then either sooner or later in course of time and change of place, the same comes to be known as untrue. 11 In the beginning the world existed in Divine Consciousness and was represented in its subtle and incompressible form. It had its essence in the mind of God, then extended its slender substance to any length according to its free will and desire. 12 Know that beside the true and immutable entity of the intellect of Brahman, all others are both real and unreal, and lasting and transient also. 13 Brahman is the only one being and soul of all. There can be no other that may be called as such. Therefore tell me, what else is there that may be called a reality or a non reality? 14 Therefore, neither the ignorant nor the enlightened part of mankind can say whether a dream is true or false at anytime. 15 The phenomenal world appears before us by delusion of our senses and misconception of our consciousness. The visible worlds, commonly referred to as illusion, has nothing of reality or certainty in it. 16 Divine Consciousness flashes forth in the mind with the glare of the glaring world, just as fluidity is seen quivering and flowing in all bodies of waters and liquids. 17 As one first sees a dream then afterwards falls fast asleep, so does everybody see phenomena in his waking state, then falls naturally into a deep and sound sleep. 18 Know then, O great sage, that the waking state is similar to that of dreaming. Know the dreaming state to be like that of waking, and that both these states are only two phases of the one and the same Brahman. 19 Divine Consciousness is an empty and incomprehensible entity. The specious universe is only its reflection. The three states of waking, dreaming and sleeping are the triple foundations of the same being. 20 There is no law regarding the effectiveness of dreams. How can you determine any rule for ascertaining the results of various dreams? 21 As long as the mind dwells on the appearance of dreams, it is troubled with its aimless wanderings. Therefore the sage must wipe their impressions off from his consciousness. 22 The temperament of the mind gives rise to dreams, like vibration in air causing wind currents. There is no other cause of dreams or any law that governs them, except that in sound
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sleep, these appearances entirely settle down and vanish. 23 The learned attribute the cause of impressions in our consciousness to external appearances of this thing or that. But relying on the doctrine that external objects have no cause, they prove to be nothing other than mere imaginations of the subjective mind. 24 Therefore the only law with respect to this is that the appearances of things, whatever they be, are generally granted as such by the common sense of mankind. 25 Thus, as there is no law of dreaming, sometimes there is some truth in some dreams, and at others there is no truth in any of them at all. Because there is a lack of any constancy, it is only an accidental occurrence. 26 Whatever appears subjectively to ones self, either from his own nature or by means of artificial devices, and whatever one is habituated to think of anything in himself, he sees the same in that form, both in his dreaming as well as waking states. 27 The appearances of things, both in mens sleeping and waking states, are merely the reflections of their minds. They remain the same whether when one is waking or lying in the imaginary city of his dreams. 28 It is not enough to call only waking to be awake because a dream also appears as waking to the waking soul that never sleeps. 29 So there is nothing such as dreaming that may be called by that name. It is only a particular form of thinking in the Divine Mind which sees sleeping and waking in the same light. 30 Or it may be that neither of the two states of waking or dreaming exists because the ever living soul of a dead person continues to behold the visible even after its separation from the body and its rebirth after death. 31 The soul remains the same never becomes other than what it is regardless what state it is in, just as endless duration never changes with the course of time, and the ocean continues alike under its rolling waves, and airy space remains unchanged above the changing clouds. 32 So creation is inseparable from the Supreme Soul, whether it exists or becomes extinct. As the perforations and marks in a stone are never distinct from it, so the states of waking and sleeping are coincident with the Divine Soul. 33 Waking, sleeping, dreaming and sound sleep are the four forms of bodies of the formless and bodiless Brahman who, though devoid of all forms, is still of the form of whole creation, cosmos and the mundane soul. 34 The Supreme Soul that pervades and encompasses all space is visible to us only in the form of infinite space or sky. Therefore, endless emptiness being only the body of Supreme Consciousness, it is no way different from it. 35 Air, wind, fire and water, together with the earth and clouds on high, are reckoned as the causes of all creation, but they only exist in their ideal shapes in the mind of Brahman. 36 The Lord is devoid of all names and attributes. He remains united with his body of Consciousness containing the knowledge of all things within itself. Phenomena are never separate from their ideas.

Chapter 149 Many People Sharing Same Event; Only Brahman Is a Possible Cause
The hunter asked, Tell me, O sage! What then became of the world that you saw in your dream? Tell me all about it until its final extinction. 2 The sage replied: Then listen as I tell you, O honest fellow, what then passed in the heart of the person in whom I had entered. Listen to the wonderful tale with proper attention. 3 As I remained there in that forgetful state of my transformation, I saw the course of time gliding upon me with its train of months, seasons and years passing imperceptibly by. 4 I passed there a full fifteen years in my domestic life, happy with the enjoyment of my married life. 5 It happened there, once upon a time, that a learned sage came as a guest to my house. I received the venerable and austere devotee with honor within my doors. 6 Being pleased with my honorable reception, he took his meal and he rested at ease. Then I asked him the following question regarding the happiness and sorrow of mankind. 7 Sage, I said, you are possessed of vast understanding. You well know the course of the world and therefore you are not known to become angry at adversity or delight in prosperity. 8 All happiness and sorrow proceed from the acts of men engaged in busy life in the world. The farmer reaps good or bad crops in autumn according to how well he cultivated his field. 9 So when all the inhabitants of a place suffer and fall under some severe calamity all at once, are they all equally faulty in their actions at the one and same time? 10 We see famine, drought, portents and catastrophes repeatedly overtaking a large portion of mankind at the same time. Say then, is it owing to the wickedness of the people at the one and very time? 11 Hearing my words he stared at me. He looked as if he was taken by surprise and seemed confounded in his mind. Then he uttered these words of reverence and ambrosial sweetness. 12 The sagely guest said: O well spoken! These words of yours indicate your highly enlightened mind and how well you have understood the cause of phenomena, be it real or unreal. Tell me, how did you came to know it? 13 Remember only the Universal Soul and think nothing about what you are and where you sit. Reflect well in yourself, what am I and from where and what is phenomena, and whether it is anything substantial or only an ideal of the mind. 14 All this is the display of dream. How is it that you do not know this yet? I am an imaginary being to you, just as you are the phantom of a dream before me. 15 The world you see is a formless and nameless nothing, a mere formation of your imagination. It flashes with the glare of the crystal Intellect and is a glaring falsehood in itself. 16 Therefore all forms whatsoever that you think or take to be anywhere are the true, nonfictional, and omnipresent Intellect. 17 Now, in assigning a cause to things, you will find that the Intellect is the cause of all. In ascribing one cause to anything, you have the uncaused and un-causing Intellect for everything. 18 The Universal Soul spreads through all and in whom all living beings reside. It is known as the common soul of all. It is regarded as residing in us and it is known to be all individual souls linked together in a series. 19 There will be other living beings in the future, with the common soul pervading in all of them, and causing their happiness or sorrow according to their desires. 20 The soul is disturbed by the disorder of fluids in the body, then mens limbs and other body parts become disturbed likewise. 21 Drought, famine and destruction may come upon mankind occurring simultaneously of themselves, because 22 it is possible, O good soul, that there are many persons living together who
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are equally guilty of some crime at the same time and are waiting for their simultaneous punishment, falling like the fire of heaven on a forest. 23 The mind that relies on the effectiveness of acts comes to feel the effects of its actions. But the soul that is free from such expectation is never involved in its acts or exposed to their results. 24 Whatever one imagines in any form at any place or time occurs to him in the same proportion as he expected it, whether that object be with or without its cause. 25 Imaginary appearances in dreams are in no way accompanied by their immediate or accessory causes, as all actual existences are. Therefore this imaginary world is the appearance of the everlasting Intellect of Consciousness, which is Brahman itself. 26 The world, appearing as a false dream, is only a causeless unreality. But considering it as the appearance of Brahman, it has both its cause and reality. 27 The casual occurrence of dreams deludes our consciousness of them. So the accidental appearance of the world is equally delusive of our understanding of it. Its extension is a delusion like the expansion of a dream. 28 Everything appears to be as caused or uncaused as we take it to be. 29 It is a deception of the understanding to take the imaginary world to be the product of a real causality. It is natural to the waking state to take the world as real which, in our sleep and dreams, appears quite calm and unreal. 30 Now hear me tell you, O great minded sage, that the one Existent Being, Brahman, is the sole cause of existence. What else can cause all nature and this all pervading vacuum? 31 Say, what can be the cause of the solidity of the earth and the lightness of air? What is the cause of our universal ignorance? What is the cause of the self born Brahman? 32 What may be the cause of creation and what is the origin of the winds, fire and water? What is the source of our apprehensions of things that are mere vacuum in empty intellect? 33 Tell me, what can be the cause of the rebirth of departed souls into the mass of material bodies? The course of creation is going on in this manner from the beginning. 34 Thus all things seem to be going on and reoccurring in this world, like wheels and spheres turning in air, because we have a constant habit of thinking and seeing them as such. 35 Thus the great Brahman himself, in the form of Brahma the Creator, spreads and moves throughout the world. Afterwards this Brahma receives as many different names as the different phases and forms he displays in nature, such as the earth, air and the like. 36 All creations move about like fluctuations of winds in the spacious firmament of the Divine Mind which conceives of itself various forms of things in its own imagination. 37 Whatever it imagines in any form or shape, the same receives the very form as a decree of fate. Since these forms are the very images or ideas of the Divine Mind, they are considered to form the body of God. 38 Whatever likeness the Divine Intellect first designed, it bears that same form and figure to this day. 39 But as the Divine Mind is all powerful and omniscient, it is able to alter them and make others anew by its great efforts. 40 Whenever anything is supposed to have a cause, it is also thought to be subject to the will of that cause. Wherever there is no hypothesis of a cause, there is no capacity or possibility of its alteration. 41 Like vibration in air, the world first existed as an idea in the Divine Mind. As it was insubstantial before, so it continues ever still. 42 They who amass the merits or demerits of their pious or impious deeds reap the good or bad rewards or results accordingly in this life. There are others who are crushed under a thousand disasters, falling upon them like showers of hailstones or the thunderbolts of heaven.

Chapter 150 The Sage in the Dream Is the Sage Who Forgot Himself in the Dream: He Imagined Everything
The sage then said: It was through this kind of reasoning that my sagely guest made me acquainted with whatever was worth knowing. 2 Then by pleading, I forced my guest to remain longer with me. He consented to stay at my house, which resembled the home of a dead, ignorant person. 3 The sage who spoke those instructive words to me, bright and cooling as moonlight, behold him to be the same venerable person who is now sitting beside you. 4 Without me having to ask, the sage gave me the following speech to remove my ignorance. It was as if Agni, the god of sacrifice, had risen out of the fire pleased with my sacrifice. Vasishta speaking: 5 Hearing these words of the sage, the hunter was confounded with wonder. He could not understand how the sage who explained the theory of dreaming was the same sage sitting before him. 6 The hunter said, O, it is a great wonder, inconceivable in my mind, that the sage who expounded the nature of dreams is now manifest before me. 7 I wonder at this, O sage, that the sagely guest you saw in your dream and who explained the cause of dreams to you, should now be seen in this waking state. 8 Say, how could this imaginary sage seen in your airy dream appear in a solid body and sit calmly here, like the fancied ghost of children? 9 Please explain your wonderful story, in due order. Who is he and from where does he comes in this questionable form? 10 The sage replied: Hear me patiently, O fortunate man. Let me relate this wonderful story. I will tell it briefly, but you must not be hasty about it. 11 This sage who now sits by you, who I had then met, told me that he was a learned man and had come to tell me his tale too long to relate. 12 As he said these words, he remembered his former nature, which was as bright and fair as the clear sky at the end of spring season. 13 O, I also remember that afterwards I became a sage with an expanded mind. My heart was swollen with joy and I remained amazed at my wonderful change. 14 In that state of my life, I was happy from my desire for the enjoyments of the world. But I had been deceived like a weary passenger pursuing a mirage with eager expectation of water. 15 Alas, that the phantoms of the phenomenal world should so attract even the wise, just as the tempting fiends of hell deceive mankind only to mislead them. 16 Alas, even I wonder at how I was misled by my own ignorance. I was misled by my false knowledge of the world to this state of life which is utterly devoid of every good. 17 Whatever I am, I find I am full of only errors. There is no truth whatever in me, yet it is the error of errors and the greatest blunder that we should be so deceived and betrayed by unrealities. 18 I am neither this nor that nor any other entity at all. Yet it is a wonder that all these false appearances should appear as realities. 19 Then what must I do now to break my bondage to these falsities? I see the germ of error lying inside me. This I must tear off and cast away from me. 20 If there is a primeval ignorance prevalent all over the world, she, being a mere negation herself, can do us no harm. Now I must try to get rid of my error of considering the unreal as real. 21 That this sage is my teacher and I am his student is all a mistake because I am in and am the very same Brahman and the person sitting next to me is like the man on the moon or in a cloud. 22 Then I thought of speaking to that great sage of enlightened understanding. So thinking, I addressed him saying, 23 O great sage! I will now go out from the body of this person into my own body so that I may see what I may be doing there.
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Hearing this, that great sage said smilingly to me, Ah! Where are those bodies of you two that are blown far away in their ashes? 25 You may go there yourself, if you please, and see the matter yourself. By seeing their present state, you will know everything relating to them. 26 Being thus advised by him, I thought of entering my former body. To reach the place where it was located, I united my soul (jiva) with his vital air (prana) flow. 27 I told him, Do remain here, O sage, until I come back here after seeing my former body. So saying I became a breath of air and fled from my home. 28 Mounting on the wind, I wandered through the air, gently blown a hundred ways like the scent of a flower. For a long time I was carried rapidly all about by fragrant breezes. 29 Wandering long in this manner, I tried to enter that body through its lungs. But finding neither that or any other passage, I kept floating in the air. 30 Then with deep felt sorrow, I returned to my place and again became tied to that world by my returning affections for it. 31 Returned to my house in that place, I saw that venerable sage sitting before me, and earnestly asked him in the following manner. 32 Tell me sage, I said, for you know all the past and future. Your all seeing sight allows you to know what all this is. 33 How was it that I could not find the person whose body I had entered or my own body? 34 I wandered throughout the vast expanse of the sphere of this earth, and searched among all fixed and living bodies there, but I could not find that opening of the throat from which I had come out. 35 Being thus addressed by me, that high minded sage then said: It is not possible for you to find with your bright and brilliant eyes unaided by my advice. 36 If you should search after it with the light of your yoga meditation, then it is possible for you to find it out as fully as one sees a lotus placed in his palm. 37 Now therefore, if you wish to listen to my words, then pay attention to my advice and I will tell you all about it. 38 Know that just like sunlight expands lotus blossoms in a lake, Brahmas enlightening beams develop the lotus of understanding. You can know nothing by yourself. 39 You once sat in meditation and dreamt your abstract reverie of entering into the heart of another person. You were confirmed in your consciousness of that belief. 40 You believed you saw the three worlds and the great sphere of heaven and earth contained in the bosom of the heart of that person you thought you had entered. 41 In this manner, as you were absorbed in your reverie thinking you resided in the body of another person, you happened to fall asleep and your hermitage in the forest suddenly caught fire and was burnt down. 42 The burning hut sent forth clouds of smoke to the sky. Blazing cinders flew to the sun and moon. 43 Flying ash covered the sky like a grey cloud or an ash-colored blanket, covering the blue vault of heaven with a canopy. 44 Wild animals fleeing from their caves and caverns let out horrible yells and growls. Bursting sparks filled the horizon. 45 Tall palm and other trees caught fire and appeared like trees of fire. Flying and falling fire cracked like clattering clouds. 46 The flames leaped high in the air and appeared like lightening fixed in the sky. The sky assumed a face like that of molten gold. 47 Fiery sparks flying far into the starry sky doubled the number of stars in heaven. Flashing fires in the open space of the sky delighted the eyes of ladies. 48 Blowing and booming fires, roaring in the hollow sky, startled sleeping foresters in the woods. They rushed out from their caves and caverns and wandered about in the forest. 49 Wild beasts and birds, half burnt in their caves and nests, fell and lay dead on the ground. Lakes and river waters boiled with heat and foresters were suffocated by fumes. 50 Young chauri bulls were burnt in the flames. The stink of burning fat and flesh of wild beasts filled the air with nasty stench. 51 This all devouring wildfire, raging like the fire at the end of the world, wholly consumed your hermitage, like a serpent devours its prey. 52 The hunter asked, Tell me sage, what was the real cause of this fire? Why were the

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brahmin lads who dwelt in that ashram also burnt? 53 The sage replied: The vibration or effort of the will or designing mind is the true cause or incentive for the production or demolition of a desired object. Its inactivity is the cause for the absence of the three worlds. 54 As a sudden fear or passion causes palpitations of the heart, so an effort or desire of the mind is the mobile force that causes the three worlds. 55 The vibration of the Divine Mind causes the imaginary city of the world together with its increase of population and its rains and draughts. 56 The will in the Divine Mind is the source of the creative mind of Brahma, which in turn gives rise to the minds of the first patriarchs who transmit it to others in endless progression. All of this proceeds from the first quiet and calm intellect through the medium of vacuum. 57 The learned well know that the brightness of the pure and empty Consciousness shines in the vacuum of their own intellects. But the ignorant think that it is what appears to them, which is not the reality.

Chapter 151 The Dream Sages View of Inexistence

The other sage, the one in the dream, continued: Afterwards the whole village, together with all its dwellings and trees, were burnt down to ashes like dry straw. 2 All things being burnt away, the two bodies of the two of you who had been sleeping there were also scorched and burnt, like fire heats and splits a large rock. 3 Then the fire set upon satisfying itself by devouring the entire forest, just like the sea sat below its basin after its waters were sucked up by sage Agastya. 4 After the fire was quenched and the ashes of the burnt cinders had become cold, they were blown away by gusts of wind, just as the winds carry away heaps of flowers. 5 Then nothing was known about where the hermits hut and the two bodies had been carried away, or where was that imaginary city and its great population that had been seen as vividly as if waking. 6 In this manner, the two bodies disappeared. Their existence remains in the conscious soul as a memory of externals remains in the mind when the unconscious body is in the state of dreaming. 7 Therefore, where is that passage of the lungs and where is that jiva soul, the self of Virat, anymore? They are burnt away together with the vigor and vitality of the dead body. 8 On account of this, O sage, you could not find those two bodies and wandered about in this endless world of dreams, as if you were awake. 9 Therefore know that this mortal state is like a mere dream that appears as if awake. All of us are only daydreams. We see each other like we see imaginary beings in our dreams. 10 You are an imaginary man to me, and so also am I to you in this intellectual sphere in which the soul is situated within itself. 11 Before you had been an imaginary being in your life, until you thought you were a waking man in your domestic life. 12 Thus I have described the entire matter to you as it has occurred to you, and which you well know by your own conception, perception and meditation of them. 13 Know at last that it is the firm conviction of our consciousness which shines forever in the emptiness of our minds like the glitter of gold. The intellectual soul catches the color of our deeds, be they fair or foul or a mixture of both, in its state of a regenerated spirit.
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Chapter 152 The Dream Sage Proposes Living with the Hunters Sage
The sage, the one in with the hunter, resumed: Saying so the sage held his silence and lay himself in his bed at night. I was as bewildered in my mind as if I had been blown away by the winds. 2 After a long time, I broke my silence and spoke to that sage, Sage, in my opinion, such dreams appear to have some truth and reality in them. 3 The other muni sage replied: If you can believe in the truth of your waking dreams, then you may also rely upon the reality of your sleeping dreams. But should your daydreams prove to be false, what faith can you place on your night dreams? 4 The entire creation from its very beginning is no more than a dream. It appears to be comprised of the earth and other elements, yet it is devoid of everything. 5 Know that the waking dream of this creation is more subtle than our recent dreams by night. O lotus eyed teacher of the hunter, you will shortly hear all this from me. 6 You think that the object you now see in your waking state in the daytime appears to you in the form of dream in your sleep. So the dream of the present creation is derived from a previous creation which existed from before as an original model in the emptiness of the Divine Mind. 7 Again, seeing the falsity of your waking dream of this creation, how do you say that you entertain doubts regarding the untruth of sleeping dreams, knowing full well that the house in your dream is not yours? How do you want to show fondness upon it anymore? 8 In this manner, O sage, when you perceive the falsity of your waking dream of this world, how can you be doubtful of its unreality anymore? The hunters sage speaking: 9 As the sage was arguing in this manner, I interrupted him with another question. I asked him to tell me how he came to be the hunters teacher. 10 The other sage replied: Hear me relate this incident to you also. I will be brief, but know O learned sage, that I can easily extend it to any length. 11 I have been living here as a holy hermit for a long time. I have been solely employed in the performance of my religious austerities. After hearing my speech, I think you too would like to remain in this place. 12 Seeing me situated here, I hope you will not leave me here alone as I truly desire to live in your company. 13 But then, I will tell you sage that in the course of some years hence, a dreadful famine will come to pass in this place and all its people will be swept away. 14 Then there will be warfare between the raging border chiefs and this village will be destroyed and all its houses will be emptied of their occupants. 15 Then let us remain in this place, free from all troubles, in perfect security and peace, free from all worldly desires by our knowledge of the knowable. 16 Here let us reside under the shelter of some shady trees and perform the routine of our religious functions, just as the sun and moon perform their revolutions in the solitary sky. 17 Then many kinds of trees and plants will grow in this desert land and deserted place and cover the surface of this lonely place. 18 The land will be adorned with fruit trees with many singing birds sitting upon them. The waters will be filled with lotus beds, with the humming bees and chakora birds chirping amidst them. We shall find happy groves for our rest like the Nandana paradise garden of heaven.
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Chapter 153 Prediction of the Arrival of the Hunter; the Sages Self-Inquiry Results in the Conclusion that the One Soul Is the Cause of All
The other, dream sage said to the hunters sage: When both of us are living together in that forest, remaining in our practice of austerities, a certain hunter will appear, weary with fatigue from chasing a deer. 2 Then you will rescue and enlighten him through your meritorious lectures. Then, from his aversion to the world, he will commence and continue to practice austerities. 3 Continuing in his austere meditation, he will desire to gain spiritual knowledge and will ask questions about the phenomena of dreaming. 4 Then you will instruct him fully in divine knowledge. He will become proficient in it through your lectures on the nature of dreams. 5 In this manner you will become his religious instructor. It is for this reason that I have spoken to you with the title of the hunters guru. 6 Now I have told you about our errors of this world, what I and you are now, and what we shall become afterwards. The hunters sage speaking: 7 Hearing what he said and learning all these things from him, I became filled with wonder. He was more amazed as I discussed these matters with him. 8 Thus we passed the night in conversation. After we got up in the morning, I honored the sage with due respect and he was pleased with me. 9 Afterwards we continued to live together in the same simple hut in the same village with our steady minds and our friendship daily increasing. 10 In this manner time glided peacefully upon us with the revolutions of his days and nights, and the return of months, seasons and years. I have been sitting here unmoved under all the changes of time and fortune. 11 I do not long for a long life, nor do I desire to die before the destined day. I live as well as I may, without any care or anxiety about this or that. 12 Then I looked upon the visible sphere and began to thinking what and how and from where it was, and what can be its cause. 13 What are these multitudes of things, and what is their cause? Is it all only the phenomenon of a dream appearing in the emptiness of Consciousness? 14 The earth and heaven, air and the sky, hills and rivers, and all the sides of space are only pictures in the Divine Mind displayed in empty air. 15 The moonlight of Consciousness spreads its beams all around the ample space of emptiness. It is this which shines as the world, which is an indelible copy in the air of Supreme Consciousness. 16 None of this earth or sky, these hills and valleys, is really in existence. Neither am I anything at all. It is only the reflection of the Supreme Mind in empty air. 17 What could be the cause of an assemblage of solid bodies when in the beginning there is no material cause for material bodies? 18 The conception of matter and material bodies is only a fallacy. What can be the cause of this error other than delusion of the sight and mind? 19 The person in whose heart I remained in the manner of his consciousness was burnt down to ashes together with me. 20 Therefore this vacuum which is without beginning or end is full with the reflection of Divine Consciousness. There is no efficient or instrumental or material cause of creation, except it being a shadow of the substance of the Divine Mind. 21 All these pots and pictures, these prints and paints before us, are only the prints of the Divine Mind. You can never get anything without its mold. 22 But Consciousness too has no brightness of it own, except its pure clarity. For how can a mere emptiness have any light other than its transparency? 23 Consciousness is the pure Intelligence of the extended entity of Brahman. It shows the panorama of the universe in itself. What else can the visible be and where else can they be seen? 24 There is only one omnipresent soul, uncaused and not causing, without beginning,
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middle or end. 25 He is the essence of the three worlds and their contents. He is something as the universal intelligence, and shows all and everything in itself.

Chapter 154 The Sage Describes His Own Life and Admonishes the Hunter to Practice Becoming Established in Knowledge
The hunters sage continued: Having thus considered the vanity of the visible, I remained free from my anxious cares about the world. I became passionless and fearless, without any ego and abiding in the state of nirvana. 2 I became without support and not supporting anything. I remained without depending upon anybody. I was quite calm with my self-composure and my soul was elevated and rested in heaven. 3 I did as my duty called, doing nothing of my own accord. I remained as void and blank as an emptiness devoid of all action and motion. 4 Earth and heaven, the sky and air, mountains and rivers, and all that lies on all sides and the sides themselves are nothing but shadows in the air. All living bodies are no more than the embodied Consciousness or intellectual bodies. 5 I am quiet and composed and manage myself as well as I can. I am quite happy in myself. I have no injunction or prohibition to obey, nor do I have to act an inner or outer part. 6 Thus I resided here in my even temper with the same course of my mind and actions. It is by mere chance that you have come to meet me here. 7 Thus I have fully explained the nature of dream and my personal self to you, together with that of the phenomenal world and yourself. 8 Hence you have well understood what is this visible world that lies before you, and also what these other beings and people are, and after all, what is Brahman. 9 O hunter, now that you know that these things are all false, you must have peace of mind with the conviction that all this is the representation of the Intellect in empty air. It is this that is dimly seen, nothing else. 10 The hunter replied, If it be so, that I, you and even the gods are nothing, as you say, then all these are only the phantoms of a dream, and all men are no men, and all existence is nonexistence. 11 The sage replied: It is truly so. All and everyone of us is to each other like the apparition of a dream, like phantom dream beings in the panoramic cosmos of the world. 12 These dream beings appear in forms according to ones conception of them. The only one appears as many, like the rays of light. All these radiations cannot be wholly true or untrue, or even a mixture of both. 13 The imaginary city of the world that appears in our waking state is only a waking dream or an apparition of our minds. It appears like the appearance of a distant city that we never saw before. 14 I have fully explained all this to you already and you have been enlightened in the subject to no end. Now you have grown wise and know well all and everything. Do therefore as you may like best for you. 15 Though thus awakened and enlightened by me, your corrupt mind is not yet turned to reason or found its rest either in transcendental wisdom or in the transcendent state of the most high. 16 Without habit or practice you cannot concentrate your wandering mind in your heart, nor can you attain the height of wisdom without the practice of constant reflection. 17 It is impossible to attain the summit of perfection without your habitual observance of wisdom, just as it is impossible for a block of wood to contain any water unless it is scooped out to form a wooden vessel. 18 Habitual reliance upon wisdom and constant attendance to the teachings of the scriptures and spiritual guides, tend to the removal of the minds uncertainty between unity and duality and set the mind to its ultimate bliss of nirvana quietism. 19 Indifference to ones worth and state, passivity to all worldly affections, refraining from the evils of bad associations, and abstaining from all earthly desires and cravings of the heart, 20 joined with ones deliverance from the chains of dualities and freedom from all pleasurable and painful associations, are the surest means that lead
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the learned to the state of unalterable bliss of nirvana.

Chapter 155 Agni Describes the Hunters Astonishment; the Sage Predicts the Hunters Tapas, Boon to Become Huge, and His Huge Body Falling on the Earth
The fire god Agni said: Upon hearing all this, the hunter was lost in wonder and remained as dumbfounded as a figure in a painting of a forest. 2 He could not pause to fix his mind on the Supreme Being and appeared to be out of his senses and mind, as if he was hurled into a sea. 3 He seemed to be riding on the wheel of his reverie, pushing him onward with the speed of a bicycle, or appeared to be caught by an alligator carrying him speedily up and down in the currents of his meditation. 4 He was drowned in doubt wondering whether this was the state of nirvana or delusion. He could not find rest, but was tossed headlong like a headstrong youth in his foolhardiness. 5 He thought the visible was the work of his ignorance, but then he had a second thought, that this delusion of the world was the production of Providence. 6 Let me see, he thought, the extent of the visible from the beginning. This I will do from a distance, by means of the spiritual body which I have gained by means of intense meditation. 7 I will remove myself to a region that is beyond the limit of the existent and nonexistent worlds. I will rest quiet in a place above ethereal space. 8 Having thus determined, he became as dull as a fool. He set his mind to the practice of yoga meditation, as it had been taught to him by the sage who had said that no act could be fruitful without constant practice. 9 He left his habit of hunting and applied himself to austerities in company with sages and seers. 10 He remained long at the same spot in the society of sagely seers. He continued in the practice of his sacred austerities for very many years and seasons. 11 Remaining long in the discharge of his austere duties, the entire time suffering the severities of his difficult penance, he once asked his sagely guide when he would obtain peace and release from these struggles. The muni responded to him this way. 12 The muni said: The little knowledge that I have given you is a spark of fire able to consume a forest of withered wood, though it has not yet burnt down the impression of this rotten world from your mind. 13 Without the habit of practice you cannot have transcendental bliss in knowledge. With practice, it is possible to attain it in the course of a long time. 14 Such truly will be your case if you will rely upon my assurance of this and wear my words as a jewel about your ears, knowing them to be forecasting events in this world. 15 You praise the unknown spirit of God in your ignorance of his nature. Your mind is hanging in uncertainty between your knowledge and ignorance of divine nature. 16 You are led of your own accord to inquire into the nature and extent of the cosmos, which is only a phantom of delusion. 17 For ages you will be employed this way in your difficult understanding of making this research, until Brahma the creative power will appear before you. He will be pleased with your investigation into his works. 18 Then you will ask a favor of your blessing god, that he release you from your heavy doubt of the reality or delusiveness of the world. You will ask, saying, 19 Lord! I see the cosmic panorama of the phenomenal world spread out everywhere like a delusion before our sight, but I want to see a place which exhibits the true mirror of the Divine Mind and which is free from the blemish of all that is visible. 20 The mirror of the empty mind, though as minute as an atom, yet represents the reflection of this vast universe in some part or other within it. 21 Therefore I want to know how far this boundless world extends for only our misfortune, and how far the sphere of ethereal space stretches beyond it. 22 It is for this that
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I ask your good grace, to make me acquainted with the infinite space of the universe. Accept my prayer, O you lord of the gods, and readily grant this my request. 23 Strengthen and immortalize my body and make it mount upon the regions of sky with the speed of the garuda bird of heaven. 24 Make my body increase to the length of a league each moment until it encircles the world like its surrounding sky. 25 Let this preeminent favor be granted to me, O great and glorious god, that I may reach beyond the bounds of the sky which surrounds the sphere of the visible world. 26 Being thus supplicated by you, O righteous man, the lord will say to you, Be it as you desire, then he will disappear like a vision from your sight, vanishing into the air with his attendant gods along with him. 27 After the departure of Brahma with his accompanying deities to their divine abodes in heaven, your thin and lean body, emaciated by your austerities, will assume a brightness like that of the brilliant moon. 28 Then bowing down to me and getting my leave, your radiant body will mount to the sky instantly in order to see the object of your desire which is settled in your mind. 29 It will rise high into the air like a second moon, and higher still than the bright sun itself. It will blaze above as brightly as a burning fire defying the brightness of the luminaries. 30 Then it will fly upwards in the empty sky with the force of the strong winged garuda, running forward with the speed of a running current to reach the ends of the world. 31 Having gone beyond the limit of the world, your body will increase in its bulk and extent and become as swollen as the ocean at the time of dissolution when it covered the face of the entire universe. 32 There you will find your body growing bigger and bigger still, like a big cloud filling the empty space of air which is devoid of all created things. 33 This is the great emptiness of the Divine Spirit, filled with the chaotic confusion of elements flying about like whirlwinds. It is the unbounded ocean of the Infinite Mind swelling with the waves of its perpetual thoughts. 34 Within this deep and dark emptiness you will find numberless worlds and created bodies hurling headlong in endless succession, just as you perceive a continuous series of cities and other objects appearing in your dreams. 35 As the torn leaves of trees are seen tossed about in the air by a raging storm, so you will see multitudes of worlds hurled to and fro in the immensity of the Divine Mind. 36 As the passing world presents a faint and insubstantial appearance to one looking down at it from the top of a high citadel, so all these worlds appear as mere shadows when viewed from above in their spiritual light. 37 As the people of this world see black spots on the moon that are never observed by the moons inhabitants, so these worlds are supposed to exist in the Divine Spirit. But in reality they are nothing other than the fleeting ideas of the Infinite Mind. 38 Thus you will continue to worlds after worlds, moving in the midst of successive spheres and skies, passing a long time viewing creation stretching to no end. 39 After seeing multitudes of worlds crowding the heavens like the leaves of trees, you will be tired to see no end of them in the endless abyss of Infinity. 40 Then you will be annoyed at this result of your meditation and the expansion of your body that allowed you to observe the immensity of space. 41 Of what good is this big body which I bear like a heavy burden upon me? It is so big that by comparison, millions of mountain ranges a great as Mount Meru shrink away like bits of straw. 42 My boundless body fills the whole space of the sky but answers no purpose whatever that I can possibly think of. 43 My heavy body measures the whole space of the visible world, yet remains in the darkness of ignorance without its spiritual knowledge, which is the true light of the soul. 44 Therefore I must cast off this huge body, which is of no use to me to acquire knowledge or to keep company with wise and holy men. 45 Of what good is this big and bulky body to scan the unknowable infinity of the endless and unsupported Brahman, whose essence contains and supports the whole of this universe?

Thinking so in yourself, you will throw away your bloated body by exhaling your breath. Then you escape your frame like a bird casts off the skin of a fruit after sucking its juice. 47 After casting off the mortal lump and turmoil of your body, your soul will rest in empty air accompanied with its respiratory breath of life, which is more slender than the subtle ether. 48 Then your big body will fall down on earth, just like when the great Mount Meru fell on the ground when angry Indra cut off its wings. Your body will crush all earthly beings and smash mountains to dust underneath. 49 Then the dry and starved goddess Kali, with her hungry host of Matris and spirits, will devour your prostrate body and restore the earth to its purity by clearing it of its annoyance. 50 Now you have heard me fully describe your future fate. Therefore go to the tali forest that is some distance away and remain there practicing your austerities as well as you may like. 51 The hunter replied, O sage, how great are the sorrows that are awaiting me, and which I am destined to undergo in my vain pursuit after knowledge. 52 Pray tell me sage. Do you have anything to say how I may avert the great disaster that you have predicted? Tell me also, is there any means to avoid the destined evil? 53 The sage replied: There is no person and no power whatever that is ever able to prevent the eventualities of fate. All attempts to avert them are thrown on ones back. 54 There is no human power to change the relative positions of the limbs of ones body, so there is no possibility to alter the decree of fate. 55 The knowledge of the science of astrology serves only to acquaint us with the events of our fate. There is nothing in it that can help us to counteract the arrows of adverse fortune. 56 Therefore those men are blessed who, with their knowledge of sovereign predestination, are still employed in their present duties, and who after the death and burning of their bodies, rest in the eternal peace of Brahman in their consciousness.

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156 The Hunter Becomes King Sindhu and Defeats King Viduratha; His Minister Explains the Events of Viduratha, Lila, and Saraswati
The hunter asked, Sage, tell me what will become of my soul that remained in the air and my body that fell on the earth? 2 The hunters sage replied: Listen carefully as I tell you what will become of your lost body on earth and your living soul sustained in the air. 3 The body being withdrawn from your whole self, your soul will assume an aerial form and will remain in empty air united with its vital breath. 4 In that airy particle of your soul, you will find the surface of the earth situated in the recess of your mind. You will see it as clearly as see the world in your dream. 5 Then, from the inner desire of your heart and in the fullness of your mind you will see that you have become the sovereign lord of this wide extended world. 6 The will of this idea rises of itself in your mind. You have become a king named Sindhu who is highly honored by men. 7 When you are eight years of age, your father will depart from this mortal world and leave you this extensive earth, reaching to its utmost boundaries of the four seas. 8 On the borders of your kingdom you will find a certain lord named Viduratha who will rise as your enemy. You will find it difficult to conquer him. 9 Then you will reflect upon your past and peaceful reign of a full hundred years. You will think of the pleasures you have so long enjoyed in the company of your consort and attendants. 10 What a misfortune that this lord of the bordering land has now risen against me in my old age, putting me to the trouble of waging a formidable warfare against him. 11 As you are thinking in this way, there will occur the great war between you and that lord of the land. All the four branches of your army will be greatly defeated and reduced. 12 In that great war, you will succeed and kill that Viduratha by striking him with your sword while standing on your chariot. 13 Then you will become the sole lord of this earth to the limits of its four oceans. You will become dreaded and honored by all, like the regents of all the sides of heaven. 14 Having thus become the sovereign monarch of the earth, reigning over it under the name of mighty Sindhu, you will pass your time conversing with the learned scholars and ministers of your court. 15 The minister will say, O lord, it is a mighty wonderful deed that you have achieved by killing the invincible Viduratha in single combat. 16 Then you will say, Tell me, O good man, how did this Viduratha grow powerful to become so very rich and possess forces as numerous as the waves of ocean? What caused him to rise against me? 17 The minister will reply, This lord has Lila as his lady. She had won the favor of the fair goddess Saraswati, the support of the world, by her extreme devotion to her. 18 The kind goddess took this lady as her foster-daughter and enabled her to achieve all her actions, even to obtain her liberation with ease. 19 It is by favor of this goddess that this lady Lila was able to annihilate you with a single nod or word. Therefore it was no difficult task for her to destroy you all at once. 20 Sindhu then will answer him saying, If what you say is true, it is wonderful indeed. Then how could the invincible Viduratha be slain by me in warfare? 21 If he was so highly favored by the goddess, how could he not get the better of me in combat? 22 The minister will reply, Because he always prayed to the goddess with earnestness of his heart to give him liberation from the cares and troubles of this world. 23 Now then, O lord, this goddess, who knows the hearts of all men and confers to all the objects of their desire, gave you the victory you sought and by your hands conferred on Viduratha the liberation he sought.
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Then Sindhu will respond, saying, If that is so, then I must ask. Why didnt the goddess confer the blessing of liberation on me also? I have been so earnestly devoted to her at all times. 25 The minister will then reply, This goddess resides as intelligence in the minds of all men and as conscience in the hearts of all individual beings. She is known to all by the title of Saraswati. 26 Whatever object one constantly desires and earnestly asks of her, she is ever ready to confer as it is felt in the heart of everyone. 27 You, O lord, never prayed for your liberation at the shrine of this goddess. You craved for your victory over your enemies, which she accordingly has decided to confer upon you. 28 Sindhu will then respond and say, Why is it that this King Viduratha did not pray to the goddess of pure wisdom to obtain a kingdom like me, and how was it that I neglected to pray to her for my final liberation as he did? 29 And why is it that the goddess knowing the desire of my heart for liberation, left me only to desire it without attempting to seek after it? 30 To this the minister will reply saying, The tendency of doing evil is inherent in your nature, so you neglected to bow down to the goddess and pray to her for your liberation. 31 It is well known since the creation of the world that intrinsic disposition forms the nature of man. This truth being evident to all from their boyhood to age, there is nobody to ignore or repudiate it at anytime. 32 The purity or impurity of the inner heart, to which one is habituated by his long practice and habit, continues to prevail over all his qualities and actions to the very end. There is no power to deny it in any manner.

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Chapter 157 The Minister Explains Creation and King Sindhus Tamasic Nature; the King Retires and Attains Nirvana
The hunters sage speaking: 1 Then King Sindhu will say, Tell me sage. What kind of a bad person was I? How ignorant was I that I still retain the evil propensities of my past life and am doomed to be reborn in this earth. 2 The minister will say in his reply, Hear me attentively for a while, O king. I will tell you this secret which you require me to relate. It will surely remove your ignorance. 3 There is a self existent and being without decay from all eternity, without its beginning or end. It is called the great Brahman and it is known here under the names of I and you and this and that. 4 I am that self same Brahman by the consciousness of my self reflection. This becomes the living principle with the power of reasoning. This power does not forsake its personality. 5 Know that this Consciousness is a spiritual substance with a form rarer and more transparent than that of the subtle ether. This is the only being in existence and there is nothing in it which is of a material substance. 6 This formless takes the form of the mind by being combined with the act of willing. It sees this and the next world in its state of life and death, and of waking and sleep. 7 The mind, though formless, stretches itself into the form of the world of phenomena, just as the formless air expands itself in the form of vibration in all material bodies. 8 The world is identical with the mind, just as the seeming and visible sky is the same as empty emptiness. So the material is the same as the intellectual and there is no difference whatever between the material and mental worlds. 9 This network of worlds resides in the mind, in their immanent impressions in it. In reality, the outer world is only the formless mind. The cosmos consists of ideas in the formless mind. Its appearance of form has no real substance in it. 10 At first there arose the pure personality of the impersonal and Universal Spirit of God in the person of the creative power known under the name of Brahma. This personal god assumed to himself the name of Ego from his will of creation. The undivided spirit was divided into many impure personalities from its desire of becoming many. 11 Then Sindhu will say, Tell me sage, what you mean by impure bodies and personalities? How and from where come these names of the Supreme Being, the Indefinite One? 12 The teacher-minister will reply saying, As all embodied beings possess bodies with organs and limbs, so the bodiless spirit is comprised of an infinite variety of minor spiritual forms under it. These are known as good or bad spirits. 13 The very same one spirit then calls all these different parts of itself by various names. The incorporeal spirit assumes to itself an endless variety of material and land and water natures and names. 14 Thus the Universal Spirit continues to exhibit in itself all the various forms of this imaginary world at its own will. It gives a distinct name and nature to each and everyone of these representations of itself. 15 When the Divine Spirit decided to conceal itself into the personality of Brahma, and in those of me or you and other individualities, it became altered from its state of original holiness and purity to those of impurity and foulness, known as passion and inertia. 16 The unalterable pure nature of the holy spirit of God, being thus transformed to un-holiness, passed into different states of impurity in the living souls of beings. 17 The spirit of God is breathed as the living soul in an animal body. The soul that comes to perceive its imprisonment in flesh and its doom to suffering is said to be of the pure sattva nature. 18 Those who, while still living in the world, possess politeness and good qualities, are said to be of a sattva good nature. 19 Those who are born repeatedly, destined to the enjoyments of life

until their final liberation at the end, are designated as having a rajas nature. 20 Those souls who are born in this lower world who are inclined to practice only their manly virtues are famed as having merely rajas nature. They are few in number. 21 Those souls who have been undergoing repeated reincarnations since the beginning of creation, and who are continually wandering in bodies of inferior beings, are said by the wise to belong to the species having the most impure tamas nature. Even so, it is possible for them to attain their salvation in the end. 22 Those who have been wandering in many births in the forms of vile animals, until they attain their salvation at the end, are designated as merely vile tamas nature by the wise who are versed in the distinction of classes. 23 Philosophers have classed the emanated souls of beings into many grades and species among which, O my respected sage, your soul is reckoned among the vilest of the vile tamas nature. 24 I know you have passed through many births of which you know nothing. These have been as various as they were filled with the different scenes of life. 25 In vain you have passed all your lives doing nothing that is useful, most particularly your late sky life with that gigantic body of yours. 26 Being thus born with the vile class of your soul, it is difficult for you to obtain your liberation from the prison house of this world. 27 Sindhu will then say in his response, Tell me sage. How can I divest myself of this inborn vile nature of my soul so that, by your counsel, I may learn to live and purify my soul to correct the conduct of my life? 28 There is nothing in all these three worlds that is hard to acquire through earnest endeavor and intense application. 29 As a failure of the previous day is corrected by its correction today, so one can purify the pristine impure soul by pious acts of the present day. 30 Whoever yearns for anything and labors hard is sure to gain it in the end. The negligent are sure to meet with failure. 31 Whatever a man is intent upon doing and tries to effect at all times, and whatsoever one desires with earnestness and is constantly devoted to its pursuit, he is to succeed and have his object without fail. 32 The hunters sage related: The king being thus instructed by his minister, was determined to resign the burden of his state, and to renounce his realm and royalty even at that very moment. 33 He wished to retire to some far distant forest, and he asked his ministers to manage his kingdom. But they declined to take the charge, though the state was free from all its enemies. 34 He then remained in the company of wise men, enlightened by their discourses like sesame seeds became fragrant by being placed in a heap of flowers. 35 Then from his inquiries into the mysteries of his life and birth, and into the causes of his confinement in this world, he obtained the knowledge of his liberation. 36 Thus by means of his continued inquiries into truth and his continual association with the wise and good, the soul of Sindhu attained a sanctity so holy that compared to it, the prosperity of Brahma is like a bit of straw or the dried leaf of a withered tree tossed about by the winds of the sky.

Chapter 158 Agni Completes the Story of the Fall of the Hunters Huge Body
The hunters sage resumed and said: I have thus related these future events to you as if they were past accounts. Do now, O hunter, what you wish and think best for yourself. 2 Agni the god of fire said: Hearing these words of the sage, the hunter remained aghast in wonder for a while. Then rising with the sage, they went to bathe themselves in the nearest pool. 3 In this manner they continued together, conducting their religious austerities and discussions at the same place, remaining in terms of disinterested friendship with one another. 4 After some time the muni sage met with his final extinction in the state of nirvana. By casting off his mortal body, he obtained his last rest in the state of transcendent tranquility. 5 In course of time and the lapse of ages, it pleased the god Brahma to give the hunter a call in order to confer upon him the object of his desire. 6 The hunter, unable to resist the impulse of his longing, begged to obtain the very same favor blessing of his god which the sage had predicted to him. 7 Be it so, said the god, and he returned to his favorite abode. The hunter flew aloft into the open air in order to enjoy the fruits of his austere meditation. 8 He flew with incredible velocity to the extensive empty space which lies beyond the spheres of worlds. It was over the course of an incalculable duration that the ever expanding bulk of his body filled the regions of the upper sky, like a mountain range stretches across this lower world. 9 He flew with the force and swiftness of the great garuda, up and down and to all sides of heaven, until the huge bulk of his body occupied the whole area of open air over the course of an indefinite period of time. 10 Thus increasing in his size with the course of time, and infatuated in the maze of his delusion, he began to grow uneasy in himself. 11 From the great anxiety of his mind, he suppressed the respiration of his breath until he breathed out his last breath of life in the air. His body dropped down as a carcass in the earth below. 12 His mind, accompanied by his vital breath, fled through the air into the body of King Sindhu who became the ruler of the whole earth and the great antagonist of King Viduratha. 13 His great body, resembling a hundred mountain ranges, became a huge mass of a carcass that fell down with hideous clattering of thunder, like one earth falling upon another. 14 At a certain time, it shines like a ball of hair (kesandraka). At other times it appears like a covering of a huge range of buildings in sky. 15 I have already related to you, O learned sage, how this huge carcass fell from above and covered the surface of this earth. 16 The earth where this huge carcass fell resembled in every way this earth of ours, which appears to us as a city in our dream. 17 Then the dry and big bellied goddess Chandi devoured this carcass, filling her bowels with its flesh and stuffing her entrails with its red hot blood. 18 The earth is called medini or fleshy from the flesh of this corpse which spreads over its surface with its prodigious bulky frame. 19 It was this huge fleshy body which was reduced to the substance of the earth over time. It received the name of the earth from the dust of this body. 20 This fleshy earth gave rise to forests and habitable parts. The fossil bones rose high in the forms of mountains from underneath the ground, which grew everything useful to men.
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Chapter 159 Vipaschit (Bhasa) Wanders; Indra Says He Has Still to Become a Deer; Indra Cursed by Durvasa; Bhasa Explains How All Possibility Lies within Brahman
The god of fire added: Go now O wise Vipaschit, to your wished for abodes and with the steadiness of your mind, conduct yourself with proper behavior everywhere on earth. 2 Indra, the lord of the assembly of creatures, has been performing his hundred sacrifices in his celestial abode. There I am invited to attend by his invocation. 3 Bhasa (Vipaschit) said: Saying so, Lord Agni disappeared from that place. He passed through the transparent ether like the electric fire of lightning. 4 Then I was led by my predestination to roam about in the air and direct my mind to the investigation of my allotted acts and the termination of my ignorance. 5 I again saw an innumerable host of heavenly bodies wandering about space, holding their positions in different worlds containing inhabitants of different natures and customs. 6 Some of these were of the same form and resembled floating umbrellas in the sky. Their shining appearance and slow motion attracted the hearts of men. 7 Some of them were of earthy substance, but shining and moving onward like mountains in motion. 8 Some were of woody appearance and others of a stony substance. But they were all airy bodies, all moving onward in their uninterrupted course. 9 I also saw some figures like carved stone statues standing in the open space of my mind, talking together all their entire days. 10 In this manner, for a long while I saw many such figures, like images in my dream. I was quite bewildered in my utter ignorance of them. 11 Then I intended to perform austere meditation to obtain my liberation. The god Indra appeared to me and said, No, Vipaschit. You are doomed to become a deer again. You are not entitled to liberation now. 12 You are propelled by your previous inclination to prefer the pleasures of heaven. Therefore I must direct you to dwell in my paradise and wander there amidst my gardens of mandara trees. 13 Being thus bid by him, I replied and said to him, I am weary, O lord, with the troubles of the world, and want to get my release from them. Therefore ordain my immediate emancipation from them. 14 The god listened to my prayer and said, Emancipation attends on the pure soul, cleansed from all its desires. This has already been explained to you by the god of fire. Therefore ask some other boon, said he. I begged him to tell me about my next future state. 15 Indra replied and said, I find you fated to be changed into the state of a deer from the fond desire of your heart to wander about and feed freely in the fields. 16 By becoming a deer, you will have to enter the holy assembly of Dasharata where another deer like you has previously obtained his liberation by listening to the spiritual instructions I had delivered there. 17 Therefore be born with your pensive soul as a deer in some forest on earth. Then you will come to recollect your past life from listening to Vasishta describe it. 18 You will learn there that all this existence is only the delusion of a dream, the creation of imagination. You will hear the account of your future life depicted in its true color. 19 After being released from the body of the deer, you shall regain your human form and perceive rays of holy light shining in your inner spirit. 20 This light will dispel the long prevailing gloom of ignorance from your mind. Then you shall attain nirvana, like the calm and breathless wind. 21 After the god had said so, I had the conviction of being a deer in this forest. I
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entirely forgot my human nature under my firm conviction of having become a deer. 22 Ever since I have been living in these woods under my impression of being a deer. Ever since I have been feeding upon the grass and herbs growing on the mountain top. 23 Once I saw a body of soldiers coming on a hunting excursion. Being frightened at the sight, I started to flee. 24 They laid hold of me and took me to their place where they kept me for some days for their pleasure. At last they brought me to this place before Rama. 25 Thus I have related to you all the incidents of my life and the magical scenes of the world too full of marvelous events. 26 It is the production of our ignorance that pervades all things and branches out into innumerable forms in everything that presents itself to our view. There is nothing whatever to dispel this darkness, except the light of spiritual knowledge. 27 Valmiki relates: Then, as Bhasa (Vipaschit) remained silent after speaking in this manner, he was approached by the well minded Rama with the following words. 28 Rama said, Tell me sage. How can a person without any desire of his own see the object of anothers desire in himself? How could the deer which arose in your desire (sankalpa) be seen by others in Indras Paradise? 29 Bhasa (Vipaschit) replied: Let me tell you that the earth where the huge carcass fell was once before trodden upon by Indra with the pride of his having performed a hundred sacrifices. 30 There, strutting along with his haughty strides, he met the hermit Durvasa sitting still in his meditative mood. Believing him to be a dead body lying on his way, he knocked Durvasa down with his feet. 31 At this the angry hermit threatened the proud god, saying, O Indra! As you have dashed me with your feet by thinking I was a lifeless corpse, so will a huge carcass shortly fall upon this ground and slash it to pieces and reduce it to dust. 32 And as you have spurned me as a dead body, so are you cursed to be crushed on earth under the falling carcass. 33 He who before was the king of kings was transformed into a deer. He remained in that appearance according to his ideas. 34 In truth, neither the actual world is a reality, nor the imaginary one an unreality. In fact, they are the one and same thing, whether we conceive it as the one or other. 35 Listen now, O Rama, to another explanation which clearly settles the point in 36 question. He in whom all things reside and from whom everything proceeds, who is all in all and who is everywhere in all must be the one that you may call All and beside whom there is none at all. 37 It is equally possible for him to bring forth whatever he wills to produce as it is for him not to produce whatever he does not wish to bring to existence. 38 Whatever anybody earnestly desires eventually must come to pass to him in reality. This is as true as the example of light always being accompanied by its shade. 39 If it is impossible for the desire and its act, which are opposite in their nature, to meet together in fact, then it would be impossible for the God of all forms to be all things both in being and not being. Therefore, the objects of our desire and thought are equally present with us as the real ones. 40 There is a reality attached to every form of existence. There is nothing which of itself is either an entity or a nothing. 41 O the great magic of illusion which is over everywhere and pervades all nature in every form and at all times and binds all beings in inescapable delusion. 42 The nature of the great God comprises the community of spirits in his spirit. It combines in itself all laws whether permissive or prohibitive acting in concert and eternal harmony. 43 His infinite power has displayed the ignorance which spreads over all the three worlds from time with or without beginning. Only our delusion depicts all things in their various forms to our view. 44 How could the creation that was once destroyed by the great deluge come to resuscitate again unless it were a rehash of the memory of the past one? The elementary bodies of water, air, fire and earth could not possibly be produced from nothing. 45 Therefore the world is

nothing other than a manifestation of divine nature. This is the verdict of the scriptures and the conviction of mankind from the very beginning of creation. 46 Things which have no sufficient proof for their material existence can easily be proved to exist by being considered with proper understanding. 47 Things of a subtle nature, imperceptible by the senses, are known in their essence by the understanding of the learned. Hence the essence of Brahman is pure understanding, of which we are quite ignorant owing to our ignorance of the Intellect. 48 The world is obvious to us from its form, just as air is evident by its vibration. Hence nobody is born or dies here. 49 That I am living and the other is dead are conceptions of our minds. Hence death, being only the total disappearance of the visible world from our view, must be as pleasing to us as our own deep sleep. 50 If the life or rebirth of a man is his ability to perceive the visible, then there is nothing in the world which is commonly called the life or death of beings. 51 At a time, the intellect appears a duality, and at other an unity. Both are nothing but intellect. 52 It is the reasoning of Divine Intellect that infuses its intelligence into all minds. What is life without the intellect and the faculty of reasoning? 53 The intellect being free from pain, there is no cause of complaint in any intellectual being. The word world and all that it means to express are only manifestations of empty intellect. 54 It is wrong to say that the intellect is one thing and the body is another because the Unity is the Soul of all and pervades all diversity. As waves and whirlpools are seen in waters, so are all these bodies known to abide in the Supreme Being. 55 The universal permeation of divine essence, like that of the subtle air, is the Cause of causes and the sole Cause of all. Hence the world is also a subtle substance, being only a reflection of Divine Intellect. 56 It is wonderful how this subtle world appears to us to be a solid body. It is only our conception of it as such that makes it appear so. But conception is no substance at all. Therefore the world has no materiality in it. 57 The demon of error reigns over us in its aerial form, deluding us to take the shadowy world as substance. In fact, this creation of error is as nonexistent and void as the empty creation of the intellect. 58 Hence this nether world below and the ethereal worlds above are as void as the super-physical world of Divine Consciousness. All these, being only reflections of the Divine Mind, are exhibited in various ways. 59 The Intellect being a subtle entity, there is nothing like a solid substance anywhere. Phenomena are all insubstantial subtleties, though they appear to us as solidified realities. 60 The knowledge of true reality and unreality are so blended together that we must remain in mute silence, like a block of wood or stone, to pronounce anything affirmative or negative about either. 61 The visible whole is the infinite Brahman. This universe displays the majesty of the great God. All these bodies are various forms exhibiting the infinite attributes of God. 62 In this manner, the substance of Divine Consciousness displays in itself. It is the empty spirit of God that manifests this insubstantial world in its own emptiness. 63 The number of living beings since the beginning of creation is unlimited everywhere. Of these there are many that exist either in their corporeal or incorporeal forms. 64 There are spiritual masters and other spiritual beings living with their subtle natures and subtle forms in the Supreme Being. They live in groups in all elements, but never come to perceive each other even though they are of the same kind. 65 The liveliness of the visible world, being purely of aerial and empty form, is never seen in its true and intellectual light, except when it appears to us in aerial shapes in our dreams. 66 The world, being well known, remains as it does in our inner conception of it, like a hazy mist appearing to sight at the end of night. 67 When seen from a distance, the world is a dark and indistinct maze with nothing distinguishable in it. It becomes clearer from a closer view. By keeping far away you lose sight of it altogether.

As particles of water fly off and fall back into the sea, so do the atoms of consciousness in all living beings continually rise and subside in the vast ocean of the Divine Mind. 69 This grandeur of creation is like the crowding multitude of our dreams which lay slumbering in the hollow space of the Divine Mind. Therefore know these emanations of Divine Consciousness to be as calm and quiet as the undisturbed spirit of God. 70 I have seen infinite glories of creation and I have felt the various results of my deeds to no end. I have wandered for ages in all quarters of the globe. But I found no rest from the struggles and troubles of the delusive world, except in the knowledge of the vanities of the world. 71 Ignorance appears as true knowledge since it is carried inside himself by Brahman as knowledge.

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Chapter 160 Vasishta Explains that Ignorance is Limitless and Is Brahman; Description of Heaven and Hell; the Mind, an Aspect of the Body, Is Carried Forward in Rebirth
Valmiki related: As Bhasa (Vipaschit) was going on saying these things, the sun wished to put an end to his speech and proceeded with rapid strides to enlighten another world. 2 Loud trumpets gave the alarm of the departing day and filled the air on all sides with their swelling sounds. All quarters of heaven seemed to echo their joy of the fanfare of victory. 3 King Dasharata gave Vipaschit many gifts of money, maidservants and houses. He bestowed on him many rich and royal presents worthy of kings. Then he rose from his seat. 4 The king, Rama and Vasishta, having taken leave of the assembly, saluted one another in proper order, then returned to their respective homes. 5 Then, having bathed and refreshed themselves, they passed the night in ease and rest. The next morning they returned to the assembly and sat in their respective seats. 6 Sage Vasishta resumed the subject of the previous discourse. He spoke his sweet words with such pleasure in his face as if the beautiful moon was shedding her ambrosial beams from her bright and cooling face. Vasishta speaking: 7 Let me tell you, O king, that despite all his efforts, Vipaschit has not been able to ascertain the limits, extent or true nature of ignorance. It is not an error of the mind that makes the unreal appear as real. 8 The nature of ignorance, as long as it is unknown, appears to be eternal and endless. But being understood, it proves to be as nonexistent and as nothing as clear water in a mirage. 9 You have already heard, O wise monarch, the story of Bhasa, King Vipaschit. Now you shall hear of his liberation in his living state. 10 It is likely that he will become acquainted with truth from some or other source or discourse. Then he will be liberated in his lifetime by being freed from his ignorance. 11 Since this ignorance is ever accompanied with Consciousness of the Lord himself, it is for this very reason that unreality is falsely taken for the reality. 12 If this ignorance is an attribute of God, then it is nothing other than the same God. The unknown or mysterious nature is nothing other than the inscrutable nature of God. 13 This ignorance is infinite. It produces endless offshoots like the sprouts of spring. Some are tasteless and others tasty; some are delicious, while others are ripe and intoxicating. 14 Some grow like thorny plants and are all hollow inside and outside. Others are straight and herblike, such as juicy sugarcane. 15 Some of are unfruitful and unprofitable. Others attract the heart by their untimely blossoming, which only predicts evil without any desirable good. 16 Ignorance has no form or shape except that of its shapeless bulk which fills all worlds. It is a long and broad mass of darkness infested by demons and devils. 17 All that is visible appears to our view in the clear sky like false light and phantoms in the open air, and like the linked and twisted specks of light curling about in the sky. In reality, they are only fallacies of our vision. 18 The various scenes stretched everywhere in empty space without any connecting link between them are like the many colored rainbows of heaven presented by falling rains that melt into empty air. 19 The universe resembles a river swollen with rains, all its worlds like countless waves of water with dirty and foaming froths floating everywhere, revolving planets like
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frightening currents and whirlpools. 20 The world is a vast and dreary desert forever exhibiting waters of mirage on its surface while, in reality, it is only a body of dust filled with the ashes of dead bodies. 21 As a man wandering in the fairyland of his dream finds no end to his journey, so have I been wandering forever in the land of my waking dream without finding any end to my travelling. 22 The web of desires that I have been fondly weaving for so long, at last proved to be fragile and frail. Hence men of firm minds learn in a short time to abandon their desires for any of the whole panoply of visible objects. 23 All those objects contained in the empty space of Consciousness are like precious germs safely stored in the container of the mind. By our misconception of them, they appear like visible objects placed in the open space of air. 24 Those worlds are like the celestial cities of the siddhas, the spiritual masters who are situated in the air and are quite invisible to us. Those who do appear to our view are nonentities, mere phantoms of our fancy. 25 The heavenly abodes of siddha godly souls appear to be overflowing with gold, precious gems and rubies, with rivers yielding pearls and fields of diamonds. They are abundant with food supplies and rivers running with clear and drinkable waters. 26 They are said to abound with honey and wine, with milk and curds, with butter and clarified butter also. There are streams of sweet drink and groups of celestial apsara nymphs. 27 There fruits and flowers grow in gardens in all seasons. Heavenly apsaras are always playing in the tree gardens. All sorts of gains and enjoyments readily attend on anyones immediate desire. 28 There a hundred suns are shining on one side and a thousand moons on another. Some inhabitants are dressed in gold and purple while others are drinking their fill of nectar. 29 There is a spontaneous darkness in one place and full sunshine in another, and an everlasting joy in some place. The siddhas, the perfected spirits with their light and ethereal bodies, are continually moving like a breeze from one place to another. 30 Some meet with birth and death at each moment, while others live to enjoy the everlasting joys of heaven. 31 There are magnificent palaces and great honors of all sorts. It is filled with the delights of all seasons and with whatever is desirable to the mind and delectable to the spirit. 32 But these desirable blessings attending upon the pious deeds of virtuous find no place in the quiet minds of the righteous. 33 There is nothing that is desirable to the soul which is devoted only to the contemplation of Brahman. Say therefore, O you unholy, of what good are all these blessings if they do not lead to divine bliss? 34 If in the beginning there was no creation at all owing to its lack of a creator, say then, what is this world, of what it is composed, and how did it come into existence? 35 If the world is not produced by any cause and is nothing in reality, then how does it appear to exist? The everlasting will of God manifests itself in the Divine Mind, just as we see the display of our rising thoughts and wishes in our mind. 36 O you simpletons, it is the same as how you or I or he comes to see our imaginary castles in the air. It is by the stretch of our imagination, or the liveliness or flights of our fancies. 37 He whose sole pursuit and object in life is divine bliss comes to attain that supreme bliss after he forsakes his mortal body. 38 Whoever pursues both heaven and heavenly bliss through his religious rites and sacrifices in this life afterwards acquires both. 39 The siddhas reign in the said manner, according to the thoughts in their minds, while the unholy are doomed to the torments of hell owing to the sinful thoughts of their minds. 40 Whatever one thinks upon, he feels the same in himself as long as he possesses his mortal body. After he loses his material body, he feels it in his mind, which is only a part of the body. 41 When a living person quits one body for another, he carries the same mind he previously had into the new body. He sees the same things in its thoughts which he was accustomed to look upon before. 42 A good conscience has all pleasing prospects before it. A corrupted soul

meets with ghastly aspects on all sides. The lofty mind sees only ethereal shapes in its emptiness. 43 Only pure souls come to enjoy the sights of these siddha cities in the air. Impure spirits are subjected to suffer their torments in hell. 44 There is a continuous rotation of unwieldy grinding stones that crush vicious souls. The wicked are hurled into blind wells or dark pits out of which they can rise no more. 45 Some bodies are cast in frozen snow where they are frozen to stones. Many are thrown into the burning coals of devils, or led amidst the burning sands of trackless deserts. 46 Clouds drop living fire and skies pour forth fiery showers and red-hot bolts and arrows darted down from heaven. 47 Stones and maces and swords float on the running stream of the sky. They fall like cloud fragments upon the chests of the cursed, breaking them like strokes of chopping axes. 48 Hot iron hailstones and brimstones fall with a hissing sound. Weapons are hurled from engines with a loud tremendous noise. 49 Missiles and bolts and maces, together with pikes, clubs, swords and arrows fall in showers. Traps and nets and hammers and clubs strike by the hundreds. 50 Hot, burning sands bury the dead. Burning meteors fall like torches while large ravens devour dead bodies everywhere. 51 The dead are engulfed by blazing piles from which they can never get out, while darts and spears and bolts and arrows are piercing other bodies all about. 52 Hunger and dismay and excruciating pains torment in turn the bodies of dead unbelievers. Others are hurled down from high hills and heights onto rough and hard stones below. 53 Some wallow in blood and roll in pools of dirt, rotten flesh and disgusting pus. Others are crushed under stones and weapons and beneath the feet of horses and elephants. 54 Hungry vultures and owls pick and tear at dead bodies, their limbs and guts cut and scattered all over the ground. 55 This is how men are influenced by sacred writings and their thoughts of punishment for their guilt. They suffer, both in their bodies and minds, the same way in which they have their inner impressions. 56 Whatever form or figure appears in the emptiness of Intellect, or whatever is dreamt or thought of at anytime, the same holds fast the imagination and presents itself before the mirror of the mind of its own accord.

Chapter 161 Vasishta Explains Dreams and Waking Are identical; Nirvana Is that Realization
Rama said, Tell me sage. Were these various events in the lives of the hermit and hunter due to any cause, or did they arise spontaneously? 2 Vasishta replied: These events are like the appearance of whirling currents in the vast ocean of the unknown Soul. They are continuously rotating in their airy forms in the whirlpool of the soul of their own accord. 3 As the vibrating particles of air are always in motion, so the current of thoughts is continually in action in the vast emptiness of consciousness. 4 Whatever issues from its source in any shape retains its original form until it is converted or restrained to another form. The aerial thoughts of the empty mind remain until they are drawn, painted or exhibited in another form. 5 The empty essence of Divine Consciousness inheres in every form it exhibits and derives from itself. It is like the substance of a body that permeates throughout all its organs and limbs, or the woody substance of a tree that is diffused throughout all the leaves and branches that shoot forth from it. 6 Brahman appears to remain permanent in some existences, such as in the four elemental forms of earth, water, fire and air. In other existences, he seems transient and impermanent, such as the frail bodies of mortal bodies, all of which abide in their aerial state in the empty spirit. 7 Therefore, all these various objects are only reflections of Consciousness impressed upon the soul. It is impossible for us to determine which of these is substantial or insubstantial or real or unreal. 8 All these are altogether unknowable except that we know them to be reflections in the emptiness of Consciousness. You who are totally ignorant of everything, do you think this visible world is real or unreal? 9 Whatever you see anywhere in the universe is only an exhibition in the emptiness of Divine Consciousness. What use is it to you who know the truth whether you believe the world is real or unreal? Therefore rely upon your belief of it as it is. 10 These forms of reflections rise of themselves in the Divine Mind, just as waves and billows exhibit themselves on the surface of the sea. They are the spontaneous offspring of the Divine Spirit. They are of themselves both causes and effects. 11 The display of the transcendent emptiness of the Divine Mind is called its will or volition, or its imagination and creation, or the creation of its imagination. Hence this world is to be understood under anyone of these interpretations, and not as being composed of earth and water. 12 This appearance of the Divine Mind appears in this manner and nothing besides. The Divine itself resides in Divinity and passes under the title of Ignorance from our ignorance of its nature. 13 There is no material grossness in the integrity of Divine Intellect. It is purely empty and immaterial and composes the whole universe. This is transcendental knowledge and its perfection is liberation. 14 The reflection of empty Intellect spreads over the whole universe. It is subtle and uncompressed, ever calm and quiet, and passes by the name of world. 15 Only the meditative man whose eyesight is fixed in his meditation, whose body is emaciated in penance, and whose mind is abstracted from the concrete and absorbed in reasoning, is capable of seeing the Intellectual world. 16 Whatever the empty essence of Consciousness exhibits in any form at any place, the same appears to be present there of its own nature. 17 The unthinking man and unreasonable soul sees only false sights in the midst of skies, just as one who is dim-sighted and blind by birth always sees a double moon in the sky. 18 Whatever is seen anywhere is nothing other than the unpolluted Brahman himself. The empty sphere of Consciousness, being forever clear and transparent, is never soiled by any foulness of gross matter. 19 The intellect, without forsaking its pure form of self1

consciousness, exhibits varieties of gross objects in the form of dreams within itself. So also, our consciousness of the world is like our dreams. 20 By comparing the statements of the scriptures with one another, and weighing them well with acute judgment, one will find his rest in himself. But the man of little understanding will not find it so. 21 The ignorance that floats upon the sea of your understanding does not contaminate my mind like dirt polluting a pure and clear stream. 22 As there is neither the earth nor any earthly thing to be encountered in our sleep, though we are conscious of them in our dream, so also the phenomenal world has no real existence, though we are conscious of it in our waking. 23 As the clearness of the Intellect, like sunlight or flaming fire, shows us many things in our sleeping dreams, so does its light exhibit the visible to our view in our waking dreams by day. 24 There is no difference between the two states of dreaming and waking. Both are of the same nature. The difference lies in how we understand them. 25 The waking man never understands his waking state to be a dream, but the dead man who rises again to life in the next world thinks that his past life was a dream. 26 People generally consider dreams to be of short duration and waking life to be of long duration, and that is a difference between dreaming and being awake. But while experiencing either, they both seem real and are similar to the other. 27 Sleeping and waking dreams, both having the same quality of presenting false objects to view, necessarily are of the same nature. There is no difference whatever in their outward features, just as there is no elder or younger between twin brothers. 28 Whatever is the waking dream, the same is waking in a dream. There is no difference behind the two states of waking and dreaming. 29 We know the inconsistency of the hundreds of dreams we have in the course of our lifetimes. In the same way, an unredeemed and unenlightened soul sees hundreds of waking states. 30 Living mortals may remember many sleeping dreams they have seen throughout their lives. In the same way the immortalized souls of siddha spiritual masters remember a number of waking dreams they have seen in their past incarnations in different bodies. 31 Thus our waking is as valid as our dreaming. Our dreams are equivalent to waking. They correlate with one another both in quality and our perception of them. 32 As the word worlds and phenomena mean the same, so the words dreaming and waking mean the same and are interchangeable. 33 As a fairyland city in a dream is as clear as the open space of the Intellect, so is this world an empty void without the materiality that ignorance attributes to it. 34 The world is a empty substance which ignorance mistakes for gross materiality. Therefore I am as free as air and any other airy thing in the world. Only my imagination binds me to my gross materiality. 35 Therefore do not confine your free and unconfined nature in the bondage of gross matter. Never change the pure vacuum of your self to a material stuff, or impair your formless and intellectual self in a gross and finite form. 36 There can be no bondage or liberation of anything whatsoever in this visible world of our ignorance because everything is a mere reflection of the formless void of Divine Consciousness. 37 Here there is no display of ignorance any no misconception of anything. There is no bondage or release of anything whatever and there is nothing that exists or is nonexistent. 38 For us there is no ignorance or knowing of anything because it is only uncreated Consciousness that manifests itself in this manner. It reflects all forms in itself, as if they were all its dreams or creations. 39 As a man keeps his mind in check as he passes from one place to another, so should we keep our minds quiet and still between our sight of the visible and our dreams. 40 One has his body and mind very quiet and calm in his sleep at night, and in the delay of acting on his sights and thoughts in the states of his waking and dreaming. This same state of lacking sense perception is

what is called a yogis nirvana. 41 Know that our knowledge of a difference between objects is equally untrue as that of our waking and dreaming states. It is impossible for us to conceive of any matter existing in immaterial Consciousness. 42 Our knowledge of identity and diversity proceed from the same empty intellect which combines the unity and duality in unbroken union and harmony in itself. 43 Knowing all as parts of an undivided whole, all these are the same whatever they appear to be. Hence the visible, however diversified they may appear, are all one and the same principle. 44 Hence the ethereal sphere of Brahman contains all in itself, who as an aerial point concentrates all in it. Creation, together with all its varieties, is the unity of Brahman. 45 Knowing all things as full of God, you must reject them all and rest yourself in the empty Intellect as the great rock of your refuge. 46 Now, O fortunate Rama, remain to act in conformity with the rules of your order and the laws of society and the requirements of your position and dignity. Continue to go on, eat and drink and rest in your usual course, rely upon your desired object, and always rest in the glorious and holy lord of your intellect, the supreme God of all.

Chapter 162 Vasishta on Ignorance; the Folly of Worshipping Form

Vasishta continued: All objects are convertible according to the conceptions of the empty intellect, so the entire universe is supposed to be seated in the hollow mind. Therefore both the outer sights of things and the inner thoughts of their forms are all only ideal images in the empty mind. 2 The world is only a dream and the form of an ideal city in the mind has nothing substantial to it. Therefore it is a quiet emptiness in itself, without having any diversity whatsoever. 3 The uniform display of Consciousness appears to us with many forms. Consciousness sees this variety, though not subjective to the soul, within itself, just as we see the fairyland of our dream rising within ourselves. 4 This world appeared in the beginning like the aerial castle of a dream in the emptiness of Consciousness. It was a mere reflection of the Divine Mind. Though it had the form of a false shadow, it remained substantive to the Supreme Spirit. 5 The knowing sage well knows this mystery, which is mysterious to the unknowing ignorant. The word creation bears the sense of both reality and unreality. 6 Both the knowing sage and the unknowing agnostic acknowledge the reality of creation, but neither can understand how it exists or communicate to the other their correct conception of it. 7 They both know the meaning of the word creation in their own minds. One has the sense of stability ever wakeful in their minds, and the other has the sense of its unsteadiness always waking in them. So they resemble the sober and drunken men who see the world in its steady and shaking states. 8 As the liquid waters in a river constantly rise in restless waves, so the rolling worlds push forward into being in the vast expanse of the Divine Mind. 9 These creations which are not of the nature of the intellect still have their seats in Consciousness, like the thoughts that rise and fall in it. Though these are invisible in their nature, they appear as visible things, like the fair objects and fairy cities in our dreams. 10 The spreading shadow of Divine Consciousness passes under the name of the world. This which is formless in itself appears as having a form, like the shadow of anything else. 11 It is a gross error to take the insubstantial shadow for a substantial body, just as it is a gross error to suppose the empty shadow of a ghost to be an embodied being. 12 The world is as unreal as an imaginary city and as false as a string of raindrops. Then why do you rely upon an unreality which is known from the experiences of both ignorant and knowing men? 13 Therefore, the words used to express this thing and that are mere empty sounds, like those emitted splitting block of wood, or those heard when waves crash or winds blow. The air conveys the empty sound into the open emptiness of the sky. But they are all unreal and meaningless and bear only a conventional sense with which it has no connection whatsoever. 14 The light of the Lord reflects itself in his creation. The reflection of his edict reverberates through the whole. In reality there is no sound or substance that is heard or seen in the universe. 15 Whatever shines or exists here is the transcendent reality of the Lord. Otherwise there is nothing that could appear at first without its cause. 16 Therefore, from the distinctions of words and things, know that the one is all in all and remain as quiet and calm as the indefinite and infinite emptiness itself. 17 Forsake the fickleness of your mind through the calm resting of your soul, the purity of your understanding, and by the even course of your disposition, because a fickle soul is troublesome in life. 18 It is ones own self who is a friend or enemy to himself. If one will not try to guard and save himself by his own self, there is no one else to do it for him. 19 Get over the ocean of the world while you are young. Make your good understanding the ferry boat that carries your body safely to the other shore. 20 Do what is good for you today. Why defer till tomorrow? You can do
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nothing in old age when your body becomes a burden to you. 21 Know youth is like old age if it is filled with learning. Consider infirmity as death itself in your lifetime. Youth is truly the life of the living, provided it is filled with knowledge (buddhi). 22 Having obtained your life in this living world, which is as transient as fleeting lightning, you must try to derive the essence from this dirty earth by availing yourself of the benefit of good scriptures and the company of the wise. 23 Woe to the ignorant who will not seek their salvation in life, who are sinking in the pits of mud, and who never strive to lift themselves above the mire. 24 The ignorant rustic is afraid at the sight of earthen images of ghosts and bows down to them, something those who are acquainted with the meaning of the word ghost would never do. 25 Those who see God in an idol or in his visible creation are misled to think it is their god and worship it as such. Those who know the true meaning of the term never worship any visible object. 26 As things in motion come to rest, the visible disappears from the sight of learned men who are acquainted with their true meaning, 27 just as the sights in a dream, seeming to be true while dreaming, disperse upon waking and the realization of their unreal nature. 28 So this world, conceived as something existing in the emptiness of understanding, in the end melts into empty air upon our knowledge of its intellectual nature. 29 This living world is like a wilderness burning with the fires of various evils that are attendant on life. Here we are exposed like weak antelopes living upon our precarious sustenance. Here we are governed by our uncontrollable minds and restless passions and senses of our bodies. All these need to be subdued in order to obtain liberation from repeated births and deaths.

Chapter 163 Means of Governing the Senses: Control the Mind; the Value of this Book
Rama asked, Sage, I know that all knowledge is vain and useless without proper control of our senses. So tell me how the senses may be kept under control so that was can have a true knowledge of things unbiased by them. 2 Vasishta replied: The obstacles to self-control and liberation are addiction to enjoyments, displays of manhood, and devotion to the acquisition of the means of life and wealth, just as blindness is an obstruction to ones sight of a light. 3 Listen to my advice, the least, shortest and best means to control your senses. This is sure to lead one to success by his own effort without struggle or trouble. 4 Know that the intellect is the person who manages you. Its power of reasoning makes you a living man. Whatever the living soul thinks within itself, it truly becomes the very same. 5 Let the strength of your consciousness use the pointed goad of your acute good sense. You will undoubtedly subdue your otherwise uncontrollable elephantine mind and be victorious shortly. 6 The mind (citta) is the captain of the army of your bodily and mental senses. If you subdue this leading mind, you will conquer the whole host of your senses, like a man walking in boots treads over thorns lying in his way. 7 You must settle your self-consciousness in your consciousness of the omnipresent vacuum of the Divine Soul, and rest yourself quietly in the cave of your heart. Then your mind will sit quietly of itself, just as the snows of winter settle down of themselves in autumn. 8 By stopping the action of your consciousness, you will also shut up your mind and put a stop to the operation of all its faculties. This you can never accomplish with all your meditation and austerities, your pilgrimages, your knowledge and sacrifice, and all other ceremonies and acts and duties. 9 Whatever occurs in consciousness must be forgotten or buried in the consciousness of the great God alone. So the forgetfulness of all enjoyments and their objects amounts to our victory over them. 10 We must try by all means to shut out the objects of sense from our consciousness. This state of being unconsciousness of sense objects is equivalent to the state of heavenly bliss. 11 Another way to preserve the steadiness of the mind is the contentment that comes from acting in conformity with the rules of our order. Therefore remain firm in the practice of your particular duties and seek no other happiness. 12 He who abandons his inclination towards the attainment of what is unlawful for him and remains content with earning his lawful gains is truly said to be a man of subdued desires, one who has self-control. 13 He who is pleased with his inner and conscious gratification and is not grieved at the unpleasant things all about him is said to have governed and subdued his mind. 14 By suspending the action of consciousness, the mind also comes to forget and forsake its activity. The sensations also become relaxed from their restlessness and the mind pursues discrimination and judgment. 15 The discriminative and judging soul becomes ennobled and magnanimous, keeping its command over feelings and senses. It is not impelled by the waves of its desires to be tossed about on the surface of the wide ocean of this world. 16 The man of well controlled senses, by his association with the wise and his constant study of religious works, comes to know all things in the world in their true light. 17 All worldly errors are dispelled by the light of truth. Otherwise, one must fall into the pit of misery by his mistake of falsehood for truth, just as an ignorant traveler is engulfed in dreary sands by mistaking a mirage for water. 18 The wise know this world to be the unknowable intellect itself, and that this material world is the immaterial mind of God. This is the true light in which the wise view the
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cosmos, and the wise have no fear of falling into the snare of error, nor do they require any release from it. 19 As the dried up waters of a river are seen no more flowing even slightly in their course, so the formless phenomena of the world never appear in the sight of the wise or leave the slightest trace in their minds. 20 Knowledge of the world as an infinite void and being freed from the false individualities of myself and yourself lead to the knowledge of a Supreme Self which is apart from all and the only Ego that fills the whole. 21 All these conceptions of our subjective, individual egos and the objective world are only errors of our brain proceeding from ignorance. They are all situated in the void of Consciousness and are void of themselves. All bodies are only empty shadows in air, as quiet as nothingness itself. 22 This world appears like a shadow of the Intellect in the emptiness of the same Intellect. It is a void within the void of Consciousness which is certainly a void itself. 23 Nobody can deny the similarity of the world to a shadowy sight in a dream. It is an unreal idea, as insubstantial as all ideas can be, and as the idea of a void is void itself. 24 A dream is nothing other than our consciousness of it and the airy realms that it presents to our view for a time. In the same way, Consciousness shows us the sight of the world without any action or passion or instrumentality of Consciousness. 25 So I am of the substance of the same Consciousness which is without activity, passivity or instrumentality. The world cannot be assigned to any causality or instrumentality, so it exists only in our simple conception of it. 26 As the conception of ones death in a dream is no reality at all, and as the sight of water in a mirage is only a visual deception, so the sight of the world is no real existence at all. 27 The empty intellect first reflects its thoughts in the clear mirror of its emptiness, which is a mere haphazard of chance without firm base or support. 28 The world appears fixed and firm, yet has no foundation anywhere. It seems to be shining brightly with dark opacity. So know that this fixity and brightness is the permanence and glory of the eternal and glorious God. 29 The vital force of living beings displays the spirit of the ever living God. The air is his emptiness. Running waters show the whirlpool-like currents of the eternal Soul. 30 As every part of the body is a constituent part of the whole frame, so all the various parts of animated and inanimate nature constitute the entirety of the one cosmic Deity. 31 As a crystal mirror shows the shades of everything in itself, so the transparency of the Divine Soul exhibits the reflections of all things in it. The silent soul is as quiet as the mute crystal, but it shows the varying scenes of nature as continuously as a clear mirror reflects everything. 32 There is no beginning or end of the Supreme Being. We see dimly only what is in between. The rest is all enveloped in ignorance, though there is no ignorance in the Omniscient. 33 The living soul wakes from its sleeping dream then falls back to its waking dream. Thus it continues dreaming forever, whether waking or sleeping, which are both alike. 34 The soul only finds rest while it remains in the fourth state (turiya) of sound sleep. Otherwise, it passes from dream to dream, whether sleeping or awake. Dreams continually haunt the soul unless it is drowned in its sound sleep of trance (sushupti), the only resort of the wise. 35 But waking and sleeping, dreaming and sound sleep, are all the same to the enlightened soul. He is equally indifferent in all states, whether asleep or awake, and he is never infested by dreams or set beside himself. 36 The knowledge of unity or duality, or that of I and you, or the subjective and objective, never disturbs the enlightened. He views the whole as an empty void and is alike unconscious of all as well as nothing. 37 The distinction of unity and duality, made in the meaningless speech of the unwise, is laughed at by the enlightened and the wise, just as aged and intelligent men scorn and laugh at the pranks and idle talk of young children. 38 The controversy of unity and duality spontaneously grows in the heart like an indigenous plant which without pruning will not put forth its blossoms to perfume the atmosphere of understanding.

The discussion of unity and duality is as beneficial to men as their best friend. It sweeps away the dirt and impurity of ignorance from their minds, just as they sweep dust from within the doors of their houses. 40 The minds of men become settled in the Divine Mind when they share, communicate, and participate in each others joys and bliss. 41 Men who are always joined together in fellowship, serving one another with delight and kindness in their hearts, attain enlightenment of their understanding whereby they are admitted into communion with the Most High. 42 It is possible for a man to be benefited even by his careful preservation of a trifle. But it is never possible for anybody to attain the most hidden knowledge of God without his diligent inquiry into it. 43 Whatever high position one may enjoy in this material world, if one does not remain aloof from all kind of vices, it is to be recognized by all as nothing. 44 What happiness is gained by the possession of a kingdom which in the end is no better than a mere annoyance of the mind? But the mind that has gained peace and tranquility in truth and divine knowledge spurns the state of rascals and kings as mere bits of straw. 45 The sleepy and the wakeful are both ready to see the visible and they are enraptured by the sight. But the saints who are calm and quiet and at rest with themselves are averse to sight-seeing and see only the one in themselves. 46 Without painstaking and continued practice of contemplation, you cannot attain this state of infinite bliss. Know that this state of transcendent bliss can only be attained through intense meditation. 47 What I have said at length is to impress the necessity of intense meditation upon you. The evil-minded say, What good is all this? to me and neglect and take no heed of all that I have been telling you for so long. 48 The ignorant can come to the right view of truth by steady attention to these lectures, by long and repeated practice of meditation, and by listening and analyzing these lectures. 49 He who reads this spiritual work once, then neglects it thinking he has already read it and turns to the study of unspiritual books, is a miserable fool who collects burnt ashes after the fire is extinguished. 50 This excellent work is to be read always, like the recital of the Vedas which are embodied in this work. This book is calculated to reward the labor of the student if constantly read with reverence and rightly explained with diligence. 51 From this book, the student will learn everything he can expect to find in the Vedas because this book embodies both the practical and the spiritual doctrines of the sacred scriptures. A knowledge of both is available by properly reading this work. 52 By learning this book, one may have knowledge of the doctrines of the Vedanta and Siddhanta scriptures, because this is the only book that treats the doctrines of all schools. 53 I have presented these doctrines to you because of my sympathy for you all. It is not by way of deception that I impose these lessons on your gullibility. You are the best judges of my discourse. You can well detect whether there is anything like deception in my instructions. 54 The knowledge you may derive by carefully weighing the instructions in this great work will serve you like salt that seasons the taste of teachings in other scriptures, which at best are only different dishes before this book. 55 The materialist who is familiar with visible phenomena discredits this book because of its occult teachings of spiritualism. But dont be the killer of your souls by neglecting your eternal salvation. Dont revisit this material world and become busied with your temporal affairs. 56 Biased minds cling to the dogmas of broken systems. Ignoble men drink the foul water of tanks dug by their ancestors. You are reasoning men. Therefore do not remain forever tightly bound to your ignorance.

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Chapter 164 How the Wise and the Ignorant View the World
Vasishta continued: The atoms of living souls in the world are like the particles of light rays in the sun. These parts, taken collectively, make the one undivided whole. There is no division within the unity of God throughout the whole of creation. 2 By attaining the transcendental knowledge of all being the one and the one as all, everything loses its shape and form before us. Nothing remains as a distinct being or duality. 3 The true believer or knower of truth sees the same in all states and forms of things. This is the transcendent and translucent Brahman, and nothing else whatsoever at anytime. 4 All the ignorant know of reality is the objects of their senses, but we do not recognize ourselves or others or what the ignorant can sense as real. 5 An ignorant mans belief in the reality of himself, yourself, and all others does not affect the knower of truth, just as the delusion of mirage never overtakes a man on Mount Meru. 6 As a man intent upon one object has no consciousness of any other thing in his mind, so one enrapt at the sight of only God is conscious of nothing else. 7 There neither is nor was nor shall ever be any such thing as the material world at anytime. The world in existence is the image of Brahman himself abiding in his spirit. 8 The world is the splendor of the crystal vacuum of the Divine Intellect. It exists in the emptiness of the Supreme Soul itself. It is from this perspective that the universe is seen in the yoga of abstract contemplation. 9 As there is nothing in an empty dream or in the aerial castle of imagination except the clear atmosphere of Consciousness, so there is no essence or substance or form or figure to this world that we see in our present waking state. 10 At first there was no creation of any kind, no world which appears to us. It exists in its aerial form in the Divine Mind from all eternity. There being no primary or secondary cause for the world, how is it possible to call it a material thing that has its own spontaneous growth? 11 Therefore there is nothing that sprang itself out of nothing, nor was there ever a creator called Brahma or any other name the ignorant might use. In the beginning there is nothing but an infinite void from eternity to eternity, filled by the self-born or uncreated spirit whose intellect exhibits this creation contained forever and ever in its emptiness.
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Chapter 165 Play on the Similarity between Waking and Dreaming; Real or Unreal, Why Be Deluded?
Vasishta continued: In the state of waking dream, dream is called waking. In the state in which we dream of being awake, this waking goes by the name of sleep. 2 The dream ends upon waking, the waking man rises from his dreaming, then falls back into his awake-dream. One awakened from his dream of being awake afterwards falls into his waking dreams. 3 The dream of the awake dreamer should also be called a dream, the waking dream of this world. Similarly, we can call the dream of being awake a mans waking state. 4 Therefore the wakefulness of one who remains in his dreaming state can be called his waking state and not any dream. So also the dream when awake and the daydreams imagining airy castles are to be called dreaming and never being awake. 5 Whatever lasts for a short while, a temporary delusion or a flight of imagination, is called a dream even if experienced while awake. Similarly, being awake seems brief to the dreamer. 6 Therefore there is no difference whatsoever between the two states of waking and dreaming, other than the absence of one in the other. Both are unreal because they blend into one another. 7 The waking dream of the world vanishes when we become unconsciousness of the world at death. Similarly, the consciousness of dreaming is lost when we wake and know it was an airy nothing. 8 A dying person who does not perceive the vanity of the imaginary world on his death-bed has no hope of being awake in the next world. 9 Whoever believes he is alive among the varying scenes of this empty world lives content with them. He can never see the visions that await him. 10 As the intellect displays its wonders in the exhibitions of the various scenes of worlds to the sight of one in his dream, so does this universe appear before the minds of men at the time of their waking. 11 These creations, so conspicuous to sight, in their transcendental light are at best only nothing. All the forms of things are like empty shadows appearing in our dreams. 12 The world with all its varieties of visible objects appears in a dream in its empty and shadowy form. It is equally empty, only an intellectual form, in our waking state. 13 It is the nature of the empty Consciousness to show the form of the world in its own space. So this earth appears to us in the spacious atmosphere like balls of light in the skies. 14 The wonderful display of Consciousness shines before us under the name of universe. These wonders are as inborn and innumerable in itself as watery and earthly particles are innate and diffused throughout nature. 15 What can you mistake as a reality in this unreal world that is an empty body in the infinite womb of emptiness? 16 The words recipient, receipt, reception, subject, object, and attribute are all meaningless with regard to this empty world. Whether it is a reality or unreality, we have no perception of it. 17 Whether the world is real or unreal or anything else, why should you mistake it for anything at all regardless of how you view it? It will amount to mistaking an empty ball for a fruit.
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Chapter 166 Story of the Unnamable Crystal Rock

Vasishta continued: The true sense of the word soul or self is to be understood from the title applied to it. This title of soul is borne out by the simile of a solid and transparent blue stone. 2 From the beginning of creation, the empty soul is diffused in itself. The reflection it casts in its own emptiness is what is called world or creation. 3 No river runs in it. No rock rises or falls in it. It is a mere emptiness existing in infinite void in which the intellect reflects itself without any action or bidding or command. 4 This reflection of Divine Consciousness is cast without any utterance of word and quite without its will or thought. It is without the device of any subsequent material, and this is the true sense of the word soul or self. 5 The soul itself is the whole world. There is no other expression for it. Being devoid of a name, it is expressible by no other name though they give many names to it. 6 Its name being nameless, whatever name they give it is not opposite but inappropriate. Therefore, what is the good of giving it a name or no name? 7 Its all the same whether it is nameless or given a wrong name because all that is visible is nothing other than a display of the wonderful fabric of the Divine Mind. 8 Whatever shines in any manner and at any time in the empty space of the Divine Mind, the same shines forth even then and in that manner like the rays of that Intellect. 9 One calls it the soul, another nonexistence, and others nothing. All these are only the mystery of consciousness, but in fact, all are the attributes of soul. 10 The word itself conveys the meaning of soul or self. It is without beginning or end. No language can express it. In fact, it is an undivided whole. 11 Now listen to a long story which illustrates this subject. It will serve to gladden your hearts and ears by removing the duality from your sight and enlightening your understanding. 12 Know that there is a very large crystal stone which extends many thousands of leagues in space, stretching like the solid blue fabric of the sky all around us. 13 It is all one piece without any joint or parts. It is as dense and compact as a hard diamond. It is thick, big and bulky in size. But at the same time, it is as clear and far away as the face of the sky. 14 It continues from countless times and endures to endless duration. With its pleasant and translucent body, it appears like the clear sky or the blank vacuum on high. 15 No one ever knows its nature or kind because no one has ever seen anything like it. No one knows from when and where it has come into existence. 16 It does not contain anything substantial in it, such as the material elements. Yet it is as dense and solid as a crystal and as impossible to dissolve as a diamond. 17 Yet it has innumerable streaks and marks embodied in itself. These resemble the veins and fibers on lotus leaves, or the marks of conches, lotuses, maces and discuses on Lord Vishnus feet. 18 These marks are named air, water, earth, fire, and vacuum, though there are no such things to be found in that crystal stone except that it possesses a living soul which imparted its marks. 19 Rama asked, Tell me sage, how could that stone of yours have life or consciousness in it? The stone is an unconscious thing which is unable to give names to the marks on its body. 20 Vasishta replied: That immense and luminous stone is neither a conscious nor an inert body. Nobody knows its nature and state, and there is no other like it. 21 Rama said, Tell me sage, who saw those marks imprinted on the surface of that stone? How could anyone ever break that stone to see its contents and its marks? 22 Vasishta replied:
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It is difficult to break this hard stone. Nobody has ever been able to break it because it extends over infinite space and encompasses all bodies within its space. 23 It is full of numberless spots in its spacious cavity. These consist of the marks of mountains and trees and of countries, towns and cities. 24 There are small and large dots in it with many forms and figures. They serve to represent the forms of men, gods and demigods, just as an outline shows the images of things. 25 Drawn in the crystal stone is a long line in the form of a circle which represents the great circle of the visible horizon. This contains the two central points, signifying the sun and moon. 26 Rama said, Tell me sage, who saw those marks of such forms? How it is possible for anybody to look into the cell of a solid or hollow ball? 27 Vasishta replied: It is I, O Rama, who saw those marks of different forms in that impenetrable block. It is possible for you to look into it, if you will only like to do so. 28 Rama said, How could you, O sage, look into those marks inside that solid stone which, you say, is as hard as a diamond and incapable of being broken or perforated by any means? 29 Vasishta replied: I sat in the very heart of that stone, so I came to see those marks and penetrate into their meanings. 30 Who else is able to penetrate that rigid stone besides me? By my penetration, I have been able to pry and pierce into the mysteries of those hidden marks. 31 Rama said, Tell me sage, what is that stone and what are you? Explain to me where you are and what you are saying? What are those things that you have seen and what is their meaning that you have penetrated? 32 Vasishta replied: It is the Supreme Soul, the sole entity and calm reality. This is represented by a figure of speech as the great crystal stone that I have been describing. 33 We are all situated in the cavity of this Supreme Spirit. The three worlds form the flesh of this Great Being who is devoid of all substantiality. 34 Know that the spacious firmament is a part of this solid rock, and the ever flying winds are fragments of its body. Fleeting time and impermanent sounds, together with all our varying actions, desires and imaginations of our minds, are all only insubstantial particles of its substance. 35 Earth, air, water and fire, as well as emptiness and understanding, together with our egoism and sensibilities, are only portions of its totality. 36 We all are only bits of the great rock of the Supreme Soul. Everything whatever that is in existence proceeds from that source. We know of no other cause or causality whatsoever. 37 This large stone is the great rock of Divine Consciousness. There is nothing beside or beyond its intelligence. Tell me if there is any such thing and what it does? 38 All things, whether a pot or cot, a picture or anything else, are only mere ideas. They appear in us as our dreams and rise before us like waves in water. 39 All is the substance of Brahman and the essence of the great Consciousness which fills and pervades the whole. Therefore know that all these are one with the substantiality of the Supreme Spirit, and all is as quiet and calm as itself. 40 Thus all this fullness is situated in the space of the great rock of the Intellect. It is without beginning, middle or end and without any hole or doorway. Therefore it is only the Supreme Soul which contemplates in itself and produces this ideal creation of the universe which passes under the name of the visible or material world.

Chapter 167 Words Cannot Describe Consciousness, Not Even Awake, Dream, Sleep or Turiya; Use Reasoning to Acquire Knowledge and Rest in Aum
Vasishta continued: The four titles under which the world is known in its different senses namely, the self-styled, the misnamed, the nameless, and the otherwise named are all meaningless to the knower of truth. 2 These different words do not disturb the mind of the knower of truth whose soul is at rest in the Supreme Spirit and who pays no regard to the use of words. 3 All that is visible rises from Consciousness and bears no name of its own. They are pure vacuum and appear to us in their simple, empty forms. 4 This soul and, and this its title, are all false conceits and creations of the brain. The spirit admits of no expression. Therefore, take no concern of any word but only the mind and its meaning. 5 Whatever appears to be moving or stationary or doing any action is as calm and clear as the empty air and as devoid of action as the Divine Soul. 6 All things, whatever noise they make, are as silent as the silent crystal stone I described. Though they seem to be always moving, they are always as quiet as the void of the sky, and as still as the inactive stone. 7 Though all things appear to be acting in their various ways, yet they are as motionless as unmoving emptiness. Though the world appears to be formed of the five elements, yet it is only a void without its own essence. 8 The world with its fullness of things is only a collection of your conceptions. It is full with the all-pervasive and transparent Consciousness that displays visions of great cities, like the empty sights in our dreams. 9 It is full of action and motion without any activity or mobility in it, like the passing city of our imagination. It is the air-built castle of our errors, like the fairyland in our dreams. 10 It is a false conception or idea of the mind, like the fading shadow of a fairy. It is the creation of our fancies, altogether insubstantial in its substantiality. 11 Rama asked, I think of this world is a waking dream, a reproduction of our memories, because our memories present the absent to our view and bring outer objects to our awareness. 12 Vasishta replied: No Rama, the world is the reflection which the glassy mirror of Consciousness casts before us. The same appears to us even then in its empty form. There is no idea or thought of anything that lays a firm hold on the mind or has its foundation there. 13 Therefore, phenomena always belongs to the ideals of the Supreme Spirit. Fluctuating phenomena always abide in it, like surging waves playing in the calm waters of the sea. 14 The uncaused world exists of itself in the Supreme Soul. It becomes extinct of itself in the emptiness of the Universal Soul. 15 Everyone sees the world in the same light as it is reflected in himself. Hence the ignorant are always at fault for having a wrong view of it. But not so the wise, who know it as nothing. 16 Again, the lord god Brahma himself has exhibited the clear nature of his being according to the four states or conditions which are natural to the soul. 17 These are the three states of waking, dreaming and sleep, together with a fourth called turiya or the state of sound sleep. These names are applied to the soul by the Supreme Soul itself. 18 But in reality none of these four states belongs either to the Divine or the living soul, which is always tranquil and of the nature of an indefinite void. 19 Or it may be said that the soul is either always wakeful or in its ever dreaming state, or in a state of continuous rest and sleep. 20 Or it is always in its fourth state of turiya, which is beyond all these triple states. But whether it is in this or that or whatever state, we know nothing as
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we are always in a state of anxiety and agitation. 21 We know nothing of the emptiness of the empty soul, whether it is like the chasm in foam or froth, or whether it is like the air in a bubble or spray, or whether it is like the gap between the waves of the sea, or what it is at all. 22 As a thing is known in imagination, so it is impressed in our conception of it. As anything appears either as real or unreal in a dream, we retain the same idea of it in our waking state. 23 All this is a display of our consciousness. Whatever reflection it exhibits to us, it is only an empty shadow in the hollow of the vacant mind residing in the emptiness of the empty intellect that pervades the infinite vacuum of the soul. 24 Consciousness is the core of empty Intellect, and it retains this form at all times. It neither rises nor sets. This world is inherent in it. 25 The creations in the beginning and the dark nights of dissolution are only parts of its body, like its nails and hairs. 26 Its appearance and disappearance, its clarity and dimness, are nothing other than the breathing air of the great Intellect. 27 Therefore what does it mean to say the soul is waking, sleeping, or dreaming? What does the term sound sleep or the turiya of the soul mean? So the word volition and lack of volition are meaningless when applied to the soul, which is always composed and indifferent. 28 Inner consciousness exhibits its inner concepts as outward objects. How then is there a duality or anything objective? What does the memory of extraneous matter mean? 29 All that appears to sight is without base or foundation. They are the reflections of our consciousness in open air, wholly devoid of any material object. 30 The external world is said to be real because it is a concept of the Divine Mind, out of which it has risen to view. Its cause is said to be memory because our memories of the first creation continue with us. 31 But there is no outward object at all because there is no material element, and there being no five material elements, there was no first creation. 32 Rabbits have no horns, trees do not grow in the air, a barren woman has no children, and there is no dark moon shining in the sky. 33 So this visible world and these personalities we think ourselves to be are misrepresentations of our ignorance. They are things invisible and nonexistent in themselves, seen and known by only the ignorant. 34 To the ignorant the world appears as a false body and they see the personalities and abstractions of persons. But there is nothing fictitious or abstract to the knower of truth who views all in one undivided Divine Spirit. 35 Consciousness, the nature or essence of the soul, exposes all these concepts to light. Consciousness is the manner in which it displays them to the imagination. That is how phenomena make their appearance to our sight. 36 Whenever our misconception portrays a concept in a material form, or gives a name and form to an airy nothing, we come to see in our imagination in the empty void of our mind. 37 The great Consciousness has the appearance of the sky for itself, which in ordinary language is expressed by the word matter consisting of the four elements. But the endless void is devoid of them. 38 The unchanging and un-decaying Consciousness bears only the form of air which it conceives by mistake to be the stable earth, just as imaginary men believe air-built castles to be real. 39 Consciousness, being an incorporeal substance, has neither this form nor that nor anything at all. It has vibration and rest in itself, like the breath and stillness of the winds in the air. 40 As consciousness manifests itself in its own sphere in the two states of its volition and no will, so the world seems to be in its states of motion and stillness taking place in the space of vacuum. 41 As the sphere of consciousness remains unchanged with the rise and fall of its thoughts, so emptiness remains unvaried with all the creations and dissolutions in its space. 42 The world is always in the same unvaried state, whether you call it so or otherwise. The seeming revolutions of bodies and succession of events are well known to be nothing to the learned and wise, but not to others. 43 The wise soul dwells in the hearts of all, which it views alike as its own self. But the ignorant soul, because it sees the outer world and knows the difference of

bodies from one another, is unconscious of its identity. 44 What is there inside or outside? What is visible or invisible? All this, whether active or still, is in the Lord. Know all is Aum and rest quietly in that Aum. 45 There can be no reasoning without an insight into the meanings of significant terms. Consideration of both sides of a question leads to right judgment. Hence reasoning leads us to truth, just as light guides us through the darkness of night. 46 Therefore drive off the multitudes of diverse desires and doubts from your mind through the light of your understanding, and by your attention to the true interpretation of the scriptures. Then rise and fly above to the higher regions of light and truth and attain the highest, best and most perfect state of Divine bliss and self-liberation.

Chapter 168 Forms of a Tree; the Value of Investigating Our Dreams; the Origin of Dreams & Creations Are Random; the Carved Image; the Process of Creation
Vasishta continued: Like an unconscious tree displaying various forms in its branches, so the unconcerned spirit of God exhibits the airy semblance of creation in air. 2 Like the ocean describing whirlpools insensibly upon its surface, so the spirit of God exhibits these spinning worlds indifferently on the surface of its own emptiness where they are seen by all. 3 The Lord also gives internal faculties of the mind, understanding and egoism to the conscious part of his creation, and also many other powers under different names. 4 The material world is the production of the unconscious Intellect, whose volitional faculties are as loose as the rolling currents of rivers and seas. 5 The mind, understanding and all mental faculties proceed from Divine Consciousness in the same way as the whirlpools, currents, waves and surges rise on the surface of the sea. 6 A picture is nothing other than its canvas. The world, which is no more than a painting, is drawn on the canvas of the intellect. This is an empty substance with the luminous reflection of the world in it. 7 I gave you the example of the unconscious tree and sea which produce branches and whirlpools. This example also applies to Intellect which shows creation rising in its emptiness, not by an act of its intention or will, but by ordinance of fate which governs all things. 8 A tree exhibits various forms named like plant, shrub, flowers or vine. In the same way, the intellect displays its many features, like its flowers, called by different names like earth, air, or water. 9 The branches and leaves of a tree are not different from the tree itself. The productions of the great Intellect are nothing other than its very substance. 10 There are many things made of the substance of a tree and having different names. The productions of the Intellect and the offspring of a living being also pass under different forms and names. 11 The offshoots of the Intellect are all the creatures that grow in and rise from the mind. They appear to be the works of the mind, as if the mind caused them. But they are no better than the dreams. 12 Should you ask why these conceptions of creation vainly arise in the mind, I would answer that they arise like dreams in sleep, which you cannot deny enjoying. 13 As a tree displays various forms in its productions, and as imagination presents different shapes to our mental sight, so the Intellect is employed realizing many such creations in empty air. 14 As the scents of flowers fly about invisibly in the open air, and as vibration abides inherent in the wind, so intellectual powers are intrinsic in the very nature of the soul. 15 These creations likewise are ingrained in the Divine Spirit, as fragrance is inborn in flowers, as emptiness is intrinsic in air, and as vacillation and speed are innate in winds. 16 As air, wind and a flower are receptacles of emptiness, vibration and scent respectively, so the Intellect is a container of creation, although it is literally only an empty emptiness. 17 Emptiness is nothing other than a vacuum, just as fluidity is not separate from liquids. Fragrance is as inseparable from flowers as movement is never separated from the wind. 18 Heat is not separate from fire, nor is coldness apart from snow. In this way, know that the world is in no way different or disengaged from the transparent, empty Intellect. 19 In the beginning, the Divine Intellect sees creation appear in itself like a dream rising in the mind. Thus, the world having no extraneous cause and being subject to the Intellect, it is no way a diverse mass or different from the Divine Mind. 20 The example of the dream is the best illustration of creation. You can judge creation
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well by the nature of the dreams you have every night. Say, what is there substantial in a dream other than it being essential to the Universal Soul? 21 A dream is not the effect of any impression in the mind, or the result of memories stored in the mind, because dreams show us many sights unseen and not thought of before. Say therefore, how does this happen? 22 If what is seen in a dream presents itself when we remember the dream, because it is not experienced, it implies that one thing is in two states. 23 Therefore these spinning worlds are like spinning whirlpools in the wide ocean of the infinite mind. They are the accidental appearances of chance. Whatever occurs in the mind afterwards passes for its dreams. 24 Creations are insensibly produced from the Divine Mind, like waves and whirlpools in the ocean. Afterwards creation receives its stability and continuity, just like whirling waters and ever rolling waves continue once started. 25 Whatever is born without its cause is equal to the unborn because the unborn are forever similar to those who have no cause for their birth. 26 As precious gems growing insensibly of themselves have their luster inherent in them, and as this brilliance is no substance or anything real at all, so the appearance of the world has no substantiality of itself. 27 Somehow or another, the world has its rise, like waves or whirling currents in a river, then it continues to go on like the continuous course of the stream. 28 There are numberless worlds of intellectual forms gliding in the vast emptiness of Consciousness, all passing like aerial dreams without any cause whatsoever. 29 All these again become causes and produce others. They are all empty forms, even the great Brahma and all other gods and angels. 30 All that is born in and produced from void (shunya) is nothing and void also. They grow in the void and return to emptiness. 31 Emptiness appears as fullness, as in the example of an empty dream that appears to be something. The man who denies his own perception is no better than a fool or a brute. 32 The unreal appearing as real is the fabrication of error and ignorance. But the wise man who knows the truth sees the world as the wonderful display of the Divine Mind. 33 Long standing and deep rooted prejudice produces the false conceptions of the creation and destruction of the world. Wisdom is to know it in its true light, and foolishness is to take a wrong view of it. 34 The light of the Divine Spirit, once seen in this causeless void of the visible world, continues forever before our sight, just as a dream seen in our vacant minds remains ever afterwards in our memory. 35 The intellect presents the accidental appearance of the world to our minds in the same manner as the sea shows its whirls and waves to our sight. 36 Such is the nature of the Intellect also. It shows itself in this manner and exhibits spinning worlds only in its own ethereal essence. 37 Then the aerial Intellect, by a retrospective view in itself, invented certain words afterwards, an expression of its mental and intellectual powers as well signifying material elements and their properties. 38 Rama said, Sage, memories are impressions left on the mind. If it is true that everything is the spontaneous growth of chance, then how can the mental power of memory suddenly be produced without memories? Please explain this to me. 39 Vasishta replied: Hear me, Rama, and I will destroy your doubt like a lion kills an elephant. I will establish the one unchanging unity like the broad daylight of the sun. 40 There is only a Universal Soul, invisible amidst the vacuum of his Intellect, like an un-carved doll remains unseen in the wood of every forest tree. 41 We can see a carpenter carving the puppet from wood, but we cannot see the Soul that carves the figure of the world from the great bulk of Consciousness. 42 The puppet does not appear in the wood unless and until it is carved by the skill of the carpenter. The hidden world does not appear in the Intellect unless and until it is brought to view by the talent of the Mind. 43 Yet the un-carved body of the world still appears in its aerial form, which is the original and genuine form in Divine Consciousness.

In the beginning of creation, the inventive Intellect forms of itself the concept of the future world, appearing as an airy dream in the sight of the soul. 45 Empty Consciousness conceives the airy ideal of the world as if it were a toy or doll gliding of itself in itself. 46 It conceives itself as the essential part of the great Brahman, the seed of the mundane system. Then it imagines itself as the source of life and the living soul and the receptacle of individual consciousness. 47 It imagines itself as understanding and the mind, the reservoir of space and time. It considers itself as the root of the knowledge of I, you, he and others, and as the essence of the five elements. 48 It sees in itself the collection of the inner and outward senses, as also of the eight faculties of the mind, and both the spiritual as well as the elemental bodies contained in itself. 49 It thinks itself to be the great trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. It sees the sun, moon and stars in itself. It considers itself as the whole creation and the interior and exterior part of everything. 50 All these are the imaginary creations of the Intellect. There is nothing whatever other than itself. But in essence, Intellect is quite transparent. There is no concrete matter in it. No memory of gross materials is ever attached to it. No duality whatsoever exists in the unity of its nature. 51 The world is a causeless, uncaused, and uncreated thing, in reality a nothing at all. Its creation is a dream and its appearance is like a delusive shadow in empty air. 52 It appears as a phantom in vacuum, and as an intelligence in Consciousness. It is intelligible as it is, and that is in the sense of a nothing. 53 What is the memory of a thing other than a dream of something, a nothing in reality? What is time of which we have no conception, except that it is an imagination of the mind in empty air? 54 What is contained inside the compact Intellect, the very same appears on the outside of it. But in reality, there is no substance to the exterior object of sight, just as there is nothing to the interior object of thought. All is only the glittering of Consciousness. 55 Whatever issues out of the bodiless and nameless something, which is forever still and calm in its nature, is considered to be a causeless and uncaused production that appears before blinded sight. 56 Therefore know that this world is to be viewed in the same intellectual light as you see the Supreme Brahman himself. Know that this world is a castle in the sky, like a dream in the empty space of your mind when you sleep. 57 There is no such thing as a visible or material world at anytime. Where can you find any dust on the watery surface of the sea? How can you see anything visible in the invisible spirit of Brahman? 58 If the world appears as anything at all to your sight, you must view it as the manifestation of God himself, in his unthinkable and incomprehensible nature. 59 The world is full of the glory of God. One is not derived from the other. The world is a full representation of divine splendor on the face of nature. 60 Though I have been repeatedly giving these lectures, yet the deluded minds of men are far from receiving them. They believe the world of their dreams as if they were awake. Even though they know the unreality of their own dreams, still they will never get rid of their rooted prejudice of being awake.

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Chapter 169 Description of the Calm and Tranquil Mind

Vasishta continued: He who is not delighted with his delights or dejected in his distress and looks only within himself for his peace and solace is truly called a liberated man in his lifetime. 2 The mind of a self-liberated man is not moved from its steadiness in the solid rock of intellectuality towards the worldly enjoyments that are spread before him. 3 The liberated soul rests in its intellectuality and has its mind ever fixed in it. He delights in intellectual culture and he has his calm rest therein. 4 The true liberated soul rests in the Supreme Soul. His mind does not slide from divine contemplation, nor does he take any delight in the visible objects that are all around. 5 Rama said, Sage, I think that the man who feels no pain in pain, who derives no pleasure from what is pleasurable, and who is entirely unconscious of both, is a mere block devoid of both senses and consciousness. 6 Vasishta replied: The self reposed rests only in his empty consciousness. From the purity of his understanding, his soul derives a spontaneous delight that can be found in nothing and nowhere else. 7 He rests in the Supreme Soul whose mind is cleansed of its doubts in all things and who by discrimination has obtained the true and certain knowledge of everything. 8 He who takes no delight in any earthly thing is said to rest in God. Though he is outwardly employed in discharging the duties of his life, yet his soul is fixed in his God. 9 He is known to be tranquil whose activities are all without any aim or expectation. He lives contentedly with whatever offers itself to his fate. 10 In this world of sorrow and misery, he alone is happy and successful who, in his long, restless, helpless and tiresome journey in it, has found his rest in the Supreme Spirit through his own intellectual improvements. 11 They who, after running their long race in the active course of worldly life, have come at last to set themselves at ease and quiet at the latter end of their lives, are like men who appear to have fallen fast asleep, enjoying their rest after the distressing dreams of their busy days. 12 In the open sphere of their intellects, they shine as brightly as the glorious sunrises in the sky, running his daily course without stopping anywhere. 13 Good people seem to be sleepy in their minds, though they seem awake and employed in business with their bodies. They remain as inactive as any inert body, though they are never inactive in their souls. 14 They who lie asleep on their beds, drowned in their reveries and dreams, are said and believed to be sleeping, though they are conscious of the workings of their minds. 15 When a tired traveler rests after a long and wearisome journey and is unable to utter a word from his hard breathing, such dullness does not indicate his dead silence or sluggishness. 16 The man of transcendent knowledge, with perfect peace and tranquility of mind and soul, remains as blind to the splendors of day as the blind owl. He remains as quiet as anybody in the darkness of night, when the whole creation sleeps in the gloom of ignorance and unconsciousness. 17 He is a happy man who, presented with the varied scenes of this visible world while awake, sleeps through them without noticing its sorrows. 18 He who pays no regard to ceremonial rites, remaining sincere to the welfare of his own soul, such a man is said to be self satisfied from his communion with himself. He is never, O Rama, considered as dead himself. 19 He who has passed over the miseries of this world and reached the other side remains supremely blessed in himself because of his sense of heavenly bliss in his inner soul. 20 He who is tired with his long journey in this world, always deluded by the five senses and the objects of the senses, becomes dissatisfied with his enjoyments in life and in the end meets with the phantoms of despair. 21 Overtaken by hoary old age, he is battered and shattered by
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the hoarfrost of diseases. Then like a old and worn-out antelope, he vainly wishes he could return to his native forests and plains. 22 Forsaken by the Supreme Soul, the only faithful guide in our journey through life, we are exposed to intricate mazes of thorns and thickets until the weary traveler, sitting in a shady grove, is at a loss to know where to take his rest. 23 Here we are robbed of our passport and money by the highwaymen of our sins and sensualities. We are overcome by our weakness and exposed to numberless dangers and difficulties along the way. 24 He who is possessed of his soul through his own spiritual knowledge crosses the ocean of the world (samsara) and reaches spiritual regions. There he rests calmly on the bedstead of his spirit and without the bedding of his body. 25 The man who moves about without any aim or effort of his own, and without his dream and sound sleep, whose mind is ever wakeful and whose eyes are never closed in sleep, such a man sleeps softly in the lap of his soul. 26 Like a well bred horse that sleeps standing and running, the self-possessed person sleeps in himself, even though he is employed among mankind with the acts of life. 27 How very sound and profound is the trance of the philosophic mind that it is not disturbed even at the roar of thunder or the explosions of volcanoes. 28 How wonderful is the ecstasy of the right discerner of truth who sees within himself all that an external observer with his open eyes sees as lying outside. 29 The man who sees the world disappear from the sight of his open eyes is joyful with his ecstatic sights, and not with intoxicating liquor. 30 Ah, how happily he sleeps in his reverie whose soul is satisfied and at rest after it has swallowed the visible world and drank the ambrosial drink of self satisfaction. 31 How happily does the self-possessed man sleep in his singleness, who is always joyful without anything to enjoy. He enjoys the everlasting bliss of unity. He sees the bright shining light of his inner spirit without any mortal thing on the outside. 32 Happy is the self-possessed soul who is blind to the objects of common desire and rejoices in the blaze of transcendent light in himself. He delights in subtle and spiritual joys as much as others take delight in their solid food and gross enjoyments. 33 The spiritual man sleeps happily with the inner peace of his mind. He shuts his eyes against the outer world which abounds only in sights of sorrow and the restlessness of the exuberant mob. 34 The self-possessed rest in the perfect peace of their minds. In their outer behavior, they debase themselves as the meanest of the mean, but in the greatness of their souls, they consider themselves to be the greatest of the great. They rest in the lap of the vast emptiness of their selves. 35 The knower of truth sleeps happily in the Universal Soul, his body resting in its vast emptiness which contains an infinity of worlds in every atom. 36 The knower of truth rests perfectly blessed in the Supreme Spirit which is full of indescribable light. He sees the repeated creations and dissolutions of the world in the Spirit, without being destroyed himself. 37 Blessed is the godly man who, seeing the world like a dream in his sleep, rests in the spirit of his God where he sees everything as clear as daylight and as bright as open sky. 38 How blessed is the knower of truth with his musings, who contemplates on the essences of all substances and absorbs the entirety of nature in himself, and whose comprehensive mind grasps the cosmos in itself, just as the emptiness of space comprehends the whole universe within its ample womb. 39 How happily does the self-communing sage sleep in his abstract contemplation of the clear and bright heavens in himself. He sees the entire universe in the light of the clear sky, resounding with the sound of his own breaths and snoring. 40 How happily does the self-communing sage rest in the depth of his innermost thoughts. He finds himself as empty as the infinite void itself. He sees the universe hovering like a dream in a corner of that emptiness. 41 How cheerfully does the self-musing sage lie down in his humble bed, which he finds to be like a mat made of straw swept before him by the tide of time and the current of contending circumstances. 42 The sage, by his diligent self-reflection, has come to know the true nature of himself. He lives in his lifetime as if in the state of dreaming. He deems his dream to be an aerial

figure existing in empty air. 43 The sage, by his diligent self-reflection, has come to the knowledge of his own emptiness. He comes to the same knowledge of all nature at large, until at last he comes to reduce and assimilate himself to that emptiness. 44 The waking man falls asleep and the sleeping person rises to wake again. In this manner they pass their time in endless turns. Only the sound sleeper is ever wakeful to his true friend, self-liberation. 45 He who, having passed his days in the company of his best friend, selfliberation, comes to enjoy the sweet companionship of that friend self-liberation in his future life for a long period of time. He is truly entitled to perpetual rest and everlasting bliss in the state of the Divinity itself forever.

Chapter 170 The Friends of a Wise Man: Good Conduct and Mind
Rama asked, Tell me sage. Who is that friend with whom he lives? What is the nature of this enjoyment? Is it subjective or objective? Is it is derived from within oneself or from external objects? 2 Vasishta replied: Only our own conduct is our true friend, whether it is innate in our nature or derived from outside through training and education from others. 3 Our inborn good conduct is as infallibly and friendly to us as the natural beneficence of our parents. Our extraneous good behavior is as governing upon us as the control and restraints of a faithful wife in the intricate maze of life. 4 A fearless course of life, a well earned livelihood, and a well regulated mode of living, together with a dispassionate temper and coolness of mind are filled with unrestricted and ambrosial sweets. 5 An unblemished life acquired from early youth is able to save a person from all dangers and difficulties in the world and render him trustworthy for every trust, a repository of all wealth and treasures. 6 It is able to preserve men from all evils, just as a father prevents his children from daubing their bodies with dust and dirt and hinders them from all acts of wickedness. 7 Such a life gives a man the passion of fire and the sweetness of flowers. It adds a clarity to his mind and face, just like sunlight brightens the face of day. 8 It supports a man like a father feeding and fondling his child, protecting him from every accident, just as a father ever ready to shield his children from all harm. 9 As fire purifies the body of gold from alloy and separates the impurity that is to be rejected, so does it show the good qualities from whatever is to be shunned and avoided. 10 It gladdens the hearts of men with polite speech controlled against awkwardness. It is a repository of all laudable pursuits, just like a treasury full of coins and precious gems. 11 As the sun never shows darkness, so a good man never exposes his dark side. As a loving wife shows only her affection to her beloved, so he shows only his tenderness to people. 12 He speaks and behaves kindly with all men, doing them only good. His words are always sweet and cooling without any self-interest. 13 He is the well-wisher of men and therefore is revered by all. He speaks smilingly to all without any craving of his own and displays the form of only goodness to all beings. 14 Should he happen to meet an enemy in a contest who is ready to strike the first blow, he tries to evade his opponents blow by some trick or skill. 15 He is the patron of gentle and polite men, the protector of women and his family. He is like nectar medicine to the souls of all who are ailing under sickness of body or heart. 16 He is particularly a patron of learning and the learned. He is a servant of respected men and favors the eloquent and argumentative. He is a companion and trusted friend to his equals in birth and breeding. 17 He gains the favor of princes, noblemen and the liberal towards him. He obtains their favor conducting all sacrifices, charitable acts, devotional austerities and pilgrimages, and contributions from his honest means. 18 He partakes of good food and drink in the company of his friends and brahmins, joining with his wife, children and all his familys dependants and house residents. He never keeps company except with the good and great. 19 He abstains from all enjoyments, considering them to be like bits of straw and the causes of disease. He occupies himself conversing upon good subjects with his view to the enlightenment and betterment of mankind. 20 In this manner he passes his time in company with his friends and family. He is content with his own state and happy with what fortune has provided for him. 21 Rama asked, Tell me sage, in short, who are his wives and children and his
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friends? What are their different forms? What are their respective qualities and virtues? 22 Vasishta replied: His many sons are sacred ablutions and charities, religious austerities and meditation. They are all great souls who are entirely devoted to him. 23 His wife is named Moon-ray (Chandra-lekha). She is like a phase of the moon in her appearance. Her very sight delights the eyes. She is his constant companion, always loving to him and content in herself. 24 She is the ravisher of his heart and the dispeller of the gloom of his mind by reason of her loving kindness to him. She is the delight and delighter of his soul, an ever faithful helpmate to him. 25 He has another consort named Same-Mind (Samata) who is dear to his heart and keeps the door to his house. She pleases him by her very appearance. 26 She fixes her mind always at the mansions of virtue and patience. She runs before and guides the steps of her oppressed lord to the abode of the blessed and blissful. 27 That strong man has another wife named Friendship (Maitri) whom he bears along with Same-Mind on either shoulder. Friendship advises him how to quell the enemies of his kings states. 28 She is his clever counselor in all honorable acts, giving proof of the truth of her advice by increasing his wealth and rendering him honorable before all. 29 Being employed this way in the discharge of his duties in the circle of his friends, family and advisers, the wise man is always pleased in himself and never complains or grumbles at any person or anything whatever. 30 The wise man always remains as he is, silent and calm in his mind. He always remains as unmoved as a figure in a painting, though he may be moving about in the ordinary affairs of life. 31 He remains as dumb as a stone in fruitless discussions, pretending to be deaf in useless conversation. 32 He is like a dead body in acts that are against the social usage, but in conversations regarding polity and good manners he is as eloquent as the wise Brihaspati and as fluent as the snake Sesha with its hundred tongues. 33 When engaged in some righteous discourse, he exposes the fallacy of sophistic reasoning. He clears all doubts in a moment by the versatility of his conversation on various subjects all at once. 34 He is tolerant and magnanimous, bounteous and charitable. He is flexible and gentle. He is sweet in his speech, handsome in his look, and famed for his pious acts. 35 Such is the character of enlightened men of their own nature. No practice or education can ever make anyone this way. The sun and moon and fire are bright by themselves. There is nothing else that can ever make them shine.

Chapter 171 Meditation of Pure Emptiness: the Space between Thoughts

Vasishta resumed and said: Our empty consciousness exhibits the phenomenal world to us. In reality, there is no such thing as this world, or its appearance, or a vacuum in nature, or a thing such as consciousness in ourselves. 2 Whatever is apparent before us is the manifestation of Consciousness. It is vainly called the world, just as the open air called the sky is nothing other than the air itself. 3 A man going from one place to another experiences a gap in between when thinks of the place he has seen and left behind. In the same way, the world a mere gap and thought of the mind. 4 Before creation there was nothing. Then how could this something appear from that nothing? The latter having no material cause, it is no material or visible thing. 5 Then there was not even an atom in existence. So how and from what could this spinning world have its rise and form? 6 Therefore this form of visible world could not have sprung from it, just as no child could ever be born of a barren woman. Hence there is nothing such as the visible world. The conception of it must be entirely false. 7 Whatever appears as visibly present before us is only the blank emptiness of Consciousness. This is the transcendental state in which the supreme unity appears to us. 8 In the depth of our sound sleep a fleeting dream appears before us. So it is with Supreme Consciousness which never forsakes the serene and unalterable tranquility of its divine nature. 9 It always exists of itself, in itself, in its calm and quiet state before the appearance of creation. It manifests intellectual emptiness in the form of the visible world, which is how it appears to us. 10 The idle thoughts of the mind present themselves like airy castles in our sleep. So does the emptiness of Supreme Consciousness exhibit the appearance of creation in its own empty space. 11 Empty air evolves itself in the manner of whirlwinds. So does the intellectual emptiness exhibit the phenomenal world that exists in its own self. 12 Hence the three worlds that appear so real to our view are in their very nature quite unintelligible and hidden to our sight. It is the Supreme Deity itself that appears in this manner of its existence in its own empty substance. 13 There is nothing such as the form of earth or anything else whatever at anytime, be it with or without form. 14 As a formless mountain appears in dream then disappears in the air upon waking, so the world that is visible when awake becomes invisible in sleep. In the same way, the triple world appears and disappears by turns in the transparent and tranquil Consciousness. 15 To the watchful and enlightened mind, the world appears as identical with God. But however intelligent we may be, we can never know whether we are sleeping or awake. 16 During the space of journeying from one place to another, the mind can be unoccupied with any object. The minds of all livings beings are naturally unoccupied with any preconceived idea. This blankness is the true state of the intellect. 17 That unemployed state of mind which one has in the interval of his journey from place to place is what is called the transcendent void which contains all existence. 18 Now, this emptiness of the mind and the emptiness of the world are similar to one another. Their contents are similar. Neither contains anything except the principles of the five elements, whether in their ideal or gross forms, which we call the unreal and real. 19 The unreal or ideal elements are the inner conceptions of the mind and are called mental idea objects. The real or gross forms of the elements are called visible form objects. Both of these are only different modes of divine essence. All of them are like whirling currents and waves rising on the surface of the infinite ocean of God. 20 Hence there is no such thing as an objective world, except that it is of the nature of that vacant mind of the traveler in the interim of his journey from one place to another.
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The rising and setting of the passions and affections in the mind are mere modes of the mind. So the being and not being of anything, the presence and absence of the world are mere modes of the Divine Mind. 22 The chasm between one thought and another is truly characteristic of the emptiness of the Divine Mind. The visible world is only a wave in the ocean of eternity, or a mirage in a sandy desert. 23 The Divine Spirit never changes from its state of calm rest and vacant mindedness, like the mind of the traveler in the interval of his journey from one place to another. Such is the state of this world which is ever calm and quiet. 24 From the beginning, since the first creation of the world, nothing was made that seems to be made. It is only a magic show that appears so perceptible to sight. 25 Alas, all this that shines so clearly to sight is nothing. Yet it is something true when viewed in the light of Brahman himself. Then it affords us fresh joy. 26 Where shall I go? How can I get away from this ungodly world that is ever prone to unrighteousness? It is an insubstantial sight that passes for substantial. Nobody understands that this world is Brahman, the same God who exhibits himself in this mode and manner. 27 It is no production or reflection, neither is it the original pattern or its copy. What then are these phenomena and how and from where? All these that appear to view are of the emptiness of Brahman who exhibits himself in this manner in all shapes. 28 As a gem shines of its own brightness and not derived from without, so empty Consciousness shines of its own splendor, shown forth in the creation which is the same as itself. 29 In that calm and quiet emptiness, this sun shines with all his glory. More accurately, a spot of that emptiness shines in the shape of the sun, which is only a limited part of it and nothing else. 30 Though situated within God, yet neither the sun nor the moon shines of itself. God illuminates those luminaries, neither of whom can illuminate that transcendent Supreme Lord to us. 31 It is his brightness that enlightens this visible mundane sphere. It is he alone who gives the light of the sun, moon, stars and fire, as well as all other shining bodies that shine with their borrowed light from him. 32 Whether God has a shape or is formless, or has a body or is without body, can only be a verbal discussion of the ignorant. The learned well know that any possible description of God is as unreal as the possibility of a flower growing in empty air. 33 A particle of sand shines brightly in sunshine, but even the sun and moon do not shine as brightly as those particles before the great glory of their maker. 34 The shining sun, moon and stars are only offshoots of the flaming gem of the empty Consciousness of God. Say, how can they be anything other than flashes of the same gem from which they are emitted? 35 The divine state of pure consciousness, divested of intellectuality and devoid of emptiness, becomes deprived of its essence and all qualities. Being thus drained of all its properties and attributes, it becomes full of the totally of all existence. 36 The earth and all elemental bodies exist in it, yet in a manner nothing exists in it. All living beings (jiva) are in it, yet none exists as separate from it. 37 All things combine in unity, in their atomic forms, without forsaking their grossness without. The Divine never forsakes its uniformity, without any mixture or duality in its pure being of unity. 38 Anything here is nothing, yet it is not a nothing either. Therefore it is too difficult to say what thing is or is not. 39 There is one thing which is infinite without any intersection and ever extended everywhere. This is the essence of the empty Consciousness that contains the germ and foundation of the universe in itself. 40 The mind is vacant and still in the space between passing from one thought to another. Such is the nature and form of the world, although it appears so diversified to view. 41 Though it appears to have great diversity, yet it is the only uniform Consciousness that extends consistently over all emptiness, seeing the five elemental bodies hovering about it as if in a dream. 42 As Consciousness passes from its rest of sleep to the sights in its dream, so it passes

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from the state of the void of universal desolation to the commotion state of creation. 43 As sleep and dream reoccur to every soul, so the extinction and renovation of the world occurs to all alike. So also waking is like the enlightened state of the soul (turiya). Hence the world is no other than a phenomenon in intellectual emptiness. 44 Thus the whole universe is no more than a state of waking, sleeping, dreaming, and turiya scenes. Such is the understanding of the learned on this subject. We know nothing about how the ignorant see the world. 45 The Lord is inscrutable amidst living brutes and all inert creation. We can come to no conclusion with regard to the nature of that Being who is beyond the knowledge of our minds and understanding. 46 This much is knowable of Him. He is pure Consciousness and all things are full of Him. Yet things are not of the same form as that Reality which manifests itself in the form of the universe. 47 The wise use words like permeate and diffusion to describe the omnipresence of the Divine Spirit in creation. Actually, there is no trace of meaning to such words to describe the Divine Essence in all nature. 48 Since the first creation of the world, this great essence of empty Consciousness is situated of itself and in the souls of great men. 49 All pervading Consciousness is always situated in the minds of the sages whose souls are full with the presence of the one Supreme Spirit. It is that Consciousness which conceived in itself the idea that passes under the name of the world. 50 The knowledge of the bliss of the world, like that of a dream upon waking, is attained with delight. But lack of this knowledge, like a nightmare when sleeping, makes us uneasy all the while. 51 The silent saint who knows the truth is always in the same state of tranquility, whether he be walking or sitting anywhere, or waking or sleeping. 52 The wise man who remains indifferent to everything, sitting contentedly even in his distress, caring not whether he lives or dies, has nothing to gain or lose. 53 The wise man who is outwardly employed in worldly affairs without taking anything to heart, neither parting with nor craving anything, remains inactive in his active life. 54 Complete detachment is characteristic of the wise man, just as heat and cold are natural to fire and snow. This habit of the mind is not acquired by practice or education. 55 He who by his nature does not have this control of his mind is ever ignorant of truth. Ignorance of this truth is the sign of a character that is inclined towards base desires. 56 The truly wise man remains perfect and strong in his own good nature. He is quite satisfied with the sweet ambrosial drink of his transcendent tranquility. He is calm in his mind without changing desires for this thing or that.

Chapter 172 There Is no Memory; All Thoughts Are Memories

Vasishta continued: The world is devoid of any material element, whether the earth or others. I believe the first creator to be only the Mind, the fruitful tree of desires. 2 The word mind derives from the act of minding. Afterwards it came to be used as a name for the thinking power, just like the whirling of waters loaned its name to a whirlpool. 3 The minds connection with Consciousness gives its understanding and other faculties. Otherwise, it would be as blank as empty air, which would have no dust were it not for the earth underneath it. 4 The mind is neither the body nor the heart, not the senses or desires, nor does the mind even have any of these. Though these are commonly attributed to the mind, yet in its true sense, it is devoid of all properties. 5 How can memory be the cause that reproduces the world? If the creator Brahma is liberated or extinct with the extinction of the world, how could he have retained his memory of it? The new creator of the new world could not possibly have any memory of what he did not know. 6 Holy and liberated souls have no bodies or memories. The passing currents of rivers do not return or whirl back, like the whirlpools of some. 7 If a liberated soul has any body at all, owing to the memory of his former state, it must be an unearthly and immaterial body, still and rarefied like an imaginary form. 8 Our imagination presents an imaginary mountain to the minds eye. Such is the airdrawn body of the all encompassing Viraj presented to us without any earthly form. 9 Therefore there is no such thing as memory whatsoever at any time. It is merely built upon popular belief and not upon the reason of wise men. 10 Rama asked, O inspired sage, explain why there was no memory in the first creator Prajapati. He must have remembered the creation of a first kalpa or learnt it by his inspiration. 11 Vasishta replied: The preexistence of memory is possible in the outward or visible world which admits of cause and effect. But can there be memory when there is no such world, only mere emptiness? 12 There is nothing visible here, from the highest heaven to the lowest pit. If everything is only a nothing, then what is memory and what use is it? 13 The thought of a prior, absent world is called its memory. But when there never was and never will be any visible world, how can you think of its memory, even in fancy? 14 The complete absence of phenomena at all times makes it identical with the invisible Brahman himself. This being the truth, tell me. How can you fancy the memory of anything? 15 Therefore the prime creator can have no memory of a prior existence, nor could he have any bodily form as he is in the form of a spirit with only pure intelligence. 16 We should remember the past from our present state, that we are mortal beings undergoing repeated reincarnations. We should not bring other persons and things to our memories, as others think it to mean. 17 Memory (smriti) means the retention of past things in our mind. But what can we remember when nothing was or is or shall ever be? 18 All this stupendous fabric is the Supreme Brahman itself. He remains as immovable as a mountain, without beginning, middle or end. What then is the memory or presence of it? 19 The Lord being the Universal Soul is the soul or essence of all things, shining like the luster of empty Consciousness. Outwardly he is quite calm, as I may say, he is resting in our memory. 20 So the memory of the Lord is as he is seen in the light of nature. Hence the habitual meditation on the Lord corresponds with the contemplation of external nature. 21 Whatever is known to us is nature, that is the object of our meditation. Hence the appearance of anything in the mind is called to its memory. 22 If anything that is absent or nonexistent appears before our sight, like the false
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appearance of water in a mirage, that is also the case with our misleading memory. 23 Again, any prejudice rooted in the minds of men that appears as correct by long habit of thinking it as such, this also passes for memory. 24 Any sudden accident or passing event that strikes the mind for a moment also passes also under the name of memory, even though it may or may not happen anymore. 25 An idea rises of itself in the mind and by being fostered for any length of time, becomes impressed upon it. Anything else that resembles it passes for an object of our memory. 26 Anything passes for an object of memory, like the movement of air by means of a fan. 27 Again, whatever occurs in the mind, like parts of a whole subject, is also called its memory, just like any part of the body is also called the body. 28 There are also many mental fabrications that arise of themselves before the mind, like magic shows appearing before our sight. If the memories of these be called memory, then say, what truth or reliance is there in it? 29 Consider how this faculty of memory is very imperfect and false to man. There is no visible creation at all. Therefore its memory is altogether meaningless. 30 The world is only a display of the density or volume of the Divine Consciousness. It is reflected at present as a visible object in the minds of the ignorant who have given them the name of memory, which in reality is nothing at all. 31 I cannot tell you how to obtain liberation, nor do I know what it means. However, to clear the doubt of the questioner, I will now tell you something about it. 32 Until there is an end to the sight of the visible, an oblivion to the memories of past events, and a cessation of ignorance and delusion, liberation is hard to be attained. 33 The ignorant have a belief in things quite unknown to us. They can never conceive whatever is imperceptible to their senses. 34 The enlightened are unacquainted with the gross errors that lurk in the darkness of ignorant minds, just as the ever shining sun knows nothing of what passes in the gloom of night. 35 Whatever likeness of anything appears to be impressed in the mirror of the mind, that is the result of habitual thoughts. The impression of anything studied or stored in the mind is called memory. 36 But when these glaring impressions in the imagination are rubbed out of the mind like the colors of a painting, nothing remains of any color or tinge of the mistaken world, such as in the clear minds of the learned. 37 A mirage shows the appearance of water which is a mere delusion and never true. So is the dream that shows this creation to view, which is no more real than a false vision. 38 Empty Consciousness contains creation and shows its representation in ourselves. Thus the world only appears in the emptiness of the Consciousness and not anything as fallen or detached from it. 39 The Supreme Soul shows this form in itself and makes its unreality appear as a reality to us. Though this form was manifested at the beginning, yet it is nothing more than the display of an unreality. 40 Tell me. Where does this world with all its pleasant and unpleasant things come from? It is never anything of a plastic form. It is not an appearance proceeding from memory. 41 The world has no cause in the beginning. It appears as the very form of the Supreme. It is only to our sorrow that we regard its visible form or search for our liberation. 42 Both of these views are wrong and tend to our bondage in the world. The view of the worlds emptiness in the emptiness of Consciousness is the only means to our release and liberation from it. 43 The only way to obtain liberation in this world is to regard the apparent world in its empty form, situated in the emptiness of Consciousness, identical with the true form or spirit of God, and undetached in its essence from the divine essence. 44 The only means for our release from the bondage of this world is to see visible bodies, such as those of the sun, moon, and mountains, and the invisible bodies, such as space, time, and other ideal objects, in the empty space of Divine Consciousness. 45 The only way to our emancipation from temporal bondage is to see the same spirit situated or dwelling in the recess of Consciousness, identical with its own notion of itself and bearing resemblance to the nature of the dream which proceeds from its essence.

How can any earthly or other elemental body have its place in the spirit of God which is not of the earth or any other element? It shines of itself in itself as the quiet void of Consciousness. 47 How and from where could the earth and other elements proceed in the beginning unless they were inherent and contemporary with the divine essence, just like the many objects of our dream arise from our own nature? 48 Afterwards these creations of the spirit are named the earth and the like and considered as material objects. But say, how could spiritual emanations assume such corporal and tangible forms either by pure memory or by creating forms? 49 The world is not the production of our error. It is not a representation of our delusion or a magic show. It is not the permeation of the spirit throughout all nature. It is the very essence of the same deity itself. 50 It is the divinity Brahman itself that shines in the form of this wonderful world. It is the very same unity which appears to manifest, and yet is so very obscure and mysterious to us. All that is visible is only pure light, the serene clarity of open air which glows bright then dims by turns, the changes of light and darkness being creation and destruction.

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Chapter 173 Brahman Is Both Conscious and Unconscious; Brahma Is the Mind, Viraj the Imagined Body
Rama asked, The universally entertained idea is that the Divine Spirit is the common soul of all, infinite in its permeation. They why is it supposed to be the soul of only the living body and called the ego or a personal being? 2 How does Consciousness become inert in the state of our sleep, as in a block of wood or stone? Why is it said to exist or become extinct in the state of its numbness? 3 Vasishta replied: In ordinary, common speech we say that the Universal Soul resides as the ego or personal being in the body, just as we say the hands of the body are its hands and not its feet. 4 As the leaf of a tree is considered only a part of the tree, so the Universal Soul residing in the tree is called only a tree. 5 As emptiness in the sky is also called the sky, so the Universal Soul dwelling in matter is referred to as that matter. 6 An aerial castle in a dream appears as a tangible castle to the dreamer for the time. In the same way, the Universal Soul living in our sleep, dreams and waking state is thought to be sleeping, dreaming, or being awake at that time. 7 As stones, trees or cliffs are seen to rise on mountains, and waves on the surface of waters, so the huge mountain also rises as a stone or a tree from the bosom of the all pervading Spirit. 8 As the living body gives growth to dull and dead nails and hairs, so the living soul of the universe grows unconscious stones and trees upon it. 9 As the conscious soul becomes as unconscious as a block of wood in its sleep, so the Universal Soul becomes inert before creation and after its dissolution. Again, as the sleeping soul sees a series of dreams arising out of it, so the tranquil spirit of God beholds the light of creation issuing out of it. 10 As the conscious and unconscious soul of man produces both conscious offspring and unconscious excrements from its body, so the Universal Soul produces both living beings and inert bodies from itself. 11 The conscious and the unconscious are both embodied in the person of the Universal Soul which is possessed of both the movables and the inert in itself, although it is formless in its substance. 12 All these contraries in nature disappear before the sight of the truly learned, just as the false sights in dreams disappear from the view of the awakened man who knows the falsity of dreams. 13 All this is the emptiness of Consciousness in which there is no sight, view or viewer, just like a dreamer, awakened from his dreaming, neither sees his dream nor his dreaming sights anymore. 14 Millions and millions of creations are appearing and disappearing in the vacuum of Consciousness, like recurring waves and revolving whirlpools in the sea. 15 The waters of the ocean show various shining forms in its rising waves. In the same way Consciousness raises many creations bearing different names in its own intellectuality. 16 To the truly learned, the world appears as it is, as Brahman. To the ignorant mass of men, it appears as many and changing because they lack precise knowledge of it. 17 The wave who knows its nature to be only calm and cool water thinks no more of being a fluctuating wave. So the man knowing himself as Brahman thinks no more of his mortal state. 18 The idea that the Divine Spirit vibrates, which comes from the fluctuating appearance of creation, is mistaking the calmness of the Divine nature. The fluctuation belongs to the powers residing in the Divinity. 19 Empty Consciousness never forsakes its tranquility. The variety of knowledge that rises in it, like a varying series of dreams, is attributable to the mind, which they call Brahma or the great progenitor of all. 20 Thus the first lord of creatures was the formless mind that does not decay. It was of intellectual form like an imaginary being, and supposed to be the cause of all.
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Saying you are nothing is like saying the word gold. The word has no form of itself. Its purity is the gold itself. 22 Uncreated Brahman, being an intellectual and empty form, an imaginary body imbued with volition, appeared as the Prime Ego or a personal being containing the world in his body. 23 The empty void of Consciousness displays these wonders that are known as the alternating creations, preservations and destructions of the world. 24 The clear and uncreated light to which Consciousness evolves itself of its own accord, like the evolution of airy dreams from the mind, is named the first father of all. 25 As a wave assumes one form or another and rolls on endlessly over the vast expanse of the sea, so runs the heavenly mind in the forms of the revolving creations and their dissolutions. 26 The light of the intellectual vacuum is called Viraj and is of the same mind as Brahman. It stretches out creation like a castle or city in ones imagination. 27 Viraj is the combined form of the triple states of waking, dreaming and sleep. The first two are analogous to the creation and preservation of the universe, and the last is similar to the utter darkness of dissolution. 28 From the chaotic state of his dissolution, there sprang light and darkness, like dark and white hairs growing on his head. The rotations of time resemble the joints of his body. 29 His mouth represent the fire, his head the upper sky, and the air is below his navel. His foot-stool is the earth, his eyes are the sun and moon, and the east and west are his two ears. In this manner Lord Viraj manifests himself in the imagination of his mind. 30 Thus did the expanded empty form of Viraj represent the whole visible world in his ideal body which was a figure of his own imagination, just like any of the insubstantial forms of our dreams or fancies. 31 Whatever is thought of in the emptiness of Consciousness, the same comes to be vividly exhibited there. Such truly is the form of this world which we conceive in our self. 32 Viraj is truly an intangible being in himself who appears to be as widely extended as the vast extent of the universe. In his own nature, he is like a city or mountain that we see in our dreams. 33 Whatever one thinks himself to be, he conceives in him to have become the same, without his actually being as such. So an actor is seen to play his part in dream from the concept of his acting on the stage. 34 Whatever be the doctrines of the Vedanta, Buddhism, Sankhya, and Saugata systems of the philosophy, and whatever may be the doctrines of Tryaksha, Pashupati, and other teachers of Agama scriptures, they all agree in acknowledging Brahman as the giver of the boons that they all respectively desire. All of them obtain the particular object of bliss from the same. Such is the glory of the great God, whose soul fills all bodies and whose bounty supports them all.

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Chapter 174 Nirvana Is Knowing God Is All and Nothing Else Exists; Only This Knowledge Yields Nirvana
Vasishta continued: Consciousness alone shined in the beginning with its thought of creation appearing before it like a vision in a dream. This was an image of the three worlds, a reflection of the light of Brahman himself. 2 These creations were like endless waves in the ocean of the Divine Mind rising from the flexibility of his omniscience. Hence there is no difference between the creation and its absence. Nor is there any sorrow in the one or bliss in the other. 3 Both dream and sound sleep of the soul belong to its sleeping state when the mind remains as vacant as empty air. In the same way, visible and invisible creation are both the same in the emptiness of Consciousness. 4 This world in our waking state, appearing like a city seen in our dream, is not worthy of reliance by the wise who are well acquainted with its nature of being an imaginary appearance. 5 Upon awaking we realize the falsity of the imaginary city we saw in our dreams. In the same way, in the end we realize our mistake of taking the world to be real. 6 As upon waking, we understand the falsity of all our efforts and desires in the imaginary city of our dream. So do we find, at last, that all our aims and attempts in our waking state in this world are equally false and fleeting. 7 If anyone assigns any other cause, then he should admit that what he says is mere 8 fancy. Guessing knowledge is no better than a dream of the world. The authority of what you can see is much stronger than that which you cannot see. 9 It is better to judge the soul and other attributes by examples that are nearer and more familiar rather than something remote. Otherwise it is like a fall from the top of a hill in a dream. 10 Perfect insensibility is complete inertness, a changeless state of body and mind. The nature of the world and the state of things in it are constantly restless and changing. Therefore it is impossible to attain samadhi in either of these two states. 11 Meditation in worldly life must be too sensitive and variable, while trance stupefies a man to a stone. True liberation consists neither in the changeableness of mind nor in its stone-like insensibility. 12 I think no liberation is obtainable from stone-like, apathetic trance any more than one gains liberation from deep sleep. 13 Only through consummate knowledge can reasoning men dispel their ignorance. He who has secured his liberation in his lifetime has no chance of his being born again. 14 Inflexible abstraction is said to have no bounds. It consists in sitting steadfast in profound meditation, without distraction or diversion. Such a posture is said to be all illuminating, the eternal sunshine of a yogi. 15 It is called the endless absorption of the soul, and this is the fourth or last state of contemplation. It is also called nirvana, or losing ones self in ones reveries. This is what they call liberation from all bonds and cares of the world. 16 Liberation is the density or depth of wisdom and the intensity of mental examination. There is a complete absence of any memory of phenomena in it. It is known as the state of perfect transcendentalism or glory. 17 It is not the stone-like inertness of some philosophers or the trance or sound sleep of others. It is neither the lack of choice of the Patanjalas or the nonexistence or utter annihilation of the Buddhist. 18 It is the knowledge of Brahman as the prime source of all and the nothingness of visible creation. It is knowing God as all and yet nothing that exists. Therefore it is to know him as he is in his all pervading spirit. 19 The consummate knowledge of all gives us our positive rest of nirvana, knowing that the world is the same as its nonexistence, 20 that all this variety is no variety at all, and that there is no entity in reality. All apparent realities are mere unrealities. It is the end of all our conceptions and inductions. It is the only reality. 21 The entire nothingness of the visible world is the state of
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nirvana. The settled knowledge of this in anyone constitutes his supreme bliss. 22 This state is attainable by ones pure understanding and his habit of constant meditation, joined with a knowledge of the scriptures and scrutiny into the right sense of significant words and their meanings. 23 Constant study of this work is the best guide to liberation. It is attainable by no means other than enlightenment of the understanding. 24 Liberation is never attainable by pilgrimage or charity, sacred ablutions or learning, meditation or yoga contemplation, religious austerities, or sacrifice of any kind. 25 The world is only a delusion causing the unreal to appear as real. The world is only an empty void which presents the appearance of the world, like a dream in the emptiness of Consciousness. 26 No religious austerity or pilgrimage is ever able to remove our error of the world. At best, they can earn us the reward of heaven, but never secure to us our liberation or final beatitude. 27 Our error is eradicated only by the light of the scriptures and our good understanding. Above all, the best means to our liberation and final salvation is spiritual knowledge. 28 The vivid light of the scriptures is sure to destroy our error of the world, just as sunshine dispels the gloom of night. 29 Light, clarity, shade, creation, preservation and destruction appear by turns in the clear empty mirror of Consciousness, like the movement of air in a breeze or the fluctuation of waves in water. 30 The first principle of a future form is contained in the heart or embryo of everything. Air contains wind in constant motion within itself. The existence of the world is inherent in Divine Consciousness. Hence the world has its evolution and dissolution in Divine Consciousness, like the rise and fall of wind in empty air.

Chapter 175 Manifestation of All as Intellects Dream; the Value of the Yoga Vasishta
Vasishta continued: The emptiness of Consciousness which first presented the shadow of a dream could not possibly assume the form of a causal and conscious body in order to be visible and form the visible world. How is it possible for an intellectual void to have a physical form at all? 2 O Rama, in the beginning of creation there was nothing except a shadow dream in the Intellect. There was no this creation or the next world in visible existence. 3 The world appeared only in the form of an insubstantial idea of it. The empty intellect remained as quiet with its ideal world as the mind rests quietly with the nightmare in its dream. 4 Such is the essence of the Intellect, translucent and without beginning or end. Though it is a clear void in itself, yet it bears the ideal model of the world in its mirror. 5 So long as this is unknown, the world appears as a gross substance. But being known as contained in the Divine Spirit, it becomes a spiritual substance. Since how is it possible for any gross matter to attach itself to the transcendent void of which there is no beginning or end? 6 This pure and abstract knowledge of the world is like the dream of a city. Such being the state of the world before its creation, how can any earthly or other matter ever be joined with emptiness? 7 The light of the Divine Soul, shining in the emptiness of Consciousness, is called the cosmos or the universe consisting of, as it is supposed, matter, mind and faculties. 8 Only the lack of understanding makes us suppose a thing such as a material earth spinning around like a whirlpool with the force of the wind. It has no basis or stability. 9 Afterwards the same Divine Spirit (jiva), wishing to display its own glory in its personality of Brahma, thought of the ideal forms of the earth and other things. 10 Then the great mind of Brahma shone with a purer light of itself. This is called his creation which is of an aerial form and nothing else. 11 That pure light was nothing substantial of itself; but only the brightness of Consciousness shining with the radiance of the Divine Spirit. 12 This light is the body of the spirit shining as intellectual light in the void of Consciousness. It presented the appearance of the world in it like dreams floating before the empty mind. 13 There is no other inference that can be derived. There is no other cause that can possibly be assigned or produced. It is certain that in the beginning the Divine Spirit sees itself in the form of creation within the emptiness of its Consciousness. 14 This body of the world, having no property of a tangible body, is never fragile in its nature. But it is as void as the emptiness of Consciousness and as insubstantial as empty air. 15 The form of the world is that of the Supreme Being, which is without any form whatever. It is identical with the Divine form. The Supreme Being comprehends all bodies in itself and extends undivided as all in all in its own self. 16 This is better understood with the example of a dream which rises of itself and shows itself in various forms. But all these varieties are nothing but empty visions, so the diverse scenes and sights of the world are no more than shows of the Divine Spirit. 17 The Divine Soul of Brahman assumed to itself the state of the living spirit and, without forsaking its transparent form, became of the form of mind. 18 This power extends the universe in its ethereal form in air, which appears to be changed from its unchangeable state of transparency to that of a gross nature. 19 The mind is Brahman who gives an external and visible form to the world that was seated invisibly in his heart. It is continually employed in the process of repeated creation and destruction of all. 20 The immaterial mind of Brahman evolved the world from its living matter, which was originally seated in his heart. From there it appeared in a different form as a counterpart of the original, or as the formless representation of something in a dream. 21 The god Brahma, dwelling in himself with his formless mind in his embodied form of the triple world, is being
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diffused in endless forms of conscious and unconscious beings in the triple world. 22 But there is no earth and no material form, not even anything of a visible appearance in the world. It is only the mind of Brahma which exhibits itself in the form of the formless and empty world. 23 Then Lord Brahma thought that his mental form was nothing of substance as it did not appear to sight. It was only Consciousness which shone in this manner within itself, without solidity or substantiality. 24 This mental conception or abstract contemplation of the world cannot be described with words. Realization makes the meditator remain in mute astonishment and causes him to continue as dumb in this ordinary conduct in life. 25 The mind reflecting upon infinite and unlimited Consciousness is lost in infinity. Hence Brahma, having remained in a long silence, at last awakened to his knowledge. 26 After the unconscious mind of Brahma came to its sense, it revolved in itself with its thoughts, just like the liquid waters of the sea turns in whirlpools by agitation. 27 As unconscious air is moved by its internal motion, so all living souls, who are identical with the calm and quiet Supreme Soul, slide away like waters flowing from their main source. 28 As winds and waves are identical with the calm air and still water, yet blow and flow in all directions of themselves, so the minds of living beings, which are the same with the Supreme Intellect, run in different ways of their own accord. 29 Hence the empty intellect of all living beings is the same as the Divine Intellect. This, O most intelligent Rama, is otherwise also known as the Supreme Soul. 30 To us, the Divine Soul appears to be blinking its eyes, like the movement of air. Closing them causes the end of the world an opening exposes creation to view. 31 Its opening of eyes causes the visibility of creation. Closing its eyes makes it invisible or extinct to view. The absence of both these acts is equivalent to the formless void of the world. 32 Seeing the opening and shutting of its sight, or seeing the visibility and disappearance of the world in one unvaried light, makes existence and nonexistence the same in the mind and indicates the perfection of the soul. 33 Seeing and not seeing and their results of creation and extinction make no difference in Divine Consciousness which is always the same. 34 Therefore know this world is as calm and quiet as the Divine Soul. It is of the nature of the uncreated void which is ever the same and has no decay. 35 The sensing, conscious Intellect exhibits itself as the insensible and unconscious emptiness. The same Consciousness shows itself in the form of the world, which in a manner is its body and home. 36 Consciousness is neither born nor made, nor does it ever grow or decay. It is never visible or perceptible, nor do we have any idea of it. It displays its wonders in itself without any extraneous substance in it. 37 All that is called phenomena is the brightness of the blazing gem of the great Consciousness proceeding from the quarry of its emptiness, just as the sunshine which illuminates the world issues from the sun. 38 Brahman shines forth as creation, just as our sleep exhibits the imaginary world in its dream. All this creation is as quiet as sleep, yet it is full with the commotion of the slumbering world. 39 Whatever is known in any manner in the mind, whether existent or nonexistent in the world, is the reflection of Consciousness, whether it be an entity or nonentity. 40 Should the mystery of existence lead us to assume some cause, such as primary atoms or the like, then what cause can be assigned to the appearance of sights in our dream? 41 If the origin of the world is not ascribed to Brahman as the origination of dreams to consciousness, then neither is there any truth in the existence of the One nor in the appearance of the others, both of which cannot be true. 42 The minds of men are inclined towards the particular objects of their fancy. Hence those who believe and delight in God take him to be the origin of all things that appear to them. 43 Whatever is in the minds of men, and whatever is the object of constant devotion in their hearts, they know them as the only objects of their lives and the very essence of their souls. 44 He who delights in Brahman immediately becomes of the same mind. So anyone who is gratified in

anything is united with that in his mind. 45 The man who has obtained his rest in God has found the highest bliss in his mind, though he shows himself as otherwise in his outward conduct and social dealings. 46 There is no reason to speculate about unity or duality when the entirety of existence is as I have taught. It is in vain to look at anything else. 47 There is nothing visible or invisible, or anything as formless or having a form. There is nothing as subject or object, nor anything of reality or unreality here. The whole is the very Brahman himself. 48 This world is without beginning or end and is known to the world as soul. But in fact, one Brahman rules over all without any fixed rule, like a path without a name. 49 That which is conceived as the serene Brahman is also called the bright Brahma or the creator god, just as what is known as the calm and clear sky is also called empty space. 50 Nebulae that seem to dim the face of the sky are something in appearance and nothing in substance. In the same way our mental faculties appear to flutter and obscure the clear atmosphere of Consciousness. They seem to be dualities and other than the serene intellectual principle. 51 But the mental, physical and all other perceptive and active powers of living beings are the common properties of the intellectual soul, just as the many gaps and hollows in various bodies are in common with the emptiness of the one universal vacuum. 52 As the quiet soul passing from its sleeping to the dreaming state retains its identity without change, so the Divine Soul passing into creation after its quiescence remains the same unchanged unity. 53 Thus the Supreme Spirit reflects the shadow of its great Consciousness in the forms of creation and dream. Hence neither this creation nor the sights in dreams are anything in substance other than a mere shadow of the picture in the Divine Mind. 54 The bright picture of the Divine Mind in the emptiness of the Great Consciousness exhibits its form and the ideal appearance as visible creation, like a fairyland in dream. 55 It is impossible for the world to appear by any of the means conjectured by different schools. From the lack of any prior cause, it must be that Consciousness saw itself exhibited in its own emptiness. 56 In the beginning of creation, the formless void of Consciousness showed itself in this visible and intangible form, representing itself as a picture of its mind or dream or its imagination. 57 Like a dream, it is a blank without any attribute. It is changeable but not breakable. Although it has the substance of intellectual emptiness, yet it is corrupted with the stain of our misapprehension of it, called ignorance. 58 Like a dream, it seems to possess some properties in its appearance, but in substance, it is wholly devoid of any. It is never different from the spiritual nature of the Lord, though it appears otherwise to our misconception of it. 59 The phenomenal world is like a mountain seen in dream and is inseparable from the soul in which it resides. Therefore the visible appearing in the emptiness of Consciousness is more empty than the vacuum of space. 60 That which is the Supreme Soul and is devoid of all form, the very same and of the same nature is all this which we call the visible world. 61 Whatever conception we have in our dream, the same is the display of our intellect. The cities and castles we see in the dreams are no real existences, only appearances presented to us by the intellect. 62 As the recognition of our acquaintance in dream and the memory of impressions in our mind are altogether insubstantial, so are the sights of the visible and the perception of things also quite unreal. 63 Therefore leaving these unrealities of our recognitions, perceptions and memories which are so much relied upon by the ignorant, we should take these forms in the light of the direct manifestations of God. 64 As waves constantly roll on the surface of the sea, so innumerable worlds continually revolving on the surface of the Supreme Soul are of the same nature as the Supreme Soul. 65 All laws and their exceptions and all varieties and complexities unite in harmony in the Divine Nature. 66 Therefore Brahman is all in all and there is none and nothing besides. He alone

is the soul of all, as all these live in him. 67 The wandering mind thinks the world is wandering about with all its contents. But the steady minded take it to be quite calm and quiet. Hence it is impossible even for the learned to settle their minds without the habitual calmness of their attention. 68 There is no other means to suppress the mind from the sight of the visible, only the constant habit of attending to the lectures on this sacred scripture. 69 Though it is difficult to repress the mind from its thoughts of this world, either in its states of living or death, yet it is possible to do so immediately by eliminating its impressions through the study of this spiritual scripture. 70 Knowledge that the visible body is nothing, and knowledge that the mind lacks any body, both in this world as well as in the next, will always serve to preserve our peace and quiet. 71 The mind, body and all that is visible are suppressed under the sense of their nothingness, just as the mind, its force and moving clouds all disappear in the absence of their cause. 72 The only cause of restlessness is ignorance which is altogether dispelled by the study of this scripture. Those whose minds are enlightened a little become composed from attending to the recital and preaching of this work. 73 The unintelligent will be able to understand the teachings. He who understands the words and meanings of these lectures will never return disappointed. 74 Know that this scripture is the best means to drive away error and to produce a universal indifference or sameness everywhere. 75 Therefore try your best to weigh well the teachings of this scripture. Whether you study one or both parts of this work, you will doubtless be freed from your misery thereby. 76 Should this scripture prove distasteful, owing to it being the composition of a holy sage, then the student may consult the sacred scriptures to perfect his spiritual knowledge. 77 Do not spend your time in false reasoning or offer your precious life to fame and ashes. Let your wise understanding commit the visible to the invisible soul. 78 No one can buy a moment of his lifetime for all the gems in the world. Yet there are many who foolishly misspend their time in their worldly dream. 79 Though we have a clear conception of the world, yet it is a false sight together with that of its beholder, the living soul. It is as false as dreaming the wailing of ones friend at ones own death.

Chapter 176 Brahma Gita, the Story of Brahma: the Cosmic Egg
Rama asked, There are innumerable worlds in the universe. Many have gone before, many are in existence, and many are yet to be. Sage, how can you persuade me to believe they do not exist? 2 Vasishta replied: You well know, Rama, the relationship which the world bears to a dream. Both mean a passing scene. This meaning cannot be denied by anyone in this audience. 3 The words spoken by the wise, who know their application and sense, are neither understood nor received in the hearts of common people, though the words are in common use. 4 When you come to know the knowledge of the One, then you will discern the three times (past, present, and future) clearly and see them all as present before you. 5 It is only consciousness that displays itself in the form of the world in our dreams. In the same way, Divine Consciousness exhibits the worlds in itself in the beginning of creation. There is no other cause for the production of creation. 6 Hence there are innumerable worlds spinning like atoms in infinite space. There is no one who can count their number or discover their modes and natures. 7 It was of old that my honorable father, the lotus-born Brahma, all besmeared with the fragrant dust of that flower, delivered a discourse on this subject, which I will now relate to you. 8 It was of old that my father Brahma told me about the number of worlds and their respective situations in the heavens where they appear to us. 9 Brahma said: O sage, all that is manifested as the world is Brahman. It is the infinite entity of the deity in its abstract essence. But viewed in the concrete, the world is a nonentity. 10 Listen to my story which is as happy to the soul as it is pleasant to the ear. It is called the story of the Cosmic Egg, the mundane mass. 11 In the infinite void there is an empty substance known as the empty Consciousness in the form of a minute atom. 12 It saw itself in a dream as being as a living soul, resembling the movement of wind in empty air. 13 Thus the Lord became a living being. Forsaking its empty form, it thought itself to have become the ego in its intangible form. 14 He had his egoism, an egoistic sense in himself. This was the knowledge of himself as an unit, which is only an act of delusion. 15 Then he thought himself as changed into the conditions of understanding, mind and ego, all as in his dream. He was inclined of his own choice to impose mutability upon his immutable nature. 16 Then in his mind, as if in dream, he saw the five senses attached to his body. These are as formless as the appearance of a mountain in dream, which the ignorant are apt to take as a solid body. 17 Then in the atom of his consciousness, he saw that his mental body was comprised of the three worlds in their abstract forms, apparent to view but without substance or solidity or any basis at all. 18 This stupendous form was composed of all beings, whether of the conscious or inert kinds. 19 He saw all things comprised in himself just as they are seen in a dream or reflected in a mirror. The triple world appeared in his person like the picture of a city newly printed on a plate. 20 He saw the three worlds in his heart, just as they are seen in a looking glass, together with all things in it with their varied, vivid colors. 21 He observed more minute atoms existing within the minute atoms, and stupendous worlds on high clustering together in groups and rings. 22 These seen in ignorance of their natures appear as gross material bodies. Viewed in the clear light of their essence, they prove to be only the display of the Divine Mind. 23 Thus the viewer who sees the world in the light of Brahman finds this
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view of it: a vision in a dream. He comes to know that there is no real viewer to view it, or any cause for it, or any duality whatsoever. 24 All things that appear everywhere around us are quite motionless in their nature, existing only in the Divine Spirit as their main substratum. They are all situated in the Universal Soul from eternity to eternity. 25 Numberless worlds situated in the Divine Spirit appear to be settled outside it, just as the waves of the sea rise above its waters and scatter its salt spray in the air.

Chapter 177 Brahma Gita, There Can Be No Cause for Creation

Rama asked, If the world has no cause and proceeds of itself from the essence of Brahman, as our dreams, thoughts and imaginations proceed of themselves from the nature of our minds, 2 and if it is possible for anything to proceed from no cause, then tell me sage, why does everything we see have its proper cause? 3 Vasishta replied: Rama, I am not speaking about what men commonly perceive, the production of anything by application of its proper causalities. I am speaking about the creation of the world, which is not in need of any atomic principle or material elements, as the Atomists maintain. 4 People see this world in whatever light they imagine. Someone else sees it in a different manner according to his own imagination. 5 Some imagine it as the diffusion of the Divine Soul and think it is one with the nature of the deity. Others think of it as the living body of Viraj, with the unconscious parts resembling the hairs and nails growing upon his body. 6 The concepts of causation and lack of causation do not apply to God because the Lord, being almighty, has the power to be either the one or other as he likes. 7 If there is anything whatever that is supposed to be other than Brahman in its essence, then it is reasonable to suppose Brahman to be the cause of that which otherwise could not come to existence. 8 But when all things that appear to be so different from one another are without beginning or end and are coeternal with the Eternal One, then tell me, which of these can be the cause of the other? 9 Here nothing comes to exist or desist at anytime. All eternally exist in the selfexistent One as one and the same with his empty Self. 10 What is the cause of anything, and to what purpose should anything be caused at anytime? The Lord expects nothing from his creatures, and therefore their creation is equal to their not being created at all. 11 Here there is no emptiness or fullness and no entity or nonentity either, or anything between them, as there is nothing attributable of the infinite emptiness of Brahman. 12 Whatever is simply is, and what does not may not be. But all is Brahman only, whether what is or is not. 13 Rama asked, Tell me sage, how can the Divine Spirit not be the cause of all when all who are ignorant of its quiet inactive nature believe that it is the sole cause? 14 Vasishta replied: No one is ignorant of God. Everyone has an innate conviction of God as his own consciousness. Whoever knows the empty entity of God also knows that this nature admits of no scrutiny or discussion. 15 Those who know the unity of God and his nature of motionless quiet, full of intelligence, also know that Gods unknowable nature is beyond all scrutiny. 16 Ignorance of God abides in the knowledge of God because one acknowledges the existence of God, yet says he is ignorant of Gods nature. This is like our dreaming is included under the state of sleeping. 17 I say that God is the soul of all, or is the all in all, to describe the omnipresence of God only for the instruction of the ignorant. In reality, his holy spirit is perfectly pure without decay. 18 Different understandings entertain different views regarding existence, whether caused or uncaused. 19 Those who see phenomena from a proper perspective have no reason to assign any cause to them whatever. Therefore, creation is without any cause whatever. 20 Therefore assigning a cause to this creation, either as matter or spirit, undermines ones self-consciousness of divine permeation. It is all merely useless words of philosophers using clever arguments that serve only to confuse. 21 In absence of any other cause, creation is nothing other than like an appearance in our dream. There is nothing such as the gross material form or its visible appearance whatsoever.
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What cause can the ignorant assign to their sight of a land in their dream other than the nature of Consciousness which exhibits such phenomena to minds? Say if there can be any other meaning to dreams? 23 Those who are unacquainted with the nature of dreams are deluded to believe them as realities. But those who are acquainted with their falsehood are not misled into believing them or this world to be real. 24 It is the impudence of fools to introduce any hypothesis of causality, either by their supposition, arrogance or in the heat of their debate. 25 Is the heat of fire, the coldness of water, or the light of luminous bodies as the ignorant suppose them to be, or any other nature of things and their respective causes? 26 There are hundreds of speculative theorists who assign as many causes to creation without agreeing upon any. Let them explain the cause of the aerial castles of their imagination. 27 The virtues and vices of men are formless things that bear fruit upon the spiritual body in the next world. How can they be causes of our physical bodies in this world? 28 How can our finite and shapeless knowledge of things be the cause of the constant rise and fall of endless and minute bodies in the world, as it is maintained by the Vijnana Vada gnostic school? 29 It is nature, says the Naturalist, which is the cause of all events. But as nothing results from the nature of anything without its combination with another, it is too indefinite in its sense. 30 Therefore all things appear as causeless illusions to the ignorant and their true cause is a mystery to them. The intelligent know them to be the wonderful display of Divine Consciousness that shows everything in itself. 31 As one who knows the falsehood of dreams is never sorry at his loss of anything in dream, so those who have the knowledge of truth never feel any sorrow even at the possession or separation of their lives. 32 In the beginning there was no production of the visible world. It is nothing more than the emptiness of the intellect. In its own and true form, it appears as a dream, and it is nothing other than a dream in its essence. 33 There is no other hypothesis which is more accurate than the world resembles a dream. This conception of the world has only the great Brahman for its ground work. 34 As fluidity, waves and whirlpools are the inherent properties of pure water, the revolutions of worlds are only appearances on the surface of the Divine Mind with the divine spirit of Brahman at their bottom. 35 As velocity and ventilation are inborn in the nature of pure air, the creation and preservation of the world are ingrained and intrinsic in the nature of God. 36 As infinity and emptiness are inherent properties of the great void, so the knowledge of all things existent and nonexistent, and of creation and annihilation are immanent in the Divine Mind. 37 All things in existence and lying dormant in the Divine Mind are perceptible to us because we participate in the very same mind. 38 This creation and its destruction both abide side by side in the dense intellect of the Divine Soul, just as thickening dreams and sound sleep reside together in the calm sleeping state of our soul. 39 As a man passes from one dream to another in the same sleeping state of his soul, so the Supreme Soul sees the succession of creations alternately taking place in its own essence. 40 The clear atmosphere of the Divine Soul, utterly devoid of earthy and other material substances, yet appears to be possessed of them all. In the same manner, the human soul sees many things in its dream without having any of those things in itself. 41 As the human mind sees the forms of a pot or painting rising before it in a thought, so the all seeing mind of God sees worlds upon worlds appearing at once in its presence with a glance of its thought. 42 The all seeing soul sees all things as they are in itself. It finds them to be of the same intellectual nature as its own intellect, and all things are equivalent to the words that express them. 43 What is the use of scriptures and what good is reasoning upon words when our lack

of desire is the best way to bliss? There being no creation because it has no cause, we have nothing to do with what appears only seemingly so. 44 It being proved that the absence of desire is our best bliss below, the sensation of desire must be the source of perpetual misery to man. Though our desires are many, yet the feeling of it is one and the same. They betray the craving mind, just as the various dreams by night disclose the intense desire nature of the soul.

Chapter 178 How Spirit Can Perceive Physical; Story of Indus Ten Sons, the Aindavas (again); How Yogis Perceive Creation
Rama asked, The world is known to consist of two sorts of beings, namely the physical or material substances and the incorporeal or subtle essences. 2 Subtle ones do not strike one another. Those are said to be solid which push and dash against each other. 3 Here we always see the dashing of one solid body against another. But we know nothing of the movement of subtle bodies or of their coming in contact with another. 4 We do know something about the quick motion of our subtle senses to their respective objects, without coming in contact with them. For example, we can perceive the distant moon. 5 I repudiate the theory of the half-enlightened who maintain the material world is the production of the will or imagination. I cannot believe that the immaterial intellect can either produce or guide the material body. 6 I believe the will is the material breath of life, moving the living body to and fro. But tell me sage, what is that power which propels the living breath in and out of beings? 7 Tell me sage, how can the intangible intellect move the tangible body and carry it about, like a porter carrying his load? 8 If the subtle intellect is capable of moving the solid body at its will, then tell me sage. Why cant a man move a mountain by his own will? 9 Vasishta replied: The opening and closing of the mouth of the aorta in the heart lets the vital breath in and out through the passage of its hole and the lungs. 10 Like the hollows of an ironsmiths bellows, the hollow of the aorta lets vital air in and out by the breathing of the heart. 11 Rama asked, It is true that the ironsmith closes and expands the valves of the bellows. But tell me sage, what power blows the wind pipe of the heart and lets the air in and out of the inner lungs? 12 How does the single breath of inhalation become a hundredfold, and how do these hundreds combine again into one? Why are some beings conscious and others as unconscious as wood and stone? 13 Tell me sage, why the inert have no vibration at all and why only moving bodies have pulsation and mutation? 14 Vasishta replied: There is an internal perception which moves the interior cords of the body, just as we can see the ironsmith work his bellows. 15 Rama asked, Say sage, how is it possible for the subtle and intangible soul to move the vital airs and tangible internal parts in the animal body? 16 If the imperceptible observant soul can move the intestinal and other inner parts of the body, then it should be equally possible for a thirsty soul to draw distant water to itself. 17 If tangible and intangible can come together at will, then what is the use of the active and passive organs of action? 18 As the intangible powers of the soul bear no connection whatever with the outward objects of the world, some think they can have no effect on the internal organs of the body. So please explain it more fully to me. 19 Tell me, how do you yogis perceive the outward material things in your inner incorporeal souls? How can your formless souls have any command over or any contact with solid bodies? 20 Vasishta replied: Listen to me explain so that all your doubts are rooted out. These words will not only please your ears, but they will give you a conception of the unity of all things. 21 There is nothing here at anytime what you would call a solid substance or a material body. Everything is a wide and extended emptiness of the fine and subtle spirit. 22 This spirit is of the nature of pure intelligence, quite calm and intangible. All material things such as the earth are as
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imaginary as our dreams, the creatures of imagination. 23 There was nothing in the beginning, nor shall there be anything at the end, for lack of a cause for its creation or dissolution. Present existence is an illusion, like any fleeting shape or shadow appearing before the dreaming mind. 24 The withdrawn yogi loses sight of the earth, sky, air and water, and the hills and rivers that ordinarily appear to sight. Through his meditation, the yogi sees them in their ideal and intangible forms. 25 The outer elements and their inner perceptions, the earth, wood and rocks, are all only empty ideas of the intellect, which is the only real substratum of ideas and besides which there is no reality. 26 Listen to the story of Aindavas which explains this doctrine. This will not fail to please your ears, though I have told it to you once before. 27 Listen to the story which I am going to repeat in answer to your question. You will come to know that these hills and others things are identical with your intellect. 28 Once in days of the past in some part of the world, there lived a certain brahmin named Indu who was famous for his religious austerities and observance of Vedic ceremonies. 29 He had ten sons by whom he was surrounded like the world by its ten sides. The sons were men of great souls, magnanimous spirits respected by all good and great men. 30 In the course of time the old father met with his death and departed from his ten sons like the eleventh Rudra at the time of the dissolution of the world. 31 His chaste wife, for fear of the miseries of widowhood, followed his funeral by cremation, much like evening twilight follows departing daylight like a faithful bride, with the evening star shining upon her forehead. 32 The sons performed the funeral ceremonies and, in sorrow for their deceased father, they left their home and domestic duties and retired to the woods for holy meditation. 33 They practiced the best method for the intensity of their concentration, best calculated to secure the accomplishment of their meditation. This was constant reflection upon their identity with Brahman. 34 Thinking so in themselves, they sat in lotus posture. Wishing to gain knowledge of the unity of all things, they did what you shall be glad to learn from me. 35 They thought the whole world presided over by the lotus-born Brahma was contained within themselves. They believed they had been transformed into the form of that mundane god. 36 Believing themselves to be Brahma, they sat long with the thought of supporting the world. They remained with their closed eyes as if they were mere figures in a painting. 37 With this belief they remained fixed and steady at the same spot, and many a month and year glided over their heads and motionless bodies. 38 They were reduced to dry skeletons, parts of which were beaten and devoured by hungry beasts. Some of their limbs were torn and disappeared from their main bodies, like parts of a shadow by the rising sun. 39 Yet they continued to reflect that they were the god Brahma and his creation, and the world with all its parts were contained in themselves. 40 In the end their ten bodiless minds were thought to be converted into so many different worlds, in their abstract meditation of them. 41 Thus by the will of their intellects, each became a whole world in himself and remained so in a clear or abstract view of it, without being accompanied by its grosser part. 42 In their own consciousness they saw the solid earth with all its hills and other things in themselves. Since all things have reference to the intellect, and are viewed intellectually only. 43 What is this triple world? It is only its knowledge in our consciousness, without which we have no perception of it and with which we have a clear conception of everything. So all things are of the empty nature of our consciousness, and not otherwise. 44 As the wave is nothing other than the water of the sea, so there is nothing movable or immovable whatever without our conscious knowledge of it. 45 As the Aindavas remained in their empty forms of intellectual worlds in the open air, so are these blocks of wood and stone pure intellectual beings or concepts in the sphere of our

minds. 46 As the will of the Aindavas assumed the forms of the world, so did the will of lotus-born Brahma take the form of this universe. 47 Therefore this world together with all these hills and trees, and also these great elements and all other bodies, belong only to the intellect which is thus spread out to infinity. 48 The earth is the intellect and so are its trees and mountains. Heaven and sky are also only the intellect. There is nothing beside the intellect, which includes all things in itself, like the intellectual worlds of the Aindavas. 49 The intellect, like a potter, forms everything upon its own wheel and produces this pottery of the world from the mud of its own body. 50 The conscious will is the cause of creation and the framer of the universe. It could not have made anything which is either unconscious or imperfect in its nature, and even mineral mountains and plant life are not devoid of their sensations. 51 If we say the world is the work of design, or the memory of former impressions, or the work of Divine Will, these are still only different powers of Consciousness. The world still proves to be a product of Consciousness. 52 Therefore there cannot be any gross substance in Divine Intellect which blazes with the shining light of Consciousness in the Universal Soul of God, like a mine of bright gems. 53 Anything however mean or useless is never apart from the Divine Soul. Sunlight shines on all objects. So does the light of Consciousness take everything in the light of the great Brahma which pervades alike on all. 54 As water flows indiscriminately upon the ground, and as the sea washes all its shores with its turbulent waves, so does Consciousness ever delight to shed its light over all objects of its own accord without any regard to its near or distant relation. 55 As the great Creator evolves the world in the first formative period of creation, like the petals of his lotus navel, so does the Divine Intellect unfold all parts of the mundane system from its own sanctuary, which parts are therefore not distinct from itself. 56 The Lord is unborn and uncreated and unconfined in his nature and purely empty in his essence. He is calm and tranquil. He is immanent in the interim of existence and nonexistence. Therefore this world is no more than a reflection of the intellectual or its ideal pattern in the Divine Mind. 57 Therefore the wise are aware of the consciousness in all creation and laugh at ignorant men who declare the insensibility of inanimate objects. Rocks and trees in this ideal world are not wholly devoid of their sensations and feelings. 58 The learned know that these ideal worlds in the air are full with the Divine Soul. They know this creation of Brahmas will to be only an ethereal paradise without any substantiality. 59 When this material world is viewed in its ethereal and intellectual light, the distresses of this delusive world take to flight and its miseries disappear. 60 As long as this intellectual view of the world does not reveal itself to the sight of a man, the miseries of the world trouble him stronger and closer on every side. 61 Men, infatuated by their continued folly and blind to the view of the world as intellect, can never have reprieve from the troubles of the world or find their rest from the hardness of the times. 62 There is no creation, no existence or nonexistence of the world, and no the birth or destruction of anyone here. There is no entity nor nonentity of anything. There is only the Divine Soul glowing serenely bright with its own light in this manner. There is no light whatever except the manifestation of the Divine Spirit. 63 The cosmos resembles a vine with multitudes of its budding worlds. It has no beginning or end. It is impossible to find its root or top at anytime, or to discover the boundless extent of its circumference. Like a crystal pillar, it bears innumerable statues in its recesses which are thickly studded together without end. 64 There is only one endless being stretching his innumerable arms throughout the infinity of space. I am that empty soul embracing everything without limit. I find myself to be that stupendous pillar in my uncreated and all comprehensive soul which is ever as tranquil and transparent and without any change in itself.

Chapter 179 Phenomena Are Points of Consciousness; Dreams Evidence Things Exist without Cause; Each Soul Is Conscious of Multitudes within
Vasishta continued: When the triple world is known to be a purely intellectual entity, then there is no possibility of the existence of any material substance, as it is believed by the ignorant majority of mankind. 2 Then how can there be a tangible body, or any material substance at all? All that appears to our sight is only an intangible extension of pure emptiness. 3 It is the emptiness of our intellectuality contained in the emptiness of the Divine Intellect. It is all an extension of calm and quiet intelligence existing in the serene intelligence of the Supreme One. 4 All this is only tranquil consciousness, like a dream of which we are conscious in our waking state. It is a pure spiritual extension, though appearing as a consolidated expanse of substantial forms. 5 What are these living bodies and their limbs and members? What are their inner parts and their bony frames? Are they not mere shadows of ghosts and spirits appearing as visible and tangible? 6 The hands, the head, and all the other parts of the body are seats of consciousness or perception. They are the seats of the imperceptible and intangible in the form of the brain or sense impressions. 7 The cosmos appears as a dream in the emptiness of the Divine Mind. The cosmos may be described as caused and uncaused owing to its repeated appearance and eternal inherence in the Eternal Mind. 8 It is true that nothing can come from nothing, nothing can exist without its cause. But what can be the cause of what is eternally destined or ordained in the Eternal Mind? 9 It is possible for a thing to come into existence without any assignable cause. Such is the presence of everything that we think of in our minds. 10 If it is possible for things to appear in their various forms in our dreams, and even in the unconscious state of our sleep, then why should it be impossible for them to appear in the daydream of our waking hours, the mind being equally watchful in both states of its being? 11 Things of various kinds are present at all times in the all comprehensive mind of the Universal Soul. These are uncaused entities of the Divine Mind. They are also described as caused when they are brought to appearance. 12 As each of the Aindavas thought he had become a hundred in his imagination, so every one of these imaginary worlds swarms with millions of beings. 13 Everybody is conscious of being many, either consecutively or simultaneously at the same time, just as we think of our diversity in the different parts and organs of our bodies. 14 As the one universal body of water diverges itself into a thousand beds and basins, branching into innumerable channels and creeks, and as one undivided duration is divided into all the divisions of time and seasons, so does the one and uniform soul become many. 15 All compact bodies are only ethereal phantoms of our dream rising in the empty space of our consciousness. They are as formless and subtle as a hollow mountain in a dream. 16 Our consciousness consists of only the concepts and ideas of things. Therefore the world must be considered to exist only as an idea. It appears as fleeting ideas of things glide over the emptiness of the intellect. 17 Our knowledge and ignorance of things resemble the dreaming and sleeping states of the soul. The world is same as the intellect, like the identity of air with its breeze. 18 Ideas and phenomena are the same state of the Intellect. Ideas are the subjectivity of its empty self, and phenomena are the objectivity of its own reasoning and dreams. Therefore this world appears as a protracted dream in the hollow cavity of the sleeping mind. 19 The world is a nonentity. The error of its entity is caused by our ignorance of the
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nature of God from the very beginning of creation. In our dream of the world, we see many terrific aspects of ghosts and the like, but our knowledge of its nonentity and of the vanity of worldliness dispel all our fears and cares. 20 As our single self-consciousness sees many things in itself, so it beholds an endless variety of forms appearing in the infinite emptiness of the Divine Mind. 21 As many lighted lamps in a room combine to emit one great blaze of light, so the appearance of this diverse creation displays the omnipotence of one almighty power. 22 Creation is like a bursting bubble, or foam and froth covering the ocean of omnipotence. It appears as a wood and wilderness in the clouded face of the firmament, but disappears in the clear empty atmosphere of the Divine Mind. There is no speck or spot of creation in the infinite ocean of Supreme Consciousness.

Chapter 180 The Story of Kundadanta and the Upside-down Ascetic

Rama said: Sage, I ask you to remove the shade of a doubt from my mind, just as sunshine dispels darkness and brings to light whatever is dark and obscure in the world. 2 Once I saw a self-controlled ascetic who came to the Gurukula school where I was sitting among the council of the sages and learned men, conversing on subjects of theology and divinity. 3 He was a learned brahmin of godly appearance. He came from the land of the Videhas and was practiced in religious austerities. The shining luster of his body was as unbearable as the terrible seer Durvasas himself. 4 On entering the assembly, he made his obeisance to the illustrious persons. We also saluted him in return and provided a seat for him to sit down. 5 The brahmin being well seated, I picked up many discourses with him from the Vedanta, Sankhya and Siddhanta philosophies. When his weariness was gone, I asked him this question. 6 Sage, you seem to be tired with your long journey to this place. Please tell me, O eloquent brahmin, from where you have started here today? 7 The brahmin (Kundadanta) replied: So it is, O fortunate prince. I have taken great pains to come here. Now hear me tell you the reason that brings me here to see you. 8 There is a district here named Vaideha. It is populous and prosperous, resembling a heavenly paradise. 9 There I was born and educated and lived. I was named Kundadanta because of the whiteness of my teeth, bearing resemblance to the buds of white kunda flowers. 10 Afterwards I renounced my worldly concerns and traveled far and wide about this earth. I stayed in the ashrams of holy sages and saints and the shrines of gods to rest from the fatigue of my travels. 11 I stayed near sacred Srisailam Mountain where I sat silently for a long period practicing my meditation austerities. 12 There I found a desert devoid of grassy pastures and woody trees where the light of the sun and the shade of night reigned by turns, as the place was completely open to the sky. 13 In the middle of this desert was a branching tree with a few green leaves and leaflets. The bright sun dispensed his gentle beams from the upper sky through its cooling foliage. 14 Under one of its branches, there hung a man of holy appearance. He blazed as the resplendent sun hanging in the open air by the cords of suns wide extending beams and radiating rays. 15 The mans feet were tied up by a thick cord of munja grass. His head hung downward towards the ground beneath. This gave him the appearance of an offshoot of a banyan tree rooted in the earth below. 16 After a while I approached him. I saw that his two folded palms were affixed to his 17 breast. Advancing nearer to the body of the brahmin, I found it was alive and breathing, having the feeling of touch and the perception of heat and cold and that of the breeze and change of weather. 18 Afterwards I devoted myself to attending upon that holy person. I underwent all the difficulties of the sun and seasons until I was received into his confidence. 19 Then I asked him, Who are you lord, that you have taken up this sort of painful meditation? Tell me, O far sighted seer, what is the object of your protracted state of self-mortification at the expense of your precious life? 20 He replied to my question, First, O devotee, tell me what is the object of your tapas and those of all others who are devoted to whatever they pursue? 21 This was his introduction to what he was going to say. Being pressed further by my troublesome questions, he gave the following answer to my questions. 22 I was born at Mathura where I grew up in the house of my father and acquired my knowledge of philology and the arts in course of time. 23 I also learned that princes are the receptacles of all pleasures and enjoyments and that early youth is capable of enjoying all the fruits of life. 24 Since then I began to reflect upon possession of the seven continents
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of the earth and to foster the ardent expectation of gratifying all my desires of this life. 25 That is why I came here, to meditate in order to attain the objects of my desire. 26 Therefore, O my disinterested and self offered friend, return to your own country and desired home. Leave me to remain in this state, with my firm resolution to accomplish my desired object. 27 Being instructed by him to leave, listen now to what I said to him. This will amaze you and the wise will be gladdened in their hearts. 28 I addressed him saying, O holy saint, let me remain here at your service underneath this holy tree until you obtain the desired reward of your meditation. 29 The humble minded devotee remained as cool and quiet as a block of stone. His eyes remained closed as he persisted in his quiescence like a dead body, without any motion in his outer limbs. 30 I stayed with him for six months. I remained quiet and quiescent like a block of wood, enduring the rigors of climate and seasons without shrinking. 31 Once I saw a person bright as the blazing sun descending from sun, then standing in the presence of the devotee. 32 The ascetic mentally offered his adoration to this divine person and I bodily prostrated myself before him. He uttered his words, in a tone as sweet as the flowing out of ambrosial sweetness. 33 He said, O persistent brahmin who has long been hanging from this branch of a banyan tree, suspend your severe austerities and accept your desired reward which I am ready to confer upon you. 34 As you wish, you shall reign over the seven oceans and continents of this earth with your present body for seven thousand years. 35 In this manner, this second sun gave his blessing to the devout ascetic, then plunged into the bosom of the ocean out of which he had come. 36 The god having departed, I approached the ascetic hanging below the branch and said to him, I witnessed today what I had heard before, that the gods are ever gracious to their suppliants. 37 Now O brahmin, as you have gained the object of your desire, it is desirable that you should give up your austerity and pursue the proper callings and the course of your life. 38 He agreed to my proposal. I climbed the tree and loosened his feet, like they loosen the feet of an elephant from its chains. 39 Then, having bathed himself, he made offerings with his pure hands for the remission of his sins. Then with the fruit which he was fortunate to pluck from the tree, he broke the fast of his long penitence. 40 By virtue of his meritorious devotion we obtained plenty of the delicious fruits of that holy tree. We refreshed ourselves lived on that fruit for three days. 41 Thus this brahmin, desiring to obtain sovereignty of the earth with its seven continents encircled by the seven oceans, completed his painful fasting hanging upside down until he obtained his desired reward from the god of day. He refreshed himself for three days in that place, then both of us set out on our journey towards the city of Mathura.

Chapter 181 Kundadanta and the Ascetic Travel, Find a Hermit at What Was Gauris Ashram by the Kadamba Tree
The guest Kundadanta resumed his narration and said: We journeyed homeward towards the holy city of Mathura, which was as fair and splendid as the solar and lunar mansions and Indras celestial city of Amaravati. 2 We reached the rural town of Raudha and stayed by a rock in the mango forest. Then we turned towards the city of Salisa where we remained two days cheerful in spirits. 3 We passed our time with that cheerfulness of heart that always comes with travelling through unknown places and scenes. We rested under the cooling shade of woodland trees, and refreshed ourselves in the cooling brooks and breezes. 4 Faded flowers falling in profusion from flowery vines growing on river banks of rivers, the splashing of the waves, the humming of the bees, and the singing of birds are delightful to the souls of passing travelers. 5 We enjoyed thickening and cooling shades of trees on the shores of rivers, herds of deer and flights of chirping birds, and frozen ice and dew drops hanging quivering like pearls on tree leaves and blades of green grass. 6 We passed many days through woods and forests, over hills and valleys, through caves and narrow passages, over marshes and dry lands, and in cities and villages. We also crossed over a great many rivers and channels and running waters. 7 We passed our nights under trees of thick plantain forests. Being weary with walking over snow and dew, we rested on beds made of plantain leaves. 8 On the third day we came to a jungle full of gigantic trees which, for lack of human homes, seemed to have divided the empire of heaven among themselves. 9 Here that devotee left the right path and entered into another forest, uttering these useless words to me. 10 The ascetic said, Let us go to the sanctuary of Gauri here, where many munis and sages from all quarters stay. It is the ashram where my seven brothers went to attain their objects. 11 We are eight brothers in all. All of us fostered great ambitions in various respects. We are all equally resolved to devote ourselves to rigorous austerities to succeed in our determined purposes. 12 This is why I seek their shelter in this holy ashram where they practiced various acts of self mortification with fixed determination, whereby they have been cleansed from their sins. 13 Before this I accompanied my brothers and remained here with them for six months. Now I find this same sanctuary of Gauri in the same state as I had seen it before. 14 I see this ground overhung by the shady flowers of trees. I see the young animal cubs resting in this their peaceful retreat. I also see leafy branches with birds listening to sages underneath reciting the scriptures. 15 Therefore, let us go to the ashram of the sages which resembles the throne of Brahma crowded by the brahmins on all sides. Here our bodies shall be purified of their sins and our hearts will be sanctified by the holiness of the place. 16 By seeing these holy men of superior understanding, the minds of learned and saint-like persons and even those who know truth are purified. 17 Upon his saying so, we went to that ashram of sages and hermits, but to our great disappointment, we saw nothing, only total desolation. 18 There was not a tree or a plant or even a shrub or vine to be seen. There was no man, muni or child, nor any altar or priest anywhere. 19 It was only a vast desert, all void and devoid of bounds, an unlimited space of burning heat. It looked like a blank expanse of sky had fallen down of the ground below. 20 Ah woe to us! What has all this come to be! we said to each other. We continued to wander about for a long while until we chanced to see a tree at some distance. 21 It presented a thick shade and cooling aspect, like that of a dark and drizzling cloud in the sky. There we saw an aged hermit sitting in meditation beneath it. 22 We two sat upon a grassy area out in front of the
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hermit. We sat there for a long time, yet we could find no rest in the hermits withdrawn meditation. 23 I felt uneasy being there for such a long while, so I broke my silence in impatience and cried out in a loud voice, saying, O sage, suspend the long meditation of your mind. 24 My loud cry awakened the muni from the trance of his reverie, like the roaring of a rain cloud wakens the sleeping lion, rising straight with his yawning mouth. 25 The hermit asked us, Who are you pious people here in this desert? Say, where has that sanctuary of Gauri gone? Who has brought me here? Tell me, what does this change mean? What time is this? 26 I replied, You, O sage, know all this and not we. Tell us, being a sage and a seer how do you not know yourself? 27 Hearing this, the holy man meditated again and saw all the events that had occurred to him and to us also. 28 He remained a moment in deep thought, then coming to himself from his meditation, he said to us, Learn about this marvelous event, and by your good common sense, know it to be only a delusion. The hermit speaking: 29 This young kadamba tree that you see here giving me shelter in this desert is now flowering in kindness to me. 30 It was for some reason or other that the chaste goddess Gauri lived upon it for a full ten years in the form of the goddess of speech. She suffered all the harshness of the seasons sitting in this tree. 31 An extensive forest of trees grew by her at this place which became known by her name. The forest was decorated by plants of all seasons. 32 It was a romantic spot for all grades of gods and men who sang and played here with the melodies of tuneful and playful birds. The air was filled with clouds of flowers, bright like multitudes of moons in the sky. The pollen of full blown lotuses perfumed the air everywhere in the forest. 33 The pollen of mandara and other flowers perfumed the air around and the opening bud and blooming blossoms brightened like moons. Flowering vines sent forth their fragrance all abou and the whole courtyard of the forest seemed to be scattered with perfume. 34 Its branches were the seats of the god of the spring season and plants. An orchestra of black bees sat and sang in concert with their mates on the top of flowers. Flower beds were spread out like sheet of moonlight and like swings for the swinging play of spiritual masters and celestial apsara nymphs. 35 Here brooks were frequented by cranes, herons and other aquatic birds of various kinds. Spacious lawns were graced by cocks, peacocks and other land birds of various colors. 36 Gandharvas and yakshas, siddhas and the hosts of celestials bowed down to this kadamba tree. Their crowns rubbed against the branch sanctified by the touch of the feet of the goddess Saraswati who is also known as Gauri. The flowers of the tree looked like the stars of heaven and exhaled their fragrance all around. 37 Gentle breezes played among the tender vines diffusing a coolness throughout secret branches, even in the light and heat of the blazing sunshine. The flying pollen of kadamba and other flowers spread a yellow carpet over the ground. 38 The lotus and other aquatic flowers were blooming in the brooks frequented by storks and cranes and herons and other watery birds that played upon them while the goddess entertained herself amidst the flowery groves, which displayed her wonderful powers in the variety of their flowers. 39 It was in such a forest as this that the goddess Gauri, the wife of the god Shiva, resided for a long time for some cause known to her godly mind. Then by changing her name and form to that of Kadamba-Saraswati, she waved as gracefully as a kadamba flower on the crown of the head of her spouse and partner, Lord Shiva.

Chapter 182 The Kadamba Tree Hermit Describes the Tapas of the Eight Brothers, Their Wives Austerities, and Durvasas Curse
The old hermit resumed and said: The goddess Gauri, of her own accord, lived on this same kadamba tree for a full ten years, then she left this tree of her own will in order to join her Lord Shiva on his left side. 2 This young kadamba tree, blessed by the ambrosial touch of the goddess, never becomes old or fades or withers, but ever remains as fresh as a child in the lap of her mother. 3 After the goddess left this place, that great garden was converted to a common bush and was frequented only by woodmen who earned their livelihood by woodcutting. 4 As for myself, know me to be the king of the country of Malwa. I have abdicated my kingdom and have become a refuge in this hermitage of holy ascetics. 5 When I came to this place, I was honored by the inhabitants of this holy ashram. I made my home beneath this kadamba tree, where I have been in meditation ever since. 6 It was sometime ago that you, sage, came here with your seven brothers to practice religious austerities. 7 You eight have lived here as holy devotees since that time, respected by all the resident devotees of this place. 8 It came to pass in process of time that one of you left here for Srisailam Mountain, then the second went out to worship Lord Kartikeya in another place. 9 The third left for Benares and the fourth to the Himalayas. Four remained here and employed themselves in rigorous austerities. 10 It was the earnest desire of each and everyone of you to become the sovereign lord of all the seven continents of the earth. 11 In the end, all succeeded and accomplished their objects of desire, which were all the same, by the grace and reward which they obtained from the respective god each worshipped who was pleased with the austerity of his particular devotee. 12 The brothers returned to their home while you were employed in meditation. After their enjoyment of the rewards of this earth in the golden age, they ascended to the highest heaven of Brahma. 13 O sage, your brothers, finding their respective gods favorable to them and willing to confer blessings, made the following request of the gods, saying, 14 You gods! Make our seven brothers lords of the seven continents of the earth and let all our subjects be truthful and sincere, attached to the occupations of their respective orders. 15 The gods who they adored gladly fulfilled their prayers and having assented to their request, disappeared and vanished in the open sky. 16 Afterwards, all the ascetics gathered here went to their respective homes and met death except this one who is now here. 17 Only I have been sitting alone, devoutly intent upon meditation. I have remained as motionless as a stone beneath this kadamba tree which is sacred to the goddess of speech. 18 Now as the seasons and years have been rolling over my devoted head, I have lived to see this forest broken and cut down by the woodmen who live in the outskirts of these trees. 19 They have spared only this unfading kadamba tree, which they made an object of their worship as the home of the goddess of speech, and me also whom they believe to be absorbed in rigorous meditation. 20 Now sirs, as you seem to have recently come to this place and bear the appearance of aged ascetics, I have told you all that I have come to know only through my meditation. 21 Rise then, you righteous men, and go to your native homes where you will meet your brothers in the circle of their family and friends. 22 You will find eight of your brothers remaining in their home and resembling the eight high minded Vasus sitting in the high heaven of Brahma. Kundadanta speaking: 23 After that great devotee had said his much, I interrupted him saying, I have a great question about your wonderful story. Please explain it to me. 24 We know this earth is composed of
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only seven continents. Then how is it possible for eight brothers to be the lord of them all at the same time? 25 The kadamba ascetic said: What I have told you is not inconsistent. There are many things which seem inconsistent but become evident when they are explained. 26 These eight brothers, when they complete their periods of asceticism, will all become lords of the seven continents of the earth in their domestic circles. 27 All eight brothers will remain in their respective houses on the surface of the earth and there become the lords of the seven continents, in the manner as you shall now hear from me. 28 Every one of these eight brothers had a wife at home who was of unblemished character. They resembled the eight stars or planets of heavens in the brightness of their bodies. 29 After these eight brothers departed to conduct their protracted meditation abroad, their love-born wives became saddened at their separation, which is altogether intolerable to faithful wives. 30 In their great sorrow of spirit, they made painful austerities to the memory of their absent lords. They completed a hundred chandrayana vows and rites to the satisfaction of the goddess Parvati. 31 After each had performed her daily devotion to the goddess, she appeared invisibly to each separately in her inner apartments and spoke to her. 32 The goddess said, O child, you have been fading away by your austerities, like a tender shoot under the scorching sun. Now accept this reward to your hearts desire, both for yourself and also for your husband. 33 Hearing the voice of the goddess of heaven, Lady Chirantika offered handfuls of flowers to Parvati and began to address her prayer to the goddess. 34 The reserved and close tongued lady uttered her words in a slow flattering voice flushed with joy. She addressed the heavenly goddess like a peacock accosts a rising cloud. 35 Chirantika said, O goddess, as you bear eternal love for Shiva, the god of gods, such is the love I also bear to my husband. Make him immortal. 36 The goddess replied, Know, O good minded lady, that according the fixed decree of destiny, ever since the creation of the world, it is impossible to gain immortality. No devotion, austerity or charity can buy immortal life. Therefore ask for some other blessing. 37 Chirantika said, O goddess, if it is impossible to attain immortality, then grant this much, that he being dead, his soul may not depart beyond the confines of this his house. 38 When my husbands body falls dead in this house, then grant me this reward that his departed soul may never depart from this place. 39 Be it so, O daughter, that your husband being gone to another world, you may still continue to be his beloved wife, even after his death. 40 Saying so, the goddess Gauri remained silently in the air, as if the sound of clouds had stopped after indicating the welfare of the world. 41 After the goddess disappeared into the air, the husbands of these ladies returned from all sides, and after the lapse of some time the wives received their desired blessings. 42 Husbands were restored to their wives, brothers met each other, and friends and relatives conversed. 43 Now listen as I tell you about a wonderful event that happened to them at this time. It presented itself as an obstacle towards the achievement of their noble purpose. 44 While the brothers were employed in meditation, their parents went out with their wives to search for them. With sorrowful hearts they were wandering about the hermitages of saints. 45 Unmindful of their personal pains and pleasures, concerned only for the welfare of their sons, they intended to see the village of Kalapa which lay on their way. 46 Passing by the village of munis and saints, they saw a white man of short stature with grey and erect hairs on his head, his body smeared with ash. 47 Thinking he was ordinary old pilgrim, the parents forgot to do him due honor and let the dust of the ground they trod upon fly upon his sacred person. This irritated the old sage, who spoke out in anger. 48 You great fool going on pilgrimage with your wife and daughters-in-law, you dont respect me, Sage Durvasa. You neglect

to do me due reverence. 49 For this act of your negligence, the rewards so dearly earned by your sons and daughters-in-law will go for nothing and the results will have a contrary effect. 50 On hearing this curse the old parents and their daughters-in-law began to do him reverence, but the ancient sage disappeared and vanished in the air. 51 The parents and their daughters were greatly dismayed and disheartened. They returned home with sad faces. 52 Therefore I say, this was not the only strange thing, that each of the brothers reigned over the seven continents all at once. There were many other inequalities awaiting them as there are on all human wishes. These occurred as thickly one after the other as sores and ulcers grow on the throat. 53 There are as many oddities and vanities always occurring in the wishes and aerial castles of the empty mind, just as numberless portents and comets and meteors and unnatural sights are seen to appear in the empty sky.

Chapter 183 Blessing and Curse Argue before Brahma; the Blessings Bear Fruit in the Minds of the Brahmin Brothers
Kundadanta said: I asked the hermit of Gauris ashram, whose head was hoary with age, and whose hair resembled the dried blades of withered grass. 2 There are only seven continents on this earth. Then how could every one of the eight brothers become the sole lord of earth at the same time? 3 How could a person who never left his house conquer the seven continents or govern them himself? 4 How could they who had a reward on one hand and its opposite curse on the other, go either way? They are opposed to one another, like the cool shade of trees and the heat of sunshine. 5 How can opposite qualities reside together at the same time? It is as impossible as the container and contained becoming the same thing. 6 The kadamba tree hermit replied: Listen, O holy man, as I relate the sequel of their tale and you will come to see the sequence of their contrary fates. 7 As for you two, you will reach your home after eight days from this place. There you will meet your relatives with whom you will live happily for some time. 8 These eight brothers also, having joined with their families at home, will breathe their last in course of time. Their bodies will be burnt by their friends and relations. 9 Then their conscious souls will remain separately in the air for a little while in a state of sluggishness, such as in the insensibility of sleep. 10 During this time their acts will appear in the empty space of their minds for the sake of receiving their punishment and justice. The blessings of gods and the curse of the sage will visit them at his time. 11 Their acts will appear in the shapes of the persons to whom they were done. The blessings and curse also will assume their particular forms in order to make their appearance before them. 12 The blessings will assume the forms of fair moon-bright bodies with four arms holding a lotus bud, a club and other weapons. 13 The curse will take the forms of Shiva with his three eyes, holding lance and mace in either hand and having a dark terrific body with an arrogant grim and frowning countenance. 14 The Blessings will boastingly say, Be far away you accursed curse! It is now our time to work, as it is with the seasons to act their parts at their proper times. 15 The Curse will say in his turn, Be far away from here, you blessed blessings. Do not intrude upon my time. It will take effect like any one of the seasons. There is none capable of counteracting its wonted course. 16 The Blessing will reply, You, cursed curse, are only a creature of a human sage. But we are messengers of the god of day. Now as the first born god of light has preference over a human being, it is proper that we should have our precedence here. 17 Upon the blessings saying so, the personified curse of the sage Durvasa became enraged and replied, I am no less the creator of a god than you since we are born of the god Rudra by his wife Rudrani. 18 Rudra is the greatest of gods, and the sage was born with a portion of Rudras bravery. Saying so, the accursed curse lifted its head as high as the exalted summit of a mountain. 19 On seeing the haughty high-headedness of the personification of curse, the personified image of the blessing smiled scornfully at him. He replied with a speech of well weighed words. 20 O you criminal curse, leave your wickedness and think on the end of this affair. Think about what is to be done after we are done arguing. 21 We must go to the father of the gods to get a decision on this case. It is better if we go now as sooner or later he is the one to make the determination.
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On hearing these words from the personified blessing, the Curse replied, Well, I agree to what you say. Even a fool cannot decline to accept a reasonable proposal. 23 The Curse agreed to go with the divine Blessing to the home of Brahma because the wise always seek the company of great minded gods for answers to their questions. 24 Curse and Blessing kneeled down before Brahma and related all that had occurred between them. The god, on hearing the whole of both sides, replied in the following manner. 25 Brahma said, Listen unto me, you masters of blessing and curse, and let him have precedence who is possessed of intrinsic merit and essence. 26 Upon hearing this from the mouth of the great god, each entered into the heart of the other in order to estimate his understanding and discover his respective parts. 27 Having searched into the eternal essentialities of the other, and having known the others character, each returned before the presence of the god and implored him in turn. 28 The Curse said, I am overcome, O lord of creatures, by my adversary. I have no internal merit in myself. I find the blessings of my foe are as sound and solid as a hard rock or a powerful thunderbolt. 29 But Blessings and I, being only intellectual beings, have no material body whatever to boast of at anytime. 30 The Blessing replied, The intellectual blessing given to the eight brahmins is here present before you, entrusted to my charge. 31 Each persons body is the evolution of his intelligence. This body enjoys the consequence of the curse or blessing that is passed on according to his knowledge of it, whether his eating or drinking or his feeling in all his wanderings at all times and places. 32 In time, the blessings received strengthen in the recipient mind. At last, the blessing acting forcibly within ones self overcomes the power and effect of the curse. 33 The gift of a blessing to a devotee becomes strong and effectual only when it is deeply rooted and duly fostered in ones self. 34 Through continued culture of our conscious goodness and by the constant habit of thinking about the results of our boons, they become perfected in ones self and convert their possessor to their form. 35 Only pure and remorseful conscience consummates ones consciousness in time. But the impure conscience of the evil minded never finds any peace or tranquility. Therefore, the brahmins thoughts of the blessing took possession of their minds, and not the curse. The earlier one, though it be minute, takes priority over the latter, and there is no rule or force of pride to counteract this law. 36 Hence the gods blessings, being prior to the sages curse, must take precedence over the latter. In fact nothing would like to increase the impact of a curse. 37 But where both sides have equal force, both must have joint effect upon the same thing. So the curse and blessing joined together must remain like water mixed with milk. 38 The equal force of blessing and curse must produce a double or divided effect on the mind of man, just as a person dreaming of the fairy city thinks he has become one of its citizens. 39 Now pardon me, O lord for repeating the same truths which you previously have taught me. Permit me to take leave and depart for my place. 40 Upon Blessing saying so, Curse felt ashamed and fled from the presence of the god, just as the ghosts and demons fly away when darkness is dispersed from the sky. 41 Then the other Blessing, the one that the departed ghosts would remain in the confines of their houses, came forward and presented itself before Brahma instead of Curse and began to plead his cause, as a substitute does for his dependent. 42 He said, O lord of the gods, I do not know how human souls can fly over the seven continents of the earth after separation from their dead bodies. 43 I am the same blessing of the goddess who promised them dominion over the seven continents in their own house, and also their conquest of the whole earth. 44 Now tell me, O lord of the gods, how am I to restrain their spirits to the narrow limits of their own homes and, at the same time, confer the domain of the sevenfold earth to each of them?

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Brahma responded, Hear me, O you Blessing of conferring the realms of the seven continents on each of them, and you Boon of detaining their departed spirits within the confines of their home. Both of you are successful in executing your respective purposes on them. 46 Now retire from here with full assurance that the delivered ghosts of these brothers will never depart from their present homes after their deaths, but will continue to live there forever with the belief of being lord of the seven regions of this earth. 47 After the loss of their frail bodies, their souls will remain a proper distances from each other. Each will consider himself as lord of the seven regions of earth, though dwelling in the empty air of their own homes. 48 How could there be the eight regions and seven continents of the earth, when to all appearance the surface of the earth is a flat level everywhere? Blessing asked, 49 Tell us lord! Where are these different divisions of the earth situated? Where is of their petty home? Is it not as impossible for their small house to contain the wide earth as it is for a small lotus bud to hide an elephant? 50 Brahma replied, It should be quite evident to you as it is to ourselves that the universe is composed of only infinite emptiness. It can be contained within the hollow of the human heart or in a minute particle of the empty mind which contains all things in the manner of its dreams. 51 If the minute granule of their empty minds can contain the images of their houses and their domestic circles, why should it be impossible for them to compress the greater and lesser circle of this earth within their ample space? 52 After the death of a person, the world exhibits itself in the minute atom of his mind. This is only an empty mass of the visible and material world in its invisible and imaginary figure. 53 In this invisible particle of the mind, the world is seen in its abstract form within the precincts of the body in each persons home. This earth appears drawn like on a map, with all its sevenfold continents and their contents. 54 Whatever manifests in the mind is only a mere mental conception inborn in the mind. In reality, there is no such thing as an extraneous or material world. The vacant mind presents these fanciful ideas of the world and everything else that is visible, just as the empty sky shows varieties of atmospheric appearances to our sight. 55 Having learnt this abstract truth from the mouth of divine Brahma, personified Blessing who had conferred this reward upon the brahmin brothers abandoned his false conception of the material world and returned to the homes of the deceased brothers who had been released from the mistake of their mortal bodies. 56 Personified Blessing bowed down to the bounteous Brahma, then departing with speed, entered the room of the eight brother kings in his eightfold spiritual personality. 57 They saw the brothers in their respective homes, each sitting as the lord of the earth with its seven continents. Each one was occupied performing his sacrifices and enjoying his blessings, like eight lordly Manus for the whole period of a day of Brahma. 58 They were all friendly to each other, though unacquainted with the others respective dominions. Each was employed with his concerns with the world without clashing with the others authority over it. 59 One of them, handsome in the bloom of his youth, held his happy reign over the great city of Ujjain located in the precincts of his own house, or rather, in the boundaries of his own mind. 60 Another had his empire over the country of Sakadwipa where he settled to conquer the Naagas. He sails as a privateer over wide foreign seas, victorious on every side. 61 Another reigns secure in his capital of Kusadwipa conferring perfect security to his subjects from all dangers. Like a hero who has conquered his enemies, he rests in peace on the bosom of his beloved. 62 One of the brothers indulges himself playing with the celestial vidyadhari nymphs, skimming over the waters of the lakes on mountain tops, and in the gushing waterfalls on mountain sides. 63 Another is engaged these eight days conducting his horse sacrifice in his royal palace at Kraunchadwipa, which he has greatly increased with gold collected from other continents. 64 Another is occupied

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waging a battle in Salmali Continent where his war elephants have assembled and have been uprooting the boundary mountain from their bases with robust tusks. 65 The monarch of Gomedha Continent, who had been the eighth and last of the brahmin brothers, was smitten with love for the princess of Pushkara Continent. He enlisted a large army to seize her in warfare. 66 The monarch of Pushkara Continent, who was also the master of the mountainous regions of Lokaloka, set out with his deputy to inspect the land of gold mines. 67 Thus every one of these brothers thought he is the lord of his respective province, just as his imagination portrayed himself in the region of his mind. 68 Blessings, having renounced their several forms and personalities, became united and one with the consciousness of the brahmins. They felt and saw whatever passed in them as if they were passing in themselves. 69 These brothers became and found in themselves what they had long been longing after. They attained their respective lordships over the seven regions of the earth, which they have continued to enjoy ever since to their hearts content. 70 In this manner these men of enlarged understandings obtained what they sought in their minds through austere meditation and firm devotion to their purpose. So it is with the learned that they find everything beside them, whatever they are intent upon in their minds, through acting upon the same principle and using the proper means leading to that end.

Chapter 184 The Kadamba Tree Hermit Explains to Kundadanta: Diversity in the One, Fate Governs All, and No Original Memory
Kundadanta said: I asked the devotee sitting beneath the kadamba tree to tell me how the seven large continents of the globe could be contained within the narrow limits of the homes of each of these brothers. 2 The kadamba tree hermit replied: The essence of consciousness, though so very empty in itself, is the largest and exists everywhere in anything in existence. It is present in its own nature with all things wherever they are known to exist. 3 The soul sees the form of the triple world, and everything else besides in itself, as a part of its own nature and without changing itself into anyone of them. 4 Kundadanta asked, You see variety as intrinsic to everything in nature, but how do you attribute multiplicity to the purely simple and immutable nature of the Supreme Soul? 5 The kadamba tree devotee replied: The sphere of the intellectual void is all quiet and serene. There is nothing of any multiplicity in it. The changes apparent in its face are no more than the waves and whirling currents on the surface of the changeless sea. 6 Infinite creations seem to be continually whirling about the immensity of intellectual emptiness, just as rising waves are seen whirling in the sea. They appear to sink in its fathomless depth, the waters in the hollow of the deep. 7 The forms of substantial things that rise in the insubstantial essence of the intellect are like the various forms of substances seen in the dreaming state of the soul, all of which are utterly forgotten in the state of sound sleep. 8 As a hill seen in dream is no hill at all, and as things appearing to be in motion in dreams are found afterwards to be perfectly motionless, so all things in nature are only mere unrealities, though as real from the real nature of soul itself. 9 The intellect is an immaterial substance. It neither creates nor perceives anything material by itself, but conceives everything as it is manifested to it in its idea in the beginning. 10 The intellect sees a great variety of objects in dream which it takes to be reality for the time. In the same way, the intellects belief in the reality of its ideas causes it to conceive them as real entities. 11 The empty intellect, flashing of itself in its own state of transparence, comes to find the world shining in the same light within itself. 12 As we have consciousness of heat in the fire, even when seen in dream, so we are conscious of the presence of everything in our minds, even though the thing itself is absent from us. 13 As we have the idea of the solidity of a pillar in our dream of it, so have we the idea of the great variety of things in existence even though there is no diversity or difference in the nature of the one unchanging unity that pervades the whole. 14 In the beginning all substances were as pure and simple as the essence of their maker. They still continue to be in the same state of their ideal purity as they were originally made out of that airy entity and unity. 15 As a tree is diversified in the various forms of its roots, fruits, leaves, flowers and trunk, so the Supreme Unity is varied in all and everywhere in his same and undivided essence. 16 In the fathomless ocean of the Supreme Essence, the immensity of creation exists like the waters of the deep. An infinite number of worlds have been rolling on in their original empty and apparently visible forms in the boundless space of that transcendent emptiness. 17 The transcendental immaterial soul and the comprehensible material world mean the same, like tree and bower. Their difference lies in the intelligibleness of the one and unintelligibility of the other. True intelligence leads us to the unconceivable One, while our ignorance deludes us into the knowledge of the many, which tends only to our distress.
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The mundane and super-mundane are surely the same according to the deduction of spiritual philosophy. The knowledge of this sublime truth is sure to lead one to his ultimate liberation. 19 The world is the product of the will of God. Will is a power or faculty belonging to the personality of God. God is transmuted to the form of the world. Therefore, it is proved that the world is the formal part of the Supreme Soul. 20 He whom no words can define and yet who defines the senses of words, who is subject to no law or prohibition, or to any state or condition of being, but appoints them for all sorts of beings, is indeed the only Lord of all. 21 He who is ever silent but speaks through all, who is inactive as a rock but acts in all, who is always existent and appears as nonexistent, is the Supreme Lord of all. 22 That subtle essence that constitutes the solidity of all gross bodies and remains without decay in all frail bodies, is the pure Brahman himself. He neither wills nor lacks will to create or destroy. There is no possession or lack of the property of anything. 23 It is the one and unchanging Soul who always rests in its state of rest and sleep and perceives the succession of creation and destruction of the world in its alternate states of dream and sound sleep, which present themselves as two pictures before its sight. 24 Unnumbered worlds seem to rise and set in succession in the substratum of Consciousness. They appear like pictures passing before the mind, without being painted there. 25 As the mixing of one thing with another produces a different effect in the mixture, so the union of the mind with the organs of sense causes a variety of impressions to be imprinted in consciousness. 26 All things exist only in the essence of consciousness. Without consciousness, nothing is knowable to anyone. Hence there is nothing in nature other than a representation of the original idea in the mind. 27 Our consciousness that things are identical with the essence of our intellect proves them to be as immaterial and immovable as their fixed ideas in the mind. 28 Thus the world, so visible and perceptible to us, is nothing but a mere nothingness in reality. Whatever appears to exist, together with the great gods and celestial beings, are no more than the false visions in our dream and fancy. 29 We see various fluctuations and phenomena rising in the waters of the vast ocean of Consciousness and appearing in the forms of our joy and grief, and those of moving and unmoving bodies in creation. 30 The nature and course of the world obscures the bright mirror of Consciousness, hiding it under the dirt of our passions and covering it under the clouds and snows of our ignorance. 31 As apparitions and dissolving views appear in the air before the sight of the dim sighted, so does this shadow of the world appear as substance to the view of the spiritually shortsighted. 32 Whatever we imagine, the same we find and seem to enjoy for the time. We are delighted with the scene of an imaginary city during sleep, and we indulge ourselves in the sight of this imaginary city of the world. 33 As we seem to enjoy our ecstasy in the imaginary city of our fancy, so under the belief of its reality, we are fooled by the delusion of this unreal world. 34 There is one eternal destiny which ever runs swiftly in its accustomed course and preordains all beings to continue in their allotted careers as ever before. 35 Destiny produces moving bodies from living beings and the inert ones from the inert. Predestination has destined the downward course of water and fluids and the upward motion of the flames of fire. 36 Blind impulse compels the limbs of the body to their respective actions and makes the luminous bodies emit their light. It causes winds to blow about in their continuous course and makes mountains stand unmoved in their proper places. 37 It makes the stars of heaven roll on in their regular revolutions and causes the rains and dews of the sky to pour down in their stated seasons. This eternal destiny directs the courses of years, ages and cycles, and the whole chariot of time to run its accustomed course. 38 Divine ordinance has ordained the limits of the earth and the distant ocean and seas and has fixed the position of hills and rocks. It has allotted the natures and powers of all things and prescribed the

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laws of rights and duties for everyone. 39 Kundadanta said, The memory of the scenes of past life occurs in the present state of existence, in the forms of our imagination and our desire for them. These inner thoughts become the foundation that frames our current lives. But tell me sage, how could the first created beings in the beginning of creation have any memory upon which their lives and natures were framed? 40 The kadamba tree devotee replied: All that offer themselves to our view are quite unprecedented and without their original patterns in the mind. They resemble the sight of our own death in a dream. The omniscience of Brahma caused the first creation, and not his memory of the past as it is with us and other created beings. 41 It is the nature of our consciousness to represent the imaginary city of the world in its empty emptiness. It is neither a positive reality nor a negative unreality, being now apparent and then lost to sight by itself. 42 The clarity of the intellect represents the imaginary world in the manner of a dream. But the pure empty intellect neither sees nor bears the memory of the world in itself. 43 The wise who are devoid of joy and grief, remaining unchanged in prosperity and adversity, are men of right integrity and equanimity in their nature. They move on as steadily as the wheel of fortune leads them onward. 44 As the intellect retains the memory of what it has seen in its dream, so it retains the false impression of this triple world to its end. 45 That which passes under the name of the world is only the reflection of our consciousness. Knowing the nature of your consciousness to be mere emptiness, you will blot out the impression of the world. 46 Know that the all and everything from which all have issued and in which they exist is that all which fills all space in which all things are situated. 47 Thus I have fully explained how you may come to know this creation as its creator, the great Brahma himself. I have also explained the means whereby you may get rid of your impression of the phenomenal world. 48 Now rise you brahmins and return to your homes, just as bees return to their cells and outer petals of lotuses at the dusk of the day. Go and perform your evening services, while I remain here in my pensive meditation, absorbed in my spiritual ecstasy forever.

Chapter 185 Kundadanta Completes His Story, Attains Liberation from Listening to Vasishta
Kundadanta narrates: The old sage, having said this much, closed his eyes in meditation. He became as motionless as a statue or picture, without any action of breath or mind. 2 We prayed to him with great fondness and endearment, yet he uttered not a word to us. He seemed to be so rapt in his meditation as to have become utterly unconscious of the outer world. 3 We then departed from that place, our hearts broken and faces dejected. After a few days journey, we were received at home by our glad friends. 4 We live there in joyous festivity, as long as the seven brothers were living. We passed our time narrating our adventures and stories of bygone times. 5 In course of time, the eight brothers perished one by one into the vast ocean of eternity, like the seven oceans at the end of the world. They were released from their worldly cares, like so many of my other friends. 6 After some time, my only remaining friend also sank like the setting sun into darkness. I was left alone to lament their loss in sorrow and misery at our separation. 7 Then, with sorrow in my heart, I returned to the devotee under the kadamba tree to derive the benefit of his advice to dispel my mental suffering. 8 There I waited on him for three months until he was released from his meditation, when upon my humble request, he decided to answer me as follows. 9 The devotee replied, I cannot pass a moment without being engaged in my meditation. I must return to my meditation practice without any loss of time. 10 As for you, you can not derive benefit from my transcendental advice to you unless you diligently engage in the practice of my teachings. 11 Now I tell you to go to the city of Ayodhya where King Dasharata reigns and lives with his son Rama. 12 Go now to this Rama who has been listening to the lectures of sage Vasishta, the preceptor and priest of the royal family who delivered these lectures before the princes assembled in the imperial court. 13 There you will hear the holy sermon on the means of attaining our final emancipation, and thereby you will obtain your highest bliss in the divine state like that of mine. 14 Saying so, he became absorbed in the cooling ocean of his meditation. I came here and arrived at last before Rama and this princely assembly. 15 Here am I, and all these are the incidents of my life, as I have related, regarding all that I have heard and seen and experienced. 16 Rama said, Eloquent Kundadanta who has just made this speech has been constantly sitting by my side in this assembly. 17 This same brahmin named Kundadanta has sat here all along and has heard the entire sermon delivered by the sage on the means of obtaining our liberation. 18 Now ask this Kundadanta, who is sitting here by me, whether he has understood the context of this lecture and whether his doubts are wholly dispelled or not. 19 Vasishta said: Upon Rama saying so to me, I looked upon Kundadanta and asked him the following questions. 20 Tell me, O good brahmin Kundadanta, what have you learnt and understood by your long attendance upon my lecture calculated to confer liberation on men? 21 Kundadanta replied, Sage, your lecture has wholly removed the doubts of my mind. I find myself to be perfect master of myself, by my victory over all selfish passions and by my knowledge of the knowable one. 22 I have known the pure One that is to be known and seen the One without decay that is worth our seeing. I have obtained all that is worth obtaining and I have found my rest in the state of transcendent bliss. 23 I have known this totality to be the condensation of that transcendental essence, and that this world is only a manifestation of this same soul (chidakasa). 24 The Universal Soul, being also the soul of every individual, is likewise the soul
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inherent in all forms of things. Only the self-existent Soul becomes apparent in all existences and all places. 25 It is possible for the human mind, which is smaller than the molecule of a mustard seed, to contain the whole world in itself, though it is nothing but a mere zero before the clear sight of the intelligent. 26 It is possible for a little room to contain the seven continents of the earth, though the room itself is no more than a mere empty space. 27 Whatever object is perceptible to us at any time or place, is only the concrete form of the Divine Spirit which is quite apart from everything that is being experienced.

Chapter 186 Demonstration of All Nature as Brahma; Intellect Equally Everywhere in Varying Degrees of Individual Awareness; Curse or Blessing is All Ordained in the Beginning
Valmiki said: After Kundadanta finished talking, venerable Vasishta delivered his enlightening speech on spiritual knowledge, saying: 2 The elevated soul of this person has found rest in the paradise of spiritual philosophy. He will see the world like a globe in his hand, glowing with the glory of the great God. 3 The phenomenal world is a false conception. It is truly the uncreated Brahman himself shining in this manner. This false conception is the same Brahman, one, ever calm and without decay. 4 Whatever thing appears anywhere, in any state, form or dimension, it is the very same Deity showing himself in that condition of his being, form and mode of extension. 5 This unborn, self-existent Deity is ever auspicious, calm and quiet. He is without decay, imperishable and pure and extends through all as the wide and endless space. 6 Whatever state of things he proposes in his all-knowing Intellect, the same he causes in a thousand ways, like a plant branching out in the rains. 7 The great cosmic egg is situated like a particle in the bosom of the great Intellect of God. This world of ours is also a mere particle in a grain of our brains. 8 Therefore, my good friend, know that your intellectual sphere is boundless, without beginning or end. Absorbed in the meditation of your personal extinction (nirvana), remain as quiet as you are sitting, relying upon your unperturbed and imperishable soul. 9 Wherever there is anything in any state or condition in any part of the world, there you will find the presence of the Divine Spirit in its form of emptiness. The Divinity, without changing its nature of calm serenity, assumes to itself whatever form or figure it likes. 10 The Spirit is itself both the view and its viewer. It is equally the mind and the body and the subjective and objective. It is something and yet nothing at all, being the great Brahman or Universal Soul that includes and extends throughout the whole. 11 Phenomena are not to be supposed as a duality or anything else other than the same Brahman. Phenomena are to be known as one and the same with the divine Self, like the visible sky and its emptiness. 12 The visible is the invisible Brahman and the transcendent One is manifest in this apparent whole. Therefore the manifest is neither inactivity nor in motion, and the formed is altogether formless. 13 Like dreams appearing to the understanding, these visions present themselves to view. The forms are all formless conceptions of the mind, mere intangible ideas of the brain. 14 As conscious beings become unconscious of themselves in their state of sleep, so all these living and intelligent beings become unconscious and ignorant of themselves and their souls, becoming like sluggish trees lost to their sensibility. 15 But in time, the intellect is capable of returning from its state of vegetable sluggishness to its true awareness, just as the dormant soul turns to see dreams in sleep, then behold the vivid outer world after waking. 16 Until the living soul is liberated from its charm of self delusion, it is subject to seeing its deceitful reveries of elemental bodies appearing as a series of airy dreams before the minds eye in sleep. 17 The mind gathers the waste of dullness about it, just as the soul draws the sheath of sleep upon itself. This dullness or dimness of apprehension is not intrinsic in the mind, but an extraneous relation contracted by it from without. 18 The intellect molds the form of one who is conversant with material and unconscious things into a motionless and immobile body. The same intellect shapes the forms of others who are conscious of their intellectual natures into the bodies of rational and moving beings.
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But all these moving and unmoving beings are only different modifications and aspects of the same intellect, just as the nails and other parts of the human body are only diverse qualities of the same person. 20 The order and nature of things have invariably continued the same as they have been ordained by the Divine Will ever since its first formation of the world. Creation is a copy of its original mold in the Divine Mind. It is as ideal as any working of imagination or vision in dreaming, both in its states of being and not being. 21 But the intangible and tranquil Brahman is ever calm and quiet in his nature. He is never permeated with the nature of things, nor is he assimilated with the order of nature. 22 He appears as the beginning and end of creation, or as its cause of production and dissolution. But these are the mere dreams of Divine Consciousness which is always in its state of profound sleep and rest. 23 The world is ever existent in his spiritual nature, without any beginning or end himself. The beginning and end of creation bear no relation to his self-existent and eternal nature. 24 There is no reality in the nature of visible creation or in its existence or dissolution. All these are nothing other than representations shown in the spirit of God, like figures painted in a picture. 25 As an army drawn in painting does not differ from its model in the mind of the painter, so these tangible objects of creation, with all other endless varieties, are not different from their prototype in the mind of God. 26 In spite of the lack of any difference between the ideal and phenomenal worlds, yet the mind is inclined to see differences of subjectivity and objectivity, just as it is prepared to differentiate its own doings and dreams in the states of its sleep and ignorance. It is profound sleep and drowsiness of the soul that cause its liberation from this mistaken view, just as its sensibility serves to bind it more tightly to the bondage of the visible. 27 The reflection of the invisible soul exhibits the visible to view, just as the subtle sunbeam displays a thousand solid bodies glaring in sight. The soul shows the different phases of creation and dissolution as in its visions in dreaming. 28 The dreaming state of sleeping consciousness is called its existence in idea, and the waking state of the self-conscious soul is termed its existence in being, just as in the examples of men and gods and other intellectual beings. 29 After passing from these, and knowing the unreality of both these imaginative and speculative states, the soul falls into its state of profound sleep or trance (sushupti) which is believed by those who seek emancipation to be the state of liberation. 30 Rama said, Tell me, O venerable sage, in what proportion does intellect abide in men, gods and demons respectively? How does the soul reflect itself during the dormancy of the intellect in sleep? In what manner does it contain the world within its bosom? 31 Vasishta replied: Consciousness abides the same in gods and demons, as well as in all men and women. It dwells also in asuras, pisachas, rakshasa, naagas and in all beasts and birds, reptiles and insects, including plants and all inert things. 32 Its dimension is both boundless and as minute as an atom. It stretches to the highest heaven and includes thousands of worlds within itself. 33 The capacity that we have of knowing the regions beyond the solar sphere, and even of penetrating into the darkness of Lokaloka Mountain, is all the quality of our intellect which extends all over the boundless space and is perfectly transparent in its form and nature. 34 So very great is the extent of consciousness that it comprehends the entire universe in itself. Mundane creation originates from the act of Consciousness comprehending the whole universe. 35 Consciousness spreads all around like the current of a river gliding over the ground both high and low, leaving some parts of dry and filling others with its waters. So does Consciousness supply some bodies with intelligence while it forsakes others, leaving them in ignorance. 36 Consciousness is the living soul of the body, which is otherwise said to be lifeless

and unconscious. It resides in all bodies, like air in empty pots, and becomes vivid in some and imperceptible in others, however it likes. 37 Knowledge of the soul removes the error of its materiality. Ignorance of its spiritual nature tends to foster the sense of its materiality, like ones false conception of water in a mirage. 38 The mind is as minute as the minutest ray of sunbeams. Truly the living soul contains the whole world within it. 39 All this phenomenal world is the phenomena of the mind as it is displayed in its imaginary dreams, all being the display of the living soul. There is no difference at all between the ideas of things and their expression as phenomena. 40 The intellect alone is assimilated into all these substances which appear to have substantiality of their own. Whatever is seen without intellect is like its imaginary dream, or like the various forms of jewelry made of the same gold. 41 As the same water of the one universal ocean appears different in different places in its multiple forms of waves and billows, so does Divine Consciousness exhibit the various forms of the visible in itself. 42 As the fluid body of waters rolls on constantly in different shapes within the basin of the great deep, so do these multitudes of visible things, inherent in and identical with Divine Consciousness, glide on forever in its fathomless bosom. 43 All these worlds are situated like statues, as if engraved sculptures in the ethereal column of Divine Consciousness. They are all alike, immovable and without any motion of their own through all eternity. 44 We see the world in the empty space of our consciousness, just as we see the appearances of things in our airy dreams. Moreover, we find everything fixed in its own sphere and place, continuing in its own state without any change of position or any alteration in its nature. 45 The exact conformity of all things in this world to their conceptions in mens minds, with respect to their unchanging equality in form and property, proves their identity with one another, or the relation of one being the container of the other. 46 There is no difference between the phenomenal and ideal worlds, just as is there none between those in our dream and imagination. They are, in fact, the one and same thing, just as the identity of waters contained in tanks, rivers and seas, and between the curses and blessings of gods. 47 Rama asked, Tell me sage, is a curse or blessing the effect of any prior cause, or does it cause subsequent consequences? Is it possible for any effect to take place without an adequate cause? 48 Vasishta replied: The manifestation of the clear firmament of Divine Consciousness in itself is called the world, just as the appearance and motion of waters in the great deep is called the ocean and its currents. 49 The revolutions of eternal thoughts of the Divine Mind resemble the rolling waves of the deep. The sages call these the will or volitions of the ever willful mind of God. 50 In course of time, through habitual meditation and reasoning and by naturally good disposition and evenness of mind, a clear minded soul comes to regard this manifestation of the Divine Will in its true spiritual light. 51 A wise man with perfect wisdom and learning becomes acquainted with the true knowledge of things. His understanding becomes wholly intellectual. He sees all things in their abstract and spiritual light and is freed from the false view of material duality. 52 The philosophic intellect, unclouded by prejudice, is the true form of the great Brahman himself who shines transparently manifest in our consciousness and has no other body besides. 53 An enlightened soul sees this entire infinite fullness of creation as a display of Divine Will, an exhibition of the tranquil and transparent soul of the divinity, and nothing else. 54 This manifestation of Divine Will in the boundless space of the universe is similar to an aerial castle of our imagination or a city of palaces seen in our dream. 55 This will that produces all is identical to the Divine Soul. It produces whatever it likes any place or time. 56 Like a

boy thinking of flinging stones at the aerial castle of his imagination, so Divine Will is at liberty to scatter numberless of balls in the open and empty space of boundless emptiness. 57 Everything in all these three worlds is the manifestation of Divine Will. There is nothing such as a blessing or curse that is separate from the Divine Soul. 58 As in our fancy we can see oil gushing out of a sandy desert, so can we imagine creation coming out from the simple will of the Divine Soul. 59 It is impossible for an unenlightened understanding, never free from its knowledge of particulars and their differences, to understand that both good and evil come under the heading of universal good. 60 Whatever is willed in the beginning by the omniscience of God remains unchanged at all times unless it is altered by the same omniscient will. 61 The opposites of unity and duality dwell together in the same manner in the formless person of Brahman, just as the different body parts of an embodied being remain side by side in the same person. 62 Rama asked, Why are some ascetics of limited knowledge so very ready to confer their blessings or pour their curses on others? Are they are attended with their good or bad results? 63 Vasishta replied: Whatever is disposed in the beginning by the Divine Will existing in Brahman afterwards comes to pass, and nothing else. 64 Brahma, the lord of creation, knew the Supreme Soul in himself and thereby he became the agent of the Divine Will. Therefore there is no difference between Brahma and the Divine Will. 65 Whatever the lord of creatures, Brahma, proposes to do at first is inspired in him by the Divine Will. The same takes place immediately and the very same is called this world. 66 It has no support or receptacle for itself, but appears as an empty bubble in the great emptiness. The world resembles a chain of pearls fleeting before the eyes of blind men in the open sky. 67 Brahma willed the productions of creatures and the institution of the qualities of justice, charity and religious austerities. He established the Vedas and scriptures, and the five systems of philosophical doctrines. 68 The same Brahma also ordained that whatever devotees learned in the Vedas pronounce in their calmness or dispute takes place immediately. 69 Divine Will has formed the chasm of emptiness in the inactive intellect of Brahma and filled it with the fleeting winds and heating fire together with liquid water and solid earth. 70 It is the nature of this intellectual principle to think of everything in itself and to conceive the presence of everything within it, whether it be a thought of you or me or of anything else. 71 Whatever the empty intellect thinks in itself, it sees present before it, just as we come to see the unreal sights of things in our dreams. 72 As we see the unreal flight of stones as a reality in our imagination, so we see the false appearance of the world as true by the will of God and the contrivance of Brahma. 73 Whatever is thought of by pure consciousness must likewise be of a purely intellectual nature. There is nothing that can do anything otherwise. 74 We are inclined to conceive things in our consciousness according to how we think about them. We dont see things in a way in which we are not accustomed. Hence we conceive all that we see in our dreams as true because of they are similar to what we are used to in our waking state. 75 By uniting ones intellectuality with the universal and Divine Consciousness, and by the union of the subjective and objective and their perception in ones self by means of triputi yoga (observer, observation, and observed), we can see the world in its true light. 76 One universal and empty consciousness, being all pervading and omnipresent, by itself is the all seeing subject and all seen objects. Hence whatever is seen or known to be anywhere is the very truth of the intellect and nothing else. 77 As vibration is inherent in air, and fluidity is inherent in water, so is largeness inherent in Brahma and absolute fullness is innate in the Divine Mind. 78 I also am Brahma in his self manifest form of Viraj which embodies the whole world as its body. Hence there is no difference between the world and Brahma, just as there is none between air

and emptiness. As drops in a waterfall assume many forms and run their several ways, so the endless works of nature take their various forms and courses at different places and times. 80 All beings devoid of senses and understanding issue like waters of a waterfall from the pouring forth of the Divine Mind. They remain forever in their uniform courses with the consciousness of their existence in Brahman. 81 But that which comes forth from the Divine Mind with senses and intellects in their bodies deviate in different ways, like liquid water, in pursuit of their many worldly enjoyments. 82 They do not know that the world is identical with the uncreated spirit of God, so because of their lack of good sense, they are insensibly led to regard this world as theirs. 83 We see the existence and distribution of other bodies in us, and the inertness of stones in our bodies. In the same way the Lord perceives the creation and annihilation and inertia of the world in himself. 84 In sleep we have both sound sleep and dreams. In the same way the Divine Soul perceives creation and its annihilation in its state of perfect rest and tranquility. 85 In its state of tranquility, the Divine Soul perceives the two phases of creation and destruction succeeding one another as its day and night, just as we see our sleep and dreams recurring like darkness and light. 86 As a man dreams of both moving bodies and immovable rocks in his sleep, so the Lord perceives the ideas of both stable and unstable in his intellectual tranquility. 87 As an absent minded man has no heed of the dust flying on any part of his body, so the Divine Spirit is not polluted by entertaining the ideas of gross bodies within itself. 88 As air and water and stones possess consciousness of their airy, watery and solid bodies, so are we conscious of our material, intellectual and spiritual bodies. 89 As the mind freed from seeing visible objects and liberated from entertaining all thoughts and desires flows along like a stream of clear water, so the current of the Divine Spirit eternally glides on with the waves and whirlpool currents of creation and dissolution perpetually rolling on and whirling.
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Chapter 187 Cosmology of the Living Creation; Ideas Beget Words Beget Objects
Rama asked, Tell me sage, how can one paramount destiny guide the fates of these endless chains and varieties of beings? How can one uniform nature be the predominant feature of all these various kinds of beings? 2 Why is the sun so very shining among the multitudes of gods? What is the cause of the lengthening and shortening of days and nights? 3 Vasishta replied: Whatever the Lord has ordained at first of himself, the same appearing as the accidental formation of chance, is called the system of the universe. 4 All that is manifested in any manner by omnipotence is and continues as real in the same manner because what is made of the core of the Divine Will and intelligence can never be unreal. Nor is it possible for the manifest and obvious to be impermanent. 5 All that appears to us in any manner, being composed of Divine Consciousness, must continue to remain forever in the same manner. The appearance of creation and its disappearance in dissolution are both attributed to the unseen power of its destiny. 6 To say this one is such and that is otherwise is to attribute these qualities to the manifestation of Brahman. These formations together with their ultimate dissolution are called the acts of their destiny. 7 The three states of waking, sleeping and dreaming that appear to the nature of the soul are in no way separated from it, just as the fluidity and motion of water are nothing other than properties of the same clear liquid. 8 As emptiness is the property of air and warmth of the sunshine, and as scent is the quality of camphor, so the states of waking, sleeping and dreaming belong to the nature of the soul and are inseparable from it. 9 Creation and dissolution follow one another in the one and the same current of Divine Consciousness which, in its empty form, exists in the empty spirit of Brahman. 10 What is believed to be creation is only a momentary flash of Divine Consciousness. That which is thought to be a period of a kalpa age is only a transient reflection of the light of Divine Consciousness. 11 Sky, space, things and actions that come to our knowledge at anytime are like mere dreams occurring to us by a flash of the shining nature of Divine Consciousness. 12 The sights of things, eternal thoughts, and whatever else occurs at anytime or in any place are all presented to us by our minds from their formless shapes or ideas in the empty intellect of God. 13 Whatever is manifested by the mind or designed by it at anytime is called its destiny, which is devoid of any form like the formless air. 14 Natural philosophers who know all nature use the word nature to describe the uniform state of things for a whole kalpa age, measuring only a moment of Brahma. 15 The one soul (consciousness) is diversified into a hundred varieties of living beings. Every portion of this general intelligence retains the same reasoning like its original, without forsaking its nature. 16 Some of the intelligences that belong to and manifest themselves in the supreme Intelligence of God imagine to assume to themselves some embodied forms, in utter ignorance of their intellectual natures. 17 Earth, air, water, fire and vacuum are severally the receptacles of many properties. Empty consciousness is the great repository of these that appear as dreams hovering all about it. 18 Consciousness is the vast receptacle that receives all tangible and solid bodies. This spacious earth with all the population on its surface is seated in the midst of it. 19 It has place for the vast ocean and affords a seat to the sun. It has a space for the course of the winds and an emptiness containing all the worlds in it. 20 It is the reservoir of the five elements which are the fivefold principles of our knowledge. It is the container of the highest essence of Brahma, what is seen or anything else before it. 21 The learned call this Consciousness the intellect and omniscience. It has all forms and one form and is all-pervading, perceived by all owing to its greatness and its great
1

magnitude. Brahma the son or offspring of Brahman is the same Brahma who, by expanding his intelligence, has expanded the void under the name of space, like an awning of silk cloth. 23 When delusion rules over the consciousness of Brahma and over subtle and gross matters, how is it possible for other things that are only parts of them to stand good in law? 24 It is simply by his will that this god Brahma stretched the network of the universe, like a spider weaves its web out of itself. The universe revolves like a disc or wheel in the air and whirls like a whirlpool in the hollow depth of Consciousness, appearing as if it were a perceptible sphere in the heavens. 25 This sphere presents some bodies of great brightness and others of a lesser light. Some are scarcely visible to us and all appear like figures in a painting. 26 All created objects appear in this manner, and those that are not created never appear to view. But to the sight of the learned, they all appear as visions in a dream. 27 Consciousness is the one soul and lord of all. The seeming visible is all really invisible. They are all impermanent because they lack any body that lasts. They are not visible by themselves, nor are they ever perceptible or seen by us. 28 Empty intellect sees these as its dreams in the great emptiness of the intellect. This world being nothing other than a phenomenon of the empty intellect, can have no form other than that of mere void. 29 Whatever is manifested by the intellect in any manner is called its form and body. The expression of that manifested form for a certain period is called its nature or destiny. 30 The first manifestation of Divine Consciousness is the form of emptiness and the vehicle of sound. Afterwards that became the source of the world, which sprouted forth like a seed in the great granary of emptiness. 31 But any account given of the origin of the world and of the creation of things one after the other is a mere fabrication of sages for the instruction of the ignorant and has no basis on truth. 32 There is nothing that is ever produced of nothing or reduced to nothingness at anytime. All this is as quiet and calm as the bosom of a rock, and ever as real as it is unreal. 33 As there existed no separate body before, so it can have no end either. All things exist as an inseparable infinitesimal with the spirit of God. Therefore nothing can rise or set in it where they are always present. 34 The empty world exists in the vacuum of the Divine Spirit. It is a pure emptiness. Therefore, how is it possible for the world to rise or set or go beyond it to rise or set elsewhere? 35 The world is only a ray of the ever shining gem of Divine Consciousness, before whose omniscience, everything shines forever in its own light and nature. 36 Divine Spirit, though unknown to all, makes itself somewhat conceivable to us in our consciousness of it and in our ability to think about it through reasoning and reflection. 37 We can get some knowledge of it by our reason, as we can draw inferences of future events by means of our reasoning. This knowledge is rarer than the subtle element of air and fainter than our foresight into the future of all things. 38 Then this transcendental essence of the Divine Spirit, being about to reflect in itself, becomes the thinking principle called the intellect, which is somewhat intelligible to us. 39 Having then the firm conviction of its consciousness in itself, it takes the name of the living soul, which is known by the title of soul (jiva), meaning the Supreme Spirit or soul. 40 This living soul embodied in itself the nameless ignorance which shrouded the atmosphere of its intellect and superseded the title of the pure intelligence. 41 The living soul forgets its spiritual nature and becomes completely occupied in thoughts of its bodily conduct and worldly affairs. 42 Having forgotten its nature of emptiness, which possesses the property of conveying the sound, it becomes preoccupied with the error of taking future material bodies for real instead of the reality of the intellect. 43 Next it gets the notion in its spiritual body of its egoism and the idea of time, then these two run together in quest of the material elements, which are the seeds for the growth of the
22

forthcoming world. 44 Then the thinking power of the living soul begets the sense of consciousness within itself and produces therein the conviction of the unreal world as a positive reality. 45 After this the thinking principle or the mind bursts out like a seed into a hundred sprouts of its wishes. Then, by reflecting on its egoism, it immediately thinks it is a living being. 46 Thus pure spirit, under the name of living soul, becomes entangled in the maze of its false and unreal reality and rolls like a heaving wave in the depth of the Universal Spirit. 47 The mind, which at first reflected on the empty nature of the living soul, in the end becomes foolishly misled to think it is solidified into animal life or the vital air and breath of life. 48 The mind becomes the source of articulate sounds or words which express certain meanings and signify certain things that were to be created afterwards and were to be embodied in the wording of the Vedas. 49 From him was to issue the would-be world through the words he spoke to denote the things he meant. The words he invented were filled with meanings and produced the things they expressed. 50 The intellect being employed in this manner is called a living being which, being clothed in significant words, produces all existent entities. 51 This self-existent entity produced the fourteen spheres that fill the whole space of emptiness and which give rise to so many worlds that exist within. 52 Before this being had the power of speech and of the use of limbs and body, it remained to reflect only on the meanings of words, having only his mind as the active part of himself. 53 As air develops the seed of a plant by exhaling on its outer coat, so does the intellect develop the bodily functions of living beings by working in its internal parts. 54 As the vibrating intellect or mind happens to come across the idea of light, it beholds light appearing to view as it is conveyed before it by its significant sound. 55 Light is only our reasoning or idea of it. It is nothing without its idea. In the same way, feeling is our consciousness of feeling and not the perception derived by means of the touch of anything. 56 Sound is only our consciousness of it. Sound is a subjective conception of our mind, just as emptiness is a conception of the empty mind that serves as the receptacle of sound. 57 Sound is known to be the product of air in its own emptiness, so everything else is the product of our consciousness and there is nothing as a duality beside it. 58 The properties of scent and flavor are also substances of sound and air and these unrealities seem as real, like the dreams that are seen and thought of in our minds. 59 Heat (tejas), which is the seed or seat of the tree of light and evolves itself in radiance and luminous bodies, are forms of the same intellect that shows itself in all things. 60 So flavor is merely a quality of empty air, though it is thought of as a reality in every article of our food and drink. It is a mere name without substance. 61 All other things which were designated by different names such as fragrance and the like are only so many forms of the thoughts and desires existing in the mind of this living being Brahma. 62 This being had in his mind the seed of all forms and dimensions from which proceeds this terrestrial globe that was to become the support of all creatures. 63 All things yet unborn appear as already born in this Divine Mind which is filled with the models of all future existences of every kind. All these formless beings have their forms afterwards, as it thought and willed them to be. 64 These forms appear to view as if by an act of chance. The organs whereby they come to be seen are afterwards called eyes, or the visual organs of sight. 65 The organs which give the perception of sounds are named ears. Those which bear the feeling of touch to the mind are called the organs of feeling. 66 The organ of perceiving the flavors is called the tongue or the organ of taste. That which receives the perception of smell is called the nose or the organ of scent. 67 The living soul is subjected to its physical body, yet the imperfect and lifeless bodily organs really do not perceive any distinction between time and place. 68 All things are only imaginations of the soul, ideas of the intellect that are wholly confined in the soul. They neither appear nor set on the outside, but are set as silent engravings in the stony and stiff bosom of the

soul.

Chapter 188 Creation Stories Are Fiction; How Yogis See Creation
Vasishta continued: As said before, the story of in the beginning and the first rise of the living soul from the calm and quiet spirit of God is only a fiction meant to explain that the nature of the animate soul is the same as the Supreme Soul. 2 The fiction serves to explain that the individual soul is not only a part of the Supreme Soul, it truly is the same with it. When the subjective soul is employed with thoughts of the objective, it is called the living God or individual soul. 3 The inclination of the self-intelligent or subjective soul towards the objects of thought garbs it under a great many fictitious names, which you, O Rama, shall now hear me describe in all their varieties. 4 It is called the living soul or jiva from its power of living and thinking. From its addiction towards thoughts, it is called the thinking (chitta) principle and the intellect. 5 It is termed intelligence for its reasoning (buddhi) of this thing as that, as well as for its knowledge of what is what. It is called the mind (manas) from its minding, willing and imagining of many things. 6 The reliance in self that I am is what is called egoism (ahamkara). The vulgar call the principle of perception mind which, when freed from everything, is called the intellect by the wise and those acquainted with the scriptures. 7 It is called the sum total of the eightfold principles (puryastaka) or totality of existence when it is combined with all its wishes of creation. It is named subtle nature (prakriti) for its production of the substantial world. 8 Being absent or imperceptible to our perception, it is called hidden nature. In this way, many other fictitious names are given to God by way of fiction or fabrication of our imagination. 9 All these fictitious names that I have mentioned are mere inventions of our fancy for the one formless and changeless Eternal Being. 10 In this manner, all these three worlds are only the fairylands of our dreams and the castles of our imagination. They appear as objects made for our enjoyment and bliss, but in reality, they are an intangible emptiness imperceptible to touch. 11 So must you know, O best of embodied beings, that this body of yours is of a spiritual and intangible nature. It is the intellectual body formed of the empty intellect, which is rarer than rarefied air. 12 It neither is born nor dies in this world, but continues with our consciousness of ourselves until our final liberation from the sense of our personalities. This mental body or mind of ours is the recipient of the fourteen worlds and all created objects. 13 In the course of time, millions of worlds continue to be created and dissolved in the extensive regions of our minds. An unnumbered train of created beings are growing and falling like fruit in the mind over the long run of time. 14 This intellectual body beholds the world, both inside and outside of it, like a looking glass reflects and refracts its outer and inner images, and as open air reflects and shows us the upper skies. 15 The mind must bear these images in its mirror until its final dissolution with all things at the end of the world when all minds and bodies and all the world and their contents are to be incorporated in the great emptiness of the Divine Mind. 16 The compactness of the Divine Mind, which comprehends all images or ideas in itself, imparts them partly in all individual minds, which are only parts of itself and which are made to think likewise. 17 This spiritual body that is occupied in viewing the inborn world in itself is called the form of the great Brahma by some, and the god Viraj by others. 18 Some call him the everlasting and others give him the name of Narayana or floating on the surface of the waters. Some name him Isha (Lord) or Prajapati, the lord of creatures. 19 This suddenly chanced to have his five organs of sense seated in the various parts of his body, where they still retain their seats as before. 20 Then his delusion of phenomena seems to
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extend far and wide without any appearance of reality, all being a vast waste and void. 21 It is all the appearance of that eternal and transcendental Brahman, and not of the phenomena which is never real. It is the same Brahman without beginning or end appearing in a light quite unintelligible to us. 22 Our inquiry into the spiritual form of God leads us to take the world to be a delusion, just as the longing of an ardent lover after his loved one leads him to see her swelling body in his dream. 23 As we have the blank and formless notion of a pot presented in the real shape of the pot in our minds, so have we the ideas of our bodies and the world represented as realities in dreams and imagination. 24 As dreamed objects of our empty minds seem to be real while we sleep, so all these ethereal objects in nature appear as solid substances in the delusion of our dreams by daylight. 25 This spiritual and formless body of the jiva comes to be gradually perceived in us, and by itself also, as we come to see ethereal forms presenting themselves to us in our dream. 26 Then the forms are embodied in a gross body composed of flesh and bones and all its organs and its covering of skin and hair. In this state it thinks of its carnal desires. 27 Then it reflects on its birth and acts in that body and upon the duration and end of that body, and it entertains the false ideas of the enjoyments and incidents of its life. 28 It comes to know that it is subject to decay, decrepitude and death. It wanders on all sides of the wide sphere of this globe. It gets knowledge of the knower and known, and also of the beginning, middle and end of all acts and things. 29 And thus the Primordial Spirit, being transformed to the living soul, comes to know the elementary bodies of earth, air, water and fire and the varieties of created beings and conduct of men. Having been the container of all bodies and space, it finds itself contained and confined within the limits of its body and of this earth.

Chapter 189 The Creation of Brahmas Thoughts

Vasishta continued: This spiritual body, as Prajapati Brahma, the primeval creator of all, being possessed of volition, by an act of chance and of its own motion, comes to think and brood on its thoughts. 2 It continues to remain in the same state as it is ever conscious of in itself and sees of its own nature this universe exposed before it as it had in his mind, nor is there any wonder in this. 3 Now this viewer, Brahma, and his viewing and the view of the world, must either all be false or they must all be true, having the spirit of Brahma at its foundation. 4 Rama asked, Now sage, please tell me. How can this spiritual and shadowy sight of the primeval lord of creation be realized in its solidified state? What reality can there be in the vision of a dream? 5 Vasishta replied: The spiritual view is ever apparent by itself within ourselves. Our continuous and ceaseless sight of it gives it the appearance of a solid reality. 6 As the sights in our dreams come to be realized by our continuous thinking about them, so the spiritual appears as real by our constant habit of thinking them as such. 7 The constant thought of the reality of our spiritual body makes it appear as a real object to our sight, just as a deers constant craving after water makes it appear in a mirage of a parched desert. 8 The sight of this world, like every other fallacy, has misled us, like the poor thirsting deer, to the misconception of water in the mirage. This and all other unrealities appear as real ones in our ignorance. 9 Many spiritual and intellectual objects, like a great many unreal things, are taken as material and real by the eagerness of their desires and ignorant admirers. 10 The impression that I am this and that one is another and that this is mine and that is his and that these are the hills and skies about us are all as false as a conception of reality in our dreams and the false phantoms of the brain. 11 The spiritual body was at first conceived in the sight of the prime creator of all, Brahma, as the material form of the cosmic egg. 12 The living soul of Brahma, being born of the cosmic egg in a corporeal body, forgot, or rather, abandoned thinking of his incorporeal intellectuality and thought himself as composed of his material body. He looked into his thought and thought that this thought was his body and the recipient of his soul. 13 Then he becomes confined in that body by his belief that his thought is a factual reality. Then he thinks of many things within himself, and goes on seeking and running after them all. 14 Then this god makes many symbolic sounds and forms, invents words for names and actions, and at last, upon his utterance of the mystic syllable Aum, the Vedas rang out and sang in currents of many words. 15 Then through the medium of those sacred words, the god ordained the ordinances for the conduct of all mankind. Everything turned out to be as he wished and thought it to be in his own mind. 16 Whatever exists in any manner is Brahma himself. Yet nobody perceives it as such owing to everyones predominant error of believing the unreal world to be a real existence. 17 All things from the great Brahma down are only false appearances like those of dreams and a magic show, yet this spiritual reality is utterly lost to sight under the garb of material unreality. 18 There is nothing such as materiality anywhere at anytime. All is only spiritual which, by our habitual mode of thinking and naming, is said to be substantial, elemental and material. 19 This, our fallacy of materiality, has come to us from our very source in Brahma, the creator who entertained the false idea of the material world and transmitted this error even to the minds of the wise and very great souls. 20 How is it possible, O Rama, for the intelligent soul to be
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confined in a piece of earth? All this must either be an illusory scene or a representation of Brahma himself. 21 There can be no other cause of this world except the eternal causality of Brahma who is self-existent without any action or causation of himself. The Supreme Soul is wholly devoid of the attributes of cause and effect. What can this world be other than an extension of the Divine Essence?

Chapter 190 Ramas Enlightenment: Short Answers to Many Questions

Vasishta continued: Gaining knowledge of what is knowable is called our bondage in this world. Our release from the bonds of knowable objects is called our liberation from it. 2 Rama asked, But sage, how is it possible to escape from knowledge of the knowable? How can we remove our rooted knowledge of things and our habitual sense of bondage to them? 3 Vasishta replied: Our misjudgment is removed by the perfection of our knowledge and the feeling of it as such. Then, after our inborn bias disappears, we get liberation from error. 4 Rama asked, Tell me sage. What is that simple uniform feeling that completely releases a living soul from its chains of error? What is said to be that complete and perfect knowledge? 5 Vasishta replied: The soul is full of subjective knowledge, intuition. It has no need for objective knowledge of the knowable without. Perfect knowledge is our inner sense and is not expressible in words. 6 Rama asked, Tell me sage. Is the internal knowledge of the soul the same or separate from itself? Is the word knowledge to be understood in its instrumental or abstract sense? 7 Vasishta replied: All perception is knowledge and knowledge also describes causation. Hence there is no difference between knowledge and the knowable, as there is none between air and its movement. 8 Rama asked, If it be so, then tell me. How does the error arise of perceiving a difference between knower and the known? The idea of the materiality of the perceptible or objective world must be as false as that of the horns of a rabbit which have never existed and are unlikely to exist anytime in the future. 9 Vasishta replied: The error of the reality of external objects also gives rise to the error of believing our knowledge of them to be real. But no inner object of thought and no object of the outward senses has any reality to it. 10 Rama asked, Tell me, O sage. How can you deny the existence of objects that are evident to your and my senses, and all others alike, and which are ever present in thoughts in the minds of conscious beings? 11 Vasishta replied: When the world was first created, the self manifested god Viraj exhibited the outline of the cosmos in a corner of his all-comprehensive mind. But as nothing was produced in reality, there is no possibility of our knowing any as a knowable or real entity. 12 Rama asked, How can our common sight of the present, past and future prospects of this world and our daily perception of things, which are felt by all in general, be regarded as nothing by your teaching? 13 Vasishta replied: Just as the dreamers vision in sleep, the deers mistake of water in a mirage in sand, the illusory sight of a second moon in the sky, and the appearance of our delusive fancies all disappear on correct observation, so the false perceptions of worldly things and the mistaken conceptions of our own existences are as false as the sights of false lights in empty air. 14 Rama asked, If our knowledge of I and you and this and that is as false as that
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of all other things in the womb of the world, then why were these brought into existence? Why were they not left as ideas in the mind of their creator, as they had existed before he created them? 15 Vasishta replied: It is certain that everything springs from its cause and not otherwise. What could be the material cause for the creation of the world after the dissolution of everything at the universal destruction? 16 Rama asked, Sage, why cannot that being be the cause of recreation? That being remains undestroyed and indestructible after destruction of creation. 17 Vasishta replied: Whatever substance abides in the cause is also in its effect. Hence the essence of Brahma, being composed of only intellect, could not give rise to the material world from itself, just as the substance of a pot cannot produce a painting or cloth. 18 Rama asked, Sage, why has the world existed in its subtle ideal state in Brahmas mind, from which it issued forth anew after dissolution of the former creation? 19 Vasishta asked: Tell me, O intelligent Rama. How could the Lord God conceive the essence of the world in himself, which, like the productive seed, sprang out in the form of the future creation? Tell me, what sort of entity was it? 20 Rama said, It is an entity of Divine Intelligence situated in that form in the subjective soul of God. It is neither a empty nothingness nor an unreal entity. 21 Vasishta said: If it be so, O mighty armed Rama, that the three worlds are only Divine Intelligence, then tell me why bodies formed of pure intelligence and those having intelligent souls in them are subject to birth and death? 22 Rama said, If there has been no creation at anytime, then tell me sage. From where has this fallacy of the existence of the world come to be in popular acceptance? 23 Vasishta replied: The nonexistence of cause and effect proves the nothingness of being and not being. All that is thought of to exist is the thought and thinking of the Divine Soul, which is the triple entity of thinker, thinking, and thought together. 24 Rama asked, The thinking soul thinks about the implements and the acts, just as the looker looks on the objects of his sight. But how can the divine looker be the dull spectacle, unless you maintain that the objective fuel burns the subjective fire? 25 Vasishta replied: The viewer is not transformed into the view owing to impossibility of the existence of an objective view. The all seeing soul shows itself as one solid fullness of space in itself. 26 Rama asked, The soul is only pure consciousness without beginning or end. It thinks only on its eternal and formless thoughts. How then can it present the form and appearance of the visible world? 27 Vasishta replied: All that is thinkable, being all causeless of themselves, has no cause whatsoever. Taking away what is thinkable indicates the liberation of the intellect. 28 Rama asked, If it is so, then tell me how we have the thoughts and conceptions of ourselves, our knowledge of the world, and our sense of motion and the like? 29 Vasishta replied: The impossibility of cause precludes the possibility of any production. From where could the thinkable proceed when all is quite calm and quiet everywhere and the knowledge of creation is only an error and a delusion?

Rama asked, Sage, describe how this error comes to overshadow the unknowable, unthinkable, and the immovable being that is self-manifest and ever untainted and clear by itself? 31 Vasishta replied: There is no error or mistake here owing to the lack of any cause for it. Our knowledge of I and you is drowned in that of one permanent unity. 32 Rama asked, O venerable sage, I am so bewildered by the error of my consciousness that I do not know what other question to ask. I am not as enlightened as the learned to be able argue more on this point. 33 Vasishta replied: O Rama, do not stop asking your questions concerning the causality of Brahma until you are satisfied with the proof that he is without cause. Such questions test the purity of gold in stone. By knowing this, you will be able to rest in the blissful state of the supremely blessed. 34 Rama asked, Sage, I grant as you say that there is no creation for lack of its cause, but tell me now. From where do I get my error of the thinkable and its thought? 35 Vasishta replied: There is no error in the belief of uncaused creation and its perfect calmness. Because you lack the habit of thinking this way makes you so restless. 36 Rama asked, Tell me sage, from where rises this habit and how do we discontinue our mode of thinking? How does rest proceed from the one mode of thought and our disquiet from the other mode? 37 Vasishta replied: Belief in the eternal God breeds no error in that of the eternity of the world. The habit of thinking otherwise creates the error of creation. Therefore, be as sound in your mind as the calm minded sages have been. 38 Rama asked, Please tell me sage, as you preach these lectures to your audience, what other mode of practice there may be to attain a quietude like that of the living liberated sages? 39 Vasishta replied: The lesson we preach is to know ones self as Brahman resting in the spirit of Brahman. This knowledge is sure to release the soul from its longing for liberation and its fear of bondage in this world. 40 Rama asked, Your doctrine, by its all negative distinctions of any knowledge of time and space, and of our actions and things, serves to drive away our consciousness of all existence whatsoever from the mind. 41 Vasishta replied: Yes. All our objective knowledge of the distinctions of time and place and of actions and things is the effect of our ignorance of the subjectivity of the soul. There is no substance other than the soul before the liberated spirit. 42 Rama asked, The absence of any knowledge of an intelligent agent or an intelligible object completely deprives us of any intelligence at all. The impossibility of unity and duality being combined must preserve our distinct knowledge of the knowing principle and the known or knowable object. 43 Vasishta replied: You get knowledge of God by your act of knowing him. Therefore the word is taken in its active sense by you and others. But with sages like ourselves who possess our intuitive knowledge of ourselves as the deity, it is only a self-reflexive verb. 44 Rama asked, But how do you feel your finite selves or sense of ego and your limited knowledge to be the same as the infinite soul and omniscience of God? Do you ascribe your

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imperfections to the transcendental divinity, who is purer than the purest water and rarer than the rarefied ether? 45 Vasishta replied: What we call individual ego is the feeling of the perfections of the Divine Soul in ourselves, and not attributing our imperfect personalities to him. The duality of living souls and the Divine Soul resembles the unity of the blowing breeze with the universal and still air. 46 Rama asked, As waves of the ocean have been continually rising and existing in it, so the objective thoughts of ones egoism and the world besides must be always rising and falling in the subjective soul of the Supreme Being, as well as in the souls of self-liberated persons. 47 Vasishta replied: If so it be, then tell me. What is the fault, so much criticized in the popular belief of duality, in the creed of unity which is eternal and infinite, full and perfect in itself, quite calm and quiet in its nature, called the transcendent one? 48 Rama asked, If it be so, then tell me sage. Who and what power conceives the ego, you, and others, which feels and enjoys all as their agent, if the fundamental fallacy of the world be the root of all? 49 Vasishta replied: The knowledge of the reality of the objective or knowable things is the cause of our bondage in this world. True knowledge does not recognize their reality. Full intelligence which assumes the forms of all things in itself sees no difference between bondage or liberation. 50 Rama asked, Intelligence, like light, does not show us all things the same way. Intelligence shows us the difference between a pot and a picture, just as light shows white and black to view. Again as the light of our eye sight shows us the different forms of outward objects, so our intelligence confirms and indicates the reality of our visual perceptions. 51 Vasishta replied: All outer objects, having no cause for their creation or any source for their production, are as incredible as the offspring of a barren woman. The appearance of their reality which is presented to our sight is as false as that of silver in a conch shell or in glittering sands. 52 Rama asked, The sight of this miserable world, whether it be true or false, is like a frightening apparition in a dream, attended only with pain. Therefore tell me the best way to avoid and get rid of this error. 53 Vasishta replied: The world, being no better than a dream, is the reflection of the idea of its reality. That view is the best way to get rid of the trap of its tempting joys and sorrows. 54 Rama asked, But how to effect this perspective to gain our bliss and rest? How do we put an end to the sight of the world which shows the sights of falsities as realities in a continuous series of deluding dreams? 55 Vasishta replied: It is the due consideration of the antecedent and subsequent states of things that must remove the false impression of their reality. It is no different from how we reflect upon our dreams. Their reality is eliminated once we examine them. 56 Rama asked, But how do the rising apparitions of the world disappear in the depth of our minds? What do we come to perceive after the traces of our memories of material substance have faded away? 57 Vasishta responded: After the false appearance of the world has vanished from view, like the faded sight of a city, the detached mind of the unconcerned soul looks upon the world as a painting wholly washed out by rain.

Rama asked, Then what becomes of the man after worldly sights and desires are decreased from his mind, like the material-looking objects of a dream, and after the mind rests in a state of total detachment? 59 Vasishta replied: The world recedes from his sight. His liking of it and his desire for its enjoyment depart and die away along with it. 60 Rama asked, How can this blind and deep rooted inclination, which has accompanied the soul from many previous births and branched out into multiple desires, suddenly give up its hold of the human heart? 61 Vasishta replied: The knowledge of truth serves to disperse the rooted error of the material world from the mind. In the same way, the sense of the vanity of human desires and the bitterness of their enjoyment suddenly dispel their seeds from the heart. 62 Rama asked, After the error of materiality and the visible spheres of worlds dissipate, what is that state of the mind which follows? How is its peace and tranquility at last? 63 Vasishta replied: After dispelling the error of the material world, the mind reverts to its seat in the immaterial soul where it is released from all its earthly bonds and finds its rests in the state of detachment and mental indifference. 64 Rama asked, Tell me sage, if the error of the world is as little as that of a childs idea of sorrow, then what trouble is there for a man to remedy it? 65 Vasishta replied: When all our desires, like the fond wishes of children, are wholly extinct in the mind, there remains no more cause for any sorrow. This you may well know from the association of desires in all minds. 66 Rama asked, Tell me sage, what is the mind and how are we to know its nature and workings? What good do we derive by our best investigation of mental powers and properties? 67 Vasishta replied: The inclination of the intellect towards intelligible objects is called the mind because it minds only what is thinkable. The right knowledge of the minds workings leads to the extinction of all our worldly desires. 68 Rama asked, Tell me sage, how long does this tendency of the intellect towards the thinkable continue? When does the mind eliminate thoughts, which causes our extinction in the state of nirvana? 69 Vasishta replied: If there is a complete absence of thinkable things, what is left for the intellect to be intent upon? The mind dwells only upon its thoughts, but the lack of thinkable objects leaves nothing for it to think upon. 70 Rama asked, How can there be an absence of thinkable when we have ideas accumulated in memory to think and reflect upon? There is no one who can deny the existence of ideas which are always imprinted in the mind. 71 Vasishta replied: Whatever idea the ignorant have has no truth and is denied by the learned. The only conception the wise have is that of a nameless and formless unity. 72 Rama asked, What do the ignorant know of this triple world which has no truth or reality to it? What is the true knowledge of the wise about the world which is inexpressible in words? 73 Vasishta replied:

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What the ignorant know about the duality of the world is wholly untrue from first to last. The true knowledge of the wise neither recognizes a duality nor acknowledges its production. 74 Rama asked, Of course, whatever is not produced in the beginning cannot exist at anytime. But how is it that this unreal and unapparent nothing could come to produce in us its conception of a something? 75 Vasishta replied: This causeless and uncaused unreality of the world appears as a real entity like a daydream presents the false sight of the cosmos as a reality. 76 Rama said, What we see in our dreams and the images we conceive in our imagination are only perceptions derived from our impressions of them in our waking state. 77 Vasishta replied: O Rama, tell me whether the things you see in your dream or conceive in your imagination are exactly of the same forms that you see in your waking state? 78 Rama said, The things we see in our dream and conceive in our imagination appear to us in the same light as they show themselves in our waking state. 79 Vasishta questioned: If the impressions of the waking state appear in our dreaming, then tell me Rama, why do you find your house standing in the morning which you saw to have fallen down in you dream? 80 Rama answered, I understand that the things seen in waking do not appear the same in dreams. But tell me sage, why do they seem to resemble those that have been seen before? 81 Vasishta replied: It is not the idea of anything that appears as a reality in our minds, but the inherent impression of the world in the soul that exhibits it to us from first to last. 82 Rama said, I understand that this world is no better than a dream. But tell me sage, how do we remove our fallacy of its reality which holds us fast like a demon? 83 Vasishta replied: Consider how this dream of the world came into fashion and what may be its cause. Knowing that the cause is not different from its effect, see this visible creation in the light of its invisible origin. 84 Rama said, But as the mind is the cause of the sights seen in our dreams in sleep, it therefore must be the same with its creation of this world, which is equally insubstantial and without decay as itself. 85 Vasishta replied: So it is, O most intelligent Rama. The world is truly the mind of God, which is nothing other than the consolidation of Divine Consciousness. Thus the world being situated in the mind, it is only this mind that exhibits these dreamlike shows which originate from it. There is no other source. 86 Rama asked, But why can I not identify creation with Brahman, the Divine Mind? The relationship of sameness exists between a component part and its integral whole, as there is between the branch of a tree and the tree itself. But it would be absurd to identify the undivided and formless Brahman with the divided and formal world. 87 Vasishta replied: It is impossible, O Rama, to identify this frail perishable world with the eternal Brahman, who is uncreated, quite calm and quiescent, and intact in his nature. 88 Rama added, In the end I find by a haphazard way that my conception of the world from first to last is false, as is the error of my attributing the qualities of activity and passivity to the nature of the transcendent being. 89 Vasishta concluded saying:

Now I have fully exposed the false views of the world, both by the elegance of my poetic speech and by the enlightening reasoning of the learned. Both eloquence and reasoning are calculated to remove the mistaken views of the emptiness and delusion of the world by establishing the truth of all being composed of the essence of the one sole and Supreme Entity.

Chapter 191 Solution of Great Question of Unity & Duality

Rama asked, If it is as you say, sage, the world must be a great riddle as it can neither be said to be in existence with all its contents, or be a perfect nothing with everything quite extinct in it. 2 This existence that shows itself to sight as the world appears as a delusion or deception, though it cannot properly be called an illusion if it is composed of divine essence as you say. 3 Vasishta replied: The accidental appearance in which Brahman manifests himself of his own accord is known to him as the world and exists in himself. 4 Rama asked, How does Brahman manifest himself as the world before space exists and after its extinction? How does the Divine Spirit shine itself as the world when there is no light in the heavens? 5 Vasishta replied: The world shines with the light of Divine Consciousness. Know that this light proceeds from the Divine Spirit which is thus diffused all over the universe. 6 As the light of the lamp enlightens a house with its brightness, the holy light of the Divine Spirit shines of itself without presenting an outward appearance or having anyone to look upon it. 7 Thus it is an immaterial and imperishable entity, without any appearance or observer to see it. It shines with the light of the intellect upon the basis or stand of the Divine Spirit. 8 It shines with an appearance visible only in the sight of the spirit which constantly looks upon it, as it sees its dreams in sleep. 9 It shines only in the light of the intellect and it appears as the created world before its creation. All creations visible and shining brightness is derived from the Supreme. 10 The one Supreme Intellect alone assumes the triple forms of the sight, seer, and seeing in the beginning of creation. It shows itself as the created world of its own nature and accord. 11 Our dreams and imaginations resemble this appearance. In the same manner, this creation shines before us with the light of consciousness. 12 This world is like an empty body appearing in the emptiness of Consciousness. Creation has neither beginning nor end. It is a development of the Consciousness which is distributed through it. 13 It has become habitual to our nature to suppose the existence of the world, but the false impression of its sight is lost in the consciousness of high-minded men. 14 To them this creation presents no visible form, or any sensible appearance at all. To them creation is only the appearance of a fallacy, like the mistake of a man in a statue or taking a false apparition as real. 15 In this manner the blunder of a duality in the soul produces a dualism in the mind. But before the existence of creation, there existed no dualism of the creator and the created, or of the one who manifests and the manifested. 16 The lack of a cause causes the appearance of a duality. But tell me how could there be a cause when there is no creation in existence? 17 Only Divine Consciousness manifests itself in the manner of the world. There is a complete absence of all visible objects. Though this seems to be the waking state of the Supreme Soul, yet it is neither its waking, sleeping or dreaming state. 18 The visible world is no production of dream but a manifestation of Brahman himself. Only Divine Consciousness exists in the manner of the infinite void before the birth of the atmospheric void of the world. 19 The Intellect which beholds this universe as its body, without being distributed or changed in the form of the world, is purely a spiritual or empty form that manifested itself in this visible form before it came to existence. 20 This visible world that is so manifest to view is as void and empty as the empty air. 21 Now knowing this in your own understanding, you must remain devoid of all
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dualism in your mind. Be as mute as a block of stone. Give no heed in your heart to the words of the universe. Do not care for their sayings of earthly enjoyments.

Chapter 192 Rama Realizes there Is No Error, No Ignorance

Rama said: Alas that I have so long strayed about in the false maze of the world without knowledge of it being a mere void. 2 Now I come to know the fallacy of my conception of the world, which is only a mere nothingness, which never is or was, and which never will be proven to be a positive reality. 3 It is all still without any support, existing only in our false knowledge of it. It is an endless formation of solid intellect, a mere empty conception that we have without any figure or form or color or mark of its own. 4 The world is the transcendental emptiness of a wholly inconceivable nature. Yet how wonderful it is, what we call our world, our earth and the sphere of our action. 5 How it appears as a duality, and how these worlds and mountains are seen as separate and solid bodies when in reality they are only the transparent sky appearing as thick and opaque to our misconception of them. 6 This creation and the future world are like the dreams that we see, the workings of our imagination. Only consciousness shows itself as these intelligible objects, which otherwise could not present their visible aspects to us. 7 The thought that I am in heaven or hell in this life makes this world appear as such to us because all that is visible are objects or creatures of our consciousness of them. 8 There is nothing such as visible or its vision, nor this world or its creation, unless it is caused by consciousness within us. It is neither a scene in our waking or sleeping, nor is this anything real in its nature. 9 If this is only a false conception of the mind, then how could such negative error produce this positive spectacle? Tell me, O sage, how could this blank fallacy bring forth the thought of this real existence? 10 How is it possible for error to creep into the infallible mind of omniscience? It is improbable that error should reign at large over this perfect creation. Therefore, it is the Lord himself who exhibits his glory in this manner. 11 How else can we think of the continuity and infinity of space, emptiness and time other than they are attributes of omnipotence? How are we to look on the transparency of air and crystal without thinking them as manifestations of his nature? 12 A false notion is as false as the sight of ones own death in a dream. But how can this world which is so perceptible to sight be lost or expunged from our sight without losing our sight of the One who manifests its? 13 Of course, the sights of a mirage, fairy cities and double moons in the sky are deceptions of vision and productions of our error. But the same analogy does not apply to our sight of the world. 14 Childrens apparitions of ghosts never lay hold on adults and the waking, or on anyone in the daylight and open air. This and similar errors arise only in our ignorance and vanish upon second thought and true knowledge. 15 It is improper in this place to raise the question from where this imaginary demon of error could arise among mankind because it is evident from our own reasoning that there is no such thing as ignorance ever in existence. 16 It is evident by rational reasoning that whatever is invisible and imperceptible to us is called not being, and the conception or idea of that is called an error. 17 That which is not clearly obtained by any proof or reasoning, and is as impossible as a sky-flower or the horn of a rabbit, cannot be believed to be anything in existence. 18 And a thing however apparent to sight, but having no cause or evidence of its reality, cannot be believed as a thing in existence, but must be a nothing like the child of a barren woman. 19 Therefore there can no error at anytime, nor can an error ever produce anything whatever. It is therefore the manifest omniscience of providence that is conspicuous in every part of this wide and grand display. 20 Whatever we see shining before us is the manifestation of the Supreme Being itself. The same Supreme Spirit fills this fullness of space and is full with it in itself. 21 There is nothing
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that is either shining or not shining here at anytime, unless it is the calm and quiet and transparent spirit of God that inheres in its body of the mundane world. 22 The one unborn, undying and unchanging everlasting being is the most adorable and ever adored lord of all who fills and pervades the whole with his essence. He only is the word ego, self-manifest, pure and all pervading, while I and all others are without our individual egos and shining in that unity.

Chapter 193 Rama Realizes that All Questions Become Meaningless upon God Realization
Rama said: There is the only One alone whom neither the gods nor the rishis know or comprehend. He is without beginning, middle or end. It is that being who shines himself without this world and these phenomena. 2 It is useless for us to mind the difference between unity and duality, or to be led to the questions created by the misleading words of false doctrines, without relying upon the state of one tranquil and unvarying spirit. 3 The world is as clearly an empty body appearing in the womb of emptiness like a string of pearls or aerial castles seen in the open sky. 4 The world is attached to the solidity of the invisible intellect in the same manner as emptiness is inherent in vacuum, hardness in stone, and fluidity in water. 5 Though the world appears to be spread on all sides of space, yet it is no more than an empty void lying calm and quiet in the hollow womb of the great Intellect. 6 This world which appears so fair and clear to the sight of ignorant people vanishes like a phantom into nothing at the sight of the boundless glory of the transcendent God. 7 The impression of difference and duality that exists among worldly men between creator and creation vanishes upon reflection, like waves in the waters of the sea. 8 The existence of the world, together with all our miseries in it, vanishes before the light of our liberation, just as the darkness of night flies away at sunrise and the light of the day disappears before the gloom of night. 9 Whether in plenty or poverty, or in birth, death or disease, or in the troubles and turmoil of the world, the wise man remains unshaken, though he may be overpowered by them. 10 There is no knowing or error in this world, no pain or pleasure, and no distress or delight in it. They are all attributes of God whose pure nature is unsoiled by them. 11 I have come to know that this existence is pure Brahman himself. Lack of knowledge means thinking there is anything other than the spirit of the great God. 12 I am awakened and enlightened in divine knowledge. I find external existence ceases to exist in any presence. 13 Perfect knowledge tells us that all these worlds are only Brahman himself. But lack of this knowledge says, I was not Brahman before, but now I have become so by my knowledge. 14 The known and the unknown, and the dark and the bright are all only Brahman, just as emptiness and unity, and brightness and blueness all belong to the one and same sky. 15 I am extinct by nirvana in the Deity and sit unafraid of anything. I am devoid of all desire with my leaning in perfect blessedness. I am as I am, seized in my infinite bliss, without my sensibility of what or which. 16 I am wholly that one and sole entity which is nothing but perfect tranquility. I see nothing but a calm and quiet which utterly absorbs and enraptures me. 17 Knowing the knowable is to un-know ones self and ignore the visible. As this knowledge continues to dawn in the soul, the whole cosmos sinks into oblivion and seems like only a block of stone, without the name or sign of anything being known.
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Chapter 194 Rama Understands that Knowledge of the One Is Indescribable, Describes Realization
Rama said: In whatever manner and form the individual soul conceives the Universal Soul within itself, it has the same conception or idea presented before it, agreeably to its concept. 2 All these worlds lie in concert in their spiritual state in the boundless spirit of the great Brahman. But they appear to us in various lights, like different rays radiating from the one and same gem. 3 The great and bright quarry of the Divine Mind contains all these sparkling worlds in its unbounded bosom. All of them unite to shed and scatter their joined light upon us like the mixed rays of jewels in the womb of a vast mine. 4 All these different worlds, shining together like so many lamps of a reflected light, are clearly perceived by some and are imperceptible to others, just as the blaze of daylight is dazzling to the clear-sighted but quite dim to the blind. 5 As the rushing of the contrary currents create whirlpools in the waters of the deep, so the contact and conflict of elementary atoms produce the consolidation and dissolution of worlds, which are no acts of creation. 6 Creation everywhere is only a joining together of the drizzling drops of the icy Consciousness. Therefore, who can count the countless watery particles that are constantly flowing out of Consciousness and condensed in the forms of worldly, spherical bodies? 7 As a part is not different from the substance of the whole, so creation is not different from its creator other than the difference between the two words used to describe creation and creator. 8 The causeless and un-causing unity is the original model of infinite variety. These numberless multiplicities are only copies of that sole part, and neither a duality nor pluralities whatever. These copies and counterparts never rise or fall apart from their original prototype. 9 That intelligence shows the objects of the intellect in itself. It produces these unproduced productions to view, just as sunlight exposes the visible to light. 10 From my non-desire of all things in existence I have accomplished perfection and acquired that prosperity which is called mental detachment or nirvana. 11 Realization does not come from understanding this bliss, nor can we have any knowledge of this bliss by our perception. There is no knowledge whereby we may know the unknown one who alone is to be known. 12 It is a knowledge that rises of itself, a waking of the soul from its sleepiness. It throws a light like that of the midday sun in the innermost soul. It is neither confined in nor absent from any place or time. 13 After all desires are dispelled and all actions with desires ended, this stillness attends upon the enlightened soul. 14 The saint of awakened understanding who is confined in himself and absorbed in meditation is inclined neither to the craving of anything nor to the avoidance of anything whatever. 15 In this state of rapture, the mind of the saint, though in full possession of its mental faculties, remains as fixed and inactive and unmindful of all worldly things and bodily actions as a burning candle that consumes itself while it illuminates others, without any shaking or motion of its own. 16 The soul becomes united with the world (vishwarupa) in its condition of thoughtfulness and is called the mundane soul (vishwatma). Or else it is said to be situated in the state of the immense void of Brahman when it is devoid of thoughts. Hence creation and its cessation both belong to the Divine Intellect in its state of activity or thoughtfulness and its state lacking thoughts or nirvana. 17 He who is enrapt in divine ecstasy and settled in his belief in the identity of God and his thinking of Him remains closely confined in himself with his rapture and secure from the distractions of his mind. 18 He who relies only upon meditation on his self, regardless of all other things in the world, comes to find the reality of only his self-absorption, and everything else besides
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is as void as empty air. 19 The man of enlarged understanding has an unbounded store of knowledge in himself, but this ultimately ends in the knowledge of the unspeakable one. 20 It is therefore in our quietism that we feel the very best being of our consciousness to be either dormant or extinct. This state of tranquility of the mind is inexpressible in words. 21 The summit of all knowledge is the abstract and concealed knowledge of all as the true one. Hence the world is a real entity, in as much as it abides in the eternal one. 22 The bliss of nirvana-ecstasy, with the utter extinction of all desire and the consciousness of a cool and calm composure of ones self, is the supreme good or highest state of bliss and perfection that is aimed at to be attained even by the gods Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. 23 All things are always present with it in all places and at all times. They are always accompanied with our concepts of them in Consciousness, which is the only pure entity that is ever in existence and is never dissolved. 24 Too hot is the busy commotion of the world and very cooling is the bliss of nirvana insensibility. It is therefore far better to have cold heartedness of detachment than a heart burning with the heat of worldliness. 25 As an artist conceives the design of a statue sculptured in relief in the slab of his mind, so the great Brahma sees this universe inscribed in himself in relief, and not carved out of him. 26 Just as the spacious ocean looks upon the waves heaving upon the surface of its waters, so the great Brahma sees the multitude of worlds rolling about in the midst of its Consciousness. 27 Ignorant people of dull understandings see those fixed, inseparable spectacles in the light of separate apparitions appearing in various shapes and forms in the spheres of their consciousness. 28 In whatever manner anybody conceives anything in his mind, he truly thinks and sees it in that same light because of his habitual mode of thinking it as such. 29 A man waking from his sleep finds no truth in anything he saw in his dream, whether it was the death or presence or absence of a friend. In the same way, the enlightened soul sees no reality in the life or death of any living being seen in this visible world, because none lives by himself or dies or departs away of himself. All are delegated alike in the tablet of the eternal mind. 30 Whatever appears to pass under and away from our sight is the fixed inert and quiescent rehash of its divine original. The conviction of this truth in the mind is enough to prohibit the mind from falling into the error of taking the copy for its mold. 31 This lesson will certainly tend to lessen the enjoyments of your body. No enjoyment will ever serve to prevent the bodys fall to nothing. This lesson will also protect you from the error of taking for real what are numberless and, at best, only passing sights in your dream. 32 Lack of desire for earthly enjoyments increases our wisdom, and wisdom serves to diminish our worldly desires. Thus they mutually serve to increase one another, like open air and sunshine. 33 The knowledge which tends to create aversion to riches, family and friends is averse to your ignorance and dullness. Acquisition of the one immediately serves to put an end to your ignorance. 34 That is the true wisdom of wise men, unmixed by greed. This is the true learning of the learned, uncorrupted by any yearning. 35 But wisdom and renunciation, alone or combined, are of no good unless they have attained their perfection. Unless perfected, they prove as vain as the blaze of a sacrificial fire in a picture which has no power to consume the sacrifice offered upon it. 36 The perfection of wisdom and renunciation is a treasure which is called liberation because anybody attaining it remains in a state of infinite bliss freed from all the bonds of care. 37 In this state of emancipation we see past and present, and all our sights and doings in them, as present before us. We find ourselves situated in a state of even calm and tranquility of which there is no end or any interruption whatever. 38 The self-contented man who finds all his

happiness in himself is ever cool and calm and tranquil in his soul, devoid of all desire and selfishness in his mind. He relies upon his cool hearted detachment and apathy to all worldly objects and sees only a clear void stretched before him. 39 We scarcely find one man in a hundred thousand human beings who is strong enough and has the bravery to break down the net of his earthly desires, like a lion breaking the iron bars of his cage. 40 The inner light of clear understanding dispels the mist of desires that overcasts the craving mind, melting thickened greed like sunshine dissolves thickened ice in autumn. 41 Lack of desire is the knowledge of the knowable and stands above all things that are desirable or worth desiring. It resembles a breath of air without any external action. 42 He sits quiet and firm in himself, his thoughts fixed upon discerning the truths and errors of the world. He looks upon all others in the light of himself, without having anything to do with them or have any desire for them. 43 He sits rested in the immensity of Brahman with his enlightened view of the visible as existing in him. He remains indifferent to all things, devoid of desire for anything, sitting quietly in the inactive silence of liberation which the wise call liberation (moksha).

Chapter 195 Vasishta Tests Rama: Why Didnt God Create the World?
Vasishta said: Bravo Rama! You are awakened to light and enlightened in your understanding. The words you have spoken are calculated to destroy the darkness of ignorant minds and rejoice the hearts of wise. 2 These phenomena that appear so very bright to our sight lose their glowing brightness with our lack of desire and disregard of them. Knowledge of this truth is attended with peace and tranquility, and liberation and calmness. 3 As we suppress our imagination of phenomena, all these imaginary sights vanish from our view like lack of movement in winds reduces them to one common and calm air. 4 An enlightened man remaining unmoved as a stone or moving quietly in his conduct in life is truly said to have his clear liberation. 5 Look at yogis like ourselves, O Rama, who have attained this state of liberation, have been cleansed of all our iniquities, and are now set at quiet rest, even while we are engaged in our worldly affairs. 6 Know that the great gods Brahma, Vishnu and others are situated in this state of quiet and freedom. They remain as pure intelligences even while discharging the offices of their divinity. 7 O Rama, attain the enlightenment of holy sages and remain as still as a stone like ourselves. 8 Rama said: I see this world as a formless void situated in the infinite emptiness of Brahma. It is an uncreated and insubstantial nothing. With all its visibility, it is an invisible nothing. 9 It is like the appearance of water in a mirage or a whirlpool in the ocean. Its glare is like the glitter of gold in dust or the sands on a beach in sunshine. 10 Vasishta said: Rama, if you have become so enlightened and intelligent, then I will tell you more for the enlightenment of your understanding. Let me ask you some questions so that your answers will remove my doubts. 11 Tell me, how can the world be a nothing when it shines so very brightly all about and above our heads? How can all these things be nonexistent which are so resplendent to sight and always perceptible to our senses? 12 Rama said: The world was never created in the beginning, nor was anything ever produced at anytime. It is therefore as nonexistent as the offspring of a barren woman. It is only a creation of our imagination. 13 There is no result without its cause and nothing comes from nothing. What can be the cause of the world when it is a nothing, a production of only our error? 14 The immutable and everlasting deity cannot be the creator without changing itself to a finite form. Therefore how can God be the cause of these frail and finite forms? 15 It is the unknown and nameless Brahman that shows himself as the cause of the world which proceeds from him and is his very self. The word world does not bear any other sense. 16 The first intelligence called the god Brahma arises from and abides for a little while as that unknown and nameless category of the Universal Spirit which we call the conscious soul with a spiritual body. 17 Then it suddenly comes to see the luminaries of the sun and moon and the heavenly hosts rising in the infinity of the Divine Mind. It thinks a small moment to be a long year in its reverie of a dream. 18 Then it perceives the ideas of space and time and their divisions and motions. The whole universe appears to its sight in the vast immensity of emptiness. 19 Upon
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completion of the false world in this manner, its false contriver, the self-styled Brahma, is employed wandering all over the world as his creation. 20 So each living soul, deluded by its mistaken conception of the world as a positive reality, traverses up and down and all about creation, repeatedly wandering in its false world. 21 Although the events of life take place according to the wishes of the soul, yet these are mere accidents of chance. It is a mistake to think they are permanent results of fixed laws. 22 Because it is as wrong to suppose the substantiality of the world and the permanency of the events, just like it is wrong to grant the birth of a child born of a barren woman and feeding it with the powder of pulverized air. 23 Nothing can be positively affirmed or denied regarding the existence of the world except that whatever it is, it is nothing other than the diffusion of the all pervasive spirit of the Eternal One. 24 The world is as clear as the transparent atmosphere and as solid as the density of a rock. It is as mute and still as a stone and quite indestructible in its nature. 25 The world is originally an idea from the ideas of the Eternal Mind. Then it is spiritual from the permeation of the all pervading spirit of Viraj. Thus what appears to us as a solid body is a mere void. 26 Thus Brahma being the great void and its fullness, where is there any other thing such as the world in it? The whole is a dead calm like death, a void devoid of beginning or end. 27 As waves continuously heave and dive in the bosom of the waters of the deep, and as the waves are not distinct from the waters, so the worlds continuously rolling in the breast of the empty Brahman are nothing other than the very same essence of Brahman himself. 28 The few who are versed in their superior and esoteric knowledge, as well as in the inferior or exoteric knowledge, live as long as they live then dive at last into this Supreme, like drops of water mix into the sea. 29 The exoteric phenomena of the world abides in the esoteric ideal of Brahman and is of the same transcendent nature as the Divine Mind. For it is never possible for the gross, changing and transitional nature to exist in the pure, unchanged and quiet state of God. 30 If one knows the nature of dream to be false and a mirage as a fallacy, how can he ever believe them to be realities? Anyone who knows visible nature to be of the nature of Brahman can never ever take it to be dull and gross material substance. 31 An enlightened sage who has esoteric knowledge of the world and reflects its spiritual sense cannot be misled to see it in its gross material light. A holy man who tastes ambrosia is never inclined to drink impure wine. 32 He who remains in nirvana meditation by turning his view away from the sight of the visible towards mental examination of his self, and who represses his mind from the thoughts of thinkable objects, is truly seated in the tranquility of the Supreme Spirit. 33 Vasishta asked: If visible creation is situated in Brahman, their cause and origin, then why not consider creation to be substance and God its cause, like the sprout of a plant is situated in its seed? 34 Rama said: The sprout does seem to be situated in the seed, but as it is produced from the same essence, the sprout appears to be the same substance as the seed. 35 If the world as it appears to us is inherent in Brahman, then it must be of the same essence and nature as Brahman. These being eternal and imperishable in Brahman, then the world also has to be so. 36 We have never seen or heard that any finite, material or perishable thing has ever proceeded from an infinite, formless and imperishable cause. 37 It is impossible for a formless thing to remain in any form whatsoever, just as it is never possible for an atom to contain a mountain in its bosom. 38 Only an idiot would say that the stupendous world with its gigantic form abides in the formless abyss of Brahman, like bright gems are contained in the hollow of a box. 39 It is inappropriate for anybody to say that the transcendent and tranquil God supports the material and moving world upon it, or that a physical body is an imperishable thing.

Our perception of the world having a form is no proof of its reality because there is no truth whatsoever to the many curious forms that present themselves in our dreams. 41 It is an unprecedented dream that presents the sight of the world of which we had no innate or preconceived idea. By comparison, our usual dreams are commonly known to be the reproduced representations of our former impressions and perceptions, the results of our memories. 42 It is not a daydream, as some would have it, because night dreams disappear in the daytime. But how does a dreamer of his own funeral at night come to see himself alive upon waking in the day? 43 Others again maintain that no bodiless things can appear in our dream because we dream only of certain bodies. But this belief has no truth in it, since we often dream of and see the apparitions of bodiless ghosts both by day and night. 44 Therefore the world is not as false as a dream, only an impression settled like a dream in our very conscious soul. The formless deity manifests itself in the various forms of this world to our understanding. 45 As only our consciousness remains despite the forms and other things appearing to us in dreams as we sleep, so Brahman remains solely in himself in the form of the world that we see. God being wholly free and apart from all can not have any accompaniment. 46 There is nothing that is either existent or nonexistent in him because we have no conception of him ourselves, nor can we form any concept of him. 47 What is this nameless thing that we cannot know in our understanding? It is known in our consciousness, but whether it exists or not, we know nothing. 48 It is a nonexistence appearing as existent and an existence seeming to be nonexistent. All things are quietly manifest in it at all times and in all forms. 49 It is the development of Brahma in Brahman, just as the sky evolves in emptiness. Nothing can be found to fill the emptiness of Brahman except Brahman himself. 50 Therefore I, my seeing, and my sight of the world are all mere fallacy. Only the calm and quiet extension of Divine Consciousness fills the infinite emptiness of his own spirit, and nothing beside. 51 As the aerial castle of our imagination has no building or reality in it, so this world is only a calm and quiet emptiness, an unfailing vacant idea. 52 It is a boundless space full with the essence of the Supreme Spirit. It is without beginning or end, wholly inscrutable in its nature, and quite calm and quiet in its aspect. 53 I have known my own state to be without birth or death, as calm and quiet as that of the unborn and immortal Brahman himself. I have come to know that I am as formless and indefinable as the Supreme Soul. 54 I have now given expression to all that I find impressed in my consciousness, just as whatever is contained in a seed comes to sprout out of it. 55 I only know what I have in my consciousness, and nothing about unity or duality, because the question of unity and duality arises only from imagination. 56 All these knowing and living liberated men, liberated from the burden of life by their knowledge of truth, are silently sitting here devoid of all their earthly cares, like empty air in infinite emptiness. 57 All efforts of mixing with the busy commotion of the world are at an end. They are sitting here as quiet and silent as a mute and motionless picture on the wall, engraved on the bright regions in their minds. 58 They are as still as statues carved in rock, or as people described in fairy tales living in the city that Sambara built in the air. 59 This world truly is a phantom appearing in our dream of creation. It is a structure without any foundation, a figure intangible to our touch. Where then is its reality? 60 The blinded ignorant see the world as a positive reality. The keen-sighted sage finds the world to be a negative nothing. He sees it in the light of Brahman and a manifestation of Brahman, as still as the calm air resting in the quiet emptiness of that transcendent spirit. 61 All these existences, with their moving and unmoving beings, and ourselves also, are mere void and vacant nullities in the knowledge of the discerning and philosophic mind. 62 I am void and so are you. We and the world beside are only mere blanks. The

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intellect is a void also, and by doing all the different voids in itself, it forms the immense intellectual vacuum which is the sole object of our adoration. 63 Being thus seated with my knowledge of the infinite emptiness of Brahman, I take you also, O you best of two-footed beings, as indistinct from the knowable one, who is one and same with the all comprehending void, and so I make my obeisance to you. 64 This world rises and sets by turns from the all comprehensiveness of empty consciousness. It is as clear as transparent air and has no other cause except the vibration of consciousness. 65 This knowledge of the nature of Brahman is beyond all other existences and above the reach of all scriptures. By attaining this state of transcendentalism, one becomes as pure and superfine as empty air. 66 There is no self, my feet or hands, or this pot or anything else that I perceive, which has any material existence. All is air and empty and insubstantial as air. Knowing this, let us turn ourselves to our subtle intellects only. 67 Sage, you have shown me the nothingness of the world and the vanity of all worldly things. The truth of this doctrine is evident in the light of our spiritual knowledge, in defiance of the clever arguments of our opponents. 68 The agnostic philosopher who upsets the silent sage with his clever arguments can never expect to see the light of spiritual knowledge shining upon him. 69 The being who is beyond our perception and conception, without any designation or indication, can be only known in our consciousness of him and not by any kind of reasoning or argument. 70 The being who is without any attribute, sight or symbol of his nature is purely empty and entirely inconceivable by us except by means of our spiritual understanding.

Chapter 196 Realization Cannot Be Obtained from Scriptures; Story of the Wood-Cutters and the Philosophers Stone
Valmiki relates: After the lotus-eyed Rama, had said these words, he fell into a trance and remained silent, his mind reposing in the state of supreme bliss. 2 He felt supremely blessed resting in the Supreme Spirit. Then, awaking after a while from his holy trance, he pensively asked a question of his sagely teacher. 3 Rama asked: O venerable sage who dispels my doubts like clear autumn scatters dark clouds, a doubt which has so long troubled my heart has at last quite been set to rest. 4 I find this knowledge to be the best and greatest of all, capable of saving me from the noisy ocean of this world. It transcends all other doctrines which are mere words to trap the careless minds of men. 5 If all this is certainly the same Brahman and our consciousness of him, then O venerable sage, he must be unspeakable and inexpressible in words, even by the most learned and wisest of men. 6 Remaining in meditation of the knowable one, without any desire in our minds for any earthly good, we are able to attain consciousness of our highest bliss which is unattainable by learning and inexpressible in words. 7 How can this certain and unchanging state of bliss be obtained from the dogmas of the scriptures which are at variance with each other and are employed in listing of categories? 8 We can gain no true knowledge from the doctrines of different scriptures. At best they only contradict one another. Therefore it is vain to expect any benefit from scriptures that are at based upon mere theories of our pretended leaders. 9 Therefore, O venerable sage, tell me whether it is of any good for us to learn the doctrines of the scriptures or attend to the teaching of our preceptors? 10 Vasishta replied: So it is, O mighty armed Rama, that the scriptures are not the means to divine knowledge. Scriptures are profuse with words; divine knowledge is beyond the reach of words. 11 Yet hear me tell you, O best of Raghus race, how the dictates of the scriptures and the lectures of your teachers are of some help towards improving your understanding. 12 There lived in a certain place some wood-cutters who had always been unfortunate and miserable in their lives. They wasted and faded away in their poverty, like trees withering in summer heat. 13 Extreme poverty made them cover themselves with patched up rags. They were emaciated in their despair, like fading lotus flowers lacking water. 14 Dried out by famine and despairing for their lives, their only thought was how to fill their bellies. 15 In this state of distress and despondence, only one thought shone in their minds: to cut wood day by day, take it for sale as fuel in town, and live upon the income. 16 Thus determined, they went to the forest to cut down wood, because any plan made in distress is best used to preserve life. 17 Thus they continued daily to go to the forest to cut wood, bring it to town for sale, and fill their bellies and support their bodies with the proceeds. 18 It happened that the outskirts of the forest where they went were full of woods with loads of treasure consisting of gold and precious gems lying hidden under the trees and exposed to view. 19 Then it turned out that some of the wood-cutters happened by their good luck to discover the brilliant gems which they took to their homes. 20 Others saw valuable sandalwood trees, some saw beautiful flowers in some place, and some found fruit trees somewhere, all of which they took and sold for their food and livelihood. 21 Some men of dull understanding neglected all these goods and kept collecting blocks of wood which they carried to edge of the forest where they sold then at very low prices. 22 Among all these woodmen employed cutting wood, some by their good luck
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happened to find some precious gems which set them at ease for every care. 23 Thus amongst all who had been working in the same field of labor, some happened to obtain their desired reward: the philosophers gem (chintamani) which converts all things to gold. 24 Having obtained the desirable gem, which bestowed all blessings of wealth and prosperity, they became preeminently happy with their fortune and remained quite content in the same woods. 25 So the seekers and sellers of worthless wooden blocks, having gained the bountiful gem of their hearts desire, remained happily with themselves, like gods dwelling in harmony in heaven. 26 Thus the Kirata woodmen, having obtained the best gain of what is the core and foundation of every good in the land, remained quiet and contented in themselves. They passed their days without any fear or grief enjoying their everlasting mental peace and bliss. 27 This world is comparable to the wilderness. All its busy people are like the laboring Kirata foresters, daily working and suffering in their hard work for the sake of their daily bread. Some are happy to find the precious treasure of true knowledge, which gives them the real bliss of life and lasting peace of mind.

Chapter 197 The Value of the Scriptures

Rama said: O greatest of sages, please give me the best treasures of knowledge, like the woodcutter obtained his precious treasure of the philosophers stone, whereby I may attain the full, perfect and indubitable knowledge of all things. 2 Vasishta replied: The woodmen I mentioned symbolize all mankind in general. Their great poverty that I have described refers to the extreme ignorance of men which is the cause of all their miseries. 3 The great forest where they live is the vast wilderness of knowledge which humans have to traverse under the guidance of their teachers and scriptures. Their labor cutting and selling wood for daily food is the hard struggle of humans throughout their lifetimes for their simple food and support. 4 Men who are not craving or employed in business, yet desire to enjoy life, are those who devote themselves to acquire learning. 5 Those who earn a living teaching and dependent on others for their support become successful acquiring learning by their practice of teachings and diligent study habits. 6 The wood-cutters initially sought worthless wood but in the end obtained valuable gems. In the same way, men pursuing their studies for a small maintenance and self support, in the end succeed in gaining divine knowledge. 7 There are some skeptics who say derisively that there is no good to be derived from studying books. But in the end, even they turn out to be true believers. 8 Worldly men devoted to achieving the fruits in this life and acquainted with the objects of mental and spiritual truths, come distrustfully to listen to the doctrines of the scriptures. But in the end, they become fully convinced of their truths. 9 Men are led many ways by the different doctrines of different scriptures and by their different desires and inclinations. But at last they meet in the same path of glory, like the wood-cutters and their treasure gem. 10 He who is not inclined to injure others but goes on in his own beaten course is called an upright man. His judgment is sought and followed by everyone. 11 Men ignorant of truth earn their living and are doubtful of the benefits of righteous conduct or the study of the scriptures. 12 But men persisting in righteousness gain both their livelihood and liberation, just as the honest woodmen obtained their wood as well as the gems, and in the same place. 13 Among the woodmen, some obtained sandalwood, some gained precious gems, while others found some common metals. A great number found only the wood of the forest trees. 14 Some of us gain the objects of our desire and some acquire riches or deeds of virtue and merit. Others obtain their liberation and attain skill in the scriptures. 15 Know, O Rama, that the scriptures deal only with instructions to acquire the triple blessings of livelihood, riches and virtue. They give no direction for knowing the Supreme One who is inexpressible in words. 16 Words and their meanings serve only to express the intelligible objects which they signify, such as the seasons signify the fruits and flowers which they bear. But knowledge of the Supreme Being is derived from ones intuition and is felt only in our consciousness. 17 The scriptures state that Divine knowledge transcends the knowledge of all other things, and that the brilliance of the Divine Person surpasses the brightness of all objects, just as the beauty of the female body excels the luster of the brightest gems. 18 Transcendental knowledge of God cannot be derived from the doctrines of the scriptures, or from the teachings of our preceptors. We can never know the unknowable one through gifts and charities, or by divine service and religious observances. 19 These and other acts and rites are falsely said to be the causes of divine
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knowledge, which can never be attained by them. Now listen to me, O Rama, and I will tell you the way to your rest in the Supreme Soul. 20 The study of the scriptures serves, of course, to purify the mind from vulgar errors and prejudices. But the lack of desire or aversion to worldly enjoyments makes the mind look within itself where it clearly sees the image of God shining. 21 Scripture establishes right understanding instead of ignorance, and this right reasoning serves to drive away all gross errors from the mind. 22 Scriptures or learning principally and initially serves to cleanse the mirror of the mind from its impurity of errors, then it purifies the person of its possessor by the force of its doctrines. 23 As the rising sun casts his image spontaneously upon the dark surface of the ocean, so the light of the scriptures and learning of its own accord sheds the bright light of truth in the minds of ignorant. 24 As the sun enlightens all objects by his presence, so the light of learning by its gracious appearance illuminates the dark understanding of the illiterate. 25 In this manner there is an intimate relation between learning derived from the scriptures and the mind of the man who desires his liberation, in as much as scriptures alone afford the knowledge of the otherwise unknowable one to our minds. 26 As the sight of the sun and the ocean shows us the blue waters of the one turning to a bright expanse by the rays of the other, so the scriptures and their doctrines show the enlightenment of human intellect by means of the other. 27 As children play with pebbles, rubbing them together in water and having their hands cleaned of dirt, so discussions of the scriptures and refuting disagreeable opinions clear minds of their errors. 28 It is in this way that learned men, by refutation of offensive and hateful doctrines, clear minds of doubts and questions. They become perfected in forming right principles and ascertaining truth from falsehood. 29 The scriptures are the distilled sweetness of holy texts. They infuse the sweet healing ointment of true knowledge into the mind. They are as full of sweetness as the sugarcane oozes with its sweet juice which is so delicious to taste. 30 As the rays of sunlight falling on the walls of houses become perceptible to us through the organ of sight, so the light of spiritual knowledge pierces the souls of men through hearing the scriptures through the organ of hearing. 31 Learning acquired to obtain the triple good of this world, namely virtue, wealth and the objects of our desire, is no learning at all without the knowledge of the scriptures leading to our liberation. Much learning, both in theory and practice, is worth nothing without the salvation of our souls. 32 The best learning gives us the knowledge of truth. True knowledge causes our mental evenness in all states of our being. That is called perfect equanimity and it produces our trance in waking. 33 Thus all these blessings are obtained from learning the scriptures. Therefore let everyone devote himself to the study of the scriptures with all diligence. 34 Hence, O Rama, know that the study of the scriptures and meditation upon their hidden meanings, together with ones attendance on his teacher and listening to his lectures and counsel, as well by equanimity and observing vows and discipline, a man can attain supreme bliss in the everlasting God, who is beyond all worldly things and is the supreme Lord God of all.

Chapter 198 Excellence of Equanimity, Humility and Universal Benevolence

Vasishta continued: Rama, hear me tell you something again to perfect your understanding. The repetition of a lesson serves to impress it more deeply in the memory of inattentive persons. 2 Before I told you about the existence of the world. I spoke at length about its creation or production, whereby you have come to know that both the appearance and existence of the world are mere fallacies of our understanding. 3 Next I explained in the Upasama Prakarana (Book V), my lecture on detachment, of the necessity of observing and maintaining a total indifference with regard to all creation. 4 In my discourse on detachment, I described the different stages of detachment. The attainment of the highest summit of detachment ultimately will contribute to your obtaining the blissfulness of the nirvana numbness, which is discussed in this book on nirvana samadhi. 5 Now you shall have to hear about how the learned conduct themselves in this phenomenal world, after they have learnt and obtained whatever there is to be known and obtained here. 6 Having received his birth in this world, a man from his boyhood should accustom himself to see phenomena as they are without any concern for himself in order to be secure and happy without reliance upon others. 7 Regard everything in the same light as yourself and observe a universal benevolence towards all beings. Then placing your reliance upon your own self-control, you can be safe and secure everywhere. 8 Know that this plan of your even-mindedness produces fruit of the most pure and delicious taste, bearing blossoms of unbounded prosperity and flowers of unfading good fortune. 9 Humble disposition yields the fruit of universal benevolence and makes the prosperity of the whole world wait at its service. 10 Neither the possession of a kingdom on earth nor the enjoyment of the best beauties here can yield that everlasting and essential happiness derived from the equanimity of the humble. 11 The utmost limit of a cool disposition and a entire lack of all anxious cares are the two remedies to ignore the fervor and vapors of sorrow from the human mind. 12 Among the spheres of all these worlds it is very rare to meet a person filled with the nectar of cool mental detachment who is friendly to his enemies and whose enemies are his friends, and who looks on all alike as he does to himself. 13 The mind of the enlightened man shines as brightly as the luminous moon and dazzles with drops of ambrosial dews. The sages all lived to drink the cooling drink of immortality, as you learn from the lives of the royal sage Janaka and others of immortal fame. 14 The man practicing his equality of self restraint has his faults described as his qualities, his sorrows seem as his pleasure, and his death is eternal life unto him. 15 Equality is always accompanied by good grace, good fortune and serenity, all of which constantly attend the detached sage, just as a faithful wife fondly clings to the sides of her beloved husband. 16 Equanimity is the perpetual prosperity of the soul, and not the transitory merriment of the mind. Therefore there is no treasure whatsoever that is a stranger to humility of spirit. 17 He who is honest in all his dealings, steady in his own profession, and liberal in his mind is as valuable as the richest gem and is treasured by all as a god upon earth. 18 An even minded man, righteous and upright in all his doings and dealings, magnanimous in his soul and benevolent in his mind, is neither burnt by fire nor stained by water. 19 Who can defeat the man who does what is right and observes things in their true light, who is not susceptible of joy or grief? 20 All his friends and enemies rely upon a righteous and unflinching man. He is honored by his king and master and loved by all wise men with whom he has any dealing. 21 Wise and even sighted men are of indifferent minds. They do not try to flee from evil or rejoice receiving any good. They are content with whatever comes to pass upon them, whether good or bad, because they care for nothing. 22 Humble minded men are unmindful of any
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good or desirable thing which they may happen to lose because they rest in the happy state of their equanimity of which no calamity or chance can deprive them. 23 Men enjoying the bliss of equanimity laugh to scorn at the tribulations of the world. They live uninjured under all the varying circumstances of life. Even the gods venerate them because of the unchanging sameness of their minds. 24 If the unfavorable course of events ever happens to pass a shadow over the face of a patient man, the inner equanimity of his mind still serves to shed ambrosial beams of a tranquil moonlight within himself. 25 Whatever an even minded man does for himself and whatever he says to criticize others misdeeds are all praised with applause by the majority of men. 26 The public approve whatever good or evil is known or done by an impartial observer at anytime whether past or present. 27 A man who sees all things in the same light of detachment is never displeased or dejected with any calamity or danger that may befall him at anytime. 28 Prince Shibi of old is recorded in history as having given away pieces of flesh from his own body to feed a hawk and save the life of a pigeon captured in its claws. 29 Consider the impassive King of Anga who did not sink into despondence seeing his beloved consort maltreated before his sight. 30 Mind also how Yudhishthira, the King of Trigarta, lost a wager with a horrible rakshasa yet offered his only son to the fiend. 31 Look at the great King Janaka, how he remained undismayed and undejected at the burning of his well decorated city of Mithila. 32 Look at the quiet and submissive prince of Salyadesa, how he calmly struck off his own head from his body, as if it were the plucking a lotus flower from its stem, in order to satisfy the demand of a god. 33 The Sauvira sovereign, who had won the big Airavata elephant of the god Indra in combat with him, in the end returned the elephant as a gift to the same god with as much unconcern as one offers a heap of white kundu flowers or huge heaps of rotten straw upon a sacrificial fire. 34 You have heard how the elephant named Kundapa used his trunk to help the brahmins cows, lifting them from being stuck in the mud. Afterwards he devoted his body to serve the brahmin, for which he was taken up to heaven in a celestial car. 35 Let your continued observance of toleration preserve you from acts of intolerance, which tend at best to oppress others. Know that the spirit of intolerance is like the demon of Kadamba forest. 36 Remember the young and gentle Jada Bharata who by the natural dullness of his mind devoured the firebrand that was thrown into his alms pot, thinking it was a piece of meat, and without any injury to himself. 37 Think of the sober-minded Dharmavyadha who in spite of his following the profession of a butcher all his lifetime, was after death taken to heaven and placed in the company of the souls of righteous men. 38 Think of the detachment and lack of desire of the royal sage Kapardana, who being seated in the garden of paradise in his youth, surrounded by celestial ladies, felt no desire for any of them. 39 Know how many princes and lords of peoples, from the unperturbed detachment of their souls, have renounced their realms and society of mankind and taken themselves to lonely forests and solitary caves of the Vindhyan Hills where they spent their lives in motionless samadhi. 40 Think of the great sages and saints and divine and devoted adepts who have passed away and were adored by even the gods for the steadiness of their holy meditation observing their rigid and steady vows of universal indifference. 41 Remember the many examples of monarchs, ordinary men, and base and mean hunters who have been honored in all ages and countries for their observance of an undisturbed equality in all states and circumstances of their lives. 42 All intelligent men strictly observe the rule of preserving their equanimity throughout life, whether it be to achieve success and understanding of every kind in this life or the next. 43 They neither long for longevity nor desire their death in difficulties but live as long as they have to live, and act as they are called to act, without any grudge or murmur. 44 The business of a wise man is to conduct himself in life with a content mind and tranquil attitude in favorable and

unfavorable circumstances, as well as in the happiness or misery of himself or others.

Chapter 199 Varieties of Ways in which Living Liberated Men Live in the World
Rama said, Tell me sage, when a wise and liberated man is endowed with spiritual light and bliss and his mind is freed from all earthly cares, why does he not abandon all earthly affairs? 2 Vasishta replied: Observing or avoiding all ritual and pious acts are the same and of no avail to a truly enlightened man who is indifferent to anything of good or evil. 3 There is nothing in this frail world that may be desirable to a man of right understanding, nor anything of positive evil that deserves to be avoided or loathed. 4 A wise man derives no positive or permanent good from doing of any act prescribed by custom or usage. Nor does he lose anything by neglecting them. Therefore, it is best for him to stand in the middle course and act according to the common rules of society and his country. 5 As long as there is life in the body, it is called a living body and it has its motion. Therefore measure your movements according to the breaths of your life, neither accelerate nor slacken them beyond their just measure. 6 If it is the same for anyone to walk one way or the other to his journeys end, yet it is much better to walk by the beaten path rather than taking a strange and unknown way. 7 Whatever action is done at anytime with humility and mild disposition, and with a calm frankness of the mind, is always held as perfectly pure and humble in its nature and is never blamed in any manner. 8 We have seen many wise, learned and farsighted men conduct themselves very honorably and blamelessly in this world full of faults and pitfalls, harassed by traps and snares on every way. 9 Everyone is employed with perfect composure discharging the duties of the particular sphere in which he is placed. Some begin their lives as a householder, ascending gradually to state of living liberation. 10 There are many wise and well discerning kings and princes, like yourself and others sitting in this assembly, who are vigilantly occupied ruling their respective states without attachment and without desire of reaping any reward, but simply as a disinterested discharge of duty. 11 Some follow customs from the true sense of the Vedas and take their food from what is left after their daily offerings to the sacrificial fire. 12 All men belonging to any of the four castes are employed observing their respective rites and duties, and in the acts of worship of the gods, and in their meditations with different ends and views. 13 Some men of magnanimous minds and higher aims of future liberation have renounced all ritual acts and remain with their spiritual knowledge of the only one, inactive like ignorant people. 14 Some are seen sitting silently and insensitive in deep and unbroken meditation in dreary and dismal deserts where even deer and other wild beasts do not traverse, and in other distant and lovely solitude where no trace of a human beings is ever seen, not even in a dream. 15 Some are found living in some sacred place of pilgrimage where they perform their acts for future rewards. Others are known to rest in some holy hermitage or sacred shrine of saints, there passing their lives quite unknown to other men practicing renunciation and detachment. 16 Many are seen to leave their own houses and quit their native countries to avoid the hatred and scorn of their fellow countrymen. They go to other lands where they settle as strangers. 17 There are many who, being dissatisfied with their families, forsake their company and desert their homes. They wander about as wanderers from forest to forest, over hills and valleys, and cities and towns, without settling anywhere. 18 Many travel to the great city of Benares, the holy city of Prayaga, the sacred shrine of Badarikasrama, and visit other holy hills and cities. 19 Many rest in the holy places at Salagrama,
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the sacred cave in Kalapagrama, the holy city of Mathura, and the sacred hill at Kalinjar. 20 See the number of pilgrims thronging in the woodlands on Mahendra Mountains, upon tablelands of Gandha Madana hills. See also the pilgrims on the plains of Dardura Hills and upon the level lands of Sahya Mountains. 21 See pilgrims thronging on the crags of the Vindhyan range, and those dwelling in the hollows of the Malaya Mountains. See them living in the happy groves of Kailash and in the caves of Rikshavata Mountains. 22 In these and many other holy places and mountains, you will find a great many hermits and far-sighted devotees dwelling in peace, wholly devoted to their holy meditation. 23 Some have deserted their prescribed duties and become renunciant monks. Those who are Brahmacharins strictly observe the law and their sacred rites. Those who have faith in Buddha are apostates forsaking the holy faith, becoming fanatics in their practices. 24 Some have left their native homes and others have left their native lands altogether. Some have settled homes in some place and others lead their nomadic lives from place to place. 25 Among these, O Rama, those who live in the nether or hell regions of this world are known as Daitya demons. 26 Some have clear understanding and are well acquainted with the civil laws of their society. Some have enlightened understanding. Others are acquainted with the past and have foresight into the future. 27 Some have unenlightened understanding, always in suspense with suspicion in their minds. They are addicted to vice, unable to govern themselves, and always under the government of others. 28 Some are half-enlightened, proud with all of their knowledge of truth, so they break away from observing customary duties and therefore are not yet an esoteric yogi or spiritualist. 29 Thus among these great multitudes of men crossing the vast ocean of life, everyone is striving to attain according to his different aim and object. 30 But one does not cross the impassable gulf of this world by confining himself at home, or remaining in his native country, or going to a hermitage or living in some solitary forest, or observing customary duties, or practicing painful austerities. 31 No dependence on righteous acts or forsaking them, or observing customary usages, or any attainment of great powers can be of any use to save a person from the troubles of the world. 32 Only ones self-control is the means to salvation. The man whose mind is not attached or tied down to anything in this world is said to have passed over it. 33 It makes no difference what a man does or neglects, or the righteous deeds of his religion and society, provided he keeps a humble mind and is never attached to anything. Such a man is considered a sage and is saved from having to return to this world of suffering. 34 The man who does nothing righteous or unrighteous in life, but has his mind fixed upon this earth and is attached to earthly objects, is considered a hypocrite and is destined to revisit this earth in repeated births. 35 Our minds are like nasty flies prone to fly about and suck upon the sores of worldly pleasures. It is hard for us to deter them, as it is impossible for us to kill them all at once to attain salvation. 36 Sometimes it happens by good fortune that a persons mind of itself turns towards perfection. By a flash of inner light, he comes to see the presence of the Divine Spirit in his own soul. 37 The mind, being enlightened by the flash of spiritual light in the soul, becomes enrapt at the sight and loses all earthly attachment. It is unified with the Supreme Unity. 38 Being unmindful of everything and conscious of yourself as a particle of infinite emptiness, remain perfectly happy with yourself in the everlasting bliss of your soul. 39 Being filled with knowledge of transcendental truth and devoid of the faults and frailties of your nature, have the magnanimity of your soul with equanimity of mind and elevation of your spirit. Thus, O support of Raghus royal race, remain without sorrow or fear of death and rebirth. Be as holy as the holy of holies. 40 Know the clear state of the most holy Brahman is quite clear of all the grossness and

foulness of nature, free from all the qualities and properties that are attributed to him. He is beyond our conception and above the reach of our thought. He is uncreated and ever existent of himself, manifest in his home of our intellect. Knowing him as yourself, remain quite free and fearless forever. 41 There is nothing more that can be gathered on this subject from the use of any more words. Nothing remains to be communicated to you for instruction in divine knowledge. You are roused, O Rama, to your full knowledge of the essential doctrines of divinity. You have become aware of whatever is knowable and hidden in nature. 42 Valmiki says: After the chief of sages had said this much, he saw Rama rapt in ecstasy and lacking mental efforts. The entire assembly sat fixed in meditation. They were all entranced in their reveries and meditations upon the mysterious nature of God like humming bees ramble over lotus petals with their soft and silent murmur and revel upon the sweetness of the flowers honey cups.

Chapter 200 Loud Applause for the Sages Speech

Valmiki continued: Upon completion of the holy sermon on nirvana, a loud commotion arose outside the court which put a stop to the sage continuing any discourse. 2 The entire audience in the court hall was immersed in a state of steadfast trance, settled attentive in the Supreme. The faculties of their mind were quite clear and their workings at rest. 3 The entire audience, on hearing the lecture on the investigation after consciousness, became passengers on the raft of existence and they all gained salvation. 4 Immediately a loud chorus of applause arose from the mouths of emancipated sages and spiritual masters dwelling in the upper regions of the skies. The vault of heaven was filled with the acclamations of praise for the venerable sage. 5 Shouts of praise also arose from the holy sages seated in the assembly, including Vishwamitra, the son of Gadhi, who sat at their head. 6 A swelling sound filled the face of the four quarters of the sky, just as blasts of wind fills the hollows of withered bamboo in the forest, making them resound with a soft sweet melody. 7 Next arose a flourish of trumpets from the celestials, mingling with the praises of the spiritual masters, which rumbled together and resounded loudly amidst the hollow caves of distant mountains and valleys. 8 Along with the fanfare of celestial trumpets, showers of flowers fell from above like cascades of snow covering all sides of heaven. 9 Flowers were scattered over the floor of the court hall and the fanfare of drums filled the mouths of hollow caves. Flying dust covered the face of the sky and the rising smell of after rain were carried upon the wings of winds everywhere. 10 Then there was a mingled rumble of shouts of applause and the sound of heavenly trumpets joined with the whistle of hissing showers of flowers and the rustling of the winds all about. 11 The courtiers looked around with uplifted faces and eyes, struck with wonder and surprise. The beasts all about the palace and in the parks remained amazed at the event with ears uplifted. 12 Women and children inside sat staring with wonder-stricken eyes. Princes sitting in the court hall looked astonished at one another with smiling faces. 13 The face of the sky became exceedingly brightened by falling showers of flowers from above. The great vault of the world was filled with the hissing sound of falling rain. 14 Showers of flowers and drizzling raindrops with their hissing sounds gave a festive appearance to the royal palace. 15 Not only the palace, but all places in the worlds seemed to celebrate their festive joy, tossing flower garlands and joining with the celestial music. 16 The shouts of spiritual masters and their utterances of joy rolled and growled high in the upper sky as rolling billows and bellowing waves howled in the depth of the ocean. 17 After the commotion of heavenly hosts subsided, the following words from the spiritual masters above were heard uttered in an audible and distinct voice. 18 The spiritual masters (siddhas) said, Since time first began, we have listened to thousands of sermons in the assembly of spiritual masters on the means of attaining liberation. But never before have we heard a lecture so impressive on the mind as this last lecture of the sage. 19 We see children and women and brute creatures, together with creeping and crawling animals, all enrapt by this soothing speech which will doubtless enrapture its readers and hearers in the future. 20 The sage has used every argument and example to rouse Rama to his bliss. It is doubtful whether he has ever shown such affection even to his wife Arundhati. 21 Hearing this lecture on liberation, even brute beasts and birds became emancipated from the burden of their base bodies. As for men, they altogether forget the nets of their bodies in their embodied state. 22 Our drink of these nectar drops of divine knowledge through the vessels of our ears has not only satisfied our appetite for wisdom, but renewed our understanding and added a
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fresh beauty to our spiritual bodies. 23 On hearing these words of the heavenly host of spiritual masters, the citizens of Ayodhya were struck with wonder and looked upward with open eyes. Then, as they cast their looks below, they saw the surface of the court hall scattered with flowers and lotuses falling in showers from above. 24 They saw heaps of mandara and other celestial flowers piled to the roof of the lofty hall. They saw the courtyard covered with blossoming plants and vines and with garlands of flowers without space between. 25 The surface of the ground was covered with blossoms of parijata plants. Thick clouds of santanaka flowers covered the heads and shoulders of the assembled people in the court. 26 The saffron flowers of yellow sandalwood hung over the jeweled crowns of princes like an awning of rain clouds spread over the glittering ceiling lights of the assembly hall. 27 Seeing these events in the court, all the people repeatedly shouted with loud applause, talking with one another of this and that as befitted the solemnity of occasion. 28 They adored the sage by prostrating their bodies and limbs, offering him their obeisance with offerings of handfuls of flowers. 29 After the loud sounds of applause had somewhat settled down, the king also rose and prostrated himself and worshipped the sage, offering a tray of presents and flower wreaths held in his hands. 30 Dasharata said, By your teachings, O husband of Arundhati, I was released from my mortal frame and gained the transcendent knowledge which filled my soul and joined it with the supreme essence in perfect bliss. 31 I think we have nothing in this earth or with the gods in heaven which is worthy enough to be given as a proper offering in your adoration. 32 Yet I beg you to ask something in order to free myself of my duty to you, and to render my services to you and have them prove effectual to me. I hope you will not be irritated at what I am saying. 33 I adore you with my queens and my wealth in both worlds, together with all my dominions and servants. 34 All my possessions are yours, so my lord, take them as yours and make them part of your hermitage. Please dispose of these as you please or use them as you like. 35 Vasishta replied, Know, O great king, that we brahmins are pleased with the mere obeisance of people. We are truly satisfied receiving reverence from men, and this you have already done and shown to me. 36 You know how to rule the earth. Therefore its sovereignty is suitable to you. You cannot give an example of any brahmin who has ever reigned as a king. Therefore keep what is yours and prosper. 37 Dasharata answered, What is this insignificant realm to me, which I am ashamed to call and own as mine? It cannot lead me to the knowledge of its true lord. Therefore lead me to this knowledge so I may clearly and truly know the most high. 38 Valmiki relates: As the king was saying this, Rama rose from his seat and threw handfuls of flowers on the sacred body of his preceptor. Then lowly bowing before him, he addressed him as follows. 39 Venerable sage, as you have made the king speechless by telling him that you are pleased with mere obeisance of men, so I am taught to wait here with my simple prostration at your venerable feet. 40 Saying so, Rama bowed his head down lowly at the feet of his guide, then scattered a handful of flowers on his pure body, just like trees on mountain sides sprinkle their dew at the foot of the mountain. 41 Then the pious prince repeatedly bowed in reverence to his venerable preceptor, while his lotus-like eyes were filled with the tears of his inner joy and piety. 42 Next rose the brother princes of Dasharatas royal race, namely Bharata, Satrughna and Lakshman, together with their equals in friends and kindred relations. They all advanced to the sage and bowed down to him with respectful reverence. 43 The other chiefs and nobles and regents who sat in their order at a distance, together with saints, sages and the priest at large, rose in groups from their seats and paid their homage to the sage, flinging handfuls of flowers upon him. 44 At this point, the sage was almost covered and hidden under heaps of flowers poured upon him from all

sides, just like the snowy Himalaya Mountains are wrapped and concealed under the snow. 45 After the clamorous sounds and exuberances of the assembly was over and the loud ringing sounds of their hailing had ended, Vasishta remembered what he had said to the assembled sages, sharing with them the truth of his doctrines and removing the doubts of his audience regarding the miracles he had effected. 46 Then with both arms he shoved heaps of flowers from his sides revealing his fair face, as if the moon had appeared from behind hoary clouds. 47 There followed a hush over the flourish of the trumpets and a silence upon the fanfare of applauses. The falling of flowers was at a stop and the murmur of spiritual masters above ceased with the noise of the assemblage below. 48 After the princes and assembled nobles had made their obeisance and greetings, there was a calm stillness in the assembly, like a lull in the atmosphere after a storm. 49 Then the chief of sages, Vasishta, having heard the applause poured upon him from all sides, spoke softly from the unblemished purity of his soul to the royal sage Vishwamitra. 50 Hear me, O sage who is the lotus of the princely race of Gadhi, and you other sages who are assembled here, namely Vamadeva, Nimi, Kruta, Bharadwaja, Pulastya, Atri, Narada, Ghrishti and Sandilya, and 51 also you sages Bhasa, Bhrigu, Bharanda, Vatsa and Vatsayana, together with all others now assembled here who have had the patience to listen to my unworthy discourse 52 with your well known graciousness to me. Please point out to me whatever you have found to be meaningless or unintelligible or ambiguous in my discourse. 53 The audience responded, O venerable sage, we have never heard or marked a single word in your spiritual and divine discourse that is meaningless or unintelligible to anybody. 54 We confess that whatever foulness was inbred in our natures by our repeated births in this sinful world has all been cleansed out by your holy lecture, just as the alloy in gold is burnt away by purifying fire. 55 O sage, our minds are as expanded by your divine sermon like blue lotus buds are opened to bloom by the cold and ambrosial beams of moonlight. 56 We all bow down to you, O chief of sages, as our best guide in divine knowledge and the giver of true wisdom with regard to all things in nature. 57 Valmiki relates: The sages hailed and bowed down to Vasishta again. Their united applause for him rose as high as the loud roar of raining clouds. 58 Then the speechless spiritual masters again poured down showers of flowers from above which covered the sages body like the clouds of winter cover rocks under ice and snow. 59 Afterwards, the intelligent and learned men in the court praised King Dasharata and Rama saying that the four princes were no other than the fourfold incarnation of the god Vishnu himself. 60 The spiritual masters said, We hail the four princes of Dasharatas line who are the fourfold forms of the self incarnate Vishnu, quite liberated from the bonds of flesh in these their living states of humanity. 61 We hail King Dasharata as having the mark of sovereignty over the whole world that extends to the limits of the four oceans and lasts forever with his race. 62 We hail sage Vasishta who is as bright as the sun and stands at the head of the whole host of sages, and also the royal sage Vishwamitra of renowned fame and dignity. 63 It is through their means that we have had this fair opportunity to hear this divine discourse, so full of knowledge and filled with reason that it serves to dispel the great gloom of error at once. 64 So saying the spiritual masters of heaven again let fall handfuls of flowers in showers, making the assembly look up to them in silence with uplifted eyes and gladdened minds. 65 Then there were greetings between the spiritual masters from above and the assembled people below. 66 At last the assembly broke with their respectful greetings to one another, accompanied with mutual offerings of flowers and salutations. The celestial and terrestrial, the great munis and sages, the pundits and brahmins, together with princes and nobles bade farewell to and took leave of one another.

Chapter 201 The Assembly Gathers again; Rama Describes His State; Vasishta Exhorts Him to Serve Vishwamitra and Dasharata
Valmiki related: When the assembly returned the next day, there was a profound silence and a cheerfulness in the faces of princes enlightened by the previous lecture. 2 Having come to the light of truth, people seemed to be smiling from reflecting on their former errors and follies. 3 The wise men in the assembly appeared to be sitting fixed in their steadfast meditation. The feelings and passions of their minds were curbed and subdued upon their access to the taste of true knowledge. 4 At this time, Rama with his brothers sat in lotus posture with legs crossed over each another, palms of their hands folded together, their eyes fixed steadfastly upon the face of their preacher. 5 King Dasharata remained in a sort of entranced meditation, thinking himself liberated in his lifetime and placed in a state of infinite bliss. 6 The sage remained silent while he was adored by his reverential audience, then spoke to them at last in distinct words. He wanted to know what they would like to hear about. 7 He said, O lotus eyed Rama, who is like the cooling moon in the clear sphere of your race, tell me what you now wish to hear. What is the most desirable and delightful to your mind? 8 Tell me the state in which you find yourself at present and in what way you view the appearance of the world now before you. 9 Being thus addressed by the sage, Rama looked at his face then spoke to him in his distinctly audible voice, with plain and unfaltering accents. 10 Rama said: It is all owing only to your favor, O venerable sage, that I have attained my state of perfect holiness and become as pure as the clear sky in autumn calm and serenity. 11 I am entirely freed from all the errors which are so harmful to the right course of our lives in this world. I am as pure as the clear sky in the true state of infinite emptiness. 12 I am set free from all bonds and released from all attributes and parts. I find myself situated in a crystal sphere, shining there as clear as crystal. 13 I am quite pacified in my mind. I am neither willing to hear nor do anything else. I am quite satisfied in myself and require nothing more for my satisfaction. I am quite at rest as in a state of trance. 14 My mind is quite calm in its thoughts and entirely pacified in its wishes. All my desires have fled from my mind and I find it resting in perfect peace and supreme bliss. 15 All my thoughts are settled and my desires subdued while I live in this waking world. I am enrapt and entranced while quite sane and sound and sleepless at all hours by day and night. 16 With my soul devoid of all wishes and expectations, I live while I am destined to live in this material body of mine. I remain rejoicing as long as I sit listening to your inspiring lessons. 17 Now I have no more need of reproof or instruction from the scriptures. I have no need to acquire riches or friends, nor do I have any need to get rid of them either. 18 I have found and I enjoy that pure happiness which attends on one in heaven or paradise, or in his attainment of the sovereignty of the whole world. 19 The world which I perceive within myself by my outward senses is conceived to be far brighter and more transparent than the outer atmosphere because I see it in the light of consciousness and consider it to be a part of its infinite empty sphere. 20 I think this world certainly is an emptiness. My belief in the nothingness of phenomena has awakened me to my immortality. 21 Let me remain content with all that is or comes to pass on me, whether they are desirable to me or occur themselves. Let me act without fail as the full extent of the law requires, but without any object or expectation of reward. 22 I am neither contented nor discontented with anything, nor do I rejoice or complain at any event. I do what is my duty in society without
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retaining any false conception of reaping their reward. 23 Let this creation be otherwise or go to utter destruction, let the winds of the last destruction blow with their fury also, or let the land smile in its plenty and beauty, yet I sit unmoved by them and remain in the divine self or spirit. 24 I rest in myself which is unseen or dimly seen by others and is untainted and without decay in itself. I am not chained to my wishes but am as free as the air which you cannot compress in your clutches. 25 As the fragrance of flowers upon trees is blown by the breeze and deposited in the air, so my soul is carried away from the confines of my body and placed in emptiness. 26 As these princes and rulers of people live and enjoy themselves in their realms at pleasure, whether they are enlightened or not, they are employed in their respective occupations. 27 So I enjoy myself with the steadiness and equanimity of my mind freed from all fear, grief or joy and desire. 28 I am happy above all happiness. My happiness is in the everlasting one. There is no other happiness which I may prefer. But because I live here as a human being, you are at liberty to appoint me to any duty, in common with all mankind and appropriate to humanity. 29 I cannot be averse to manage myself with the unimportant things of this world as long as I am destined to them. In the same manner children are never to be blamed for indulging themselves in the playthings of their childhood. Sage, as long as I have to live in this body, I must do my bodily acts, but with my mind fixed in only upon the sole One. 30 I must live to eat and drink and continue in the course of my business in life, but I am freed from all fear of my failings in them, by your kind counsels to me. 31 Vasishta replied: O bravo Rama! You have chosen the most meritorious course of life. You shall never have to repent from the beginning to the end of your career. 32 By this cold detachment in yourself and complete equanimity in every state, you have truly become established for the unbroken rest in your life, as the visible sky has found infinite emptiness. 33 By your good fortune, you have gotten rid of your sorrows. It is fortunate that you have become so well composed in yourself. It is your good luck to be freed from the fears of both worlds and it is happy for you to be at your hearts ease and rest. 34 You are lucky, my lord, to have purified the lineage of Raghu to be so filled with holy knowledge and the knowledge of present, past and future. 35 Now prepare yourself to accomplish Vishwamitras request to complete his holy sacrifice and, at your fathers request, continue to enjoy sovereignty of the earth subject to your royal parent. 36 May the mighty king reign forever in prosperity over his prosperous realm in association with you and his other sons, relatives and nobles, and in possession of all his infantry, cavalry, chariots and elephants, and without any disease or fear of his enemies.

Chapter 202 Rama Describes His State

Valmiki related: Upon hearing these words of the sage, the assembled princes and lords of men in the court felt a coolness in their souls, as if they had all be sprinkled with ambrosial waters. 2 Rama, with his lotus-like eyes and moonlike face, remained as resplendent as if they were filled with the nectar of the Milky Ocean. 3 Then sage Vamadeva and others who were filled with divine knowledge exclaimed their admiration for the preacher, O the holy instruction that you have given us this day! 4 The face of the king, his soul pacified and mind joyous, shone as if he had a new light infused in him. 5 After many other sages who were well acquainted with the knowledge of the knowable One had pronounced their praises, enlightened Rama opened his mouth again and spoke in the following manner. 6 Rama said: O seer who knows past and future, you have cleansed away all our inner impurities like fire purges gold of its impurity. 7 Venerable sage, we have now become all knowing by our knowledge of the Universal Soul, though we are confined in these our visible bodies and seeming to all appearance as knowing nothing beyond them. 8 Now I feel I am perfect and full in all and have become quite without decay in myself. I am freed from all fear and apprehension and I am quite aware of all things. 9 I am overjoyed to no end and I am happy beyond all measure. I have risen to a height from which there is no fear of falling. I am elevated to the supreme summit of prominence and perfection. 10 I am cleansed by the holy and cooling water of divine knowledge which you have so kindly poured forth in me and whereby I am as happy as a full blown lotus in the lake of my heart. 11 By your favor, I am now set in a state of joy which makes the face of the universe bright to me with ambrosial delight. 12 Now I hail myself, that I have become so fair within myself with the clarity of my mind and by the disappearance of all sorrow from it. I have received a grace in my face from the peace of mind and purity of my wishes. I am joyous in myself with my inner joy and I am wholly pure with the purity of my soul.
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Chapter 203 Valmiki Describes the Noon Sun; Assembly Retires; Dasharatas Largesse; Sunrise; Assembly Reconvenes
Valmiki related: As Rama and the sage were talking in this manner, the sun advanced towards its zenith to listen to their holy conversation in the royal hall. 2 Sunbeams spread on all sides with greater force and brightness as if to expose the sense of Ramas speech to clearer and greater light. 3 Then the lotus beds in the ponds of the royal palace pleasure gardens began to expand their enclosed buds to bloom before him, just as the princes shone forth brightly the royal hall. 4 The air was gladdened with joy at hearing the holy lectures of the sage. The air seemed to be dancing with the sunbeams, glistening in strings of pearls suspended at the windows of the palace. 5 The early gleams of the sun brightly glistened on the glittering glass doors and shining ceiling lights of the court hall, just as the gladdened hearts of the audience glowed in response to the sages enlightening speech. 6 After Rama was settled in his calmness, his face reflected the rays of the sages look upon it and shone as bright as a blooming blue lotus. 7 The sun advanced towards the summit of the horizon, like an ocean fire rising on the surface of the blue ocean, and by his darting flames dried up the dewy humidity of the sky, just as an undersea heat swallows the waters of the deep. 8 The blue sphere of heaven appeared like a lake of blue lotuses and the shining sun looked like the golden petals of the flower. His bright beams resembled the golden powder of flowers and his slanting rays were like the slanting flowers in the air. 9 He shone like the dazzling crown upon the head of the goddess Lakshmi, queen of the worlds, and was hanging like a resplendent earring pendant on the ear of heaven, while the crown lay hidden under his glaring light like bits of diamonds concealed under the brightness of a blazing ruby. 10 The ethereal maids of all the quarters of heaven held out the mirrors of silvery clouds before his face, their uplifted arms of the mountain peaks all around, and these were adorned with solar rays like rainless clouds on mountain tops. 11 Sunstones in the quarries on earth emitted a fury blaze which adorned the skies with a greater light than that of the sun. 12 Trumpets sounded aloud with the wind blown by the months of trumpeters, and conch shells blew as loudly at midday, just as the winds of the last deluge set sea waves to their tremendous uproar. 13 Then drops of sweat appeared on the faces of the princes, like dew drops falling on lotus leaves. They were so closely connected together as to appear like strings of pearls. 14 The thickening noise of the hurry and flurry of men resounded harshly within the hollow walls of the hall filling the ears of men like crashing waves fill the curved depression of the hollow sea. 15 Waiting maids came forward with cups of liquid camphor in their hands to sprinkle on the princes bodies and reduce the intensity of the solar heat. 16 Then the assembly broke, and the king rose from his seat accompanied by Rama, the princes and Vasishta, together with all the lords and nobles present in the assembly. 17 The assembled lords and princes, the ministers of the state and religion, together with the high priests and sages rose from their seats. Having gladly made their greetings to one another, they took their leave and departed to their respective homes. 18 The front of the royal inner apartment was fanned with flapping fans of palm leaves blowing clouds of camphor powder scattered for reducing the midday heat. 19 Then the chief of sages, Vasishta, opened his mouth and spoke to Rama while the instrumental compositions of noonday music resounded amidst the walls of the royal hall. 20 Vasishta said: Rama, you have heard whatever is worth hearing. You also know all that is worth
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knowing. Now I see there is nothing left worth communicating to you for your higher knowledge. 21 Now you have to reconcile in yourself, by your best understanding, all that I have taught you and what you have read and learnt in the scriptures, and harmonize the whole for your guidance. 22 Now rise to do your duties while I hasten to perform sacred bathing rites. It is now midday and the proper time for our bathing is quickly passing away. 23 Then whatever other questions you may have to satisfy your wishes, you can ask them of me tomorrow morning when I shall be happy to elaborate on the subject. 24 Valmiki related: After the sage spoke in this manner, mighty King Dasharata saluted the parting chiefs and sages, honoring them according to their proper ranks and degrees. 25 Then, as advised by Vasishta, the virtuous king with Rama by his side proceeded to give due honors to the sages, spiritual masters and brahmins, one after the other. 26 He gave them gems and jewels, money and bouquets of flowers. He gave some riches equivalent to the values of gems and jewels, while to others he gave strings and necklaces of pearls. 27 He honored some with his respects and deference and others with money suited to their worth and degree. To others he gave gifts of cloths and seats, food and drink, and gold and lands. 28 He saluted others with perfumes and aromatic spices and wreaths of flowers. He honored the elders with due respect and gave his bare regards to others. 29 Then the king rose from amidst the assembly with the whole body of his courtiers and the holy sages and Vasishta with him, just as the splendid moon rises in the sky with the retinue of stars about him. 30 The rising of the assembly and its people was attended with a rumbling noise like that heard when men tread over a marsh of knee-deep mud and mire. 31 The clashing of the concourse against one another and the cracking of their armlets and wristlets by their friction with each other, joined with broken jewels and scattered pearls slipped from the nobles torn necklaces, gave the floor of the court hall the appearance of the star sparkling heaven. 32 Bodies of sages, saints, brahmins, princes and nobles all jumbled together. There was a rapid waving of chowry fans waving in the hands of fanning maid servants. 33 But there was no crowding or dashing or pushing as they were intent upon reflecting upon the sense of the sages preaching. Rather, when they came in contact with each other, they asked to be excused with the gestures of their bodies. 34 At last the king and the sages and nobles approached one another with sweet and soft words and took their parting leave. 35 Then they left the palace and proceeded to their residences with gladdened faces and contented minds, as when the immortals return to all parts of heaven from the heavenly council of King Indra. 36 After everyone had taken leave of others and arrived at their respective houses, they employed themselves in the discharge of their ritual services of the day. 37 Thus the king and all performed their daily ritual bathing and services as usual, until the end of the day. 38 As the day ended with the discharge of the duties of the daily ritual, the tired sun, the traveler of the ethereal path, sat down to rest in the west. 39 After performing evening prayers, Prince Rama and the people at large passed their nights awake talking and thinking about the discourse of the day. 40 Then the rising sun advanced in the east, sweeping away the dust of darkness from before his path, scattering the starry flowers on his way in order to fix his seat in the middle of his dome of the universe. 41 The new rising sun reddened the skies with his rays resembling the crimson color of kusambha flowers. Then he embarked on the board of his bright globe amidst the wide ocean of the ethereal region. 42 Then the reigning princes and lords of men, together with the nobles, peers and their ministers, met at the assembly hall of King Dasharata. The great saints and sages, with Vasishta at their head, also gathered there. 43 They entered the assembly hall and took their seats according to their different degrees and ranks, just as the stars of heaven appear and occupy their places in their respective constellations and circles in the expanse of heaven. 44 Then the king and his ministers

advanced and bowed down to Vasishta and ushered him to his high seat and pulpit. They all poured forth their praises to the sage after he was seated in the speaking pulpit. 45 Now the lotus-eyed Rama, who sat before the king and the holy sage, opened his lotus-like mouth and spoke in the following manner, with his natural good sense and usual elegance of speech. 46 Rama said, O venerable sage who is acquainted with all religions and is the great ocean of knowledge, you are the axe to all knotty questions and doubts, removing the grief and fears of mankind. 47 Please tell us whatever more is worth hearing and knowing, for you know best whatever remains to be said for the enlightenment of our knowledge. 48 Vasishta replied, Rama, you have gained full knowledge and you have nothing more to learn. You have attained the perfection of your understanding and obtained the supreme good which is sought by all, wherewith you are quite content in yourself. 49 It is better if you consider and tell me how you find yourself and your inner mind at present, and consider what else you wish to know and hear from me. 50 Rama asked, O sage, I find myself fully perfected in my understanding. I am possessed of the peace and tranquility of my mind from the blessing of nirvana and the ultimate bliss of my soul. I have nothing to ask or desire of you. 51 You have said all that you had to teach me and I have known all that is worth knowing. Now sage, take your rest with the goddess of speech, who has done her utmost to instruct us all. 52 I have known the unknown and knowable one that is the only One to be known as the true reality. Knowing this all as the one Brahman, I am freed from my knowledge of duality. I have gotten rid of the deception of the diversity of the visible and I am released from reliance upon any worldly thing.

Chapter 204 All Forms, Dream or Awake, Are Manifestations of Intellect

Vasishta resumed and said: O Rama, let me tell you a few words on transcendental knowledge. The mirror of the mind shines more brightly when it is cleaned and polished of external images, rather than when it is clouded by outer shadows. 2 The significant words that describe what we know are as insignificant as the hissing murmurs of waters and waves. Phenomena are only an apparent resemblance of ideas, just as a dream is the reflection of the mind and the visible world is only a reflection of a visionary dream. 3 The waking state is that of dreaming and its scenes are those of our dreams. These scenes present themselves before us in both waking and sleeping states from our memories of them. They are the inner concepts of our consciousness appearing to be situated outside our consciousness. 4 I am conscious of the clarity of my intellectual sphere in spite of seeing fairylands in its state of dreaming. In my waking, I find my mind to be equally clear of all its imaginary forms of the three worlds and their contents, which in reality are a formless emptiness only. 5 Rama asked: If all things are formless in the formless void of the universe as an empty emptiness of the intellect, then tell me sage. How do these endless shapes and forms arise, such as earth, water and fire, and those of these hills, rocks and pebbles? 6 Tell me why the elements have different forms and qualities and why the empty air, space and time have no form or property. What makes the wind so very fleet and what causes the motions and actions of moving bodies? 7 Why is space only a vacuum? Why is the mind also empty? These are all the various properties of things. I would like a good explanation for my own knowledge. 8 Vasishta replied: Rama, you have asked good questions as they naturally occur to everyone who seeks the truth. But tell me, why do you see varieties of earth and sky and all other things that you see in your dream? 9 From where does the water you see in your sleep come? How are the pebbles scattered about you in your dream? Why do you see flaming fires and all sides of heaven appearing before your sight? 10 How do you have the idea of time in your dream? How do you perceive the actions and motions of people and things in dreams? From where do all those accidents proceed that you see occurring in your sleeping and dreaming moments? 11 What creates, produces and gives the formless dream its fascinating form, then dissolves it to nothing in the end? You find it produced and presented to your view, but you cannot say how it acts and of what stuff it is composed. 12 Rama said: The dream of the dreaming world has no form or position of its own. Its soul and substance are empty. The earth and rocks which dream presents to sight are a traceless nothing, as if in the clouds. 13 Only the empty soul is the cause of dream, which likewise is as formless and without support like the soul. The formless void is never in need of support. 14 Consciousness never produces anything or has any relationship with anything. All we perceive are only reflections of consciousness situated in the recess of the mind. 15 The mind is the evolution of the intellect which reflects images of things in the form of ideas upon the mind. Hence the ideas of time and space, and of air, water, hills and mountains are all reflections of the intellect upon the mind. 16 Our consciousness is also a void which receives the impressions of emptiness in the form of its emptiness, and the impressions of earth, air and water in the forms of their solidity, vibration and liquidity. 17 In reality there is nothing in existence such as the earth or any solid body or its form or sight. They all exist in their abstract states in the great void of consciousness, and are as equally void in their natures as consciousness itself. 18 In fact there is nothing in reality which is visible to sight. There is only the infinite emptiness of consciousness
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which represents all things in itself and is identical with all of them. 19 Conscious Intellect has the idea of solidity in its abstract notion of it. Thereby Intellect conceives itself in the forms of earth, rocks and hills. 20 So by its conception of vibration and fluidity, it perceives the form of air and water in itself. By its inner conception of heat, it feels the fire in itself without forsaking its intellectual form. 21 Such is the nature of this intellectual principle. It is an airy and empty form called spirit, soul or mind that develops itself in all these various qualities and schemes without any cause or incentive. 22 There is nothing anywhere in nature beside these intellectual attributes of intellect itself, just as there is no sky or vacuum without its emptiness, or any vast expanse of the ocean without water. 23 Know then there is nothing else anywhere, not even the sense of yourself or myself or anything else, except in the recess of intellectual emptiness. So commit yourself to that all filled void and remain quite calm in yourself. 24 As you see earth and heaven and all their contents in your dreams and creations of your fancy in the recess of your mind and in the midst of this house of yours, so should you see everything in their incorporeal forms to be contained in the vast space of the infinite vacuum of Divine Consciousness and its all-knowing intelligence. 25 The emptiness of Consciousness shines forth as the substratum of all bodies, but without a body of its own in the beginning of creation because there is no prior material cause for any material existence. It must be understood that only Consciousness, through our own ignorance, exhibits all material existence in its empty space. 26 Know that your immaterial mind, understanding and individual ego, together with the material existences of the elements, these hills, skies and all others, are situated as dull and dumb rocks in the quiet, calm and clear sphere of Infinite Intellect. 27 Nothing produced or destroyed. There is nothing which may be said to exist of itself. This world as it appears exists in the emptiness of Divine Intellect. 28 The sunshine of the Consciousness manifests the world in its visible shape and form, just as sunlight shows objects hidden in darkness, and as the fluidity of water gives rise to waves and bubbles. 29 This appearance of the world is no real appearance. In its true and proper sense and light, and as it is viewed by the wise, the world is only the representation of the intellectual void. The ignorant may view it in any light as they please.

Chapter 205 There Can Be No Material Cause for Material Creation

Rama asked: Sage, if the whole fullness of space is emptiness, like the phenomena in our dreams, it must follow that the world we see in our waking state is also emptiness. There can be no doubt in it. 2 But answer my important question. How does the formless and bodiless intellect appear to become embodied in all these various forms of bodies that we see in our waking dream? 3 Vasishta replied: Rama, visible phenomena that appear to view in our waking dream by daylight are all empty bodies. They are born, rest and are supported in empty emptiness. Hence you cannot on any reasonable basis doubt their emptiness. 4 This infinite and eternal void is entirely devoid of any and all material causes. It is impossible for any material creation to come from this nothing. 5 The formless intellect could not bring forth material earth to form solid bodies. It is impossible to believe that any phenomena which appear has any real existence in nature. 6 Therefore the airy intellect sees the visible in the daytime in the same manner it sees visions in its dreams at night. It sees them all rising in their intellectual light within itself, but appearing as real and material objects set outside itself by its delusion. 7 The reflection of the workings of the intellectual soul appears as real within the hollow sphere of the intellect. What we see awake resembles what our memories represent in the mind in our sleep, and it takes the name of the visible world. 8 The clear perception of these intellectual representations in the emptiness of the mind is called a vision or dream. The gross conception of them in the mind is called the gross or material world. 9 The intellect itself gives different names to its different views of the same internal thought and ideas. It calls the finer and purer ones thoughts, and the grosser ones visible or material objects. 10 The same reflection of the intellect is called both dream and the world. The workings of the mind and its reflections in itself are natural to intellect. Though the dreams vanish upon waking, yet the working and reflections of the mind are never at rest, either in waking or dreaming. 11 Many such visions of creation alternately rise and set in the emptiness of Brahmas mind. They are never apart from it, just as empty air is either in motion or at rest in the hollow of the great void and is always inseparable from it. 12 Rama said: Sage, you have told me that there are millions of worlds. Tell me now, which are situated within the sphere of the cosmic egg and which are beyond? 13 Which worlds are the terrestrial globes and which are empty spheres? Which are fiery bodies in the sphere of fire and which are the airy bodies in the regions of air? 14 Which have surfaces of earth situated in the midst of emptiness on which hills and forests are set at the opposite sides of the globe, hanging up and down perpendicular in empty air? 15 Which are the aerial bodies with their living souls and which have inhabitants of darkness with their dark shapes? Which are formed of only emptiness and which bodies are full of worms and insects? 16 What sorts of beings settle the ethereal sphere and what live in the midst of rocks and stones? What dwell in bodies of water and what live in the air like birds? 17 Tell me, O greatest of philosophers, how this cosmic egg of ours is situated among all these worlds. 18 Vasishta replied: These wonderful unknown, unseen and unheard of worlds are mentioned and described in the scriptures which also give examples. They have been received and believed as true by their students. 19 Rama, the cosmology of the world has been described and explained by gods and sages in hundreds of their scriptures called the Agamas, all of which you are well acquainted
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with. 20 Now as you are well acquainted with the descriptions given in the scriptures, it is not necessary to relate them again here. 21 Rama replied: Yet tell me, O venerable sage, how the great void of the intellect came to be produced from Divine Spirit? Tell its extent and duration in time and space. 22 Vasishta replied: The great God Brahman is without beginning or end and is ever existent and without decay. There is no beginning, middle or end of him, nor are there any materials or shapes in his transcendent emptiness. 23 The emptiness of Brahman is without beginning or end and is spread unspent and unbounded to all eternity. It is this which makes the universe which is ever without beginning or end. 24 The reflection of the intellectual void in its own emptiness is called the universe by itself to no purpose. 25 As a man sees a fair city in his dream by night, so he sees the sight of this world in his dream by daylight. 26 Do not think that solid rock has any solidity in it, or fluid waters have any fluidity in them. Do not think that empty space is emptiness or the passing time has any flight or counting of it. 27 All things are fixed in their formless, unchanging and ideal states in Divine Consciousness. The false and unsteady nature of the human mind gives and views them in different forms according to its own fancy. 28 The mind sees the uncreated eternal ideas of the intellect as created objects, just as in its dream it sees rocks where there are no rocks and sky where there is none. 29 As the formless and unconscious mind sees material worlds in its sleep, so it sees the invisible and formless world as a material form during its waking hours. 30 As air even at rest is always in motion, so the spirit of Brahman is constantly vibrating without its rise or fall. 31 This world resides in the Divine Spirit of Brahman just like the property of fluidity resides in water, emptiness resides in vacuum, and substantiality resides all substances. 32 The world is neither produced nor external to the soul. The world does not occur to anyone or develop from the life or death of anybody. The world is causeless. It comes from no cause and is neither joined with nor separate from the Divine Spirit, 33 the one who has no beginning or end or any indication of itself. It is formless, only an intellectual emptiness. It can never become the cause of a visible, material creation. 34 Thus as parts and features together make an entire body, so this empty world is situated in the undivided and formless emptiness of Brahman. 35 All creation is without substance other than pure intelligence without any materiality or foulness. There is no entity or nonentity here, nor can anything be said to exist or not exist. 36 All this is only an air drawn city of our imagination and dream. Everything here appears to be stretched out in a fairy dance all about us. But in reality, it is only a calm and quiet emptiness full with the unchanging and un-decaying spirit of God. 37 The whole is the hollowness of the divine heart and the empty sphere of the omniscient Consciousness. Its reasoning intellect reflects many a transparent image in its own sphere and to no end. This is called the world or the image of the Divine Soul, which continues forever and ever.

Chapter 206 The Story of King Prajnapti Asking How Immaterial Can Create Material (the Great Buddhist Inquiry)
Vasishta resumed: The appearance of the uncreated phenomenon of creation is nothing in reality. Only the transcendental principle of supreme Brahman is the true reality. 2 Once someone asked me about this subject. Now I will share with you how I answered that question so that you, O high-minded Rama, may have a strengthened understanding. 3 The great island of Kushadwipa is surrounded by seas on all sides like a watery belt. This land is renowned for its beauty all over the three regions of the world. 4 On its northeastern side there is a city called Ilavati surrounded by a series of pillars gilded all over with gold, glittering with radiant beams reaching from earth to the skies. 5 There formerly reigned a king called Prajnapti who ruled on earth like the god Indra in heaven and to whom this land paid homage. 6 On one occasion I happened to encounter this king, as the sun descends on earth on the last day of desolation. 7 The king hailed and adored me with offerings of flowers and presents and made me sit by him with due reverence. Then in the course of my conversation with him, he fondly asked me as follows. King Prajnapti speaking: 8 Tell me sage, what becomes of the world after the destruction of all things, when the causalities of recreation are all extinct and annihilated in the indefinable vacuum of desolation? 9 What becomes the prime cause of things at the recreation of the world? What are the accompanying elements to reproduce objects? How and from where do they arise? 10 What is the world and what was the beginning of its creation? What was the primeval chaos and whence is this earth? What is the air, the support of the seas, and the hell filled with worms and insects? 11 What are the creatures contained in the womb of air and what creatures live in the bosom of mountains? What are the elementary bodies and their productions? How have understanding and its faculties come into existence? 12 Who is the maker of all these and who is their witness? What is the support of the universe and what are the things it contains? I am quite certain that the world can never have its ultimate destruction. 13 All the Vedas and scriptures are opposed to one another in their different views and interpretations. Each one makes a hypothesis according to its own particular view. 14 From our knowledge of the world, we do not know whether it is indestructible or an unreality. 15 Tell me, O chief of sages, what is the form and cause of those bodies that are doomed to dwell in hell after men die on this earth and their bodies are cremated and destroyed? 16 What causes bodies to regenerate after they are destroyed upon death? The virtues and vices of departed souls, all being immaterial things, cannot cause the formation of their material bodies. 17 It is absurd to reason that something that is immaterial could possibly produce a material body, just as it is impossible to believe that there can be a child without the original cause of its parents. 18 Tell me sage, what could possibly cause the production of material bodies? For lack of any such cause, it is also improper to deny the existence of a future state. 19 It is contrary to the dictates of Vedas and scriptures, and also to the conviction and common sense of mankind, to deny the future state of our existence. The resurrection of our bodies is as unavoidable as exile to a distant land by decree of law, though it be against our wish or will. 20 How are beings born and put into action over the course of their lives by invisible causes that are quite unconnected? Pillars of stone were converted to gold, not just gilded, by the word of the brahmin. How did the brahmin suddenly obtain this vast treasure? 21 Why call something great which lasts only for a moment? What is the need to frame strict laws for the present
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to reap a harvest in future when all that is not based on sound reasoning? 22 Tell me sage, how do you reconcile such disagreements in the Vedas which mention the existence of being and not-being in the beginning? Tell me also how that not-being existed before creation, and then the being or creation was born of the not-being. 23 How could the primeval nonentity become Brahman? How could Brahma be produced or born from a mighty emptiness? Then tell also me sage, how come there are no other Brahmas born of its spacious womb? 24 Tell me how plant and other creations are produced without their different sources. How do they derive their nature of being able to propagate their own kinds by their own seeds? 25 Tell me why the life and death of a man are contemporaneous with those of his friend or adversary. How do people happen to obtain their wishes in their next lives by dying in holy places such as Prayaga? 26 Should the wishes of men be crowned with success in their next lives, then tell me sage, why isnt the sky filled with multitudes of moons? The worshippers of the moon are seen dying each day with the expectation of becoming a brilliant moon in the next state of their existence in heaven. 27 How can men attain their wishes for the future when most of them desire the same object? It necessarily falls to the lot of only one of them, just as a maid expected to be wedded by many is destined to be married only by one man. 28 Again, how can a woman be called a wife who is either unchaste or leads a life of celibacy even when dwelling in her husbands house? 29 What is the difference between the blessing and curse pronounced on the brahmin brothers for their sovereignty over the seven continents on the one hand, and having no such thing on the other, when they remained thinking themselves as monarchs of the world in their own house? 30 The acts of piety, whether charities, austerities or subservient ceremonies, which are supposed to produce some unknown reward in the next world, are of no benefit on this earth to those who practice them. So what is the good derived if they afford no earthly benefit to the earthly body, but to a future body with which no one here has any concern? 31 Should it be said that the soul of the pious observer reaps the reward in its future state, then this also is impossible because the disembodied soul is incapable of enjoyment. Should it have another body to enjoy hereafter, of what use is that distant body to the body of the present observer (of the pious acts)? 32 Should these acts be accompanied with any reward, either in this life or in the next, they should be known to the actor. Lacking this knowledge, their observance appears to be an irreconcilable inconsistency. 33 These are my doubts which I beg you will kindly remove by your cool and clear reasoning, like moonlight disperses evening twilight. 34 Now sage, please dispel my doubts in my inquiry after transcendental truth so that it may lead to my good in both worlds. The company of the righteous is ever filled with very great blessings to all people.

Chapter 207 Vasishta Replies to the Questions (of the Buddhist): NonDualism in a Nutshell
Vasishta replied: Hear me prince and I will clearly expound to you the doctrine which will immediately root out your doubts. 2 All these entities in the world are nonexistent nothings forever though they appear as realities in our consciousness. 3 We do not consider the true nature of reality, so we think that whatever appears in any manner in our consciousness is as real as it seems to be. 4 That is the nature of consciousness. Everyone who knows what consciousness is thinks it is the same as the bodiless soul. 5 Its body is the knowledge in the mind, either in waking or dreaming. This false consciousness is believed to be its body, and there is nothing else besides this that they call a solid body. 6 The world shines before us like the sights seen in a dream. The absence of all causes for the production of the world prove that it is nothing other than the phantom of a dream. 7 This pure and unstained knowledge of the universe is called Brahman himself. The very same shines as the world, which is nothing other than that. 8 Thus the world remains quite pure and unchanged from ever before and forever more. So it is thought and said to be by the Vedas and all good and great scriptures, and also by the common agreement of all thinking men in all ages and countries. 9 Those who deny the sole existence of the Being which is impressed in the consciousness of all beings, the Being full and perfect everywhere and acknowledged by all great souls, are the most ignorant fools and resemble croaking frogs living in the recesses of dark caves and pits. 10 There are many who are deluded by their ideas of the appearances of things and the evidence of their senses. They have fallen into the error of understanding the gross body as causing consciousness and inner impressions. 11 They are exuberant with their wrong ideas. They are not worthy of our discourse because one cannot converse with those who are intoxicated without liquor and are learned fools. 12 When the discourse of the learned is not capable of answering the questions of men in all places, such discourse is to be understood as foolish talk of the universe. 13 He whose beliefs rely upon only what can be sensed and who regards the believer of the invisible to be a fool, is considered for his illogical reasoning to be like a block of stone. 14 The fool who maintains this materialistic doctrine in opposition to all rational philosophy is said to be like a frog in a dark cave because he is blind both to the past which is out of his sight and to the invisible future. He is concerned only with what is present before him. 15 The Vedas, the sayings of wise men, and the inferences of their right reasoning, as I have maintained in these lectures, can remove doubts in these matters. 16 If the conscious body is consciousness, then why is the dead body unconscious of anything? 17 This world is an imaginary city of the Divine Mind in its form of Brahma, the creator. Hence the phenomenon of the world appears to our minds like a phantom in our dream. 18 Therefore all that you see is only the creation of Divine Consciousness which is an intellectual entity in itself. You are not mistaken in your judgment if you consider them as phantoms in your dream appearing in the emptiness of your mind. 19 Hence this earth and the skies, these hills and cities, are all only appearances in the void of the intellect, the conceptions of your mind like those appearing in the reveries of dream, or like castles built in the air. 20 The dense emptiness of self-consciousness is called the great Brahma or the personal god of creation. The display of his will in the material is known as Viraj or the visible universe. Thus the pure and distinct consciousness of Brahman is condensed into the form of the
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world. 21 Whatever is imagined in the imaginary city of Brahma is conceived as existent in reality, just like you imagine objects of your desire or fancy to be actually present before you. 22 Whatever is thought of in ones imagination, whether a fancied city or a fairyland, seems to be present before him for the time being. 23 Brahma, in his form of the mind, thinks of living and dying bodies, so are they thought of by all mankind. 24 After the great dissolution of the world, it is said that the world is reproduced from nothing, but because there is no material cause that can produce a material world, it is certain there is no material being in existence. 25 Brahma, the lord of creatures, having got rid of the world upon its dissolution, was also freed from all his memories and ideas of creation forever. Therefore only the reflection of divine light appears as the world before us. 26 Thus the Supreme Soul of Brahma reflects itself in itself in the beginning in the manner of an imaginary castle of his will, which is as air-drawn as the visible sky in the invisible vacuum. This is known as the cosmos or world existing in empty space. 27 An imaginary castle is the creation of the intellect and presents only its intellectual form to our minds. In the same way, the world appears to us in its intellectual form, an evolution of the intellect without any other cause for its appearance. 28 Whether there is anybody anywhere, there is empty Consciousness which is everywhere. Know that the Divine Spirit pervades all over this totality, whether it be an embodied duality or an empty unity. 29 Hence the empty mind of a dead body sees the form of the whole world within its emptiness. The empty mind of a living being, in its imagination or dream, sees the shapes of both solid and subtle bodies. 30 The living man thinks this immaterial world is a solid mass of dull matter. The dead person thinks this empty universe is a solid and substantial existence lying exposed before him in its mind. 31 But the enlightened or awakened soul of a living body sees no trace of scenes of its dream upon waking, so the soul of a redeemed dead being sees no trace of the objects and sights of this world upon its redemption and bliss in the next world. 32 The very same is the case with the enlightened soul of everybody in this world. It bears only inner conceptions within itself. There is no outward perception. Therefore there is no material reality in existence because there is no material cause in emptiness. 33 As a sleeping man sees an imaginary world in his dream as if it were real, so the unenlightened person sees the phenomenal world as a factual reality before him. In the same way, the souls of the dead see the world of their departed spirits in the emptiness before them. 34 The souls of the departed see earth and heaven and mountains and everything else as they had seen before appearing in the open air. 35 The departed soul perceives its separation from a dead body and thinks of its rebirth in another body on earth where it will have its enjoyments and suffering again as before. 36 The soul never gets rid of this delusion of its reincarnation as long as it neglects to seek its salvation and final liberation. It is freed from its error of reproduction through knowledge of truth and the absence of desire. 37 The consciousness of the soul, its righteous or unrighteous desire, represents the picture of this airy world in the hollow sphere of the mind. 38 Therefore the world is neither substantial nor empty but the display of Divine Consciousness. The lack of this knowledge is the source of all misery to man. Its true knowledge, that it is a show of divine wisdom, is filled with all bliss and joy.

Chapter 208 Vasishta Explains that Everything is the Expression of an Idea in God, including Laws and Secondary Causes
Vasishta continued: Now hear me tell you why men happen to meet with good or fortune at home and how, in the same way, rewards and punishments come upon departed souls from unforeseen causes in the far distant world. 2 You know that the entire world is a creation of Divine Will. The world appears as material phenomena to our outer sight, as concepts to our inner insight, and as concepts to Brahman himself in its spiritual light. 3 In this volitional world, everything appears in the same way as you want to see it. 4 In your own house, you are master of your children and you can dispose of your things and affairs as you please. In the same way, the Lord is the sole disposer and dispenser of all things in this world of his will, as he likes of his own accord. 5 In your own home you find everything to your liking as you wish it to be. In the same way, the Lord directs and disposes all things in His world. 6 The disorder that appears to take place in the order of nature is to be attributed to the Divine Will as the sovereign law of all. 7 The good or evil which waits on men owing to their obedience or transgression of the law is both attributable to Divine Will. 8 It is also the dispensation of Divine Will whereby all living bodies have their perceptions of worldly things, just as they have the conception of the existence of the world which, in reality, has no substance. 9 It is by will of Divine Intellect that everything appears to exist before us. It is the opening and closing of Intellect which causes the appearance and disappearance of the world to our view. 10 King Prajnapti asked, Tell me sage, if the world is the production of Divine Will, why did it not exist before, with the eternity of Divine Will, and why did it came to be manifested afterwards? Is the world an unstable and vanishing appearance in the air, or it has any fixity in the Divine Mind or stability in nature? 11 Vasishta replied: Such is the nature of the empty and volitional city of Divine Consciousness. It comes into being and not being in succession in the states of repeated waking dreams of creation and in the sleeping oblivion of its desolation. 12 Like the mud-built house of playful children and the air-drawn castles of fanciful men, the appearances of creation appear both real and unreal in Divine Consciousness, as well as to our minds. 13 You build and break your imaginary city in the air. You make and unmake a fabric of your will elsewhere, whether of your own choice or for any other reason. In the same way, the Divine Will constructs and retracts any of its works at its pleasure. 14 Thus all beings are continually rising and falling in this empty city of the Divine Will which is ever shining in its nature with the pure light of the Divine Mind. 15 The whole fullness of the world is an emptiness full with the dense intelligence of omniscience. This omniscient intelligence does whatever it thinks upon and wills. 16 Therefore it is not the hidden but the self manifest God that does all things, even at a distance of millions of miles and over multitudes of ages, as if they lay before him at the present time. 17 So there is nothing in any country or in any world which is not known or thought of by the sole and unhidden soul of all. 18 As a brilliant gem reflects its light and shade within itself, so does the gem of Consciousness reflect the various changes of the world in itself by its own light. 19 Laws and prohibitions necessary for the preservation of people are implanted in the human soul. 20 The soul neither dies nor revives. Brahman himself is the source and origin of the human soul. The human soul is his reflection constantly emanating from the Divine Soul. 21 Being
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the viewer, it supposes itself to be the view and thinks its imaginary world is a visible phenomenon. In the same way it thinks itself to be born, living and dying. 22 When the soul of its own nature ceases to cast its reflection, or suppresses it within itself, and remains quietly in the empty sphere of Divine Consciousness by assimilating itself into the Universal Soul of Brahman, then it is said to be quiet in death or vanishing from the world. 23 The emission and admission of its reflection are as natural to ignorant and imperfect living souls of animal beings as vibration and calm are inherent in air. 24 In the city of your imagination, you see the growth, decay and death of people at different times and places. 25 In the same way, the nature of this imaginary city of God is to exhibit these changes everywhere, as in the cases of animals, plant and all other things in all three worlds. 26 But God neither wills nor does everything himself in this creation of his will. He acts by general laws and secondary causes, like children playing, growing grass from grass, producing trees and their fruits from seeds, and everything else. 27 The nature of the almighty intellect of God is to bring forth whatever it wills to be in being. 28 All things originally have an intellectual form. Afterwards they appear in whatever forms and different natures as the Almighty Intellect invests them with. 29 Hence everything here, because they originate from Divine Intellect, ultimately and truly is of an intellectual form. Because the intellect includes all things in itself, it displays every form and shows itself in any form it likes. 30 This same intellect is the omniscient and Universal Soul without beginning, middle or end. It is omnipotent, something which is nothing, and an entity appearing as nonentity. It appears such as it remains anywhere and shows itself as anything. It is the origin of all things and beings and the source of all plants and grass.

Chapter 209 Judgment and Reincarnation; Any Idea Can Manifest

Vasishta continued saying: The life of a person is dear and useful to him as long as he lives and not afterwards. But hear me tell you the good of a man dying in some holy place with a wish for future reward in his next life. 2 God has ordained certain virtues and merits to certain places, even in the beginning of his imaginary city of this world. 3 Whatever merit is assigned to any place awaits on the soul of a person after its release from bondage when he has performed the acts of piety commanded by the scriptures. 4 Hence any great sin committed by anybody anywhere is either partly or wholly erased by the good act of the person, according to comparative merit of the holy place or the degree of remission in the mind of the penitent sinner. 5 If the sin is insignificant compared to the holiness of the place, the sinner is completely released from his guilt and attains the object of his wish. 6 If the sin is equal to the holiness of the place, the penitent man receives two bodies in his next life, a physical body and a spiritual soul. 7 Such is the effect of the earliest guilt and merit of mankind. They are endowed with double bodies, physical frames and spiritual souls. Such is the Divine Soul even from before. 8 The principle is called Brahman in its sense of the whole. It is called Brahma as the totality of living souls (jivas). It is called I or the ego to refer to any living soul in particular. As God remains in any manner, whether whole or part, so he manifests himself as the world. 9 The reflection of purity acquired in some holy place appears to the penitent soul. It appears to be the opposite to the guilty soul which is not freed from its sin in any holy place. 10 A person sees visions of his own death, his living relatives weeping, and considers himself to be a departed ghost in the next world, all alone and without a single soul beside him. 11 He also sees the deaths of his friends there, and he also thinks that he hears the wailings of their relations at that place. He sees all these mental illusions in his frenzy, just like a man with deranged body functions sees the apparitions of imaginary demons in his confused state. 12 So it also happens with great souls. They see the sights of both good grace and fear according to the measure of their merit or guilt in this life. Thus thousands of hopeful and hideous shapes float about in the imaginations of men, owing to the purity or depravity of their natures. 13 The friends of a dying man, lying unconscious as a dead body, weep and wail over his corpse then take him to the funeral ground for cremation. 14 But a guiltless man, accompanied by his self-conscious and righteous soul, approaches his infirmity and death with firmness and without any feeling of sorrow. 15 With his material body he sees himself as a living being. With his invisible part, his inner soul, he sees his conquest over death by the merit of his holy pilgrimage. 16 The guiltless man fears his death only momentarily. He is conscious of the indestructibility of his inner soul, just like a man clad in armor is fearless of the arrows of his lightly armored enemy. 17 In this manner the deceaseds relatives find his pure soul obtaining immortality after his death. Life and death are indifferent to the virtuous and purified person. 18 The sights of all three worlds are equally false both in their tangible and intangible forms, just as the vision of an object in a dream is as false as another (in a waking state) in their visionary nature. 19 We have a clear understanding that the dreams and imaginations arising in our minds are deceptions. But the deceptions of our waking dreams in broad daylight appear more real and are less conspicuous. 20 King Prajnapti asked, But tell me sage, how do virtue and vice, both of which are bodiless things, assume the bodily forms of living beings in the course of their reincarnation? 21 Vasishta replied: There is nothing impossible for the creative power of Brahman to produce in the
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imaginary fabric of this world of his mind. The substantive Divine Will is able to give substantial forms to intellectual things. 22 There is nothing which is unimaginable and there is nothing that cannot be produced by the mind of Brahman. It is the same with us. The only things we know are what we imagine in our finite minds. 23 A visionary city in a dream and an imaginary castle of imagination both present a similar, ideal form to the mind. Both are composed of a collection of ideas which appear as real objects for the time being. 24 All the numerous thoughts that lie like a dead and dormant mass in the states of our deep and sound sleep appear to us in endless forms in the visions of our dreams and our waking imagination and leave their traces in the memory. 25 Who has not had the idea of aerial castles of his dreams and imaginations and found them composed of only his ideas in the airy world of empty consciousness? 26 Therefore, what is there that is not capable of being produced in this aerial world? Everything can be produced in the airy imagination of the empty intellect, and its substance is the same. 27 Therefore what appears in the form of the visible universe is only a fallacy. There is nothing in real existence or nonexistence. All things appear to be existent and non-existent in the luminous conscious space (chidakasa) of the Divine Mind. 28 Anything that is perceived in any manner is a manifestation of a thought, an inspiration of it. The enlightened seekers of truth find nothing wrong in believing this. 29 Therefore, if the doctrines of his religion teach a man to hope for the enjoyment of a heaven with flowery banks and streams flowing with nectar, then it is very probable that he will meet with the same things in his future life in the next world. 30 Therefore, the acts done in this world by anybody are attended with their like rewards for him in the next. There is nothing inconsistent in this belief, though it appears so to the unbeliever. 31 Should there be anything which may be said to be permanent in this world, it must be always be present in the sight of its viewer. If this is the standard, then let any man identify what always remains in his sight. Only the ideas of things in his mind are ever present in his knowledge and never lost sight of in his consciousness. 32 I have compared dreams and thoughts to prove the essentiality of our notions and ideas. Because the worlds belong to the will and exist in the mind of omniscience, they are nothing other than the essence of the great Brahman himself. 33 There is nothing wanting or impossible in the aerial castle of your imagination. There is nothing which does not and cannot exist in the will and mind of the Almighty. 34 Whatsoever form is conceived in the Divine Mind, the same remains fixed there and appears situated before our sight like a picture or a screen play. 35 Therefore this appearance of the Divine Mind is perceived only by our internal senses. There is nothing to be perceived by any external organ, or to both internal and external at once, because only our minds perceive the impressions of the Eternal Mind and it is our minds that impel the internal organs to receive those reflections. 36 As the Lord has willed everything at first, so it lasts with him to the very end of his creation when his will of creating the world anew gives another form to the state of things in future. 37 The Lord manifests himself as he wills, in the manner of his will and in the form of another world in every kalpa duration of creation. In the same way the minds of men come to see another world and another state of things in each successive dream. 38 There is nothing which does not exist in this worldly city of Divine Will. All that exists there is nothing but the production of Divine Consciousness. Therefore this world is to be known as full of the forms of the productive mind of God.

Chapter 210 We See What We Believe; Karma; upon Realization, Phenomena Disappear
Vasishta resumed and said: Now let me reply to your question why heaven is not filled with a hundred moons. If a hundred people wish to become the moon in their future lives, and if their efforts are crowned with success, why do we not see a hundred moons? 2 Those who aspire to become as bright as the full moon of heaven actually became so in their conception of themselves in the sphere of their minds, and not by their situation in the vault of the sky or in the globe of that luminary. 3 Tell me who has ever anywhere gotten into anothers imaginary city? Who has ever obtained any fancied treasure except the person who framed the fancy and fabricated the wish for wealth? 4 Everyone has a heaven of his own in his conception of creation. That is where he is situated and shines as a bright, full moon without phases of wane or wax. 5 All those aspirants to luminosity had thought of entering into the moon of his own mind. There he found himself resting at last with full light of that luminary and the delight of his conscious soul. 6 Each thought of entering the shining moon in their minds. Each felt as glad in their situation as if they were seated in the globe of the celestial moon. 7 Whatever one seeks and searches after, the same becomes natural with his consciousness. If one has a firm belief is some state, he thinks and feels himself to be the very same. 8 As everyone who aspires to be the full moon comes to be according to his conception, so the marriage suitors of the same bride become wedded to her according to his own conception of her. 9 The one pure maiden who is thought of as taken to wife by many men in their minds is never defiled by anyone of them. They have a simple enjoyment of her idea only. 10 As the sovereign ruler of the seven continents holds his sway over them without ever going out of his city, so the soul passes through everything while remaining in the precincts of its body, and so does every man see his imaginary castle in the sphere of his own house. 11 When the whole universe owes its origin to the imagination of its omniscient originator, the self-born Brahma, what else can the universe be but an intangible void, quite calm and quiet in itself? 12 Now let me tell you about the unknown and invisible results of the acts of piety such as charity, funeral rites, religious austerities and the repetition of holy mantras which accumulate to the departed ghosts of bodily beings in the next world. 13 Souls marked with traces of pious acts in them come to see them vividly as actual works painted in lively colors fabricated by their lively intellects, like their dreams. 14 A carnal mind distrusts the reality of these impressions of consciousness and disregards the internal operation of the inner intellect. It becomes restless for its sensuous enjoyment and the exercise of the outward organs of action. Only by decrease of this passion does it become restored to inner peace and tranquility. 15 The theme of early poets tells us that the impressions of acts of piety and charity are imprinted in the intellect and reflected in the passive soul in the next world when the conscious soul continues to keep the gratification of those acts. 16 Thus the rewards of charity and miserliness are equally felt in the gratification and dissatisfaction of the soul in this world in which everything is according to our feelings of it. 17 Thus I have fully answered whatever you have asked of me. Now from all this, know that the sensible world is an intangible dream, an air-drawn spectacle of the mind. 18 King Prajnapti asked, But sage, please tell me how could the intellect exist alone before the production of the body? How can a light exist without its receptacle of a lamp? 19 Vasishta replied:
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The sense in which you use the word body is quite unknown to spiritually minded persons who discard the material meaning of the word, just as they reject the idea of rocks dancing in the air. 20 The meaning of the word body is the same as that of Brahman. There is no difference in meaning, just as there is none between the words fluid and liquid. 21 The body is an imaginary appearance. The great body of Brahma is like a phantom in vision which represents the forms of all things in the stupendous fabric of the universe as in a dream. 22 The difference between your dream, or what you see, and the fullness of Brahman is that what you see is the result of only what you have previously thought and they disperse and vanish upon your waking. But the universe exhibited in the fullness of Brahman is not so impermanent. 23 What is this thing we call the body, and how does it appear to us in the shape of something in our dream? Why does anything appearing as a reality in dream vanish and appear as nothing and an error upon our waking? 24 There is no waking, sleeping or dreaming or any other condition of being in the turiya transcendent state of Brahman. It is something like pure and primeval light, like transparent air, all quiet and still. 25 It is the same as the unknown and inscrutable light which shows and glows before us to this day. It is the same primeval and primordial light that first showed the sight of the world to view, as if a dream in the gloom of night. 26 A body traveling from one district to another, though proceeding onward, is always in the middle of its circuit, yet never fixed at any spot. In the same way, all things are in endless rotation in this world, whether singly or collectively. 27 The sight of the world, like that of a dream, presents a favorable aspect to some minds, but it presents a clear and serene prospect to men of unclouded intellects. 28 The same empty Intellect is the emptiness of space and the innumerable fullness of objects in space, the reflection and the eclipse of all things, the existence and nonexistence of the world and matter, and unity and duality. 29 The world is entirely a complete evolution from the fullness of God. The world stands as a complete counterpart of the original. It is neither a shining nor a not-shining body by itself, but is as bright as the contents of a crystal within its bowels. 30 Wherever there is the evolution of the world in the Intellect, there is the presence of the subtle soul. Whenever there is a speck of thought anywhere, it is attended with the thought of the world also. 31 The emptiness of Intellect is present everywhere. This omnipresence is the divine presence which is termed the world. 32 The Divine Soul is as quiet and unchangeable as this universe is stable and stationary. The fluctuation of the supreme mind causes these variations in the face of the city of the Divine Will. 33 The impossibility of any other inference proves that the universe is necessarily of the same essence as God. Any hypothesis of agnostic philosophers is unreasonable and inconsistent with this subject. 34 The common belief of mankind, the testimony of the scriptures, and the statements of the Vedas are established and incontrovertible truths. Therefore nobody can have any doubt about the reality of the Divine Spirit. 35 This being acknowledged, it becomes evident that the world is God itself. When the world appears as one with God, it is seen in our clear spiritual insight to be extinct in the Divine Essence. 36 Because the impermanent sight of the world is ultimately the same as God, when the living soul is conscious of the Intellect, the sight of phenomena is lost. This is the doctrine of Pantheism in which all of nature is seen as God. 37 He who is conscious of the sphere of his intellect is also conscious of the tree of the world that is dependent upon consciousness. He sees the three worlds in himself, whether he is in the state of bondage or liberation. 38 The visible world, though so manifest to view, is entirely lost to sight upon its right knowledge. He who knows this becomes like the setting sun, wholly invisible to public sight, and remains as mute as a lump of silent stone. 39 The way established by the Vedas and accepted by the general consent of wise men

must be acknowledged as the right path leading to sure success. 40 He who adheres steadily to his own purpose by utter disregard of all other objects is said to be firmly determined and is sure to reap success in the end. 41 Everything appears in the same light in which a person is accustomed to see and know it. Whether the object of ones faith is true or false, it still appears to each person as he is accustomed to believe it. 42 This is the conclusion of your question, as I have determined and delivered to you. Now be quick and walk your way with perfect ease of your mind, health of your body, and agility of your limbs.

Chapter 211 Seeing the Supernatural; All Is the Creation of the Viewer
Vasishta resumed: After I said these things to the king, he honored me with his obeisance. Then thinking I had finished my task for him, I rose up to proceed on my aerial journey. 2 Thus I have related to you this day, O most intelligent Rama, regarding the omnipresence of the Divine Spirit. Keep this empty view of Brahman before your sight and proceed everywhere with the peace of your mind. 3 Know all this to be Brahman itself, only a nameless and insubstantial emptiness. It is something unborn and uncreated, all calm and quiet, without beginning, middle or end. 4 It is said to be the reflection of intellect and it is called Brahman because of its immensity. It is also called the most transcendent, and something without any name at all. 5 Rama asked, Tell me sage, how can we see the celestials, the siddha spiritual masters, the perfect (sadhya) spirits, Yama, Brahma and the heavenly vidyadharas and gandharvas? Tell me also, sage, how people of other spheres can be visible to us? 6 Vasishta replied: The celestial siddhas, sadhyas, the gods Yama and Brahma, and the vidyadhara demigods, together with all other beings of great souls and wonderful might, 7 are all visible to you both day and night, and above, below, behind and ever before you, if you will only look at them with the eyes of your mind. But if you shut your mental eye against spirituality, you can never see spirit presented before your view. 8 If you become used to seeing these spiritual beings, they are never far away. They are described as self-willed beings and they are said to be always wandering everywhere. 9 These volitional beings are as unsteady as the living creatures of this earth, like the volatile winds which blow at random in every direction. 10 They resemble the airy creatures of your imagination and dreams which hover fluttering in the air and gather about you by day and night. Others have no will or motion and remain stationary in their respective spheres. 11 Through silent and steadfast meditation, then in the calm quiet of your mind and soul, you can see the reflection of any of these spirits and, without fail, you can visit them in the innermost recess of your soul. 12 This is how men see the gods and spiritual masters, arrayed with all their majesty and glory as they are imagined to be in their intense meditations. 13 Men of steady minds find themselves soaring to heaven accompanied by spiritual masters and clad in all their glory. Those of unsteady and unsettled minds must take great pains to gain control of the fleeting object of their contemplation. 14 The world is an insubstantial and imperceptible thing, ever a silent and serene void, the emptiness of the intellect. However, it appears to be a solid and compact mass, according to the notion we have of it in our consciousness. 15 It does not exist in our unconsciousness, it does not appear to exist, and it is not a dull, unconscious or unthinking being. It is an emptiness and a nothing, an utterly intangible and imperceptible thing to our senses and consciousness. 16 The nature of consciousness is to reflect in itself. All that we see about us is the shadow of that reflection. The knowledge that this shadowy reflection is substantial proceeds from the vanity of the intellect, and not from its nature which is free from mistake. 17 There can be no talk of causation, production or vegetation in the nature of the universe. It is an absolute void entirely devoid of the elements of cause and effect. 18 That which appears to be produced is only a void in the midst of primeval emptiness. There can be no attribution of unity or duality to infinite emptiness. 19 Yet the world appears to your mind as something that exists and it is visible to your eyes. This happens in the same manner as you have consciousness and sight of dreams in the undisturbed calm of your empty sleep. 20 Imagination causes mountains to rise in the empty sphere of our minds, but in reality there are no mountains.
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Such is this creation, an airy working of the Divine Mind. 21 Hence the wise and intelligent remain as quiet and mute as motionless blocks of wood. Great minds manage themselves like wooden puppets, moving as they are moved by the prime moving power of God alone. 22 As waves are seen rolling on the surface of waters and as currents whirl round and hurl headlong into the deep, so all of creation and all created things turn about the axle wheel of the great Brahma. 23 As emptiness is inborn in space and vibrations are immanent in the air, so these creations are inherent and inseparably connected with the Divine Spirit in their formless and ideal shapes. 24 An air-drawn castle of our will or imagination, with all its lack of substance, presents a substantial shape before us. In the same way, this world appears as a compact frame shown before us in spite of its situation in the formless mind of Brahma. 25 All three worlds that we are accustomed to believe as real, the sites of our temporal and spiritual concerns, are all void and formless and as unreal as the airy castles of our imagination. 26 The imagination of our minds creates populated cities. In the same way, the thought of the mind of God creates these numerous worlds and presents them to our minds and eyes. 27 Though we always think of this visible world as a reality, it bears no meaning at all. It resembles the sight of a mans own death in his dream. 28 A man sees a dream in which his own funeral is conducted by his son. In the same way, the unreal world is seen as a reality, in as much as it is reflected as such by its supreme contriver. 29 Both the existence and non-existence of the universe constitute the body of the pure God in the same way as a made-up name applied to a person makes no difference to his character. 30 Whether what I have said is true or not, you have nothing to lose or gain. It is useless for wise men to expect any reward by casting offerings into Falgu River. So to the intelligent who have known the true God, there is no value to take the pains of invoking the aid of the minor gods.

Chapter 212 On Ascertainment Of Truth

Vasishta resumed: The man who possesses intellect and intellectual powers and considers himself as I am that Brahman is elevated to the rank of Brahman and contains the whole world in himself. 2 As Lord Brahma Hiranyagarbha remains in this state, he is not then the creator of the world but was also the uncreated Brahman, the everlasting God, as he continued from all eternity. 3 The world appears in our consciousness like a mirage in a desert, an unreality that appears as a reality. 4 Since creation this primeval emptiness began to present the illusion of the world in itself. How can such an illusion arise unless it was presented by Brahman himself? 5 The world is a revolving sphere in the vast empty ocean of Brahman. How can the question of unity or duality arise in this? How can we talk of dualism in the whirling currents of the waters of the deep, or of unity if there is a lack of duality? 6 The great Brahma is profoundly quiet. Having his intellect inherent in himself, he is conscious of his being the great or sole I in his mind. He sees himself as a vast expanse of emptiness. 7 As fluctuation is inherent in air, heat is innate in fire, and the moon contains its coolness, so the great Brahma broods over the eternal ideas of things contained in the cavity of his fathomless mind. 8 Rama asked, Tell me sage, how does the Divine Mind come to think and brood upon his creation when it is always employed in its reasoning process of intellect? 9 Vasishta replied: It is even so, O Rama! The great Ego of God always thinks of everything in itself. There is nothing unknown to the uncreated and ever existent spirit of God. 10 Empty Brahma is always and everywhere present in both creation and non-creation. There is nothing known to him as existing or not existing at anytime. 11 As the mind is conscious of its fluctuation, the moon of her coldness, and the air knows its emptiness, so Brahma knows himself to be Ego and never thinks himself without the other. 12 Such is the entity of God, never otherwise. As Brahma is imperishable, this world must be without beginning or end. 13 You are led to a belief in duality of the non-dualistic unity of God only from a lack of sufficient intelligence and a prejudice arising from the idea of non-ego. 14 In reality, there is no one and nothing that thinks of anything of itself other than the Divine Ego. 15 The apparent threefold world is always one with and inseparable from God who dwells alike and evenly in all and who composes one uniform whole without any mixture of diversity or duality. 16 O Rama, know that nothing like a rock or tree is produced in empty emptiness. These seemingly solid worlds can never be produced in the empty spirit of Brahma. Know this and go on freely in your own way. 17 Teachings cannot persuade men of little intelligence and doubtful minds of the truth. As long as they cannot comprehend the unity, they are ever apt to believe in the multiplicity of objects. 18 No teaching or scripture can lead the ignorant to the knowledge of truth unless they can get rid of their prejudice of diversity which the creator Brahma has spread over the minds of men. 19 Rama asked, Sage, I understand what you say, but I ask you to give some illustration so that I may understand better. 20 What does the supreme Brahma do by assuming the title of Ego or thinking to himself he is an agent? (What happens when the notion of I arises in God?) You know everything, but the audiences understanding is less than satisfactory. 21 Vasishta replied: The Supreme One was quite indistinct. He assumes the title of Ego to himself and becomes divided and distinguished into the distinct essences of emptiness, space and its directions, and time with all its divisions. 22 Then the Ego assumes its personality and finds many such
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distinctions appearing before itself which are quite imperceptible in its state of impersonality. 23 The knowledge of these empty principles and their qualities and attributes is preserved in the soul as abstract ideas. Afterwards they are expressed by certain symbolic sounds or words, which are also as empty as air. 24 Thus the formless and empty principle of the Ego entertains in itself the ideas or knowledge of time and space in their ideal forms. 25 This universe which appears as an expression of the ideal of the Ego and seems to be visible and substantial is in reality only the intangible Brahma appearing as the tangible nonBrahma. 26 The world is truly the quiet spirit of Brahma. It is one with him without beginning, middle or end. It is truly the void of Brahma who assumes to himself the titles of Ego and the living soul, empty himself in his own vast and extensive empty self.

Chapter 213 Ramas Prior Learning under Vasishta

Vasishta continued: O Rama, the destroyer of your enemies, this same question which you asked me today, you asked me before when you were a student under my teaching. 2 In a former age we had a spiritual discourse when you were my student in a certain forest. The present is only a repetition of a past life. The wheel of life rolls and revolves constantly from age to age. 3 I sat there as your teacher and you sat before me as my student. You asked me this very same question with the gravity of your understanding. 4 The Student said, Sage who knows all things, please remove my doubt and difficulty. What perishes and doesnt perish in the final, great flood? 5 The Teacher replied: My son, know that the traces of all things are utterly destroyed at the last deluge, just like your dreams disappear in your sound sleep. 6 Hills and rocks on all ten sides of the earth are all destroyed without distinction. Nothing is left of the actions of men and the routine of their business. 7 All beings are destroyed at the end, and the great void that is the receptacle of all bodies becomes a perfect void. 8 The gods Brahma, Vishnu, Indra, Rudra and others who are the prime causes of the causal agencies of this world all become extinct at the end of the world. No trace of them remains. 9 All that remains is the great emptiness of Divine Consciousness which is ever existent without decay. This is known from the Divine Spirit who remains witness to both annihilations and regenerations of past and future worlds. 10 The Student said, The entity never becomes a non-entity and the non-entity never becomes an entity. Therefore, tell me where the past world has gone when it disappears, and from where does the future world comes to existence? 11 The Teacher replied: This world, my boy, is not wholly destroyed. It is quite true that nothing never becomes anything and anything never proceeds from a nothing. 12 That which is an entity in reality can never become a non-entity. How can that which is nonexistent of itself ever become a nothing and nonexistent afterwards? 13 Where is the water in a mirage? Where are the two seeming moons seen in the sky? Where are the delusive hairs found floating in the air, and when does a false conception prove to be true? 14 My son, know that all these phenomena are mere delusions without any reality. They appear like the cities and towns in our dreams. 15 They are liable to vanish from sight in the end, just like our dreams vanish upon waking, and just like our waking scenes vanish under the veil of sleep. 16 When we wake up, we do not know where the city of our dream has vanished. When the universe vanishes at its dissolution, we are equally ignorant about its location in the chaotic void. 17 The Student asked, If the world is a nothing as you say, then sage, please tell me what is it that appears to us and disappears by turns? What is that empty intellect which presents this extensive view before us? How does the void present its reflection as the fullness of space and to what purpose? 18 The Teacher replied: My boy, the empty sphere of consciousness shines with its transparency. Its reflection is called the world. It is nothing else but this. 19 It is the reflection of the widely extended substance of the great void of the intellect. This apparently material form is nothing other than the transparent form of that intellect. 20 The incorporeal Brahman, like all corporeal bodies, presents both a fair and a dark
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complexion. He also discloses himself sometimes and hides at another, which causes the creation and annihilation of the world. 21 The clarity of the Divine Spirit always remains the same and unaltered, whether before or after creation and its dissolution. Its like a fountain of clear water that always remains clear even though it may or may not reflect the shadows of bordering trees. 22 As a man remains unchanged in his sleep, whether he is dreaming or enjoying deep sleep, so the Spirit continues unchanged in its intellect, whether it is in the act of creation or annihilation. 23 The ideal world appears to be calm and quiet in both the dream of the dreamer and his sound sleep. This visible world of ours is always viewed as calm in the tranquil spirit of the Lord and in the tranquil spirit of the contemplative saint. 24 Hence I do not recognize the existence of an emptiness or a sky anywhere that is independent of our soul. The same appears in the souls of others as it does in ours according to our view of it. 25 If we can perceive the light of our intellect even at the point of our death when the world disappears from us, then why should we not believe the same happens to others, that they also perceive the same intellectual light in their consciousness. 26 The Student said, If such is the case, that others who are awake have the same view of the world as the dreamer has in his dream, then I believe that all those who are living have the same view of the world as those who are dying. 27 The Teacher replied: So it is, O my intelligent lad. The world does not appear in its real form because it appears as a reality to ordinary perception. 28 In reality, the world does not appear and is nothing. There is nothing in the world that has any reality to it. It is a mere reflection of the intellect, and there can be no reality in our false sight of it. 29 It is apparent and seems to be everywhere always, but it does not exist in any way anywhere or at anytime. 30 Because it is both the real and unreal form of Brahman, it is both a reality and an unreality. Being an intellectual void, it is never destroyed. 31 The empty entity of Supreme Consciousness exhibits the phenomena of creation and its destruction. If we have any degree of concern for it, it is only for our misery. We are unaffected if we remain altogether unconcerned with its casualties. 32 All these appearances exist everywhere at all times in the same manner as they appear to the ignorant. But in truth, they appear nowhere in any manner or at anytime to the wise and learned. 33 The same being appears as a god in one place and a pot in another. Here he is seen as a hill and there as a stream or valley. He is a tree here, a shrub there, and spreading grass in another. He is the moving and movable somewhere and the unmoving and unmovable elsewhere. He is fire and all other elements everywhere. 34 He is entity and nonentity, both emptiness and solidity. He is action and duration, and earth and sky likewise. He is the being and not being and their growth and their destruction. He is good as well as the evil that attends on one and prohibits another. 35 There is nothing that is not he who, though one, is always all things in all places. He is in and out of everything and extends along the beginning, middle and end of all things. He is eternity and duration and the three divisions of time also. 36 He is all and exists in all things and in all places and times. Yet he is not the all and does not exist with anything at anytime or place. Vasishta speaking: 37 Rama, know now that Brahman is the Universal Soul. He is all in all places and times. Because Brahman is the conscious soul, he exhibits all things to our consciousness like images in our dreams or the creatures of our imagination. 38 The maker of a material world must have a material body. The framer of the woody trees must have a wooden frame. But the Lord God of all has no material body or shape. 39 Some make a mountain god the lord of all. Some even make and worship a human figure as the supreme god. 40 Some make a picture the lord and maker of all. Others make some image and worship it as

the great god of all. 41 But there is only one Supreme Being who is the maker, supporter and the Lord God of all others. He is without beginning or end. The spirit of Lord Brahman upholds and supports all others. 42 A straw-made image or an earthen pot is attributed with divine powers and is represented to be the most high. So the formless God is shown in frail images made and destroyed by human hands. 43 An outward object is made the actor and enjoyer of acts. The wise know only consciousness to be the active and passive agent of all actions. 44 The truly wise acknowledge no active or passive agent of creation, although many among the wise recognize one God as the only actor and enjoyer of all. 45 All these views may be probable and may very well apply to the most High, the sole object of all these theories, because there is nothing which can be positively affirmed or denied of Him. 46 All these believers see and manifest God as they desire in the empty space of their intellects, and by viewing the whole world in themselves, they remain without decay at all times. 47 All that is visible, all laws and prohibitions, and all desires and designs of men are confined within men as ideas. Hence those who are true to their faith and firm in the observance of their duties and performance of their acts, by seeing all of creation within themselves, truly are of the nature of the Divine Soul. 48 This same doctrine was taught to you before, when you had been a student under my tutelage. But as you could not fully comprehend it then, you are condemned to another birth to learn it from me again. 49 The world represents a long, dark and dreary winter night, yet is also presents the pure light of knowledge, shining with the serene and cooling beams of the autumn moon. Now, O Rama, as you are improved by pure intelligence, shake off the impurity of dull ignorance and continue to discharge your duties as they have descended upon you and your royal race. 50 Remain released from your attachment to all things of this temporal world. Rely solely upon the one supreme and Universal Soul whose pure nature is perceptible throughout all nature. Be as clear as the transparent sky with the peace of your mind and delight of your soul. Learn to rule your realm with justice and impartiality.

Chapter 214 Description of the Great Celebration

Valmiki related: As the sage finished saying these things, the celestials sounded their trumpets from heaven and the clouds showered nectar-like rain. The face of the sky was whitened everywhere, as is if by snowdrifts in hoary winter, and the surface of the earth was covered by rain dropping like showers of flowers. 2 Earth appeared to be blessed with prosperity in the beauty of flowers stretching their pistils and stalks, like beautiful women with their evening decorations, and sending far away the fragrance of their powdery dust, like the perfume on the bodies of fairies. Their outer ornaments and inner cool sweetness are truly gifts of the gods. 3 The rampant hurricane of heaven made flowers fall from the dried branches of heavenly trees. Vying with the glittering stars, the flowers scattered all over the face of the sky, laughing with bashful and blushing smiles. 4 Then clouds descended upon the assembly hall with sounds of trumpets, drizzling raindrops and falling flowers, like snow falling on Himalayas head, filling the assembly with wonder, gaping mouths and staring eyes. 5 The assembly seated in their order, took handfuls of these heavenly flowers and poured them upon Vasishta with their obeisance, casting away all their earthly cares and sorrows with those celestial offerings to the sage. 6 King Dasharata said, O wonder that we are so lightly released of our cares and sorrows in this wide extended vale of miseries of the world. Our souls are now lightened of their pain by your grace, like the heavy clouds lightened of their weight and at last floating lightly on the Himalayas. 7 We have reached the goal of our acts and we have seen the end of our miseries in this life. We have fully known the knowable one and we have found our rest in that supreme state. 8 We know to rest in the ultimate void in our meditation and to get rid of our false thoughts of bodies by our intense application to the abstract, 9 by ridding ourselves from the inventions and wanderings of our imagination, by escaping from the hot passion for the sights of this dream world, by ceasing to mistake the shells of clams for silver, by our deliverance from falsely judging ourselves as dead either in our sleep or dream, 10 by our knowledge that the wind and its movement are identical and water is the same as its fluidity, by our distrust in this magical world and fairyland of our fancy, 11 by our disbelief in the magical scenes of this world and the aerial castles of fairies, by our mistrust of water in a mirage, gardens in the sky, and double moons of heaven, 12 by knowing it is no earthquake if our tottering footsteps should shake and slip in our drunkenness, and by not seeing a ghost in a shadow as children do, or seeing the braids of hair hanging down from the clouds in heaven. 13 Sage, from these and other examples that you have given for our instruction, you have suddenly erased our belief in the visible sights of this world. 14 Rama added, My ignorance is dispelled. I have come to the knowledge of truth by your good grace. O chief of sages, I acknowledge you as having brought me from impenetrable darkness to light. 15 I am freed from my doubts and set to the light of the true nature of God. Now I will act as you say, acknowledging the transparent truth (of viewing God as manifest in nature). 16 Remembering and reconsidering your words, so filled with ambrosial sweetness and full of delightful taste, I am filled with fresh delight, though already satisfied and refreshed by their sense. 17 I have nothing to do for myself at present, nor is there anything left for me to do. I am as I am and have ever been, always without any craving for myself. 18 What way can there be to our true bliss other than what you have shown? Otherwise, I find this wide-extended field of the earth is full of only sorrow and misery. 19 I have no foe to annoy me or a friend to give me any joy. I have no field to work in, no enemy to fear, and no good soul to rely upon. Our misunderstanding makes this world appear so troublesome, while our good sense makes it all agreeable.
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How could we know all this without your good grace? It is never possible for a boy to cross over a river without the assistance of a boat or a bridge. 21 Lakshman said, I have come to know the truth today through your divine sermon, holy sage. You have removed the doubts that had been inherent and inherited in my repeated births. All this is by virtue of the merit I acquired in former births. I feel the radiance of a holy light in me, shining as brightly as the cooling beams of moonlight. 22 It is strange that men disregard this heavenly bright light and become entangled in a thousand errors to be burnt in the end like dried wood by their foul mistake and great misfortune. 23 Vishwamitra said, Through our great merit we have heard this holy lecture from the mouth of the sage which has cleansed our inner souls like a thousand baths in the clear stream of the Ganges. 24 Rama said, We have seen the highest peak of all prosperity and the best of all that is to be seen. We have known the end of all learning and the last extremity of adversity. We have seen many countries and heard many speeches, but never have we heard or seen or known anything better than the discourse on the beauty of the soul which the sage has shown to us today. 25 Narada added, Today our ears are purified from hearing what we have never heard before, whether preached by Brahma, the gods above, or men below. 26 Lakshman replied, Sage, you have entirely dispelled all our inner and outer darkness. You have shown us the transcendent light of the bright sun of the Divine Soul. 27 Satrughna said, I am satisfied and tranquilized and thought free in the Supreme Soul. I am forever full and perfect in myself. I sit quite content with my singleness. 28 Dasharata repeated, By the merit of our deeds of repeated lives, O chief of sages, we have been sanctified this day by your sacred and sanctifying speech. 29 Valmiki related: As the king and his courtiers were speaking this way, the sage opened his mouth again and spoke words filled with pure and purifying knowledge. 30 Vasishta said, Hear me, O moonlike king of Raghus race, and do as I ask. Rise now and honor the assembled brahmins who deserve their due honor at the close of a discourse. 31 Rise therefore and satisfy their desires with your plentiful gifts. Thereby you will obtain the merit that attends on the learning of the Vedas, doing your duties according to their dictates. 32 It is the obligation of even a mean, worm-like man to honor the brahmins to their utmost at the end of a sermon on salvation. How much more important it is for a monarch to discharge this necessary duty. 33 Hearing this command of the sage, the king held reverent silence and signaled his messengers to go to all ten sides of his dominions and invite thousands of brahmins who were acquainted with the Vedas to come without delay to the royal court. 34 He ordered them to go to Mathura, Surashtra and Gauda and bring with due respect all the brahmins born of Vedic families who lived in those districts. 35 More than ten thousands of brahmins assembled at the royal palace. The king fed them all alike, paying particular regard to the more learned among them. 36 He treated them with the best sorts of food and rice, honored them with their rewards, and gave them a good many gifts. After honoring them in this manner; he offered his oblations to the spirits of his departed ancestors and gave his offerings to the family gods of his house. 37 Next King Dasharata treated his friends and relatives with proper food, then fed his companions and servants and the citizens all on the same day. His attention was at last directed to the feeding of the poor and needy, and of the lame and blind and lunatics. 38 Having discharged the duties of the festival to his utmost, he commanded a great festival to be held in his hall, all decorated with silk and embroidery and with gold, gems and pearls. 39 The city was adorned and lighted like the ever bright Mount Meru. There were

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celebrations and merry dancing of exuberant girls and players in every house. 40 Bells rang and cymbals sounded everywhere, drums beating at every door. Flutes and wind instruments blew on every side, and guitars and stringed instruments were played competing with each other. 41 Markets were closed. Buyers and sellers stopped their business. Raised arms of merry dancers in the streets, shaking and waving, looked like a grove of plants shaking in the air. The glittering light of the teeth of strolling players, displayed in their comic dance and loud laughter, looked like the starry heaven. 42 There were heroic dances attended by the players loud shouts, and melodramas accompanied by the soft and sweet musical compositions of performers. There was also a staggering and strutting dance on one leg, thumping the ground with the other. 43 Here they flung flower wreaths glittering like stars and falling down in showers. Flowers scattered over the ground like raindrops were indiscriminately trodden under the feet of passersby. 44 Here actresses danced with loose ornaments and gestures of love. There the bards chanted their hymns with clarity as brahmins recited and songstresses sang. 45 Here fools and drunkards drank their fill of wine and food mongers fed upon their foods of various kinds. 46 The insides of houses were whitewashed like bodies of princes with ointments of moonlight color. 47 Servants and maids attending on the king idly walked about adorned in flashy clothes of various colors. They graced the royal festival with their decorations of necklaces and sweet perfumes on their bodies. 48 Sprightly ballet girls, smeared with perfumed pastes and decorated with glittering ornaments, promptly ran to the ball at the royal hall. 49 Thus King Dasharata entertained for a whole week, passing a full seven nights in festive rejoicing while he distributed gifts and food for as many days, which contributed to inexhaustible prosperity on earth.

Chapter 215 Eulogy on This Work and the Mode of Its Recital
Valmiki said: O most intelligent Bharadwaja, the chief of my students, now you have heard how the great Rama and others came to the knowledge of the knowable One. They passed across this vale of misery and sorrow by attending to these lectures. 2 Fix your sight upon the light of Brahman and conduct yourself gladly by abandoning all your affections and cares of this world and by remaining brave with your living liberation and tranquility of mind. 3 O you sinless one, know that the learned and the humble do not mix with worldly men but remain steady as Rama and others in their right principles. They are never liable to be deluded although they are troubled by temptations on all sides. 4 Thus these men of great natures such as King Dasharata, Prince Rama and his brothers, together with their companions, all attained the state of the living liberated. 5 Now, my son Bharadwaja who naturally is of a liberal mind, you have become more liberated by hearing these sermons on the salvation of souls. 6 It is possible even for children to obtain liberation by attention to those holy lectures. They are the most evident and surest means to salvation. Therefore they cannot fail to convince you of their truth. 7 The high minded, sinless and sorrow-less sons of Raghus race attained the holy state of perfection and self-liberation. So you also obtain that best and highest state by attending upon the lectures of the divine sage Vasishta. 8 Weak men of good understanding can know the knowable though the advice of the good and service under the great, and by humble questions and the explanations of the learned, just as the Raghavas and others did under Vasishta. 9 The ties of greed and affection that have tightly bound the hearts of the ignorant all tend to prevent them, like playful children, from inquiring into the means of their liberation, until they become too old to benefit by their knowledge. 10 Only those who can discern the minds of high minded men can come to the knowledge of truth. Only such men no longer return to this world of sorrow. This is the substance of all that I can speak to you. 11 Having first received your instruction from the teacher, you must weigh well and digest its meaning in yourself. Then communicate its sense to the most sensible and intelligent student. Sages and saints say that this constitutes the three liberal arts of science. Know this and you need no more to become wise when your boyhood is over. 12 Whoever read this book with some understanding of its meaning, and whoever copies it without expectation of getting a fee, and whoever recites or causes it to be recited either with or without any desire of reward, shall have his ample reward in the land of the Aryas. 13 These men receive the same reward as performing a rajasuya sacrifice. They are entitled to heavenly seats in their pure essence as often as they ascend after their death on earth, and until they attain final liberation. 14 The god Brahma of unknowable form first composed this work in his excellent diction. Considering it to be the only means to liberate mankind, Brahma had revealed it to the assembly of saints. Therefore let nobody take the truth of this saying to be an untruth. 15 At the close of reciting these lectures on the way to attain human salvation, it is suitable for every sensible man to honor brahmins with diligence and serve them with desirable gifts of food and drink and furnish them with good houses for their lodging. 16 They should also be rewarded with gifts and payments and supplied with money to their hearts desire and to the utmost capacity of the donor. Then the giver or master of the ceremony should rest assured of having discharge his duty and reaped the merit according to the intent of the scriptures. 17 Thus I have repeated to you this great scripture which explains divine knowledge
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and pure truth with many great tales and stories that serve as examples and illustrations so that you may clearly understand these concealed doctrines. May your hearing these serve to lead you to utter indifference of this world and to desire your liberation while you are alive in this world. May this also tend to your continued prosperity and engage your attention towards perfection of your knowledge and devotion, and to the discharge of the duties of your station in life without fail.

Chapter 216 The Celestial Messengers Message of Liberation

Valmiki continued to say: Thus I have related to you, O King Arishtanemi, whatever the pot-born Vasishta taught and preached to the princes. It is certain that you will attain the same elevated state as they did by hearing these lectures on sacred knowledge. 2 King Arishtanemi replied: O venerable sage, your kind look is enough to free us from bondage in this world. Hence I am not only brought to light, but saved from the ocean of this world by your favor. 3 The Heavenly Messenger said (to the apsara Suruchi): After saying this, King Arishtanemi seemed amazed. Then he began to speak these words to me with a graceful voice. 4 The King said, I bow down to you, O divine messenger, and wish all safety to attend on you. It is said that the friendship of the good is attended with seven benefits, all of which you have conferred upon me. 5 Now return safely to your seat in the heaven of Indra. Know that I am both gladdened and grown unconcerned with worldly concerns by hearing this discourse from you. 6 I shall continue to remain here for ever more without feeling any anxiety. I will think well and ponder deeply into the sense of all that I have heard from you. Now I tell you, O lady, that I was quite surprised to see so much courteous behavior on the part of a king. 7 He said, I have never heard before such words filled with so much knowledge as I have come to hear from you. It has filled my inner spirit with as much joy as if I have drunk my fill of ambrosial nectar. 8 Then I came to you, O sinless apsara, at the asking of Valmiki, in order to relate to you all that you have asked of me. Now I shall turn my path towards the celestial city of Indra. 9 The apsara said: Now I must thank you, O very fortunate messenger of the gods, for all that you have related to me. My knowledge of this and its benign influence has entirely calmed my spirit. 10 I am quite satisfied in myself, and will remain always free from sorrow and all the sickening cares of life. You may now go to your destination at Indras world with all speed attending on your journey there. Agnivesya speaking: 11 So saying Suruchi, the best of the apsara nymphs, continued to keep her seat on the slope of the Himalayas, near the Gandhamadana Mount of fragrance, and reflect on the sense of what she had heard of divine knowledge. 12 Now my son, as you have fully heard all the teachings of Vasishta, you are at liberty to do as you like upon considering well their meaning. 13 Karanya said: The memory of the past, the sight of the present, and the talk of future events, together with the existence of the world are all as false as the sights in our dreams or of water in a mirage or the birth of a child to a barren woman. 14 I gain nothing from my deeds, nor lose anything by what is left undone. I live to do as it happens, or at the impulse of the occasion and without any effort on my part. 15 Agastya said: O Sutikshna, saying thus Karunya, the worthy son of Agnivesya, continued to pass his time in the discharge of his duties, as they occurred to him from time to time. 16 You, O Sutikshna, should never keep any doubts regarding the acts you must perform after you attain divine knowledge. Doubt destroys the virtue of the deed, just as selfishness takes away its merit. Unnamed person speaking: 17 Upon hearing the sages speech which reconciles the two incompatible fields of
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action and reflection into the unity of their combination, Sutikshna bowed to his teacher and uttered the following words with due submission to him. 18 Sutikshna said: Any action done in ignorance of the actor is reckoned as no act of his. It is ones act only if done with full knowledge. But actions done with reason by reasonable men are invaluable in their nature. All our acts are best seen by the light of the intellect, just like the actions of actors on a stage lit by candle light. 19 The presence of the Supreme Soul in us, the action of our hearts, directs the motions of our bodies. It is like the malleability of gold that allows it to be molded into many forms of jewelry. 20 The great body of waters gives rise to roaring waves and little playful waves that heave and move in our sight. So the inherence of the great Soul fills great and small alike. 21 I submit and bear with all that happens to me because there is no escape from destiny and no neglecting the sound sayings of sages. O venerable sage, I acknowledge my knowledge of the knowable one only by your good grace. 22 I owe it to myself to be quite happy with your favor. I prostrate on the ground before you for lifting me up from the sorrowful pit of the world. There is no other way to repay my gratitude to my venerable teacher. 23 There is no other act whereby one may express ones obligation to the teacher for his salvation in this world. I can only offer myself to your service with my whole body and mind and the words of my mouth. 24 By your good grace, O my good sage, I have passed over the ocean of this world. I am filled with infinite joy amidst all these worlds. I am set free from all my doubts. 25 I bow down to that Brahman who is sung of in the Sama Veda as filling all this universe, like the waters of the ocean fill the boundless deep, whose memory fills our souls with ecstasy. 26 I also bow down to sage Vasishta who is pure knowledge incarnate, who is immersed in the joyous ecstasy of divine bliss, who is beyond all duality and sees only the one in the unity of infinite emptiness, who is ever like the pure and stainless one, who witnesses the innermost of all minds, who is beyond all states and conditions, and who is quite devoid of the three qualities. 27 Here ends the Maharamayana of sage Vasishta with its continuation by his recorder Valmiki and the speech of the celestial messenger at the latter end of the Book on Nirvana, the ultimate extinction of the living soul.