Philosophy and Religion / Yoga Vāsistha / Yoga-Vāsistha (3): Utpatti-Prakarana

Válmiki

Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 3: Utpatti-Prakarana (Evolution of the World). Chapter 103 - On the Nature of the Mind

Some minds are seen to break-forth in passions like the torrents of oceans, and to heave and overflow on earth on every side. ¹

They reduce the great to lowness, and exalt the low also to greatness; they make strangers of their friends, as also friends to strangers. ²

The mind makes a mountain of a mote by its thought, and thinks itself a lord with its little of a trifle. ³

The mind being elated by the prosperity, which attends upon it by the will of God, spreads a large establishment for a while, and is then reduced to poverty in a moment at its loss. ⁴

Whatever things are seen in this world to be stationary or changeful, are all but accidents according to the state of viewing them in that light: Just as a passing vessel is thought stationary by its passenger on board, but as moving by the spectators on the shore.

The mind is so changeful by the influence of time, place power and nature of acts and things, that it continually shuffles from one feeling to another, like an actor personating his many parts on the stage.

It takes the truth for untruth and its reverse for certainty: so it takes one thing for another, and its joy and grief are all of its own making. ⁵

The fickle mind gets everything according to its own doing, and all the actions of our hands, feet and other members of the body, are regulated by the same. ⁶

Hence it is the mind that reaps the rewards of good or evil according to its past acts; just as the tree bears its fruits, according as it is pruned and watered in time. ⁷

As the child makes a variety of his toy dolls at home from clay, so the mind is the maker of all its good and bad chances, according to the merit or demerit of its past actions.

Therefore the mind which is situated in the earthen dolls of human bodies, can do nothing of its own will, unless it is destined so by virtue of its former acts. ⁸

As the seasons cause the changes in trees, so the mind makes differences in the dispositions of living beings. ⁹

The mind indulges in its sport of deeming a span as a league, and vice-versa of thinking a long as short, as in the case of the operations of our dreams and fancy.

A Kalpa age is shortened to a moment, and so is a moment prolonged to a Kalpa, by the different modes of the mind; which is the regulator both of the duration and distance of time and place.

The perceptions of the quickness and slowness of motion, and of much or little in quantity, as also of swiftness or tardiness of time, belong to the mind and not to the dull material body: (though these sensations are derived by means of the bodily organs).

So the feelings of sickness and error and of dolour and danger, and the passing of time and distance of place, all rise in the mind like the leaves and branches of trees. ¹⁰

The mind is the cause of all its feelings, as water is the cause of the sea, and the heat of fire. Hence the mind is the source of all things, and intimately connected with whatever is existent in the world.

The thoughts that we have of the agent, effect and instrument of things, as also of the viewer, view and the instrumentality of sight, all belong to the mind.

The mind alone is perceived of be in existence in the world; and its representations of the forests and all other things are but variations of itself. So the thinking man sees the substance of gold only, in all its various formations of bangles and- bracelets, which are taken for naught. ¹¹

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