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

Válmiki

Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 3: Utpatti-Prakarana (Evolution of the World). Chapter 18 - Exposure of the Errors of this World

She said, "I have much consolation in you, and now will I console my sorrowing heart." So saying, she made a sign for the assembly to break, and rose from her royal seat.

She entered the inner apartment and sat by the side of the dead body of her lord, hidden under the heap of flowers, and thus began to reflect within herself.

She exclaimed: "O the wondrous magic! that presents these people of my place situated in the same manner without myself, as they were seen to be seated within me.

"O how great is the extent of this delusion, as to contain the same high: hills, and the same spacious forests of palm and Hintāla trees, both in the outside as well as they are situated in the inside of myself.

"As the mirror shows the reflexion of the hills within itself as they are without it, so the reflector of the intellect presents the whole creation inwardly as it has outwards of itself.

"I must now invoke the goddess of wisdom to ascertain which of these is illusion, and which the sober and certain reality."

So saying, she worshipped and invoked the goddess, and beheld her immediately before herself, in the form of a virgin.

She made the goddess sit on the elevated seat, and having seated herself low upon the ground before her, asked that divine power to tell her the truth.

Līlā said : "Vouchsafe, O goddess, and clear this doubt of your suppliant; for it is your wisdom which has framed this beautiful system of the universe at first and knows the truth. (Divine wisdom is the prime cause of all).

"Tell me, O great goddess, about what I am going to lay before you at present, for it is by your favour alone the I may be successful to know it.

"I saw the pattern of this world in the intellect, which is more transparent than the ethereal sphere, and as extensive as to contain millions and millions, of miles in a small space of it.

"It is what no definite words can express, and what is known as the calm, cool and ineffable light. This is nailed the unintelligible intelligence, and without any cover or support (nirāvarana nirbhitti).

It is exhibits the reflexions of space and the course, of time, and those of the sky and its light, and the course of events concentrating in itself.

Thus the images of the worlds, are to be seen both within and without the intellect, and it is hard to distinguish the real and unreal ones between them.

The goddess asked: "Tell me fair lady, what is the nature of the real world, and what you mean, by its unreality.

Līlā replied: I know the nature of the real to be such as I find myself to be sitting here, and looking upon you as seated in this place.

And I mean that to be unreal, as the state in which I beheld my husband in the ethereal region erewhile; because vacuity has no limit of time or place in it.

The goddess rejoined: The real creation cannot produce an unreal figure, nor a similar cause produce a dissimilar effect.

Līlā replied: But we often see, O goddess! dissimilar effects to be produced from similar causes: thus, the earth and earthen pot though similar in their substance, yet the one is seen to melt in water, and the other to carry water in it.

The goddess said:- Yes, when an act is done by the aid of auxiliary means, there the effect is found to be somewhat different from the primary cause. (Thus the earthen pot being produced by the auxiliary appliances of fire, the potter's wheel and the like, differs in its quality from the original clay).

Say O beautious lady! what were the causes of your husband's being born in this earth? The same led to his birth in the other world also. (i.e. The merit of the acts and desires of men, are the causes of their transmigrations in both worlds).

When the soul has fled from here, how can the earth follow him there any more, and what auxiliary causes can there be in connection with this cause?

Wherever there arises a co-action with its apparent causality, it is usually attributed by every one to some unknown antecedent cause of motive.

Līlā said: Methinks goddess, that it was the expansion of my husband's memory that was the cause of his regenerations; because it is certain that reminiscence is the cause of the reproduction of objects before us.

The goddess replied: That, memory is an aerial substance, and its production are as unsubstantial as itself.

Līlā said: Yes I find reminiscence to be an airy thing, and its reproduction of my husband and all other things within me to be but empty shadows in the mind.

The goddess replied: So verily was this reproduction of your husband and all those things which appeared to your sight in your reverie; and so, my daughter, is the appearance of all things I see in this world.

Līlā said: Tell me goddess for the removal on my conception of the reality of the world, how the false appearance of my formless lord, was produced before me by the unreal world, (since nothing unsubstantial can cast a shadow).

The goddess replied: As this illusive world appeared a reality to you before your reminiscence of it, so must you know all this to be unreal from what I am going to relate to you.

There is in some part of the sphere of the Intellect the great fabric of the world, with the glassy vault of the firmament for its roof on all sides.

The Meru is its pillar, beset around by the regents of the ten sides, as statues carved upon it. The fourteen regions are as so many apartments of it, and the hollow concavity containing the three worlds, is lighted by the lamp of the luminous sun.

Its corners are inhabited by living creatures resembling ants and emmets, which are surrounded by mountains appearing as ant-hills in the sight of Brahmā, the prime lord of creatures and the primeval patriarch of many races of men.

All animal beings are as worms confined in the cuckoons (prison houses) of their own making. The azure skies above and below are as the soot of this house, beset by bodies of Siddhas (or departed spirits), resembling groups of gnats buzzing in the air.

The fleeting clouds are the smoke of this house or as webs of spiders in its corners, and the hollow air is full of aerial spirits, like holes of bamboos filled with flies.

There are also the playful spirits of gods and demigods hovering over human habitations, as swarms of busy and buzzing bees about vessels of honey.

Here there lay amidst the cavity of heaven, earth and the infernal regions, tracts of land well watered by rivers, lakes and the sea on all sides.

In a corner of this land, there was situated a secluded piece of ground (a vale or village), sheltered by hills and craigs about it.

In this secluded spot thus sheltered by hills, rivers and forests, there live a Brāhmana with his wife and children, free from disease and care of gain and fear of a ruler, and passed his days in his fire-worship and hospitality, with the produce of his kine and lands.

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