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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 3: Utpatti-Prakarana (Evolution of the World). Chapter 79 - Interrogatories of the Rāksasī
Vasistha continued- After saying so, the fiend began to put forth her queries; and you should be attentive to them Rāma, like the prince who told her to go on.
The Rāksasī resumed : What is that atomic minim which is one yet many, and as vast as the ocean, and which contains innumerable worlds like the bubbles of the sea? 1
What is that thing which is a void yet no-void, which is something yet nothing? What is it that makes myself, and yourself, and wherein do I or you do abide and subside? 2
What is it that move unmoved and unmoving, and stand without stopping; what is it that is intelligent yet as dull as a stone; and what is it that presents its variety in the vacuity of the understanding?
(Another text reads vyomni citra krt, which means; who paints the sky with variegated hues).
What is it that has the nature of fire without its burning, quality; and what is that unigneous substance which produces the fire and its flame. 3
Who is he that is not of the nature of the ever-changing solar, lunar and steller lights, but is the never-changing enlightener of the sun, moon and stars; and who is that being who having no eyes, gives the eye its sight?
Who is he that gives eyesight to the eyeless vegetables, and the blind mineral creation? (Whereby they perceive the light of the luminaries of heaven as the sunflower moonflower-helioselini and others).
Who is the maker of heavens, and who is the author of the natures of things; who is the source of this coming world, and whose treasure are all the gems contained it? (Man foolishly owns them for a time, but leaves at last to their true possessor and maker).
What is that monad which shines in darkness, and is that point which is and is not; what is that iota which is imperceptible to all, and what is that jot which becomes an enormous mountain? 4
To whom is a twinkling of the eye, as long as a Kalpa millennium; and a whole age but a moment? Who is he whose omnipresence is equal to his absence, and whose on'tniscience is alike his total ignorance? 5
Who is called the spirit, but is no air in itself; and who is said to be the sound or word, but is none of them himself? He is called the All, but is none at all of all that exists; and he is known as Ego, but no ego is he himself. 6
What is it that is gained by the greatest application of a great many births (lives), and when gained at last, is hard to be retained (owing to the spiritual carelessness of mankind)? 7
Who being in easy circumstances in life, has not lost his soul in it; and who being but an atom in creation, does not reckon the great mountain of Meru as a particle? 8 9
What is that which being no more than an atom, fills a space of many leagues; and who is an atomic. particle; that is not contained (measured) in many miles? 10
At whose glance and nod is it, that all beings act their parts as players; and what is that ace which contains in its bosom many a mountain chain? 11
Who is it, that is bigger than the mount Meru in his minuteness; and who is it that being, lesser than the point of a hair, is yet higher than the highest rock? 12
Whose light was it, that brought out the lamp of light from the bosom of darkness; and what minute particle is it, that contains the minutiae of ideas ad infinitum in it? 13
Which having no flavour in it, gives savour to all things; and whose presence being withdrawn from all substances, reduces them to infinitesimal atoms. 14
Who is it that by his self-pervasion, connects the particles composing the world (as by their power of attraction); and what imperceptible power is it, that rejoins the detached particles, after their separation and dissolution for recreation of the new world? (The atomic powers of attraction an repulsion of particles and bodies).
Who being formless, has a thousand hands and eyes; and a twinkling of whose eye, comprehends the period of many eyeless together? 15
In what microscopic mite does the world subsist as an Arbor in its seed, and by what power do the unproductive seeds of atoms, become productive of worlds?
Whose glance is it, that causes the production of the world, as from its seed; and who is it that creates the world without any motive or material? 16
What is that being, who without his visual organs, enjoys the pleasure of seeing-Drsti; and is the viewer-drastā of Himself, which he makes the object of his view (drsya). 17
Who is he that having no object of vision before him; sees nothing without him, but looks upon himself as an infinity void of all visibles within it. 18
Who is it, that shows the subjective sight of the soul by itself, as an objective view; and represents the world as the figure of a bracelet, in his own metal? 19
Who is it that has nothing existent beside himself, and in whom all things exist, like the waves existing in the waters; and who is it whose will makes them appear as different things? (The one being no more than fluctuations of the other, and substantially the same).
Both time and space are equally infinite and indivisible, as the essence of God wherein they subsist, why then do we try to differentiate and separate them like the water from its fluidity?
What is the inward cause in us, which makes the believer in the soul, to view the unreal world as real, and why does this fallacy continue at all times?
The knowledge of the worlds whether as present, past or infuturo, is all a great error; and yet what is that immutable being, which contains in it he seed of this phenomenal wilderness?
What being is that, which shows these phenomena without changing itself, such as in the shape of the seed of the world, before it develops itself in creation; and sometimes in the form of a developed forest of created beings?
Tell me, O prince! on what solid basis does the great Meru, stand like a tender filament of the lotus; and what gigantic form is that, which contains thousands of Merus and Mandaras within its capacious womb?
Tell me, what is that immeasurable Intellect, which has spread these myriads of intelligences in all these worlds; what is that which supplies you with your strength for ruling and protecting your people, and in conducting yourself through life; and what is it in whose sight, you do either lose yourself or think to exist? Tell me all these, O clear sighted and fair faced prince, for the satisfaction of my heart.
Let your answer melt down the doubt, that has covered the face of my heart as with snows. If it fail to efface this dirt of doubt altogether from the surface of my heart, I will never account it as the saying of the wise.
But if you fail to lighten my heart of its doubts, and set it at ease; then know for certain, that you shall immediately be made a fuel to the fire of my bowels at this very moment.
I shall then fill this big belly of mine with all the people of your realm; but should you answer rightly, you shall reign in peace; or else you shall meet your end like the ignorant, who are surfeited with the enjoyments of life.
Saying so, the nocturnal fiend made the loud shout of a roaring cloud, expressive of her joy; and then sat silent with her fearful features, like a light hearted cloud in autumn. 20
Footnotes
1. It is a minim for its minuteness, an atom- owing to its imperceptibility, one-as regards its unity, many- on account of its attributes (upādhis), and vast in respect to its infinity, containing the passing worlds as the evanescent bubbles of water.
2. It is nothing in appearance, but something in our consciousness, and is both the subjective and objective.
3. This passage refers to the glory and light of God which shines without burning.
4. A geometrical monad is a point without dimension. In the Monadology of Leibnitz, it is the elementary particle of vital force acting not mechanically, but from internal principle. It is the Enteleched of Aristotle, whose essence consists in force.
5. To whom eternity is a moment, and whose omnipresence and omniscience are unknown to us.
6. Spiritus or the breathing of ventus-wind-prāna and the sabda or Śruti are not God; nor is he one and all in his person, nor the ego and non ego, I not l, and temoiet nonle moi, dasic and nictich, the subjective and objective, and having no personality of his own.
7. Liberation by final extinction-nirvāna, is hard to be had owing to the interminable metempsychosis of the soul, according to the doctrine of the pre-existence and immortality of souls.
8. the egotist.
9. It is harder for the easy rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, than for a camel to enter the eye of a needle. Gospel. The pride of egotism levels mountains to dust, and its ambition soars above them.
10. It is the atomic theism of Kanāda's Vaiśesika system and of Ecphantus Archelaus. The mind is included in the atomism of Empedocles and Anasagoras. Epicurus added morality to it, and Lucretius added to it the beauty of poetry also. See also the Atpistic Atomic systems of Leucippus and Democritus.
11. The mountain was produced from and is contained in the atom of the divine mind; and so every gain of the human brain, contains in it the form of a prodigious mountain
12. So the Śruti. Anoranīyān mahato mahīyan: i.e. Minuter than the minutest and bigger than the biggest
13. God said "Lux fiat et lux fit. Genesis. Hail holy light Heaven's first born Milton. Eternal ideas of immaterial forms of possible existences in the Divine Mind, the archytype of the Ectypical world. These are the Types of things; Plato; Forms of ditto. Cicero. Eternal exemplars of things. Seneca etc.
14. by destruction of cohesion. So the Śrūti.- Raso vai tat.- He is flavour etc. Attraction of all kinds, is a manifestation of Divine power- ākrsti, personified in the form of Krsna- the regent of the sun, whose gravity supports the solar world.
15. The divine hypostases of Virāt, is endowed with a thousand hands and eyes, as in the Purusa Sūkta: "Sahasra śirsa, sahasra bāhu sahasrāksa" etc.
16. The motives are the subjective or internal cause and the objective or external objects of creation. And material means the matter of unisubstantism of materialists.
17. God sees all thins in himself as the receptacle of all in the eternal ideas of them in his mind. Or. The Ego meditates on itself both subjectively as the viewer, and objectively as the view. So Milton, "And God saw his works were good" answering his fair idea.
18. This is the subjective reflection of the Yogī, like that of God on his ownself, as abstracted from the thoughts of all other things. The Mind is the subjective reality and matter has no objective reality.
19. The subjective soul and the metal are the true realities, and the objective view of the jewel and the world, is but error and delusion. The Vedantist like Berkeley, held all objective reality to be subjective.
20. Which is of gigantic shape, but empty of rain waters within.
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