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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 4: Sthiti-Prakarana (On Ontology or Existence). Chapter 31 - Investigation of Reality and Unreality
Vasistha continued: It was for your enlightenment, O high minded Rāma! that I have related to you the instance of Dāma and Vyāla, that you may derive instruction thereby, and not let it go for nothing as a mere idle story.
Following after untruth by slighting the truth, is attended with the danger of incurring endless miseries, which the careless pursuer after it, is little aware of.
Mind! how great was the leadership of Sambara's army, 1, and whereby they defeated the hosts of the immortal deities, and reflect on the change of their state to contemptible fishes in a dry and dirty quagmire.
Mind their former fortitude, which put to flight the legions of the immortals; and think on their base servility as hunters, under the Chief of Kirātas afterwards.
See their unselfishness of mind and great patience at first, and then see their vain desires and assumption of the vanity of egotism at last.
Selfish egotism is the root of the wide extended branches of misery in the forest of the world, which produces and bears the poisonous blossoms of desire.
Therefore, O Rāma! be deligent to wipe off from your heart the sense of your egoism, and try to be happy by thinking always of the nullity of yourself.
The error of egoism like a dark cloud, hidst the bright disk of the moon of truth under its gloom, and causes its cooling beams to disappear from sight.
The three Daityas Dāma, Vyāla and Kata, being under the demoniac influence of Egoism, believed their nonentity as positive entity by the excess of their illusion.
They are now living as fishes in the muddy pool of a lake, among the forest lands of Kashmira, where they are content a present with feeding with zest upon the moss and weeds growing in it. 2
Rāma said- Tell me sir, how they came to existence when they were non-existent before; for neither can a nil be an ens, nor an entity become a nonentity at any time.
Vasistha replied: - So it is, O strong armed Rāma! that nothing can ever be something, or anything can ever be nothing. But it is possible for a little thing to be great, as for a great one to be reduced to minuteness. 3
Say what nonentity has come to being, or what entity has been lasting forever. All these I will explain to you by their best proofs and examples.
Rāma answered: Why sir, all that is existent is ever present before us as our own bodies, and all things beside ourselves; but you are speaking of Dāma and the demons, as mere nullities and yet to be in existence.
Yes Rāma, it was in the same way, that the non-existent and unreal Dāma and others seemed to be in existence by mere illusion, as the mirage appears to us to be full of water by our optical delusion 4.
It is in like manner that ourselves, these gods and demigods, and all things besides, are unrealities in fact, and yet we seem to turn about and speak and act as real persons.
My existence is as unreal as your, and yet it appears as real as we dream our death in sleep. 5
As the sight of a dead friend in a dream is not a reality, so the notion of the reality of the world, ceases upon the conviction of its unreality, as that of the demise of the person seen in a dream.
But such assertions of our nihility are not acceptable to them, who are deluded to the belief of the reality of sensible objects. It is the habit of thinking its reality, that will not listen to its contradiction.
This mistaken impression of the reality of the world, is never to be effaced without the knowledge of its unreality, derived from the Śāstras, and the assuetude of thinking it so.
He who preaches the unreality of the world and the reality of Brahmā, is derided by the ignorant as a mad man; 6.
The learned and the ignorant cannot agree on this subject, as the drunken and sobermen can not meet together. It is one who has the distinct knowledge of light and darkness, that knows the difference between the shade and sunlight.
It is as impossible to turn the ignorant to truth, from their belief in the reality of unrealities, as to make a dead body to stand on it legs by any effort.
It is in vain to preach the doctrine of "to pan," that "Brahmā is all" to the vulgar, who for want of their knowledge of abstract meditation, are devoted to their sensible notions.
There prohibition is a admonition, giving to the ignorant, (who are incapable of persuations); as for the learned who know themselves to be Brahmā, it is useless to lecture them on this subject (which they are already acquainted with).
The intelligent man, who believes that the supremely quiescent spirit of Brahmā, pervades the whole, universe, is not to be led away by any from his firm belief.
So nothing can shake the faith of that man, who knows himself as no other, beside the Supreme Being who is all in all; and thinks himself to be dependant on the substantiality of God, as the formal ring depends on its substance of gold.
The ignorant have no notion of the spirit, beside that of matter, which they believe as the cause and effect (Kārya Kārana) of its own production; but the learned man sees the substantive spirit, in all forms of creation, as he views the substance of gold in all the ornaments made of that metal.
The ignorant man is composed of his egoism only, and the sage is fraught with his spirituality alone; and neither of them is never thwarted from his own belief.
What is one's nature or habit (of thinking), can hardly be altered at any time; for it would be foolish in one, who has been habituated to think himself as a man, to take himself for a pot or otherwise.
Hence though ourselves and others, and that Dāma and the demons are nothing in reality; yet who can believe that we or these or those and not what ourselves to be.
There is but One Being that is really existent, who is truth and consciousness himself, and of the nature of the vacuum and pure understanding. He is immaculate, all pervading, quiescent and without his rise or fall.
Being perfect quietude and void, he seems as nothing existent; and all these creations subsist in that vacuity as particles of its own splendour.
As the stars are seen to shine resplendant in the darkness of night, and the worms and waves are seen to float on the surface of the waters, so do all these phenomena appear to occur in his reality.
Whatever that being purposes himself to be, he conceives himself to be immediately the same: it is that vacuous Intellect only which is the true reality, and all others are also real, as viewed in it and rising and setting in it out of its own will (volition or bidding).
Therefore there is nothing real or unreal in the three worlds, but all of or the same form as it is viewed by the Intellect, and rising before it of its own spcntaneity. 7
We have also sprung from that Will Divine as Dāma and others; hence there is neither any reality or unreality in any of us, except at the time (when we exist or cease to do so).
This infinite and formless void of the Intellect, is ubiquitous and all pervading; and in whatever form this intellect manifests itself in any place, it appears there just in the same figure and manner.
As the divine consciousness expanded itself with the images' of Dāma and others, it immediately assumed those shapes by its notions of the same. 8
So it is with every one of us, that all things are produced to our view, according to their notions which are presented to our consciousness. 9
What we call the world, is the representation of things to us as in our dream; it is a hollow body as a bubble rising in the empty ocean of the Intellect, and appearing as the water in the mirage.
The waking state of the vacuous intellect, is styled the phenomenal world, and its state of sleep and rest, is what we call liberation, emancipation or salvation from pain (ātyantika dukkha nivrtti moksa).
But the Intellect which never sleeps, nor has to be awakened at any time (but is ever wakeful), is the vacuity of the Divine Mind, in which the world is ever present in its visible form, (and to which nothing in invisible).
There the work of creation is united with the rest of nirvāna, and the cessation from the act of creation, is joined with uninterrupted quiescence; and no difference of alternate work and rest whatever subsists in God any time. 10
The Divine Intellect views its own form in the world, and the world in itself in its true sense; as the blinded eye sees the internal light in its orbit.
The Divine Intellect like the blinded eye, sees nothing from without, but views every form within itself; because there is no visible nor phenomenal world, beside what is situated within the vacuous sphere of the intellect.
There are all these things everywhere, as we have ideas of them in our minds; but there is never any thing any where, of which we have no previous idea in the mind. It is the one quiet spirit of God, which lies extended in all these forms coming to our knowledge. Therefore knowing him as all in all, give up all your fears and sorrows and duality, rest in peace in his unity.
The great intellect of God, is as solid and clear as a block of crystal, which is both dense and transparent in the inside. They appear to be all hollow within, but replete with the images of all things from without.
Footnotes
1. Once held by Dāma and his colleagues
2. The watery land of Kashmīr is well-known to abound in fishes feeding on aquatic herbs and moss.
3. As it is the case in the evolution and involutions of beings.
4. or deception of vision
5. So we dream of our existence while we are awake.
6. For his negation of the seeming reality, and assertion of the unseen God.
7. The three worlds are composed of this earth and the world above and beneath it, called as svarga-martya and pātāla.
8. But here it was the consciousness of Śambara or Satan, which manifested itself in those shapes, and implies everything to be but a manifestation of our notion of it.
9. This is the tenet of conceptualism or idealism, which bears resemblance to the doctrine of Realism. See Cousin's treaties "De Intellectibus".
10. There is no such thing as "God rested from his works".
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