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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 4: Sthiti-Prakarana (On Ontology or Existence). Chapter 61 - Scrutiny into the Nature of God
Vasistha continued: Now Hari who slept on his couch of the snake, in his watery mansion of the Milky ocean, and whose delight it was to preserve the order of all the groups of worlds:
Looked into the course of world in his won mind, after he rose from his sleep at the end of the rainy season for achieving the object of the gods. 1
He surveyed at a glance of his thought the state of the triple world, composed of the heaven, the earth and the regions below; and then directed his attention to the affairs of the infernal regions of the demons.
He beheld Prahlāda sitting there in his intense hypnotic meditation, and then looked into the increasing prosperity of Indra's palace.
Sitting as he was on his serpentine couch in the Milky Ocean, with his arms holding the conch-shell, the discus, and the club and lotus in his four hands: -
He thought in his brilliant mind and in his posture of padmasana, about the states of the three worlds, as the fluttering bee inspects into the state of the lotus.
He saw Prahlāda immerged in his hypnotism, and the infernal regions left without a leader; and beheld the world was about to be devoid of the Daitya race.
This want of the demons, thought he, was likely to cool the military ardour of the Devas; as the want of clouds serves to dry up the waters on earth.
Liberation which is obtained by privation of dualism and
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Consider well in your mind the frail acts, which are attended with various evils; and do those acts which are good for the three worlds, both in their beginning and end, and forever to eternity.
The intelligent think that as dangerous to them, and not otherwise; by reason of their being freed from narrow views, and the false specters- the offspring of ignorance.
You should always consider in yourself for the enlightenment of your understanding, and say; O Lord! what am I, and whence in this multiciplity of worlds?
By diligently considering these subjects in the society of the wise and righteous, you must neither be engaged in your ceremonial acts, nor continue in your unnecessary practices of the rituals.
You must look at the disjunction of all things in the world from you, 2
Our inward egoism, outward body and the external world, are the three seas encompassing us one after the other. It is right reasoning only which affords the raft to cross over them, and bring us under the light of truth.
By refraining to think of the beauty an firmness of your exterior form, you will come to perceive the internal light of your intellect hid under your egoism; as the thin and connecting thread is concealed under a string of pearls. 3
It is that eternally existent and infinitely extended blessed thread, which connects and stretches through all beings; and as the gems are strung to a string, so are all things linked together by the latent spirit of God.
The vacuous space of the Divine Intellect, contains the whole universe, as the vacuity of the air, contains the glorious sun; and as the hollow of the earth, contains an emmet.
As it is the same air which fills the cavity of every pot on earth, so it is the one and the same intellect and spirit of God, which fills enlivens and sustains all bodies in every place. 4
As the ideas of sweet and sour are the same in all men, so is the consciousness of the Intellect alike in all mankind. 5
There being but one and only one real substance in existence, it is a palpable error of your ignorant folks to say, "this one exists, and the other perishes or vanishes away". 6
There is no such thing, Rāma, which being once produced, is resolved into naught at any time; all these are no realities nor unrealities, but representations or reflexions of the Real One.
Whatever is visible and of temporary existence, is without any perceptible substantiality of its own; it is only an object of our fallacy, beyond which it has no existence. 7
Why, O Rāma! should any body suffer himself to be deluded by these unrealities? All these accompaniments here, being no better than causes of our delusion.
The accompaniment of unrealities, tends only to our delusion here; and if they are taken for realities, to what good do they tend than to delude us the more. 8
Footnotes
1. Visnu rises after the rains on the eleventh day of moon.
2. The temporaneousness of worldly things); and seek to associate with the righteous, as the peacock yarns for the rainy clouds.
3. The hidden thread underlying the links of souls, is termed Sūtratmā.
4. The text says, "The Intellect knows no difference of bodies, but pervades alike in all.
5. We are all equally conscious of our intellectuality, as we are of the sweetness and sourness of things.
6. Nothing is born or extinct, but all exist in God. So is Malbrance's opinion of seeing all things in God.
7. Hence they are no more than unrealities.
8. It is better to let the unreal pass as unreal, than to take them for real, and be utterly deceived at last.
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