Philosophy and Religion / Yoga Vāsistha / Yoga-Vāsistha (6.1): Nirvāna-Prakarana

Válmiki

Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 6: Nirvāna-Prakarana (On ultimate extinction). Chapter 52 - Story of Arjuna, as the incarnation of Nara-Narāyana

Vasistha said- Know Rāma, this world to be as a dream, which is common to all living beings, and is fraught with many agreeable scenes, so as to form the daily romance of their lives, which is neither true nor entirely false.

But as it is not likely that the living souls of men should be always asleep; therefore their waking state is to be accounted as one of dreaming also. ¹

Life is a longer dream than the short lived ones in our sleep; and know it, intelligent Rāma, to be as untrue as it is unsubstantial and airy in its nature.

The living souls of the living world, continually pass from dream to dream, and they view the unrealities of the world as a positive realities in their nature. ²

They ascribe solidity to the subtile, and subtilety to what is solid; they see the unreal as real, and think the unliving as living in their ignorance.

They consider the revolution of all worlds, to be confined in the solar system; and rove about like somnambuletors and fleeting bees about the living soul, which they differential from the supreme.

They consider and meditate in their minds, the living soul as a separate reality, owing to its ubequity and immortality, and as the source of their own lives. ³

Hear me to relate to you the best lesson of indifference ⁴, which the lotus-eyed lord (Krsna) taught to Arjuna, and whereby that sagely prince became liberated in life time. ⁵

Thus Arjuna the son of Pandu will happily pass his life, and which I hope you will imitate, if you want to pass your days without any grief or sorrow.

Rāma said- Tell me sir, when will this Arjuna the son of Pandu, will come to be born on earth, and who is this Hari of his, that is to deliver this lesson of indifference to the world to him.

Vasistha replied- There is only the entity of one soul, to whom this appellation is applied by fiction only. He remains in himself from time without beginning and end, as he sky is situated in vacuum.

We behold in him the phantasmagoria of this extended world, as we see the different ornaments in gold, and the waves and billows in the sea. ⁶

The fourteen kinds of created beings display themselves in him; and in him is the network of this universe, wherein all these worlds are suspended, as birds hanging in the net in which they are caught.

In him reside the deities Indra and Yama and the sun and moon, who are renowned and hallowed in the scriptures; and in him abide the five elemental creation, and they that have become the regents ⁷.

That the one thing is virtue and therefore expedient, and the other is vice and therefore improper, are both placed in him as his ordinances ⁸; and depending on the free agency (sancalpa) of men, to accept or reject the one or the other for good or evil. ⁹

It is obedience to the Divine ordinance, that the goods are still employed in their fixed charges with their steady minds.

The lord Yama is accustomed to make his penance, at the end of every four yugas ¹⁰, on accounts of his greatness in destruction of the creatures of god. ¹¹

Sometimes he sat penitent for eight years, and all others for a dozen of years, often times he made his penance for five or seven years, and many times for full sixteen years.

On a certain occasion as Yama sat observant of his austerity, and indifferent to his duty, death ceased to hunt after living beings in all the worlds.

Hence the multitude of living beings filled the surface of the earth, and made ground pathless and impassable by others. They multiplied like the filth born gnats in the rainy weather, that obstruct the passage of elephants.

Then the gods sat together in council, and after various deliberations come to determine the extirpation of all living beings, for relieving the over burdened earth. ¹²

In this way many ages have passed away, and many changes have taken place in the usages of the people, and unnumbered living beings have passed and gone with the revolutions of the worlds.

Now it will come to pass, that this yama-the son of the sun and the lord of the regions of the dead; will again perform his penance in the aforesaid manner after the expiration of many ages to come.

He will again resume his penitence for a dozen of years, for the atonement of his sin of destroying the living; when he will abstain from his wonted conduct of destroying the lives of human beings.

At that time, well the earth be filled with deathless mortals, so as this wretched earth will covered and overburden with them, as with dense forest trees.

The earth groaning under her burden, and oppressed by tyranny and lawlessness, will have recourse to Hari for her redress, as when a virtuous wife resorts to her husband from the aggression of Dasyus.

For this reason, Hari will be incarnate in two bodies, joined with the powers of all the gods, and will appear on earth in two persons of Nara and Nārāyana, the one a man and the other the lord Hari himself.

With one body Hari will become the son of Vāsudeva, and will thence be called Vāsudeva; and with the other he will be the son of Pandu and will thereby be-named the Pāndava Arjuna or Arjuna the Pāndava.

Pandu will have another son by name of Yudhisthira, who will adopt the title of the son of Dharma or righteousness, for his acquaintance with politics, and he will reign over the earth to its utmost limit of the ocean.

He will have his rival with Duryodhana his cousin by his paternal uncle, and there will be a dreadful war between them as between a snake and weasel.

The belligerent princes will wage a furious war for the possession of the earth, with forces of eighteen legions on both sides. ¹³

The God Visņu will cause Arjuna to slay them all by his great bow of gāndiva, and thereby relieve the earth of her burden of riotous peoples.

The incarnation of Visnu in the form of Arjuna, will comprise all the qualities incident to humanity; and will be fraught with the feelings of joy and vengeance, which are connatural with mankind.

Seeing the battle array on both sides, and friends and kinsmen ready to meet their fate, pity and grief will seize the heart of Arjuna, and he will cease from engaging in the war.

Hari will then with his intelligent form of Krsna, persuade his insensible person of Arjuna, to perform his part of a hero for crowning his valour with success.

He taught him the immortality of the soul by telling him that, the soul is never born nor does it die at any time, nor had it a prior birth, nor is it new born to be born agar on earth, it is unborn and ever lasting, and is indestructible with the destruction of the body.

He who thinks the soul to be the slayer of or slain by anybody, is equally ignorant of its nature, never kills nor is ever killed by any body.

It is immortal and uniform with itself, and more rare and subtile than the air and vacuity; the soul which is the form of the great god himself, is never and in no way destroyed by any body.

O Rāma, that are conscious of yourself, know your soul to be immortal and unknown, and without its beginning, middle and end; it is of the form of consciousness and clear without any soil, so by thinking yourself as such, you become the unborn, eternal and undecaying soul yourself.

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