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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 6: Nirvāna-Prakarana (On ultimate extinction) - part 2. Chapter 192 - On the attainment of spiritual anaesthesia
Rāma said: Alas! that I have so long strayed about, in the erroneous maze of the world; without the knowledge of its being a mere void and vacuum.
I now come to know the fallacy of my conception of the world, which is but a mere nullity; which never is nor was, nor shall ever prove o be a positive reality.
It is all still and supportless, and existing in our false knowledge of it; it is an endless formation of the solid intellect, and a mere vacuous conception of ours, without any figure or form or colour or mark of its own.
It is the transcendental vacuum and of a wholly inconceivable nature; and yet how wonderous it is, that we call this our world, our earth and the sphere of our action.
How it appears as a duality 1, and how these worlds and mountains seen as separate and solid bodies of themselves; when they are in reality but the pellucid sky appearing as thick and opaque to our misconception of them.
These creation and the future world, are as the dreams that we see, but working of our imagination; while it is the intellect only that shows itself as these intelligible objects, which could not otherwise present their visible aspects to our conceptions of them.
The thought that I am situated in heaven or hell in this life, makes this world appear as such unto us; because the visible are all objects or creatures of our consciousness of them. 2
There is nothing as visible or its vision, nor this world or its creation, unless it is caused as such, by the intellect within us; it is neither a scene in our waking or sleeping, nor is this anything as real in its nature.
If this be but an erroneous sight, how could the negative error produce this positive spectacle, should it but a false conception of the mind, then tell me, O sage, how could this blank fallacy bring forth the thought of this real existence.
It is not possible for error, to creep into the infallible mind of omniscience; nor is it probable that error should reign over this perfect creation at large; it is therefore the Lord himself, that exhibits his glory in this manner.
What can we think otherwise of the continuity of space, infinity of vacuum and infinity of time, than they are the attributes of omnipotence; and how are we to look on the transparency of the air and crystal, without thinking them as manifestation of his nature?
An erroneous notion is as false, as the sight of one's own death in a dream; but how can this world which is so-palpable to sight, be lost to or expunged from our sight, without losing our sight of its great manifester also? 3
The sights of the mirage, fairy cities and double moons in the sky, are of course deceptions of vision and productions of our error; but the same analogy does not apply to our sight of the world.
The boy's apparitions of ghosts, never lay hold on adults and the waking, nor on any one in the day light and open air; this and similar errors arise in our ignorance only, but they vanish upon our school thought and true knowledge of them.
It is improper in this place to raise the question, regarding whence this bug bear of error could rise among mankind; since it is evident from our own reasoning, that there is no such thing as avidyā or ignorance, 4 ever in existence, nor an asat or not being even in being. 5
It is evident by rational reasoning, that whatever is invisible and imperceptible to us, the same is called as asat or not being, and the conception of idea or that is termed an error.
That which is not clearly obtained by any proof or reasoning, and is as impossible as the sky-flower or the horn of a hare, how can that be believed to be as anything in-existence.
And a thing however apparent to sight, but having no cause or evident of its reality, cannot be believed as thing in-existence, but it must be a nullity like the issue of a barren woman.
Therefore there can no error at any time, nor can an error ever produce anything whatever; it is therefore the manifest omniscience of Providence, that is conspicuous in every part of this wide and grand display.
Whatever then is seen now to shine before us, is the manifestation of Supreme being itself; the same Supreme spirit fills this plenitude, and is full with it in itself. 6
There is nothing that is either shining or unshining here at any time, unless it be the calm and quiet and transparent spirit of God, that inheres in its body of the mundane world.
It is the one unborn, undying and unchanging everlasting Being, that is the most adorable and ever adored Lord of all, that fills and pervades the whole with his essence. He only is the word ego, self manifest-pure and all pervading, while I and all others are without our egoism, and shine only in that unity; 7.
Footnotes
1. apart from the unity of God
2. It is the mind that makes a heaven of hell
3. To ignore the world is to ignore its maker also, as the denial of God leads to that of the world
4. which is the cause of error
5. Because the Veda says the existence existed from before
6. So the Veda etc.
7. lit. without our duality
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