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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 6: Nirvāna-Prakarana (On ultimate extinction) - part 2. Chapter 9 - On the Development of Intellect
Bhuśunda said: The unintelligible objects of thought are phenomena of the intellect; they lie as calmly in the great mass or inert body of the intellect, as the sun-beams shine in the bosom of a clear basin of water: 1.
The unintelligent world subsists in the intelligent intellect, by its power of intellection; and remains alike with the unlike 2, as the submarine fire resides in the water, and the latent heat with cold.
The intelligent and the unintelligent 3 have both their source in the intellection of the intellect, which produces and reduces them from and into itself, as it is the same force of the wind, which kindles as well as extinguishes the fire.
Do you rest in the intellect, which remains after negation of your egoism, 4: and remain in that calm and quiet state of the soul, which results from your thinking in this manner. 5
You are settled in your form of the intellect, both within and without everything; as the sweet water remains in and out of a raining cloud. 6
There is nothing as I or you, but all are forms of one intellect, and connected with the same which is Brahma itself; there is none else besides which is endued with intelligence, but the whole is one stupendous intelligence, with which nothing can be compared.
It is itself the earth, heaven and nether world, with their inhabitants of men, gods and demigods; and exhibits in itself the various states of their being and actions 7.
As the world is seen to remain quietly, in its representation map; so does the universe appear from its portraiture in the vacuum or ample space of the divine mind.
Hence we see the various appearance, as the divine mind unfolds from itself and exhibits to view; as it depends on your option, either to view them as animated or inanimated beings; 8.
These are the wondrous phenomena of the intellect, which appear as so many worlds in the open sky; they are as the mirage spread over by the sun-beams for delusion of the ignorant; while they appear as empty air to the learned, who view them in their true light.
As the blinded eye, beholds spectres and spectrums in the clear sky; so does the world appear as a phantom and phantasmagoria, before the purblind sight of the unspiritual and ignorant people in general.
Thus the knowledge of the objective world, and that of the subjective ego, are mere reflexions of the ideas in the mind, which appear and disappear by turns; just as a city is gilded or shaded by the falling and failing of the sunbeams thereon; but in this case city houses are realities, but the apparitions of the mind, are as baseless as garden in the empty sky.
Footnotes
1. where they retain their light without their heat
2. matter with the mind
3. the subjective I and the objective-these
4. which is the cause of both the subjective and the objective
5. By forgetting yourself, you forget everything else besides the wakeful intellect
6. The gloss explains it saying that, after you are freed from all thoughts, you see the sole Brahma only
7. as upon its stage
8. as you may choose to do the figures of animals, drawn in a picture
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