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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 6: Nirvāna-Prakarana (On ultimate extinction) - part 2. Chapter 15 - The Final Extinction of the Vidyādhara
Bhuśunda resumed and said: Wherever there is the thought of egoism of any one, the idea of the will be found to be inherent in it; as it appeared to Indra within the bosom of the atomic particle.
The error of the world 1, which covers the mind, as the green verdure of grass overspreads the face of the ground; has for its origin the idea of one's egoism, which takes its root in the human soul.
This minute seed of egoism, being moistened with the water of desire, produces the arbor of the three worlds, on the height of Brahma in the great forest of vacuum.
The stars are the flowers of this tree, hang on high on the branches of the mountain craigs; the rivers resemble its veins and fibers, flowing with the juicy pith of their waters, and the objects of desire are the fruits of this tree. 2
The revolving worlds, are the fluctuating waves of the water of egoism; and the profluent current of desires, continually supplies with varieties of exquisite symposiums, sweet to the taste of the intellect. 3
The sky is the boundless ocean full of ethereal waters, and teeming with showering drops of star light in it; plenty and poverty are the two whirlpools in the ocean of the earth, and all our woes are the mountainous waves on its surface. 4
The three worlds are presented as a picture of the ocean, with the upper lights as its froths and foams swimming upon it; the spheres are floating as bubbles upon it, and their belts are as the thick valves of their doors.
The surface of the earth is as a hard and solid rock, and the intellect moves as a black crow upon it; and the hurry and bustle of its people, are conformable with the incessant rotation of the globe.
The infirmities and errors, old age and death, are as billows gliding on the surface of the sea; and the rising and falling of bodies in it, are as the swelling and dissolving of bubbles in water.
Know the world to be a gust of the breath of your egoism, and know it also as a sweet scent proceeding from the lotus like flower of egoism.
Know the knowledge of your egoism and that of the objective world, are not two different things; but they are the one and same thing; as the wind and its breath, the water and its fluidity, and the fire and its heat.
The world is included under the sense of ego, and the ego is contained in the heart of the world; and these being productive of one another, are reciprocally the container and contained of each other.
He who effaces the seed of his egoism frog: his understanding, by means of his ignoring it altogether; has verily washed of the picture of the world from his mind, by the water of ignorance of it.
Know Vidyādhara, there is no such thing as is implied by ego; it is a causeless nothing as the horn of a hare.
There is no egoism in the pervading and infinite Brahma, who is devoid of all desire; and therefore there being no cause nor ground of it, it is never anything in reality.
Whatever is nothing in reality, couldn't possible have any cause in the beginning of creation; therefore egoism is a nihility, as the son of a barren woman is a nullity in nature.
The want of egoism on the one hand, proves the privation of the world also on the other; thus there remains the Intellect or the one mind alone, in which everything is extinct.
From the proof of the absence of ego and the world, the operations of the mind and the sight of visible, all come to an end, and there remains nothing for you to care for or fear.
Whatever is not is a naught altogether, and the rest are as calm and quiet as nil in existence; knowing this as certain be enlightened, and fall no more to the false error which has no root in nature.
Being purged from the stain of fancy, you become as purified and sanctified as the holy lord Śiva forever, and then the sky will seem to you as a huge mountain, and the vast world will dwindle to an atom. 5
Footnotes
1. the false conception of its reality
2. The objects of desire are the enjoyments and fruition of life
3. The pleasures of desire are sweet to the mind, and afford intellectual delight
4. The heaven and earth are the two oceans above and below; the one shining with starry light, and the other gliding with waves of woe. So says the Bible:- And God made the firmament to divide the waters above from the waters below. Genesis I
5. This is done by two powers of adhyāropa and vyapadeśa or expansion or contraction in yoga
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