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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 6: Nirvāna-Prakarana (On ultimate extinction) - part 2. Chapter 57 - On the Knowledge of the Know and Unknown
Rāma rejoined: Tell me, O most sapient sage, how it is possible for the demon of ego to take hold of you, that are extinct in the deity, and dissipate my doubts there.
Vasistha replied: It is impossible, O Rāma, for any being whether knowing or unknown to live here without the sense of his egoism; as it is not possible for the contained to subsist without its container.
But there is a difference of this which you must known, that the demoniac egoism of the quiet minded man, is capable of control by means of his knowledge of and attention to the śrutis.
It is the infantile ignorance which raise up this idol of egoism, though it is found to exist no where; just as little children make dolls and images of gods and men, that have no existence at all.
This ignorance also 1, is nothing positive of itself; since it is dispelled by knowledge and reason, as darkness is driven away by the light of a lamp. 2
Ignorance is a demon that dances about in the dark, and a fiend that flies afar before the light of reason. 3
Granting the existence of ignorance, in absence of the advance of knowledge and reason; yet it is at best but a fiend of delusion, and is as shapeless as the darkest night: 4.
Granting the existence of creation, we have no trace of ignorance any where in it; 5 the existence of two moons in the sky.
Creation having no other cause 6, we know not how could ignorance find a place in it; just so it is impossible for a tree to grow in the air 7. 8
When creation began and was begotten in the beginning, in its pure and subtile form in the womb of absolute vacuum 9; how is it possible for the material bodies of earth and water to proceed 10 without a material causes?
The Lord is beyond 11 the mind, and 12 the six senses, and is yet the source of the mind and senses; but how could that formless and incorporeal being, be the cause of material and corporeal things?
The germ is the effect 13, germinating from its causal source-the seed; but how and where can you expect to see the sprout springing without the productive seed?
No effect can ever result, without its formal cause or main-sppng; say who has ever seen or found a tree to spring from and grow in empty air. 14
It is imagination alone that paints these prospects in the mind, just as the fume of fancy shows you the sight of trees in the empty air; so it is the phrensy of the mind, that exhibits these phenomena before your eyes, but which in reality have no essentiality in them.
So the universe as it appeared at its first creation, in the vacuity of the divine intellect; was all a congeries of worlds swimming in empty air 15.
16. It is the same as it shines itself in the spacious intellect of the supreme soul 17; it is the divine nature itself which is termed as creation, and which is an intellectual system having proceeded from the intellect, and the self-same divinity.
The vision of the world which is presented in our dream, and which is of daily occurrence to us, furnishes us with the best instance of this; when we are conscious of the sights of cities, and of the appearance of hills, all before our mental eyes in the dreaming state. 18
It is the nature of the Intellect as that of a dream, to see the vision of creation, as we view the appearance of the uncreated creation before our eyes, in the same manner as it appeared at first in the vast void 19.
There is but one unintelligible intelligence, a purely unborn and imperishable being, that appears now before us in the shape of this creation, as it existed with its everlasting ideas of infinite worlds, before this creation began.
There is no creation here, nor these orbs of earth and others; it is all calm and quiet with but One Brahma seated in his immensity.
This Brahma is omnipotent and as He manifests himself in any manner, He instantly becomes as such without forsaking his purely transparent form.
As our intellect shows itself, in the form of visionary cities in our dream; so does the divine intellect exhibit itself, in the forms of all these worlds, at the commencement of their creation.
It is in the transparent and transcendent vacuum of the Intellect, that the vacuous intellect is situated; and the creation is the display of its own nature, by an act of its thought in itself. 20
The whole creation consists in the clear vacuity of the intellect, and is of the nature of the spirit situated in the spirit of God. 21
The whole creation being but the diffusion of the self-same spiritual essence of God, there is no possibility of the existence of a material world or ignorance or egoism, in the creation and pervasive-fullness of the Supreme spirit.
Everything have I told you all about the desinence of your egoism, and one knowing the unreality of his egoisticism, gets rid of his false belief, as a boy is freed from his fear of a ghost.
In this manner, no sooner was I fully convinced of the futility of egoism; than I lost the sense of my personality; and though I retained fully the consciousness of myself, yet I got freed from my selfishness, as a light autumnal cloud by disloading its watery burden.
As our knowledge of the inefficacy of a flaming fire in painting, removes the fear of our being burnt by it; so our connection of our fallacies of egoism and creation, serves to efface the impressions of the subjective and objective from our minds.
Thus when I was delivered from my egoism, and set to the tranquility of my passions; I then found myself seated in an unatmospheric firmament 22; and in an uncreated creation: 23.
I am none of egoism, nor is it anything to me; having got rid of it, I have become one with clear intellectual vacuum.
In this respect, all intelligent men are of the same opinion with myself; as it is well known to them that our notion of egoism is as false, as the fallacy of fire represented in a painting.
Being certain of the unreality of yourself and of others, and of the nihility of everything beside; conduct yourself in all your dealings with indifference, and remain as mute as a stone.
Let your mind shine with the clearness of the vault of heaven, and be as impregnable to the excess of all thoughts and feelings as solid stone. Know that there is but One Intellectual essence from beginning to end, and that there nothing to be seen except the One-deity, who composes the whole plenum.
Footnotes
1. which is the case of egoism
2. Ignorance and darkness are but negative terms
3. Hence the disappearance of ignorance causes our egoism to disappear also
4. When nothing is to be seen
5. since creation is the production of omniscience, there is no nescience in any part of
6. but god himself
7. which God has made void, barren, and bare
8. God has planted the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden, but no tree of ignorance did He set any where
9. or the mind of God
10. from the immaterial spirit
11. the conception of
12. the perception of
13. or product
14. Nihil exnihil fit, et nihil in nihilum reverte posse
15. in their hollow ideal shapes
16. But the universe is not altogether a void and nihility
17. or spirit
18. So this world is but a dream
19. of divine mind
20. There is a large note explanatory of this passage
21. The world exists in its spiritual form in the ample space of the divine spirit
22. which was free from cloud and rain
23. in the everlasting vacuity or eternal sunshine of heaven
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