Philosophy and Religion / Yoga Vāsistha / Yoga-Vāsistha (6.2): Nirvāna-Prakarana

Válmiki

Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 6: Nirvāna-Prakarana (On ultimate extinction) - part 2. Chapter 154 - Relation of Past Events

The sage continued: Having thus considered the vanity of the visible, I remained free from my anxious cares about the world; and became passionless and fearless, and extinct in nirvāna, from insensibility of my egoism.

I became supportless and unsupporting, and remained without my dependence upon any body; I was quite calm with my self-composure, and my soul was elevated and rested in heaven.

I did as my duty called, and did nothing of my own accord; and remained as void and blank as vacuum, which is devoid of all action and motion.

The earth and heaven, the sky and air, the mountains and rivers, and all that lies on all sides and the sides themselves, are not but shadow in the air, and all living bodies are no more than the embodied ¹ Intellect or Intellectual bodies.

I am quiet and composed, and manage myself as well as I can; I am quite happy in myself; having no injunction nor prohibition to obey, nor to act an innėr or outer part: ².

Thus I resided here in my even temper, and the same tenor of my mind and actions; and it is by mere chance, that you have come to meet me here.

Thus I have fully explained to you about the nature of dream and my personal self; together with that of the phenomenal world and yourself.

Hence you have well understood, what is this, visible world that lies before you; as also what these beings and these people are, and what Brahma is after all.

Now knowing these things, O you hunts-man, to be mere false, must now have your peace of mind, with the conviction that, all this is the representation of the Intellect in empty air. Yea, it this that is dimly seen in these, and naught besides.

The hunts-man rejoined: If so it be then both me and you, and the gods even, you say to be nullity; and that all of these are but the phantoms of a dream, and that all men are no men, and all existence as non existence (sadasat).

The sage replied: It is verily so, and all and every one of us is situated as the spectre of a dream to one another, and as phasma in the cosmorama of the world.

These spectres appear in forms, according to one's conception of them; and the only One appears as many, like the rays of light. All these radiations cannot be wholly true or untrue, nor a mixture of both of them.

The visionary city of the world that appears in our waking state, is but a waking dream or an apparition of our minds, and appears the prospect of a distant city before us, that we ever saw before.

I have fully explained all this to you already, and you have been enlightened in the subject to no end; now you have grown wise and well known all and everything; do therefore as you may like best for you.

Though thus awakened and enlightened by we, your reprobate mind is not yet turned to son, nor found its rest either iu transcendental wisdom, or in the transcendent state of the most high.

Without assuetude you cannot concentrate your vagrant mind into your heart; nor can you without the practice of constant reflexion attain the acme of wisdom.

It is impossible to attain the summit of perfection, without your habitual observance of wisdom; as it is incapable for a block of wood to contain any water in it, unless it is scooped out in the form of a wooden vessel. Habitual reliance in sapience and constant attendance to the precepts of the śāstras and preceptors, tend to the removal of the mind's suspense between unity and duality ³, and set the mind to its ultimate bliss of nirvāna-­anaesthesia in quitism.

Insensibility, of one's worth and state and inertness to all worldly affections, refraining from the evils of bad associations and abstaining from all earthly desires and cravings of the heart:- These joined with one's deliverance from the fetters of dualities, and enfranchisement from all pleasurable and painful associations, are the surest means that lead the learned to the state of unalterable bliss-nirvāna ⁴.

Footnotes

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE