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Válmiki
Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 6: Nirvāna-Prakarana (On ultimate extinction) - part 2. Chapter 27 - Sermon on the Superior Sort of Yoga Meditation
Vasistha continued: Be dead to your sensibility, and retain the tranquility of your soul, by conforming with whatsoever you gettest or is meted out to your lot; or else the fair 1, will appear as foul, as a pure crystal shows itself as black in the shade.
All and everything being contained in the only one all extended soul, we cannot conceive how the conception of variety or multiplicity can rise from the unity. 2
The category of the intellect is entirely of a vacuous nature, and having neither its beginning nor end; and is neither produced nor destroyed, with the production and destruction of the body. 3
All insensible and material bodies, are moved by the miraculous power of the intellect or mind; which being unmoved of itself gives motion to bodies, as the still waters of the sea gives rise to the waves. 4
As it is an error to suppose a sheet of cloth in a cloud, so the supposition of egoism in the body, is altogether erroneous: 5.
Do not rely in the unreal body, which is of this world, and grows to perish in it; but depend on the real essence of the endless spirit, for your everlasting happiness 6.
The vacuous intellect, is the essential property of the immortal soul; this is the transcendent reality in nature, and may this super-excellent entity be your essence likewise.
If you are certain of this truth, you become as glorious as that essence also; because the deep meditator loses himself in the meditated object, in his intense meditation of the same. 7
The triple condition of the viewer, view and act of viewing, are the three properties of the one and same intellect; and there is nothing which is any other than 8 the knowledge thereof, as there is no thought unlike the act of its thinking. 9
The soul is ever calm and clear and uniform in its nature, it does not rise and fall like the tides by the lunar influence, nor is it soiled like the sea waters by tempestuous winds. 10
As a passenger in a boat beholds the rocks and trees on the bank to be in motion, and as one thinks a shell or conch to be composed of silver; so the mind mistakes the body for reality, 11.
As the sight of the material dismisses the view of the intellectual, so does intellectuality discard the belief of the material; and so the knowledge of the living soul being resolved in the supreme soul, there remains nothing at last, except the unity of the all pervading spirit.
The knowledge that all this 12, is quite calm and quiet 13; and the whole is an evolution of the divine spirit, takes away the belief in everything else, which is naught but the product of error and illusion.
As there is no forest in the sky, nor moisture in the sands; and as there is no fire in the disk of the moon, so there is no material body in the sight of the mind. 14
Rāma fear not for this world-the mere creation of your error„ and without its real existence whatsoever, know this transcendent truth, O you best amongst the inquirers of truth, that this world is a nullity and void.
Your mistake of the existence of the visible world, and the disbelief which you fostered with regard to the entity of the invisible soul, must have been removed this day by my preaching, say now what other cause there may be of your bondage in this world.
As a plate, water-pot and any other earthenware, is no more than the earth 15; so the outer world is no other than the inner thought of the mind, and it wears away under the power of reasoning.
Whether expose to danger and difficulty, or placed in prosperity or adversity, or betided by affluence or penury; you must preserve, O Rama, your even disposition amidst the consciousness 16 of your joy and grief; be gladly free from the knowledge of your egoism, and remain as you are sedate by your nature, and without your subjection in any state.
Remain Rāma, as you are, like the moon in the sphere of your race, with your full knowledge of everything in nature; avoid your joy and grief at every occurrence, and give up your desire and disgust for anything in the world. Do so or as you may choose for yourself.
Footnotes
1. order of nature and ordinance of God
2. To Him no high, no low, no great, no small; He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all. Pope
3. And though it is diffused all over the body and its various powers and senses, yet there is variation of its own essence. Gloss
4. Here the intellect is explained as the mind in the gloss
5. since one's personality consists in the soul and not in the person
6. in both worlds
7. This assimilation of the triputi or triple condition of the thinker and his act and object of thought in one, is the meaning and main end of the yoga meditation of union
8. or not the same with
9. This shows the agreement of the cause, its causation and effect
10. The soul is ever uruffled at any event
11. which in truth is an unreal appearance
12. world
13. in its nature
14. Mentally considered, there is no matter
15. of which it is made
16. or knowledge
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