The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 1 (of 4)Valmiki
Religion
The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 1 (of 4)
Valmiki
Hinduism -- Doctrines -- Early works to 1800; Religious life -- Hinduism -- Early works to 1800
27. Lílá asked:—How can the Bráhmanic pair be ourselves, when they are
dead only eight days before, and we have been reigning here for so many
years?
28. The goddess replied:—There is neither any limit of space or
duration, nor any distance of place or length of time in reality: hear
me now tell you the reason of it.
29. As the universe is the reflexion of the divine mind, so are
infinity and eternity but representations of himself.
30. Attend to what I tell you about the manner in which we form the
idea of time, and its distinct parts of a moment and an age, in the
same way as we make the distinction of individualities in me, thee and
this or that person (which are essentially the same undivided spirit
and duration).[14]
SECTION II.
_State of the Human soul after death._
31. Hear now, that no sooner does any one come to feel the
insensibility consequent to his death, than he forgets his former
nature and thinks himself as another being.
32. He then assumes an empty form in the womb of vacuity in the
twinkling of an eye, and being contained in that container, he thinks
within himself in the same receptacle.
33. “This is my body with its hands and feet.” Thus the body he thinks
upon, he finds the same presented before him.
34. He then thinks in himself: “I am the son of this father and am
so many years old; these are my dear friends and this is my pleasant
abode.”
35. “I was born and became a boy, and then grew up to this age. There
are all my friends and in the same course of their lives.”
36. Thus the compact density of the sphere of his soul, presents him
many other figures, which appear to rise in it as in some part of the
world.
37. But they neither rise nor remain in the soul itself, which is as
transparent as the empty air; they appear to the intellect as a vision
seen in a dream.
38. As the view beheld in a dream, presents the sights of all things in
one place, so does every thing appear to the eye of the beholder of the
other world as in his dream.
39. Again whatever is seen in the other world, the same occurs to
men in their present states also; wherefore the reality of this and
unreality of the other world, are both alike to a state of dreaming.
40. And as there is no difference in the waves of the same sea-water,
so the produced visible creation is no other than the unproduced
intellectual world, both of which are equally indestructible: (the one
being but a copy of the other).
41. But in reality the appearance is nothing but a reflection of the
intellect; and which apart from the intelligible spirit, is merely an
empty vacuity.
42. The creation though presided by the intelligible spirit, is itself
a mere void, its intelligible soul being the only substance of it as
the water of the waves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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