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
Soon after the insensibility occasioned by one’s death is over, there
appears to him (soul) the sight of the world, as he viewed it with his
open eyes when he was living.
2. It presents before him the circle of the sky and its sides with the
cycle of its seasons and times, and shows him the deeds of his pious
and secular acts, as they were to continue to eternity.
3. Objects never seen nor thought of before, also offer themselves to
his view, as the sight of his own death in a dream, and as they were
the prints in his memory.
4. But the infinity of objects, appearing in the empty sphere of the
immaterial intellect, is mere illusion, and the baseless city of the
world, like an aerial castle, is but the creation of imagination.
5. It is the remembrance of the past world, that makes it known to us
(because it is impossible to recognise any thing without a previous
impression of its kind in the mind). Hence the length of a _kalpa_ age
and the shortness of a moment, are but erroneous impressions proceeding
from the rapidity and slowness of our thoughts.
6. Therefore knowledge, based upon previous notions or otherwise, is
of two kinds, and things known without their cause, are attributed to
Divine Intelligence (as the hidden cause of all).
7. We are conscious also of thoughts, unthought of before in our minds,
as we often have in our dreams; and think of our parents after their
demise by mistake of other persons as such.
8. Sometimes genius supercedes the province of memory, as in the first
creation or discovery of a thing, which is afterwards continued by its
remembrance.
9. According to some, those visible worlds are said to have remained
in their ideal state in the Divine mind; and according to others, that
there were no pre-existent notions of these in the mind of God.
10. According to some others, the world manifested itself not from the
memory, but by the power and will of God; while others maintain it to
be the production of a fortuitous combination, of intelligence and
atomic principles on a sudden (_Kákatálíya sanyoga_).
11. It is the entire forgetfulness of the world, which is styled
liberation, and which can not be had from attachment to what is
desirable or aversion of the undesirable.
12. It is difficult to effect an entire negation, both of one’s
subjective as well as objective knowledge of his self, and the
existence of the outer world; and yet no body can be freed without
obliteration of both.
13. As the fallacy of taking a rope for a snake, is not removed until
the meaning of the world snake, is known to be inapplicable to the
rope; so no one can have rest and peace of his mind, unless he is
convinced of the illusive nature of the world.
14. One party, who is at peace with himself (by his abandonment of the
world), can not be wholly at rest without divine knowledge; as the
ghost of his inward ignorance, may overtake him after his getting rid
of the devil of worldliness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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