The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 2 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)Valmiki
Religion
The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 2 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)
Valmiki
Hinduism -- Doctrines -- Early works to 1800; Religious life -- Hinduism -- Early works to 1800
32. There is but One Being that is really existent, who is truth and
consciousness himself, and of the nature of the vacuum and pure
understanding. He is immaculate, all pervading, quiescent and without
his rise or fall.
33. Being perfect quietude and void, he seems as nothing existent; and
all these creations subsist in that vacuity as particles of its own
splendour.
34. As the stars are seen to shine resplendent in the darkness of
night, and the worms and waves are seen to float on the surface of the
waters, so do all these phenomena appear to occur in his reality.
35. Whatever that being purposes himself to be, he conceives himself to
be immediately the same: it is that vacuous Intellect only which is the
true reality, and all others are also real, as viewed in it and rising
and setting in it out of its own will (volition or bidding).
36. Therefore there is nothing real or unreal in the three worlds, but
all of or the same form as it is viewed by the Intellect, and rising
before it of its own spontaneity. (The three worlds are composed of
this earth and the worlds above and beneath it, called as swarga,
martya and pátála).
37. We have also sprung from that Will Divine as Dáma and others; hence
there is neither any reality or unreality in any of us, except at the
time (when we exist or cease to do so).
38. This infinite and formless void of the Intellect, is ubiquitous and
all pervading; and in whatever form this intellect manifests itself in
any place, it appears there just in the same figure and manner.
39. As the divine consciousness expanded itself with the images of Dáma
and others, it immediately assumed those shapes by its notions of the
same. (But here it was the consciousness of Sambara or Satan, which
manifested itself in those shapes, and implies every thing to be but a
manifestation of our notion of it).
40. So it is with every one of us, that all things are produced to our
view, according to their notions which are presented to our
consciousness. (This is the tenet of conceptualism or idealism, which
bears resemblance to the doctrine of Realism. See Cousin’s treatise “De
Intellectibus”).
41. What we call the world, is the representation of things to us as in
our dream; it is a hollow body as a bubble rising in the empty ocean of
the Intellect, and appearing as the water in the mirage.
42. The waking state of the vacuous intellect, is styled the phenomenal
world, and its state of sleep and rest, is what we call liberation,
emancipation or salvation from pain (_átyantika dukkha nivritti
moksha_).
43. But the Intellect which never sleeps, nor has to be awakened at any
time (but is ever wakeful), is the vacuity of the Divine Mind, in which
the world is ever present in its visible form (and to which nothing is
invisible).
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