The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 3 (of 4), Part 1 (of 2)Valmiki
Religion
The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 3 (of 4), Part 1 (of 2)
Valmiki
Hinduism -- Doctrines -- Early works to 1800; Religious life -- Hinduism -- Early works to 1800
23. When the mind comes to understand itself, after it is roused from
its dormancy of self-forgetfulness (by being addicted to the thoughts
of external objects); it gains what is known to be the best of gains,
and the purest and the holiest state of life.
24. If with the vacillation of your vital breaths, and the
fluctuation of your wishes, you do not disturb the even tenor of your
consciousness, like the giddy part of mankind, then you are likened to
the great Brahmá himself (who lives and does what he likes, without any
disturbance of his inward intuition).
25. The mind without its self-consciousness or conscience, is a barren
waste; and the life of man with its knowledge of truth, is as a mazy
path, beset with traps and snares of errors and dangers.
26. The meditative Yogi is practised to the suppression of his breath
for the peace of his mind, and conducts his _pránáyáma_ or restraint of
respiration, and his _dhyána_ or intense meditation, according to the
directions of his spiritual guide and the precepts of the sástras.
27. Restraint of breath is accompanied by the peace of mind, causing
the evenness of its temperament; and it is attended with health and
prosperity and capacity of cogitation to its practiser.
28. Learn Ráma, another cause of the activity of the mind, which is
considered by the wise as the source of its perpetual restlessness; and
this is its restless and insatiable concupiscence.
29. Now this concupiscence is defined as the fixed desire of the mind,
for the possession of something, without consideration of its prior
and ultimate conditions. (_i.e._ Whether it is worth having or not, and
whether its gain will be productive of the desired object in view).
30. It is the intensity of one’s thought of getting something that
produces it before him; in utter disregard of the other objects of
its remembrance. (The gloss gives a mystic sense of this passage;
that reminiscence which is the cause of the reproduction of prior
impressions, is upset by the intensity of the present thought in the
mind).
31. The man being infatuated by his present desire, believes himself
as it depicts him to be; and takes his present form for real, by his
forgetfulness of the past and absent reality. (The present unreal
appears as real, and the past reality passes away as an unreality, as
in the case of prince Lava’s believing himself a chandála during his
dream, and so it is with us to take ourselves as we think us to be).
32. It is the current of our desire, that carries us away from the
reality; as the drunkard sees everything whirling about him in his
intoxication.
33. Men of imperfect knowledge, are led to like errors by their
desires, as a man is driven to madness by the impulse of passions.
34. Such is the nature of the mind, that it leads to the imperfect
knowledge of things, so as to view the unreal as real, and the
unspiritual as spiritual.
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