The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 3 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)Valmiki
Religion
The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 3 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)
Valmiki
Hinduism -- Doctrines -- Early works to 1800; Religious life -- Hinduism -- Early works to 1800
11. The active mind which is always prone to action, leads the machine
of the body together, with the passive and helpless living soul at
random, as the winds drive about in different directions, together with
the inert stones (ballast) contained in it. (_i.e._ The mind is the
mover of both the body and soul, but the intellect is the primum mobile
of all).
12. The body is the vehicle, and God has employed the mind and the
vital breath, as the two horses or bullocks for driving it. (The mind
is said also to be its driver, the soul its rider, and the breaths are
its coursers).
13. Others say, that the rarefied intellect assumes a compact form,
which becomes the living soul; and this riding on the car of the mind,
drives it by the vital airs as its racers. (Hence the course of the
mind and its thoughts, are stopped with the stoppage of respiratory
breaths).
14. Sometimes the intellect seems as something born and to be in being,
as in its state of waking and witnessing the objects all around; at
others it seems to be dead and lost as in the state of its profound
sleep. Again it appears as many, as in its dreaming state; and at
last it comes to know itself as one and a unit, when it comes to the
knowledge of truth and of its identity with the sole unity.
15. Sometimes it seems to be of a different form, without forsaking its
own nature; as the milk becomes the butter and curd etc. and as the
water appears in the shape of a billow or wave or of its foam or froth.
(That changed in all, yet in all the same &c. Pope).
16. As all things depend upon light, to show their different forms
and colours to view, so the mental powers and faculties, do all of
them depend upon the intellectual soul for their several actions. (The
intellect in the form of the soul, directs and exhibits the actions of
the mind).
17. Again the Supreme Spirit being situated in the mind within the
body, the animal soul has its life and action; as all things appear to
sight, while the lighted lamp shines inside the room. (As the silent
soul directs the mind, so the active mind keeps the soul alive).
18. The ungoverned mind gives rise to all diseases and difficulties,
that rise as fastly and thickly, as the perturbed waters rise in waves,
which foam out with thickening froth.
19. The living soul dwelling like the bee in the lotus-bed of the body,
is also subject to diseases and difficulties as the bee to the rains
and flood; and it is as disturbed by the casualties of life, as the
calm sea-water are perturbed to waves by the blowing winds.
20. The dubitation that, "the divine soul is omnipotent, and the
living soul is impotent and limited in its powers; and therefore
the human soul is not the same with the Divine"; is the cause of our
woe, and serves to darken the understanding; as the clouds raised by
the sunlight, serve to obscure the solar disk (this doubt leading to
dualism, cuts us from God and exposes us to all the calamities of life).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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