The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol 4 (of 4), Part 1 (of 2)Valmiki
Religion
The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol 4 (of 4), Part 1 (of 2)
Valmiki
Hinduism -- Doctrines -- Early works to 1800; Religious life -- Hinduism -- Early works to 1800
4. As the beauty of the visibles appears to view, on one’s coming to
sense after his sleep; so it is the intellect only which gives sensation
to one, who is waking or just risen from his sleep: (and so it was the
intellectual wakefulness of Vasishtha and other inspired men, which made
them sensible of outward objects, even in the trance of their
meditation). (Samádhi).
5. So there is conception of creation in the self-same soul, ere its
formation or bringing into action; and the forms of creations are
contained in the vacuum of the heart, and in no other separate vacuity
whatever.
6. Ráma rejoined:—Sir, your assertion of the vacuum of the heart, made
me take it in the sense of infinite space of vacuity, which contains the
whole creation; but please to explain to me more clearly, what you mean
by your intellectual vacuum, which you say, is the source of the world.
(_i.e._ whether the heart or mind or infinite space, is the cause and
container of the cosmos).
7. Vasishtha replied:—Hear Ráma, how I thought myself once in my
meditation, as the self-born Swayambhu or the god who is born of
himself, in whom subsisted the whole, and there was nothing born but by
and from him; and how I believed the unreal as real in my revelry, or as
an air-built-castle in my dreaming.
8. As I had been looking before, at that sight of the great
kalpa-dissolution, with my aeriform spiritual body; I found and felt the
other part of my person (_i.e._ my material frame), was likewise infused
with the same sensibility and consciousness. (The body being the counter
part or _réchauffé_ of the mind).
9. As I looked at it for a while, with my spiritual part; I found it as
purely aerial, and imbued with a slight consciousness of itself. (So
says the Sruti:—In the beginning the spirit became or produced the air
with its oscillation).
10. The vacuous Intellect found this elastic substance, to be of such a
subtile and rarefied nature, as when you see the external objects in
your dream, or remember the objects of your dream upon your waking.
11. This etherial air, having its primary powers of _chit_ and
_samvid_—intellect and conscience, becomes the intellection and
consciousness also; then from its power of reflecting (on its existence
in space and time), it takes the name of reflection (chittam). Next from
its knowledge of itself as air, it becomes the airy _egoism_, and then
it takes the name of _buddhi_ or understanding, for its knowledge of
itself as plastic nature, and forgetfulness of its former spirituality.
At last it becomes the mind, from its minding many things that it wills
or nils.
12. Then from its powers of perception and sensation it becomes the five
senses, to which are added their fivefold organs; upon the perversion of
the nice mental perceptions to grossness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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