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
5. So saying they both got up, and rose as high as the stars of heaven;
and both directed their course in the same way, as an aeronaut, or a
stone flung into the air.
6. We then took leave of each other with mutual salutations; and each
went to the respective place which was desirable to either of us.
7. I have now related to you fully the whole of this story, whereby
you may know, O Ráma, the wonderful occurrences that betide us in this
everchangeful world.
8. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, how and with what form of body, thou didst
rove about the regions of the Siddhas, when thy mortal frame was reduced
to dust.
9. Vasishtha replied:—Ah! I remember it, and will tell you the
particulars, how I wandered throughout these worldly abodes, until I
arrived at the city of the Loka-pála deities, and joined with the hosts
of Siddhas, traversing in the regions of midway sky.
10. I travelled in the regions of Indra or open firmament, without being
seen by any body there; because I was then passing in my spiritual body,
eversince I had lost my material frame-work.
11. I had then become, O Ráma, of an aerial form, in which there was
neither a receptacle nor recipient, beside the nature of vacuous and
intellectual soul.
12. I was then neither the subject or object of perception of persons
like yourself, who dwell on sensible objects alone; nor did I make any
reckoning of the distance of space or succession of time. (The spiritual
_yogi_ has no cognizance of gross material things, nor of the divisions
of space and time, which are objects of sensation only).
13. The soul is busy with the thinking principle of the mind, apart from
all material objects composed of earth &c.; and is as the meditative
mind or ideal man, that meddles with no material substance.
14. It is not pressed nor confined by material things, but is always
busy with its cognitions; and it deals with beings in the same manner,
as men in sleep do with the objects of their dream (and others with
their air-built cities).
15. Know Ráma, this doctrine of intellection by the simile of dreaming,
to be quite irrefutable, although it is confuted by others (_i.e._ the
Nyáya philosophers who deny the mental conceptions without previous
perceptions); but they are not to be regarded as right. (Since the Veda
says, the spirit of God created all from his mind, and not from its past
perceptions).
16. As the sleeping man thinks himself to be walking and acting in his
dream, without such actions of his being perceived by others (in the
same room); so methought I walked before and beheld the aerials without
their seeing me.
17. I beheld all other terrestrial bodies lying manifest before me, but
nobody could observe me that was hid from their sight in my spiritual
form.
18. Ráma asked:—Sir, if you were invisible to the Gods, owing to your
bodiless or vacuous form; how then could you be seen by the Siddha in
the Kanaka land, or see others without having eyes of your own?
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