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
62. As a city seen in dream is inane, and a hill formed in imagination a
mere void; so both Brahma and his world are as the transparent
firmament, and having no shape or substance of them.
63. So the world is, but a reflexion of the divine intellect; it is ever
existent and undecaying, and the belief of the beginning, middle and end
of creation, is as false, as the sight of the ends and midspot of skies.
64. Say Ráma, whether you find any gross substance, to grow in the inane
space of the mind of yours or mine or any other person; and if you find
no such thing there, how can you suppose it to exist in the inanity of
the Divine Intellect, and in the vacuity of the universe?
65. Then tell me why and whence the feelings and passions, such as anger
and affection, hate and fear, take their rise; all which are of no good
to any body, but rather pernicious to many.
66. In truth I tell thee that these are not created things, and yet they
seem to rise and fall of themselves, like our wrong notions of the
production and destruction of the world. These are but eternal ideas,
and coeternal with the eternal mind of God.
67. The vast extent of infinite void, is full with the translucent water
of Divine Intellect; but this being soiled by our imaginary conceits,
produces the dirt of false realities.
68. The boundless space of the Divine Intellect, is replete with the
vacuous spirit of God; which being the primary productive seed of all,
hath produced these multitudes of worlds, scattered about and rolling as
stones in the air.
69. There is really no field nor any seed, which is sown there in
reality; nor is there any thing which is ever grown or produced therein,
but whatever there is, is existent for ever the same; (and the rest is
but fiction).
70. Now among the scattered seeds of souls, there were some that grew
mature, and put forth in the forms of gods; and those that were of a
bright appearance, became as intelligences and saints.
71. Those that were half mature, became as human beings and Nága races;
and such as were put forth themselves in the forms of insects, worms and
vegetables.
72. Those seeds which are bloated and choked, and become fruitless at
the end; these produce the wicked Pisáchas, which are bodiless bodies of
empty and aerial forms.
73. It is not that Virinchi (vir incipiens) or Brahmá, made them so of
his own accord or will; but they became so according to the desire which
they fostered in themselves in their prior existence (which caused their
transformations or metamorphoses in the latter ones). (Because the lord
is impartial, and makes <not> one more or less than another).
74. All existent beings are as inane, as the inanity of the Intellect in
which they exist; and they have all their spiritual bodies, which are
quite apart from the material forms in which you behold them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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