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
29. Say why you forsake your state of absolute nothingness, and what you
get in your visionary city of this world; it is all calm and quiet
without, as your vacuous Intellect is serene and clear within you.
30. It is the want of right knowledge, that causes our error of the
world; but no sooner do we come to detect this false knowledge of ours,
than this error flies away from us.
31. The world being known as a dream, and having no reality in it, it is
as vain to place any reliance therein, as to place one’s affections <on>
the son of a barren woman, or confide in such a one.
32. When the dream of the world is known to be a mere dream or false,
even at the time of dreaming it in sleep; what faith or confidence can
be relied on it, on one’s coming to know its nothingness upon his
waking.
33. What is known in the waking state, could not be otherwise in that of
sleep; whatever is known in the later hour of coming to its knowledge,
the same must have been its previous state also. (_i.e._ The world is
nothing, both in the states of its knowledge as well as ignorance).
34. There are the three times of present, past and future, and our
knowledge of these, proceeds from our ignorance of endless duration;
which is the only real tranquil and universal substratum of all (and
this is the attribute of the ever unchanging One).
35. As the breaking of breakers, by the dashing of waves against one
another, does no harm to the waters of the sea; so the molestation or
destruction of one body by another, does no injury to the inward soul,
which is ever impregnable and also indestructible.
36. It is the vacuous Intellect within us, that gives rise to the
erroneous conception of our bodies; wherefore the loss of the body or
its false conception, does not affect our intellect and ourselves
neither.
37. The waking soul sees the world, situated in the vacuity of
Intellect, as it were in its sleep; and this of creation in the mind
being devoid of materiality, is very like a dream; (which proceeds from
reminiscence only).
38. The ideas (dhi) of material things, are produced in the beginning of
creation, from their previous impressions left in the intellect; and the
world being but a dream or work of imagination; it is an error of the
brain to take it for a reality.
39. The traces of prior dreams and reminiscences (of previous birth),
being preserved in the memory or mind; the same things appear and
reappear in it (in later births), and represent their aerial shapes as
substantial figures (as some pictures appear true to life).
40. This error has taken possession of the mind, in the same manner as
the untrue is taken for truth: while the transcendent and clear truth of
the omniform soul is rejected as untrue.
41. In reality there is the Divine Intellect only, that has existed for
ever; and this being the most certain truth that Brahma is all in all,
the doctrine of reminiscence and oblivion goes to nothing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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