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
20. Vasishtha replied:—The disappearance of the dreamed objects upon
waking, does not prove their falsity, nor make any difference between
the two states of dreaming and waking; because the objects which one
sees in his dream, are like those that a traveller sees in foreign
country, which are lost upon his return to his own country, and the
sights of this are soon lost upon his death. Hence both are true for the
time being, and both proved equally false and fleeting at last.
21. A man being dead, he is separated from his friends, as from those he
sees in his dream; and then the living is said to be awakened, as when a
sleeper awakes from his slumber.
22. After seeing the delusions of the states of happiness and misery,
and witnessing the rotations of days and nights, and feeling many
changes, the living soul at last departs from this world of dreams.
23. After the long sleep of life, there comes at last an end of it at
last; when the human soul becomes assured of the untruth of this world,
and that the past was a mere dream.
24. As the dreamer perceives his death in the land of his dream, so the
waking man sees his waking dream of this world, where he meets with his
death, in order to be reborn in it and to dream again.
25. The waking beholder of the world, finds himself to die in the same
manner in his living world; where he is doomed to be reborn, in order to
see the same scenes and to die again.
26. He who finds himself to die in the living world in his waking state,
comes to revisit this earth, in order to see the same dreams, which he
believed to be true in his former births. (Hence the sleeping and waking
dreams, that view the same things over again, are both alike).
27. It is the ignorant only, that believe their waking sights as true;
while it is the firm conviction of the intelligent, that all these
appearances are but day dreams at best.
28. Taking the dreaming state for waking, and the waking one for
dreaming, are but verbal distinctions implying the same thing; as life
and death are meaningless words for the two states of the soul, which
never born nor died.
29. He who views his life and death in the light of a dream, is said to
be truly waking; but the living soul that considers itself as waking and
dying, is quite the contrary of it.
30. Whoso dwells upon one dream after another, or wakes to see a waking
dream; is as one who wakes after his death, and finds his waking also to
be a dream. (All states of sleeping and waking, and of living and dying
are mere dreams).
31. Our waking and sleeping, are both as events of history to us; and
are comparable to the past and present histories of nations. (Both being
equally fleeting and fluctuating).
32. The dream-sleep seems as waking, and the waking dream is no other
than sleeping; they are both in fact but unrealities, and the mere
_réchauffé_ or reflexions of the intellectual sky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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