The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 4 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)Valmiki
Religion
The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 4 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)
Valmiki
Hinduism -- Doctrines -- Early works to 1800; Religious life -- Hinduism -- Early works to 1800
37. The sage replied:--The words piety and impiety, our desires and
acts, are words of the same import, and significant of their causality
in framing the living soul according to their own stamp; but these are
mere suppositions, and neither true causes of the schesis of our souls,
nor of the modes of our lives.
38. It is the mind which is situated in the vacuous intellect, and
is possest of the power of intellection that imagines in itself the
various states of things (and the happiness and miseries of life),
and gives names to them accordingly. (So says the sruti:--The sapient
seeing the different form and states of things, coin words to designate
them and their various modes also).
39. The conscious soul comes to know by means of its intellection, its
own body in its vacuous self; and after death it sees the same to exist
as in its dream or imagination (_i.e._ in its ideal form).
40. The knowledge of the dead in regard to the next world, is likewise
in the manner of a dream; and though this dreaming state of the soul
continues for a long duration, it bears no truth in its nature.
41. If a new body is framed by another person (such as parents or the
creator himself), for the re-entrance of deceased spirit into it,
then can the new born body have any remembrance of the past, and how
can this body be what the dead person had before, and as for his
intellect, it is a mere vacuity, and cannot pass from one body into
another.
42. Therefore no one that is dead is born again, or is to be reborn
afterwards at any time; it is only an idea of the mind, that I was so
and am reborn as such; and a vain wish in its vacuity, to be born again
<in> some form or other.
43. It is by nature and habitual mode of thinking, that men are
impressed with belief of his regeneration, both by popular persuasion
and scriptural evidence of a state of future retribution, which is
altogether false and fanciful.
44. The soul is an aerial and vacuous substance, giving rise to the
phantoms of visibles, in the forms of shadowy dreams in its spacious
vacuity; and always views its births and deaths in endless repetitions
in this world.
45. It views every particular object, in the illusive net work, which
is spread in its ample sphere; and seems to see and act and enjoy
everything, without being in the actual enjoyment of any thing.
46. In this manner millions and millions of worlds, are constantly
rising before its sight; which appear to be so many visible phenomena
in its ignorance; but which when viewed in their proper light, prove to
be the display of One all pervading Brahma only.
47. But none of them ever occupy any space, nor do any one of them ever
exist anywhere in reality; but there is that one Brahma that spreads
undivided through all, and knows all these <to be> an undivided whole,
and yet every one of them forming a world of itself. (The Lord is full
and perfect in each and all of these).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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