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Válmiki

Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 5: Upaśama-Khanda (On Quietism). Chapter 36 - Hymn to the Soul

Prahlāda continued- I thank you, O lord and great spirit! that are beyond all things, and are found in myself by my good fortune.

I have no other friend, O my Lord, in the three worlds except you; that dost vouchsafe to embrace and look upon me, when I pray unto you.

It is you that preservest and destroyest all, and givest all things to every body; and it is you, that makest us move and work, and praise your holy name. Now are you found and seen by me, and now you goest away from me.

You fillest all being in the world with your essence; you are present in all places, but where are you now fled and gone from me.

Great is the distance between us, even as the distance of the places of our birth, it is my good fortune of friend! that has brought you near me today, and presented you to my sight so fleeting is spiritual vision.

I hail you, you felicitous one! that are my maker and preserver also; I think you that are the stalk pf this fruit of this world, and that are the eternal and pure soul of all.

I thank the holder of the lotus and discus, and you also that bearest the crescent half moon on your forehead-great Śiva. I thank the lord of Gods-Indra, and Brahmā also, that is born of the lotus.

It is a verbal usage that makes a distinction betwixt you and ourselves, ¹; but this is a false impression as that of the difference between waves and their elemental water.

You showest yourself in the shapes of the endless varieties of beings, and existence and extinction are the two states of yourself from all eternity.

I thank you that are the creator and beholder of all, and the manifest of innumerable forms. I thank you that are the whole nature yourself.

I have undergone many tribulations in the long course of past lives, and it was by your will that I became bereft of my strength, and was burnt away at last.

I have beheld the luminous worlds, and observed many visible and invisible things; but you are not to be found in them. So I have gained nothing ².

All things composed of earth, stone and wood, are formations of water ³, there is nothing here, that is permanent, O god, beside yourself. You being obtained there is nothing else to desire.

I thank you lord! that are obtained, seen and known by me this day; and that shalt be so preserved by me, as never to be obliterated ⁴.

Your bright form which is interwoven by the rays of light, is visible to us by inversion of the sight of the pupils of our.eyes, into the inmost recesses of our heart.

As the feeling of heat and cold is perceived by touch, and as the fragrance of the flower is felt in the oil with which it is mixed; so I feel your presence by your coming in contact with my heart.

As the sound of music enters into the heart through the ears, and makes the heart strings to thrill, and the hairs of the body to stand at an end; so is your presence perceived in our hearts also.

As the objects of taste are felt by the tip of the tongue, which conveys their relish to the mind; so is your presence felt by my heart, when you touchest it with your love.

How can one slight to look and lay hold on his inner soul, which shoots through every sense of his body; when he takes up a sweet scenting flower, perceptible by the sense of smelling only, and finally decorating his outer person with it.

How can the supreme spirit, which is well known to us by means of the teachings of the Vedas, Vedānta, Sidhantas and the Purānas, as also by the Logic of schools and the hymns of the Vedas, be any way forgotten by us?

These things which are pleasant to the bodily senses, do not gladden my heart, when it is filled by your translucent presence.

It is by your effulgent light, that the sun shines so bright; as it is by your being lustre also, that the moon dispenses her cooling beams.

You have made these bulky rocks, and upheld the heavenly bodies; you have supported the stable earth, and lifted the spacious firmament.

Fortunately you have become myself, and I have become one with yourself, I am identic with you and you with me, and there is no difference between us.

I thank the great spirit, that is expressed by turns by the words myself and yourself; and mine and yours.

I thank the infinite God, that dwells in my unegoistic mind; and I thank the formless Lord, that dwells in my tranquil soul.

You dwellest, O Lord! in my formless, tranquil, transparent and conscious soul, as you residest in your own spirit, which is unbounded by the limitations of time and space.

It is by you that the mind has its action, and the senses have their sensations; the body has all its powers, and the vital and respirative breaths have their inflations and afflations.

The organs of the body are led by the rope of desire to their several actions, and being united with flesh, blood and bones, are driven like the wheels of a car by the charioteer of the mind.

I am the consciousness of my body, and am neither the body itself nor my egoism of it; let it therefore rise or fall, it is of no advantage or disadvantage to me.

I was born in the same time with my ego, ⁵; and it was long afterwards that I had the knowledge of my soul; I had my insensibility last of all, in the manner of the world abproaching to its dissolution at the end.

Long have I travelled in the long-some journey of the world; I am weary with fatigue and now rest in quiet, like the cooling fire of the last conflagration. ⁶

I thank the Lord who is all (to pan), and yet without all and everything; and you my soul! that are myself likewise. I thank you above chose Śastras and preceptors, that teach the ego and to ⁷.

I hail the all witnessing power of that providential spirit, that has made these ample and endless provisions for others, without touching or enjoying them itself.

You are the spirit that dwellest in all bodies in the form of the fragrance of flowers, and in the manner of breath in bellows; and as the oil resides in the sesame seeds.

How wonderful is this magic scene of yours, that you appearest in everything, and preservest and destroyest it at last, without having any personality of your own.

You makest my soul rejoice at one time as a lighted lamp, my manifesting all things before it; and you makest it joyous also, when it is extinguished as a lamp, after its enjoyment of the visibles.

This universal frame is situated in an atom of yourself, as the big banian tree is contained in the embryo of a grain of its fig.

You are seen, O Lord, in a thousand forms that glide under our sight; in the same manner as the various forms of elephants and horses, cars and other things are seen in the passing clouds on the sky.

You are both the existence and absence of all things, that are either present or lost to our view; yet you are quite apart from all worldly existences, and are aloof from all entities and non-entities in the world.

Forsake, O my soul! the pride and anger of your mind, and all the foulness and wiliness of your heart; because the high-minded never fall into the faults and errors of the common people.

Think over and over on the actions of your past life, and the long series of your wicked acts; ant then with a sigh blush to think upon what you had been before, and cease to do such acts anymore.

The bustle of your life is past, and your bad days have gone away; when you was wrapt in the net of your tangled thoughts on all sides.

Now you are a monarch in the city of your body, and hast the desire of your mind presented before you; you are set beyond the reach of pleasure and pain, and are as free as the air which nobody can grasp.

As you have now subdued the untractable horses of your bodily organs, and the indomitable elephant of your mind; and as you have crushed your enemy of worldly enjoyment, so dost you now reign as the sole sovereign, over the empire of your body and mind.

You are now become as the glorious sun, to shine within and without us day by day; and dost traverse the unlimited fields of air, by your continued rising and setting at every place in our meditation of you.

You Lord! are ever asleep, and risest also by your own power; and then you lookest on the luxuriant world, as a lover looks on his beloved.

These luxuries like honey, are brought from great distances by the bees of the bodily organs; and the spirit tastes the sweets, by looking upon them through the windows of its eyes. ⁸

The seat of the intellectual world in the cranium is always dark, and a path is made in it by the breathings of inspiration and respiration (prānāpāna), which lead the soul to the sight of Brahmā: ⁹.

You Lord! are the odor of this flower-like body of yours, and you are the nectarious juice of your moon-like frame, the moisture of this bodily tree, and you are the coolness of its cold humours: phlegm and cough).

You are the juice, milk and butter, that support the body, and you being gone (O soul!). The body is dried up and become as full to feed the fire.

You are the flavour of fruits, and the light of all luminous bodies; it is you that perceivest and knowest all things, and givest light to the visual organ of sight.

You are the vibration of the wind, and the force of our elephantine minds; and so are you the acuteness of the flame of our intelligence.

It is you that givest us the gift of speech, and dost stop our breath, and makest it break forth again on occasions. ¹⁰

All these various series of worldly productions, bear the same relation to you, as the varieties of jewelleries ¹¹; are related to the gold ¹².

You are called by the words I, you, he etc., and it is yourself that callest yourself such as it pleaseth you. ¹³

You are seen in the appearances of all the productions of nature, as we see the forms of men, horses and elephants in the clouds, when they glide softly on the wings of the gentle winds. ¹⁴

You do invariably show yourself in all your creatures on earth, as the blazing fire presents the figures of horses and elephants in its lament flames. ¹⁵

You are the unbroken thread, by which the orbs of worlds are strung together as a rosary of pearls; and you are the field that growest the harvest of creation, by the moisture to your intellect. ¹⁶

Things that were in-existent and unproduced before creation, have come to light from their hidden state of reality by your agency, as the flavour of meat-food, becomes evident by the process of cooking. ¹⁷

The beauties of existences are imperceptible without the soul; as the graces of a beauty are not apparent to one devoid of his eyesight.

All substances are nothing whatever without your inherence in them; as the reflection of the face in the mirror ¹⁸, is to no purpose without the real face or figure of the person.

Without you the body is a lifeless mass, like a block of wood or stone; and it is imperceptible without the soul, as the shadow of a tree in absence of the sun.

The succession of pain and pleasure, ceases to be felt by one who feels you within himself; as the shades of darkness, the twinkling of stars, and the coldness of frost, cease to exist in the bright sunlight.

It is by a glance of your eye, that the feelings of pain and pleasure rise in the mind; as it is by the beams of the rising sun, that the sky is tinged with its variegated hues.

Living beings perish in a moment, at the privation of your presence; as the burning lamp is extinguished to darkness, at the extinction of its light. ¹⁹

As the gloom of darkness is conspicuous at the want of light; but coming in contact with light, it vanishes from view. ²⁰

So the appearances of pain and pleasure, present themselves before the mind, during your absence from it; but they vanish into nothing at the advance of your light into it.

The temporary feelings of pleasure and pain, can find no room in the fullness of heavenly felicity ²¹; just as a minute moment of time, is of no account in the abyss of eternity.

The thoughts of pleasure and pain, are as the short-lived fancies of the fairy land or castles in air; they appear by turns at your pleasure, but they disappear altogether no sooner your form is seen in the mind.

It is by your light in our visual organs, that things appear to sight at the moment of our waking, as they are reproduced into being; and it is by your light also poured into our minds, that they are seen in our dream, as if they are all asleep in death.

What good can we derive from these false and transient appearances in nature? No one can string together the seeming lotuses that are formed by the foaming froth of the waves.

No substantial good can accrue to us from transitory mortal things; as no body can string together the transient flashes of lightning into a necklace. ²²

Should the rationalist take the false ideas of pain and pleasure for sober realities; what distinction then can there be between them and the irrational realists (Buddhists).

Should you like the Nominalist, take everything which bears a name for a real entity; I will tell you no more than that, you are too fond to give to imaginary things a fictitious name at your own will. ²³

But the soul is indivisible and without its desire and egoism, and whether it is a real substance or not we know nothing of, yet its agency is acknowledged on all hands in our bodily actions.

All joy be yours! that are boundless in your spiritual body, and ever disposed to tranquility; that are beyond the knowledge of the Vedas, and are yet the theme of all the śāstras.

All joy to you! that are both born and unborn with the body, and are decaying undecayed in your nature; that are the unsubstantial substance of all qualities, and are known and unknown to everybody.

I exult now and am calm again, I move and am still afterwards; I am victorious and live to win my liberation by your grace; therefore I hail you that are myself.

When you are situated in me, my soul is freed from all troubles and feelings and passions; and is placed in perfect rest. There is no more any fear of danger or difficulty or of life and death, nor any craving for prosperity, when I am ab­sorbed in everlasting bliss with you.

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