/ Vedanta / Yoga Vāsistha / Yoga-Vāsistha (5): Upaśama-Khanda

Válmiki

Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 5: Upaśama-Khanda (On Quietism). Chapter 81 - Insubstantiality of the Mind

Vasistha resumed- Having thus conside-red and known the mind in themselves; and in the aforesaid manner; it is the business of great minded philosophers, O mighty Rāma, to enquire into the nature of the soul, as far as it is knowable.

And knowing the world to be purely the soul, it is to be inquired, whence arose the phantom of mind which is nothing in reality.

It is ignorance, error and illusion, which exhibit the vacant and visionary mind to view, as it is our false imagination, which forms an arbour of trees in the vacant air.

As the objects standing on the shore, seem to be moving to ignorant boys passing in a boat; so the sedate soul appears to be in motion ¹ to the unintelligent.

After removal of our ignorance and error, we have no perception of the fluctuation of our minds; as we no more think the mountains to be in motion, after the velocity of air car is put to a stop.

I have given up the youghts of all internal and external things, knowing them as the creation of my airy mind only. Thus the mind and its actions being null and void, I see all things to exist in the spirit of Brahmā alone.

I am freed from my doubts, and sit quiet devoid of all care; I sit as Śiva, wiyout a desire stirring in me.

The mind being wanting, there is an end of its youthful desires and other properties also; and my soul being in the light of the supreme spirit, has lost its sight of all others colours and forms presented to the eyes.

The mind being dead, its desires also die with it, and its cage of the body is broken down wiyout it. The enlightened man being no more under the subjection of, his mind, is liberated from the bondage of his egoism also. Such is the state of the soul, after its separation from the body and mind, when it remains in its spiritual state in this and the next world.

The world is one calm and quiescent Unity of Brahmā, and its plurality or multifariety is as false as a dream. What then shall we think or talk of it, which is nothing in reality.

My soul by advancing to the state of divine holiness, becomes as rarefied and all-pervasive as the eternal spirit of God, in which it is situated forever.

That which is, and what is not, as the soul and the mind the substantial and the unsubstantial, is the counterpare of the something, which is rarer than air, calm and quiet, eternal and intangible; and yet all pervading and extended through all.

Let there be a mind in us, or let it remain or perish forever; yet I have nothing to discuss about it, when I see everything to be situated in the soul.

I considered myself as a limited and embodied being, as long as I was unable to reason about these abstruse subjects; and now I have come to know my unlimited form of the spirit; but what is this that I call "myself" is what I have not yet been able to know, since the whole is full with the one supreme spirit.

But the mind being granted as dead, it is useless to dubitate about it; and we gain nothing by bringing the demon of the mind to life again.

I at once repudiate the mind, the source of false desires and fancies; and betake myself to the meditation of the mystic syllable "Om" with the quietness of my soul, resting quiescent in the Divine spirit.

With my best intelligence, I continue always to inquire of my God, both when I am eating or sleeping or sitting or walking about.

So do the saints conduct their temporal affairs, with a calm and careless mind, meditating all along on the Divine soul in their becalmed spirits.

Setting aside the feelings of and boastfulness, retaining happy feeling like that of moon getting dimnished shining due to winter season the intellecutals confertably get involved in temporal affairs.

Footnotes

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE