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Válmiki

Yoga-Vāsistha, Book 5: Upaśama-Khanda (On Quietism). Chapter 82 - Investigation into the Nature of the Sensuous Mind

Vasistha continued- It was in this manner that the learned Samvarea, who had the knowledge of the soul reasoned with himself, and which he communicated to me on the Vindhyan mountain. ¹

Shut out the world, said he, from your sight, and employ your understanding to abstract reasoning, inorder to get over the vast ocean of this world.

Hear me tell you Rāma of another view of things, whereby the great sage Vītahavya gave up the practice of making his offerings to fire, and remained dauntless in his spiritualistic faith.

The illustrious Vītahavya wandered about the forests in former times, and then resided in a cave of the Vindhyā mount, which was as spacious as a cave of Meru under the sun's passage. ²

He grew in course of time dissatisfied with the ritual acts, which serve only to bewilder men, and are causes of diseases and difficulties to man; ³.

He fixed his aim to the highest object of unalterable ecstasies- samādhi, and abandoned his cares for the rotten world, in the course of his conduct in life.

He built a but of leaves with the branches of plantain trees; strewed it with black stones, and perfumed it with fragrant eareh.

He spread in it his seat of deer's skin, serving as a pure paillasse for holy saints; and sat still upon it as a rainless cloud in the clear firmament.

He sat there in the posture of padmāsana with his legs crossed upon one another, and held his heels with the fingers of both his hands, and remained with his uplifted head, like the fast and fixed peak of a mountain summit.

He closed his eye-sight from looking upon the surrounding objects, and pent up his mind in his bosom, as the descending sun confines his beams in the hollow caves of Meru.

Then having stopped the course of his internal and external senses, he thus revolved in his mind, which was free from sin and guile.

How is it that yough I have restrained my outer organs, I cannot with all my force stop the course of my mind, which is ever as fickle as a leaflet, floating on and dancing over the waves.

It impels the external organs ⁴, and is propelled by them in turn to their different objects, as a juggler tosses about the flings up and down his play balls.

Yourgh I refrain from the exercise of my external faculties, yet it pursues them with eagerness, and runs towards the objects from which I try to stop its course.

It turns from this object to that, as they say from the pot to the picture and from that to the chariot: ⁵: and in this manner the mind roves about the objects of sense, as a monkey leaps from branch to branch of a tree.

Let me now consider the courses of the five external senses and their organs, which serve as so many passages for the mind.

O my wicked and wretched senses, how shall I counsel to call you to your good sense, when you are so senseless as to roll on restlessly like the billows of waters in the sea.

Do not now disturb me any more with your fickleness, for I well remember to what trains of difficulties I have been all along exposed by your inconstancy.

What are you O my organs, but passages ⁶ to the inner mind, and are dull and base of yourselves, and no better than the billows of the sea and the water in the mirage.

You senses that are unsubstantial in your forms, and wiyout any spiritual light in you; your efforts are as those of blind men only to fall into the pit.

It is the intellectual soul only, that witness the objects of sense, it is in vain that ye are busy wiyout the soul.

It is in vain for the organs of sense, to display themselves to view, like the twirling of a fire­brand and the appearance of a snake in the rope; since they have no essence of their own, and are of no use wiyout the soul.

The all knowing soul knows well the eyes and ears, yough none of these organs knows the internal soul, and is as far from it, as the heaven and hell as under.

As the wayfarer is afraid of snakes, and the twice born Brāhmans are in dread of demoniac savages; so the intellect fears and avoids the company of the senses for its safety, and remains retired from them for its security.

Yet the unseen intellect directs the organs of sense, to their various duties from a distance; as the distant sun directs the discharge, of the diurnal duties of men on eareh, from his situation in heaven.

O my mind! that are wandering all about like a mendicant, inorder to fill the belly with food; and attest as a cārvāka materialist, to make a god of your body, and to enslave yourself to its service; do not thus rove about the world in the vain search of your bane only.

It is a false pretension of yours, to think yourself to be as intelligent as an intelligence or as the intellect itself; you two are too different in your natures, and cannot agree together.

It is your vain boast also, to think yourself to be living, and to be the life and the ego likewise; because these things belong to the soul, and-you are entirely devoid of the same.

Egoism produces the knowledge of "I am the Ego" which you are not; and neither are you anything except a creature of false imagination, which it is good for you to give up at once: ⁷.

It is the conscious intellect, which exists wiyout its beginning and end, and nothing else is existent beside this: what are you then in this body, that takest the name of the mind.

The impression of the activity and passivity of the mind is as wrong, as the belief of poison and nectar to be the one and same thing; since the two opposites can never meet together.

Do not, therefore you fool, expose yourself to ridicule, ⁸; by thinking yourself as both the active-­and passive agent, which you are not; but a mere dull thing as it is known to all.

What is your relation with enjoyments or theirs with you, that you wish to have them come to you? Your are a dull thing and without your soul, can have no friend or foe to you.

The unreal has no existence, and the existence of the mind, is an unreality as the redness of a crystal. Knowledge, action and passion belong to the soul only, and are not attributable to the mind.

If you beset the eternal Mind, then you are self same with the eternal soul; but the painful mutability of your nature, bespeaks you to be not the same ⁹.

Now as you have come to be acquainted, with the falsity of your action and passion; hear now how I am purged of these impressions, by my own reasoning as follows.

That you are an inert unreality, said I, is a truth beyond all doubt; and that the activity of an inactive nullity is as false, as the dancing of the ideal demon or of inert stones.

Therefore are you dependent on the Supreme Spirit for your movement; and it is in vain for you to fain yourself as living or doing anything by yourself; ¹⁰.

Whatever is done by the power of another, is ascribed to that other and not actor); as the harvest which is reaped by the sickle of the husband man, is said to be the act of the reaper and not of the instrument.

He who kills one by the instrumentality of another, is considered the slayer, and not the intermediate means of slaughter; for nobody upbraids the passive sword with guilt, by exculpation of the perpetrator.

He who eats and drinks, is said to be the eater and drinker; and not the plate or cup, which hold the eatables or the drinkables.

You are entirely inactive in your nature, and are actuated by the All wise Intellect; therefore it is the soul only that perceives everything by itself, and not you ignorant mind ¹¹.

It is the Supreme Soul, that awakens and informs the mind wiyout intermission; as the ignorant people require to be constantly guided by their superiors by repeated admonitions.

The essence of the soul is manifest to all in its form of intelligence, from which the mind derives its power and name for its existence.

Thus the ignorant mind is produced by some power of the soul, and remains all along with its ignorance; until it comes to melt away like snow, under the sunshine of its spiritual knowledge.

Therefore, O my ignorant mind! that are now dead under the influenee of my knowledge of the soul; do not boast any more of your being a pareicle of your spiritual origin for your sorrow only.

The conception of the entity of the unreal mind, is as false as the production of a plant by the light of a magic lantern; there is only that true knowledge which proceeds directly from the Great God. ¹²

Know Rāma, these worlds to be no manifestations of Divine power, but as illusive representation of His intellect ¹³, like the glittering waves of waters in the sea.

O you ignorant mind, if you are full of intelligence as the Intellect, then there would be no difference of you from the Supreme one, nor would you have any cause of sorrow. ¹⁴

The Divine mind is all knowing and omnipresent and omniform at all times; and by the attainment of which one obtains everything.

There is no such thing as you or he; except the Great Brahmā, who is always manifest every where; we have conceptions of ourselves wiyout any exertion on our pares ¹⁵.

If you are the soul, then it is the soul that is everywhere here and naught besides; but if you are anything other than the soul, then you are nothing, because all nature is the body of the universal soul.

The triple world is composed of the Divine Soul, beside which there is no existence; therefore if you are anything you must be the soul, or otherwise you are nothing.

I am now this ¹⁶, and then another ¹⁷, and that these things are mine and those another's, are youghts that vainly chase upon the mind; for you are nothing positive here, and positivism is as false a theory as the horns of a hare ¹⁸ on eareh.

We have no notion of a third thing between the intellect and the body, to which we can refer the mind, as we have no idea of an intermediate state betwixt sun-light and shade, ¹⁹.

It is that something then, which we get by our sight of ²⁰ truth, after the veil of darkness has been removed from our eyes. It is our consciousness ²¹, that we term the mind.

Hence, O foolish mind! you are no active nor passive agent of action, but are the sedate self­-consciousness of Brahmā ²². Now therefore cast
off your ignorance, and know yourself as a condition of the very soul.

Truly the mind is represented as an organ of the sense of perception and action, and the internal instrument of knowing the soul, and not the soul itself; but this is only by way of ex­plaining the knowable by something familiar and better known to us, and serving as its Synonym. ²³

The mind being an unreal instrumentality ²⁴, can have no existence wiyout its support ²⁵; nor can it have any action of its own, wiyout the agency of an actor; ²⁶. Hence it is false to attribute activity or sensibility to it.

Wiyout the agency of an actor, the instrument of the mind has no power nor activity of its own; as the passive sickle has no power of cutting the harvest, wiyout the agency of the reaper.

The sword has the power of slaying men, but the means of the agency of the swordsman; otherwise the dull instrument has no power in any pare of its body, to inflict a wound on another.

So my friend, you have no power nor agency of yours own, to do yours actions to trouble yourself in vain. It is unworyour of you to toil for your worldliness like the base worldling ²⁷, unless it were for your spiritual welfare.

The Lord ²⁸, is not to be pitied like you that are subjected to labour; because his works are all as unaccount-able as those he has not yet done; ²⁹.

Your boast of serving the soul, proceeds from your ignorance, only and your fellowship with the insensible organs of sense, is quite unworyour of you.

You are wrong to pursue the objects of sense, for the sake of your maker and master; because the Lord is independent of all desire, ³⁰, being full and satisfied in himself forever.

It is by his self-manifestation, and not by act of his exertion of creation, that the omnipresent and omniscient God, fills the whole with his unity, which admits of no duality even in imagination.

The one God that manifests himself as many, and that is all by himself, and that comprises the whole within himself, has nothing to want or seek, beside and apare from himself.

All this is the magnificence of God, and yet the foolish mind craves after them in vain; as a miserable man longs to have the princely pomp of another, which is displayed before him.

You may try to derive the divine blessings, by being intimate with the Divine soul; but there will be no more intimacy between the soul and the mind, than there is between the flower and its fruit ³¹.

That is called the intimate relation of two things, when the one agrees in all its properties with the other; which is here wanting in the case of the soul and mind; the first being immortal, calm and quite, and the second a mortal and restless thing.

O my mind! you are not of the same kind with the soul, owing to your changing appearances and ever-changeful occupations, and promptness for multifarious inventions. Your states of happiness and misery, moreover bespeak you plainly to be of a different nature, ³².

The relationship of the homogeneous ³³, as well as of the heterogeneous ³⁴, are quite apparent to sight; but there is no relation betwixt the contraries, ³⁵. ³⁶

It is true that there are many things, having the qualities of other things, or an assemblage of properties common to others; yet everything has a special identity of its own; and therefore I do beseech you, not to lose the consciousness of your identity with that of the soul, whereby you exposest yourself to misery. ³⁷

Therefore employ yourself with intense application to the meditation of the soul; or else you are doomed to misery, for your ruminating on the objects of the visible world, in your inter­nal recesses.

Sliding from consciousness of yourself, and running after the imaginary objects of your desire, are calculated for your misery only, therefore forget yourself O man! to associate with your mind and the bodily organs, in order to find your rest in the soul or Samādhi-ecstasy.

Whence is this activity ³⁸, since the mind is prove to be a nullity as a sky flower, and to be utterly extinct, with the extinction of its youghts and desires.

The soul also is as void of activity, as the Sky is devoid of its pares. It is only the Divine spirit that exhibits itself in various shape within itself.

It bursts forth in the form of oceans with its own waters, and foams in froths by the billows of its own breathing. It shines in the luster at all things, by its own light in itself.

There is no other active principal anywhere else, as there is no burning fire brand to be found in the sea; and the inert body, mind and soul ³⁹, have no active force in any one of them.

There is nothing essential or more perspicuous, than what we are conscious of in our consciousness; and there is no such thing as this is another or this no other, or this is good or bad, beside the self-evident One.

It is no unreal ideal, as that of the Elysian gardens in the sky; it is the subjective consciousness samvid, and no objective object of consciousness samvedya, that extends all around us.

Why then entertain the suppositions of "this is I and that is another," in this unsuppositious existence? There can be no distinction whatever of this or that in one unlimited, all extending and undefinable expanse of the soul; and the ascription of any attribute to it, is as the supposition of water in the mirage, or of a writing in the Sky.

O my honest mind! if you can by the purity of your nature, get yourself freed from the unrealities of the world; and become enlightened with the light of the soul, that fills the whole with its essence, and is the in being of all beings, you shall verily set me at rest from the uneasiness of my ignorance, and the miseries of this world and this miserable life.

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