Yoga Vasistha [English], Volume 1-4

by Vihari-Lala Mitra | 1891 | 1,121,132 words | ISBN-10: 8171101519

The English translation of the Yoga-vasistha: a Hindu philosophical and spiritual text written by sage Valmiki from an Advaita-vedanta perspective. The book contains epic narratives similar to puranas and chronologically precedes the Ramayana. The Yoga-vasistha is believed by some Hindus to answer all the questions that arise in the human mind, an...

Chapter XV - The final extinction of the vidyadhara

Argument: Description of Egoism as the productive seed of the world, and its extinction as the cause of emancipation from it.

Bhusunda resumed and said:—

1. [Sanskrit available]
Wherever there is the thought of egoism of any one, the idea of the world will be found to be inherent in it; as it appeared to Indra within the bosom of the atomic particle.

2. [Sanskrit available]
The error of the world (the false conception of its reality), which covers the mind, as the green verdure of grass overspreads the face of the ground; has for its origin the idea of one's egoism, which takes its root in the human soul.

3. [Sanskrit available]
This minute seed of egoism, being moistened with the water of desire, produces the arbour of the three worlds, on the height of Brahma in the great forest of vacuum.

4. [Sanskrit available]
The stars are the flowers of this tree, hang on high on the branches of the mountain crags; the rivers resemble its veins and fibres, flowing with the juicy pith of their waters, and the objects of desire are the fruits of this tree. (The objects of desire are the enjoyments and fruition of life).

5. [Sanskrit available]
The revolving worlds, are the fluctuating waves of the water of egoism; and the profluent current of desire, continually supplies with varieties of exquisite symposiums, sweet to the taste of the intellect. (i.e. The pleasures of desire are sweet to the mind, and afford intellectual delight).

6. [Sanskrit available]
The sky is the boundless ocean full of etherial waters, and teeming with showering drops of star light in it; plenty and poverty are the two whirlpools in the ocean of the earth, and all our woes are the mountainous waves on its surface. (i.e. The heaven and earth are the two oceans above and below; the one shining with starry light, and the other gliding with waves of woe. So says the Bible:—And God made the firmament, to divide the waters above from the waters below. Genesis I).

7. [Sanskrit available]
The three worlds are presented as a picture of the ocean, with the upper lights as its froths and foams swimming upon it; the spheres are floating as bubbles upon it, and their belts are as the thick valves of their doors.

8. [Sanskrit available]
The surface of the earth is as a hard and solid rock, and the intellect moves as a black crow upon it; and the hurry and bustle of its people, are conformable with the incessant rotation of the globe.

9. [Sanskrit available]
The infirmities and errors, old age and death, are as billows gliding on the surface of the sea; and the rising and falling of bodies in it, are as the swelling and dissolving of bubbles in water.

10. [Sanskrit available]
Know the world to be a gust of the breath of your egoism, and know it also as a sweet scent proceeding from the lotus like flower of egoism.

11. [Sanskrit available]
Know the knowledge of your egoism and that of the objective world, are not two different things; but they are the one and same thing; as the wind and its breath, the water and its fluidity, and the fire and its heat.

12. [Sanskrit available]
The world is included under the sense of ego, and the ego is contained in the heart of the world; and these being productive of one another, are reciprocally the container and contained of each other.

13. [Sanskrit available]
He who effaces the seed of his egoism from his understanding, by means of his ignoring it altogether; has verily washed off the picture of the world from his mind, by the water of ignorance of it.

14. [Sanskrit available]
Know Vidyadhara, there is no such thing as is implied by ego; it is a causeless nothing as the horn of a hare.

15. [Sanskrit available]
There is no egoism in the all pervading and infinite Brahma, who is devoid of all desire; and therefore there being no cause nor ground of it, it is never anything in reality.

16. [Sanskrit available]
Whatever is nothing in reality, could not possibly have any cause in the beginning of creation; therefore egoism is a nihility, as the son of a barren woman is a nullity in nature.

17. [Sanskrit available]
The want of egoism on the one hand, proves the privation of the world also on the other; thus there remains the Intellect or the one mind alone, in which everything is extinct.

18. [Sanskrit available]
From the proof of the absence of ego and the world, the operations of the mind and the sight of visibles, all come to an end, and there remains nothing for thee to care for or fear.

19. [Sanskrit available]
Whatever is not is a naught altogether, and the rest are as calm and quiet as nil in existence; knowing this as certain be enlightened, and fall no more to the false error which has no root in nature.

20. [Sanskrit available]
Being purged from the stain of fancy, you become as purified and sanctified as the holy lord Siva for ever, and then the sky will seem to thee as a huge mountain, and the vast world will dwindle to an atom. (This is done by two powers of adhyaropa and vyapadesa or expansion or contraction in yoga).

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