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 CLXIV - Unity of the divinity and the mundane world

Argument:—Intromission of the Living soul and all bodies, that is the subjective and objective into the Divine Essence.

Vasishtha continued:—

1. [Sanskrit available]
The atoms of living souls in the world, are as the particles of rays in the orb of the sun (or as the sparks of fire in a furnace); and as all these parts taken collectively, make the one undivided whole; so there is no division of the unity of the Deity, throughout the whole creation.

2. [Sanskrit available]
By attaining the transcendental knowledge of all being the One, and the One as all; every thing loses its shape and form before us, and there remains nothing whatever as a distinct being or duality.

3. [Sanskrit available]
The true believer or knower of truth, sees the selfsame object in all states and forms of things; and this is the transcendent and translucent Brahma only, and nothing else whatsoever at any time.

4. [Sanskrit available]
He is the same, that is known to the ignorant, as their objects of sense; but we do not recognize either ourselves or others, or the sensible objects of the ignorant as such.

5. [Sanskrit available]
The belief of the ignorant man in the reality of himself, thyself and all others, does not affect the knower of truth, as the delusion of mirage never overtakes the man on Mount Meru: (where the deceptive sands of the deserts are wanting).

6. [Sanskrit available]
As the man intent upon one object, has no consciousness of any other thing in his mind; so one enrapt at the sight of God alone, is conscious of nothing besides.

7. [Sanskrit available]
There neither is nor was nor shall ever be, any such thing as the material world at any time; the world in esse is the image of Brahma himself, and abides in his spirit.

8. [Sanskrit available]
The world is the splendour of the chrystalline vacuum of the Divine Intellect, and subsists in the vacuity of the supreme soul itself; it is in this light that the universe is seen in the dhyana yoga or abstruse contemplation of [the] yogi.

9. [Sanskrit available]
As there is nothing in an empty dream or in the aerial castle of imagination except the clear atmosphere of the Intellect; so there is no essence or substance nor form or figure of this world, that we view in our present waking state.

10. [Sanskrit available]
At first there was no creation of any kind, nor this world which appears to us (in its material form); it exists in its aerial form in the Divine Mind from all eternity; and there being no primary or secondary cause of it, how is it possible to call it a material thing of its own spontaneous growth.

11. [Sanskrit available]
Therefore there is nothing that sprang itself out of nothing at first, nor was there ever a creator called Brahma or other by the ignorant, in the beginning; there is nothing but an infinite void from eternity to eternity, which is filled by the self-born or increate spirit, whose intellect exhibits this creation, contained for ever and ever in its vacuity.

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