THE YOGA VASISTHA
IN
POEM
CHAPTER Three
By Swami Suryadevananda
12. BRAHMA AND VASISTHA'S DIALOGUE
Brahma to Vasistha
After hearing the sun's good advice
I began creating as was natural to me
The sun helped in my work on request
Playing a dual role most efficiently
Whatever appears in one's consciousness
That seems to come into being
It soon gets established and bears fruits
Such is the power of the mind
Creatorship too is a result of the mind
Mind alone manifests everything
Bringing about bodily appearances too
Naught else is aware of the body
Individualized consciousness is the mind
Also known as the individual or jiva
Appearing as physical or material bodies
Non-different from infinite consciousness
The intention of the ten young men
Made them feel they were creators
Even so do I feel and experience
And manifest—all based on intention
All this takes place in pure consciousness
Which thinks of itself as an individual
As the mind and as body too
But all these are based on consciousness
The mind is sentient and inert
As its basis is pure consciousness
It takes on the role of objects—unaware
As the substance is pure consciousness
Apprehension requires similarity
Like alone does contact like
Subject and object must be similar
The deluded mind is unaware of this
The individual mind somehow believes
Itself to be subject as the sentient
All objects to be inert and insentient
And is bound by delusion of duality
When this illusion is seen as reality
False egotism arises instantly
But on unrelenting self-inquiry
The division disappears—one attains bliss
Vasistha asks Brahma
Regarding the earlier story of Ahalya
How did their bodies suffer—not their minds
If the body is non-different from the mind
The punishments should have affected both
Brahma's Reply to Vasistha
From Brahma down to a little hill
All embodied have twofold bodies
Mind which is restless and acts quickly
A body of flesh which does nothing
The body is what is overpowered
By punishments as it is dependent
The mind only seems dependent
Though it is really independent
When the mind exerts in self-effort
It is beyond the reach of sorrow
The mind alone experiences
Fruit of self-effort not the body
Dwelling constantly on what is pure
The mind attains to purity
Immune to onslaught of every kind
Experiencing what it contemplates
The ten youth attained creatorship
By mental effort none could prevent
A mind devoted to the Self
Cannot be touched by any calamity
With the mind—make the mind
Take to the path of purity
With the self—make the self
Tread on the highway of purity
What the mind does contemplate
Materializes and is experienced
By intense contemplation bring about
Total change free of all delusion
13. VASISTHA'S INSTRUCTION CONTINUES
The Appearance of Diversity
All that you see emerges from Brahman
Just as waves manifest in the ocean
Existing in the mind of Brahma
The creator and the cosmic mind
Diversity is but an appearance
Events happen quite accidentally
Just as when a crow sits on a tree
And a coconut drops at the same time
Expression leads to experience
Thus cause and effect do come about
By desire—the cause of all this
Bringing rise and fall in evolution
Such is this forest as world appearance
Cut its very root completely, O Rama
With the axe of inquiry, persistently
Till total freedom is attained
Some arrive at the understanding sooner
Some longer—depends on one alone
Inner quality is most important
Now hear of this a little further
Different Types of Being
The foremost of all are naturally good
Devoted to being good in every way
Full of purity and light called sattva
They reach liberation in a few lifetimes
The middling are full of dynamism
Desires or rajas and some sattva
Exhausting rajas and increasing sattva
They move slowly towards liberation
The third are sunk in darkness or tamas
Rising and falling in the cycle of samsara
Thousand births do not much change
They take very long towards liberation
Individual Action and Cosmic Action
Diverse beings arose with the cosmic mind
Rising from and within the cosmic mind
Which arose in pure consciousness
But beings somehow feel separateness
Since action is movement of energy
Energy is movement in consciousness
Action must inevitably bears its fruit
As action is movement in consciousness
When action motivated by separateness
Comes to end—so does the mind
As cosmic action does not require
The individual mind of separateness
Same Thing Acting Different
Mind is the only perception
Perception is movement in consciousness
Therefore what the mind doth think
Materializes instantly as experience
What is called illusion or maya
Is a word without any substance
Infinite consciousness is the only reality
In which all concepts are conceived to exist
By accidental coincidence did concepts arise
So too diversity arose quite the same way
Veiled by nescience diversity appears real
This is what is known as the mind
That which has firm conviction
Of certain perception is called intelligence
Which when it imagines separateness
Becomes what is known as egotism
When egotism abandons consistent inquiry
It allows itself to get entangled by many thoughts
That come and go like the winds in space
And is known as individualized consciousness
Action without an independent doer
Is pure action—movement in consciousness
But when fruition is pursued
It is called karma—one is then bound
Memory of past enjoyments
Become triggers for action
As latent tendencies that await
Conditions for their enactment
Recalling memory constantly
Breathes life into them powerfully
Once opportunity for action is seen
They burst forth in ignorance
When the same mind turns round
Looking within to inquire
As to this seeming inner division
It is what is known as knowledge
When it moves the wrong way
Getting involved deeply in false fancies
Greater is the self-forgetfulness
It is what is known as impurity
When it entertains with sensations
It is known as senses or indriyas
When unmanifest in consciousness
It is what is known as nature
When it creates confusion
Between what appears to be
And what is the only reality
It is known as illusion or maya
When it dissolves in the infinite
There is freedom—liberation
When it thinks 'I am bound'
There is what is called bondage
Threefold Space
Threefold is space, O Rama
Infinite space of consciousness
Finite divided space of the individual
And physical space of the material world
Undivided consciousness is infinite space
'Tis that which exists in all and everything
Inside, outside—'tis the pure witness
Of the real and all that appears to be
The finite space of individual consciousness
Is what creates the divisions in time
It pervades all beings and is interested
In the welfare of all beings as well
The physical space does contain
All elements like air and such
All exist in infinite space
Without existence of their own
Whatever be the mind's origin
Free it from all latent tendencies
Direct it towards liberation instead
And self-knowledge through self-effort
Pure mind is free from latent tendencies
It can therefore attain self-knowledge
Since the universe is within the mind
Bondage and liberation are within it too
Listen carefully to an ancient legend
In this connection—most insightful
I heard this from the creator himself
'Tis called 'Story of the Great
Forest'
Om Tat Sat
(Continued...)
( My
humble salutations to H H Sri Swami
Suryadevananda ji and H H Sri Swami Venkatesananda ji for the
collection)
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