CHAPTER LXIII.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
Dream of Jíváta.
Arguments:—All living souls are occupied with the thought of their present state, forgetful of the past, and altogether heedless of the future.
VASISHTHA continued:—This bird that sported beside the stalk of the lotus seat of Brahmá, once went to the city of Rudra with his god on his back, and there beheld the God Rudra face to face. (The inferior Gods waited upon the superior deities).
2. Seeing the God Rudra he thought himself to be so, and the figure of the God was immediately imprest upon his mind, like the reflexion of an outward object in the mirror.
3. Being full of Rudra in himself, he quitted his body of the bird, as the fragrance of a flower forsakes the calyx, as it mixes with the breeze and flies in the open air.
4. He passed his time happily at that place, in the company with the attendants and different classes of the dependant divinities of Rudra.
5. This Rudra being then full of the best knowledge of divinity and spirituality; looked back in his understanding into the passed accounts of his prior lives, that were almost incalculable.
6. Being then gifted with clear sightedness and clairvoyance, he was astonished at the view of naked truths, that appeared to him as sights in a dream, which he recounted to him as follows.
7. O! how wonderful is this over spreading illusion, which is stretched all about us, and fascinates the world by its magic wand; it exhibits the palpable untruth as positive truth, as the dreary desert presents the appearance of limpid waters, in the sun beams spreading over its sterile sands.
8. I well remember my primary state of the pure intellect, and its conversion to the state of the mind; and how it was changed from its supremacy and omniscience, to the bondage of the limited body.
9. It was by its own desire that the living soul assumed to itself a material body, formed and fashioned agreeably to its fancy, like a picture drawn in a painting; and became a mendicant in my person in one of its prior births, when it was unattached to the objects exposed to view all around.
10. The same mendicant sat in his devotion, by controlling the actions of the members of his body, and began to reflect on outward objects, with great pleasure in his mind.
11. He buried all his former thoughts in oblivion, and thought only of the object that he was employed to reflect upon; and this thought so engrossed and worked upon his mind, that it prevented the rise of any other thought in it.
12. The phenomenon which appears in the mind, offers itself solely to the view also (by supplanting the traces of the past); as the brownness of fading autumn, supercedes the vernal verdure of leaves and plants, so the man coming to his maturity, forgets the helpless state of his boyhood, and is thoughtless of his approaching decay and decline.
13. Thus the mendicant became the Brahman Jivátá by his fallible and fickle desire, which laid him to wander from one body to another, as little ants enter into the holes of houses and things.
14. Being fond of Brahmahood and reverential to Bráhmans in his mind, he became the wished for person in his own body; because the reality and unreality have the power of mutually displacing one another, according to the greater influence of either. (The weaker yields and makes room to the stronger, like the survival of the fittest).
15. The Bráhman next obtained the chieftainship, from his strong predilection for the same; just as the tree becomes fruitful by its continuous suction of the moisture of earth. (The common mother of all).
16. Being desirous of dispensing justice, and discharging all legal affairs, the general wished for royalty, and had his wishes fulfilled by this becoming a prince; but as the prince was over fond of his courtesans, he was transformed to a heavenly nymph that he prized above all in his heart.
17. But as the celestial dame prized the tremulous eye sight of the timorous deer, above her heavenly form and station; she was soon metamorphosed to an antelope in the woods, and destined to graze as a miserable beast for her foolish choice.
18. The fawn that was very fond of browzing the tender blades and leaves, became at last the very creeping plant, that had crept into the crevice of her lickerish mind.
19. The creeper being long accustomed to dote on the bee, that used to be in its company; found in its consciousness to be that insect, after the destruction of its vegetable form.
20. Though well aware of its being crushed under the elephant, together with the lotus flower in which it dwelt, yet it was foolish to take the form of the bee, for its pleasure of roving about the world. (So the living soul enters into various births and bodies only to perish with them).
21. Being thus led into a hundred different forms, said he, I am at last become the self-same Rudra; and it is because of the capriciousness of my erratic mind in this changeful world.
22. Thus have I wandered through the variegated paths of life, in this wilderness of the world; and I have roamed in many aerial regions, as if I trod on solid and substantial ground.
23. In some one of my several births under the name of Jiváta, and in another I became a great and respectable Bráhman, I became quite another person again, and then found myself as a ruler and lord of the earth. (So every man thinks and acts himself, now as one person and in the stage of his life. Shakespeare).
24. I had been a drake in the lotus-bush; and an elephant in the vales of Vindhya; I then became a stag in the form of my body, and fleetness of my limbs (and in the formation of mind also).
25. After I had deviated at first from my state of godliness, I was still settled in the state of a devotee with devotedness to divine knowledge; and practicing the rites befitting my position (such as listening to holy lectures, meditating on the mysteries of nature and so forth).
26. In this state I passed very many years and ages, and many a day and night and season and century, glided on imperceptibly in their courses over me. (It is said that the sedate and meditative are generally long living men, as we learn in the accounts of the ancient patriarchs, and in those of the yogis and lamas in our own times).
27. But I deviated again and again from my wonted course, and was as often subjected to new births and forms; until at last I was changed to Brahmá's vehicles of the hansa—or anser, and this was by virtue of my former good conduct and company.
28. The firm or wonted habit of a living being, must come out unobstructed by any hindrance whatsoever; and though it may be retarded in many intermediate births for even a millennium; yet it must come and lay hold on the person some time or other. (Habit is second nature, and is inbred in every being; and what is bred in the bone, must run in the blood).
29. It is by accident only, that one has the blessing of some good company in his life; and then his inborn want may be restrained for a time, but it is sure to break out with violence in the end, in utter defiance of every check and rule.
30. But he who betakes himself to good society only, and strives always for his edification in what is good and great, is able to destroy the evil propensities which are inbred in him; because the desire to be good, is what actually makes one so. (Discipline conquers nature).
31. Whatever a man is accustomed to do or think upon constantly, in this life or in the next state of his being; the same appears as a reality to him in his waking state of day dream, as unreality appears as real in the sleeping or night dream of a man. (It is the imagination that figures unrealities in divers forms both in the day as also in the night dreams of men).
32. Now the thoughts that employ our minds, appoint our bodies also to do their wished for works; and as these works are attended with some temporary good as well as evil also; it is better therefore to restrain and repress the rise of those tumultuous thoughts, than cherish them for our pleasure or pain.
33. It is only the thought in our minds, that makes us to take our bodies for ourselves or souls; and that stretches wide this world of unrealities, as the incased seed sprouts forth and spreads itself into a bush. (The thought bears the world in it, as the will brings it to view).
34. The world is but the thought in sight or a visible form of their visible thought, and nothing more in reality besides this phantasm of it, and an illusion of our sight.
35. The illusive appearance of the world, presents itself to our sight, like the variegated hues of the sky, it is therefore by our ignoring of it, that we may be enabled to wipe off those tinges from our minds.
36. It is an unreal appearance, displayed by the supreme Essence (of God or His intelligence); as a real existence at his pleasure only, and can not therefore do any harm to any body.
37. I rise now and then to look into all these varieties in nature, for the sake of my pleasure and curiosity; but I have the true light of reason in me, whereby I discern the one unity quite apart from all varieties.
38. After all these recapitulations, the incarnate Rudra returned to his former state, and reflected on this condition of the mendicant, whose body was now lying as a dead corpse on the barren ground.