CHAPTER LVII. Phenomena of Dreaming.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
Argument. Unsubstantiality of the aerial body of Lílá and the Spiritual bodies of Yogis.
Vasishtha continued:—They beheld there the younger Lílá of Vidúratha, who had arrived there after her demise, and before the death of that king.
2. She was in her former habit and mode with the same body, and the same tone and tenor of her mind; she was also as beautiful in all her features, as in her former graceful form and figure when living.
3. She was the same in every part of her body, and wore the same apparel as before. She had the very ornaments on her person, with the difference that it was sitting quietly in the same place, and not moving about as before.
4. She kept flapping her pretty fan (chouri), over the corpse of the king; and was gracing the ground below, like the rising moon brightening the skies above.
5. She sat quiet, reclining her moonlike face on the palm of her left hand; and decorated with shining gems, she appeared as a bed of flowers, with new-blown blossoms on it.
6. With the glances of her beautiful eyes, she shed showers of flowers on all sides; and the brightness of her person, beamed with the beams of the etherial moon.
7. She seemed to have approached to the lord of men, like the goddess Lakshmí, appearing before the god Vishnu; and with the heaps of flowers before her, she seemed as Flora or the vernal season in person.
8. Her eyes were fixed on the countenance of her husband, as if she was pondering his future well-being; and there was a melancholy like that of the waning moon, spread over her face, to think of his present woeful state.
9. They beheld the damsel, who however had no sight of them; because their trust was in truth, and saw everything clearly; while her views being otherwise, she could not discern their spiritual forms.
10. Ráma said:—You have said Sir, that the former Lílá had repaired there in her reverie and spiritual form, by the favour of the goddess of wisdom.
11. How do you now describe her as having a body, which I want to know how and whence it came to her.
12. Vasishtha replied:—What is this body of Lílá, Ráma! It is no more true than a false imagination of her gross spirit, like that of water in the mirage. (It is the conception of one’s self as so and so, that impresses him with that belief also).
13. It is the spirit alone that fills the world, and all bodies are creations of the fancy. This spirit is the Intellect of God, and full of felicity in itself.
14. The same understanding which Lílá had of herself to her end, accompanied her to her future state; and the same notion of her body followed her there, though it was reduced to dust, as the ice is dissolved into water.
15. The spiritual bodies also, are sometimes liable to fall into error, and think themselves as corporeal bodies, as we mistake a rope for the serpent.
16. The belief in the materiality of any body, as composed of the earth and other elements, is as false as it is to believe the hares to have horns on their heads.
17. Whoso thinks himself to have become a stag in his dream, has no need of seeking another stag for comparing himself with it. (i.e. Men are actuated by their own opinion of themselves).
18. An untruth appears as truth at one time, and disappears at another; as the error of a snake in a rope, vanishes upon the knowledge of its falsehood.
19. So the knowledge of the reality of all things, in the minds of the un-enlightened; is dispersed upon conviction of their un-reality in the minds of the enlightened.
20. But the ignorant, that have a belief in the reality of this world of dreams, believe also in the transmigration of the animal soul, like the revolution of the globe on its own axis.
21. Ráma asked:—If the bodies of Yogis be of a spiritual nature, how is it that they are seen to walk about in the sights of men?
22. Vasishtha replied:—The Yogi may take upon himself various forms, without the destruction of his former body; as the human soul may deem itself transformed to a stag or any other being in a dream, without undergoing any change in its spiritual essence. (The identity of the self is not lost under any form of the body. Locke).
23. His spiritual body is invisible to all, though it may appear as visible to their sight. It is like the particles of frost seen in sun-beams, and as the appearance of a white spot in autumnal sky (when there is no frost nor cloud in it).
24. No body can easily discern the features of a Yogi’s body, nor are they discernible by other Yogis. They are as imperceptible as the features of a bird flying in the air.
25. It is from the error of judgment, that men think some Yogis to be dead and others to be living; but their spiritual bodies are never subject to death or common sight.
26. The embodied soul is subject to errors, from which the souls of Yogis are free; because their knowledge of truth has purged the mistake of a snake in the rope, from their souls.
27. What is this body and whence it is, and what of its existence or destruction? What is lasting remains forever and is freed from the ignorance it had before (and it is the soul which is ever lasting and free from error).
28. Ráma said:—Whether the embodied soul takes the spiritual form, or is it something other than this. Tell me this and remove my doubt.
29. Vasishtha said:—I have told this repeatedly to you, my good Ráma! and how is it that you do not understand it yet, that there exists only the spiritual body, and the material form is nothing?
30. It is by habit of constant meditation, that you must know your spiritual state, and subdue your sense of corporeality; and as you abstain from the latter, so you attain to the former state.
31. Then there will be an end of your sense of the gravity and solidity of objects, like the disappearance of the visions of a dreaming man, when he comes to wake.
32. The body of a Yogi becomes as light and subtile, as the evanescent appearances in a dream: (the fleeting objects of vision).
33. And as a dreaming man feels the lightness of his body, in his dreaming rambles; so the Yogi finds his solid body, as volatile as air in all places.
34. The expectation of the longlife of a master-head in his material body, is realized in the spiritual one, after the corpse has been burnt away. (Longevity consists in the longlife of the spirit and not of the body).
35. Every body must have to assume his spiritual frame afterwards; but the Yogi finds it in his life-time, by the enlightenment of his intellect.
36. As a man upon his waking from sleep, remembers his having an intellectual form in his dreaming state; so the Yogi is conscious of his spiritual body in his own intellect.
37. The notion of the corporeal body is a mere fallacy, like that of the snake in a rope; hence nothing is lost by the loss of this body, nor is anything gained by its production and regeneration.
38. Ráma said:—Now tell me Sir, what the inmates of the house thought this Lílá to be; whether they viewed her as an embodied being or a bodiless apparition appearing before them.
39. Vasishtha answered:—They took the sorrowful queen to be some friend of the king, and to have come from some place they knew not what and where.