CHAPTER LXXXXI. Description of Igneous, Luminous and Brilliant Objects in Nature.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
40. Sometimes I was borne on high by the burning fire, with its teeth of the sparks and its flaming arms, and its flying fumes resembling the dishevelled hairs on its head.
41. The conflagration burnt down the straw-built houses before it, and fed upon the animal bodies on its way; and consumed the eight kinds of wood, that are ordained in sacrificial rites.
42. I saw the sparks of fire, emitted by the strokes of hammer, from the red hot iron of blacksmiths, were rising and flying about like golden brickbats, to hit the hammerer.
43. In another place I saw the whole universe, lying invisible for ages in the womb of stony mundane egg.
44. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, how you felt yourself in that state of confinement in the stone; and whether it was a state of pleasure or pain, to you and the rest of beings.
45. Vasishtha replied:—As when a man falls into sleep with the dulness of his senses, and has yet his airy intellect fully awake in him; so was that outward insensibility filled with intellectual sensibility. (So a man assimilating himself to Brahma, is full of his internal light and felicity).
46. The great Brahma awakens the soul, when the body lies as insensible as the dull earth; so the sleeping man remaining in his torpid state, has his internal soul full with the divine spirit (which fills it with true intellectual delight sachchidánanda).
47. Because the earthly or corporeal body of man, is verily a falsity and has no reality in it; it appears as visual phantom to the sight of the spectator, but in reality it is one with unchanged spirit of God.
48. Knowing this certain truth, whoso views these all as an undivided whole; sees the quintessence as one essence, and the subjective and the objective as the same (Lit.:—He does not fall into the blunder of the viewer and the view).
49. I then having assimilated myself to the pure spirit of Brahma, viewed all things in and as Brahma, because there is none beside Brahma, that is or can be or do anything from naught.
50. When I viewed all these visibles as manifestation of the self-same Brahma, then I left myself also situated in the state of divinity of Brahma himself.
51. When on the other hand, I reflected myself as combined with the pentuple material elements; I found myself reduced to my dull nature, and was incapable of my intellectual operation of excogitation, and the conception of my higher nature.
52. I thought myself as asleep, notwithstanding my power of intellection (which lay dormant in me); and being thus overtaken by the conception of my sleepy insensibility, how could I cogitate of anything otherwise; which is of a transcendental nature.
53. He whose soul is awakened by knowledge, loses the sense of his corporeal body, and raises himself to his átiváhika or spiritual form, by means of his purer understanding.
54. A man having his sentient and spiritual body, either in the form of a minute particle or larger size as one may wish, remains perfectly liberated from the fetters of his body and his bondage in this world.
55. With his intelligent and spiritual body, a man is enabled to enter into the impenetrable heart of a hard stone, or to rise to heaven above or descend to the regions below.
56. Hence, O Ráma, I having then that intelligent and subtile body of mine, did all that I told you, with my essence of infinite understanding.
57. In my entrance into the hard stone, and my passages up and down the high heaven and the nether world, I experienced no difficulty from any side.
58. With my subtile and intelligent body, I passed every where, and felt everything, as I used to do with material body.
59. One going of his own accord in one direction, and wishing to go in another, immediately finds himself even then and there, by means of his spiritual body.
60. Know this spiritual and subtile body, to be no other than your understanding only; and now you can well perceive yourself to be of that imperishable form, by means of your intelligence also.
61. Thinking one’s self as the vacuous Intellect, abiding in the sun and all visible objects; the spiritualist comes to know the existence of his self only, and all else that is beside himself as nothing.
62. But how is it possible to view the visible world as inexistent, to which it is answered that it appears as real as the unreal dream to the sleeping person, but vanishes into nothing upon his waking (scholium). Reliance in the inexistent world, is as the belief of the ignorant man in falsehoods; and this reliance is confirmed by habit, although it is not relied upon by others that know the truth.
63. But this reliance is as vain as the vanity of our desires, and the falsity of our aerial castle building; all which are as false as the marks of waves, left on the sea sands; or as the marking of anything with a charcoal, which is neither lasting nor perceptible to any body.
64. We see the woodlands, blooming with full blown flowers and blossoms; but these sights are as deluding, as the sparks of fire, presenting the appearance of a flower garden in fire works.
65. These pyrotechnical works, which are prepared with so much labour; burst on a sudden at the slight touch of fire, and then they are blown away as soon, as the prosperity of sharpers (which is transient).
66. Ráma, I beheld the flourish of the world, to be as false and fleeting, as the appearance of light in the particles of dust; all these appearing as so many things of themselves, are in fact no other than the appearances of hills and cities, in the vacuity of the mind in our dreams at sleep.