CHAPTER XXVIII.
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Valmiki and Mitra, Viharilala
Lecture on Theopathy or Spiritual Meditation.
Argument.—Learning from examples and parables. Falsity of phenomenal and reliance in the noumenal.
VASISHTHA said:—I have thus far related to you, O sinless Ráma! the narrative of Bhusunda; who had passed over the perilous sea of delusion, by means of his intelligence and wisdom.
2. Keeping this instance in view, and following his practice of pránáyáma or regulation of breath; you will also, O mighty armed Ráma! pass over the wide ocean of this hazardous ocean.
3. As Bhusunda has obtained the obtainable one, by means of his knowledge and by virtue of his continued practice of yoga; so do you strive to gain the same by imitation of his example.
4. Men of uninfatuated understanding may attain the stability of Bhusunda, and their reliance in the transcendental truth like him by their attending to the practice of pránáyáma or restraining of their breath.
5. Thus you have heard me relate to you many things, relating to true knowledge; it now depends on your own understanding to do as you may like to choose for yourself. (Either to betake yourself to spiritual knowledge or the practice of pránáyáma or either as the gloss explains it, either to esoteric contemplation yoga or exoteric adoration upasana).
6. Ráma replied:—you sir, that are the luminous sun of spiritual light on earth, have dispelled the thick gloom of unspiritual knowledge from my mind at once (by transcendental light of your holy lectures).
7. I am fully awake to and joyous in my divine knowledge, and have entered into my state of spirituality; I have known the knowable, and am seated in my divine state like yourself.
8. O the wondrous memoir of Bhusunda that you have narrated! It fills me with admiration, and is fraught with the best instruction. (Lit. it is instructive of the highest wisdom).
9. In the account that you have given of Bhusunda, you have said that the body is the abode of the soul, and is composed of flesh and blood, and of the inner bones and outer skin (as its materials and plaster).
10. Please tell me sir, who made this fabric and how it came to be formed; how it is made to last, and who abides therein.
11. Vasishtha answered: Listen now Ráma, to what I will relate to you for the instruction of the supreme knowledge, as also for removal of the evils which have taken root instead of true knowledge.
12. This dwelling of the body, Ráma! which has the bones for its posts, and the blood and flesh for its mortar, and the nine holes for so many windows, is built by no one: (but is formed of itself).
13. It is a mere reflection, and reflects itself so to our vision; as the appearance of two moons in the sky by illusion, is both real as well as unreal. (This vedantic doctrine is opposed to the popular faith of the creatorship of God).
14. It may be right to speak of two moons from their double appearance to our sight, but in reality there is but one moon and the other its reflection. (So are all phenomenal bodies but reflections of the noumenal).
15. The belief of the existence of body makes it a reality, the unreal seems as real, and therefore it is said to be both real and unreal at the same time. (The perception is real but the object of perception an unreality. Just so the perception of a snake in the rope may be true, though the snake in the rope is quite untrue).
16. Any thing seen in a dream is true as a dream, and appears to be so in the state of dreaming, but afterwards it proves to be untrue, so a bubble of water is true as a bubble, which comes to be known afterwards to be false in reality. (So all things appearing to be true to sight, vanish into nothing when they are judged aright, and even a judge may deem a thing as just, which upon further and right investigation is known as unjust).
17. The body seems to be substantiality in the doing of bodily actions, but it proves otherwise when we view the essentiality of the spirit only; so the reflection of the sun on the sandy desert, makes the mirage appear as water, whose reality proves to be unreal the next moment: (so it is of the body).
18. The body existing as a reflexion disappears the next moment. It is no more than a reflexion, and so it reflects itself.
19. It is your error to think that you are the material body which is made of flesh and bones. It is the inward thought of your mind that is situated in the body, and makes you to think yourself as so and so and such a one. (The reminiscence of the mind of its former body, causes to think itself as an embodied being, in all its repeated transmigrations. Gloss).
20. Forsake therefore the body that you build for yourself at your own will, and be not like them, who while they are asleep on their pleasant beds, deport themselves to various countries with their dreaming bodies: (which are all false and unreal).
21. See, O Ráma! how you deport yourself to the kingdom of heaven even in your waking state, in the fanciful reverie of your mind; say then where is your body situated. (It neither accompanies the mind to heaven, nor is it on earth being unperceived and unaccompanied by the mind).
22. Say Ráma, where is your body situated, when your mind wanders on the Meru in your dream, and when you dream to ramble with your body about the skirts of this earth.
23. Think Ráma, how you seem to saunter about the rich domains (of the gods) in the fancied kingdom of your mind, and tell me whether you are then and there accompanied with your body, or is it left behind.
24. Tell me, where is that body of yours situated; when you think of doing many of your bodily and worldly acts without your body, in the fancied realm of your mind.
25. Tell me, O strong armed Ráma! where are those members of your body situated; with which you think to coquette and caress your loving courtezans in the court of your painful mind.
26. Where is that body of yours, with which you seem to enjoy anything; the enjoyment belongs to the mind and not to the body, and both of them are real as well as unreal, owing to their presence at one time and absence at another.
27. The body and the mind are known to be present with coeval with their actions, and they participate with one another in their mutual acts (without which they are said to be inexistent). Therefore it is erroneous to say that, I am this body and am situated here, and these things are mine, all which are illusory and caused by illusion. (Egoism and meity are illusive ideas).
28. All this is the manifestation of the will or energy of the mind, and you must know it either as a long dream or lengthened fallacy of the mind.
29. Know this world, O son of Raghu's race, to be a display of the vast kingdom of your imagination, and will vanish into nothing, when you will come to your good understanding by the grace of your God.
30. You will then see the whole as clearly as in the light of the rising sun, and know this world to be like a creation of your dream or volition. (i.e. as you wish to have a thing for yourself).
31. So is this world a display of the will of the lotus-born Brahmá, as I have said before in length in the book of creation.
32. There rises of itself a willful creation within the mind, and out of its own accord as if it were so ordained by destiny; and the mind being fully possest of the great variety of forms, is lost at last into the error of taking them for true.
33. It is a creation of the will only and a display of it in the same manner, as the fancied chimera of Brahmanship had possessed the minds of the sons of Indu. (See the narrative of Indu's sons in the upasama Prakarana).
34. After the soul has passed from its former frame, it receives the same form which it has in view before it after the fancy of the mind, which is either of the kind, to which it has been long used and accustomed, or what it fondly longs in the mind.
35. The body shows itself in the form as it is shaped by the prior acts of a person, and is also convertible to the intellect by the manly exertions of some: (whose corporeal bodies may become intellectual beings, as some persons have mere brutal, while others are highly intellectual).
36. He that thinks himself as another, is transformed to the nature of that air (as it is the pattern that moulds a thing after its own model): and the thought that you are this or that, and have this thing or others for yourself, is what actually makes you so in this world. (The metamorphose of the natures and forms of things and persons to other kinds in Ovid, were all owing to their tendencies and inclinations towards them).
37. Whatever is thought upon keenly and firmly, the same comes to take place accordingly; and whatever is thought of with intense and great force of thought, the same must occur in a short time: (so are all things done to which we set our minds).
38. We see every day the objects of our desire, presenting their fair forms to our view, like the comely faces of our beloved ones present before our sight, in the same manner as the sights in a dream and distant objects, are recalled to the mind of men; with their closed and half-shut eyes. (This is the doctrine of reminiscence which reproduces our long remembered bodies to us).