PHENOMENA OF DREAMING.
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.
40. They did not like to examine the matter, because it is the nature of
the ignorant like that of brutes, to believe what they see, without
investigation or consideration of its nature.
41. As a stone flung at random flies off from its mark, so the brutish
and ignorant folks go astray, from hitting at the true mark of a thing
placed before them.
42. As we know not what becomes of the objects of our dream, and whither
they are fled upon our waking; such is the case with our material
bodies, which are as false and fleeting as our delusive dreams.
43. Ráma said:—Tell me Sir, where the hill we dream of, is hid upon our
waking; kindly remove my doubt, as the wind disperses the autumnal
clouds.
44. Vasishtha said:—All things appearing in our dream or residing in our
desire as the hill, &c., are absorbed in our consciousness whence they
sprang; just as the motion of bodies subsides in the air which gives the
vibration.
45. As the motion of the air mixes with the fixed ether, so the dreams
and desires which we are conscious of, set in the unchanging soul whence
they have their rise.
46. Our dreams like our knowledge of all other things, are made known to
us by our consciousness, the nature of which is unknown to us as that of
the inward soul. (Consciousness and the soul are represented as two
different predicaments, and the one is not predicated of the other, as
we say—the conscious soul).
47. We do not find our dreams and desires as distinct from our
consciousness of them; they appertain to it in the same manner, as
fluidity to water and motion to the air.
48. Whatever difference may appear to exist between them, is the effect
of sheer ignorance; and this gross ignorance is the feature of this
world, known as the phantom of fancy.
49. As it is impossible to conceive two co-eternal and co-existent
causes together (as an efficient and a material cause); so it is wrong
to suppose the dream as a distinct existence or otherwise, than an act
of our consciousness.
50. There is no difference whatever between the dreaming and waking
states; in dream we see a false city appearing to view, so in waking you
behold the unreal world, standing as a reality before you.
51. Nothing can be truly existent that appears as true in a dream; this
being always true of the visions in a dream, it is likewise so of the
external phenomena, appearing to the sight in our day dreams.
52. As the hill in a dream, immediately disappears into airy nothing, so
the material world sooner or later disappears into naught by thinking on
its nihility.
53. A Yogi is seen by some to mount in the air, and by others as a dead
body lying on the ground; and this is according to one’s belief in his
spiritual or material body, that every one sees him in his own way.
54. The view of the phenomenal world as distinct from the Unity, is as
false as a sight in delusion or magical show; or a dream or delirium of
the great Illusion—_máyá_.
55. Others who are blinded by similar errors, entertain as in a dream,
the notion of their reproduction after being awakened from the
insensibility of their death like sleep; but the spiritual body of the
Yogi shines and soars upward, after passing over the mirage of the false
appearances of the world.