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).
39. This world is said to be a creation of the thoughts of men, and
appears to sight from habitual reflection of it, in the same manner as
the sights in a dream, appear to the mind of a man in the day time.
40. The temporary world appears to be as lasting, as the river which
appears in the sky under the burning sunshine. (Though in fact both of
them are equally evanescent).
41. This inexistent earth also appears as existent in our cogitation,
as there appears bundles of peacock's feathers in the sky to the
vitiated or purblind eye.
42. It is only the vitiated understanding that dwells upon the
beauties of creation, as the vitiated eye sight looks upon the various
tinges in the sky. But to the clear sighted understanding the one is as
evanescent, as the other is to the clear sighted eye.
43. The sharp sighted man is never led away by the display of worldly
grandeur, as even the most timid man is never afraid of a tiger in his
imagination.
43a. This great show of worldly grandeur can never mislead the
penetrating sight of the wise, as a monstrous creature of imagination
cannot terrify even the most timid. (Because the one knows the falsity
of the show as well as the other does that of imaginary monster).
44. The wise man is never afraid of his imaginary world, which he knows
to be the production of his own mind, from its nature of self-evolution
_bahir mukhata_. (The mind is naturally possessed of both its power
of self involution in the interior soul, as also that of its evolving
itself in the form of the exterior world).
45. He that has stood in the path of this world, needs not fear for any
thing in it, and he that is afraid of it for fear of falling into its
errors, should learn to purify his understanding from all its dross and
impurity. (Stretch your mind, and the world will appear to light, curb
it in yourself and every thing will disappear from view).
46. Know Ráma, that the soul is free from the erroneous conception of
the world, and from the errors which pervade all over it. Look well
into these things, and you will have a nature as pure as your inward
soul.
47. The soul is not soiled by impurity, as a pure gold is not spoiled
by dirt; and though it may sometimes appear to be tarnished as copper,
yet it soon resumes its colour after its dirt is cleansed or burnt
away. Thus the world being a reflexion of the omnipresent Brahma, is
neither an entity nor a nonentity of its own nature.
48. Thus the abandonment of all other thoughts, besides that of the
universal soul or Brahma, is called the true discernment of the mind;
which derives the thoughts of life and death, heaven and hell into
nothing, and proves all knowledge to be ignorance alone.
49. The knowledge of the nullity of everything, except its being a
reflexion of the Intellect, is called the individuality and right
discernment of the mind, which removes the thought of the separate and
independent existence of the ego and tu, and also of this world and its
ten sides: (_i.e._ of the subjective as well as the objective).
50. That all things are but reflexions of the soul, is what is known
as the true and right discernment of the mind; and is derived from its
observation of true nature of things in this real and unreal world.
(The real is the spiritualistic view of the world, and the unreal is
illusory phenomenal appearance).
51. That nothing rises or sets or appears or disappears in this world,
is what the mind perceives by its right discernment of things; and by
its investigation into the true and apparent natures of all. (In their
true light all things are in a state of continued revolution, and
nothing rises anew to view or disappears into nothing).
52. Right discernment gives the mind its peace and tranquillity, and
its freedom from all desires; and makes it indifferent to joy and
grief, and callous to all praise and censure.
53. The mind comes to find this truth as the cooling balsam of the
heart, that we are all doomed to die one day or other, with all our
friends and relations in this world of mortality.
54. Why therefore should we lament at the demise of our friends, when
it is certain that we must die one day sooner or later (and without the
certainty of when or where).
55. Thus when we are destined to die ourselves also, without having any
power in us to prevent the same; why then should we be sorry for others
when we can never prevent also.
56. It is certain that any one who has come to be born herein, must
have some state and property for his supportance here; but what is the
cause of rejoicing in it (when neither our lives nor their means are
lasting for ever).
57. All men dealing in worldly affairs, gain wealth with toil and pain
for their trouble and danger only; what is the reason therefore for
pining at its want, or repining at its loss.
58. These spheres of worlds enlarge, expand and rise to our view, like
bubbles of water in the sea which swell and float and shine for a time,
and then burst and subside in the water of eternity.
59. The nature of reality (the entity of Brahma), is real at all times,
and the condition of the unreal world is unsubstantial for ever, and
can never be otherwise or real, though it may? appear as such for a
time. Why then sorrow for what is nil and unreal.
60. I am not of this body nor was I in it, nor shall I remain in
it; nor is it any thing, even at present, except a picture of the
imagination. Why then lament at its loss.
61. If I am something else beside this body, that is a reflexion of the
pure intellect; then tell me of what avail are these states of reality
and unreality to me, and wherefore shall I rejoice or regret.
62. The Sage who is fully conscious of the certainty of this truth in
himself, does not feel any rise or fall of his spirits at his life or
death, nor doth he rejoice or wail at either in having or losing his
life.
63. Because he gains after the loss of his gross body, his residence
in the transcendental state of Brahma or spiritual existence; as the
little bird _tittera_ builds its nest of tender blades, after its
grassy habitation is broken down or blown away.
64. Therefore we should never rely in our frail and fragile bodies, but
bind our souls to the firm rock of Brahma by the strong rope of our
faith, as they bind a bull to the post with a strong cord.
65. Having thus ascertained the certitude of this truth, rely thy faith
on the reality of thy spiritual essence, and by giving up thy reliance
on thy frail body, manage thyself with indifference in this unreal
world.
66. Adhere to what is thy duty here, and avoid whatever is prohibited
to thee; and thus proceed in thy course with an even tenor of thy
mind, without minding at all about thy reliance on the one and
miscreance of the other.
67. He gets a cool composure of his mind; like the coolness at the
close of a hot summer-day, who shuts out from his view the reflexions
of all worldly objects.
68. Look on this universe, O sinless Ráma, as one common display of
Divine light, like the appearance of day light which is common to all;
it is the mind which taints it with various forms, as the sun-beams are
reflected in sundry piece by objects.
69. Therefore forsake all reflexions, and be without any impression
in thy mind, be of the form of pure intellectual light, which passes
through all without being contaminated by any.
70. You will be quite stainless by your dismissal of all taints and
appearances from your mind, and by your thinking yourself as nothing
and having no true enjoyment in this world.
71. That these phenomena are nothing in reality, but they show
themselves unto us for our delusion only; and that yourself also are
nothing will appear to you, by your thinking the whole as a display of
the Divine Intellect.
72. Again the thought that these phenomena are not false, nor do they
lead to our illusion since they are the manifestation of the supreme
Intellect, is also very true and leads to your consummation.
73. It is well Ráma, and for your good also if you know either of
these; because both of these views will tend equally to your felicity.
74. Conduct yourself in this manner, O blessed Ráma! and lessen
gradually all your affection and dislike to this world and all worldly
things. (_i.e._ Neither love nor hate aught at any time).
75. Whatever there exists in this earth, sky and heaven, is all
obtainable by you, by means of the relinquishment of your eager desire
and hatred.
76. Whatever a man endeavours to do, with his mind freed from his
fondness for or hatred to it, the same comes shortly, to take place,
contrary to the attempts of the ignorant: (whose excessive desire and
dislike turn to their disadvantage).
77. No good quality can have its abode in the heart that is troubled by
the waves of faults; as no stag will set its foot on the ground, heated
by burning sands and wild fires.
78. What acquisitions does he not make, in whose heart there grows the
kalpa tree of desire, and which is not infested by the snakes of ardent
desire or dislike (the two cankers of human breast).
79. Those men who are wise and discreet, learned and attentive to their
duties, and at the same time influenced by the feelings of love and
hatred, are no better than jackals (or jack asses) in human shape, and
are accursed with all their qualifications.
80. Look at the effects of these passions in men, who repine both at
the use of their wealth by others, as also in leaving their hard earned
money behind them. (This proceeds from excessive love of wealth on
the one hand, and hatred of family and heirs on the other as is said
[Sanskrit: putrádapi ghanabhajam bháti], the monied miser, dislikes
even his son).
81. All our riches, relatives and friends, are as transitory as the
passing winds: why then should a wise man rejoice or repine at their
gain or loss.
82. All our gains and wants and enjoyments in life, are mere illusion
or máyá, which is spread as a net by Divine power, all over the works
of creation, and entraps all the worldlings in it.
83. There is no wealth, nor any person, that is real or lasting to
any one in this temporary world; it is all frail and fleeting, and
stretched out as a false magic show to sight.
84. What wise man is there that will place his attachment on anything,
which is an unreality both in its beginning and end, and is quite
unsteady in the midst. No one has any faith in the arbour of his
imagination or aerial castle.
85. As one fancies he sees a fairy in a passing cloud, and is pleased
with the sight of what he can never enjoy, but passes from his view to
the sight of distant peoples; so is this passing world, which passes
from the sight of some to that of others, without its being fully
enjoyed or long retained in the possession of any one. (The passing
world passes from hand to hand, without its standing still at any one's
command).
86. The bustle of these fleeting bodies in the world, resembles the
commotion of an aerial castle, and the appearance of a city in an
evanescent dream and fancy.
87. I see the world as a city in my protracted dream, with all its
movables and immovable things, lying as quiet and still as in profound
sleep.
88. Ráma, you are wandering in this world, as one rolling in his bed
of indolence, and lulled to the long sleep of ignorance; which lends
you from one error to another, as if dragged by a chain of continuous
dreaming.
89. Now Ráma, break off your long chain of indolent ignorance, forsake
the idol of your errors, and lay hold on the inestimable gem of your
spiritual and divine knowledge.
90. Return to your right understanding, and behold your soul in its
clear light as a manifestation of the unchangeable luminary of the
Intellect; in the same manner as the unfolding lotus beholds the rising
sun.
91. I exhort you repeatedly, O Ráma! to wake from your drowsiness,
and by remaining ever wakeful to your spiritual concerns; see the
undecaying and undeclining sun of your soul at all times.
92. I have roused you from your indolent repose, and awakened you to
the light of your understanding, by the cooling breeze of spiritual
knowledge, and the refreshing showers of my elegant diction.
93. Delay not Ráma, to enlighten your understanding even now, and
attain your highest wisdom in the knowledge of the supreme being, to
come to the light of truth and shun the errors of the delusive world.
94. You will not be subject to any more birth or pain, nor will you be
exposed to any error or evil, if you will but remain steady in your
soul, by forsaking all your worldly desires.
95. Remain steadfast, O high minded Ráma, in your trust in the tranquil
and all soul of Brahma, for attainment of the purity and holiness of
your own soul, and you will thereby be freed from the snare of your
earthly desires, and get a clear sight of that true reality, wherein
you will rest in perfect security, as were in profound sleep.