DESCRIPTION OF IGNEOUS, LUMINOUS AND BRILLIANT
OBJECTS IN NATURE.
Argument:—Vasishtha’s Identity of his soul with light, and his
observation of it in all lightsome substances.
Vasishtha related:—I then believed myself as identical with light, and
beheld its various aspects in the luminous bodies of the sun and moon,
in the planets and stars, and in fire and all shining objects.
2. This light has by its own excellence, and it becomes the light of the
universe; it is as brilliant as the mighty monarch, before whose all
surveying sight, the thievish darkness of night flies at a distance.
3. This light like a good prince, takes upon it the likeness of lamps,
and reigns in the hearts of families and houses in a thousand shapes (of
chandeliers &c.), to drive off the thievish night, and restore the
properties of all before their sight.
4. Being glad to lighten all peoples (worlds), it enkindles the orbs of
the sun, moon and stars; who with their rays and beams, dispel afar the
shade of night from the face of the skies.
5. It impoverishes the darkness, that bereaves all beings from their
view of the beauties of nature, and dispenses the useful light, which
brings all to the sight of the visibles.
6. It employs the axe at the root of the nigrescent arbour of night, and
adds a purity and price to all things; it is this that gives value to
all metals minerals, and makes them so dear to mankind.
7. It shows to view all sorts of colours, as white, red, black and
others. It is light that is the cause of colours as the parent is the
cause of the progeny.
8. This light is in great favour, with every one upon this earth;
wherefore it is protected with great fondness in all houses, as they
foster their children in them, by means of earthen walls (in order to
preserve them from inclement winds).
9. I beheld a slight light, even in the darkness of the infernal region
(_i.e._ the dismal hell fire); and I saw it partly in the particles of
dust, which compose all bodies on the surface of the earth.
10. I saw light, which is the first and best of the works of God, to be
eternally present in the abodes of the celestial; and observed it as the
lamp of the mansion of this world, which was the great deep of waters
and darkness before. (“And darkness reigned over the face of the deep”).
11. Light is the mirror of the celestial nymphs of all the quarters of
heaven (_i.e._ it shows and points out the face of the heavens to us);
it scatters like the winds the dust of frost from before the face of
night, it is the essence of the luminous bodies of the sun, moon and
fire, and the cause of the red and bright hue of the face of heaven.
12. It discloses the cornfields to day-light, and ripens their corn, by
dispelling darkness from the face of the earth. It washes also the
glassy bowl of heaven, and glitters in the dewy waters upon its face.
13. It is by reason of its giving existence to, and bringing to view all
things in the world, it is said to be the younger brother, of the
transcendent light of divine Intellect. (The gross light is the
reflexion of holy light).
14. It is the light of the sun, which is the reviver of the lotus bed of
the actions of mortals; and which is the life of living beings on earth;
it is the source of our sight of the forms of all things, as the
intellect is that of all our thoughts and perceptions.
15. Light decorates the face of the sky, with numberless gems of shining
stars; and it is the solar light that makes the divisions of days,
months, years and seasons in the course of time, and makes them appear
as the passing waves in the ocean of eternity.
16. This immense universe bears the appearance of the boundless ocean,
wherein the sun and moon are revolving as the rolling waves, over the
scum of this muddy earth.
17. Light is the brilliancy of gold, and the colour of all metals; it is
the glitter of glass and gems, the flash of lightnings, and the vigour
of men in general.
18. It is moon shine in the nocturnal orb, and the glittering of
glancing eye lids; it is the brightness of a smiling countenance, and
the sweetness of tender and affectionate looks.
19. It gives significancy to the gestures, of the face, arms, eyes and
frownings of the eye-brows; and it adds a blush to maiden faces, from
the sense of their invincibleness. (Laughter spring from pride).
20. The heat of this light, makes the mighty to spurn the world as a
straw, and break the head of the enemy with a slap; and strike the heart
of the lion with awe.
21. It is this heat which makes the hardy and bold combatants, engage in
mutual fighting with drawn and jangling swords; and clad in armours
clanking on their bodies.
22. It gives the gods their antagonism against the demons, and makes the
demoniac races also antagonistic to the gods; it gives vigour to all
beings, and causes the growth of the vegetable kingdom.
23. All these appeared to me as the mirage in a desert, and I beheld
them as phantasms in my mind; and this scene of the world was situated
in the womb of vacuum, and I beheld these sceneries, O bright eyed Ráma,
all these sceneries seem to resemble the appearances of a phantasmagoria
to me.
24. I then beheld the glorious sun above, stretching his golden rays to
all the ten sides of the universe, and himself flying as the phoenix in
the sky; and I saw also this speck of the earth, resembling a villa
beset by the walls of its mountains.
25. The sun turned about and lent his beams to the moon, and to the
submarine fire beneath the dark blue ocean; and stood himself as the
great lamp of the world on the stand of the meridian, to give the light
of the day.
26. I saw the moon rising as the face of the sky, with a lake of cooling
and sweet nectar in it; the moonlight appearing as the soft and sweet
smile of the sable goddess of night, and as the glow of the nightly
stars.
27. The moon is the comparison of all beautiful objects in the world,
and is the most beloved object at night, of females, and of the blue
lotus, and companion of the vesper or evening star.
28. I beheld the twinkling stars likening to the clusters of flowers in
the arbour of the skies, and delighting the eyes and faces (of their
spectator); and they appeared to me as flocks of butterflies, flying in
the fair field of the firmament.
29. I saw many shining gems washed away by the waters, and tossed about
by the waving arms of the ocean;[3]and I saw many jewels also in the
hands of jewellers, and balanced by them in their scales.
30. I looked into the submarine fire lying latent in the sea, and the
eddies whirling the silvery shrimps in the whirlpools, I saw the golden
rays of the sun, shining as filaments of flowers upon the waters, and I
saw also the lightnings flashing in the midst of clouds. (There is a
play upon the words _abdhi_ and _abda_ which mean the sea, the eddy, the
marine fire, the cloud &c.).
31. I witnessed the auspicious sacrificial fire, blazing with ineffable
light; and marked its burning flame, splitting and cracking the sacred
wood, with a crackling and clattering noise.
32. I saw the lustre of gold and other metals and minerals, and I found
also how they are reduced to ashes by the act of calcination, like
learned men overpowered by the clownish ignorant.
33. I observed the brightness of pearls, which gave them a place on the
breasts of women in the form of necklaces; as also on the necks and
chests of men and giants, and of Gandharvas and chiefs of men.
34. I beheld the firefly, with which the beauties adorn their fore heads
with bright spots; but which are trod upon on the way by ignorant
passers as worthless; hence the value of things depends on their
situation and not real worth.
35. I saw the flickering lightning in the unmoving cloud, and the fickle
shrimps skimming upon the waters of the calm ocean; I heard also the
hoarse noise of whirlpools in the quiet and unsounding main, and marked
how restlessness consorted with restive and sedate.
36. Some times I saw the soft petals of flowers, were used as lamps to
light the bridal beds in the inner apartments.
37. Being then exhausted as the extinguished lamp, I became as dark as
collyrium; and slept silently in my own cell, like a tortoise with its
contracted limbs.
38. Being tired with my travel throughout the universe, at the kalpánta
end of the world; I remained fixed amidst the dark clouds of heaven, as
the elephant of Rudra abides there in company with (his lightning).
39. At the end when the worlds were dissolved, and the waters were
absorbed by the submarine fires; I kept myself dancing in the etherial
space, which devoid of its waters.
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.