LIKENESS OF WAKING AND SLEEPING DREAMS.
Argument:—The Identity of the Intellect by day and night, proves
the sameness of its day and night dreams.
Vasishtha continued:—The Intellect conceives the form of the world, of
its own intrinsic nature; and fancies itself in that very form, as it
were in a dream. (The subjective Intellect, sees itself in the form of
the objective world).
2. It feigns itself as asleep while it is waking, and views the world
either as a solid stone, or as a void as the empty air.
3. The world is compared to a dream, exhibiting a country embellished
with a great many cities; and as is no reality in the objects of dream,
so there is no actuality in any thing appearing in this world.
4. All the three worlds are as unreal, as the various sights in a dream;
and they are but day dreams to us even when we are awake. (The
Intelligent dream by day light, as the ignorant do in the shade of
night).
5. Whether in waking or sleeping, there is nothing named as the world
(or the turning sphere); it is but the empty void, and at best but an
air-drawn picture in the hollow of the Intellects.
6. It is a wondrous display of the Intellect in its own hollowness, like
the array of hills and mountains in the midway firmament; the sense of
the world is as a waking dream in the minds of the wise.
7. This world is nothing in its substance, nor is it any thing of the
form of Intellect; it is but a reflexion of the Intellect, and the
vacuity of the intellectual world, is but an empty nothing.
8. The triple world is only a reflexion, and like the sight of something
in dream, it is but an airy nothing; it is the empty air which becomes
thus (diversified), and is entirely bodiless, though seeming to be
embodied in our waking state.
9. It is inventive imagination of men, that is ever busy even in the
hours of sleep and dreaming; and presents to us with many creations that
were never created, and many unrealities appearing as real ones.
10. The universe appears as an extensive substantiality, implanted in
the bosom of endless vacuity; but this huge body, with all its mountains
and cities, is in reality no other than the original vacuum.
11. The howling of the sea, and clattering of clouds on mountains,
though they are so very tremendous to the waking; are yet unheard by the
sound sleeper by his side. (So the pomp of the world, is unseen by the
blind).
12. As a widow dreams her bringing forth a son in her sleep, and as a
man thinks to be ever living, by forgetfulness of his past death, and
being reborn again; so are men unmindful of their real state.
13. The real is taken for the unreal and unreal for the real; as the
sleeping man forgets his bed room, and thinks himself else where; so
every thing turns to be otherwise, as the day turns to night and the
night changes to day.
14. The unreal soon succeeds the real, as night—the want of light
succeeds the light of the day; and the impossible also becomes possible,
as when a living person sees his death, or thinks himself as dead in his
sleep.
15. The impossible becomes possible, as the supposition of the world in
the empty void; and the darkness appears as light, as the night time
seems to be daylight to the sleeping and dreaming man at night.
16. The daylight becomes the darkness of night, to one who sleeps and
dreams in the daytime (as it is to owls and bats and so to cats and
rats); the solid ground seems to be hollow, to one who dreams of his
being cast into a pit.
17. As the world appears to be a nullity in our sleep at night, and so
it is reality even in our waking state, and there is no doubt of it. (It
is doubtful that the world exists, but no doubt in its inexistence).
18. As the two suns (of yesterday and today), are the one and same with
one another, and as two men are of the same kind; so it is doubtless
that the waking and sleeping states are alike to another.
19. Ráma rejoined:—That of course cannot be admissible and reliable as
true, which is liable to objection and exception; the sight of a dream
is but momentary and falsified upon our waking; wherefore it cannot be
alike to the waking state.
20. Vasishtha replied:—The disappearance of the dreamed objects upon
waking, does not prove their falsity, nor make any difference between
the two states of dreaming and waking; because the objects which one
sees in his dream, are like those that a traveller sees in foreign
country, which are lost upon his return to his own country, and the
sights of this are soon lost upon his death. Hence both are true for the
time being, and both proved equally false and fleeting at last.
21. A man being dead, he is separated from his friends, as from those he
sees in his dream; and then the living is said to be awakened, as when a
sleeper awakes from his slumber.
22. After seeing the delusions of the states of happiness and misery,
and witnessing the rotations of days and nights, and feeling many
changes, the living soul at last departs from this world of dreams.
23. After the long sleep of life, there comes at last an end of it at
last; when the human soul becomes assured of the untruth of this world,
and that the past was a mere dream.
24. As the dreamer perceives his death in the land of his dream, so the
waking man sees his waking dream of this world, where he meets with his
death, in order to be reborn in it and to dream again.
25. The waking beholder of the world, finds himself to die in the same
manner in his living world; where he is doomed to be reborn, in order to
see the same scenes and to die again.
26. He who finds himself to die in the living world in his waking state,
comes to revisit this earth, in order to see the same dreams, which he
believed to be true in his former births. (Hence the sleeping and waking
dreams, that view the same things over again, are both alike).
27. It is the ignorant only, that believe their waking sights as true;
while it is the firm conviction of the intelligent, that all these
appearances are but day dreams at best.
28. Taking the dreaming state for waking, and the waking one for
dreaming, are but verbal distinctions implying the same thing; as life
and death are meaningless words for the two states of the soul, which
never born nor died.
29. He who views his life and death in the light of a dream, is said to
be truly waking; but the living soul that considers itself as waking and
dying, is quite the contrary of it.
30. Whoso dwells upon one dream after another, or wakes to see a waking
dream; is as one who wakes after his death, and finds his waking also to
be a dream. (All states of sleeping and waking, and of living and dying
are mere dreams).
31. Our waking and sleeping, are both as events of history to us; and
are comparable to the past and present histories of nations. (Both being
equally fleeting and fluctuating).
32. The dream-sleep seems as waking, and the waking dream is no other
than sleeping; they are both in fact but unrealities, and the mere
_réchauffé_ or reflexions of the intellectual sky.
33. We find the moving and unmoving beings on earth, and creatures
unnumbered all around us; but what do they all prove to be at last, than
the representations of the eternal ideas in the Divine Intellect.
34. As we can have no idea of a pot, without that of the clay which it
is made of; so we can have no conception of the blocks of mould and
stone, unless they were represented to our minds, from their prints in
Divine Intellect.
35. All these various things, which appear unto us both in our waking as
well as dreaming states; are no other than the ideas of blocks, which
are represented in our dreams from their archetypes in the Intellect.
36. Now say O Intelligent Ráma, what else must this Intellect be, than
that infinite and vacuous essence which acts in us, both in our dreaming
and waking states.
37. Know this Intellect to be the great Brahmá, who is everything in the
world, as if it were in the divided forms of his essence; and who is yet
of the figure of the whole world, as if he were the undivided whole
himself. (_i.e._ He is all and everything collectively and
individually).
38. As the earthen pot is not conceivable, without its formal substance
of the earth; so the intellectual Brahmá is inconceivable, without his
essence of the Intellect.
39. Again as a stone-made jar is beyond our conception, save by the idea
of its stony substance; so the spiritual God is beyond our
comprehension, besides our idea of the spirit.
40. As the water is a liquid substance, which cannot be conceived
without its fluidity; so is Brahmá conceived as composed of his _chit_
or Intellect only, without which we can have no conception of him.
41. So also we have the conception of fire by means of its heat, without
which we have no concept of it; such too is our idea of God that he is
the Intellect, and beside this we can form no idea of him.
42. We know the wind by its oscillation only, and by no other means
whatsoever; so is God thought as the Intellect or Intelligence itself;
beside which we can have no notion of him.
43. There is nothing, that can be conceived without its property; as we
can never conceive vacuum to be without its vacuity, nor have any
conception of the earth without its solidity.
44. All things are composed of the vacuous Intellect, as the pot or
painting appearing in the mind, is composed of the essence of the
intellect only; and so the hills &c., appearing in dream, are
representation of the Intellect alone. (All the material world is
composed of matter, so is the intellectual world made of intellect
only).
45. As we are conscious of the aerial sights of the hills and towns,
presented to our minds in the dream; so we know all things in our
conscious in our waking state also; so there is a quiet calm vacuity
only both in our sleep and waking, wherein our intellect alone is ever
busy to show itself in endless shapes before us.
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FOOTNOTES:
Footnote 1:
Note.—The logical term pratiyogi vyava-cheda is explained as _pratiyogi
nirúpaka vyávrithi_, which means that egoism being an abstract term,
does not point out any particular person or thing, and the ego being a
discrete word conveys no sense of a concrete noun. Moreover it is
indeterminate and signifies no determinate number, nor is it
predicated by any of the predicables which is not applicable to it.
Footnote 2:
Note.—These are named as the spheres of _ahamkára_ or egoism,
_mahatattwa_ or the great principle, and the _ananta-prakriti_ or the
hyperphysical Infinity; in the saiva and sánkhya sástras.
Footnote 3:
(Note.—Full many a gem of brightest ray serene, the dark unfathomed
caves of ocean bear. Gray.)
Footnote 4:
Note.—The sky or vacuum is the taumatra or identic with the
sound or word; and the void and its sound are both uncreated and
eternal. (_sabdho ajonitáth_ शब्दोऽयोनित्वात्). So it said:—In
the beginning was the word (sound), the word was with god
(vacuity), and the word was god (atmá), the spirit or air.