The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 3 (of 4), Part 2 (of 2)

by Valmiki

21. The bodies that are produced by our long desire, continue for a longer time, and are subjected to a longer series of miseries in this world. (So it is said, a "long life is a long term of woes and calamities").

22. The body is a creature of our fancy, and is neither a reality or unreality in itself; and yet are the ignorant people fondly attached to it, for the prolongation of their misery only.

23. As the destruction of the portrait of a man, does no harm to his person; and as the loss of a fancied city is no loss to the city, so the loss of the much desired body of any one, is no loss to his personality in any wise.

24. Again as the dis-appearance of the secondary moon (halo), is no deprivation of the primary satellite (moon), and as the evanescence of the visionary world, is no annihilation of the external world. (So there is no loss of the soul, as the loss of the shadow, is no loss of the substance).

25. As the dis-appearance of water in the sunny banks of rivers, is no deprivation of the river's water; so the creations of fancy which are not negative in their nature, cannot be destructive of what is positive, nor any damage done to the machine of the body, can ever injure the dis-embodied soul.

26. The body is a piece of work wrought by the architect of the mind, in its dreaming somnambulation over the sleeping world; wherefore its decoration or disfigurement, is of no essential advantage or dis-advantage to inward soul.

27. There is no end of the Intellect in its extent, nor any motion of the soul from its place; there is no change in the Divine spirit of Brahma, nor do any of these decay with the decline of the body.

28. As the inner and smaller wheel, makes the outer and larger wheel to turn about it, so the inner annulus of the mind, sees in its delirium spheres over spheres revolving in empty air.

29. The mind views by its primitive and causeless error, the constant rotation of bodies both in the inside and out side of it; and some as moving forward and others as falling down, and many as dropped below.