Valmiki

“ It is better for thee, O chátaka! to pick up the blades of grass for thy food, and drink the water of the fountains, and rest in the shady plantain grove of the forest; than to dwell in the hollow cave of a withered tree in sultry heat, by thy pride of never stooping down for thy subsistence.
24. Think not, O peacock! this cloud to be a sea and the abode of sharks; but know to be a watery cloud, born of the smoke of wild fire, and of the vapours of the mountain and ascending to the sky. ”

“ The Intellect is neither born or made, nor does it ever grow or decay; it is never visible nor perceptible, nor have we any notion of it; it displays its wonders in itself, without any extraneous substance in it.
37. All that is called the phenomenal, is the brightness of the blazing gem of the great Intellect, and proceeding from the quarry of its vacuum; as the sunshine which illumines the world, issues from the orb of that luminary.
38. It is Brahma himself that shines forth as the creation, just as our sleep exhibits the visionary world in its dream ”

“ It is as the transpicuous vacuity of the intellect, exhibits itself from time to time in itself; that we see the things in our dream, as we behold them when we are awake; and so also we see the sights in our waking state, as we behold them in our dreams in sleep.
21. As the fragrance of flowers, lies hid in the invisible air; so the world lies concealed in the invisible intellect, which sees through every pore of it. ”

“ Now behold, O Ráma the almighty power of the mind, which at first made itself (or became) a living being by its breathing; and then an intelligent being, by its power of thinking; and next became the living soul, with its body; it made the three worlds, and became the prime male in the form of Brahmá; it became embodied from its aerial form, in the shape of Virát; thus it created every thing in itself of its own will, as men produce all things in their imagination, and see the cities of their fancy in dream. ”

“ The world is but a blossom of the great arbour of Brahma, or a little billow of vast ocean of Eternity; it is a sculpture on the colossal pillar of the Intellect, without being carved out or cast upon it. (It is the macrocosm moulded in the mind of God) .
9. The firmament is the ample field, filled with an infinity of worlds, appearing as our earthly abodes in the empty city of air; the mind wanders at random all over it as an infuriate elephant, with an airy empty life, as fickle and fleeting as a breath of air. ”

“ As our consciousness consists of the mere notions and ideas of things, the world must therefore be considered, as a mere ideal existence; and it appears in the sights of it and observes in the same light; as the fleeting notions of things glide over the void of the intellect. (The mind is conversant only with the ideas and not with the substance of things) .
17. Our knowledge and nescience of things, resemble the dreaming and sleeping states of the soul; and the world is same as the intellect, like the identity of the air with its breeze. ”

“ Life is but a breath of air, and overhung by the clouds of calamities, and is as frail as a drop of falling water; our enjoyments are a series of clouds interspersed by fickle and flickering lightnings; youth is fleeting and its pleasures are as the gliding waters, and the body is as transient as a moment; therefore O my child! attain thy felicity while in this world, and expect thy nirvána-extinction at the end. ”

“ The wondering women of the siddhas, behold with their astonished and uplifted faces and eyes, a large body of cloud borne away by the winds; and dubitate in their minds, whether it is a mountain peak carried away by the winds, or is it a forest of the snowy mountain flying upward in the air, or is it a column to measure the distance of the earth and sky, or a balance to weigh their weight. ”

“ The man of transcendent knowledge, and perfect peace and tranquility of his mind and soul; remains as blind to the splendours of day as the purblind owl, and as quiet as any body in the darkness of night, when the whole creation sleeps in the gloom of ignorance and unconsciousness. ”

“ Thou profound sky, that art the receptacle of the most elevated objects of nature, and containest the lofty clouds and trees and summits in thy womb; that art the recipient of the sun, moon and the aerial spirits that move about in thee; art yet inflamed by the flames of the fiery bodies that rise in thee to our great regret, notwithstanding thy greatness, which helps them to spread themselves high in heaven. ”

“ How happily doth the self-communist, rest in the depth of his inmost thoughts; who finds himself as null and void, as the infinite vacuum itself, and views the universe hovering as a dream, in a corner of that vacuity. ”

“ The limpid lake is little discernible in winter, when the keen blasts have covered it with hoar frost, and converted its blueness to white.
14. So the world appears to the wise, a vast sheet of the glory of God; and all these distinct forms of things, like waves of the sea are lost at last, into the bright element of Eternity.
15. It is by one’s own exertion, that every body should try to raise himself above the sea of error, or else he must be continually whirling in the whirlpool of blunder, like all other ignorant men. ”

“ I am an atom of the intellectual soul, and am joined with the intellectual soul of the universe; it is my sight of the supreme spirit in my meditation, that I am lost in it as a drop of water is lost in the ocean. ”

“ As a man travelling from country to country, retains his consciousness untravelled in himself; so the intellect always rests in its place in the interim, though the mind passes far and farther in an instant.
21. The world is full of the intellect, both as it is or had ever been before; and its outward sight being dependent on its ideas in the mind, gives it the form and figure as they appear unto us.
22. It is by a slight winking of its eye, that it assumes and appears in varied shapes; though the intellect never changes its form, nor alters the clearness of its vacuous sphere. ”

“ Knowing this world as the unknowable intellect itself, that is the knowledge of the material world as the immaterial mind of God; is the true light in which the cosmos is viewed by the wise, who have neither the fear of their falling into the snare of error, nor require their release from it.
19. As the dried up waters of a river, are seen no more to glide even slightly in their course; so the formless phenomenals of the world, never appear in the sight of the wise, nor leave their slightest vestiges behind in their mind. ”

“ Thus the supreme soul of Brahma, reflected itself in itself in the beginning, in the manner of an imaginary castle of his will, which was air-drawn as the visible sky in the invisible vacuum, and known as the cosmos or world subsisting in empty space.
27. As an imaginary castle is the creation of the brain or intellect, and presents to our minds only its intellectual form alone; so does the world appear to us in its intellectual form, and only as an evolution of the intellect, and without having any other cause for its appearance. ”

“ Though we have a clear conception of the world, yet it is a false sight together with that of its beholder—the living soul; it is as false as the dream of one’s own death in his sleep, and his hearing the wailing of his friend at his demise. ”

“ But the intellect is capable to return to its sensibility, from its state of vegetable torpidity in time; as the dormant soul turns to see its dreams in sleep, and then to behold the vivid outer world after its wakening. ”

“ The gurgling noise of the whirlpools, resembles the loud thunder claps of heaven; and the submarine fire is sometimes seen to burst out of the deep, like the latent flame of Agastya, that consumed the waters of the main.
39. The watery maze presents the picture of a vast wilderness, with its waves as the waving trees; the billows as its branch boughs, its surfs as blossoms, and the foams and froths as flowers.
40. The high heaving surges with the shoals of fishes skimming and skipping upon them; appear as fragments of the sky fallen below, and carried away by the gliding waters. ”

“ The world resembles a rainy river, with all its orbs appearing as the countless waves of water, with the dirty and foaming froths floating over it; and the fearful eddies and whirlpools, resembling the revolving planetary bodies.
20. The world is a vast and dreary desert, ever exhibiting the waters of mirage on its surface; while in reality but a body of dust, and filled with the ashes of dead bodies. ”

“ As there is but one endless duration, embracing the periods both of creation as well as annihilation; and as the tree comprehends all its parts, blossoms and fruit under it; so is Brahma the Soul of all. (These are but parts of one stupendous whole. Pope) .
19. As the great edifice of one, appears as an empty space to another; so as one’s sight of a castle in a mirage, appears as nothing to another; so this visible world of waking people, is the dream of sleeping persons, and rising on the ground of their imagination. ”

“ All these knowing and living liberated men, that have been liberated from the burthen of life by their knowledge of truth; are sitting silent here, and devoid of all their earthly cares, like the empty air in the infinite vacuity. ”

“ But the Intellect too has no brightness of it, except its pure lucidity; for how can a mere void as vacuum have any light, except its transparency.
23. The Intellect is the pure Intelligence, of the extended entity of Brahma; which shows in itself the panorama of the universe, what else are the visibles, and where is their view besides.
24. There is but one Omnipresent soul, who is uncaused and uncausing, and without its beginning, middle and end; He is the essence of the three worlds and their contents. ”

“ As the mind that is freed from seeing the objects of sight, and liberated from entertaining all their thoughts and desires also, flows along like a stream of limpid waters; so doth the current of the divine spirit glide on eternally, with the waves and eddies of creation and dissolution, perpetually rolling on and whirling therein. ”

“ The chasm that there is between one thought and another, is truly characteristic of the voidness of the Divine Mind, (which reposes forever, in its everlasting and tranquil intellectual felicity sachchidánanda) ; the visible world is but a wave in the ocean of Eternity, or as the mirage in a sandy desert. ”

“ I bow down to that Brahma, who is sung in the Sáma-veda, as filling all this universe, as the waters of the ocean fill the boundless deep; and whose remembrance fills our soul with ecstasy.
26. I bow down also to the sage Vasishtha, who is of the form of incarnate knowledge alone, and who is immerged in the joyous bliss of divine felicity; who is beyond all duality and sees the only One in the unity of infinite vacuity. Who is ever alike the pure and immaculate One, and witnesseth the inmost of all minds ”

“ The existence of the world, together with all our miseries in it, before the light of our liberation; as the darkness of night flies away at sunrise, and the light of the day disappears, before the gloom of night. ”

“ Vasishtha continued:—The atoms of living souls in the world, are as the particles of rays in the orb of the sun (or as the sparks of fire in a furnace) ; and as all these parts taken collectively, make the one undivided whole; so there is no division of the unity of the Deity, throughout the whole creation.
2. By attaining the transcendental knowledge of all being the One, and the One as all; every thing loses its shape and form before us, and there remains nothing whatever as a distinct being or duality. ”

“ The visionary city of the world that appears in our waking state, is but a waking dream or an apparition of our minds, and appears as the prospect of a distant city before us, that we never saw before. ”

“ Nárada added:—Our ears are purified to-day, by the hearing of what we have never heard heretofore; to be preached by Brahmá or the gods above or men below.
26. Lakshmana rejoined:—Sir, you have entirely dissipated all our inner and outer darkness also; and have shewn us the transcendent light, of the bright sun of the Divine soul.
27. Satrughna said:—I am satisfied and tranquilized, and uncomposed in the supreme soul; I am for ever full and perfect in myself, and sit quite content with my solity. ”

“ How happily does the self-communing sage, sleep in his abstract contemplation of the clear and bright heavens in himself; and who views the whole universe in the light of the clear firmament, resounding with the sound of his own breathings or snoring. ”

“ As heat is the gist of fire, and motion the marrow of the sufflated air or wind; or as the fluidity of water is the pith of the billows, and coolness the quiddity of breeze (so is consciousness the quintessence of both our waking and dreaming states) .
20. The whole universe is an unruffled chasm, and an unchanging unreality; and this seeming reality of the world, is even united with its negative sense of nihility. ”