Cosmic mind and World – Yoga Vasishta

The book “The Supreme Yoga” is the teaching of the sage Vasistha imparted to Sri Rama. It contains true understanding about the creation of the world i.e. the world is nothing but the play of consciousness. the Yoga Vasistha is the greatest help to the spiritual awakening and direct experience of Truth. Vasistha demands direct observation of the mind, its motion, its notions, its reasoning, the assumed cause and the projected result. The book is a translation into English by Swami Venkatesananda of Divine Life Society, Rishikesh India. The article is primarily based on it.
The Yoga Vasistha repeatedly emphasizes that "the mind alone is the creator of the world." Just as a dream creates a complete, diverse world with various beings within the dreamer's mind, so too does the Universal Mind (Brahman) project the entire cosmos, with all its myriad forms and living beings. Individual minds then perceive and experience aspects of this cosmic projection, sometimes adding their own unique mental constructs.
Actually, mind is the creator of the world-appearance. Essentially, everything seen is in Pure Consciousness itself whether scene, sight or seer. The diversity is merely a play of consciousness. The diversity arises from Vasana (latent impressions or desires) and Karma (actions and their accumulated effects).
Universes are the creations of the desires that arise in the heart, like castles built in the air. Neither the world of matter nor the modes of creation are truly real; yet the living and the dead think and feel they are real. Ignorance of this truth keeps up the appearance.
 
Cosmic Mind:
Creator is none other than the cosmic mind. All objects and substances in this universe have emerged in Brahman the absolute, just as waves manifest in the ocean. Infinite numbers of diverse creatures manifest themselves in this cosmic mind and they are then known as diverse Jiva. Desire alone is thereafter the cause of all this. They are naturally good and devoted to good deeds. They reach liberation in a few lifetimes. They are full of the quality of purity and light (sattva).
 
World -
The five elements are the seed of the world; and the eternal consciousness is the seed for the elements. As is the seed, so is the fruit (world). Therefore, the world is nothing but Brahman the absolute. In every atom there are worlds within worlds.
Just as space does not have a fixed span, time does not have a fixed span either. Just as the world and its creation are mere appearances, a moment and epoch are also imaginary, not real. This world and this creation are nothing but memory, dream, distance and measures of time. Memory is like space, empty. All creation here is the effect of that emptiness – and hence the creation is empty.
Neither freedom from sorrow nor realisation of one’s real nature is possible as long as the conviction does not arise in one that the world-appearance is unreal. And this arises when one studies this scripture with diligence.
Everything in this world is dependent upon the mind, upon one’s mental attitude. On examination, the mind itself appears to be unreal. But we are bewitched by it. We seem to be running after mirage in the desert to slake our thirst.
The world appears real because:

• Our minds are conditioned by deep, beginningless Vasana that project this reality.
• It's a very consistent, long-duration, and shared "dream" of the Cosmic Mind, which makes it incredibly compelling.
• We are under the veil of fundamental ignorance (Avidya/Maya) that makes us believe in the solidity and separateness of phenomena.
• We don't typically engage in the deep, sustained inquiry necessary to see through the illusion.

 
Relative Reality of Appearances:
While the diverse creatures appear real to our senses, the Yoga Vasistha states that they are as real as a mirage or a city in the sky. They have no independent existence apart from the mind that conceives them. This doesn't mean they don't exist in our experiential reality, but that their ultimate nature is not solid or separate from consciousness. The difference between the dream world and the waking world is primarily a matter of duration and shared experience, not of fundamental reality.
 
Vasana and Karma as Seeds of Diversity:
The diversity arises from Vasana (latent impressions or desires) and Karma (actions and their accumulated effects). These deeply ingrained tendencies in the Cosmic Mind (or individual minds, reflecting the Cosmic Mind) manifest as the various forms and experiences.

1. Cosmic Level: The initial creative impulse of Brahman, imbued with subtle Vasana, gives rise to the initial differentiations, leading to the evolution of various species and forms.
2. Individual Level: An individual's own Vasana and Karma determine the kind of body they inhabit, the experiences they undergo, and the type of creatures they perceive and interact with. Your "world appearance" is shaped by your own mental conditioning.
3. The Dream Analogy: The analogy of a dream is paramount in the Yoga Vasistha. In a dream, you can encounter diverse people, animals, and landscapes, all of which are creations within your own mind. They appear perfectly real within the dream state, but vanish upon waking. Similarly, the entire waking world, with its vast array of creatures, is seen as a grand, collective dream of the Cosmic Mind, or an individual dream when viewed from the perspective of an individual consciousness.
4. Perceiver and Perceived are One: A crucial point is that the perceiver and the objects perceived (including diverse creatures) are not different from the Atman (Self) or Brahman. The Yoga Vasistha teaches that when a person gains firm comprehension of this truth, they realize that nothing exists apart from their own Atman. The diversity is merely a play of consciousness upon itself. The "difference" is only apparent, not real.
5. Sentience in All Things: The text also touches upon the idea that everything, being a manifestation of Brahman, has a form of sentience or perception. This is not necessarily conscious thought as humans understand it, but an inherent awareness. "Know everything to be sentient that has its perception or sensitivity; wherefore all things are possessed of their perceptivity, by the like relation of themselves with the supreme soul." This suggests that even seemingly inanimate objects, and certainly diverse living creatures, share in the fundamental consciousness of Brahman.

 
In essence:
According to the Yoga Vasistha, the diversity of creatures is like the diverse characters and scenarios in a dream or a mental projection. They are "real" within the framework of that projection, but they have no independent existence outside the mind that conceives them. When the "dreamer" (whether individual consciousness or the Cosmic Consciousness) awakens to its true nature, the apparent diversity dissolves into the non-dual reality of pure consciousness, which is the sole substance of everything. The manifold forms are simply the myriad ways in which the One Consciousness expresses or appears to itself
The goal of Yoga Vasistha is not to deny our everyday experience or to suggest we live in a hallucination in the pathological sense. Rather, it's to reveal that the ultimate reality of what we perceive as "real" is consciousness itself, and that the perceived solidity and separateness are ultimately superimpositions, like reflections in a mirror or characters in a dream. The world is real as an appearance but not as an independently existing, separate substance.