Wisdom & Self-Knowledge – the Yoga Vasistha

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.
Only those who strive to gain self-knowledge, are worth gaining in this world, thereby putting an end to future births. To the unwise, knowledge of scriptures is a burden; to one who is full of desires, even wisdom is burden; to one who is restless, his own mind is a burden; and to one who has no self-knowledge the body (the life-span) is a burden. 
When the mind is at peace and the heart leaps to the supreme truth, when all the disturbing thought-waves in the mind-stuff have subsided and there are unbroken flow of peace and the heart is filled with the bliss of the absolute, when thus the truth has been seen in the heart, then this very world becomes an abode of bliss. Such bliss is possible only by self-knowledge not by any other means.
The delusion that veils the self-knowledge is sevenfold: seed state of wakefulness, wakefulness, great wakefulness, wakeful dream, dream, dream wakefulness and sleep.
 
There are seven states or planes of wisdom. Pure wish or intention is the first, enquiry is the second, the third is when the mind becomes subtle, establishment in truth is the fourth, total freedom from attachment or bondage is the fifth, the sixth is cessation of objectivity, and the seventh is beyond all these.
 
Sages are able to cut egotism and cravings with the sward of self-knowledge. Self-enquiry subdues the ego sense.
 
There have been countless beings in this world who have attained self-knowledge and liberation while yet living, like the emperor Janaka. Non-attachment to anything here is known as liberation. By right exertion, and by right self-enquiry strive to reach the perfection of self-knowledge.

Ignorance or Mental Conditioning -
The seed of this world appearance is ignorance. This ignorance or mental conditioning is acquired by man effortlessly and it seems to promote pleasure, but in truth it is the giver of grief. It creates a delusion of pleasure only by the total veiling of self-knowledge. thus, it was able to make the king Lavana experience less than an hour as if it were of several years’ duration.
 
This ignorance or mental conditioning has but a momentary existence: yet, since it flows on. It seems to be permanent like a river. Because it is able to veil the reality. People sitting in a moving boat see the shore moving.
 
The firm conviction the ‘I am not the absolute Brahman’ binds the mind; and the mind is liberated by the firm conviction that ‘everything is the absolute Brahman’. Ideas and thoughts are bondage; and their coming to an end is liberation.
 
Do not let the foolish idea of the existence of ignorance take root in you; for if the consciousness is thus polluted, it invites endless suffering. Give up mental conditioning which alone is responsible for the perception of duality, and remain totally unconditioned. Then, you will attain incomparable pre-eminence over all.
 
When mental conditioning is overcome and the mind is made perfectly tranquil, the illusion that deludes the ignorant comes to an end. In the self there is no desire: the world appears in it without any wish or intention on its part.
 
They who says that this universe exists in a seed-state after cosmic dissolution are those who have firm faith in the reality of this universe! This is pure ignorance. It is appropriate to say that the tree exists in the seed, because both these have appropriate forms. But in that which has no form (Brahman) it is inappropriate to say that this cosmic form of the world exists.
 
Wise man is not upset even when they are offended.

Even as the silkworm weaves its cocoon and thus binds itself, the infinite being fancies this universe and gets caught in it. People pass through countless embodiments and through countless experience of pain and pleasure, wisdom and delusion. Sometimes born as cruel king, a greedy trader and wandering ascetic. But there is no pleasure. Only pure mind experiences liberation.
 
Childhood is wasted in ignorance; youth is wasted in lusting after pleasures and the rest of one’s life is spent in family worries: what does a stupid person achieve in this life.
 
Even if one performs great religious rites, one may go to heaven – nothing more.
Weigh in the balance of your wisdom the sense-pleasures on one side and the bliss of peace on the other.
 
The tree in a seed grows out of it after destroying the seed: but Brahman creates this world without destroying itself.
 
Bondage & Wisdom -
The surest sign of a man of the highest wisdom is that he is unattracted by the pleasures of the world, for in him even the subtle tendencies have ceased when these tendencies are strong, there is bondage; when they have ceased, there is liberation. He is truly a liberated sage who by nature is not swayed by sense-pleasure, without the motivation of fame or other incentives.
In dream, the dream-body appears to be real; but when there is an awakening to the fact of dream, the reality of the body vanishes. Even so, the physical body which is sustained by memory and latent tendencies is seen to be unreal when they are seen to be unreal. At the end of the dream, you become aware of the physical body; at the end of these tendencies, you become aware of the ethereal body. When the dream ends, deep sleep ensues; when the seeds of thought perish, you are liberated. In liberation the seeds of thought do not exist.
World experienced in the waking state is no more real than that experienced during sleep (dream). During sleep, the world does not exist; and during waking state, the dream does not exist. While living, death is non-existent, and in death, life is non-existent. Because, that which holds together either experience is absent in the other.
No time during a dream a whole life’s drama is enacted. In reality, you are unborn and you do not die.
To an immature and childish person who is confirmed in his conviction that this world is real, it continues to be real. The sole reality is infinite consciousness which is omnipresent, pure, tranquil, omnipotent, and whose very body and being is absolute consciousness (therefore not an object, not knowable): wherever this consciousness manifests in whatever manner, it is that. Because the substratum (the infinite consciousness) is real, all that is based on it acquires reality, though the reality is the substratum alone. This universe and all beings in it are a long dream.
By persistent practice egotism is quietened.
When the world-appearance is seen as an appearance it does not produce either elation or sorrow. When a truth that has not been personally experienced is expounded, one does not grasp it except with the help of an illustration.
There are seven states or planes of wisdom. Pure wish or intention is the first, enquiry is the second, the third is when the mind becomes subtle, establishment in truth is the fourth, total freedom from attachment or bondage is the fifth, the sixth is cessation of objectivity, and the seventh is beyond all these.
 

1. “Why do I continue to be a fool? I shall seek holy men and scriptures, having cultivated dispassion” – such a wish is the first state.
2. Thereupon one engages in the practice of enquiry (direct observation).
3. With all these, there arises non-attachment, and the mind becomes subtle and transparent. This is the third state.
4. When these three are practised, there arises in the seeker a natural turning away from sense-pleasures and there is natural dwelling in truth. This is the fourth state.
5. When all these are well practised, there is total non-attachment and at the same time a conviction in the nature of truth. This is fifth state.
6. Then one rejoices in one’s own self, the perception of duality and diversity both within oneself and outside oneself ceases, and the efforts that one made at inspiration of others bear fruition in direct spiritual experience.
7. After this there is no other support, no division, no diversity, and self-knowledge is spontaneous, natural and therefore unbroken. This is seventh, transcendental state.  This is the state of one who is liberated while living here. Beyond this is the state of one who has transcended even the body (turiyatita).

Human Beings Born of Impurity -
Some beings are born pure and enlightened (Satvik). Even in their own previous births they had turned away from the lure of sensual pleasures. But the nature of the others who are born merely to perpetuate the cycle of birth and death, is a mixture of the pure, the impure and the dark. There are others whose nature is pure with just a slight impurity; they are devoted to the truth and are full of noble qualities. Other people are enveloped by the darkness of ignorance and stupidity – they are like rocks and hills.
Those beings in whom purity are preponderant with just a slight impurity (the rajas – Satvik people) are ever happy, enlightened and do not grieve nor despair. They are unselfish like trees, and like them, they live to experience the fruition of past actions without committing new ones. They are desireless. They are at peace without themselves and they do not abandon this peace even in the worst calamities. They love all, and look upon all with equal vision. They do not drown in the ocean of sorrow.
Person who is intelligent, who is good natured and equal visioned, and who sees only what is good, is entitled to the vision of wisdom.
Seemingly unending world-appearance is sustained by impure (rajas) and dull (tamas) beings, even as a superstructure is sustained by pillars. But it is playfully and easily abandoned by those who are of pure nature.

Renunciation of Cravings -
Austerity and penance, charity and the observance of religious vows do not lead to the realisation of the Lord; only the company of the holy men and the study of true scriptures are helpful, as that dispel ignorance and delusion. Even when one is convinced that this alone is real, one goes beyond sorrow, on the path liberation. Austerity or penance is self-inflicted pain. Of what value is charity performed with wealth earned by deceiving others – only they derive the fruits of such charity. Religious observances add to one’s vanity. There is only one remedy for ignorance of the Lord – the firm and decisive renunciation of craving for sense-pleasure.
Craving for heaven and even for liberation arises in one’s heart only as long as the ‘I’ is seen as entity. As long as the ‘I’ thus remains, there is only unhappiness in one’s life.
 
However, the higher form of ‘I-ness’ which gives rise to the feeling ‘I am one with the entire universe, there is nothing apart from me’, is the understanding of the enlightened person. Another type of ‘I-ness’ is when one feels that the ‘I’ is extremely subtle and atomic in nature and therefore different from and independent of everything in this universe: this, too, is unobjectionable, being conducive to liberation. But the ‘I-ness’ that has been described earlier on is one which identifies the self with the body: this is to be abandoned firmly. By the persistent cultivation of the higher form of ‘I-ness’. The lower form is eradicated.
 
Self-Knowledge -

1. Cravings destroy wisdom. Lost in satisfying sensual appetites, life ebbs away fast. This body, which is the excellent vehicle to take us to the other shore of self-knowledge, falls into the mire of worldliness.
2. The mind be led along the path of righteousness by the prior study of the scriptures, company of the holy ones and the cultivation of dispassion.
3. How equanimity, purity or dispassion arise in the mind of one who is swayed by thoughts of ‘this is right’, ‘this is wrong’, ‘this is gain’, ‘this is loss’? when there is only one Bhagwan (which is forever one and the many) what can be said to be right and what wrong?
4. Be free of duality; remain firmly established in the self, abandoning even concern for your own welfare. Be at peace within, with a steady mind.
5. He who knows that all the activities merely happen because of the mere existence of the consciousness – even as a crystal reflects the objects around it without intending to do so – is liberated.
6. The reflection of an object in the mirror can be said to be neither real or unreal. It is indescribable. Even so, the body which is reflected in the self is neither real nor unreal, but is indescribable.
7. Mind is false, and world-appearance is also false; hence there is a mysterious relationship between the two – like the relationship between the barren woman and her son.
8. The darkness of ego-sense which veils the self is dispelled by wisdom (inner light). He who seeks to be established in the highest state of consciousness, should first purify his mind by the cultivation of wisdom or the kindling of the inner light.
9. This ocean of worlds-appearance can be crossed only when you are firmly established in supreme wisdom, when you see the self with the self alone and when your intelligence is not diverted or coloured by sense-perception.
10. There is indeed nothing which is worth desiring or renouncing. For as long as these things are seen as objects, they are nothing but concepts, precepts and notions. Good and evil, great and small, worthy or un worthy, are all based on the notion of desirability. When desirability has no meaning, the others do not arise at all. There is truly no essence in all that is seen in this world – the mountains, the oceans, the forests, the men and women and all the objects – hence there is no desire for them. When there is no desire, there is supreme peace at heart.
11. Be firmly established in this wisdom and discard the impure notion of ego-sense from the heart. Thereafter, even if you engage yourself in activity, you are unattached to it and therefore not tainted by it.
12. To the enlightened person this ocean of sorrow is like a little puddle. He views this body as a spectator looks at a distant crowd. Hence, he is not affected by the pains that the body is subjected to.
13. The self is ever untouched by pain and pleasure; but thinking itself to be the body; it undergoes the experiences the body.
14. Intellectual knowledge is not knowledge! unattachment to wife, son and house, equanimity in pleasure and pain, love of solitude, being firmly established in self-knowledge – this is knowledge, all else is ignorance! Only when the ego-sense is thinned out does this self-knowledge arise.