The Supreme Yoga (Yoga Vasistha), Volume 2 - by Swami Venkatesananda: February 1 section VI.1 chapter 55 sa jivah pranamurtih khe yatra yatra vatisthate tam tam svavasanabhyasat pasyatyakaramatatam (27) The Lord continues to instruct Arjuna: Without renouncing aught, and without the egotistic feeling I enjoy or I suffer, one should remain in an equanimous state in all natural situations. Do not entertain the feeling of This is self or consciousness towards what is not-self (non-consciousness). When the body perishes, nothing is lost. The self is never lost! The self is by definition the indestructible and infinite consciousness. Never let even the thought The self is perishable enter your mind. What perishes, what changes is naught other than the notions This is lost and This has been gained. The Self which is eternal and infinite does not cease to be the reality, and the unreal has no existence whatsoever. The Self that pervades all everywhere is imperishable. The bodies have an end, but the Self (the infinite consciousness) is eternal. The Self or the infinite consciousness is one and non-dual. What remains when all sense of duality has been abandoned, that is the Self, that is the Supreme Truth. Arjuna asks: Then, O Lord, what is known as death, and what are known as heaven and hell? The Lord replies: The jiva, or the living soul, or personality, lives in the net woven by the elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space), and also by the mind and the intellect. And that jiva is dragged by the latent tendencies (past impressions, memory, etc.), imprisoned as it is in the cage known as the body. In course of time, the body gets old. The jiva gets out of that body, even as juice from a leaf when pressed. Taking with it the senses and the mind, it leaves the body and goes forth, even as scent leaves its source and goes. The jivas body is none other than the vasana or the residual impressions gained in the body. When the jiva has left the body, it becomes inert; it is then known as dead. Wherever it roams in space, the jiva, which is of the nature of prana or life-force, sees whatever forms are conjured up by its previous vasanas or impressions. These previous impressions are destroyed only by intense self-effort. Even if the mountains were pulverised and the worlds dissolved, one should not give up self-effort. Even heaven and hell are but the projection of these impressions or vasanas. This vasana arose in ignorance and foolishness, and it ceases only on the dawn of self-knowledge. What is jiva except vasana or mental conditioning, which again is vain imagination or thought-form? He who is able to abandon this vasana, while yet living in the body in this world, is said to be liberated. He who has not abandoned vasana is in bondage, even if he is a great scholar. vivid-water-9254.herokuapp/yv/2/2/1
Posted on: Sat, 01 Feb 2014 09:30:01 +0000
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