Sri Vasista

1. O Rāma, after the Book of Creation/Beginnings, listen to this book (Chapter) on Sthithi (sustenance).  Knowledge of this can give liberation (Nirvana) and extinction into self.

2. Thus the entire visible, manifest world is composed of ‘aham’.  And so it is formless and illusory.  It is totally unreal and is nonexistent.

3. It has no doership.  It is inelegant like a picture in void sky.  It is witness-less.  It is an experience in a dream during sleepless state.

4. It is like a city of the future, conceived in mind.  It is like the fire-like bean with which monkeys try to ward off cold.  It is unreal and nonexistent.  Even so some purpose can be served by it.

5. It is indivisible from Brahman.  Yet appears separate like whirls in water.  Like the effulgence of Sun in sky, it is existent though void.

6. It is like the bright pearl-white effulgence boundaryless and visible with no (reflecting) walls.  It is like the city of gandhavas, visible always though with no reflecting walls.

7. It is unreal like water in a mirage.  It creates a belief in one as real.  It is experienced like a city of mental conjecture and determination which is totally unreal.

8. It is a luminous reflective fable with no existence anywhere and anytime.  It is sapless.  Yet it is firm like a dream-mountain.

9. It shines like bhutakasa, It is totally void.  It stands in the fore (of knowledge) like an autumn cloud shielding the sunshine.  It is imperishable and cannot be hurt.

10. Though lacking substance, it is visible like the blue colour of the sky.  It is like romance with a lady-in-dream, which is meaningless and calamitous.

11. This world is like a pleasure garden in full bloom in a picture, which though elegant in form lacks any  essence.  It is like the bright coloured sun and brilliant fire in a picture  without any real content.

12. It is unreal and untrue being experienced as an empire of the mind.  It lacks fragrance like a lotus painted in a picture.

13. Sparkling in colourful forms from void, this world has no substance.  It is like a rainbow in void.

14. By inquiry (into it), it shakes nude of its tender leaves and flowers and is rendered absolutely sapless.

15. It revolves in darkness like the world of a  person inhibited in vision.  Though extremely non-existent, this world gives the impression of an existent thing.

16. This world is like a water bubble with a shiny form.  It looks interesting without any real content.  It arises and breaks.

17. It is widely spread like fog.  It is full of voids and tiny elements.

18. ‘I am with all these elements’ – so thinks a being.  Even so, this world is elementless and void.  Though attractive in form, it is non-existent.  It is like the beings of the night.

Sri Rama

19. O sage, it is said that all this manifest visible world (exists) withdraws into the Absolute like a sprout in seed at the time of great deluge.  Later it arises out of it.  How does this happen.  Please tell me.

20. O Bhagwan, area those who have this knowledge ‘jnanis’ or ‘ajnanis’?  Please tell me to quell all my doubts.

Sri Vasista

21. O Rāma, those who think that this world abides as sprout in a seed at the time of deluge, are indeed ignorant people who are in the initial stages of knowledge.

22. Listen how such unrelated and incorrect knowledge – which is incoherent – leads both the listener and the speaker into a sense of delusion.

23. ‘This world abides in the supreme as a sprout in a seed’ – such a proposition is held out by stupid people is mere intelligent prattle.  Hear how it is so.

24. The seeds of cereal foods like yava, rice etc are visible to the senses.  It is , therefore, quite possible that leaves and sprouts arise out of them.

25. Mind is greater than the senses.  Atom is of much greater subtlety than that.  And beyond all these is the subtlest ‘swayambhu’ (The self born) self.  How can such a one be the seed of the world.

26. The Supreme Self is subtler than ether.  This Self is beyond all known ways of perceptions and knowledge.  How can seed-hood touch that one?

27. Such a subtle one appears unreal to nonexistent beings.  For such a subtle how can seed-hood arise?  When seed is not, how can there be a sprout.

28. That Supreme State is piner than sky and is void.  How can a world, a Meru, an Ocean and such exist in that?

29. How can something exist in that which is nothing, not even a little.  If (for some reason) anything exists, why is it not seen as such?

30. In what is not even a little, how can there be anything?   Even if it (exists), when and how did a mountain arise from space in a pot?

31. How can even a little shade in such or darkness is sunshine?  How can there be fire in snow?  These are opposites (one can not exists in the other).

32. How can there be a ‘Meru” in an atom?  Where is one with form in something formless?  There are not similar even in form and where is shade and where is heat?  (they cannot co-exist as one).

33. In something like banyan tree with form there can be sprouts.  This is reasonable.  How can a huge form like world  exist in something that is formless?

34. Temporal, spatial and human (interactions) are visible to the senses and cognizable by intelligence.  When something is beyond the senses and intelligence, there can be nothing that can be said to exist.

35. ‘Effect or action goes forth out of a reason or cause’ – This is mere confusion in knowledge.  With what cooperative cause is this effect or action arising?

36. O Rāma, you therefore stay away from this kind of improper imaginations and fabrications of cause-effect creations.  Truth is one that has neither beginning, nor end nor middle.  World is Brahman itself.