Day 226 - The Story of the Rock: Part II

Day 226 - The Story of the Rock: Part II

Understanding the Egosense and Transcendental Consciousness

Vasistha continued:

"O Rama, all these—the egosense, space, etc.—appear as real substances though they have never truly been created. In the absence of creation, everything is seen. Sages, gods, and perfected beings remain in their transcendental consciousness, experiencing the bliss of their own nature. They have abandoned the illusion of duality, the observer, and the object, along with the consequent movement of thought. Their gaze is fixed and unwinking.

The Nature of the Enlightened Sages

Unmoved Minds

"Though active here, these sages do not entertain even the slightest notion of illusory existence. They are firmly rooted in the abandonment of the relationship between the knower and the known (subject and object). Their life-force remains calm, like painted pictures, with their minds unmoved, having abandoned the conceptualizing tendency of consciousness. They engage in appropriate activities with minimal thought, akin to the Lord Himself. Such movement and the experience of the observer contacting the object bring them great joy. Their consciousness is absolutely pure, free from all images (concepts and notions).

The Purity of the Self

Beyond Teaching and Perception

"Such a state of purity of the self, the true nature of infinite consciousness, is not a mere vision or sensory experience. It is beyond teaching, not easily attained, yet neither far distant nor impossible. It is realized through direct experience alone. Only that exists; nothing else: neither body, senses, life-force, mind, memory, latent tendencies, jiva, movement in consciousness, consciousness, nor the world. It is neither real nor unreal, nor something in-between, neither void nor non-void, neither time nor space nor substantiality. Free from all these and a hundred veils in the heart, one should experience the self in all that is seen.

The Eternal Self

Unaffected by Birth and Death

"It has neither beginning nor end. Because it is ever-present everywhere, it is often mistaken for something else. Thousands are born and thousands die, but the self, which is everywhere, inside and outside, remains unaffected. It exists in all bodies as if it were just a little different from the infinite. Though engaged in diverse activities, remain free from the sense of 'I-ness' and 'mine-ness'. For whatever is seen in this world is Brahman, free from characteristics and qualities, eternal, peaceful, pure, and utterly quiescent.

The Illusion of World-Appearance

Rama asked:

"If Brahman does not undergo any modification, how does this world-appearance, which is and is not real, arise in it?"

Vasistha replied:

"True modification, O Rama, is a transformation of a substance into another, like the curdling of milk, where the curd cannot revert to milk. This is not the case with Brahman, which was unmodified before the world-appearance and regains its unmodified state after the world-disappearance. Both in the beginning and in the end, it is unmodified homogeneous consciousness. The momentary and apparent modification is merely a mild disturbance of consciousness, not a true modification. In Brahman, there is neither a subject nor an object of consciousness. Whatever a thing is in the beginning and the end, that alone it is. If it appears to be something else in the middle, that appearance is regarded as unreal. Hence, the self is the self in the beginning, middle, and end! It never undergoes transformation or modification."