June 17, 2026
iyaṁ dṛśyabharabhrāntimanvavidyeti cocyate
vastuto vidyate naiṣā tāpanadyāṁ yathā payaḥ (5)
VASIṢṬHA continued:
The notion of the existence of the world arises in the ignorant just as the awareness of its various limbs may arise in the “mind” of a tree! This illusory apprehension of the objective world, which goes by the name “avidyā” or “ignorance” does not in fact exist: it is as real as water in the mirage (sound without substance). However, just for the sake of clear understanding, take this ignorance as real and listen! Then you will yourself understand that it does not exist in fact.
Whatever appears to be here perishes at the end of the world-cycle. No one can avert this total destruction. Brahman alone exists then. This realisation is not like drug-induced experience: we know with certainty that the body is like a dream-object and that consciousness alone is real. This world-appearance perishes again and again. What has perished and how does it come into being again and again? If it is said that all these objects remained hidden in space, then one has to admit that they were not destroyed even in the cosmic dissolution.
There is similarity between cause and effect. Since there is no cause for this world-appearance, it is not an effect. One alone is. The numerous branches, leaves, flowers and fruits of a tree are but the expansion of the single seed. There is no need to invent a causal relationship. The seed alone is the reality. When the truth is investigated, we realise that the one consciousness alone remains as the truth.
At the end of the world-cycle, all these objects of perception cease to be. The one self which is consciousness alone remains, and this is indescribable, being beyond thought and description. Only the sage of self-knowledge experiences this: others merely read these words. For it is neither time nor mind, neither being nor non-being, neither consciousness nor unconsciousness. I have thus described it negatively because the scriptures have done so. In my vision, it is pure and supreme peace. In this there are infinite potentialities like figures in an uncut marble. Thus the supreme self is at the same time diverse and non-diverse. It is when you do not have direct self-knowledge that there arises in you doubt concerning this.
The perception of diversity is due to the division that arises in the self. However, the self is devoid of any division into time, space, etc. The self is the very substratum and undivided reality of time, space, etc., just as the ocean is of the waves. Hence, the reality is undivided and divided, it is and it is not. The uncut images in the marble may be carved out of it, but it is not possible to carve the world out of the infinite consciousness. Hence, divided though undivided, it merely appears to be different from the totality though really non-different from it.