September 10, 2026
yadā tadātmakātmaikaparo hṛdi sahasthitaṁ
apradhānīkarotyetaccittaṁ svārthasvabhāvataḥ (21)
THE SAGE continued:
Then I desired to become one with the consciousness of that being. When I left that being’s “ojas” in order to enter into the consciousness, my own senses were immediately awakened. However, I restrained them at once and entered into the consciousness. As I entered that consciousness, I experienced two worlds at the same time. Everything appeared double. However, since the two perceiving intelligences were similar, the duality appeared to be similar and mixed well like water and milk.
In a moment, I drew into myself the consciousness of that other being with the help of my consciousness. At once the “two worlds” merged into one even as for one who is suffering from diplopia, the perception of two moons gives way to the perception of a single moon when he is cured. I had not abandoned my own wisdom, but my own thought-form had greatly weakened and taken on the thought-form of the other being. Hence, I began to experience the world as he did.
After some time, he retired to sleep. He collected the rays of his mind. Even as a tortoise draws its limbs into itself, his senses were drawn into his heart along with their functions. His sense-organs became as if they were dead or as if they were but painted images. I was within him and I followed the course of his mind and entered into his heart. For a moment, I enjoyed the happiness of sleep, having abandoned the experience of external objects and having entered into the “ojas”. All the channels within him were dense and congested on account of fatigue; and on account of food, drink, etc., the life-breath flowed slowly through the nostrils. The life-force turns upon its own source within the heart and relieves the mind of materiality (or, makes the mind unimportant), because naturally it is its own object. The self is its own object now and there is no other externalising activity. Hence, it shines in itself as itself.
RĀMA asked:
The mind is able to think only on account of the life-force and it has no existence in itself. Then, what is it in itself?
VASIṢṬHA replied:
Though the body is experienced to be real, it does not exist in truth. Mind is as real as the mountain seen in a dream. Since no “object” has ever been created on account of the absence of any cause, the mind (citta) does not exist. All this is Brahman and since Brahman is everything, this world exists as it is. Even the body, the mind, etc., are Brahman only: but how the knowers of truth see this is not for us to describe.
The one indivisible, infinite consciousness perceived itself as its own object and that is said to be the mind. When there arose the notion of motion, that notion manifested as prāṇa or life-force. Prāṇa gives rise to the experience through the senses and thus arises the world.