November 9, 2026
śilānṛttaṁ yathā satyaṁ saṅkalpanagare tathā
jagatsaṅkalpanagaraṁ satyaṁ brahmaṇa īpsitaṁ (72)
VASIṢṬHA continued:
In course of time by the constant practice of vicāra or enquiry and of equanimity, or by being endowed with purity at birth, perfect knowledge arises in the wise man who sees the reality in everything. Then his buddhi or awakened intelligence regains its nature as pure consciousness, devoid of duality. The infinite consciousness is devoid of body and is unhidden by veils: its only body is its faculty of awareness and its ability to illumine all things. It is through these that consciousness perceives everything that it considers to exist, as a result of the notions that arise in it. This entire universe is an idea that arises in the infinite consciousness. Even so the self is also able to give rise to different notions within itself and experience the materialisation of these notions. Thus boons and curses are also realised as notions that arise in the consciousness but they are non-different from it. But if the veil of ignorance has not been removed and if one still entertains notions of duality or diversity, the boons granted by such a one are ineffective.
RĀMA asked:
How does an unenlightened but righteous person confer boons?
VASIṢṬHA continued:
Whatever Brahmā the creator ordained in the beginning of this creation prevails even now. Brahmā is non-different from Brahman the infinite consciousness. That Brahmā brought into being through his own thought-force the standard of righteousness, charity, austerity, good qualities, the vedas and other scriptures, the five great elements. He also ordained that the utterances (boons, etc.) of the ascetics and the knowers of the vedas should come true. It was Brahmā who also ordained the nature of all substances here. Just as we become our own dream-objects while dreaming, consciousness though it is real and conscious becomes even the unreal world-appearance with all its sentient and insentient objects. The unreal world-appearance itself is later regarded as real on account of constantly repeated affirmation and conviction of its reality. When one indulges in day-dreaming he can even see stone images dance as if they were real: even so this world-appearance which appears in brahman is thought to be real.
The seer and the seen are non-different, consciousness is conscious of itself as consciousness. Therefore, it sees whatever it wishes to see. I am the infinite Brahman who is the cosmic person whose body is the world: hence the world and Brahman are non-different. Just as a conscious being may sometimes be in an unconscious state, even so the supreme being or the infinite consciousness itself exists as the apparently inert world. In dream there is “light”, in deep sleep there is darkness, though both these are in sleep: even so both light and darkness seem to exist in the one infinite consciousness.