History of Indian Philosophy

SR No.: 007593
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Surendranath Dasgupta
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Year: 1922
Total Pages: 2517
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 125 MB

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The Philosophy of the Yoga-vasistha
[CH.
anyone whose mind has not been properly purified by the essential virtues of self-control and disinclination to worldly pleasures1. As in magic (indrajāla), non-existent things are produced and existent things are destroyed, a jug becomes a cloth, and a cloth becomes a jug, and all sorts of wonderful sights are shown, though none of these appearances have the slightest essence of their own; so is the entire world-appearance produced out of the imagination of the mind. There is no active agent (karty) and no one enjoyer (bhoktr) of the pleasures and sorrows of the world, and there is no destruction whatsoever2.
Though the ultimate state is the indescribable Brahman or cit, yet it is from manas that all creation and destruction from cycle to cycle take their start. At the beginning of each so-called creation the creative movement of manas energy is roused. At the very first the outflow of this manas energy in the direction of a conceptual creation means an accumulation of energy in manas, called ghana, which is a sort of statical aspect of the dynamical energy (spanda). At the next stage there is a combination of this statical state of energy with the next outflow of energy, and the result is the stabilized accretion of energy of the second order; this is again followed by another outflow of energy, and that leads to the formation of the stabilized energy of the third order, and so on. The course of thought-creation is thus through the interaction of the actualized energy of thought with the active forms of the energy of thought, which join together, at each successive outflow from the supreme fund of potential energy. Thus it is said that the first creative movement of manas manifests itself as the ākāśa creation, and that, as a result of this creative outflow of energy, there is an accretion of energy in manas; at this moment there is another outflow (spanda) or movement on the part of manas, as modified by the accretion of energy of the previous state, and this outflow of manas thus modified is the creation of air. The outflow of this second order, again, modifies manas by its accretion, and there is a third outflow of energy of the manas as modified by the previous accretion, and so on. This process of the modification of energy by the outflow of the manas modified at each stage by the accretion of the outflow of energy at each of the preceding states is called
2
adau śama-dama-prāyair guṇaiḥ śisyam visodhayet paścāt sarvam idam brahma śuddhas tvam iti bodhayet.
nātra kaścit kartā na bhoktā na vināśam eti.
IV. 39. 23.
IV. 39. 41.