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118
VIVEKACŪDAMAŅI
carefully read from beginning to end. There Janaka asks Yajnavalkya "kimjyotirayam puruṣaḥ": "What is the (nature of the) effulgence of this purușa?" To this query, Bhagavan Yājñavalkya first refers to the Sun, the great illuminator well-known in all the worlds. When the sun has set, he says, it is the moon. When that has set, the fire. When that has died down, the speech. To the further query 'what (or wherefrom) is the splendour of speech.' he says that the atman is the source of effulgence. By the ātman these luminous things exist, i.e., function, go, do actions and come back. Even though this splendour of the atman exists always, yet, in the waking state when the external luminaries like sun etc., which help the sense-organs function, and in the cumulative activity of the internal and external instruments of action, its (the ātman's) luminosity could not be perceived in its distinctness. Though it is distinct in dreamless sleep, it could not be seen as then there is no object to illumine; for every perceivable object is swallowed up in the darkness of sleep. It may be said 'ajñāna exists in sleep'. But it is a debatable point as some people consider it as abhāva, a negative category. Therefore, where various activities take place as in the waking state, but where there are no external sources of light, when the gross body does not exist (does not function) and when all instruments of external action are stilled, then the mind alone by its power of reflecting the atmajyotis assumes all forms endowed with the vāsanās of the waking state. When the śruti says atrāyam puruṣaḥ svayamjyotiḥ, atra meaning here, in the dream, it does not mean that it is not svayamjyotis in the waking and dreamless sleep states, but that it is so in dream state. Though the world is always of the form of Brahman which is devoid of differences of like, unlike or internal nature and which is never sublated, yet for easy comprehension by the hearer, the Chandogya śruti says: sadeva somya idam agra āsīt. (Hence agre āsīt, 'was in the beginning' does not mean it is not so now.) So too, in the case of the mind in dream. Though in the dream the mind is endowed with the samskāras of the waking state, it is jaḍa (insentient), it has to be illumined by something else. So, it has to be transformed as illuminatory like the sun, moon etc., by virtue of their reflecting the luminosity of the Paramatman of the form of caitanya and as the illumined like the pot, cloth etc. That is why even blind persons etc., see objects in the dream. It may be asked: 'How can they see since they have no eyes in the waking state'? It must be said that the mind alone is modified as the eye, by the power of the atman. Hence, to clearly
