The Vision and Nature of Jiva

She appeared exactly as before in every detail of her person and attire, wearing the same ornaments, with the sole difference that she now sat in quiet stillness rather than moving about. Observing this, Rāma remarked that, by the favor of the goddess of wisdom, the former Līlā had traveled there in her spiritual form during her reverie. Vasistha taught:— He reflected that it is the spirit alone—the supreme, blissful Intellect of God—that pervades the entire universe, while all physical bodies are merely creations of the mind. Just as a man who dreams of becoming a stag has no need to seek out a real stag to validate his experience, the ignorant mistake the dreamlike world for reality and consequently fall into the belief that souls transmigrate like a spinning globe. Out of this same error of judgment, people view some Yogis as dead and others as living, failing to see that spiritual bodies are beyond physical death and ordinary sight. 

Rāma questioned the true nature, origin, and impermanence of the physical frame, asking for clarification on whether the embodied soul actually transforms into a spiritual state or becomes something entirely distinct. Rāma, when a person awakens, the heavy solidity of objects vanishes just as dream visions dissolve, leaving them to recall the weightless, intellectual form they inhabited while asleep. In that exact manner, a Yogi experiences the physical body as light and volatile as air, remaining fully conscious of their spiritual essence within the intellect.

Rāma then asked where the vast hills of our dreams disappear to upon waking, seeking to clear his doubts like wind dispersing autumn clouds.  Rāma in truth, dreams and desires are indistinguishable from consciousness itself, belonging to it just as fluidity belongs to water or motion to air. It is a mistake to view a dream as a separate entity—or as anything other than an act of consciousness—just as it is impossible to conceive two independent, co-eternal causes. Just as a dreamt mountain dissolves instantly into nothingness, the material world eventually vanishes when one recognizes its underlying unreality. While those blinded by illusion cling to the dreamlike notion of rebirth after the deep sleep of death, the spiritual body of the Yogi shines bright, soaring upward far beyond the false mirage of the material world.

Yoga Vaisitha Wisdom

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