La concordancia

El mapa del canon

Bhūmikā

• 1 · Śubhecchā (buen deseo)
• 2 · Vicāraṇā (indagación)
• 3 · Tanumānasā (adelgazamiento de la mente)
• 4 · Sattvāpatti (amanecer del ser)
• 5 · Asaṃsakti (desapego)
• 6 · Padārthābhāvanī (disolución de los objetos)
• 7 · Turyagā (el cuarto)

Zonas de trance

• Ligero · 14
• Medio · 11
• Profundo · 10
• Sonambúlico · 17
• Plenario · 13

Dónde vive cada fenómeno

Número de relatos de cada libro en los que el texto describe el fenómeno. Cuanto más intenso el color, más presente.

Induction

the text describes how the state is entered (breath, gaze, posture, absorption)

23 relatos

1. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.23.4–11

   Beside the corpse the two 'stood motionless ... as if they were sculptures engraven on marble columns', 'shook off all their thoughts and cares', 'continued in fixed attention without any external sensation', were 'altogether absorbed', 'lost the remembrance of the phantom of the phenomenal world' and became 'as quiet as inert nature herself'.

2. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.41.24–26

   With the king and minister seated cross-legged, hands joined and eyes lowered, Sarasvatī "touched his head with her hand, and immediately the dark veil of illusion and oblivion was dispersed"; his mind "opened as a blossom".

3. 6
   Karkaṭī, la rākṣasī que se hizo aguja III.68.17; III.72.3–4

   She sits on the summit 'with her steadfast eyeballs ... fixed on one object'; in the second austerity she 'saw in her mind her form of the needle, entering into her heart with her breathings' and is wafted by that breath to the peak.

4. 7
   Los diez hijos de Indu III.86.34–37

   The eldest brother prescribes posture and idea ('sit in your posture of padmásana, and think yourselves as the bright Brahmá'); the others answer 'Amen' and sit 'like the still pictures in a painting.'

5. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.104.31–32; III.104.41–42

   The magician twirls a staff of peacock feathers that describes "a bright circlet, emitting the particles of its rays around"; the king then gazes at the horse "with his fixed eyes and without closing his eye-lids", mounts, and sits "still with his closed eye-lids".

6. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.5.15–19; IV.6.1

   He beholds the apsarā "with the eyes of Hari, fixed upon his Lakshmí", tries to check the impulse, "but losing all his power over himself, he became absorbed", then continues "with his closed eye-lids" in reverie.

7. 15
   Dāśūra, el árbol kadamba y el rey nacido del aire IV.51.2

   ‘He looked up to heaven, and then placing himself in the posture of _padmásana_, he called back his mind to himself.’

8. 16
   El canto de Kaca IV.58.11

   He sounds Om ‘as the ringing of a bell’, first the vowel, then the nasal, while meditating on the spirit ‘not as situated in or without’ the mind.

9. 17
   Janaka y el canto de los Siddhas V.8.6–18; V.9.1–3

   Alone in a fragrant grove, Janaka hears voices ‘as that of some invisible aerial spirits’, including the self ‘which we continually inspire and respire in our breathings’; he is at once ‘dejected in his mind’, withdraws in silence and climbs alone to his balcony.

10. 19
    Bali, Virocana y Śukra V.26.1; V.27.31–32

    Bali ‘closed his eyes, and thought upon the lotus-eyed Sukra’; later he ‘fell to a deep meditation’ on ‘the half mantra of Om (_i.e._ the dot only)’.

11. 21
    Gādhi, el brahmán del estanque V.44.8–9; V.44.18–20

    Eight months standing "up to his neck" in a lake (44.8–9); later, during the expiatory rite in the water, "he chanced to forget his sacred mantras (texts), and was drowned in deep water in the confusion of his mind" (44.20).

12. 22
    Uddālaka V.52.3–7; V.54.1–6; V.54.28–37

    A prepared seat of leaves and deerskin, padmāsana, beads (52.3–6); "with his half shut eye-lids" he sounds Om, which "rang with a resonance like the ringing of a bell" (54.1–3), with regulated exhalation; later "his pupils remained as fixed and unmoved" (54.32) and the senses are withdrawn "as the tortoise contracts his limbs" (54.34).

13. 25
    Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.82.8–11; V.84.4–5

    Seat prepared, padmāsana with heels held, head erect, eyes closed, senses stopped; in the trance itself "His slight and acute eye-sight was fixed on the top of his nose", eyelids barely pulsing.

14. 26
    Bhuśuṇḍa, el cuervo al borde del tiempo VI.1.25.6–19; 25.29–35; 25.46–49

    The outgoing breath (prāṇa) is known "to rise from its source of the lotus like heart, and stretch to the distance of twelve inches out of it, where it sets or stops"; the incoming (apāna) is taken in from there to the heart; the one is warm as the sun, the other cool as moonlight, and "the apána breath becomes extinct, where the prána comes to be born".

15. 27
    Vasiṣṭha ante Śiva: el culto interior VI.1.35.3–7; VI.1.31.45–47

    Śiva begins the instruction with “call your thoughts home” and tells Vasiṣṭha “to attend to the internal breathings”; earlier he states that when the breath is “pent up in the heart” the mind ceases to move.

16. 34
    Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.101.1; 80.15

    'After the prince had so far attended to the lectures of Kumbha, he remained ... as if in a state of trance'; Cūḍālā's own practice: 'restraining her upheaving breath in the midst of her eye-brows'.

17. 47
    El Indra de la fibra de loto: crear es imaginar VI.2.14.5–7

    Meditation “having his mind fixed in his cerebral artery, resembling the thread of a tubular stalk of the lotus”, “in his solitary retirement … in this silent meditation of his tranquil mind”.

18. 48
    Manki, el brahmán piadoso VI.2.26.13–14

    “as the shutting of the eyelids, shuts out the view of the visible objects from sight; so … the closing of consciousness, puts out the appearance of all sights and thoughts”.

19. 49
    La mente-ciervo VI.2.45.22

    “let him kindle the flame of his soul within by the breath of respiration; and be united with the Supreme spirit”.

20. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.56.33–37; VI.2.59.12–13

    A self-made enclosure, the lotus posture, closed eyes and withdrawal of the senses: he 'shut my eyes closely against all external sights' and gave up 'my sensations of all external objects of sense'.

21. 53
    El siddha de la celda aérea VI.2.93.4–8

    The siddha's entry into the state is described posture by posture: padmāsana, head erect, palms open below the navel, eyelids closed, 'his eyesight was as weak, as to view all the visibles in one light of whiteness', mind as calm as the horizon.

22. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.137.7–12

    The sage sits in padmāsana and fixes his attention. He stretches his thought out and draws it back, then alternates outbreath and inbreath until 'my breath being accompanied with my mind' passes into the other man.

23. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.1.128.1–4

    Vālmīki gives Bharadvāja a full induction: rest quiet in the seat, 'continue to repeat the syllable Om, until his mind is cleared', restrain the respiration, then 'restrict his senses by degrees, from their respective outward objects'.

Deepening

progressive descent, counting, layering

12 relatos

1. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.54.40–55

   The dying man's sight darkens, stars appear by day, he is "lifted up in the air, and now hurled down", thinks himself "falling in a dark pit", whirls "as by a rotatory machine", loses memory, then swoons (murch'ha) until the body stiffens.

2. 19
   Bali, Virocana y Śukra V.27.31–35

   Graded descent: deep meditation, then the half-mantra, then thoughts suppressed, then loss of ‘the consciousness of his meditation, and of his being the meditator and also of meditated object’, then statue-stillness and inner light.

3. 22
   Uddālaka V.54.40–58

   A clear light appears and is lost to rajas, tamas brings drowsiness, reason shakes it off, the void gives way to self-consciousness (54.45–51); then "from that of his consciousness of himself" to intellectuality, to "the intellect of his intellect", to "the pure universal intellect" (54.55–57).

4. 23
   Suraghu, Māṇḍavya y Parigha V.59.3–17; V.59.38

   Successive negations ("I am not in this mountain", not the Kirāta habitation, not the government, not flesh, bones, organs, nourishment, senses, mind or understanding, nor the "intelligible intelligence") end in "I rest myself, in the lap of my tranquil soul, as in a state of sound sleep" (59.38).

5. 25
   Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.87.1–14

   Om repeated and its mātrās contemplated; voice raised to the cranium; a flood of inner light; the light itself lost "as a new born child loses... its knowledge"; thought stopped "in a twinkling"; Susupta-hypnotism; turīya.

6. 26
   Bhuśuṇḍa, el cuervo al borde del tiempo VI.1.25.23–24; 25.54–59

   Practising kumbhaka the adept "must remain calmly in this act of suppression"; as prāṇa and apāna subside "together with his thoughts of time and place", the pause comes "of itself", and inside "without any efforts" it is "the state of the most supreme".

7. 27
   Vasiṣṭha ante Śiva: el culto interior VI.1.34.7–25

   The yoga is taught as graded stages: “the curbing and weakening of the mind, which is the first step”, then “the second step of the edification and strengthening of the intellect”, a third stage, and a fourth beyond them, reached “by great enduring patience”.

8. 43
   Manu e Ikṣvāku: las siete etapas VI.1.120.1–9

   Seven graded stages, each defined and then mapped onto a state of consciousness: “The first three stages relate to the waking state … the fourth stage concerns the sleeping state”. The fifth is sound sleep, the sixth turya, and the seventh lies beyond turya.

9. 49
   La mente-ciervo VI.2.44.16–31; VI.2.45.13; VI.2.45.18; VI.2.45.24

   Growth by stages (seed, sprout, two leaves, stem, bark, branches, flowers, fruit), then an ascent “by degrees to its higher branches” until “the devotee arrives to the sixth stage”.

10. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.59.13–16

    Descent in stages: senses released, then 'by degrees I lost my consciousness also', then mirror-like awareness, then merging with space 'as a drop of water mixes with water'.

11. 55
    Vipaścit, el rey que se hizo cuatro VI.2.125.70–74

    The mind 'freed from its imagination, and drowned in deep meditation (samádhi), as in the state of a sleepless sleeper'; duality is lost in unity, unity in 'a vast void', which ends in conscious bliss; the yogi sits 'as still and cold as a stone'.

12. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.1.128.5–26

    The body is handed back element by element (flesh to earth, blood to water, heat to fire, senses to their deities), then each element is folded into the next: 'his thought of heat under that of air, and this again under his idea of vacuum, which last is swallowed up by his thought of the great cause of all' (128.17). Bharadvāja reports entering 'the sea of _turíya_' (128.26).

Absorption

total engagement in an inner scene

20 relatos

1. 1
   El desaliento de Rāma y la llegada de Viśvāmitra I.32.2–9

   As Rāma ends, the hearers' 'hairs ... stood erect', they 'remained (motionless) as the figures in a painting, being enraptured', the queens sit 'mute and motionless', and the garden birds listen 'without fluttering their wings or making any motion or sound'.

2. 4
   El antiguo Vasiṣṭha y Arundhatī III.19.5–13

   Seated under the sarala trees, the brahmin is drawn into the passing spectacle (flappers 'a stream of moon light', banners 'a moving forest', elephants 'moving towers') and then into an inner scene of his own royal life: 'When will the breeze waft the fragrance of kunda flowers ... to lull me and my consorts to sleep.'

3. 7
   Los diez hijos de Indu III.86.38–49

   Twelve verses of first-person immersion: 'I find in me the whole ritual ... I see in me the spheres of the regents ... I see a Kalpa passing away before me.'

4. 8
   Indra y Ahalyā III.89.21; III.89.29; III.89.34

   The queen 'saw the world full with the figure of her beloved Indra'; the lovers are 'lost in the meditation of one another, and forget our own persons.'

5. 10
   Los tres príncipes que nunca existieron III.101.2–3; III.101.30

   The boy asks for 'some pretty story for his amusement'; the nurse tells it 'with a gladsome countenance, and in accents sweet as honey'; he is glad 'without understanding its import.'

6. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.6.2–24; IV.7.2–30

   A multisensory heaven: the hum of bees, choirs, fragrance carried by the winds, golden lotuses; Indra lifts him by the hand and seats him beside him; the lovers 'fell into their trance of love'.

7. 15
   Dāśūra, el árbol kadamba y el rey nacido del aire IV.51.3–7

   For ‘full ten years’ he performs fire, horse, bull and human sacrifices purely in his mind, ‘paying their honorariums in his mind’, until ‘his mind was purified and expanded’.

8. 16
   El canto de Kaca IV.58.3–4

   His mind ‘filled with the ambrosial draughts of divine knowledge’, he is ‘rapt in his mind with the vision of the Holy Spirit’ and ‘saw nothing else beside him’.

9. 20
   Prahlāda V.37.1–6

   He sat "absorbed in his entranced rapture" and "remained intent upon his God, with his fixed and firm gaze for thousands of years" (37.5); "the sight of infelicity disappeared from his view" (37.6).

10. 21
    Gādhi, el brahmán del estanque V.49.30

    "the thoughts of the whole career of the Chandála, had altogether engrossed thy mind".

11. 25
    Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.84.18–36

    In the subtle body he lives a hundred years under a kadamba tree, a hundred as a Vidyādhara, five yugas as Indra, then king, swan of Brahmā, huntsman, prince, forester; he was "at liberty to take upon him whatever personality he chose" (V.84.28).

12. 27
    Vasiṣṭha ante Śiva: el culto interior VI.1.33.49; VI.1.40.2

    “Think in yourself that you are one … keep this single reflection before you, and holding fast to it, you will become the object of your meditation”; the devotee is then “assimilated to and self same with his God”.

13. 32
    Los enigmas del Vetāla VI.1.73.1–2

    The vetāla “held his peace and quiet, and remained reflecting”, and “being quite absorbed in his fixed meditation, he forgot at once his hunger and thirst.”

14. 37
    La gema de los deseos y el trozo de vidrio VI.1.88.8, 88.15

    "He was then immerged in himself to think with amazement for a long time, he overlooked and neglected to lay hold on his great gain"; he "hung for a long time in a state of suspense" and "did not even stretch out his hand".

15. 47
    El Indra de la fibra de loto: crear es imaginar VI.2.14.7–18

    The chain of causes disappears, and he beholds Brahman with “hands stretch to all sides … his face and eyes are on all sides”, present “as pungency in the heart of pepper”.

16. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.56.37–41

    A century in 'unwavering meditation', 'intensively intent upon a single object'.

17. 52
    La disolución final: Śiva y Śakti VI.2.87.57–61; VI.2.90.10; VI.2.91.1; VI.2.92.1

    Total identification with each element in turn: 'I became amalgamated with the earth as if it were one with myself', then water, light and 'the form of the current air'.

18. 57
    El mosquito y el cazador VI.2.136.18–19

    The awakened intellect is 'fully occupied with the thought of the sage's curse and that of its having the nature of a gnat', 'brooded over the reflection of the parts of its body, and became the very gnat in its shape'.

19. 60
    Aindava: la Brahmā Gītā VI.2.178.35–42

    They 'thought they sustained in them the whole world' and saw 'the solid earth with all its hills &c. in themselves'. Each 'viewed himself as a cosmos' (Mitra's gloss on 178.40).

20. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.2.193.15–17; 196.1; 199.42

    Rāma: 'I see nothing but a calm and quiet, which utterly absorbs and enrapts me quite' (193.16); he 'fell into a trance and remained silent' (196.1); then 'the whole assembly sitting fixed in the one and same tenor of their meditation. They were all entranced' (199.42).

Time distortion

a moment holds years, or years a moment

16 relatos

1. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.20.27–28; III.20.50–51; III.29.34

   The brahmin pair 'are dead only eight days before, and we have been reigning here for so many years'; 'a single moment appeared to it as the period of an age', as 'King Harish Chandra of yore thought one night as a period of twelve years'; Līlā sees 'his royal dignity of eight days, which had seemed ... (as eighty years)'.

2. 4
   El antiguo Vasiṣṭha y Arundhatī III.19.21–28

   The spirit becomes 'the victorious monarch of the three realms', subjugating earth, heaven and the nether regions, yet 'it is only eight days past' since the pair died.

3. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.41.29–30; III.41.50; III.58.2–3

   Vidūratha asks how "so many events have occurred to me in course of one day after my death" when he has lived "full seventy years"; the goddess says error "makes a moment appear as a period of hundred years". Līlā's absorption has meanwhile lasted a month.

4. 6
   Karkaṭī, la rākṣasī que se hizo aguja III.80.39–43; III.81.47–49

   'Sometimes a twinkling—instant represents a Kalpa'; 'the short space of a single night, appeared as a period of twelve long years to king Haris Chandra in his misery'; 'It is the idea only that makes a twinkling, appear a kalpa or many.'

5. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.104.43; III.107.47; III.110.59; III.113.28; III.121.18

   About two hours of clock time contain "sixty painful years"; Vasiṣṭha explains that the measurements of time "are made according to the intensity or laxity of our thoughts" and that the notion "makes a kalpa age appear as a moment".

6. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.8.11–14; IV.10.1; IV.10.54; IV.13.15

   He believes he spent sixty years, then half a yuga, then eight cycles of the four yugas (IV.10.54); Death says he tasted all these states 'at a moment's thought of his mind', while Bhṛgu's trance lasts a thousand years of outer time.

7. 19
   Bali, Virocana y Śukra V.28.19; V.29.1–4

   Śukra says it will take ‘a thousand years… (as a moment’s sleep makes a myriad of years in a dream)’; after a thousand celestial years Bali speaks of the rapture in which his soul was ‘enrapt for a short time’.

8. 21
   Gādhi, el brahmán del estanque V.45.5–6; V.46.4; V.48.46

   The vision runs from birth through the "twelfth and then its sixteenth year", marriage, children, old age and eight years of reign, yet "It was for a moment only that I thought to have seen some thing".

9. 22
   Uddālaka V.53.44; V.54.61; V.54.74

   His intellect "remained there for many years" on the sea of joy (54.61), yet "Uddálaka thus remained in his holy seat for six months" (54.74); earlier he notes that the mind "makes the long of short and the short of long" (53.44).

10. 25
    Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.84.7–8

    "he passed there the period of thrice three hundred years as half a moment"; Mitra's gloss: close attention shortens time "for want of the succession of thoughts by which time is reckoned".

11. 26
    Bhuśuṇḍa, el cuervo al borde del tiempo VI.1.20.24–25; 24.36; 26.8; 27.17–19

    Time is known only "by the respirations of our breath"; in profound rest "his days glide on imperceptibly"; past and future are seen "as ever present"; the crow is unchanged across ages.

12. 30
    Arjuna, encarnación de Nara-Nārāyaṇa VI.1.56.22–24

    “The mind has moreover the power of prolonging a moment to a kalpa age; as of enlarging a minim to a mountain, and of increasing a little to a multitude.”

13. 31
    Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.63.26; VI.1.65.19

    “Many a day and night and season and century, glided on imperceptibly”; after the lecture “the night passed as short as a moment with some, and as long as an age with others”.

14. 34
    Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.109.11

    'All these he saw rising in his soul, in one moment of his meditation' — years of events condensed into an instant.

15. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.56.41

    'The hundred years ... glided away as quickly as a single moment before me', explained by the narrowing of attention.

16. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.140.30–40

    Inside the dream the sage passes 'sixteen years' after his birth and then 'a whole century' as a village Brahmin. He tells the hunter, 'I passed there full fifteen years in my domestic life' (149.4). Meanwhile his body sits in the hermitage.

Age regression / past-life regression

earlier lives relived

10 relatos

1. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.29.2–24; III.29.33–37

   At the brahmin's house Līlā 'became a seer of the three times', 'remembered the whole course of her past life' and relives it: milking, churning, 'haste and hasten', her pet calf Karṇikā, her weeping servant, her son, and her husband's 'fond wish of obtaining royal dignity'.

2. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.41.27–28; III.41.46–47

   "He remembered by his intelligence his former kingdom, of which he had been the sole lord, and recollected all his past sports with Lílá"; he perceives "that your present life is but a shadow of the former".

3. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.9.5; IV.14.34–36

   Between births 'the disembodied spirit of Sukra, remained to reflect on his past transmigrations'; later 'Bhrigu desired him to remember his prior births' and he 'remembered it instantly'.

4. 13
   Dāma, Vyāla y Kaṭa IV.32.22

   'The parrot Kata, happening to hear it, remembered his past life, whereby he was absolved of his sins.'

5. 18
   Puṇya y Pāvana V.20.9–29

   Puṇya lists Pāvana’s former births by form and place, from stag and gander to ant and millipede to a Pulinda woman’s suckling, and then his own.

6. 21
   Gādhi, el brahmán del estanque V.45.2–7; V.49.28–30

   He sees himself "reborn there in the womb of a Chandála woman", feeling the pressure of the intestines (45.2–3), and lives the outcaste's life; Viṣṇu later says it was the real life of Kaṭañja that "entered into thy mind" (49.30).

7. 25
   Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.85.3–4

   The dawning light of the intellect "exhibited to his remembrance the scenes of his former states of existence"; he "beheld the various forms of the bodies, through which he had passed in his former lives".

8. 53
   El siddha de la celda aérea VI.2.93.30–35

   Recollecting, the siddha relates 'as if they were the occurrence of his present day' a former birth as a butterfly in paradise, when the sight of whirlpools in a stream first turned him to sorrow and dispassion.

9. 55
   Vipaścit, el rey que se hizo cuatro VI.2.131.30–44; 132.1–12

   Bhāsa recounts a thousand years as a tree, a century as a mountain stag, lives as śarabha, Vidyādhara, cygnet of Brahmā's swan, jackal, celestial nymph, raven and anchorite.

10. 57
    El mosquito y el cazador VI.2.136.28–30

    Gnat to deer to hunter: 'as it died by looking at the face of a deer, it was reborn in the shape ... of the same'; the deer 'saw the countenance of the huntsman in his dying moment' and was born a hunter.

Age progression

the future lived in advance

4 relatos

1. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.107.2–5; III.108.1; III.116.5–7

   A reigning king lives forward through marriage, four children and "sickly and decrepit old age" (III.107.19); Vasiṣṭha says the dream discharges the twelve years of hardship that the Rājasūya would otherwise bring.

2. 31
   Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.66.15–21

   “I passed beyond the limit of the present world, and pierced through the mist of future creations”, seeing Nārada, Vyāsa, Śuka and the present sages reborn “with their very same natures and characters”.

3. 52
   La disolución final: Śiva y Śakti VI.2.86.35; VI.2.86.45

   In the stone he sees 'the past, present, and future commotions of the world', including 'the young Ráma killing the Rákshas ... (an event which was yet to occur)'.

4. 58
   El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.155.11–157.36

   The sage narrates the hunter's whole future in detail: the boon, the swelling body, its fall, the life as Sindhu and Sindhu's liberation. He then closes: 'I have thus related these future events, as if they were past accounts unto thee' (158.1).

Amnesia

forgetting of identity or history

12 relatos

1. T
   El umbral I.1.55–60; I.3.2

   Viṣṇu is cursed to 'sacrifice thine omniscience for some time, and pass as an ignorant mortal' (I.1.60), entering Rāma's life with 'an assumed ignorance'; Vālmīki then prescribes effacing worldly conceptions 'in oblivion' rather than reviving them.

2. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.20.16; III.20.31–35

   'You have lost the remembrance of the states of your former lives after death, as they lose the recollection of waking events in the dreaming state'; at death one 'forgets his former nature and thinks himself as another being'.

3. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.41.25; III.54.52; III.55.13; III.58.16

   A "veil of illusion and oblivion" hides the former life; the dying man "loses the remembrance of the past and present"; the most sinful "lose the remembrance of their past states for the period of a whole year"; the adept forgets the material body "as a youth forgets his embryonic state".

4. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.108.7

   "I forgot my royalty like a dead man ... and was confirmed in my belief of a Chandála"; the waking identity is not merely dimmed but replaced, and returns intact on waking.

5. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.7.1

   He "forgot his former nature, without his passing through the pangs of death".

6. 18
   Puṇya y Pāvana V.20.34; V.20.43

   ‘Let us remain unmindful of all existence (whether past, present or future)’; ‘rub out all thy wishes and the vestiges of thy remembrance from thy mind’.

7. 21
   Gādhi, el brahmán del estanque V.45.47; V.46.3

   As king "He now forgot his former pains and sorrows" and "The pæans of the panegyrists, made him forget himself and his former state"; the Brahmin Gādhi is wholly absent until waking (47.4).

8. 28
   El fruto vilva VI.1.45.23

   Consciousness “views itself in an objective light, by forgetting its subjectivity”, and becomes “as low as a sublunary being”.

9. 31
   Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.63.11–12, 45; VI.1.64.22

   The mendicant “buried all his former thoughts in oblivion”; the awakened forms “remained ignorant of one another”; they “did not know or look on one another, but had all their thoughts and sights fixed on Rudra alone.”

10. 46
    Indra en el átomo VI.2.13.19

    He found “his instant rest in that state … by utter forgetfulness of the warfare”.

11. 55
    Vipaścit, el rey que se hizo cuatro VI.2.123.14; 126.19

    One Vipaścit reigns five years in the land of coconuts before he 'was restored to the remembrance of his former state'; after death the southern one, 'forgetful of his spiritual nature, thinks himself to be reigning in the Salmalidwípa'.

12. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.140.33–35

    The sage 'forgot myself as one of them by my habitual mode of thinking', believing 'my material body only to constitute my person'. On waking a second time among his family, 'I utterly lost all my remembrance of the past' (147.19).

Hypermnesia

total recall, often of many lives

10 relatos

1. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.27.34–59

   Līlā remembers that she 'had undergone a hundred and eight births' and recounts them in detail: vidyādhara's bride, eagle's mate, woodman's wife, gulañcā plant, prince of Surāṣṭra, weasel, bullock, bird, bee, antelope, fish, stork, apsaras, tortoise, goose, crane.

2. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.41.30–31; III.40.36; III.55.9

   "I recollect the bygone days of my boyhood and youth, and I remember well all the friends and relatives and all the apparels and suite"; humans "do not lose their remembrance of the past" at death; "the soul continues to remember all its past adventures, even in its next state".

3. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.14.38–43

   "I see my countless and unknown births, and the innumerable accidents to which they were subject"; "There is naught of good or evil, which I have not tasted."

4. 18
   Puṇya y Pāvana V.20.24; V.20.30

   ‘I also remember the several births that I had to undergo’; ‘I remember the various customs and pursuits of different peoples on earth, that I had to observe and follow in my repeated transmigrations.’

5. 19
   Bali, Virocana y Śukra V.22.41–49; V.25.1

   After his first trance Bali says: ‘Ah! I now come to remember, what I had heard from my father’, and recalls the scene under the kalpa tree and Virocana’s long discourse; later: ‘which I fortunately remember at the present moment’.

6. 26
   Bhuśuṇḍa, el cuervo al borde del tiempo VI.1.21.28–52; 22.1–53

   Detailed recall of world-cycles: the earth bare and then full of ashes, the churning of the ocean twelve times, a hundred Kali ages, and "thy eight births" of Vasiṣṭha himself (22.8).

7. 31
   Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.63.5–8, 21–24

   Rudra “looked back in his understanding into the passed accounts of his prior lives, that were almost incalculable”, remembering even “my primary state of the pure intellect”.

8. 34
   Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.109.9–12

   In meditation 'he saw the whole affair, rising and exhibiting itself plainly before his mental vision; ever since the renunciation of his royalty, until his meeting with Chúdálá'.

9. 55
   Vipaścit, el rey que se hizo cuatro VI.2.130.24–25

   Restored from the stag, Bhāsa 'sat in the hall in his meditative mood, and remembered all the incidents of his past life and former body', while the assembly sat motionless.

10. 61
    Kundadanta y el ermitaño del kadamba VI.2.181.27

    'The holy man betook himself to his meditation again, and there saw all the events that had occurred to himself and us also.' Mitra's chapter title for 185 speaks of Kundadanta's 'Clairvoyance'.

Analgesia / anaesthesia

imperviousness to pain or sensation

20 relatos

1. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.21.76–79; III.23.7

   Sarasvatī prescribes sitting 'in a state of unalterable insensibility (by forgetting yourself to a stone)', after which 'an unshaken anesthesia will overtake you all at once'; in practice the two remain 'without any external sensation'.

2. 6
   Karkaṭī, la rākṣasī que se hizo aguja III.72.21–22; III.74.2–4; III.75.15

   Fire, hail, lightning and burning sun do not move her; Brahmā names the state 'the anaesthesia of thy meditation (to the state of a stock and stone).'

3. 8
   Indra y Ahalyā III.89.27; III.89.31–34

   In the freezing tank 'instead of betraying any sign of pain, they kept smiling together'; in the frying pan, under elephants and scourges they 'remained unhurt.'

4. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.110.34; III.110.39; III.110.58

   "The dispassionate Yogi ... has no sense of his hands being bitten off by a voracious beast ... owing to the absence of his mind"; the deeper or lighter attention of the mind "aggravates or lightens its sense of pleasure or pain".

5. 16
   El canto de Kaca IV.58.6

   ‘Knowing all things to be full of the holy spirit, I forget and sink all my pains in my spirit.’

6. 19
   Bali, Virocana y Śukra V.28 (title); V.28.1; V.28.16; V.29.6

   Mitra titles the chapter ‘Description of Bali’s Anaesthesia’; the court is impatient at ‘this numbness of their king’; Śukra calls him ‘as cold as ice’; Bali later speaks of ‘the entranced state of my insensibility’.

7. 20
   Prahlāda V.37.1, V.37.4

   "undisturbed anaesthesia or insensibility"; "his deadened mind remained deaf to their calls like a solid rock".

8. 23
   Suraghu, Māṇḍavya y Parigha V.60.8–9

   "he remained quiet in every state of pleasure and pain" (60.8); "his entranced soul enjoyed its anaesthesia in every state of his life" (60.9).

9. 25
   Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.84.9–13

   Neither thunder, the shouts of soldiers and hunters, lions, waterfalls, earthquakes nor "the noise and heat of wild fires" disturbed his repose.

10. 27
    Vasiṣṭha ante Śiva: el culto interior VI.1.41.18; VI.1.32.21

    Śiva is known “after subsidence of the senses … together with the imperceptibility of our sensations of pain and pleasure”; Mitra glosses the soul's insensibility as like “some anaesthetic agent as opium, chloroform and the like”.

11. 30
    Arjuna, encarnación de Nara-Nārāyaṇa VI.1.53.10; VI.1.54.9–12

    Kṛṣṇa speaks of subduing the body “with the morphia of indifference” and teaches that “no bodily hurt or debility affects the soul, which is seated beyond it.”

12. 42
    Bhṛṅgīśa y Śiva: la triple conducta VI.1.115.35

    "He who does not take to his mind the pains, which invade his body, mind and the senses, is said to have cast away from himself, all the troubles of his mortal state", with Mitra's gloss that "the mind only feels the bodily and sensuous pains".

13. 43
    Manu e Ikṣvāku: las siete etapas VI.1.119.9; VI.1.122.7

    Samādhi is called a weapon of “anaesthesia” that cuts the feeling of agreeable and disagreeable. The liberated man “is not affected either by the torture or subministration of his body; he deems his pain and pleasure as passing on his shadow”.

14. 45
    Las preguntas del vidyādhara VI.2.11.1–4

    The one established in the Supreme “has his mind unmoved at the stroke of a weapon of his bare body” and “sees inwardly what is worth seeing: (though he is outwardly as insensible as a block of stone)”.

15. 48
    Manki, el brahmán piadoso VI.2.26.31; VI.2.26.41

    “The anaesthetic sage” and Manki “unmoved and insensible as a stone, quite callous in all his senses and feelings, and wakeful with his internal sensibility”.

16. 52
    La disolución final: Śiva y Śakti VI.2.91.44–46; VI.2.79.15

    Asked whether confinement in the stone was pleasure or pain, he answers that it was like sleep 'with the dulness of his senses' while the intellect stays 'fully awake'; in samādhi there is no consciousness of the body.

17. 55
    Vipaścit, el rey que se hizo cuatro VI.2.119.12–13, 20; 128.19

    On his own pyre the traveller is 'untouched by the flames' while absorbed in the rapture of his love, and cries out only when 'I felt the pain of the burning flame'; the northern Vipaścit, devoured by birds, 'did not feel the pains and pangs ... but retained his clear consciousness all along'.

18. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.141.1

    'Though repeatedly burning amidst those fires, yet I was neither consumed nor felt the least pain therein.' Earlier he entered the flames and was 'quite unscorched and unscathed' (140.64).

19. 60
    Aindava: la Brahmā Gītā VI.2.178.38–39

    Their skeletons were 'beaten and devoured by rapacious beasts', and limbs disappeared, 'yet they continued to reflect that they were the God Brahmá and his creation'.

20. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.2.198.4; 198.36

    The highest pitch of indifference leads to 'the blissfulness of the _nirvána_ numbness, which is treated of in this book on _anæsthesia_' (198.4); Jaḍabharata, 'by the natural hebetude of his mind, devoured the firebrand ... without any injury to himself' (198.36).

Catalepsy

immobility, suspended animation, the body left

23 relatos

1. 2
   Śuka ante Janaka II.1.42–44

   Śuka 'remained silent with his mind fixed in the purely supreme object', then 'passed ten thousands of rains in a state of unalterable meditation, till at last he broke his mortal coil'.

2. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.48.24–27; III.49.19; III.56.4

   Under Sindhu's Gandharva missile the soldiers become "as mute as moonstruck, staring in their looks, and appearing as dead bodies or as pictures in a painting" until a counter-charm wakes them; later troops stand "petrified ... with staring eyes, open mouths, and unmoving hands and feet"; the dying king lies "as motionless, as those of a statue".

3. 6
   Karkaṭī, la rākṣasī que se hizo aguja III.72.23–24; III.75.2; III.75.8

   'the feet of the firm ... never move from their place'; she 'loses in time the motion of his external organs'; when Brahmā comes she 'wanted the external organs of sense' to speak and is 'quite abstracted from all external sensations, and the use of her bodily organs.'

4. 7
   Los diez hijos de Indu III.86.9; III.86.50; III.87.2–3

   The parents stand 'unmoved as immovable trees' for two ages; the sons sit 'in their motionless postures like fixed rocks' until their bodies dry, drop and are devoured.

5. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.104.43–49; III.105.2–4

   For about two hours he sits motionless and "could not be roused from his stupefaction by any body"; the court freezes with him. On return his body shakes and he nearly falls from the horse until his attendants hold him up.

6. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.9.16; IV.10.1–5; IV.14.16

   His first body lies 'prostrate on the bed of stones' until it is a skeleton; Bhṛgu sits a thousand years in 'suspension or syncope'; the Samaṅgā ascetic's 'limbs were stiff, and his sense at a stand still'.

7. 17
   Janaka y el canto de los Siddhas V.10.18–19

   His ‘restless mind became as still, as it made him sit down like a picture in painting or as a statue’, while the chamberlain stands waiting in silence.

8. 19
   Bali, Virocana y Śukra V.27.34; V.28.7

   ‘He remained long in his steady posture as a statue carved of a stone’; the court finds him ‘with his head hanging down with the crown upon it, and his arms hanging loosely’.

9. 20
   Prahlāda V.37.2–5

   The ecstasy "made his body as immovable as a rock in painting or a figure carved on a stone"; he sat "as unmoved, as the carved sun upon a stone".

10. 22
    Uddālaka V.54.54; V.55.22

    "his limbs dropped down as in the drowziness of sleep" (54.54); "His great body remained as fixed as an image in painting" (55.22).

11. 25
    Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.84.2–6; V.84.14–16

    "His body became motionless and devoid of its pulsations"; "His heart was cold and his breathings were stopped"; he has "the appearance of a statue hewn upon a rock", buried in mud to the shoulders.

12. 29
    La piedra que contiene todas las formas VI.1.46.38–41

    “As the figures in the stone, have no action or motion of their own; so the agents of the world have no action of theirs”; all actions are “as motionless in mind of God, as the carved lie asleep in the hollow of a stone.”

13. 31
    Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.63.38, 43

    The mendicant's body is found “lying as a dead corpse on the barren ground”; Jīvaṭa lies “asleep and insensible as a dead body”.

14. 34
    Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.101.2; 102.15–16; 103.11–13, 103.22–34

    'fixed eyes and quite speechless ... a carved statue without its motion and sensation'; loud shouts and shaking do not rouse him, yet pulse and bodily warmth remain.

15. 44
    El ciervo y el cazador VI.1.124.31; VI.1.124.38

    Sages are “as cool as blocks of stone”, and the fourth state “bears the feature of death in it. Yet this dead like figure possesses the principle of life in it”.

16. 48
    Manki, el brahmán piadoso VI.2.26.40–41

    He “remained in his deep meditation for a century of years” and “resides there still, unmoved and insensible as a stone”.

17. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.56.37; VI.2.69.8

    Vasiṣṭha 'as immovable as a statue carved in relief upon the face of the sky'; the Brāhmaṇa 'as immovable as a rock (in his yoga hypnotism)'.

18. 53
    El siddha de la celda aérea VI.2.93.21–22

    Falling from the sky across the continents, he keeps his lotus posture, trunk upright on the rising breaths, and 'did not wake from the torpor of his samádhi ... but fell down insensible as a stone'.

19. 55
    Vipaścit, el rey que se hizo cuatro VI.2.123.12–13; 124.17–18

    Turned to stone by siddhas for a century; 'spellbound by their sorcery, he lay asleep for full seven years', then 'converted to the torpid state of a stone' for seven more.

20. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.140.51–52

    From outside, the sage sees 'myself sitting in my padmásana' while his pupils care for 'my person in its state of anaesthesia'. Meanwhile the host lies 'as dead as a lifeless block or as a figure in painting' (138.17).

21. 60
    Aindava: la Brahmā Gītā VI.2.178.36–37

    They sat 'with their closed eyes, as if they were mere figures in painting', and 'many a month and year glided over their heads and motionless bodies'.

22. 61
    Kundadanta y el ermitaño del kadamba VI.2.180.29

    The hanging ascetic 'persisted in his dormancy as a dead body, without any motion in his outer limbs'. The kadamba hermit has 'remained as motionless as a stone' (182.17), and at the end he becomes 'as motionless as a statue or picture, without any action of his breath and mind' (185.1).

23. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.1.127.4–7; VI.1.128.97; VI.2.195.57–58

    Rāma's strength fails, his limbs 'fall', he stares, then sits 'without uttering a word' (127.4–7); later he 'remained transfixed in his trance and uttered not a word in reply' (128.97). The sages sit 'as quiet and silent as yon mute and motionless picture on the wall' and 'as still as the statues engraven in a rock' (195.57–58).

Dissociation

the self split from body, role or scene

9 relatos

1. 8
   Indra y Ahalyā III.89.36–37

   'all your punishments to torment the body, can give no pain to the mind'; the body is 'a shadowy appearance', and punishing it is 'striking a shadow with a stick.'

2. 9
   El gran yermo: historia del corazón humano III.98.25–27; III.99.28–32

   The man tears off and casts away his head, arms, breast and belly; the decoding: they 'were glad to think in their minds, how they got rid of the confines of their bodies and limbs, the accomplices of their actions.'

3. 14
   Bhīma, Bhāsa y Dṛḍha IV.34.12–14

   They are ‘insensible of their personal existence’ and rush out convinced ‘that the unsubstantial body is nothing… and that there is nothing which we call as I or another’.

4. 17
   Janaka y el canto de los Siddhas V.11.1–2

   He performs the rites ‘without the sense of his agency in them’, ‘awaking as if it were in his sleep’; the gloss: ‘He did his acts by rote, but wot not what he did in his insensibility of them.’

5. 27
   Vasiṣṭha ante Śiva: el culto interior VI.1.38.5; VI.1.28.21–24

   “In all forms of worship you must cease to think of your body, and separate your mind from your person”; Vasiṣṭha repeatedly asks “where is your body situated” when the mind travels in dream or reverie.

6. 30
   Arjuna, encarnación de Nara-Nārāyaṇa VI.1.53.5–7

   “Let the eyes see, the ears hear, and your touch feel their objects… but why take them to your soul and where is your egoism situated in these?”

7. 31
   Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.65.1–3

   “So it is the case with all living beings, to look on their past lives and actions apart from themselves, and in the persons of other men… and all persons appear as distinct figures in the dream.”

8. 42
   Bhṛṅgīśa y Śiva: la triple conducta VI.1.115.18, 115.22

   The best actor "acts his part with his body, but keeps his mind quite unattached to it"; the great enjoyer "receives with his hands what his mind does not perceive; and acts with his body without being conscious of it".

9. 48
   Manki, el brahmán piadoso VI.2.26.31–33

   The sage “is no voluntary actor of any act, although he may be physically employed”. He moves “as a mechanical figure or puppet … moving as it is moved”, like “a babe sleeping in a swinging cradle”.

Parts / ego states

the self divided into persons who meet

10 relatos

1. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.52.36–37; III.58.46–47

   The younger Līlā "is but a form of thee as thou didst desire to be to please thy husband"; before the revived king the elder says, "The other Lílá is but a reflexion of myself, and cast by my free will for your service."

2. 13
   Dāma, Vyāla y Kaṭa IV.25.34–38; IV.34.3–6

   Śambara produces the three 'by his sorcery' and names them 'according to the demon's wish'; they are 'facsimiles of the images in the demon's mind'. After their fall he reviews why they failed and resolves to produce new ones endowed with reason and spiritual knowledge.

3. 17
   Janaka y el canto de los Siddhas V.9.60; V.11.4–18

   Janaka names his mind ‘the robber of my soul’, then at night addresses it as ‘O my friendly mind!’ and ‘O wicked mind!’, asking it to rest from its wanderings.

4. 25
   Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.82.12–83; V.83.3; V.86.12–14

   The sage addresses his mind and his senses as persons: "O my mind! that art wandering all about like a mendicant" (V.82.26); "O my senses, said he, I know your special essences to be for our misery only" (V.83.3).

5. 31
   Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.63.44–56; VI.1.64.2

   “This one soul exhibited in the triple forms of Rudra, Jivátá and the mendicant”; finally “the one Rudra Personality in a hundred persons”, who “remained with Rudra, as parts and compositions of himself.”

6. 51
   La ninfa celeste VI.2.64.46–48; VI.2.69.34–35

   The Brāhmaṇa 'produced me out of himself' and she remains 'a mental consort of his'; in the frame he declares her 'the presiding divinity over my will ... neither my wife nor have I betrothed her'.

7. 52
   La disolución final: Śiva y Śakti VI.2.84.23; VI.2.85.11–20

   The ever-moving power is 'never different or unconnected' from the still Śiva; she 'became one with Siva' once 'conscious of herself, as one and same' with him, 'as a river is incorporated in the ocean'.

8. 55
   Vipaścit, el rey que se hizo cuatro VI.2.109.23–31; 113.2; 124.2, 13; 125.2–6, 21

   The besieged king becomes four kings 'of one soul and mind'; later 'though they were impressed with the consciousness of their self identity, yet they all acted their several parts as quite distinct' (124.13), and the parts free one another from curses, 'these states mutually helped and healed each other' (125.21).

9. 60
   Aindava: la Brahmā Gītā VI.2.179.12–13

   'Each of the Aindavas, thought himself to have become a hundred in his imagination', and 'every body conscious of his being many, either consecutively or simultaneously'.

10. 61
    Kundadanta y el ermitaño del kadamba VI.2.183.11–38

    The Blessing and the Curse take bodily form, argue their precedence, go before Brahmā, and 'entered into the heart of one another, in order to sound their understandings'. The Curse then concedes.

Nested trance

dream within dream, world within world

16 relatos

1. T
   El umbral I.1.9–I.2.24

   Agasti tells Sutīkṣṇa of Agniveśya, who tells Kāruṇya of Suruci, who hears from Indra's messenger of Ariṣṭanemi, who is told by Vālmīki how Brahmā and Bharadvāja set the Rāma–Vasiṣṭha dialogue in motion: at least five frames, each opened by a question.

2. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.20.8–11; III.20.23–26

   Līlā cannot believe that 'the small space of the room in which my husband's body is lying, could contain those spacious lands'; the goddess answers that the brahmin's spirit holds the kingdom in his house 'as the bee abides in the lotus', and that the soul 'contains in every atom of it, unnumbered worlds within worlds'.

3. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.41.33–35; III.52.3–6; III.52.26

   The royal pavilion "is situated in the vacuous space, within the house of the Bráhman in that hilly district"; the war "occurred nowhere except in the vacant space of the shrine"; Padma "beholds these illusions of the world spread before him in the same sepulchre in the person of Vidúratha".

4. 7
   Los diez hijos de Indu III.85.10–11; III.87.9–11

   Worlds created by ten minds now stand inside Brahmā's mind: 'these have become the ten bright orbs situated in the vacuous sphere of thy mind.'

5. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.106.26–30; III.115.27–33

   Inside the dream he sleeps in a tree, and "I passed that one night as a long Kalpa in my senselessness", which Mitra glosses as the dreaming mind that "makes an age of a moment". The cause of the whole episode is itself a mental rite: a Rājasūya performed in the mind, after which he spends a year in a forest and wakes "by the evening of that day".

6. 15
   Dāśūra, el árbol kadamba y el rey nacido del aire IV.52.1–5; IV.52.23

   Vasiṣṭha tells Rāma of overhearing Dāśūra tell his son of a king who, living in one city, ‘builds another for his future habitation’.

7. 31
   Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.62.7–36

   Mendicant → Jīvaṭa → brahman (who “fell asleep one day into a deep trance”) → chieftain → king → nymph → deer → creeper → bee → elephant → bee → goose → Brahmā's swan → Rudra; most passages are a sleep within the previous dream.

8. 32
   Los enigmas del Vetāla VI.1.71.2–17; VI.1.72.3–4

   The answer is a ladder of containment: “That which contains thousands of such worlds… That which contains thousands of such eggs… That which bears thousands of such Gods… is the Great God Rudra”; and the plantain stem whose pith is “deeply hid in the interior”.

9. 45
   Las preguntas del vidyādhara VI.2.5.4–7; VI.2.13–14

   Vasiṣṭha tells Rāma what Bhuśuṇḍa told the vidyādhara, and Bhuśuṇḍa in turn tells of Indra's world inside an atom and a later Indra inside a lotus fibre. There are four narrative frames, two of them worlds within worlds.

10. 46
    Indra en el átomo VI.2.13.6–12; VI.2.13.18–30

    The world is a fig on a branch of the tree of ages. Inside it Indra enters an atom, and inside the atom he builds a world where a thousand generations reign.

11. 47
    El Indra de la fibra de loto: crear es imaginar VI.2.14.23–24

    The first Indra reigns in an atom, the last in the hollow fibre of a lotus stalk, and “thousands of other Indras … are going on still in their fancied realm”.

12. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.58.5; VI.2.63.33; VI.2.69.3–4; VI.2.70.12–14

    'Thousands of worlds are contained within the compact and solid body of a stone'; 'each mind has a world in it, and every world has its people also'; inside the stone sits another Brahmā with his own world.

13. 53
    El siddha de la celda aérea VI.2.93.10–17, 95–97

    The siddha's meditation is housed in a cell that exists only by Vasiṣṭha's sustaining wish; when the host withdraws the wish, the cell vanishes and the guest's trance is dropped to earth. Mitra's own gloss at 93.95 calls the cell 'a creation of the saint's imagination'.

14. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.141.1

    Falling through the fire at the end of the age, the sage says: 'I thought all this as a dream in my dreaming (i.e. one dream in another)'. The world in which he now teaches the hunter is itself inside the host's dream (150.3; 151.8–11).

15. 60
    Aindava: la Brahmā Gītā VI.2.176.17–21

    In Brahmā's account the atom of Intellect sees the three worlds within itself, and 'minuter atoms subsisting within the minute atoms; and stupendous worlds also on high'. Each Aindava world in turn 'teemed with millions of beings' (179.12).

16. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.2.206.2–211.1; 216.1–17

    Inside the final sermon Vasiṣṭha recounts a separate dialogue with King Prajñapti of Kuśadvīpa (206–211). In ch. 216 the frames close in turn: Vālmīki and Prince Ariṣṭanemi, the celestial messenger and the apsaras Suruci, Kāruṇya, and finally Agastya and Sutīkṣṇa.

Positive or negative hallucination

seeing what is not there, not seeing what is

23 relatos

1. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.17.31–33; III.26.7–9; III.27.11

   In Padma's court Līlā walks 'unperceived by all' (a negative hallucination for the courtiers); at the brahmin's house she wills that 'the inmates of the house might behold her and the goddess', and they see 'the two ladies as Laxmí and Gaurí'. The goddess explains: 'you ... wished that your son might see you, whereby he was enabled to have your sight.'

2. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.44.14–17; III.56.16; III.57.9; III.57.53; III.58.12

   Līlā sees the queen "exactly of her form and features" and asks whether these are "living beings (or the false chimeras of my imagination)"; the king's soul and the younger Līlā cannot see the two spirit forms present; a Yogi is seen by some in the air and by others as a corpse, "according to one's belief"; children who fear devils see ghosts.

3. 10
   Los tres príncipes que nunca existieron III.100.41; III.101.34–35

   'Imagination represents an unreality as reality ... as a rope presents the appearance of a snake even to the wise'; the elements of the world are 'creations of our fancy, like the visions in our dreams.'

4. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.106.5–8

   "I sat on the back of this unmoving horse and seemed to ride on a fleet steed"; a whole world of desert, forest, people and seasons is perceived while the court around him is not.

5. 21
   Gādhi, el brahmán del estanque V.48.57–64

   Viṣṇu: the guest, the journey, the villages and the Kīra city "were the excogitations of thy own mind" (48.61); "It was all a day dream, that thou didst see with thy mind’s eye" (48.64).

6. 22
   Uddālaka V.54.7–24; V.54.49

   In the three stages of the praṇava, the body is burned to ashes, the ashes scattered, then a lunar dew "resuscitated the burnt body to its former form" bearing "the four arms of Vishnu" (54.8–23); later "the broad expanse of the blue firmament, filled with fancied forms of animals, and flights of peacocks" (54.49).

7. 27
   Vasiṣṭha ante Śiva: el culto interior VI.1.29.94–96; VI.1.35.25–26

   Vasiṣṭha sees Śiva “by the sight of my understanding, or the mental vision”; Śiva states that the deity “takes upon him the visible form, according to the thought in the mind of the worshipper”.

8. 28
   El fruto vilva VI.1.45.17

   “The thought that 'I am this', clothes the unreality with a gross form (as the thought of a devil gives the unreal phantom a foul figure)… the mind makes them of itself and then believes its fictitious creatures as real ones.”

9. 31
   Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.63.39, 50

   The resuscitated mendicant understands “that all his wanderings were but hallucinations of his mind”; the gloss adds that “all these journeys, places and persons, were but reveries of the mind”.

10. 34
    Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.107.17; 108.1–13; 109.8

    She 'showed by her magic skill the god Indra, sporting in the company of celestial nymphs', later 'retracted the enchantment'; she says the forms of Kumbha and others 'were no real but magical appearance'.

11. 36
    El nacimiento de Kumbha, el hijo del cántaro VI.1.87.22

    "As the boy possest the idea of a ghost in his mind, sees the apparition of a devil before him; and as a sick man having hypochondria of his malady, is soon attacked by it"

12. 37
    La gema de los deseos y el trozo de vidrio VI.1.88.20–23

    A "brittle piece of glass, shining with its false glare" is taken for the wish-gem; "the deluded mind ... sees the serpent in the rope and views the desert land as the watery expanse ... and spies another moon in the sky".

13. 39
    El falso Indra VI.1.107.17–32; VI.1.108.1

    Cūḍālā "showed by her magic skill the god Indra" with nymphs and a train of gods; Indra speaks, offers objects, argues, and vanishes with his retinue "as the huge surges of the sea, subside"; afterwards she "retracted the enchantment".

14. 44
    El ciervo y el cazador VI.1.124.30–33

    A wounded stag has just fled past, yet the sage, his ego dissolved, says he rests in the fourth state “wherein there is no vision of the visibles”. He explains that the mind conducts all the actions of the senses (124.32).

15. 45
    Las preguntas del vidyādhara VI.2.8.18; VI.2.13.3

    “a thought that is long dwelt upon and brooded over in the mind, comes to appear as really present before the sight”. The world, “as minute as a particle of fragrance”, appears “as big as a mountain to the sensation of the outward organs of sense”.

16. 46
    Indra en el átomo VI.2.13.20–24

    Inside the atom he “conceived in his imagination, his royal palace”, then “saw an imaginary city … with its walls studded with gems, pearls and corals”, then a country of hills, villages and forests, then all three worlds.

17. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.59.2–8

    A sweet female voice reciting verses is heard 'without knowing its author', though 'I find no visible being appearing to my sight'.

18. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.67.6–18

    At the stone he sees only 'a crystaline marble, and burning with fire', while she sees all its worlds; she ascribes his blindness to 'the want of your preconceptions'.

19. 52
    La disolución final: Śiva y Śakti VI.2.83.3–8

    Vivid figures of Rudra and Kālī are seen and simultaneously known as 'spectres of delusion ... creatures of my mistaken fancy'; whatever a term signifies is 'presented before the outward sight by the power of delusion'.

20. 54
    El piśāca VI.2.94.19–27; 95.2–5

    Gods, sun, moon and siddhas do not perceive him; his calls are unheard and his hands pass through them. When he decides they should see him, 'They then began to look upon me standing before them, and felt astonished'.

21. 56
    El cadáver prodigioso VI.2.133.2–7

    In a sphere 'so different from it, as a city in dream differs from one in sight', Vipaścit sees a locust-like shadow, then 'the mountainous form of a man, falling fast from the sky', and then the sun itself falling.

22. 61
    Kundadanta y el ermitaño del kadamba VI.2.183.47–67

    The brothers' ghosts 'deem themselves as lords of the seven regions of earth, though dwelling in the empty air of their own abodes'. Each is seen ruling Ujjain, Scythia, Kuśadvīpa and other lands, 'unacquainted with the respective provinces of one another'.

23. 63
    La gran indagación: las preguntas del rey Prajñapti VI.2.207.21–22

    'Whatever is imagined in the imaginary city of Brahma, the same is conceived as existent in reality; as you conceive the objects of your desire or fancy, to be present before you in actuality'. Mitra's gloss: 'The thought of a thing appears as the thing itself'.

24. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.2.210.2–7; 211.11–13

    Those who longed to become the moon became it 'in their conception of themselves' (210.2); 'in the case of his firm belief in the same state, he thinks and feels himself to be the very same' (210.7). In 'silent and steadfast meditation' one can 'have the visitation' of siddhas and gods in the soul (211.11), though the gloss warns it is 'often dangerous to the unadept novice' (211.13).

Out-of-body / thought-body travel

17 relatos

1. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.17.16; III.23.12–15; III.29.39–45

   Līlā 'quitted in a moment the prison house of her body ... to fly freely in the air, like a bird freed from its cage'; later the two 'rose as high as one span above the ground, then taking the forms of the empty intellect, they began to mount in the sky', and in III.29 fly beyond sun, stars and the spheres of the dead.

2. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.40.8–10; III.40.62–64; III.53.1–17; III.56.6–19

   The goddesses enter the sleeping king's tent through a crevice, since one who "has the true notion of his inward subtle spirit" is not bounded by the body; the younger Līlā, "in her fancied body", flies through clouds, sun, stars and the cosmic shell and returns to the tomb; the elder Līlā and Sarasvatī follow the king's departing soul.

3. 6
   Karkaṭī, la rākṣasī que se hizo aguja III.72.4; III.73.35–42

   She is 'wafted by her vital breath to the top of the hill'; 'the living soul of Súchí' enters the heart of a young vulture, is carried to the mountain and 'issued from the body of the bird, in the manner of the spirit coming out of it.'

4. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.10.51–52; IV.11.4–6

   "He having left this body of his behind him, in the mountain cave of Mandara, fled to the celestial region, as a bird flies from his nest"; Bhṛgu's mind enters his son's thoughts and 'returned from the bank of Samangá to his own body on mount Mandara, where it was left in its sitting posture'.

5. 15
   Dāśūra, el árbol kadamba y el rey nacido del aire IV.52.1; IV.55.2

   Vasiṣṭha travels ‘in my invisible body’ toward the Mandākinī and alights on the kadamba ‘with my spiritual body’.

6. 22
   Uddālaka V.54.60–62

   "He passed out of the confines of his body and then went to a certain spot, where leaving his ordinary form, he became as a sea of joy".

7. 25
   Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.84.18; V.85.5; V.85.14–24

   The subtle body (liṅgadeha, puryaṣṭaka) leaves the buried body, sees it "lying in the cave as an insect", rides a sunbeam into the sun, enters Piṅgala's body and finally re-enters its own "as its nest".

8. 31
   Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.63.3; VI.1.66.4–7

   The swan-Rudra “quitted his body of the bird”; Vasiṣṭha searches with “the all seeing eye of my intellectual vision” and “ran in my mind at the last watch of the night, and passed over the regions on the north”.

9. 34
   Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.103.36–39; 85.8–9

   'Chúdálá left her body ... and entered into the body of the body', gave 'a vibration to the intellection of her living lord', and returned 'as a bird ... comes back to its own nest'.

10. 46
    Indra en el átomo VI.2.13.17–18

    Indra “compressed the thought of his big body in his mind, and became of a minute form”, then entered an atom “by means of the consciousness of his personal minuteness”.

11. 47
    El Indra de la fibra de loto: crear es imaginar VI.2.14.20

    “He then wandered in his mind all over this creation, and believing himself as the lord of all he saw in it, became the very god Indra”.

12. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.59.10–17; VI.2.62.2–4

    He leaves his body in its posture and 'with the vacuous body of my intellect' mixes with space; later he was 'neither seated in any one place, nor ... moving', yet saw everything in himself.

13. 51
    La ninfa celeste VI.2.65.17–20

    Freed of desire, she acquires 'the power of locomotion amidst the air', sees past and future events of her world while staying at home, and goes out as far as the polar mountain.

14. 52
    La disolución final: Śiva y Śakti VI.2.91.53–59

    With 'his intelligent and spiritual body' one can 'enter into the impenetrable heart of a hard stone, or to rise to heaven above or descend to the regions below'; 'In my entrance into the hard stone ... I experienced no difficulty'.

15. 54
    El piśāca VI.2.94.10–17

    Having lost his material frame, Vasiṣṭha travels the regions of Indra 'in my spiritual body', with 'neither a receptacle nor recipient', making no 'reckoning of the distance of space or succession of time'.

16. 55
    Vipaścit, el rey que se hizo cuatro VI.2.126.8–14; 128.30–41

    After death their 'vacuous and self-conscious souls' behold the continents; the northern one passes the region of fire 'without being burnt or hurt in his spiritual body', and concludes 'what is it beside the mind, that can lead any body from one place to another' (128.35).

17. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.140.49–51

    The sage leaves the host's body on its outbreath, 'mounting afterwards on the vehicle of the wind'. From outside he sees his own body seated among his pupils. Later he 'became a breath of air' to search for that body (150.27–29).

Post-hypnotic carry-over

what happened inside endures outside

24 relatos

1. 4
   El antiguo Vasiṣṭha y Arundhatī III.19.14; III.19.19–20

   The wish formed on the hillside is 'thenceforth' sustained by lifelong austerities, and after death the spirit 'assumed the shape of a mighty man on earth, by virtue of the excessive desire and merit of acts in his former state of existence'.

2. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.58.11–16; III.59.14–17

   Līlā keeps a body "changed to a purer one, agreeably to the tenor and temperament of thy mind"; after the revival the king, "fraught with the wisdom imparted to him by the goddess", rules with both Līlās "in their state of living liberation for myriads of years".

3. 7
   Los diez hijos de Indu III.87.4; III.88.17–20

   The state continues after the bodies are gone, and its products persist into the next kalpa: 'no body has the power to destroy them, when they are seated so firmly in the mind.'

4. 8
   Indra y Ahalyā III.90.10–13

   Through births as deer, doves, humans and brahmins they remain a pair, 'by virtue of their delusion and reminiscence.'

5. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.120.2–11; III.121.4–9; III.121.22–27

   He travels to the Vindhyas and finds "the same huts and hovels ... with the same men and women"; Vasiṣṭha explains that "Lavana's remembrance of the dream ... was the internal cause, that represented to him the external picture" and that the dream "took possession of their minds also".

6. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.13.10–11; IV.16.10; IV.16.22

   "What your son had thought of in his mental body ... the same he found"; the life imagined at the Samaṅgā leaves an actual body that falls when he leaves it and must be cremated.

7. 14
   Bhīma, Bhāsa y Dṛḍha IV.34.5–11

   The reason and knowledge installed by Śambara’s charm at their creation hold for ‘many cycles of years’ of war: they ‘were not elated with pride, owing to their being under the guidance of reason and judgement’.

8. 17
   Janaka y el canto de los Siddhas V.12.1–14

   Thereafter he governs ‘without being subject to the feelings of joy or sorrow’, remaining ‘in his hypnotic state of sound sleep (abstraction)’ while attending to affairs of state.

9. 19
   Bali, Virocana y Śukra V.29.30–38

   Confined by Viṣṇu in the nether world, ‘the living liberated Bali’ looks on prosperity and adversity ‘in the same light’; regaining sovereignty, he is ‘neither elated… nor… depressed’ and stays ‘one and the same person in every state of his life’.

10. 20
    Prahlāda V.41.4, V.41.18

    "whether I am in my trance or waking state, I enjoy the tranquility of my mind"; "I continue also, in the same state of my mind even after I am awakened".

11. 21
    Gādhi, el brahmán del estanque V.47.17–34; V.47.66; V.48.19–20

    A guest, a ruined hut, bones, and townspeople confirm the reign ("it is now a dozen of years", 48.20); Gādhi returns "equally ashamed and astonished", the vision "stamped like the black spot of the moon upon the tablet of his mind" (47.66).

12. 23
    Suraghu, Māṇḍavya y Parigha V.60.3–10

    He "continued as firm and unmoved, amidst the righteous and wrongful acts of his subjects, as a rock" (60.3) and "continued for a full century to reign over his realm with his mind unattached to state affairs" (60.10).

13. 25
    Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.86.9–11; V.90.1

    After the trance he "passed his long life in the state of his living liberation"; "there arose in him the qualities of universal benevolence and philanthropy".

14. 26
    Bhuśuṇḍa, el cuervo al borde del tiempo VI.1.25.22; 25.26–28; 26.2–3

    The breaths are restrained "even when he is employed in his work or is in his act of eating"; "Whether I am awake or asleep... I am never at a loss of this meditation even in dream".

15. 27
    Vasiṣṭha ante Śiva: el culto interior VI.1.42.32; VI.1.43.5–7

    After Śiva departs Vasiṣṭha gives up “the external form of my worshipping”, yet for the rest of his life worships inwardly “at all times, both by day and night” while still “employed in the observance of the prescribed and popular ritual”.

16. 30
    Arjuna, encarnación de Nara-Nārāyaṇa VI.1.58.1, 16

    Arjuna: “I am now placed above all doubts, and will act as you have said”; he “laid hold on his Gándíva bow, and rose with Hari for his charioteer”.

17. 31
    Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.64.2–8, 34–35

    “Being enlightened by him, they wandered all about the world, and rested contented with themselves”; then they return “to their respective residences” and families for their allotted time.

18. 33
    Bhagīratha y el descenso del Ganges VI.1.76.10

    The composure won in anonymity endures on the throne: he rules “without the least dismay or disquietude, though he was quite calm and serene in his mind, quiet in his speech, and devoid of passions”.

19. 34
    Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.110.25–29

    The equanimity found in the forest governs his return: 'It was by his observance of equanimity, that he enjoyed the peaceful reign of above a thousand years' (110.28).

20. 47
    El Indra de la fibra de loto: crear es imaginar VI.2.14.22

    “by virtue of his former habit of thinking, the seed of his remembrance sprouting forth with the lotus stalk, wherein he thought to have lain before”.

21. 57
    El mosquito y el cazador VI.2.136.13–19

    The curse takes effect after death and after an interval in which 'his heart and mind became as insensible as in a swoon' and his senses were scattered on the winds.

22. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.156.30–32

    As Sindhu, the former hunter never thinks to pray for liberation, because 'the propensity of doing evil (or slaughter), being inherent in your nature (from your past profession of huntsmanship)'. Later the text says 'he carries with him the same mind into the other' body (160.41).

23. 63
    La gran indagación: las preguntas del rey Prajñapti VI.2.207.33–36

    The dead 'deem the empty void of air as the world of their departed spirits', because, in Mitra's gloss, they bear 'those impressions with them even to the next world'. The soul 'never gets rid of this delusion of its regeneration' until knowledge and the absence of desire free it.

24. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.2.201.15; 203.33–39; 214.16; 216.11; 216.15

    Rāma is 'enrapt and entranced, while I am quite sane and sound and sleepless' (201.15); the dispersing crowd is 'intent upon reflecting' and gentle with one another (203.33); people 'passed their nights awake ... thinking upon the discourse of the day' (203.39); Rāma: 'Remembering and reconsidering thy words ... I am filled with fresh delight' (214.16); Suruci stays to 'reflect on the sense' (216.11); Kāruṇya 'continued to pass his time in the discharge of his duties' (216.15).

Emergence / re-alerting

the return, and the danger of not returning

25 relatos

1. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.17.42; III.25.35; III.28.8

   'Having recovered her sense at the removal of her trance'; 'returned on a sudden to her own land, and found herself in her closet again'; 'Having come out of her vision of the world, she found herself seated in her house, as one finds himself lying in his own bed, after his rambling from one dream to another.'

2. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.58.34–43; III.48.26–27

   Sarasvatī's breath enters the corpse's nostrils; colour returns, the limbs grow supple, "he oped his eyes", raised his body and "cried, 'who waits there'"; in the battle a counter-charm "awakened the senses" of the spell-bound soldiers.

3. 6
   Karkaṭī, la rākṣasī que se hizo aguja III.75.16–18; III.76.4–5; III.82.58

   Brahmā insists meditation be compatible with worldly affairs; 'Being roused to her sense, she felt the pains of her thirst and hunger'; thereafter she rises from devotion every four to seven years to visit the court.

4. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.105.1–6; III.109.20

   He is "roused from my reverie by the sound of music" at the instant he leaps onto the pyre, and on returning asks "what place was it and whose court it was".

5. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.14.25–26; IV.16.9–14

   Death's 'Awake' startles him 'as the roaring of a cloud, rouses the slumbering peacock'; later he re-enters the corpse, 'the veins and arteries ... were again supplied with their circulating blood', and he rises 'breathing the breath of life'.

6. 17
   Janaka y el canto de los Siddhas V.10.2–9; V.11.1

   The chamberlain urges him to rise for the day’s duties; Janaka stays in meditation until his reasoning is complete, then ‘rose up for performance of his daily rites as usual’.

7. 19
   Bali, Virocana y Śukra V.29.1–21

   Roused ‘to his sensibility, at the beating of heavenly drums’; he longs to resume the state and begins to close his eyes again, is interrupted, reasons it through, then receives his court ‘with the nods and glancings of his eyes’ and resumes his offices.

8. 20
   Prahlāda V.38.21; V.39.7–22

   Viṣṇu resolves to "awaken the Daitya chief from his trance", commands "rise from thy trance" and blows the conch; breath descends from the crown (39.12), circulates (39.13), the senses reopen (39.14), the mind re-forms (39.15), "his eyelids were about to open of themselves" (39.16), movement returns (39.17), and he is reoriented to his dominions and body (39.22).

9. 21
   Gādhi, el brahmán del estanque V.46.45; V.47.1–8

   The pain of the pyre "roused the dreaming Gádhi from his reverie amidst the water"; "He regained his senses slowly, as a man upon waking from his sleep" (47.3); "I am the same Gádhi and in the same function" (47.4).

10. 22
    Uddālaka V.54.74; V.54.89–90

    "after which he awoke from his trance"; later "in the course of a day, and then of a month, and sometimes after the lapse of a year or years, that he rose once from his meditation" (54.89); "After his yoga was over, he came out and mixed with the world" (54.90).

11. 23
    Suraghu, Māṇḍavya y Parigha V.62.13–19

    "this pause of samádhi being stretched too far to a dead lock, is liable to break down by itself" (62.13); a soul unconscious of itself "has no knowledge of the course of time; as in the state of sleep, delirium and insensibility" (62.19).

12. 25
    Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.85.8–27; V.86.8

    Re-entry by his own breath fails; the sun's attendant Piṅgala, as an elephant, digs out the body and draws it up "as a stork pulls up a lotus stalk"; the sage bathes and rises shining. After a later six-day sitting "he was roused as a passenger wakes after his short nap".

13. 26
    Bhuśuṇḍa, el cuervo al borde del tiempo VI.1.21.15–21; 22.46–47

    At each dissolution he rests "in a state of profound sleep" until creation resumes; then, "After awaking from the insensibility of my trance", he recognises all objects and fixes the position of Meru "from the positions of the stars".

14. 27
    Vasiṣṭha ante Śiva: el culto interior VI.1.29.1–4

    The court falls “comatose” and is “converted … to stock and stone”; Vasiṣṭha “withheld his speech for fear of disturbing their spiritual repose” and resumes only “as Ráma (with the rest of the assembly) came to be rose from their torpor after a while”.

15. 31
    Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.63.39, 49, 54–55

    Each sleeper is woken in turn — the mendicant, the brahman (“they awakened his drowsy intelligence, by means of their own intelligence”), the chief, the prince.

16. 34
    Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.96.2–5; 103.8–42

    Kumbha rouses him from trance and prescribes the middle course (96.3); later fears 'his soul will soon forsake its mortal frame' (103.8), stirs his intellect from within, then chants Sāma hymns until 'his dormant life was awakened' (103.41).

17. 45
    Las preguntas del vidyādhara VI.2.16.1–3

    The vidyādhara falls into “the trance of samádhi—anaesthesia”, and “notwithstanding my repeated attempts, to awaken him … he did not open his eyes”.

18. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.56.42–43; VI.2.69.13–15

    His senses expand 'as the withered arbors expand ... by the enlivening influence of the vernal season' and egoism returns; the Brāhmaṇa, called by name, 'opened his eyes slowly, as flowers open their petals'.

19. 53
    El siddha de la celda aérea VI.2.93.23–30

    Vasiṣṭha roars, rains, hails and flashes lightning until the siddha 'flushed and his eyes opened'; the siddha then asks him to 'wait awhile until I can recollect myself and my former state'.

20. 54
    El piśāca VI.2.95.4–13

    Vasiṣṭha decides to be seen and is seen; 'my spiritual body assumed a material form, which sprang from within me and of my own will', though both forms were perceived 'in my intellectual mind only'.

21. 55
    Vipaścit, el rey que se hizo cuatro VI.2.130.4–28; 128.41–46

    Vasiṣṭha raises a smokeless fire by mantra and concentration; the stag leaps in and emerges human; Bhāsa 'rose from his reverie', and Vasiṣṭha 'raised him by touching his head' with a blessing. Two Vipaścits, by contrast, never return and wander 'for ever more'.

22. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.150.26–151.8

    The sage sets out to return to his body but finds 'neither that or any other passage'. The guest explains that a wildfire burned both bodies 'as you absorbed in your reverie', so 'you could not find out those two bodies'.

23. 61
    Kundadanta y el ermitaño del kadamba VI.2.181.23–28

    Kundadanta's 'loud cry awakened the muni from the trance of his reverie'. The hermit is disoriented ('what means this change and what time is this'), re-enters meditation, and only then comes 'to himself from his abstraction'.

24. 62
    Los leñadores y la gema VI.2.196.1–3

    Rāma 'fell into a trance and remained silent' in supreme bliss, then 'awaking after a while from his holy trance', he states that his doubt is set at rest and asks his question.

25. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.1.128.94–99; VI.2.196.2; 203.22

    Vasiṣṭha's verbal command, 'it is not the time for you thus to slumber in yoga, rise', fails; his spirit then enters Rāma 'through dormitory passage of _susumná_', fills breath, mind and senses, and 'Ráma slowly oped his eyelids' and gazes 'without any wish or effort of his own' (128.97–98). In VI.2 Rāma wakes 'after a while' by himself (196.2), and the session ends with 'Now rise to do your duties' (203.22).

Therapeutic metaphor / reframe

30 relatos

1. T
   El umbral I.1.7; I.1.18

   Agasti answers the action-or-knowledge question with the image of a bird's two wings; Agniveśya answers his son's paralysis not with an argument but with 'a narrative' whose 'purport' the son is to weigh and act on as he chooses.

2. 1
   El desaliento de Rāma y la llegada de Viśvāmitra I.11.2–7

   Against the attendants' account of a madman-like illness (I.10.17), Viśvāmitra declares the 'stupor' to be 'the development of that superior intellect', and promises not cure but completion: Rāma will 'repose in that happy state of mind, to which we have arrived'.

3. 4
   El antiguo Vasiṣṭha y Arundhatī III.18.37–38; III.19.17; III.20.1

   Sarasvatī answers Līlā's question about reality with the story of 'a Bráhman with his wife and children', drops a hint inside it (Arundhatī worshipped the goddess 'like thyself'), and only afterwards reveals: 'his wife Arundhati, is no other than thyself'.

4. 6
   Karkaṭī, la rākṣasī que se hizo aguja III.69.14–15; III.82.11–12

   The illness is given a name, a home 'in the north of the snowy mountain' and a face, so that it can be addressed and banished; the king later seeks the mantra because colic 'is not removed from the hearts of men by any medicine.'

5. 9
   El gran yermo: historia del corazón humano III.98.5–45; III.99.2–36

   A full allegory is told first and then decoded point by point: 'That great desert is not distant nor different from this wilderness of the world'; 'The big bodied men ... know them to be the minds of men.'

6. 10
   Los tres príncipes que nunca existieron III.100.43; III.101.31–36

   The tale 'will serve to explain to you, the fabrication of the mind of this imaginary being of the world'; 'This air-built castle of the world ... is like the story.'

7. 13
   Dāma, Vyāla y Kaṭa IV.32.3; IV.32.21–25

   Yama foretells release 'upon hearing the account of their lives and actions'; the minister recites 'this poetical narrative of the Titan war', and the parrot, the sparrow and the gnat are liberated by hearing it.

8. 14
   Bhīma, Bhāsa y Dṛḍha IV.34.34–36

   Vasiṣṭha pairs the two triads and asks Rāma to ‘reject the examples of the former, imitate that of the latter’, a lesson he says he first received from Brahmā.

9. 15
   Dāśūra, el árbol kadamba y el rey nacido del aire IV.52.4–29; IV.53.4–37

   Dāśūra tells the Air-born king story ‘by way of a simile of worldly things’, then, when the boy is puzzled, decodes it: the king is the mind, the city the triple world, the new house desire.

10. 18
    Puṇya y Pāvana V.19.31–34; V.20.9–13; V.20.39

    Parents as many as ‘the streams of running waters in every forest’ and kin as the ‘fruits and flowers of a large tree’; the rhetorical ‘why not lament also’ for deer, swans and lions; ‘The world is a stage’.

11. 19
    Bali, Virocana y Śukra V.23.1–29; V.24.4–13

    Virocana’s parable of a featureless country whose quiet sovereign is served by an invincible minister, decoded as soul and mind: ‘The king of that place is the soul… it is the mind which is appointed by that soul as its wise minister.’

12. 24
    Bhāsa y Vilāsa V.66.14–15, V.66.20, V.66.33–35

    Life as "The poisonous plant of worldliness" that "flowers in our old age, and never fructifies before our death" (66.14); the mind as an elephant "without rest or sleep" (66.20), "a straw, in the eddy" (66.33), "a bewildered bird" trapped "in the trap of its own fancies" (66.35).

13. 25
    Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.86.32–34

    "I thank you ye pains! that have led me to the inquiry of the soul"; "I thank thee Adversity! that hast revealed to me the felicity of my soul".

14. 28
    El fruto vilva VI.1.45.2–16

    A fruit “as large as the distance of many myriads of miles”, “ever ripe of itself”, holding “millions of worlds” as its seeds, is offered as the image of the intellect and of “the human as well as the divine soul” (VI.1.45.16).

15. 29
    La piedra que contiene todas las formas VI.1.46.7–16

    A stone “bright and glossy, and cold and smooth to touch” holds a lake of lotuses within it; Vasiṣṭha explains it is “figuratively called a stone from its solidity, cohesive impenetrability and indivisibility”.

16. 34
    Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.87.46; 88–91

    Kumbha tells 'a story of a certain person, whose conduct and character resembled in every way to thine' (the false gem, the trapped elephant), and interprets them only when asked: 'the same man is thyself' (90.3).

17. 35
    El kirāṭa avaro VI.1.83.16–27

    A parable told in direct answer to Rāma's question, then mapped point by point: 'As the search of couri became the cause of or was attended with the gain of the gem, so our attendance on secular instructions of the preceptor, becomes an indirect cause' (83.27).

18. 36
    El nacimiento de Kumbha, el hijo del cántaro VI.1.87.19–23, 87.29–34

    Brahmā's kuśa grass, which "presents the fair flowers to view, without ever bearing their fruits", is turned on the king's rites; his pots, staffs and stools become "false playings of fools" and his penance the life of insects "perforating the stones in which they live".

19. 37
    La gema de los deseos y el trozo de vidrio VI.1.90.3–7, 90.19, 90.26

    "That searcher after the philosopher's stone ... the same man is thyself"; the gem is the "relinquishing of errors", the glass "the false glossy gewgaw of austerity".

20. 38
    El elefante del Vindhya VI.1.91.2–22

    Point-by-point decoding: "That elephant of the vindhyan range, is thy very self"; tusks = reasoning and resignation; hunter = ignorance; chain = expectation; palm-tree fall = ignorance cast down; pit = austerity; fodder = "expectations of future reward".

21. 41
    El hombre que construía casas en el aire VI.1.112.15–35; VI.1.113.3–9

    Six shelters (castle, cave, pot, tub, open cottage, barn-hut), each destroyed, are decoded: "The pit and the pot, and the cottage and the hut, represent the different bodies"; the man is the "magical engine (máyá yantra)" of egoism. The register is deliberately comic: "quite ludicrous and laughable from first to last".

22. 43
    Manu e Ikṣvāku: las siete etapas VI.1.118.15

    “as a fond mother moans on missing her child, forgetful of its sleeping upon her lap”: men grieve for a self they have never lost.

23. 45
    Las preguntas del vidyādhara VI.2.7.11–20; VI.2.8.2; VI.2.15.3–9

    The world-tree grows from “the particle of egoism”, with senses as roots, stars as blossoms and desires as filaments. The seed “being roasted by the fire of reason, ceases to sprout forth anymore”.

24. 49
    La mente-ciervo VI.2.44.2–31; VI.2.44.32–50; VI.2.45.1–18

    An extended double metaphor. The tree of samādhi grows from seed to fruit, and a deer-like mind “galled in its mouth by browsing the thorny brambles” finally “takes its rest and refuge under this cool shade”.

25. 52
    La disolución final: Śiva y Śakti VI.2.79.11–14

    Gods and sages vanish into nirvāṇa 'as the sleeping dreamers come to themselves after they are awakened'; the body 'disappearing with the privation of our fancy for it, like a dream vanishing from the sight of a waking man'.

26. 54
    El piśāca VI.2.94.72–76, 80–84

    Piśācas are seeds of souls 'bloated and choked' by their own former desire; they collect in dark places 'as the waters upon earth, are collected in lowlands', and darken the spot where they sit so that 'the sun even is not able, to dispel that darkness'.

27. 56
    El cadáver prodigioso VI.2.134.15–24; 135.2–12

    The goddess inhales the blood, the goblins devour the flesh, the out-of-world limbs rot by themselves; then flesh becomes clouds and soil, bones mountains, the fluids an ocean, and the earth is named medinī from the corpse's fat.

28. 59
    La estatua tallada VI.2.168.40–43

    The world is 'the uncarved doll' unseen in the forest log, and the statue that 'does not appear in the rugged block' until hewn. Mitra's gloss ties this to Aristotle and Addison: future images lie in blocks of wood and stone.

29. 62
    Los leñadores y la gema VI.2.196.12–27

    Wood-cutters looking for fuel find sandalwood, flowers and gems; the dull keep selling logs; a few find the cintāmaṇi. Vasiṣṭha decodes it himself: poverty is ignorance, the forest is knowledge, wood-gathering is the struggle for a living (197.2–6).

30. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.2.196.12–27; 197.2–6

    Destitute woodcutters go daily for firewood and some find gems and the wish-granting stone; Vasiṣṭha decodes it: the forest is the field of knowledge, and 'men prosecuting their studies for a paltry maintenance ... succeed to gain divine knowledge at the end' (197.6).

Paradox / confusion technique

7 relatos

1. 6
   Karkaṭī, la rākṣasī que se hizo aguja III.79.2–4; III.79.10

   'What is that thing which is a void yet no-void, which is something yet nothing?' 'What is it that moveth unmoved and unmoving'; 'To whom is a twinkling of the eye, as long as a Kalpa millennium.'

2. 10
   Los tres príncipes que nunca existieron III.101.5; III.101.12; III.101.16–17; III.101.22; III.101.24; III.101.26–27

   Princes 'unbegotten and increate'; trees that 'did not grow of themselves'; bathing in 'the almost dried up channel'; a house 'without its foundation'; a pot made of dust; brahmins 'bodiless' and one with 'no mouth' who eats a hundred dronas.

3. 13
   Dāma, Vyāla y Kaṭa IV.27.29; IV.27.35–40; IV.28 (argument)

   Brahmā tells Indra to 'foster both the egoistic selfishness, as well as the ambition of Dáma and others' and to stop fighting: 'try your best to inflame the pernicious avarice of your enemies to the utmost'.

4. 32
   Los enigmas del Vetāla VI.1.70.13–17

   Six “dark enigmas” put under threat of death: a sun of whose rays the worlds are particles, a wind that wafts star-dust, a thing that passes from dream to dream, a pith under a hundred sheaths, an invisible atom that produces the universe, a formless atom under the mountains.

5. 34
   Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.92.4–19; 93.12–64

   Each offering (kingdom, forest, hut, burnt possessions, even the body) is declared not yet total renunciation, until only 'your egoism' remains (92.5); finally he must 'drive away the pride of your total abandonment' (93.64).

6. 35
   El kirāṭa avaro VI.1.83.25–27

   Divine knowledge cannot be attained 'by the mere lectures of the preceptor' (83.25), yet it is 'not possible to arrive to spiritual knowledge, without the guidance of the spiritual guide' (83.26).

7. 40
   Kaca y Bṛhaspati VI.1.111.22–23, 111.30–33

   Told to forsake the mind, Kaca "strove henceforth to relinquish the thoughts and operations of his mind" and "found it impossible"; the deadlock is resolved by the statement that "There is no such thing in reality my son, as what you call your egoism".

Direct suggestion

21 relatos

1. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.45.12; III.53.36; III.56.29–31

   The goddess grants boons yet says "I have no power to do anything"; "the effect of a blessing or curse ... is no other than his obtaining the state he desired or feared"; the mere thought of receiving the funeral cake nourishes the dead, and thought "makes the poison savour as nectar".

2. 6
   Karkaṭī, la rākṣasī que se hizo aguja III.69.15–17

   The sufferer rubs the painful part, imagines the colic crushed and driven beyond the hills, thinks the medicinal moon seated in the heart and is to 'believe himself to be freed from death and disease; and his faith will save his life and heal his pain.'

3. 7
   Los diez hijos de Indu III.86.34–36; III.88.19

   A direct instruction is accepted without reservation and fulfilled completely; the Sun then states the limit of all such influence: belief is removed by no one 'except by its owner.'

4. 8
   Indra y Ahalyā III.90.3–9

   The king asks Bharata for a curse and the sage pronounces it; the pair 'fell down by effect of the denunciation', yet they had replied that it 'cannot affect our inward minds and spirits.'

5. 9
   El gran yermo: historia del corazón humano III.98.19–20; III.98.38–39; III.99.8–9

   The sage stops the runner and questions him; some receive his counsel, while others answer 'You wicked Bráhman!' and 'fell down into the pit, upon being chid by me with reproofs and rebukes.'

6. 11
   Lavaṇa y el mago III.110.50–51; III.121.19

   "As the king Lavana believed himself to be a chandála for some time, so do we believe ourselves to be so and so"; "A man deprived of understanding, believes himself as he is said, to have become a sheep."

7. 16
   El canto de Kaca IV.58.4–10

   The whole song is addressed by Kaca to himself: he ‘fervently uttered to himself’ a series of first-person affirmations: ‘all is spirit and so am I also’.

8. 20
   Prahlāda V.39.20; V.41.31–35

   "the lord bade him awake instantly at his word; and he rose" (39.20); then instructions to carry into rule: "Govern thy realm without any interested motive of thy own, and without showing any symptom of anger or fear" (41.32).

9. 22
   Uddālaka V.52.8–25

   "O my senseless mind! said he, why is it, that thou art occupied in thy worldly acts to no purpose" (52.8); then "it is only by reasoning with the mind that men are enabled to govern their hearts" (52.25).

10. 27
    Vasiṣṭha ante Śiva: el culto interior VI.1.28.37; VI.1.33.49

    “Whatever is thought upon keenly and firmly, the same comes to take place accordingly”; and the formula “Think in yourself that you are one … you will become the object of your meditation.”

11. 30
    Arjuna, encarnación de Nara-Nārāyaṇa VI.1.54.23; VI.1.58.13

    “Whoever thinks in his mind, of becoming anything in earnest; he undoubtedly becomes the same”; Kṛṣṇa closes: “mutter to yourself the mantra of your resignation of desirables”.

12. 33
    Bhagīratha y el descenso del Ganges VI.1.74.34–35

    Tritala prescribes a concrete course: “renounce all your worldly possessions and remain unmoved in your mind… rather living in contemptible beggary among them… you are then greater than the greatest.” Bhagīratha carries it out to the letter (VI.1.75.1–7).

13. 34
    Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.87.44–45

    'As a boy obeys the words of his father ... so must you receive my words'; 'hear unto my words, as you hear music without inquiring into their reason or rhyme.'

14. 40
    Kaca y Bṛhaspati VI.1.111.9, 111.15, 111.21, 111.28–31

    One short instruction given three times and re-specified each time: abandon "concerns" (111.9), "abandon his all" (111.15), "this all means the mind" (111.21), and the mind "is known as the egoism" (111.28), whose removal is "as easy as the twinkling of our eyelids" (111.31).

15. 42
    Bhṛṅgīśa y Śiva: la triple conducta VI.1.115.1, 115.9–38

    A single triple directive ("ever strive to be foremost in your action and passion and in your relinquishment of everything") is unfolded in a litany of nearly thirty parallel sentences ("He is said to act his part well, who ...").

16. 43
    Manu e Ikṣvāku: las siete etapas VI.1.118.18

    A compact chain of imperatives: “keep the steadiness of your mind, repress thy imagination and the flights of thy fancy; call thy thoughts home and confine them to thyself; remain calm and cool”.

17. 50
    La gran piedra: la meditación de Vasiṣṭha y el mundo dentro de la roca VI.2.68.1–9

    The woman instructs him to apply long practice to meditation on the spirit; he sits in samādhi 'according to the holy dictate of the nymph', and the stone then appears 'as a crystaline globe'.

18. 57
    El mosquito y el cazador VI.2.136.11–13

    After the Asura wrecks his hermitage, the sage pronounces: 'be thou now be born as a contemptible gnat, by thy immediate death under my curse', and his rage-fire burns the Asura to ashes.

19. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.159.15–22

    Indra declares that Vipaścit will become a deer. 'After the god had said so, I had the presentiment of being a deer... and entirely forgot my human nature, under my firm conviction of having become a beast.' The same mechanism appears in hell: men 'prepossessed' with images of punishment 'come to suffer the same' (160.55).

20. 60
    Aindava: la Brahmā Gītā VI.2.178.33–35

    The brothers' method is 'the constant reflection of their identity with Brahma (in the formula we are the lords of all, about us)'. Holding it, they 'believed themselves to be transformed... in an instant'.

21. 61
    Kundadanta y el ermitaño del kadamba VI.2.183.30–36

    The boon is a received suggestion that 'is strengthened in the mind of the donee in time'. It becomes effective 'only, when it is deeply rooted and duly fostered in one's self', and the prior one prevails 'though it be that of a minute only'.

Ego-strengthening / resourcing

12 relatos

1. 1
   El desaliento de Rāma y la llegada de Viśvāmitra I.11.32; I.11.36; I.33.29–46

   Vasiṣṭha calls Rāma 'truly heroic to have conquered your worldly appetites'; Viśvāmitra tells him he is 'not the person to be troubled with those evils ... to which the base and vile alone are subject'; the assembled sages declare that no one equals him in discrimination and that his speech must be answered.

2. 2
   Śuka ante Janaka II.1.38–41

   'You must be a hero to have overcome your desire ... Even your father ... has not arrived to the state of perfection like you ... you are greater than both of us'; 'you are liberated from it, and have nothing to doubt of.'

3. 16
   El canto de Kaca IV.58.10

   ‘I am as full of that spirit and its ineffable bliss, as the all encompassing water of the great deluge.’

4. 23
   Suraghu, Māṇḍavya y Parigha V.58.33, V.58.37–38

   "you will remain unchanged by your joys and griefs, as a firm rock" (58.33); "you will find yourself to be of greater magnitude, than the extent of the sky and ocean put together" (58.37); "the big elephant will not be engulfed in the hole made by the bullock’s hoof" (58.38).

5. 26
   Bhuśuṇḍa, el cuervo al borde del tiempo VI.1.26.13–38; 23.4–11

   A litany of over twenty sentences, each naming a quality (equanimity, freedom from fear, fellow-feeling, non-attachment) and ending "this has made me long-lived and undecaying" or a close variant.

6. 33
   Bhagīratha y el descenso del Ganges VI.1.73.7–8

   The tale is introduced explicitly as a resource model: “A steady and dauntless mind with its promptness in action, is successful in most arduous undertakings, as was the prince Bhagíratha with his unsevering perseverance.”

7. 34
   Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.110.4–10

   After the oath she installs him: 'leave off your quiet character of a muni ... and assume the vigour of the eight rulers'; he in turn installs her as queen regnant.

8. 38
   El elefante del Vindhya VI.1.91.2, 91.19

   Before the confrontation the king's resources are named: "his two strong tusks are no other than the two virtues of reasoning and resignation, on which you lay your strength"; and at the end, "though you are not the witless elephant".

9. 48
   Manki, el brahmán piadoso VI.2.23.39–41

   “not to be disheartened at your ignorance, as you have already come to the path of wisdom … I see you have come to the possession of the invaluable treasure, of your indifference to worldly matters”.

10. 52
    La disolución final: Śiva y Śakti VI.2.75.51–55

    In the conflagration the Malaya mountain 'yielded its fragrance even in that state'; 'Burn the sandal wood, yet it will diffuse its fragrance'; gold and space cannot be consumed.

11. 56
    El cadáver prodigioso VI.2.133.8–12

    Facing destruction, he turns to the fire; Agni, 'my adored divinity in a hundred repeated births', appears 'in his cooling moon-like form' and says 'fear not', then lifts him on his parrot.

12. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.2.201.31–34

    After Rāma's self-report Vasiṣṭha affirms him: 'O Bravo Ráma! that you have chosen for yourself the most meritorious course of life; wherein you shall never have to repent', and names his good fortune, composure and freedom from fear.

Trance testing / ratification

10 relatos

1. 2
   Śuka ante Janaka II.1.21–27; II.1.30–41

   Janaka keeps Śuka seven days at the gate, seven in the outer court and seven in the inner apartments, then plies him with 'eatables, perfumeries and lusty damsels'; only after 'having thus known the (unalterable) disposition of Suka's mind' does he receive him. He then repeats Śuka's own knowledge back and declares, 'There is nothing more certain'.

2. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.17.42–57; III.18.6

   After her first trance Līlā wakes the servants and convenes the full court at midnight, 'to clear her doubt by seeing the courtiers all alive'; finding them all in place, she then invokes the goddess 'to ascertain which of these is illusion, and which the sober and certain reality'.

3. 6
   Karkaṭī, la rākṣasī que se hizo aguja III.72.18–19; III.77.25–33

   Indra has meat-dust thrown into her mouth 'for the purpose of frustrating the efficacy of its devotion'; she does not swallow it. Later she herself resolves to 'make a trial of them' before deciding whether to eat the king and minister.

4. 19
   Bali, Virocana y Śukra V.28.11–19

   Śukra ‘saw in his silent meditation, the state of the mind of the king of demons’, declares him ‘an adept’, forbids disturbance and predicts waking after a thousand years.

5. 34
   Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.101.4–5; 103.54–56; 107.15–16; 108.3

   Kumbha questions him after each trance ('did you feel in it that sweet composure...?'); then Cūḍālā resolves 'I will make a trial of the heart of my partner' with a conjured Indra, and tests anger and jealousy with Madanikā and a lover.

6. 39
   El falso Indra VI.1.107.15–16; VI.1.108.1–3

   "there arose a thought in the mind of Chúdálá, to make a trial of her associate"; she reads the result (he "remained with perfect tranquillity and equanimity of his mind") and plans a further trial of anger.

7. 43
   Manu e Ikṣvāku: las siete etapas VI.1.120.11–17; VI.1.122.1–9; VI.1.123.6

   Manu lists observable signs of the liberated: unmoved in prosperity and adversity, untouched by honour or slight. Vasiṣṭha names the decisive sign: “This is verily the sign of the unconspicuous seer in yoga, that he is always cool and calm in his mind”.

8. 45
   Las preguntas del vidyādhara VI.2.8.23; VI.2.16.13

   Bhuśuṇḍa assesses his pupil's level before deepening him (“purified your soul in this your second or third stage of Yoga”). Vasiṣṭha later goes to the vidyādhara's dwelling “in order to learn the truth of the story”.

9. 61
   Kundadanta y el ermitaño del kadamba VI.2.185.16–27

   Rāma asks Vasiṣṭha to question Kundadanta 'whether his doubts are wholly dissipated or not'. Kundadanta states what he has realised: the world contained in the mind, a room containing the seven continents.

10. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.2.195.10; 200.52–53; 201.8–30

    Vasiṣṭha will 'put some questions for your answer to them' (195.10; the argument calls them 'questions for his trial'); he asks the assembly to name anything 'meaningless or unintelligible' (200.52); next morning he asks Rāma, 'Tell me the state in which you find yourself at present' (201.8), and Rāma gives a long self-report.

Rapport, pacing and leading; entering the other's world

12 relatos

1. T
   El umbral I.1.17–18; I.1.49–51

   Agniveśya waits out Kāruṇya's silence and offers a story; Vālmīki first 'welcomed the King with gentle inquiries regarding his welfare', and only after the king states his wish does he begin to teach.

2. 1
   El desaliento de Rāma y la llegada de Viśvāmitra I.11.1; I.11.34–38

   Viśvāmitra asks that Rāma be persuaded to come 'as they do one deer by others (of the train)'; in the hall he does not prescribe but asks Rāma to name his thoughts, 'their names and natures, their number and causes', and Rāma 'shook off his sorrowing ... in the hope of gaining his object'.

3. 24
   Bhāsa y Vilāsa V.66.5–12

   Vilāsa greets Bhāsa as "the best fruit of the tree of my life" (66.5); Bhāsa replies "as respectfully as a friend doth to his dearest friend" (66.8) and speaks in the plural: "how can we expect to have our peace and rest" (66.9).

4. 31
   Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.63.43–44

   “Rudra laid aside his bright celestial form, in order to enter into the earthly abode” of Jīvaṭa; they revive him “by imparting to him portion of their spirit and intellect.”

5. 34
   Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.85.53–78; 87.5–14

   Because he 'treats me always as his young and silly wife' (85.54), she comes as a Brahmin boy; she accepts his flowers and returns his courtesy, praising his humility (85.72–73), and only then asks for his own account of himself (87.6–7).

6. 36
   El nacimiento de Kumbha, el hijo del cántaro VI.1.85.53–57; VI.1.87.6

   Cūḍālā judges that her words "will make no effect in him; who treats me always as his young and silly wife", so she takes a form he reveres; after telling her story she asks him to "give me an account of yourself as I have given mine to you".

7. 45
   Las preguntas del vidyādhara VI.2.7.2–5

   Bhuśuṇḍa first praises the vidyādhara's awakening and clarity (“Thy clear mind will be able to grasp the meaning … as the clean mirror”). He then asks for spoken assent before teaching: “You must give your assent to what I say, by uttering the syllable Om—yes to the same”.

8. 48
   Manki, el brahmán piadoso VI.2.23.8–23

   Vasiṣṭha falls in with the muttering traveller, greets him as “my fellow traveller on the way”, and speaks to the intention he has just voiced, rest in the hamlet, before redirecting him. Manki “felt himself as glad, as if he was bathed in ambrosial showers”.

9. 51
   La ninfa celeste VI.2.64.1–3

   She is 'gently looked upon ... and accosted with tenderness', asked 'whose and what thou art, where is thy abode ... and what thou desirest of me'; she responds by laying her case 'confidently' before him.

10. 53
    El siddha de la celda aérea VI.2.93.26–32; 94.1–6

    Vasiṣṭha greets the roused siddha 'very politely'; the siddha asks pardon for his intrusion; Vasiṣṭha replies 'I am equally fallible also' and invites him to rise, and they ascend together before parting with mutual salutations.

11. 58
    El cazador y el sabio: el sueño del rey Sindhu VI.2.138.1–12

    The sage mixes his sensations with the host's 'as a drop of oil is mixed with and diluted in water'. He first sees everything doubled, with 'two suns and two moons', and then 'the double view of the world now became one', while his own discernment 'became finer and finer without wholly losing itself in his'.

12. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.1.128.59–63

    Viśvāmitra: Vasiṣṭha has shown his efficacy 'by hypnotising and laying dormant the powers of Ráma'; the best teacher 'mesmerises the body of his pupil, by his kind look, touch and sound'; knowledge needs 'both the pupil and preceptor ... competent and worthy of one another'.

Grief and loss work

15 relatos

1. 3
   Līlā, Padma y la diosa Sarasvatī III.16.45–50; III.17.1–5; III.26.40–42; III.27.2

   Līlā fades by the corpse 'about to die of grief' until the goddess consoles her; at the brahmin's house she lays her hand on her son's head and 'the boy was relieved of all his sorrow'; the family, 'forgetting their grief, ... betook themselves to their domestic employments'.

2. 4
   El antiguo Vasiṣṭha y Arundhatī III.19.16; III.19.25–27

   Seeing his death approach, Arundhatī 'was fading away with fear'; widowed, she 'was pining away in her sorrow, and her heart was rent in twain', until she 'became a dead body like her husband' and ran to meet his spirit 'as rapidly as a river runs to meet the sea'.

3. 5
   La guerra de Vidūratha y Sindhu; muerte y regreso de Padma III.54.4; III.55.73; III.52.48

   Līlā: "You see here my husband is about to die, so tell me what must I do at present"; after the goddess's account of death she is "relieved of her pain, by the recital of this agreeable narration" and watches him breathe his last; the younger Līlā's boon was that she should not survive as a widow.

4. 9
   El gran yermo: historia del corazón humano III.98.23–24; III.99.22–29

   Tears 'like a shower of rain', then laughter; decoded as grief for pleasures, for the family one toiled for and for one's own body, followed by the gladness of release.

5. 12
   Śukra, Bhṛgu y Kāla (la Muerte) IV.10.13–16; IV.11.11–13; IV.15.1–26; IV.15.34–41

   Bhṛgu, thinking his son dead, turns to anger and a curse; Śukra laments his old body ('This is that body of mine ...'); Vasiṣṭha calls such mourning the way of all flesh, wise or unwise.

6. 15
   Dāśūra, el árbol kadamba y el rey nacido del aire IV.48.21–29

   Bereft of both parents, Dāśūra wails ‘like a heron’ and fades ‘as the lotus blossom in winter’; an unseen forest god speaks to him, he dries his eyes, falls silent and performs the funeral rites.

7. 18
   Puṇya y Pāvana V.19.23–35

   Pāvana ‘was deeply absorbed in grief’ and wanders the woods wailing; Puṇya, after the rites, seeks him out and asks why he mourns ‘for what is not to be mourned for at all’.

8. 24
   Bhāsa y Vilāsa V.65.28–31; V.66.1–4

   After the parents' death "they continued to wail over their memory with piteous cries and tears. They sat silent and inactive as pictures in a painting" (65.31); then years of austerities "with cool apathy in their minds" (66.2) that "served only to shatter their frames" (66.4).

9. 25
   Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.86.35–59

   A formal leave-taking: to the body ("I thank thee also, O my aged body!"), the cell, the staff, his acts, and the vital airs "who kept company with me through all my various births", each sense returned to its source.

10. 30
    Arjuna, encarnación de Nara-Nārāyaṇa VI.1.52.34; VI.1.56.1; VI.1.58.15

    “Pity and grief will seize the heart of Arjuna”; Kṛṣṇa asks him to forsake “your sympathy for your friends”; Arjuna ends: “Thy words have dispelled all grief from my heart.”

11. 33
    Bhagīratha y el descenso del Ganges VI.1.76.11–12

    He resolves on “the redemption of his ancestors… burned alive underneath the ground (by the curse of sage Kapila); by laving their bones and dead bodies with the waves of Ganges”, and “first washed his ancestral remains with its holy waters.”

12. 41
    El hombre que construía casas en el aire VI.1.112.23–34; VI.1.113.17

    After each loss the man laments ("O my air built mansion, why art thou broken down"); the interpretation names the grief: "people are seen to lament at the loss of their frail bodies, as if it entailed the destruction of their indestructible soul".

13. 51
    La ninfa celeste VI.2.64.58–71; VI.2.65.1, 65.11

    Ages of unfulfilled love: she burns, weeps at beauty, finds comfort a 'bed of thorns', laments 'my youthful days have all gone in vain'; then the passion slowly dries to indifference.

14. 56
    El cadáver prodigioso VI.2.134.32, 44–64

    The gods lament each lost place, the oceans of milk, curds and honey, the Kalpa trees, the Jambu river, the nymphs' dances, the cities and their people; Mitra's gloss at 134.32 notes that things 'absent from sight, are present in the mind'.

15. 61
    Kundadanta y el ermitaño del kadamba VI.2.182.29–39

    The love-lorn wives, 'disconsolate at their separation', ask first that their husbands be made immortal, then that a husband's 'parted soul may never depart from this place'. Later Kundadanta, bereft of brothers and friend, goes to the hermit 'to dissipate my dolor' (185.6–7).

Witness position / dis-identification

30 relatos

1. 1
   El desaliento de Rāma y la llegada de Viśvāmitra I.12.23; I.29.19

   Rāma's hidden grief is known only to 'my consciousness the silent witness in my solitude'; later he says the mind twirls the chain of craving 'but pure consciousness sits quiet to observe its rotation'.

2. 9
   El gran yermo: historia del corazón humano III.98.19; III.99.6–7

   Vasiṣṭha watches 'for a long time' before stepping in; 'Their observer was Reason personified in myself', whose work is 'to awaken those drowsy minds.'

3. 13
   Dāma, Vyāla y Kaṭa IV.33.43; IV.33.46–47; IV.33.50–52

   'Whoso thinks himself to be the inward noumena, and distinct from the outward phenomena, and keeps the calm equanimity of his mind, is not ruffled by the feeling of his egoism'; a self 'as minute as the hundredth part of a hair' is kept as a good form of ego.

4. 14
   Bhīma, Bhāsa y Dṛḍha IV.34.16–17

   They act fully yet stand outside authorship: they ‘did their duties and thought themselves as no doers of them’, their nature ‘of even tenor at all times’.

5. 17
   Janaka y el canto de los Siddhas V.12.8; V.13.40

   He ‘preserved his equanimity amidst the conflicts of his soul and sensible objects’; Vasiṣṭha draws the rule: ‘so must thou do all thy acts outwardly, and without thyself mixing in any.’

6. 18
   Puṇya y Pāvana V.20.40–42

   ‘Those that have known the True One, remain only to witness the course of nature’; they act ‘just as the lamps of night witness the objects around’ and as a mirror receives images.

7. 20
   Prahlāda V.35.36–37

   "There is another one in me … which beholds the actions of the other (i.e. of the mind) as a theatric act"; the percipient mind is "another thing beside myself" (35.36).

8. 22
   Uddālaka V.52.36–44; V.53.71–73

   "I analysed my body at each atom from the head to foot, but failed to find what we call the “I” in any part of it" (52.36); "I am none of the elements of the body, nor the mind nor its desire" (52.44).

9. 23
   Suraghu, Māṇḍavya y Parigha V.59.26–29

   "This world is a stage, stretched out by the mind its chief actor, and the soul sits silent as a spectator of this scene"; the same mind "causes the error of my kingship in me" (59.26).

10. 25
    Vītahavya y el cuerpo en la cueva V.86.5–6; V.87.13

    "I will remain wakeful inwardly, appearing as I were dead and asleep outwardly; and yet sensible in my insensibility"; later he gazes "like a motionless dreamer", a paśyantī, "patient spectator".

11. 26
    Bhuśuṇḍa, el cuervo al borde del tiempo VI.1.20.23–28; 26.7; 26.40

    "...we look into the errors and delusions of the world, with out falling in them ourselves" (20.28); he witnessed "the perdition and reproduction of beings, without any change of the sedateness of my soul and mind" (26.7).

12. 27
    Vasiṣṭha ante Śiva: el culto interior VI.1.31.34–35; VI.1.29.36

    Sounds reach the mind while “the intellect is conscious of this as in its sleep. (And as a silent witness of the same)”; the soul dwells “as a witness” like a lamp in windless air.

13. 29
    La piedra que contiene todas las formas VI.1.46.26–27

    The changes of the worlds “do not prove the changeableness of the all containing Infinite Mind… (The container is not necessarily of the nature of its contents)”; its only change is “its absorption of all finite changes into its infinity.”

14. 30
    Arjuna, encarnación de Nara-Nārāyaṇa VI.1.54.25; VI.1.56.6

    “He who sees the inactive God in all his active duties… is said the readiest discharger of his deeds”; the liberated work “with the cool calmness of their minds… as if they are in their profound sleep.”

15. 31
    Jīvaṭa y los cien Rudras VI.1.63.37

    “I rise now and then to look into all these varieties in nature, for the sake of my pleasure and curiosity; but I have the true light of reason in me, whereby I discern the one unity quite apart from all varieties.”

16. 33
    Bhagīratha y el descenso del Ganges VI.1.74.34; VI.1.75.18–21

    He is to remain “unmoved in your mind (although in actual possession of them)”; with Tritala he lives “without feeling any joy above their inward bliss, or knowing any sorrow”, hailing good and evil alike “with complaisance”.

17. 34
    Cūḍālā y Śikhidhvaja VI.1.94.29–37

    The question 'what am I that bear this corporeal form upon me' leads him to find that his ego lies not in the body, organs, mind or understanding, and that he is 'that intelligent and pure soul' (94.37).

18. 40
    Kaca y Bṛhaspati VI.1.111.24, 111.36–41; VI.1.112.1–2

    Kaca first sees the mind as "aloof and apart from all"; Bṛhaspati points to "one real Ego alone ... more transparent than the clear atmosphere" and bids him "Know thyself (soul) as unbounded by space and time"; Kaca muses "as one liberated from his personal entity".

19. 41
    El hombre que construía casas en el aire VI.1.113.15–19

    "How is it possible for any body, to preserve or confine the vacuous spirit in the narrow limit of a pot"; "the dissolution of the body, does not dissolve the embodied and intangible soul".

20. 42
    Bhṛṅgīśa y Śiva: la triple conducta VI.1.115.15, 115.23, 115.43

    The great actor "witnesses all objects as a mere witness"; the great enjoyer looks on "as an unconcerned and indifferent spectator"; Rāma is told to "look always to the inner soul within thyself, and perform all thy outward actions with the outer members of thy body".

21. 43
    Manu e Ikṣvāku: las siete etapas VI.1.118.7; VI.1.118.14

    “Be of an indifferent mind (udásina) with regard to your bodies and all external objects”. The king is also told to “sit retired from all except alone with thyself”.

22. 44
    El ciervo y el cazador VI.1.124.23–27

    Turya is defined as the state in which “one remains as a mere witness and spectator of the affairs of life”. It is neither waking, since it has no wish, nor deep sleep, since it is not insensible.

23. 49
    La mente-ciervo VI.2.45.14–15

    From the higher branches he looks on family and wealth “as if they were the adjuncts of former life, or as visions in his dream”, and on his passions “as actors (dramatis personae), acting their several parts in the drama of his life”.

24. 52
    La disolución final: Śiva y Śakti VI.2.79.1; VI.2.80.7

    'Seeing the end of all I still retained my seat in infinite vacuity'; he watches the terror 'from my aerial seat'.

25. 54
    El piśāca VI.2.94.24–25

    'Being unseen myself by any one there, I saw distinctly every body there, and their mode of life and dealings with amazement.'

26. 55
    Vipaścit, el rey que se hizo cuatro VI.2.125.37–41

    The liberated one 'may appear to be weeping, yet he never weeps in grief'; 'Undeluded he sees the delusions of the world ... and all pleasure and pain seem as ideal unto him', in contrast to the half-enlightened Vipaścits who suffer every transformation.

27. 56
    El cadáver prodigioso VI.2.133.12–13; 134.20, 25

    From the upper sky 'I found the body as if it were made of wood'; the gods watch the devouring 'from their seats on the distant border or boundary mountains'.

28. 59
    La estatua tallada VI.2.168.46–50

    The Intellect 'conceives itself' as living soul, egoism, mind, understanding and 'the root of the knowledge of I, thou, he', yet 'it is quite transparent in its essence... nor any duality whatsoever'.

29. 63
    La gran indagación: las preguntas del rey Prajñapti VI.2.208.20–22

    'The soul never sets nor rises'. Only 'from being the viewer, it supposes itself to be the view', and so 'thinks itself to be born, living and dying'. When it withdraws its reflection, it rests in quiet.

30. 64
    El regreso: el éxtasis de Rāma, el reposo hipnótico de la corte y el gran júbilo VI.1.127.55–56

    To the grieving Bharadvāja: 'sit but silently for a while, and see the drama of the course of this world ... the wise spectator ... never shrinks nor shudders for a moment'.