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The Vāsiṣṭha Atlas

The Forty-Day Path through the Tales

Forty days, one tale a day, up the ladder of the seven stages, and back to the world.

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This is a practice path for one person, alone, over forty days. It walks the ladder of the seven stages using one tale for each day, from the first good wish to the return to the world. It does not ask you to go deep. The greatest trances in the tales are far deeper than anyone should seek alone. The path climbs the ladder of understanding, not the ladder of depth: every sitting is meant to stay in light or medium trance, the depth of a quiet afternoon with the eyes closed, and every sitting ends with a full return.

Each day names the tale, the stage, the practice and the passage it comes from. The full practices are in the chapters of Part II, written to be read aloud; here each is given in the short form you can hold in mind as you sit.

Which tale do I need? →FP20 · day 1 baseline

This path is for healthy adults. It is not a treatment and does not replace one.

Do not undertake it alone if you have, or have had, a psychotic illness, a bipolar disorder, a dissociative disorder, uncontrolled epilepsy, or thoughts of ending your life; or if you are living with trauma that still returns as flashbacks or nightmares; or if you are in the first months of a bereavement. For you the tales can still be a companion, but the sittings should be done with a qualified clinician who knows your history.

Some days carry their own cautions, and they are marked. In general: if you are pregnant, or have a heart or respiratory condition, high blood pressure or a history of panic attacks, never hold the breath; let the breath pause naturally at the end of the out-breath and no more. If images of fire, burning or death are difficult for you, replace them with mist, snow melting or salt dissolving in water. If any image becomes distressing, open your eyes, look around the room and name what you see; the practice can always be left.

Never practise while driving, operating machinery, standing, in water or near it, or when you will need to be fully alert within ten minutes. Sit rather than lie down, so that the body can tell you when it is time to come back. Choose a time of day you can keep, a place where you will not be interrupted, and a length: ten to twenty minutes is enough. Set a soft timer.

Finally, tell someone you trust that you are doing this. The tales are full of companions, and a practice witnessed by a friend is safer.

The shape of each sitting

Arrive. Sit upright, feet on the floor, hands resting. Let the breath slow without forcing it. Let the eyes close, or rest half open on a point in front of you.

The day's practice. Read or recall the short form below and follow it at your own pace. Do not try to make anything happen. If nothing happens, that is a sitting too.

The return. This is the same every day, and it is never skipped. Let the breath become fuller. Feel the weight of the body on the seat and the feet on the floor. Move the fingers and toes. Count slowly from one to five, and on five open the eyes. Say your name, the day and the place, aloud or in a whisper. Name three things you can see. Sit for a minute before you stand. If you feel at all slow or far away, count from one to five again, stand, walk a few steps and drink some water.

The note. Write three lines: what you practised, what you noticed, and one thing you will carry into the day.

Noticing change

Change on a path like this is quiet and easy to misjudge. Two simple measures help.

The first is the three-line note. Read the week's notes on the seventh day of each week. Look for small shifts rather than events: a reaction that came later or softer than it used to, a thought noticed instead of obeyed, an evening that ended with less residue.

The second is the FP20, the Fundamental Peace scale developed for the YVH Model. Complete it on the morning of day 1, again on day 20, and again on day 40. Its items ask, in general terms, about equanimity when things go wrong, the capacity to hold difficult feeling without being ruled by it, care for others and for oneself, and a sense of continuity and peace that does not depend on circumstance. Look at the overall pattern rather than any single answer. The FP20 is a way of noticing, not a diagnosis. If your answers move sharply in the direction of distress, or if you feel worse in a way that persists, stop the path and read the last section of this chapter.

Days 1–5

First stage: entering (śubhecchā)

The first rung is the good wish: the honest admission that what you have is not enough, and the wish to understand. These five days do not try to change anything. They let the wish become clear.

  1. 1
    Day 1 · FP20

    Crossing the Threshold

    The Threshold · The Threshold · Denial → Ease

    Name one either/or question that has stopped you, as Sutīkṣṇa and Kāruṇya are stopped (I.1.6; I.1.16). Breathe with two wings: the in-breath "knowing", the out-breath "doing", until neither is heavier. Then let one fixed idea about your life fade, as Vālmīki advises, like a colour from a clear sky (I.3.2). Complete the FP20 today, before the sitting.

    Today, before you sit, complete the FP20. FP20 →

  2. 2

    Sit for a moment as Rāma sat, still, cheek in hand, and admit the tiredness. Let the things that have lost their taste pass before you as images. Then find the one who has seen all of it: "my consciousness the silent witness in my solitude" (I.12.23). Let a single question form, the one you would ask a real teacher.

  3. 3

    If you can, do this with a friend; if not, in writing. Ask Vilāsa's questions slowly: is your mind free of anxieties, are you at peace? Answer as Bhāsa does, in the plural, "how can we expect to have our peace and rest" (V.66.9), speaking first of the condition you share with everyone.

  4. 4

    Sit as the brahmin sat on the hillside, at ease (III.19.5). Let a procession pass below, something you have admired in another's life, and notice the first thought it raises. Let the wish unfold in detail, then watch the world it would build. Then step back to the doorway of the small house: the whole kingdom fits inside it and has lasted eight days (III.20.27).

  5. 5

    Recall a sentence once spoken over you that took root, choosing a mild one for this sitting (VI.2.136.12). Notice how the mind, waking, filled itself with that sentence. Then walk into the hermitage and receive a new sentence, spoken with kindness, and let the mind be fully occupied with it (136.31–33).

    If the sentence that comes is linked to abuse or trauma, open your eyes and choose another day's practice; that work belongs with a clinician.

Days 6–11

Second stage: inquiry (vicāraṇā)

The second rung is inquiry, and most of these tales are Kumbha's: stories told to a man who has renounced everything except the habit of not looking. The practice each day is a question.

  1. 6

    Let a wide, empty wilderness appear at dusk (III.98.5). From a distance watch a man run, swinging a club at himself; name each blow as a particular care. Then step forward as Reason did and ask him, gently, "Who are you Sir, and why do you act in this manner?" (III.98.19–20). Let him set down one grasping hand.

  2. 7

    Recall the place you withdrew to in order to escape pain: a routine, a discipline, a silence. Let a visitor arrive in an unexpected form, someone you would not normally listen to. Ask the kuśa-grass question: which of my efforts "presents the fair flowers to view, without ever bearing their fruits"? (VI.1.87.23). Hear one sentence of counsel "as you hear music" (VI.1.87.45).

  3. 8

    Recall something good you worked for that finally arrived. Let a luminous gem appear within reach. Let the doubting voice speak as the merchant's did, and notice where in the body the hand holds back (VI.1.88.8, 15). Breathe into that place, and let the hand close around the gem. Then look for the piece of glass you have been holding instead.

  4. 9

    Feel the weight and strength of the body, like an elephant standing on the earth. Recall a chain you have already broken and the strength that broke it, the tusks of reasoning and resignation (VI.1.91.2). Then survey where you are resting now: is there a ring of green leaves over a pit? The elephant escaped the chain and fell into the pit; ignorance was "not yet destroyed" (VI.1.91.14). Choose a path that does not need the bait.

  5. 10

    Name the small, concrete goal that brought you to this path. Search for it in light trance, with full and patient care, as the Kirāṭa searched the forest for his lost cowrie (VI.1.83.17–21). On the third evening, let attention widen and notice what shines in the same forest. Hold both: the small aim was worth pursuing, and the larger find came because of it (VI.1.83.27).

  6. 11
    Day 11

    From the Questions to the Questioner

    Tale 63 · The Great Inquiry · Guilt → Forgiveness

    Let all your large questions come, one after another, as King Prajñapti's did (VI.2.206.8–32). Hold each as a bubble without answering it. Then turn from the questions to the one who asks: the soul, Vasiṣṭha says, "from being the viewer, it supposes itself to be the view" (VI.2.208.21). Rest in what "never sets nor rises" (208.20).

Days 12–16

Third stage: thinning (tanumānasā)

The third rung is the slow loosening of grip. Nothing is torn away; habits are allowed to become thinner until they no longer govern.

  1. 12

    Feel the space inside the body: mouth, chest, belly. Picture the aerial man's castle, then his cave, his pot, his tub, his cottage, his hut, each falling away. When the last is gone, notice the space that was inside it. It has gone nowhere. Repeat inwardly: the pot breaks, the space remains (VI.1.113.15–19).

  2. 13

    Look up for a moment, then close the eyes and call the mind back to itself (IV.51.2). Perform one offering in imagination only: the act you would normally perform compulsively, done fully in the mind and paid for in the mind (IV.51.3–7). Then notice which new house the king is already building, and let the desire for it thin of itself (IV.54.14–16).

  3. 14

    Let the hungry question that troubles you step out of the forest as the vetāla. Let it ask riddle after riddle without your answering, until the mind is pleasantly overloaded. Smile, breathe out, and give the one answer to every riddle: "reflect this in thyself and keep thy quiet" (VI.1.72.11). Notice the questioner fall silent and the hunger recede (VI.1.73.1–2).

  4. 15

    Recall a moment of complete, unselfconscious action, playing, helping, making, when no one was watching. Replay slowly the moment the thought of "mine" arrived and the body began to scan for danger. Step back to the witness who sees both, and keep, as the tale advises, a self "as minute as the hundredth part of a hair" (IV.33.50–52): small, clear, and enough.

  5. 16

    Notice a presence nearby that carries an unmet longing. Greet it with tenderness and ask Vasiṣṭha's four questions: whose and what are you, where do you live, and what do you desire of me? (VI.2.64.1–3). Let it say what it is growing tired of (VI.2.65.11), and thank it.

    If you are newly bereaved, use Tale 18, Puṇya and Pāvana, on this day only with a counsellor.

Days 17–21

Fourth stage: the dawn of being (sattvāpatti)

The fourth rung is the brief arrival at pure being, the place the YVH Model regards as the heart of therapeutic work. The tales are candid that it is crossed rather than inhabited. These five days teach you to recognise it and to find it again.

  1. 17
    Day 17

    The Fruit That Holds the Worlds

    Tale 28 · The Vilva Fruit · Separation → Care

    Imagine a small, round bel fruit before you, and let it grow until it is vast, always ripe, never rotting (VI.1.45.2–16). Look inside at its countless seeds, each a world. Notice the thought "I am this" attach itself to one seed (VI.1.45.17), and let it loosen. Rest as the fruit itself, "the stupendous body of felicity" (VI.1.45.13).

  2. 18

    Climb the first four rungs slowly, one breath each: the wish, the reconsidering of what you already know, the quiet rumination, and then Manu's instruction, "call thy thoughts home and confine them to thyself; remain calm and cool" (VI.1.118.18). Rest on the fourth, silent meditation in which desire and darkness are lost before the light (VI.1.120.2). Do not climb further today.

  3. 19

    Let attention rest on a fine thread of sensation running up the centre of the body (VI.2.14.5–7). Set down each "because" as it arises until the chain thins. Rest. Then watch for the first familiar ambition or self-image to reappear, "the seed of his remembrance sprouting forth" (VI.2.14.22), and let your seeing of it be enough.

  4. 20
    Day 20 · FP20

    The Stillness of the Carved Figure

    Tale 3 · Līlā · Separation → Care

    Become still as the two women beside the body, "as if they were sculptures engraven on marble columns"; let thoughts close; keep attention fixed while outer sensation recedes (III.23.4–11). Rest only there. On returning, do what Līlā did after her first trance: look around and confirm that the room and the people in your life are where you left them (III.17.42–57). Complete the FP20 again today.

    Today, before you sit, complete the FP20. FP20 →

  5. 21

    Sit still as a figure in a painting. Choose one resource identity and give it to yourself in the first person, as the brothers did: "here I sit, and find myself as …" Over ten breaths let the circle of "I find in me" widen: body, room, people, land, sky (III.86.38–49). End by affirming that this belief is yours, and that only its owner may keep or change it (III.88.19).

Days 22–27

Fifth stage: non-clinging (asaṃsakti)

The fifth rung is non-clinging in the midst of life, Manu's "partly waking and partly sleeping" state that Mitra glossed as "half hypnotism" (VI.1.120.3). These days are practised with an eye on action: each sitting rehearses something you will do.

  1. 22

    Bring to mind something you already know to be true but cannot rest in (II.1.10–11). Pass three gates, waiting at each without impatience. Let pleasant distractions appear and pass by, neither refused nor pursued (II.1.21–27). Hear your own insight spoken back to you by someone free: "There is nothing more certain."

  2. 23

    Name a task before which you freeze. Let the eyes see, the ears hear, the skin feel, and ask, as Kṛṣṇa asks, "where is your egoism situated in these?" (VI.1.53.5–7). Rehearse the task in imagery while offering its result away. Choose a short phrase to carry, your own "mantra of your resignation of desirables" (VI.1.58.13), and use it before the task.

  3. 24
    Day 24

    Great Doer, Great Enjoyer, Great Relinquisher

    Tale 42 · Bhṛṅgīśa and Śiva · Denial → Ease

    Rehearse a task from tomorrow fully, while part of you watches "as a mere witness" (VI.1.115.15). Imagine a pleasant and an unpleasant event and receive both evenly. Set down, one by one, thoughts of success and failure, praise and blame. If there is pain in the body, notice the sensation and let the mind decline to take it up (VI.1.115.35).

  4. 25
    Day 25

    The Ruler's Sitting Before Judgement

    Tale 23 · Suraghu · Guilt → Forgiveness

    Name a decision you must make, with both its horns. Ask Māṇḍavya's questions slowly. Climb down the ladder of "not": not this place, not this office, not these possessions (V.59.3–17). Rest as the spectator while mind and role play on the stage (V.59.26–29). Open the eyes and review the decision from that stillness, without anger or favour (V.60.3–8).

  5. 26

    Recall a calm you have already reached. Let your strongest temptation appear as a radiant visitor with attendants, offering heaven. Notice the pull in the body and greet the visitor courteously. Answer from contentment, as the prince did: "I am fully satisfied every where" (VI.1.107.27). Watch the visitor subside like waves into the sea.

  6. 27

    Meet an inner Tritala and name what you most fear to lose: money, title, good opinion (VI.1.74.34–35). In imagery give these away, one by one, and walk where no one knows your name. Then return to your own gate, accept only what nourishes, and take up your work again "devoid of passions and envy or selfishness" (VI.1.76.10).

Days 28–33

Sixth stage: melting (padārthābhāvanī)

The sixth rung is the melting of objects, the home of the book's greatest trances. Here especially the path keeps to the surface: these sittings borrow the images of the deepest tales without asking for their depth.

  1. 28

    Follow the out-breath from the centre of the chest, warm like sunlight, to a point a little beyond the nose; receive the in-breath from there, cool like moonlight, down into the heart (VI.1.25.29–35). Notice the small pause at each turning point. Do not hold the breath. Let the pauses lengthen only of themselves, "without any efforts" (VI.1.25.59).

  2. 29
    Day 29

    The Self-Guided Descent, short form

    Tale 22 · Uddālaka · Rejection → Gentleness

    Speak to your mind as Uddālaka did, and then, as he did, stop scolding and reason with it (V.52.8–25). Search the body from head to foot for the "I" (V.52.36–43). Sound a soft Om on three breaths, out, pause, in, letting the old self dissolve like mist and gather again like a lake filling in spring (V.54.5–27). Rest two minutes, and come back as he did, "and mixed with the world" (V.54.90).

    Omit the pause if you should not hold the breath; read "mist" wherever the chapter says "ash".

  3. 30
    Day 30

    The Lotus in the Stone

    Tale 29 · The Stone · Denial → Ease

    Sit as a stone: weight, coolness, a surface that does not wear (VI.1.46.7). Inside, find a still lake with lotuses, open, in bud, bowed, hidden (VI.1.46.8–16). Let each present thought take its place as one carved flower. Rest as the stone, which "is not necessarily of the nature of its contents" (VI.1.46.26).

  4. 31

    Settle as a child settles for a bedtime story. Tell yourself the tale of the three princes, two never born and one never conceived, without trying to make sense of it (III.101.4–28). Then turn the same gaze on one heavy worry and notice that it, too, is being told. Let the images thin, and do what the tale actually asks: "repress the thickening phantoms" (III.101.39).

  5. 32

    Feel the body as one block of wood, dense and even in grain. Notice sensations and thoughts as shapes carved on its surface, with the same grain running through them. Name one role you carry and see it as a carving, wood through and through (VI.2.168.47). Let the carving soften back into the uncarved block (VI.2.168.43).

  6. 33

    Name one honest regret. Plant it as a seed, water it with one kind voice and one sentence of wisdom, and watch the tree of stillness grow: two leaves, a stem, bark, branches (VI.2.44.16–31). Then watch the restless mind arrive like a deer "galled in its mouth by browsing the thorny brambles", and lie down in the shade (VI.2.44–45). With each out-breath let a small inner flame brighten (VI.2.45.22).

Days 34–36

Seventh stage: the fourth (turyagā)

Manu says the seventh stage belongs to the disembodied (VI.1.120.6). The path does not reach for it. These three days practise its living reflection: resting as the witness of waking, dream and sleep, and leaving and returning with care.

  1. 34

    Imagine sitting as the sage in a forest clearing. Sounds of pursuit come and go. Let a stag, an intrusive thought or a sensation, run across the clearing. You do not follow it. Turya, the sage says, is the state in which "one remains as a mere witness and spectator of the affairs of life" (VI.1.124.23–27). Rest there, like muddy water once the mud has settled.

  2. 35

    Speak kindly to the restless mind and to each sense in turn, and give them leave to rest (V.82.12–26; V.83.3). Then offer thanks, as Vītahavya did, to past pains for what they taught (V.86.32–34) and to your body for its company: "I thank thee also, O my aged body!" (V.86.35–59). End by settling back into the body as a bird into its nest.

    This sitting stays with gratitude; it does not leave the body.

  3. 36

    Before you begin, choose a song or chant you love and set it to play softly after ten minutes. Rest in quiet, keeping to what Kumbha prescribed after his pupil's first trance, the middle course (VI.1.96.3): neither straining after depth nor drifting into sleep. When the music begins, let it rouse you as the Sāma hymns roused the king (VI.1.103.41), slowly, and take your time coming back.

Days 37–40

The return

The last rung of this path is not a stage of the ladder but its purpose. Every great trance in the book ends in a return, and the last four days practise returning well.

  1. 37

    Before you begin, agree the signal that will call you back: a bell, a word, a time. Rest for a few minutes as the witness that watches the mind "as a theatric act" (V.35.36). At the signal, return in Prahlāda's order: breath descending from the crown, breath through the body, the senses reopening, thinking resuming, the eyelids opening of themselves, movement, and then remembering "your large dominions", your work and your people (V.39.12–22).

  2. 38
    Day 38

    The Overheard Song

    Tale 17 · Janaka · Denial → Ease

    Walk or sit alone somewhere green. Listen to a remembered verse as if overhearing it, and let one line catch (V.8.6–18). Speak to your mind as to a friend and ask it to rest (V.11.4–18). Then let an outside call come, the chamberlain at the door, and when the inner sentence is complete, rise for your duties "as usual" (V.10.2–9; V.11.1).

  3. 39

    Recall the daily labour that fills your days, the bundle you carry to market (VI.2.196.15–17). Walk to the edge of the forest and let your eyes soften: sandalwood, fruit, a gem in plain sight. Pick it up and let it show you what it is to be content exactly where you are. Rest in the equanimity Mitra calls "hypnotism in waking" (VI.2.197.32), with the eyes open.

  4. 40

    Sit as the princes sat in Daśaratha's hall (VI.2.201.4). Slow the breath; withdraw the senses one by one (VI.1.128.3); give the body back to the elements for a few breaths. Rest in the shared stillness, remembering that others are sitting too. Then ask yourself Vasiṣṭha's morning question, "Tell me the state in which you find yourself at present" (VI.2.201.8), and answer it in a sentence. Hear the last words of the session as addressed to you: "Now rise to do your duties" (VI.2.203.22). Complete the FP20 a third time, and read your forty notes.

    Today, before you sit, complete the FP20. FP20 →

Stop the path and speak to a qualified clinician, a doctor, psychologist or clinical hypnotherapist, if any of the following happens.

  • You feel unreal, detached from your body or from the world, and the feeling lasts beyond the sitting or returns unbidden during the day.
  • Memories, images or feelings surface that are distressing and do not settle after the return, or that come back as nightmares or flashbacks.
  • Your sleep, appetite or ability to work is disturbed for more than a few days.
  • You experience panic, a racing heart or breathlessness during or after practice.
  • You hear, see or sense things that others do not, outside the sitting.
  • Thoughts of death begin to feel attractive, or the tales of chosen departure (Uddālaka's last sitting, Arundhatī following her husband) begin to feel like invitations. If this happens, contact a professional or an emergency service the same day.
  • Your FP20 answers move sharply towards distress, or the people close to you tell you that you seem worse.

None of these is a failure. The tales are full of returns that needed help: Prahlāda needed a conch, Śikhidhvaja needed Cūḍālā's song. Asking for help is the most traditional thing a practitioner of this path can do.

At the end, keep what served you: for most people, one or two practices, a few minutes a day, and the habit of the return. The point of the path was never to reach the top of it, but to live, a little more each day, in the state Mitra called "hypnotism in waking": asleep to what does not matter, and awake to what does.

Collaborate on this research

Researchers, clinicians and institutions are welcome to write. Replication, data-sharing and site partnerships for the trials in progress are all open conversations.

luismiguel@shooliniuniversity.comThe FP20 scaleWorld Happiness FoundationORCID 0009-0005-3222-6092

Educational and scholarly content. Hypnotherapy and regression material is complementary and not a substitute for medical or psychiatric care.