Tale 16 · The Vāsiṣṭha Atlas
Sthiti · Existence · Mitra IV.58 · 513 words
When spirit fills everything, there is nothing left to seek.
Kaca, son of Bṛhaspati, preceptor of the gods, lives in a grove on Mount Meru and through devotion has found the tranquillity of his spirit in the Supreme. His mind is full of divine knowledge, so the visible world of five elements gives him no satisfaction; rapt in the vision of spirit, he sees nothing else, and speaks to himself. What is there to do or refuse, to receive or reject, where to go or not go, when spirit fills everything like the waters of the deluge? He finds pleasure and pain inherent in the soul and the sky with its quarters within it, and so ‘sinks all his pains’ in the spirit: pain is held, not denied. Spirit is inside and outside, above and below; he too is in it, full of its bliss. He sounds Om, vowel then nasal, like a bell, and remains clear as an autumn sky. The shortest tale is a song of completion, given in the first person so it can be spoken again.
Pain is not expelled but given a larger place: Kaca finds ‘pleasure and pain inherent in the soul’ and sinks all his pains in the spirit, a containment rather than a denial, close to Fundamental Peace (IV.58.6).
When the whole field is one, the anxiety of choice dissolves: the questions of what to do or refuse, receive or reject, where to go or not go, lose their hold (IV.58.5).
Satiety with the visible world here follows fullness, not deprivation: his mind was first ‘filled with the ambrosial draughts of divine knowledge’ (IV.58.3).
Sound can carry attention from content to space: Om voiced in two parts, the vowel and then the nasal, while the spirit is held as neither inside nor outside the mind (IV.58.11).
The Vāsiṣṭha Atlas
Kaca's song dissolves the stance of choosing and refusing, 'What is there for me to do or refuse or to receive or reject' (IV.58.5), and pain is held rather than expelled: 'I find pleasure and pain inherent in the soul' (IV.58.6). Separation heals into Care as communion: spirit fills everything inside and outside, above and below, and he is within it (IV.58.7–9), his soul 'as clear as the atmosphere in autumn' (IV.58.12).
Holding 'pleasure and pain inherent in the soul' (IV.58.6) without expelling either is emotional coherence in its plainest form.
The Māṇḍūkya maps the parts of Oṃ onto waking, dream and deep sleep, and its partless silence onto the fourth; Kaca sounds Oṃ, vowel then nasal, 'as the ringing of a bell' (IV.58.11), and rests in what remains.
Several Vijñāna Bhairava dhāraṇās ask the practitioner to sound a syllable such as Oṃ and follow its resonance as it fades into silence; Kaca's bell-like Oṃ and autumn-clear soul (IV.58.11–12) trace that practice.
The Gītā's yogī sees the self in all beings and all beings in the self; Kaca's spirit inside and outside, above and below, with himself within it (IV.58.7–9), is the same vision sung in the first person.
IEAF: Integrative Emotional Alchemy Framework (Gallardo, Frontiers in Psychology, 2026). FP20: the Fundamental Peace Scale. ITM: the Integrative Transformation Model. Parallels in other yogas are contemplative correspondences, not claims of influence.
Vasiṣṭha introduces it simply: on this subject he will tell Rāma the holy song sung of old by Kaca, son of Bṛhaspati, the preceptor of the gods. The Yoga Vāsiṣṭha uses Kaca elsewhere as the type of the beloved only son — Dāśūra was his father’s only son ‘like Kacha the only progeny of Brihaspati’ (IV.48.19) — and in the Nirvāṇa book it tells how Bṛhaspati brought him to awakening. None of that is narrated here. This chapter opens after the work is done.
Kaca lives in a grove on a slope of Mount Meru, the golden mountain, the homestead of the gods. Through holy devotion he has found the tranquillity of his spirit in the Supreme Soul. His mind has drunk deep of the ambrosia of divine knowledge, and because of that fullness the visible world, composed of the five elements, no longer gives him any satisfaction. The order matters: he is not starving himself of the world; he is already filled, and the world can add nothing.
Rapt in his mind in the vision of the spirit, he sees nothing else beside him. And then, alone, he speaks fervently to himself. What is there for me to do or to refuse, to receive or to reject? What place is there for me to go to or to keep away from, when this whole is filled by the Divine Spirit as by the water of the great deluge? The image is of a flood that has covered every landmark: with no high ground and no low ground left, there is no direction in which to move.
He goes on. He finds pleasure and pain inherent in the soul, and the sky and all its quarters contained in the magnitude of the soul. Knowing all things to be full of the spirit, he forgets and sinks all his pains in his spirit. He does not say that pain has ceased to exist; he says that it has been taken into something large enough to hold it.
The spirit, he says, is inside and outside all bodies, above and below and on every side; here, there and everywhere it is the same, and there is no place where it is not. It abides everywhere and everything abides in it; all things are one with it, and he himself is situated in it. Nothing, intelligent or insensible, is other than spirit. All is spirit, and so is he. He is as full of that spirit and its ineffable bliss as the all-encompassing water of the deluge. So Kaca muses to himself in the bower of the golden mountain.
Then he utters the sound Om, and it rings out on all sides like a bell. Mitra’s rendering is exact about the sound: first he utters the vocal part, the ‘o’, and then the nasal that tops it like a tuft of hair. All the while he meditates on the spirit in his mind, not as something placed within it or outside it, but as the all-pervading soul.
So, Vasiṣṭha tells Rāma, Kaca continued to muse in himself and to chant his holy hymn, freed from the foulness of the flesh and rarefied in his spirit like the breath of the wind. His soul was as clear as the atmosphere in autumn, after the dark clouds of the rainy season have dispersed. Nothing else happens. There is no conflict, no teacher, no test and no return; the chapter offers only the sound of a mind that has finished seeking, a state rather than a story, given in Kaca’s own first-person words.
Passages from Mitra’s translation (1891–99), cited by book, chapter and verse.
“Being rapt in his mind with the vision of the Holy Spirit, he saw nothing else beside him, and then fervently uttered to himself in the following strain.”“What is there for me to do or refuse or to receive or reject, and what place is there for me to resort or refrain from going to, when this whole is filled by the Divine Spirit (_to pan_), as by the water of the great deluge.”“I find pleasure and pain inherent in the soul, and the sky and all its sides contained in the magnitude of the soul. Thus knowing all things to be full of the holy spirit, I forget and sink all my pains in my spirit.”“He uttered the sound Om (_on_ or amen), and it rang on all sides as the ringing of a bell; he first uttered a part of it the vocal part—o, and then the nasal—n, which tops it as a tuft of hair.”“His soul was as clear as the atmosphere in autumn, after dispersion of the dark clouds of the rainy season.”In the textHis 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’.
In the clinicAbsorption (Tellegen & Atkinson 1974) at the point where the peripheral field drops away, a narrowing that in hypnosis can shade into negative hallucination for the surroundings.
In the textThe 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’.
In the clinicSelf-directed suggestion in the manner of Coué’s conscious autosuggestion (1922): short first-person formulas, repeated with feeling, that consolidate a state.
In the text‘Knowing all things to be full of the holy spirit, I forget and sink all my pains in my spirit.’
In the clinicHypnotic analgesia by expansion and reattribution rather than blocking: pain is felt as one event inside a much larger field of awareness, lowering its affective weight.
In the text‘I am as full of that spirit and its ineffable bliss, as the all encompassing water of the great deluge.’
In the clinicEgo-strengthening at the close of a session (Hartland): the client leaves with a felt sense of sufficiency, here phrased as fullness rather than as strength.
In the textHe 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.
In the clinicSound-based or mantra induction, comparable to the repeated word of Benson’s relaxation response (1975), with the nasal hum adding a felt resonance on which attention can rest.
Read upward — stage 1 at the bottom, stage 7 at the top
Integration zone
Pure-awareness trance and silent presence — not another state to enter but the ground recognised in every state. Jīvanmukti; Fundamental Peace.
Integration zone
Perceptual shift — the boundaries of things soften; consciousness expands past its usual partitions.
Integration zone
Post-trance integration — sustained non-reactivity carried into behaviour; what was seen in depth becomes how one lives.
Integration zone
Hypnotic absorption meets direct knowing — identity deconstruction at full depth. This is YVH's primary therapeutic zone, and the model's central testable hypothesis.
Integration zone
Progressive relaxation and deepening — the habitual self loosens enough for new pattern to take.
Integration zone
Self-inquiry joined to guided suggestion — narrative reframing and Socratic dialogue inside a gently focused state.
Integration zone
Therapeutic motivation — disillusionment with suffering becomes readiness for change. The first honest wish to be free is itself the induction.
A note on what this map claims. The alignment between stages of knowledge and trance depths is a clinical map — a heuristic correspondence proposed for research, not a claim of identity between contemplative attainment and hypnotic depth.
Bhūmikā 6 · Padārthābhāvanī
The visible world ‘composed of the five elemental bodies’ gives him no satisfaction and he ‘saw nothing else’ but spirit (IV.58.3–4): objects have melted into one substance. He still speaks and chants, so the text does not show turyagā.
Zone · Deep
Total absorption with the surroundings gone (IV.58.4), yet speech and chanting continue (IV.58.5–11); a plenary trance would leave no voice.
In Calcutta in the 1890s, the translator chose the vocabulary of hypnotism to name these states. More →
Being rapt in his mind with the vision of the Holy Spirit, he saw nothing else beside him, and then fervently uttered to himself in the following strain.IV.58.4In this manner was Kacha musing in himself in the bower of the golden mountain.IV.58.10Thus Ráma! did Kacha continue to muse in himself and chant his holy hymn, being freed from the foulness of flesh, and rarefied in his spirit like the breath of the wind.IV.58.12Indications. As a closing suggestion and integration at the end of a deep session. For choice-paralysis and existential indecision, where Kaca's questions of IV.58.5 can be asked and left unanswered. As an adjunct in chronic pain, using the expansion-and-containment image of IV.58.6. For over-striving seekers who need a model of having arrived rather than another method for arriving.
How to use it. Read the song aloud, in the first person, after the work of the session is done. Its function is ratification: it gives the client words for a state already touched. The two-part Om can be laid down as an anchor at that moment and used to re-enter the state between sessions.
Cautions. The song presupposes fullness already reached (IV.58.2–3). Used too early, it becomes what Welwood (1984) called spiritual bypassing: the use of spiritual language to step around unfinished grief or anger. Do not offer it to someone who has not yet felt what they need to feel. "Saw nothing else" and "all is spirit and so am I also" can destabilise clients prone to derealisation, and can feed grandiosity in those with a history of mania or psychosis; screen for both, and with such clients use only the containment image of IV.58.6, never the identification of IV.58.9. Pain imagery never replaces medical assessment of the pain.
Practise with a qualified professional if you have a history of dissociation, trauma or psychosis.
The Song of Kaca: a Closing Script
Read slowly, aloud, at the end of a longer session or on its own; eight to ten minutes.
Before you begin. This is a short closing practice for most healthy adults. If you have a history of psychosis, mania, or episodes in which the world or your body felt unreal, practise only with a clinician who knows your history, and use only the steps about holding and the sound. If you are in pain, this practice is a companion to medical care, not a substitute. Do not practise while driving or operating anything. Sit, with your feet on the floor.
How to return at any moment. Open your eyes, press your feet into the floor, name three things you can see, and breathe normally.
Sit, and let the body be still.
Remember a moment when nothing was lacking. Not a perfect day; a moment. A meal, a view, a hand held. Let it be here again. Full.
Close the eyes. Let the room recede, not because you push it away, but because something nearer is enough. Let attention rest in a sense of open space.
Ask, without answering. What is there for me to do? What to refuse? What to receive, what to reject? Where to go? Let the questions go out like water over flat land, until there is no high ground and no low ground left.
Now find whatever is present in the body: an ache, a warmth, a tightness, a pleasure. Do not change it. Feel the space around it. Feel how much larger the space is than the thing. Let the pain sink, as a stone sinks in a lake. It is there. It is held.
Inside and outside. Above and below. On every side. The same openness. And you are in it.
Now the sound. Breathe in. On the out-breath, let the vowel come, open: Ooooo. Let it ring like a bell struck once. Then close the lips and let the hum follow: Mmmmm. Feel it in the face, the skull, the chest. Let it fade on its own.
Once more. Ooooo… Mmmmm.
And rest in what remains.
(Silence: one to two minutes.)
Let the sound be finished. Feel the weight of the body on the seat, the feet on the floor. Let the breath deepen a little.
Move the fingers. Move the toes. Roll the shoulders once.
I will count from one to five. On five the eyes open, clear as an autumn sky after the rains.
One. Breath full. Two. Hands and feet your own. Three. The sounds of the room. Four. A deep breath in. Five. Eyes open, here, now, alert.
Say your name, the day and the place. Look at three things in the room. Sit a moment before you stand.
Meta Pets World · Your ally · Meta Pet 45
I commune with the cosmos in every moment.
Cosmic Communion walks with Kaca because his short song dissolves the stance of Dominance, the habit of governing experience by choosing, refusing, receiving and rejecting. His turning is Synergy, pleasure and pain held together inside the soul's vast space with nothing expelled, and his arrival is Communion, spirit inside and outside, above and below, and he within it: nothing was ever separate.
Dominance, the will that rules experience: Kaca names it in the very questions that dissolve it, 'What is there for me to do or refuse or to receive or reject, and what place is there for me to resort or refrain from going to' (IV.58.5).
Synergy: 'I find pleasure and pain inherent in the soul, and the sky and all its sides contained in the magnitude of the soul… I forget and sink all my pains in my spirit' (IV.58.6); opposites are held in one whole, not fought.
Communion: spirit is inside and outside, above and below, and he is within it (IV.58.7–9); he sounds Om 'as the ringing of a bell' (IV.58.11), and his soul is 'as clear as the atmosphere in autumn' (IV.58.12).
Cosmic Communion, and a young sage on Mount Meru who stopped choosing between this and that, and simply hummed. Try his Om: open vowel, then the hum. Who exactly were you separate from?
If, as Kaca sang, spirit is inside and outside, above and below, and you are within it, what is left for you to control, and with what do you commune, having never been separate?
Tonight, write one honest sentence about something you tried to control today, and what it would be to let it belong to the whole.
Light trance, eyes open if you prefer. For the full, deeper script, see “The practice” above and its cautions.
Cosmic communion with what? You were never separate: today, each time you reach to control, hum once and let it belong.
Maori · Rotorua, Aotearoa · Mauri Orafi
Visit Hinemoa, the Māori tohunga wahine of Rotorua, for whom people, land and waters share one mauri, one life force; beside her, Kaca's song of spirit above and below might sound like a homecoming.
Guided Meditation
#45 · Cosmic Communion
Aim. To help a person who already knows moments of fullness release the controlling stance, hold opposites in one space, and rest in communion without bypassing pain.
ITM 5 Transcendent Integration. Kaca's song presupposes fullness already reached and holds pleasure and pain calmly in one whole, the signature of Transcendent Integration.
This short song suits the close of a retreat or a series. In a circle, invite each person to recall a moment of fullness and share it in a single word. Read Kaca's words of IV.58.5–6 aloud, then lead the closing script at light depth. Sound Om together three times, the open vowel and then the hum, and let the circle notice how many voices become one sound without anyone directing it. In pairs, each person names one place where they will trade control for collaboration. Close with a minute of silence 'clear as an autumn sky', and a full return: weight, breath, hands, feet, eyes open.
Training and certification in the Meta Pets Method: metapetsworld.org/facilitators ↗
The correspondence between tales and Meta Pets is contemplative: the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha does not contain the Meta Pets; each tale enacts its ally’s arc. Felicia is an artificial-intelligence companion; her words are contemplative reflections, not clinical advice.
From the cycle The Sixty-Four Tales
Figure — Kaca, son of Bṛhaspati, alone in a grove on the golden mountain, singing to himself.
Where in the text — Book IV (Sthiti-prakaraṇa), Mitra chapter 58.
Hypnotic phenomenon the song enacts — ABS with ANA: one voice in the first person over a drone whose harmony never moves, each phrase rising as if to ask where to go and settling back to the same note, the pain sung low and sunk in the register, and Om sounded as the text gives it, vowel then hum, until it is the drone.
Mantra — Kiṃ karomi kva gacchāmi kiṃ gṛhṇāmi tyajāmi kim (किं करोमि क्व गच्छामि किं गृह्णामि त्यजामि किम्). Source: Kaca's own song in the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha, the first half of the verse Mitra gives as IV.58.5 ("What is there for me to do or refuse or to receive or reject, and what place is there for me to resort or refrain from going to…"). Meaning: "What shall I do? Where shall I go? What shall I take? What shall I give up?": questions that are not answered but dissolve, because the whole is filled with spirit "as by the water of the great deluge" (IV.58.5).
Performance: the shortest song of the cycle. One voice and a tanpura, nothing else, and no chord ever changes: there is nowhere for the harmony to go. Each question in Verse 2 rises and falls back to the drone unanswered. Verse 3 is sung an octave lower: the pain sunk. In the bridge the voice strikes Om once like a bell, the open "O" and then the hum, and holds the hum until it cannot be told from the drone. The outro lifts back to the opening pitch.
Verse 1 On a slope of the golden mountain, in a grove where the gods keep house, my mind has drunk its fill, and the world of the five elements has nothing left to give me. I see nothing else beside me.
Verse 2 What is there to do? What to refuse? What to take? What to give back? Where is there to go, or not to go, when the water of the great flood has covered every place?
Chorus Water above me, water below, water on every side; the sky with all its quarters lies inside the soul. I am as full as the flood.
Verse 3 (an octave lower) Pleasure is in it. Pain is in it. I do not throw the pain away; I sink it, all of it, in the spirit, down in the flood, and the flood holds it. Inside the body and outside it, here, and there: there is no place it is not.
Chorus (repeat)
Bridge (mantra) (one bell-stroke of the voice: the vowel, then the hum) O…… …ṃ…… kiṃ karomi kva gacchāmi (what is there to do? where is there to go?) kiṃ gṛhṇāmi tyajāmi kim (what to take? what to let go?) kiṃ karomi kva gacchāmi kiṃ gṛhṇāmi tyajāmi kim
Outro (back at the opening pitch) The rains are over; the dark clouds have gone. My breath is light as the wind. The sky is clear, the way it clears in autumn. Here is the grove. Here is the gold of the mountain. I open my eyes, and all of it is here, and full.
Interpretación: la canción más breve del ciclo. Una voz y una tanpura, nada más, y ningún acorde cambia: la armonía no tiene adónde ir. Cada pregunta del verso 2 sube y vuelve al bordón sin respuesta. El verso 3 se canta una octava más grave: el dolor hundido. En el puente la voz toca el Om una vez, como una campana, la «O» abierta y luego el zumbido, y sostiene el zumbido hasta que no se distingue del bordón. El final vuelve al tono del principio.
Verso 1 En la ladera del monte de oro, en un bosque donde viven los dioses, mi mente ha bebido hasta saciarse, y el mundo de los cinco elementos ya no tiene nada que darme. No veo nada más a mi lado.
Verso 2 ¿Qué hay que hacer? ¿Qué rechazar? ¿Qué tomar? ¿Qué devolver? ¿Adónde ir, o no ir, si el agua del gran diluvio ha cubierto cada lugar?
Estribillo Agua sobre mí, agua debajo, agua por todos lados; el cielo con todos sus rumbos cabe dentro del alma. Estoy lleno como el diluvio.
Verso 3 (una octava más grave) El placer está en ella. El dolor está en ella. No arrojo el dolor lejos; lo hundo, entero, en el espíritu, al fondo del diluvio, y el diluvio lo sostiene. Dentro del cuerpo y fuera de él, aquí y allá: no hay lugar donde no esté.
Estribillo (se repite)
Puente (mantra) (un golpe de campana de la voz: la vocal, luego el zumbido) O…… …ṃ…… kiṃ karomi kva gacchāmi (¿qué hay que hacer? ¿adónde ir?) kiṃ gṛhṇāmi tyajāmi kim (¿qué tomar? ¿qué soltar?) kiṃ karomi kva gacchāmi kiṃ gṛhṇāmi tyajāmi kim
Final (de vuelta al tono del principio) Pasaron las lluvias; se fueron las nubes oscuras. Mi aliento es ligero como el viento. El cielo está claro, como se aclara en otoño. Aquí está el bosque. Aquí está el oro del monte. Abro los ojos, y todo está aquí, y lleno.
EN: When the flood fills everything, there is nowhere left to go. ES: Si el diluvio lo llena todo, ya no hay adónde ir.
The shortest tale in the book, and the shortest song: twelve verses, no plot, no teacher, only a young man on the golden mountain who has drunk his fill and speaks to himself. What is there to take or refuse, where is there to go, when the whole is under water like the great flood? He does not throw his pain away; he sinks it in something wide enough to hold the sky. Here is analgesia by widening, not by blocking, and a closing suggestion a listener can say again in the first person. One voice, a drone that never changes chord, Om struck once like a bell; then the autumn sky after the rains.
Source: Vihari-Lala Mitra, The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki (1891–99), public domain.
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