The Great Inquiry: King Prajñapti's Questions

Vasiṣṭha told Rāma that the only true reality is the supreme Brahma, and that the uncreated show of creation is nothing in itself. Someone had once questioned him on exactly this, he said, and he would relate it to strengthen Rāma's understanding.

There is a great island called Kuśadvīpa, ringed by seas and famous in all three worlds. On its north-eastern side lies the city of Ilāvatī, encircled by gold-gilded pillars whose radiance reaches from earth to sky. A prince named Prajñapti once ruled there like Indra in heaven. Vasiṣṭha came down into his presence, as the sun descends at the end of an age. The king honoured him with flowers and gifts, seated him beside him and, as they talked, began to ask.

What becomes of the world after everything is destroyed, the king asked, when every cause of re-creation has vanished into the void? What then causes things to be made again, and from what do they rise? What is the world, what was the primal chaos, what holds up the seas, and what is hell, crawling with worms? Who made all this, and who witnesses it? He was sure, he said, that the world can never be finally destroyed. The Vedas and śāstras contradict one another, and each makes its own supposition.

The questions kept coming. After the body is burned, what form do the damned take? Virtue and vice are formless; how can they be the causes of a new physical body, when matter cannot come from no-matter? Yet to deny a future state goes against scripture and common sense. How did the stone pillars of his city turn to gold at a Brahmin's word, without gilding? If people get their wishes in the next life by dying at holy places, why is the sky not filled with moons, when moon-worshippers die every day hoping to become bright orbs? What was the difference between the blessing and the curse on the Brahmin brothers, who ruled the seven continents while never leaving their house? And what good are charity and austerity if their reward goes to some future body that no one here cares about?

Vasiṣṭha answered. All the entities of the world are nullities, though they appear real to consciousness. Whatever appears in consciousness is taken to be as real as it seems, without anyone examining its nature. The idea of a thing, in waking or in dream, is what people call its body; there is no other solid body. The world shines like the sights of a dream, and since nothing could have caused it materially, it is a dream's phantom. This pure knowledge of the universe is Brahma himself.

Then Vasiṣṭha's tone hardened. Those who deny the one Being in every consciousness are like frogs croaking in dark caves. Those who make the gross body the cause of consciousness are 'intoxicated without intoxication' and not worth talking to. Mitra's gloss names such a man 'the Buddhist or Charvaka': he trusts only his senses and is blind to past and future.

The world, Vasiṣṭha went on, is the imagined city of the divine mind in the form of Brahmā. Whatever is imagined there seems present, as your own fancies seem present before you. The living see a solid world, and the dead see one too, because they carry their impressions with them. A sleeper sees his dream as real, and the unenlightened see the waking world in the same way. The departed soul imagines its own rebirth, and it will not be freed from that delusion until knowledge and freedom from desire release it.

As for unseen reward, the world is the city of the divine will, ordered as you order your own house. That will is present everywhere and knows every place. Laws and prohibitions are planted in the human soul, and the mind is aware of what it deserves wherever it goes. The soul never truly sets or rises. Taking itself to be the view instead of the viewer, it thinks itself born, living and dying.