The Story of Vitahavya - 7

Sage Vasishtha

Vasishtha continued:

Once, this sage Vitahavya felt inclined to abandon his body and to ensure that he would never again return to embodiment. He resorted to a cave on the Sahya mountains., sat in the lotus posture and Vitahavya said this within himself:

O attraction, abandon your force of attraction. O hate, abandon hatred. You have played long enough with me. O pleasures, salutations to you; you have indeed sustained me all these years and even made me forget the self. O sorrow, salutations to you; you spurred me on my quest for self-knowledge and it is by your grace that I have attained this self-knowledge; hence you are indeed the bestower of delight.

O body, my friend, permit me to go to my eternal abode of self-knowledge. Such indeed is the course of nature; everyone has to abandon the body at some time or the other. O body, my friend, you have been my relation for a long time. I abandon you now. You yourself have brought on this separation by nobly leading me to the realization of the self. How wonderful! In order to enable me to attain self-knowledge, you have destroyed yourself.

O mother craving! give me leave to go; you are now left alone to wither away, because I have reached the state of supreme peace. O lust! in order to conquer you, I befriended your enemy dispassion; forgive me. I proceed to freedom; bless me. O merit! salutations to you, for you rescued me from hell and led me to heaven. Salutations to demerit, the source of pain and punishment. Salutations to delusion under which I labored for a long time and which is not seen by me even now.

O body, return to the elements of which you are composed. Salutations to activities like bathing; salutations to all the activities in this world. Salutations to life-forces (prana) that have been my companions. Whatever I did in this world was done only with you, through you and because of your energy. Pray, return to your own source, for now I shall merge in the infinite consciousness (Brahman). All things that come together in this world will have to part one day or the other. O senses, return to your own sources, the cosmic elements.

I shall now enter into the self by the culmination of the OM-sound -  as a lamp without fuel. I am free from all the activities of this world and from all notions and perceptions and experiences. My heart is established in the peace indicated by the resonance of the OM. Gone are delusion and error.