Thereupon I said to Bhushunda, "Marvelous indeed is this, your autobiography, O Lord. Blessed indeed are they who can behold you. You are like a second creator. Rare indeed are people like you. I have earned great merit by seeing you. May you continue to be blessed. Give me leave to depart."
O Rama, on hearing this Bhushunda worshipped me and, in spite of my remonstrances, accompanied me for some distance holding my hand tightly in a gesture of friendship. Then we parted: and parting of friends is indeed a difficult event. All this was in the previous (Krta) age and now it is Treta-age.
Such is the story of Bhushunda, O Rama: you too, practise the pranayama described by Bhushunda and endeavor to live like him.
RAMA asked: Lord, by the rays of light shed by you the gloom of darkness has vanished. We are all spiritually awakened, we are delighted, we have entered into our own self, we are your own replica, as it were, having known what there is to be known.
In that inspiring account of Bhushunda that you narrated, you made mention of a body which has three pillars, nine gates etc. Pray tell me: how did it arise in the first place, how does it exist and who dwells in it?
VASISHTHA said:
O Rama, this house known as the body has not been made by anyone in fact! It is only an appearance, like the two moons seen by one suffering from diplopia. The moon is really only one, the duality is optical illusion. The body is experienced to exist only when the notion of a physical body prevails in the mind: it is unreal, but since it appears to be when the notion arises, it is considered both real and unreal. Dreams are real during the dream-state, though they are unreal at other times; ripples are real when they are seen to exist, not at other times. Even so the body is real when it is experienced as a real substance. It is only an illusory appearance even though it appears to be real.
The notion of 'I am this body' arises in relation to what is truly a piece of flesh with bones, etc., because of a mental predisposition; it is an illusion. Abandon this illusion. There are thousands of such bodies which have been brought into being by your thought-force. When you are asleep and dreaming, you experience a body in it: imagine you are in heaven, etc.: where is that body? When all these have ceased, you engage yourself in diverse activities, playing different roles: where is the body with which you do these? When you besport with your friends and enjoy their company in self-forgetful delight, where does that body abide? Thus, O Rama, the bodies are but the product of the mind: hence they are regarded as real and unreal. Their conduct is determined by the mind, they are non-different from the mind.
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