Nothing Really Happens

Sage Vasishtha 

The LORD (Shiva) said:

Do you know who 'god' is? God is not Vishnu, Shiva or Brahma; not the wind, the sun or the moon; not the brahmana or the king; not I nor you; not Lakshmi nor the mind (intellect). God is without form and undivided (not in the objects); that splendor (devanam) which is not made and which has neither beginning nor end is known as god (deva) or lord Shiva which is pure consciousness. That alone is to be worshipped; and that alone is all.

If one is unable to worship this Shiva then he is encouraged to worship the form. The latter yields finite results but the former bestows infinite bliss. He who ignores the infinite and is devoted to the finite abandons a pleasure-garden and seeks the thorny bush. However, sages sometimes worship a form playfully.

Now for the articles used in the worship: wisdom, self-control and the perception of the self in all beings are the foremost among those articles. The self alone is lord Shiva who is fit to be worshipped at all times with the flowers of wisdom.

(I asked the lord: "Pray tell me how this world is transmuted into pure consciousness and also how that pure consciousness appears as the jiva and other things." The LORD continued:)

Indeed only that chid-akasha (the infinite consciousness), which alone exists even after the cosmic dissolution, exists even now, utterly devoid of objectivity. The concepts and notions that are illumined by the consciousness within itself shine as this creation, on account of the movement of energy within consciousness, precisely as dreams arise during sleep. Otherwise, it is totally impossible for an object of perception to exist outside of the omnipresent infinite consciousness.

All these mountains, the whole world, the firmament, the self, the jiva or the individuality and all the elements of which this world is constituted - all these are naught but pure consciousness. Before the so-called creation when only this pure consciousness existed, where were all these (heaven, etc.)? Space (akasha), supreme or infinite space (paramakasham), absolute space (brahmakasham), creation, consciousness - are mere words and they indicate the same truth even as synonyms do. Even as the duality experienced in dream is illusory, duality implied in the creation of the world is illusory. Even as the objects seem to exist and function in the inner world of consciousness in a dream, objects seem to exist and function in the outer world of consciousness during the wakeful state. Nothing really happens in both these states. Even as consciousness alone is the reality in the dream state, consciousness alone is the substratum in the wakeful state too. That is the Lord, that is the supreme truth, that you are, that I am and that is all.