Essence of Yog-Vasisht
An oft-recurring expression in this scripture is 'kakataliya*' — a crow alights on the cocoanut palm tree and that very moment a ripe coconut falls. The two unrelated events thus seem to be related in time and space, though there is no causal relationship.
Such is life. Such is 'creation'. But the mind caught up in its own trap of logic questions 'why', invents a 'why' and a 'wherefore' to satisfy itself, conveniently ignoring the inconvenient questions that still haunt an intelligent mind.
Vasistha * demands direct observation of the mind, its motion, its notions, its reasoning, the assumed cause and the projected result, and even the observed and the observation — and the realisation of their indivisible unity as the infinite consciousness.
The text abounds in repetitions which are, however, not repetitious. If you do not like (or need) repetition, then readjust this one verse:
This world-appearance is a confusion: even as the blueness of the sky is an optical illusion. I think it is better not to let the mind dwell on it, but to ignore it. (1.3.2)
This verse occurs several times in the scripture and it seems to be the very essence of the teaching.
If that is not quite clear to you now, read the scripture. The numerous ways in which this truth is revealed will help open your mind.
It is wise to readjust one page a day. The teaching is revolutionary. The biased mind does not readily accept it. After the daily reading, meditate. Let the message soak through.
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O sage, kindly enlighten me on this problem of liberation —
which one of the two is conducive to liberation, work or knowledge?
AGASTYA replied: Verily, birds are able to fly with their two wings: even so both work and knowledge together lead to the supreme goal of liberation. Not indeed work alone nor indeed knowledge alone can lead to liberation: but, both of them together form the means to liberation
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1:2 VALMIKI* said:
He is qualified to study this scripture (the dialogue between Rama* and Vasistha*)
who feels "I am bound, I should be liberated",
who is neither totally ignorant nor enlightened.
He who deliberates on the means of liberation propounded in this scripture in the form of
stories surely attains liberation from the repetitive history (of birth and death).
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VALMIKI* continued:
This world- appearance is a confusion, even as the blueness of the sky is an optical illusion. I think it is better not to let the mind dwell on it, but to ignore it. Neither freedom from sorrow nor realisation of one's real nature is possible as long as the conviction does not arise in one that the world- appearance is unreal. And this conviction arises when one studies this scripture with diligence. It is then that one arrives at the firm conviction that the objective world is a confusion of the real with the unreal. If one does not thus study this scripture, true knowledge does not arise in him even in millions of years.
Moksa* or liberation is the total abandonment of all vasana* or mental conditioning, without the least reserve. Mental conditioning is of two types — the pure and the impure. The impure is the cause of birth; the pure liberates one from birth. The impure is of the nature of nescience and ego-sense; these are the seeds, as it were, for the tree of re-birth.