Yoga Vashista -Excerpt Chapter 211

 The world is an insubstantial and imperceptible thing, ever a silent and serene void, the emptiness of the intellect. However, it appears to be a solid and compact mass, according to the notion we have of it in our consciousness. It does not exist in our unconsciousness, it does not appear to exist, and it is not a dull, unconscious or unthinking being. 

It is an emptiness and a nothing, an utterly intangible and imperceptible thing to our senses and consciousness. The nature of consciousness is to reflect in itself. 

All that we see about us is the shadow of that reflection. The knowledge that this shadowy reflection is substantial proceeds from the vanity of the intellect, and not from its nature which is free from mistake. There can be no talk of causation, production or vegetation in the nature of the universe. It is an absolute void entirely devoid of the elements of cause and effect. 

That which appears to be produced is only a void in the midst of primeval emptiness. There can be no attribution of unity on duality to infinite emptiness. Yet the world appears to your mind as something that exists and it is visible to your eyes.

 This happens in the sate manner as you have consciousness and sight of dreams in the undisturbed calm of your empty sleep. Imagination causes mountains to rise in the empty sphere of our minds, but in reality there are no mountains. Such is this creation, an airy working of the Divine Mind. Hence the wise and intelligent remain as quiet and mute as motionless blocks of wood. 

Great minds manage themselves like wooden puppets, moving as they are moved by the prune moving power of God alone. As waves are seen rolling on the surface of waters and as currents whirl round and hurl headlong into the deep, so all of creation and all created things turn about the axle wheel of the great Brahma. 

As emptiness is inborn in space and vibrations are immanent in the air, so these creations are inherent and inseparably connected with the Divine Spirit in their formless and ideal shapes. An air-drawn castle of our will or imagination, with all its lack of substance, presents a substantial shape before us. In the same way, this world appears as a compact frame shown before us in spite of its situation in the formless mind of Brahma. All three worlds that we are accustomed to believe as real, the sites of our temporal and spiritual concerns, arc all void and formless and as unreal as the airy castles of our imagination. 

The imagination of our minds creates populated cities. In the same way, the thought of the mind of God creates these numerous worlds and presents them to our minds and eyes. 

Though we always think of this visible world as a reality, it bears no meaning at all. It resembles the sight of a man's own death in his dream. A man sees a dream in which his own funeral is conducted by his son. In the same way, the unreal world is seen as a reality, in as much as it is reflected as such by its supreme contriver. 

Both the existence and non-existence of the universe constitute the body of the pure God in the same way as a made-up name applied to a person makes no difference to his character.

-YOGA VASHISTA 

as said by Vashista to Rama