A story · Yoga Vasishtha · Yoga Vasishtha — Stories of Freedom

Jivata's Dream

Yoga Vasishtha 6.1.62

The story · English

Vasishtha told Rama of a mendicant who gave his life to devotion and kept the rules of his order. In deep meditation his mind was cleared of desire, and it melted into the thing he meditated on, the way sea water takes the shape of a wave. One day, after his meditation ended and he sat getting ready for his sacred duties, a thought passed over his clear mind like a cloud's shadow at noon. He wondered what it would be like to look at the lives of ordinary people, their pleasures and their ways. That small curiosity pulled him away from his calm, as a whirlwind stirs a quiet sea. Then he imagined himself as a man, and in an instant he was one. His name was Jivata.

Jivata wandered through a city that he had raised in his own mind, like a sleeper building palaces in a dream. He drank his fill of pleasure, as a giddy bee sips from lotus cups, grew plump and happy, and slept soundly without a care. Then he dreamed himself a Brahman, content in his studies and his duties, and the thought of it was enough to make it so. One day the Brahman fell into a deep sleep and dreamed of a new life as a chieftain, who ate and drank and slept like anyone else. The chieftain dreamed himself a king, ruling the earth to its horizon, hung with enjoyments the way a creeper is hung with flowers.

The king, at ease one day, fell into a sound sleep and saw what his actions would bring, as flowers come out of a tree. His heart, he saw, had grown fond of the court women, and so he became a heavenly maiden. Weary, she slept, and woke as a deer. The deer, with her restless eyes, slept in turn and dreamed herself a creeping plant, the very kind she loved to graze on. Even beasts and plants sleep and dream, Vasishtha said, from whatever they have seen and felt while awake. The creeper bloomed with fruit and flowers and made a bower for the goddess of the woods. Inside it, wishes grew quietly, as a seed hides the tree it will become.

The creeper had always been visited by a bee, and one day, tired of its own drowsy stillness, it wished to be that bee. At once it was one. The bee roamed the blossoming forest and drank nectar from the flowers as a lover drinks from a beloved's lips. Then it fell for a lotus on a lake and settled on the thorny stalk, which Vasishtha called the fondness of fools for what hurts them. Elephants often came to that lake, tearing and trampling the lotus beds. One day the bee was crushed under an elephant's tusk along with its flower. But in its last moments it had admired the elephant's great body, and so it became an elephant.

The elephant became the prince's favourite, for he had beaten the enemy's forces, and he rampaged about with a giddy strength. In the end he fell into a deep dry pit, and later under enemy swords and darts, as a proud ego drops when reason wounds it. As he lay dying, he remembered the swarms of bees that hummed over elephants' heads and sipped their ichor, and he longed to be a bee. He became one. The bee went back to the forest creepers and then to the lotus lake, since fools find it hard to give up a fond wish even when it brings danger. Again an elephant crushed it. Having lived so long beside the geese of the lake, it was born a goose.

The goose lived many lives until it became a gander playing among the geese. There it heard of the gander who carries Brahma, and it began to dream of being that bird, as the yolk of an egg nurses the chick inside. It grew old and sick, eaten by disease as wood is eaten by worms, and died holding that wish. In its next birth it was Brahma's own great bird. It lived among the wise, learned about the world, and rested in freedom, wanting nothing more. Then one day it carried Brahma to the city of Rudra and saw the god face to face. It thought itself to be Rudra, and the god's form was stamped on its mind like an image in a mirror. It left its bird body as a flower's scent leaves the blossom.

Now the bird lived happily in Rudra's city among the god's attendants, and Rudra looked back through his own countless past lives. Astonished at what he saw, he spoke. "How wonderful this illusion is. It shows what is false as if it were true, the way a desert in the sun looks like water. I remember when I was pure intellect, before it became mind and was bound in a body. That soul took a body by its own desire. In one earlier birth it was a mendicant who sat in meditation and began to think about outward things with pleasure. That one thought crowded out every other, and by desire he became the Brahman Jivata, then a chief, a king, a nymph, a deer, a creeper, a bee, an elephant, a goose, and at last Brahma's bird. Now I am Rudra, and my restless mind is why."

Rudra went on: "What a person does and thinks all the time, he will see as real, as dreams look real to a sleeper. Thought makes us take the body for ourselves, and it spreads out the whole world, as a seed spreads into a bush. So it is better to quiet those thoughts than to feed them. I come back now and then to look at the world's variety, out of curiosity, but I keep the light of reason, and I see the one unity behind it all." Then he returned to the mendicant's body, which lay like a corpse on barren ground, and woke it with his own intelligence. The mendicant sat up and understood that his wanderings had been hallucinations. Together they set out to find Jivata.

They crossed continents and islands and found Jivata asleep with a sword in his hand, as still as the dead. Rudra put aside his shining form, entered him, and woke him, so one soul stood in three shapes: Rudra, Jivata and the mendicant. They stared at one another in silence like figures in a painting. Then they flew to the air-built home of the Brahman and woke him as he lay with his wife clinging to his neck, and to the chief on his golden bed among his women, and to the king, until at last they came to Brahma's bird. Each time they woke one, they all marvelled together at being one man in so many forms. Becoming the bird in their minds, they knew themselves as the one Rudra in a hundred persons.

Rama asked what became of all those forms. Vasishtha said they stayed with Rudra as parts of him, saw his wonders, and were then sent home. Rudra told them: "Go and enjoy your families. When you have finished your joys and sorrows, come back and be my attendants, until we all return to the supreme." Then Rudra vanished among the other Rudras. Jivata and the rest went home, and when their time ended they became Rudras and shone as stars. Rama said that imagined people have no substance. Vasishtha answered that what we are conscious of is real, even if the imagery is false. Desire, imagination and dream are one thing, and firm resolve wins the goal. The mendicant fixed on Rudra alone and became him, and the others dwelt in groves of Kalpa creepers, roaming Kailasa with immortal crowns.

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In this book

• Before: Arjuna, as Vasishtha Foretells It · Yoga Vasishtha 6.1.52
• Next: The Vetala's Questions · Yoga Vasishtha 6.1.70
• All of Yoga Vasishtha · Ask Krishna about it

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