The external world appears as a reality, but in truth it is only a creation of our desires. It is an ideal castle in the air, and a magic view spread before us. It is at the point of death and afterwards that the unreality of the world best appears. But this knowledge (of the unreality of the world) becomes darkened upon being reborn on earth, when the shadow of this world again falls on the mirror of his sentient soul. The dead have no sensation of the earth and other bodies made of the elements, or of the course of the world, but they fall again to these errors upon being reborn here. There is an interminable ignorance resembling an immense river enveloping the face of creation, and breaking into streamlets of ignorance that are impossible to cross.

1. 1
Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 3: Repeated Creations of the World
Book II
The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
(Mumukshu Khanda)
This section deals with the preparations required
of the person who seeks God and the moral and
mental qualities necessary to qualify for the
spiritual path.
Vashishtha states that peace of mind (shanti),
contentment (santosha), keeping the company
of realized sages (satsanga), and inquiry into
the nature of the soul (vichara) are the four
sentinels that guard the gates to moksha, or
liberation.
The belief that one is confined by fate is
severely condemned and the person who seeks
spiritual development is urged to rely on
personal efforts for progress on the spiritual
path.
The person should not shun action but should
learn to be indifferent to its fruits. One should not
be affected by the pleasures and pains that are the
inevitable accompaniment of action.
The person is advised to keep the company of
saints and to study the scriptures (Shastras),
particularly those dealing with self-knowledge
(atma vidya).

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 3: Repeated Creations of the World
What is Mumukshutva?
Mumukshutva is the intense desire to be free. All the
misery we have is of our own choosing; such is our
nature:
• We run headlong after all sorts of misery, and are
unwilling to be freed from them. Every day we run
after pleasure and before we reach it, we find it is
gone; it has slipped through our fingers.
• Still we do not cease from our mad pursuit, but on
and on we go, blinded fools that we are.
As born slaves to nature, money and wealth,
wives and children, we are always chasing a wisp
of straw, mere chimeras, and going through an
innumerable round of lives without obtaining
what we seek.
We seek all these to be happy and never meet with
misery, but the more we go towards happiness, the
more it goes away from us:
• And if we study our own lives, we find how little of
happiness there is in us, and how little in truth we
have gained in the course of the wild-goose-chase of
the world.
It is because happiness and misery are the obverse
and reverse of the same coin, he who takes
happiness must take misery also:

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 3: Repeated Creations of the World
• We all have this foolish idea that we can have
happiness without misery, and it has taken such
possession of us that we have no control over the
senses.
The majority of men have more or less undeveloped
brains. One in a million we see with a well-developed
brain.
Few men realize that with pleasure there is pain,
and with pain, pleasure; and as pain is disgusting, so is
pleasure, as it is the twin-brother of pain:
• Both should be turned aside by men whose reason is
balanced. Why will not men seek freedom from
being played upon?
The sage wants liberty; he finds that sense-objects
are all vain and that there is no end to pleasures and
pains:
• When a man begins to see the vanity of worldly
things, he will feel he ought not to be thus played
upon or borne along by nature. That is slavery.
When one realizes all this slavery, then comes the
desire to be free; and intense desire comes. If a piece of
burning charcoal were placed on a man’s head, see how
he struggles to throw it off:
• Similar will be the struggles for freedom of a man who
really understands that he is a slave of nature. This is
what Mumukshutva or the desire to be free is.

4. 4
Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 3: Repeated Creations of the World
Book II, Chapter 3
Repeated Creations of the World
Repeated Incarnations of the Same Personality
1Vashishtha said, “Rama, I will now expound to you the
knowledge that was imparted of old by the lotus-born
(Brahma) for the peace of mankind after he created the
world.”
2Rama said, “Sage, I know that you will expound to me
the subject of liberation in full length, but first
remove my false ideas about the frailty of this
world.
3How was it that the great sage Vyasa, the father and
guide of Shuka, with all his omniscience, did not
attain disembodied emancipation when his son
did?”
4Vashishtha said, “There is no counting the atoms that
proceed from the spirit and form the three worlds both
before and after the birth of the glorious sun.
5There is nobody who can even count the millions
of orbs that form the three worlds.
6Nor can anyone calculate what numbers of creation
will rise from the ocean of divine existence like endless
waves.”
7Rama said, “It is needless to talk of worlds gone
by or yet to come. Speak of the present.”

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 3: Repeated Creations of the World
8Vashishtha said, “This world consists of brute,
human and heavenly beings whose lives, when
they are said to perish in any part of it, really exist
in the same part.”
9The mind is described as ever-fluctuating. In
itself, it gives rise to everything in the three
worlds. It resides in a void in the form of the heart,
and the Uncreated also resides in the empty space
of the soul (giving the mind the power to realize
the latent ideas of the soul).
10The millions of beings who are dead, those who
are dying and will die hereafter, are all to be
reborn here according to the different desires in
their minds.
11The external world appears as a reality, but in
truth it is only a creation of our desires. It is an
ideal castle in the air, and a magic view spread
before us.
12It is as false as an earthquake in a fit of delirium, like
a hobgoblin shown to terrify children, like a string of
pearls in the clear sky, and like trees on a bank appear
moving to a passenger in a boat.
13It is an illusion like the phantom of a city in a dream,
and as untrue as the imagination of a flower growing in
the air. It is at the point of death and afterwards
that the unreality of the world best appears.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 3: Repeated Creations of the World
14But this knowledge (of the unreality of the
world) becomes darkened upon being reborn on
earth, when the shadow of this world again falls
on the mirror of his sentient soul.
15Thus there is a struggle for repeated births and
deaths here, and a fancy for the next world after
death.
16After he shuffles off his body, he assumes
another and then another form, and thus the
world is as unstable as a stool made of plantain
leaves and its coatings.
17The dead have no sensation of the earth and
other bodies made of the elements, or of the
course of the world, but they fall again to these
errors upon being reborn here.
18There is an interminable ignorance resembling
an immense river enveloping the face of creation,
and breaking into streamlets of ignorance that are
impossible to cross.
19Divinity like a sea shoots forth in various waves
of creation that rise constantly and plentifully one
after the other.
20All beings here are only the waves of this sea.
Some are alike to one another in their minds and

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 3: Repeated Creations of the World
natures, while others are half alike, and some
quite different from the rest.
21I reckon that sage Vyasa there, on account of his vast
knowledge and good looking appearance, is one of
thirty-two of these waves.
22There were twelve possessed of a lesser
understanding. They were the patriarchs of men and
endued with equal energy. Ten were men of subdued
spirits, and the rest were adepts in their family duties.
23There will be born again other Vyasas and Valmikis,
and likewise some other Bhrigus and Angiras, as well
as other Pulastyas and others in different forms.
24All other men, asuras and gods with all their hosts are
repeatedly born and destroyed either in their former or
different shapes.
25Like this there are seventy-two Treta cycles in a kalpa
age of Brahma, some of which have passed by and
others to follow. Thus will there be other people like
those who have gone by and, as I understand, another
Rama and Vashishtha like ourselves.
26There have been ten successive incarnations of this
Vyasa who has done such wonderful deeds and is
famed for his vast knowledge.
27Myself and Valmiki have been contemporaries many
a time, born in different ages and very many times.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 3: Repeated Creations of the World
28We have been together many times, and there
were others also like myself, and so was I also
born in many forms (in many ages).
29This Vyasa will be born again eight times
hereafter, and he will again write his
Mahabharata and the Purana histories.
30He will finally attain liberation from the body
after he has divided the Vedas, described the acts
of Bharata’s race (in the Mahabharata), and
established the knowledge of Brahmn.
31This Vyasa who is devoid of fear and sorrow,
and who has become tranquil and emancipate in
himself after subduing his mind and discarding
the worldly desires, is said to be liberated even in
his present lifetime.
32Those liberated in life may sometimes associate
with relatives and estates, his acts and duties, his
knowledge and wisdom, and all his exertions, like
those of any other men, or he may forsake them
all at once.
33These beings are either reborn a hundred times
in some age or never at all (as in the case of divine
incarnations), depending on the inscrutable will
(maya, or illusion) of God.

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Yoga Vashishtha of Valmiki
Book II – The Aspirant Who Longs for Liberation
Chapter 3: Repeated Creations of the World
34Souls undergo such changes by repetition, like a
bushel of grain that is collected only to be repeatedly
sown, then reaped again and again.
35As the sea heaves its constant surges of different
shapes, so all beings are born constantly in
various forms in the vast ocean of time.
36The wise man who is liberated in his lifetime
lives with his internal belief (of God) in a state of
tranquillity, without any doubt in his mind, and
quite content with the ambrosia of equanimity.
*******
Meaning
Frailties: The state of being weak in health or body
(especially from old age); physical or moral weakness.
*******