Līlā’s Adventures in the Pavillion: Freedom and the Space of Consciousness in the Mokṣopāya

The Mokṣopāya (MU) or “Means to Liberation,” popularly known as the Yogavāśiṣṭha (YV), is a series of philosophical narratives framed as a dialogue between the legendary sage Vaśiṣṭha, and his pupil Rāma. As suggested by its title, the purpose of these narratives is to illustrate the means to spiritual freedom. Thought to have been authored in Kashmir, this Sanskrit text reached its recognizable form around a millennium ago. Although it came to be appropriated by the intellectual tradition of Advaita Vedānta centuries later, the affiliation of the text itself is more ambiguous. In the broadest sense, it is described as a form of non-dualist Yoga, sometimes called Yoga-Advaita, to distinguish it from the Vedic hermeneutic method of Advaita Vedānta proper. Scholars have pointed out that the Mokṣopāya, with its ‘consciousness only’ doctrine, dream thesis, and argumentation style bear a striking resemblance to that of Buddhist Yogācāra (Hanneder 2006, Lo Torco 2015). Yet, Arindam Chakrabarti points out the “underlying fusion” of brahmanical language philosophy, leading to the upholding of an impersonal, intrinsically valid Vedic deontic system (Chakrabarti 2015). As such, the 64 stories Vaśiṣṭha narrates to Rāma are aimed at dissolving the notion of “world” within an infinite series of dreamlike, illusory projections generated by intersecting subjectivities all grounded within pure consciousness, while simultaneously maintaining the necessity of ethical activity within it. 

The longest of these stories, the Līlopākhyāna or “story of queen Līlā” (MU 3.15-65) is a fantastic tale of travel between worlds resembling Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, rich with the philosophy of the Mokṣopāya. The story essentially tells of how a queen named Līlā, through the grace of the goddess Sarasvatī, gains the ability to travel between the world she is familiar with, to an entirely separate world contained within the pavilion of her palace. We are told that this world was in fact generated by the mind of her recently deceased husband, King Padma, into which he has been reborn as a king by the name of Viduratha. Bewildered, Līlā is told by the goddess that her own world is itself the projection of her husband from a previous life as a humble brahmin, and that conventional reality consists of infinite such worlds within worlds generated by subjective memories and desires. However, all such worlds are purely illusory, like imaginary clouds or a city of the gandharvas, and all that truly exists is consciousness alone (cinmātra). As the real locus of these phenomenal experiences, it is repeatedly called the “space of awareness” (cidākāśa) as well. What enables the queen to move freely between worlds is a special familiarity with this cidākāśa, a power she receives through the goddess. She learns that through ascesis, one can recognize the physical body as consisting merely of space qua pure awareness, and render permeable the once concrete boundaries of space, time, and world. The narrative concludes with Līlā restoring her husband to life in his body within the world they shared, along with a second queen Līlā from his alternate world in the pavilion. 

No doubt, the story of Līlā comes across as bizarre – even to a contemporary audience. My aim however is to focus on the extraordinary philosophical concepts proposed by Vaśiṣṭha through this tale. The notable ideas that emerge are as follows: 

1. The famous doctrine of three spaces (ākāśa); e.g. material space, the space of mind (cittākāśa), and the space of consciousness (cidākāśa), (MU 3.17.10);
2. The notion that infinite worlds that overlap/contain one another within the mind spaces of individual subjects (MU 3.30.3);
3. The position that all worlds, qualified by multiplicity, spatio-temporal difference, objectivity, and solidity, are in fact ephemeral, illusory, epistemically indistinguishable from dreams, and akin to false cognitions like horned hares (MU 3.20.35-40);
4. The related claim that both spatial and temporal extension are mere appearances with no ultimately real status, and only phenomenally experienced in any given world (MU 3.20.25-28);
5. The position that the multiplicity of worlds and subjects are all projected upon consciousness, which has the nature of space (MU 3.20.41). 

There are no formal glosses for the term ‘cidākāśa’ that I have encountered, yet we may presume that it most likely resembles, ‘cinmayaḥ ākāśaḥ’; or ‘cid eva ākāśaḥ,’ i.e. space consisting of consciousness, or even space which is consciousness. There are a number of terms that additionally serve as synonyms to the primary term. Broadly speaking, all of the various Sanskrit synonyms for ordinary ākāśa are used to denote this mystical ākāśa as well; e.g. vyoman, ambara, nabhas, Gagana, kha, etc. They are all prefixed with the word for consciousness, ‘cit,’ rendering them as cidvyoman, cidambara, cinnabhas, cidgagana, etc. Descriptions of cidākāśa are quite frequent within the third prakaraṇa of the MU dealing with cosmogony, called the Utpattiprakaraṇa, which is where our story takes place.

Understandings of space vary among different Sanskrit philosophical traditions, and are in fact less intuitive than the MU might have us assume. One encounters two different descriptions of cidākāśa. On the one hand, it is described as the one real locus within which the false cognition of multiplicity and objectivity is projected, leading to its being a primordial ground of being. Yet on the other hand, we are told that the experience of this cidākāśa can only occur when false cognitions like ‘world’ cease entirely. We are presented then with two seemingly contradictory cidākāśas – one characterized as plenum, and the other as void. 

1. Cidākāśa is the totality of infinite worlds and innumerable, intersecting subjects, which are themselves essentially nothing but pure consciousness-space.
2. Cidākāśa is the empty space of pure awareness, which cannot be accessed so long as the perceptions of subjects, objects, causality, and world persist. 

In what follows, I demonstrate the problems inherent in these two, conflicting notions of space, and then attempt to reconcile them.