Sukra and the Dancing Girl

Rama: "Great sage, I struggle with desires that pull at my mind. Even knowing the world is dreamlike, attractions arise. How does one overcome this?"

Vasishtha: "Your question is timely, Rama. Let me tell you of Sukra, son of the sage Bhrigu. Sukra was a young man of great learning but little wisdom about the ways of desire. One day, as he sat meditating in the forest, an apsara named Urvashi descended from heaven and began to dance before him."

Rama: "Even for a sage's son, such a vision would be overwhelming."

Vasishtha: "Indeed. Sukra's concentration shattered. His mind flew out through his eyes and attached itself to her beauty. In that single moment of wanting, something extraordinary happened. His consciousness left his body and entered an imaginary world where he pursued her. In this mind-created realm, he won her love, married her, and lived with her for ages—experiencing pleasures, quarrels, reconciliations, children, grandchildren, and eventually the pain of watching her grow old and die."

Rama: "All this from a single glance?"

Vasishtha: "Yes. Grieving her death, dream-Sukra wandered the world, taking new wives, building kingdoms, losing them to war, becoming a wandering beggar, dying and being reborn countless times. Civilizations rose and fell. He experienced every possible human situation—wealth, poverty, fame, disgrace, health, disease—for what seemed like countless ages."

Rama: "This is the prison of desire—it multiplies endlessly!"

Vasishtha: "Meanwhile, Sukra's physical body sat motionless in the forest. His father Bhrigu, returning from a celestial journey, found what appeared to be his son's corpse—for the body had become emaciated during this trance that had actually lasted mere days. Through yogic power, Bhrigu perceived what had happened and entered his son's mental universe to retrieve him."

Rama: "Could he bring him back?"

Vasishtha: "Bhrigu appeared before the wandering beggar that Sukra had become in his fantasy and awakened him to truth. He showed Sukra that all those ages of experience—the loves, the losses, the entire history—had occurred in the space of a few days while his body sat unmoving. Sukra was stunned. Upon awakening to his body, he remembered everything."

Rama: "What became of him?"

Vasishtha: "Sukra, now wise through suffering, asked his father: 'If all that was mere imagination, then what of this world I've returned to? Is it any more real?' And Bhrigu answered: 'No. This too is a dream. But now you know the nature of the dreamer.' From that moment, Sukra was free. He still saw beautiful things, but the grasping had ended. He had seen that desire creates worlds of bondage, and that seeing through desire dissolves them."

Rama: "So the cure for desire is not suppression, but understanding its mechanism?"

Vasishtha: "Exactly, Rama. When you truly see how a single wanting thought creates endless chains of experience, that seeing itself is freedom. The apsara was never the problem—the grasping was. Know yourself as the consciousness in which all desires appear, and they will lose their power to bind you."