Seeking to detach himself from the world, Rishi Vasishtha looked for a place where he could meditate in seclusion – a place without the distractions of the city, forest, sky, ocean, clouds, creatures, gods, or souls. He found a spot in space that was so far away from earth that even the natural elements could not reach it. In that empty place, he imagined a small hermitage and made it inaccessible to the rest of the world. Then he sat down in it in the lotus posture, and quietening his mind, went into samadhi for a hundred years.
On awakening, when he willed his consciousness to return, he heard a sigh. In this place of his imagination, which was so far away in empty space, where not even air could intrude, he wondered where that sound was coming from, and from whom. So he went back into the infinite consciousness of his mind and began searching. In his mind were order and disorder and countless universes in different stages of creation and destruction. None of these universes knew the other existed; they were all dormant realities, resting in one indivisible, infinite consciousness. As he wandered in this infinite space, Vasishtha heard...