REPRESENTATIONS OF REMINISCENCE.
Argument. Description of Lílá’s passage in the air, and her union with
her husband’s spirit. Relation of the depravity of those that are
unacquainted with and unpractised in Yoga.
Vasishtha said:—Lílá having obtained the blessing of the goddess,
proceeded with her fancied body to meet her royal spouse in heaven
beyond the skies.
2. Having assumed her spiritual form which was as light as air, she fled
merrily as a bird; and was wafted aloft by the fond desire of joining
with her beloved lord.
3. She met before her a damsel sent by the goddess of wisdom, and as
issuing out of the best model of her heart’s desire.
4. The damsel said:—I am the daughter of thy friend Sarasvatí, and
welcome thee, O beauteous lady in this place. I have been waiting here
on thy way through the sky in expectation of thee.
5. Lílá said:—Lead me, O lotus-eyed maid to the side of my husband, as
the visit of the good and great never goes for nothing.
6. Vasishtha said:—The damsel replied, come let us go there; and so
saying, she stood before her looking forward on her way.
7. Then proceeding onward both together, they came to the door-way of
heaven, which was as broad as the open palm of the hand, and marked with
lines as those in palmistry. (?).
8. They passed the region of the clouds, and overstepped the tracks of
the winds; then passing beyond the orbit of the sun, they reached the
stations of the constellations.
9. Thence they passed through the regions of air and water (Indraloka),
to the abodes of the gods and saints (Siddhas); whence they went across
the seats of Brahmá, Vishnu and Siva to the great belt—of the universe.
10. Their spiritual bodies pierced through its orifice, as the humidity
of ice water passes out of the pores of a tight water-jar.
11. The body of Lílá was of the form of her mind, which was of the
nature of its own bent and tenor, and conceived these wanderings within
itself (_i.e._, the peregrinations of Lílá were purely the workings of
her own mind and inclination).
12. Having traversed the spheres of Brahmá, Vishnu and Siva, and crossed
the limit of the mundane sphere, and the environs of atmospheric water
and air:—
13. They found an empty space as spacious as the scope of the great
intellect, and impassable by the swift Garuda (the eagle of Jupiter)
even in millions of Kalpa ages. (_i.e._ The unlimited space of the mind
and vacuity).
14. There they beheld an infinity of shapeless and nameless worlds,
scattered about as the countless fruits in a great forest. (The Nebulae
of unformed worlds).
15. They pierced through the ambit of one of these orbs before them, and
passed inside the same as a worm creeps in a fruit which it has
perforated.
16. This brought them back by the same spheres of Brahmá, Indra and
others, to the orb of the globe below the starry frame.
17. Here they saw the same country, the same city and the same tomb as
before; and after entering the same, they sat themselves beside the
corpse of Padma covered under the heap of flowers.
18. At this time Lílá lost the sight of the heavenly damsel, who had
been her companion erewhile, and who had now disappeared from her sight
like a phantom of her illusion.
19. She then looked at the face of her husband, lying there as a dead
body in his bed; and recognized him as such by her right discretion.
20. This must be my husband, said she, ay my very husband, who fell
fighting with Sindhu, and has now attained this seat of the departed
heroes, where he rests in peace.
21. I have by the grace of the goddess arrived here in person, and
reckon myself truly blest to find my husband also as such (_i.e._,
resting here in his own figure).
22. She then took up a beautiful _chauri_ flapper in her hand, and began
to wave it over his body as the moon moves in the sky over the earth.
23. The waking Lílá asked:—Tell me, O goddess! in what manner did the
king and his servants and hand-maids accost this lady, and what they
thought her to be.
24. The goddess replied:—It was by our gift of wisdom to them, that this
lady, that king and those servants, found themselves to partake of the
one and same intellectual soul, in which they all subsisted.
25. Every soul is a reflection of the divine intellect, and is destined
by his fixed decree to represent the individual souls to one another as
refractions of the same, or as shadows in a magic show (bhojakádrishta).
26. Thus the king received his wife as his companion and queen, and his
servants as cognate with himself. (_i.e._ Partaking of the same soul with
his own).
27. He beheld the unity of his soul with her’s and their’s, and no
distinction subsisting between any one of them. He was astonished to
find that there was nothing distinct in them from what he had in
himself.
28. The waking Lílá said:—Why did not that Lílá meet her husband in her
own person, according to her request and the boon that was granted to
her?
29. The goddess replied:—It is not possible for unenlightened souls (as
that of the young Lílá), to approach in person to holy spirits (or their
persons or places), which are visible and accessible only to the
meritorious, and unapproachable by gross bodies as the sun light is
inaccessible by a shadow.
30. So it is the established law from the beginning of creation, that
intelligent souls can never join with dull beings and gross matter, as
truth can never be mixed up with falsehood.
31. And so is that as long as a boy is prepossessed with his notion of a
ghost, it is in vain to convince him of the falsehood of goblins as mere
chimeras of his imagination.
32. And as long as the feverish heat of ignorance rages within the soul,
it is impossible for the coolness of the moon of intelligence to spread
over it.
33. So long also as one believes himself to be composed of a corporeal
body, and incapable to mount in the higher atmosphere, it is no way
possible to make him believe otherwise (that he has an incorporeal
nature in his soul and mind).
34. But it is by virtue of one’s knowledge and discrimination, and by
his own merit and divine blessing, that he acquires a saintly form
(nature); wherewith he ascends to the higher region, as you have done
with this body of yours.
35. As dry leaves of trees are burnt in no time by the burning fire, so
this corporeal body is quickly lost by one’s assumption of his spiritual
frame.
36. The effect of a blessing or curse, on any one is no other than his
obtaining the state he desired or feared to have. (Hence the boon of
Lílá has secured to her what she wished to get).
37. As the false appearance of a snake in a rope, is attended with no
motion or action of the serpent in it; so the unreal views of Lílá’s
husband and others, were but the motionless imageries of her own
imagination.
38. Whoever views the false apparitions of the dead as present before
the vision of his mind, he must know them as reflections of his past and
constant remembrance of them.
39. So our notions of all these worlds are mere products of our
reminiscence, and no creation of Brahmá or any other cause; but simple
productions of our desire (which presents these figures to the
imagination).
40. So they who are ignorant of the knowable spirit of God, have only
the notions of the outer world in them; as they view the distant orb of
the moon within themselves (in their minds).