Reading section 77

30. The streets are deserted for want of passers-bye, and have become dusty without being watered. They have become as empty as the hearts of men forsaken by their joys of life.

31. The fading plants are wailing in the plaintive notes of Cuckoos and the humming of bees; and are withering in their leafy limbs by the sultry sighs of their inward grief.

32. The snows are melt down by the heat of their grief and falling in the form of cataracts, which break themselves to a hundred channels by their fall upon stony basins.

33. Our prosperity has fled from us, and we sit here in dumb despair of hope. Our houses have become dark and gloomy as a desert.

34. Here the humble bees, are humming in grief upon the scattered flowers in our garden, which now sends forth a putrid smell instead of their former fragrance.

35. And there the creepers that twined so gayly round the vernal arbors, are dwindling and dying away with their closing and fading flowers.

36. The rivulets with their loose and low purling murmur, and light undulation of their liquid bodies in the ground, are running hurriedly in their sorrow, to cast themselves into the sea.

37. The ponds are as still in their sorrow, as men sitting in their meditative posture (_Samádhi_), notwithstanding the disturbance of the gnats flying incessantly upon them.

38. Verily is that part of the heaven adorned this day by the presence of our parents, where the bodies of heavenly choristers, the Kinnaras, Gandharvas and Vidyádharas, welcome them with their music.

39. Therefore, O Devis! assuage this our excessive grief; as the visit of the great never goes for nothing.

40. Hearing these words, Lílá gently touched the head of her son with her hand, as the lotus-bed leans to touch its offshoot by the stalk.

41. At her touch the boy was relieved of all his sorrow and misfortune, just as the summer heat of the mountain, is allayed by the showers of the rainy season.

42. All others in the house, were as highly gratified at the sight of the goddesses, as when a pauper is relieved of his poverty, and the sick are healed by a draught of nectar.

43. Ráma said:—Remove my doubt, sir, why Lílá did not appear in her own figure before her eldest son—Jyeshta Sarmá.

44. Vasishtha answered:—You forget, O Ráma! to think that Lílá had a material body, or could assume any at pleasure. She was in her form of pure intellect (lingadeha), and it was with her spiritual hand that she touched the inner spirit of the boy and not his body. (Gloss). Because whoso believes himself to be composed of his earthly body only, is verily confined in that; but he who knows his spirituality, is as free as air: (and it was in this aerial form that Lílá was ranging about and touched her son).

45. Belief in materialism leads one to think his unreal earthly frame as real, as a boy’s belief in ghosts makes him take a shadow for a spirit.

46. But this belief in one’s materiality, is soon over upon conviction of his spirituality; as the traces of our visions in a dream, are effaced on the knowledge of their unreality upon waking.

47. The belief of matter as (vacuous) nothing, leads to the knowledge of the spirit. And as a glass door appears as an open space to one of a bilious temperament, so does matter appear as nothing to the wise.

48. A dream presents us the sights of cities and lands, of air and water, where there are no such things in actuality; and it causes the movements of our limbs and bodies (as in somnambulation) for nothing.

49. As the air appears as earth in dreaming, so does the non-existent world appear to be existent in waking. It is thus that men see and talk of things unseen and unknown in their fits of delirium.

50. So boys see ghosts in the air, and the dying man views a forest in it; others see elephants in clouds, and some see pearls in sun-beams.

51. And thus those that are panic-struck and deranged in their minds, the halfwaking and passengers in vessels, see many appearances like the aforesaid ghosts and forests, as seen by boys and men in the air, and betray these signs in the motions and movements of their bodies.

52. In this manner every one is of the form of whatever he thinks himself to be; and it is habit only that makes him to believe himself as such, though he is not so in reality.

53. But Lílá who had known the truth and inexistence of the world, was conscious of its nothingness, and viewed all things to be but erroneous conceptions of the mind.

54. Thus he who sees Brahma only to fill the sphere of his intellect, has no room for a son or friend or consort to abide in it.

55. He who views the whole as full with the spirit of Brahma, and nothing produced in it, has no room for his affection or hatred to any body in it.

56. The hand that Lílá laid on the head of Jyeshtha Sarmá—her eldest son, was not lain from her maternal affection for him, but for his edification in intellectual knowledge.

57. Because the intellect being awakened, there is all felicity attendant upon it. It is more subtile than ether and far purer than vacuum, and leads the intellectual being above the region of air. All things beside are as images in a dream.

CHAPTER XXVII.

PAST LIVES OF LÍLÁ.

The two ladies then disappeared from that place, leaving the Bráhman family at their house in the mountainous village.

2. The family exclaimed “We are highly favoured by the sylvan goddesses;” and then forgetting their grief, they betook themselves to their domestic employments.

3. Then the etherial goddess spake to the aerial-Lílá, who stood fixed in air, over the mansion of the Bráhman, in a state of mute astonishment.

4. They then conversed as familiarly with each other, as persons having the same thoughts and desires, agree with one another in their views and acts; and as the dreamers of the same dream hold their mutual correspondence, like _Usha and Aniruddha_ (the Cupid and Psyche of India).

5. Their conversation in their immaterial forms, was of the same intellectual (psychical) kind, as we are conscious of in our dreams and imaginations.

6. Sarasvatí said:—Now you have fully known the knowable, and become acquainted with whatever is visible and invisible: such is the essence of Brahma; say now what more you want to know.

7. Lílá said:—Tell me the reason why I was seen by my son, and not where the spirit of my departed lord is reigning over his realm.

8. Sarasvatí replied:—Because you were not then perfect by your practice of Yoga to have your wish fulfilled, nor had you then lost your sense of duality, which is a preventive of perfection.

9. He who has not known the unity, is not entitled to the acts and benefits of his faith in the true God; as no one sitting in the sun, can enjoy the coolness of shade.

10. You were not practiced to forget your identity as Lílá, nor learnt that it is not your will, but the will of God that is always fulfilled.

11. You have afterwards become of pure desire, and wished that your son might see you, whereby he was enabled to have your sight.

12. Now if you should return to your husband, and do the like, you will undoubtedly be successful in your desire.

13. Lílá said:—I see within the sphere of this dome (of my mind), the Bráhman to have been my husband before; and I see also in it, that he died and became a ruler of the earth afterwards.

14. I see in it that spot of the earth, that city and that palace of his where I sat as his queen.

15. I see within myself my lord to be reigning in that place, and I see even there how he died afterwards.

16. I see herein the glory of the sovereign of so many countries on earth, and I see also the perfect frankness of his conduct through life.

17. I see the worlds in the inner sky of my mind, as they are placed in a casket, or as the oil is contained in a mustard seed.

18. I see the bright orb of my husband ever roving before me, and now I pray you to contrive any how to place me by his side.

19. The Goddess replied:—Tell me Lílá, to what husband you shall go, as there are hundreds of them that you had, and shall have in your past and future lives, and now there are three of them confined in this earth.

20. The nearest of the three, is the Bráhman who is here reduced to ashes; the next is the prince lying in state and covered with flowers in the inner apartment.

21. The third is now a reigning prince in this earth, and has been buffeting in the waves of error in the vast ocean of the world.

22. His intellect is darkened and disordered by the splashing waves of worldliness, his intelligence is perverted to stupidity, and he is converted to a tortoise in the ocean of the world.

23. The management of his very many disordered state affairs, has stultified him to a lubbard, and he is now fast asleep amidst the turmoils of business.

24. He is fast bound to subjection by the strong chain of his thoughts, that he is a lord, is mighty, accomplished, and that he is happy and is to enjoy his estates for ever.

25. Now say, O excellent lady! to what husband you wish to be led, in the manner of the fragrance of one forest borne by the breeze to another.

26. Here you are in one place, and there they in others amidst this vast world; and the state of their lives and manners differs widely from one another.

27. These orbs of light in the heaven, though they appear to be placed so near us (both to our eyesight and in the mind), are yet situated millions of leagues apart from one another; and the departed souls are carried in them (in their endless transmigrations).

28. And again all these bodies are as vacuous as air, though they contain the great mounts Meru and Mandara in themselves.

29. All bodies are formed by the combination of atoms, incessantly proceeding from the Great Intellect, like particles of sun-beams over the universe.

30. The great and stupendous fabric of the world, is no more (in the eye of intelligence), than a quantity of paddy weighed in the balance.