The Yoga-Vasishtha Maharamayana of Valmiki, Vol. 2 (of 4), Part 1 (of 2)

by Valmiki

YOGA VÁSISHTHA.

BOOK III.
UTPATTI KHANDA.

CHAPTER LI.
Description of Sindhu’s Dominions.

Vasishtha said:—The loud cry that the king was killed in battle by the rival monarch, struck the people with awe, and filled the realm with dismay.

2. Carts loaded with utensils and household articles, were driving through the streets; and women with their loud wailings, were running away amidst the impassable paths of the city.

3. The weeping damsels that were flying for fear, were ravished on the way by their captors; and the inhabitants were in danger of being plundered of their properties by one another.

4. The joyous shouts of the soldiers in the enemy’s camp, resounded with the roarings of loose elephants and neighings of horses, trampling down the men to death on their way.

5. The doors of the royal treasury were broken open by the brave brigands, the valves flew off and the vaults re-echoed to the strokes. The warders were overpowered by numbers, and countless treasures were plundered and carried away.

6. Bandits ripped off the bellies of the royal dames in the palace, and the chandála free-booters hunted about the royal apartments.

7. The hungry rabble robbed the provisions from the royal stores; and the soldiers were snatching the jewels of the weeping children trodden down under their feet.

8. Young and beautiful maidens were dragged by their hair from the seraglio, and the rich gems that fell from the hands of the robbers, glistened all along the way.

9. The chiefs assembled with ardour with their troops of horses, elephants and war-chariots, and announced the installation of Sindhu by his minister.

10. Chief engineers were employed in making the decorations of the city and its halls, and the balconies were filled by the royal party attending at the inauguration.

11. It was then that the coronation of Sindhu’s son, took place amidst the loud acclamations of victory; and titles and dignities, were conferred upon the noblemen on the victor’s side.

12. The royal party were flying for life into the villages, where they were pursued by the victorious soldiers; and a general pillage spread in every town and village throughout the realm.

13. Gangs of robbers thronged about, and blocked the passages for pillage and plunder; and a thick mist darkened the light of the day for want of the magnanimous Vidúratha.

14. The loud lamentations of the friends of the dead, and the bitter cries of the dying, mixed with the clamour raised by the driving cars, elephants and horses, thickened in the air as a solid body of sound (pindagráhya).

15. Loud trumpets proclaimed the victory of Sindhu in every city, and announced his sole sovereignty all over the earth.

16. The high-shouldered Sindhu entered the capital as a second Manu (Noah), for re-peopling it after the all-devastating flood of war was over.

17. Then the tribute of the country poured into the city of Sindhu from all sides; and these loaded on horses and elephants, resembled the rich cargoes borne by ships to the sea.

18. The new king issued forthwith his circulars and royal edicts to all sides, struck coins in his own name, and placed his ministers as commissioners in all provinces.

19. His iron-rod was felt in all districts and cities like the inexorable rod of Yama, and it overawed the living with fear of instant death.

20. All insurrections and tumults in the realm, soon subsided to rest under his reign; as the flying dust of the earth and the falling leaves of trees, fall to the ground upon subsidence of a tempest.

21. The whole country on all sides was pacified to rest, like the perturbed sea of milk after it had been churned by the Mandara mountain.

22. Then there blew the gentle breeze of Malaya, unfurling the locks of the lotus-faced damsels of Sindhu’s realm, and wafting the liquid fragrance of their bodies around, and driving away the unwholesome air (of the carnage).

CHAPTER LII.
State of Man after Death.

Vasishtha said:—In the meanwhile, O Ráma! Lílá seeing her husband lying insensible before her and about to breathe his last, thus spoke to Sarasvatí:

2. Behold, O mother! my husband is about to shuffle his mortal coil in this perilous war, which has laid waste his whole kingdom.

3. Sarasvatí replied:—This combat that you saw to be fought with such fury, and lasting so long in the field, was neither fought in thy kingdom nor in any part of this earth.

4. It occurred nowhere except in the vacant space of the shrine, containing the dead body of the Bráhman; and where it appeared as the phantom of a dream only (in your imagination).

5. This land which appeared as the realm of thy living lord Vidúratha, was situated with all its territories in the inner apartment of Padma. (The incidents of Vidúratha’s life, being but a vision appearing to the departed spirit of Padma).

6. Again it was the sepulchral tomb of the Bráhman Vasishtha, situated in the hilly village of Vindhyá, that exhibited these varying scenes of the mortal world within itself. (i.e. As a panorama shows many sights to the eye, and one man playing many parts in the stage).

7. As the departed soul views the vision of the past world within its narrow tomb; so is the appearance of all worldly accidents unreal in their nature. Gloss:—The apparitions appearing before the souls of the dead lying in their tombs, are as false as the appearances presenting themselves before the living souls in their tomb of this world. The souls of the living and the dead are both alike in their nature, and both susceptible of the like dreams and visions.

8. These objects that we see here as realities, including these bodies of mine and thine and this Lílá’s, together with this earth and these waters, are just the same as the phantoms rising in the tomb of the deceased Bráhman of the hilly region.

9. It is the soul which presents the images of things, and nothing external which is wholly unreal can cast its reflexion on the soul. Therefore know thy soul as the true essence which is increate and immortal, and the source of all its creations within itself. Note:—The subjective is the cause of the objective and not this of that.

10. The soul reflects on its inborn images without changing itself in any state, and thus it was the nature of the Bráhman’s soul, that displayed these images in itself within the sphere of his tomb.

11. But the illusion of the world with all its commotion, was viewed in the vacant space of the souls of the Bráhman and Padma, and not displayed in the empty space of their tombs, where there was no such erroneous reflexion of the world.

12. There is no error or illusion anywhere, except in the misconception of the observer; therefore the removal of the fallacy from the mind of the viewer, leads him to the perception of the light of truth.

13. Error consists in taking the unreal for the real, and in thinking the viewer and the view or the subjective and objective as different from each other. It is the removal of the distinction of the subjective and objective, that leads us to the knowledge of unity (the on or one or om).

14. Know the Supreme soul to be free from the acts of production and destruction, and it is his light that displays all things of which He is the source; and learn the whole outer nature as having no existence nor change in itself.

15. But the souls of other beings, exhibit their own natures in themselves; as those in the sepulchral vault of the Bráhman, displayed the various dispositions to which they were accustomed. (Thus the one unvaried soul appears as many, according to its particular wont and tendency in different persons).

16. The soul has no notion of the outer world or any created thing in it; its consciousness of itself as an increate vacuity, comprehends its knowledge of the world in itself. (i.e. The subjective consciousness of the Ego, includes the knowledge of the objective world).

17. The knowledge of the mountain chains of Meru and others, is included under the knowledge in the vacuity of the soul; there is no substance or solidity in them as in a great city seen in a dream.

18. The soul views hundreds of mountainous ranges and thousands of solid worlds, drawn in the small compass of the mind, as in its state of dreaming.

19. Multitudes of worlds, are contained in a grain of the brain of the mind; as the long leaves of the plantain tree, are contained in one of its minute seeds.

20. All the three worlds are contained in an atom as the intellect, in the same manner as great cities are seen in a dream; and all the particles of intellect within the mind, have each the representation of a world in it.

21. Now this Lílá thy step-dame, has already gone to the world which contains the sepulchre of Padma, before the spirit of Vidúratha could join the same.

22. The moment when Lílá fell in a swoon in thy presence, know her spirit to be immediately conveyed to him and placed by his side.

23. Lílá asked:—Tell me, O goddess! how was this lady endowed here with my form before, and how is she translated to and placed as my step-dame beside my deceased husband?

24. Tell me in short, in what form she is now viewed by the people in Padma’s house, and the manner in which they are talking to her at present.

25. The goddess replied:—Hear Lílá, what I will relate to thee in brief in answer to thy question, regarding the life and death of this Lílá as an image of thyself.

26. It is thy husband Padma, that beholds these illusions of the world spread before him in the same sepulchre in the person of Vidúratha.

27. He fought this battle as thou didst see in his reverie, and this Lílá resembling thyself was likewise a delusion. These his men and enemies were but illusions, and his ultimate death, was as illusory as a phantom of the imagination, like all other things in this world.

28. It was his self delusion, that showed him this Lílá as his wife, and it is the same deceit of a dream, which deludes thee to believe thyself as his consort.

29. As it is a mere dream that makes you both to think yourselves as his wives, so he deems himself as your husband, and so do I rely on my existence (also in a like state of dream).

30. The world with all its beauty, is said to be the spectre of a vision; wherefore knowing it a mere visionary scene, we must refrain from relying any faith in this visible phantasmagoria.

31. Thus this Lílá, yourself and this king Vidúratha, are but phantoms of your fancy: and so am I also, unless I believe to exist in the self-existent spirit.

32. The belief of the existence of this king and his people, and of ourselves as united in this place, proceeds from the fulness of that intellect, which fills the whole plenitude.

33. So this queen Lílá also situated in this place with her youthful beauty, and smiling so charmingly with her blooming face, is but an image of divine beauty.

34. See how gentle and graceful are her manners, and how very sweet is her speech; her voice is as dulcet as the notes of the Kokila, and her motions as slow as those of a lovelorn maiden.

35. Behold her eyelids like the leaves of the blue lotus, and her swollen breasts rounded as a pair of snow-balls; her form is as bright as liquid gold, and her lips as red as a brace of ripe Vimba fruits.

36. This is but a form of thee as thou didst desire to be to please thy husband, and it is the very figure of thy ownself, that thou now beholdest with wonder.

37. After the death of thy husband, his soul caught the same reflexion of thy image, as thou didst desire to be hereafter; and which thou now seest in the person of the young Lílá before thee.

38. Whenever the mind has a notion or sensation or fancy of some material object, the abstract idea of its image is surely imprinted in the intellect.

39. As the mind comes to perceive the unreality of material objects, it thenceforth begins to entertain the ideas of their abstract entities within itself. (Hence the abstract ideas of things are said to accompany the intellectual spirit after its separation from the body).

40. It was the thought of his sure death, and the erroneous conception of the transmigration of his soul in the body of Vidúratha, that represented to Padma thy desired form of the youthful Lílá, which was the idol of his soul. (This passage confutes the doctrine of metempsychosis, and maintains the verity of eternal ideas).

41. It was thus that thou wast seen by him and he was beheld by thee according to your desires; and thus both of you though possest of the same unvaried soul which pervades all space, are made to behold one another in your own ways (agreeably to your desires).

42. As the spirit of Brahma is all pervasive, and manifests itself in various ways in all places; it is beheld in different lights, according to the varying fancies (vikshepa sakti); or tendencies (vásaná sakti) of men, like the ever-changeful scenes appearing to us in our visions and dreams.

43. The omnipotent spirit displays its various powers in all places, and these powers exert themselves everywhere, according to the strong force and capability it has infused in them (in their material or immaterial forms).

44. When this pair remained in their state of death-like insensibility, they beheld all these phantoms in their inner souls, by virtue of their reminiscence and desires (which are inherent in the soul).

45. That such and such person were their fathers and such their mothers before, that they lived in such places, had such properties of theirs, and did such acts erewhile (are reminiscences of the soul).

46. That they were joined together in marriage, and the multitude which they saw in their minds, appeared to them as realities for the time in their imagination (as it was in a magic show).

47. This is an instance that shows our sensible perceptions, to be no better than our dreams; and it was in this deluded state of Lílá’s mind, that I was worshipped and prayed by her:—

48. In order to confer upon her the boon that she might not become a widow; and it was by virtue of this blessing of mine, that this girl had died before her husband’s death (to escape the curse of widowhood).

49. I am the progeny of Brahmá, and the totality of that intelligence of which all beings participate: it is for this reason that I was adored by her as the Kula Devi or tutelar divinity of all living beings.

50. It was at last that her soul left her body, and fled with her mind in the form of her vital breath, through the orifice of her mouth.

51. Then after the insensibility attendant upon her death was over, she understood in her intellect her living soul to be placed in the same empty space with the departed spirit of Padma.

52. Her reminiscence pictured her in her youthful form, and she beheld herself as in a dream, to be situated in the same tomb. She was as a blooming lotus with her beautiful countenance, and her face was as bright as the orb of the moon; her eyes were as large as those of an antelope, and she was attended by her graceful blandishments for the gratification of her husband.

CHAPTER LIII.
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).

CHAPTER LIV.
Reflections on Death.

Argument. The lot of living beings and the cause of their death. The duration of human life as determined by their acts and enjoyments, and the merit of their conduct in life time.

The goddess continued:—Those therefore who know the knowable God, and rely in virtue, can go to the spiritual worlds and not others. (Knowable means what ought to be and not what is or can be known).

2. All material bodies which are but false and erroneous conceptions of the mind, can have no place in Truth (the true spirit); as no shadow can have any room in sunshine. (So gross matter has no room in the subtile spirit).

3. Lílá being ignorant of the knowable (God), and unacquainted with the highest virtue (the practice of Yoga), could go no further than the city of her lord which she had at heart.

4. The waking Lílá said:—Let her be where she is (I inquire no more about her); but will ask you of other things. You see here my husband is about to die, so tell me what must I do at present.

5. Tell me the law of the being and not being of beings, and what is that destiny which destines the living beings to death.

6. What is it that determined the natures of things and gave existence to the categories of objects? What is it that has caused the warmth of the fire and sun, and gave stability to the earth?

7. Why is coldness confined to the frost and the like, and what forms the essence of time and space; what are the causes of the different states of things and their various changes, and the causes of the solidity of some and tenuity of others?

8. What is that which causes the tallness of trees and men above the grass and brambles; and why is it that many things dwindle and decay in the course and capability of growth?

9. The goddess said:—At the universal dissolution of the world, when all things are dissolved in the formless void; there remains the only essence of Brahma, in the form of the infinite sky stretching beyond the limits of creation on all sides.

10. It then reflects in its intellect in the form of a spark of fire, as you are conscious of your aerial journey in a dream.

11. This atomic spark then increased in its size in the divine spirit, and having no substance of itself, appeared what is commonly styled the ideal world.

12. The spirit of God residing in it, thought itself as Brahmá—the soul of the world, who reigned over it in his form of the mind, as if it was identic with the real world itself. (The world is a display of the Divine Mind).

13. The primary laws that he has appointed to all things at their first creation, the same continue invariably in force with them to the present time. (i.e. The primordial law or nature).

14. The minds of all turn in the same way as it was willed by the divine mind, and there is nothing which of itself can go beyond the law which the divine will has assigned to it.

15. It is improper to say that all formal existences are nothing, because they remain in their substance (of the divine spirit), after disappearance of their forms; as the substance of gold remains the same after alteration of its shape and form.

16. The elementary bodies of fire and frost still continue in the same state, as their elements were first formed in the Divine mind in the beginning of creation.

17. Nothing therefore has the power to forsake its own nature, as long as the divine intellect continues to direct his eternal laws and decrees which are appointed to all.

18. It is impossible for any thing to alter its nature now from the eternal stamp, which Divine will has set upon all the substantial and ideal forms of creation.

19. As the Divine Intellect knows no opposition in its way, it never turns from the tenor of its own wonted intelligence which directs the destinies of all. (This is the real or subjective, intellectual or nominal view of evolution of all things from the divine mind).

20. But know in the first place the world to be no created thing. All this that appears to exist, is but a display of the notions in our consciousness, like the appearances in our dreams.

21. The unreal appears as real, as the shadow seems to be the substance. Our notions of things are the properties of our nature. (i.e. They are natural to us, as they are engrafted in it by the eternal mind).

22. The manner in which the intellect exhibited itself, in its different manifestations, at the beginning, the same continues in its course to this time, and is known as the samvid-kachana or manifestations of consciousness, which constitute the niyati—course or system of the universe.

23. The sky is the manifestation of the intellectual idea of vacuity in the divine mind; and the idea of duration in the intellect, appeared in the form of the parts of time.

24. The idea of liquidity evolved itself in the form of water in the divine mind; in the same manner as one dreams of water and seas in his own mind. (So the air and earth are manifestations of the ideas of fluidity and solidity).

25. We are conscious of our dreams in some particular state of our intellect, and it is the wonderfully cunning nature of the intellect, that makes us think the unreal as real.

26. The ideas of the reality of earth, air, fire and water are all false; and the intellect perceives them within itself, as its false dreams and desires and reveries.

27. Now hear me tell you about death, for removing your doubts with regard to the future state; that death is destined for our good, in as much as it leads us to the enjoyment of the fruits of acts in this life.

28. Our lives are destined in the beginning to extend to one, two, three and four centuries in the different Kali, Dwápara, Tretá and Satya ages of the world. (Corresponding with the golden, silver, brazen and iron ages of the ancients).

29. It is however by virtue of place and time, of climate and food, and our good or bad actions and habits, that human life extends above or descends below these limits.

30. Falling short of one’s duties lessens his life, as his excelling in them lengthens its duration; but the mediocrity of his conduct keeps it within its proper bound.

31. Boys die by acts causing infant diseases and untimely deaths; so do the young and old die of acts that bring on juvenile and senile weakness, sickness and ultimate death.

32. He who goes on doing his duties as prescribed by law of the Sástras, becomes both prosperous and partaker of the long life allotted by the rule of the Sástra.

33. So likewise do men meet their last state and future reward, according to the nature of their acts in life-time; or else their old age is subjected to regret and remorse, and all kinds of bodily and mental maladies and anxieties.

34. Lílá said:—Tell me in short, O moon-faced goddess! something more with regard to death; as to whether it is a pleasure or pain to die, and what becomes of us after we are dead and gone from here. (Death is said to be release from misery by some, and the most grievous of all torments by others. So Pope:—O, the pain, the bliss of dying).

35. The goddess replied:—Dying men are of three kinds, and have different ends upon their death. These are those who are ignorant, and such as are practiced in yoga, and those that are reasonable and religious.

36. Those practicing the dháraná yoga, may go wherever they like after leaving their bodies, and so the reasonable yogi is at liberty to range everywhere. (It consists in mental retention and bodily patience and endurance).

37. He who has not practiced the dháraná yoga, nor applied himself to reasoning, nor has certain hopes of the future, is called the ignorant sot, and meets with the pain and pangs of death.

38. He whose mind is unsubdued, and full of desires and temporal cares and anxieties, becomes as distressed as a lotus torn from its stalk. (i.e. It is the subjection of inordinary passions, and suppression of inordinate desires and cares, which ensure our true felicity).

39. The mind that is not guided by the precepts of the Sástras, nor purified by holiness; but is addicted to the society of the wicked, is subjected to the burning sensation of fire within itself at the moment of death.

40. At the moment when the last gurgling of the throat chokes the breath, the eye-sight is dimmed and the countenance fades away; then the rational soul also becomes hazy in its intellect.

41. A deep darkness spreads over the dimming sight, and the stars twinkle before it in day-light; the firmament appears to be obscured by clouds, and the sky presents its gloomy aspect on every side.

42. An acute pain seizes the whole frame, and a fata Morgana dances before the vision; the earth is turned to air and the mid-air seems to be the moving place of the dying person.

43. The sphere of heaven revolves before him, and the tide of the sea seems to bear him away. He is now lifted up in the air, and now hurled down as in his state of dizziness or dream.

44. Now he thinks as falling in a dark pit, and then as lying in the cavern of a hill; he wants to tell aloud his torments, but his speech fails him to give utterance to his thoughts.

45. He now finds himself as falling down from the sky, and now as whirled in the air like a bundle of straws blown aloft in the air by a gust of wind. He is now riding swiftly as in a car, and now finds himself melting as snow.

46. He desires to acquaint his friends of the evils of life and this world; but he is carried away from them as rapidly as by an air-engine, (like a stone shot by a ballista or an aeronaut in a balloon).

47. He whirls about as by a rotatory machine or turning wheel, and is dragged along like a beast by its halter. He wallows about as in an eddy, or turns around as the machine of some engine.

48. He is borne in the air as a straw, and is carried about as a cloud by the winds. He rises high like a vapour, and then falls down like a heavy watery cloud pouring out in the sea.

49. He passes through the endless space and revolves in all its vortiginous vacuities, to find as it were, a place free from the vicissitudes to which the earth and ocean are subject. (i.e. A place of peace and rest).

50. Thus the rising and falling spirit roves without cessation, and the soul breathing hard and sighing without intermission, sets the whole body in sore pain and agony.

51. By degrees the objects of his senses become as faint to his failing organs, as the landscape fades to view at the setting of the sun. (The world recedes; it disappears: Pope).

52. He loses the remembrance of the past and present, upon the failing of his memory at this moment; as one is at a loss to know the sides of the compass after the evening twilight has passed away.

53. In his fit of fainting, his mind loses its power of thinking; and he is lost in a state of ignorance, at the loss of all his thoughts and sensibility. (So the lines:—It absorbs me quite, steals my senses, shuts my sight. Pope).

54. In the state of faintishness, the vital breath ceases to circulate through the body; and at the utter stoppage of its circulation, there ensues a collapse murch’ha or swooning.

55. When this state of apoplexy joined with delirium, has reached its climax, the body becomes as stiff as stone by the law of inertia, ordained for living beings from the beginning.

56. Lílá said:—But tell me, O goddess, why do these pains and agonies, this fainting and delirium, and disease and insensibility, overtake the body, when it is possessed of all its eight organs entire?

57. The goddess replied:—It is the law appointed by the author of life from the first, that such and such pains are to fall to the lot of living beings at such and such times. (Man’s primeval sin brought pain and disease and death into the world).

58. The primeval sin springs of itself as a plant in the conscious heart of man, and subjects him to his doomed miseries, which have no other intelligible cause. (There is no other assignable cause of death and disease except the original guilt).

59. When the disease and its pain overpower the body, and prevent the lungs and arteries to expand and contract, in order to inhale and exhale the air, it loses its equipoise (samána) and becomes restless.

60. When the inhaled air does not come out, nor the exhaled breath re-enter the lungs, all pulsation is at a stop; and the organic sensations are lost in their remembrance only. (As in the memory of sleeping and dreaming men).

61. When there is no ingress nor egress of the vital air, the pulse sinks and becomes motionless, and the body is said to become senseless, and the life to be extinct.

62. I shall also die away in my destined time, but my consciousness of former knowledge will all be awake at the hour of death (which proves the immortality of the soul).

63. Though I am dead and gone from here in this manner, yet I must mind, that the seed of my innate consciousness (the soul), is never destroyed with my life and body.

64. Consciousness is inward knowledge and imperishable in its nature; therefore the nature of consciousness is free from birth and death. (The body is subject to birth and death, but not the soul).

65. This consciousness is as clear as a fresh fountain in some persons, and as foul as tide water in others; it is bright in its form of the pure intellect—chit in some, and polluted with the passions of animal life, in its nature of the sentient or living soul—chetana in many.

66. As a blade of grass is composed of joints in the midst, so is the even nature of the sentient or living soul; which is combined with the two states of birth and death amidst it.

67. The sentient soul is neither born nor dead at any time; but witnesses these two states as the passing shadows and apparitions in a dream and vision.

68. The soul is no other than the intellect, which is never destroyed anywhere by any. Say, what other thing is this soul, which is called the Purusha beside the intellect itself. Gloss. It is not the body, nor the vital breath, nor perceptions nor mind; it is not the understanding nor egoism, nor the heart nor illusion, all of which are inactive of themselves.

69. Say then whom and what you call to be dead today, and whether the intellect is liable to disease or demise at any time and in any wise. Millions of living bodies are verily dying every day, but the intellect ever remains imperishable.

70. The intellect never dies at the death of any living being; because all the living soul continues the same upon the demise of every body here.

71. The living soul therefore, is no more than the principle which is conscious of its various desires, affections and passions. It is not that principle to which the phases of life and death are attributed by men.

72. So there is none that dies, nor any one that is born at any time; it is this living principle only that continually revolves in the deep eddy of its desires.

73. Considering the unreality of the visible phenomena, there can be no desire for them in any body; but the inward soul that is led by its egoism to believe them as true, is subject to death at the dis-appearance of the phenomena.

74. The recluse ascetic flying from the fears of the world as foreign to his soul; and having none of its false desires rising in his breast, becomes liberated in his life and assimilated with the true ONE.

CHAPTER LV.
The states of Life and Death.

Lílá said:—Tell me, goddess! for edification of my knowledge, the manner in which a living being comes to die and to be re-born in another form.

2. The goddess replied:—As the action of the heart ceases to act, and the lungs blow and breathe no more, the current of the vital airs is utterly stopped, and the living being loses its sensibility.

3. But the intellectual soul which has no rise nor fall, remains ever the same as it abides in all moving and unmoving bodies, and in air, water, fire and vacuum. Gloss. So saith the Sruti:—The soul is unlimited, permanent and imperishable.

4. When the hindrance of breathing, stops the pulsation, and motion of the body, it is said to be dead; and is then called an inert corpse (but not so the soul).

5. The body being a dead carcase, and the breathing mixing with the air, the soul is freed from the bonds of its desires, and flies to and remains in the mode of the discrete and self-existent soul. Gloss. The Sruti says:—“His elemental parts mix with the elements, and his soul with the Supreme.” The unconditioned—nirupadhika spirit, joins with the Holy spirit; but not so the conditioned (upádhika) soul of the unholy.

6. The soul having its desires and styled the animal spirit—Jíva, is otherwise than the átman—soul. It remains in its sepulchral vault under the same atmosphere as the soul of Padma, which thou sawst hovering about his tomb. Gloss. The desire binds down the spirit to its own sphere. (The Ghost hovering about the charnel vault. Milton).

7. Hence such departed spirits are called pretas or ghosts of the dead, which have their desires and earthly propensities attached to them; as the fragrance of the flower is concentrated in its pollen, and thence diffused through the air.

8. As the animal souls are removed to other spheres, after their departure from this visible world, they view the very many scenes and sights; that their desires present before them like visions in a dream.

9. The soul continues to remember all its past adventures, even in its next state, and finds itself in a new body, soon after the insensibility of death is over. Gloss. This is the linga or súkshma deha—the spiritual or subtile body of spiritualism.

10. What appears an empty vacuum to others, seems as a dusky cloud to the departed soul, enveloping the earth, sky, moon and all other orbs within its bosom (the circumambient atmosphere).

11. The departed spirits are classed in six orders, as you shall now hear from me; namely, the great, greater and greatest sinners, and so likewise the three degrees of the virtuous.

12. These are again subdivided into three kinds, as some belonging to one state, and others composed of two or three states; (i.e. of virtue and vice intermixed) in the same individual soul.

13. Some of the most sinful souls, lose the remembrance of their past states for the period of a whole year; and remain quite insensible within themselves, like blocks of wood or stone. (This is called the pretárasthá continuing for a whole year after death). (It is allied to Abraham’s bosom or Irack of Mahomedans).

14. Rising after this time, they are doomed to suffer the endless torments of hell; which the hardness of their earthly mindedness has brought upon them. (This is the Purgatory of Christians).

15. They then pass into hundreds of births, leading from misery to misery, or have a moment’s respite from the pains in their short lived prosperity, amidst their dreaming journey through life. (These transmigrations of the soul, are the consequences of its evil propensities).

16. There are others, that after their torpor of death is over, come to suffer the unutterable torments of torpidity, in the state of unmoving trees (which are fixed to undergo all the inclemencies of weather).

17. And others again that having undergone the torments of hell, according to their inordinate desires in life, are brought to be re-born on earth, in a variety of births in different forms.

18. Those of lesser crimes, are made to feel the inertness of stones for sometime, after the insensibility attending upon their death. (This means either the insensibility of dead bodies, or that of mineral substances.)

19. These being awakened to sensibility after some period, either of duration long or short (according to their desert); are made to return on earth, to feel the evils of brutish and beastly lives.

20. But the souls of the least sinful, come to assume soon after their death, some perfect human form, in order to enjoy the fruits of their desire and desert on earth.

21. These desires appear before the soul as dreams, and awaken its reminiscence of the past, as present at that moment.

22. Again the best and most virtuous souls, come soon after their death, to find themselves in heavenly abodes, by reason of their continued thoughts and speculations of them.

23. Some amongst them, are brought to enjoy the rewards of their actions in other spheres, from which they are sent back to the mortal world, at the residences of the auspicious and best part of mankind.

24. Those of moderate virtues are blown away by the atmospheric air, upon the tops of trees and medicinal plants, where they rove about as the protozoa, after the insensibility of death is over.

25. Being nourished here by the juice of fruits, they descend in the form of serum and enter into the hearts of men, whence they fall into the uterus in the form of semen virilis, which is the cause of the body and life of other living beings.

The gloss says:—Having enjoyed in the next world the good fruits of their virtuous deeds, they are blown down on earth by the winds and rain. Here they enter in the form of sap and marrow in the vegetable productions of corn, grain and fruits; and these entering the body of animals in the form of food, produce the semen, which becomes the cause of the lives and bodies of all living beings.

26. Thus the dead, figure to themselves some one of these states of living bodies, according to their respective proclivity, after they recover from the collapse attending upon their death.

27. Having thought themselves to be extinct at first, they come to feel their resuscitation afterwards, upon receiving the offering of the mess, made to their departed spirits (by their surviving heirs).

28. Then they fancy they see the messengers of death, with nooses in their hands, come to fetch them to the realm of Yama; where they depart with them, (with their provision for one year offered in their Srádh ceremony).

29. There the righteous are carried in heavenly cars to the gardens of Paradise, which they gain by their meritorious acts in life.

30. But the sinful soul, meets with icebergs and pitfals, tangled with thorns and iron pikes, and bushes and brambles in its passage, as the punishment of its sins.

31. Those of the middling class, have a clear and paved passage, with soft grassy path-ways shaded by cooling arbours, and supplied with spring waters on both sides of them.

32. On its arrival there, the soul reflects within itself that: “here am I, and yonder is Yama—the lord of the dead. The other is the judge of our actions—Chitragupta, and this is his judgment given on my behalf”.

33. In this manner the great world also, appears to every one as in a dream; and so the nature and manner of all things, present themselves before every soul.

34. But all these appearances are as void as air; the soul alone is the sentient principle, and the spacious space and time, and the modes and motions of things, though they appear as real, are nothing in reality.

35. Here (in Yama’s court), the soul is pronounced to reap the reward of its acts, whereby it ascends either to the blissful heaven above, or descends to the painful hell below.

36. After having enjoyed the bliss of heaven, or suffered the torment of hell, it is doomed to wander in this earth again, to reap the reward of its acts in repeated transmigrations.

37. The soul springs up as a paddy plant, and brings forth the grains of intelligence; and then being assembled by the senses, it becomes an animal, and lastly an intelligent being.

_i.e._ The insensible vegetable, entering into the animal body in the form of food, is converted to a sensible but irrational soul; but entering as food in the body of man, it turns to a rational and human soul. The one Universal soul is thus diversified in different beings. (It is the plant and food that sustains and nourishes all souls. Gloss).

38. The soul contains in itself the germs of all its senses, which lie dormant in it for want of its bodily organs. It is contained in the semen virilis of man, which passing into the uterus, produces the fœtus in the womb of the female.

39. The fœtus then becomes either well-formed or deformed, according to the good or evil deeds of the person in its past state; and brings forth the infant of a goodly or ill shapen appearance.

40. It then perceives the moonlike beauty of youthful bloom, and its amorous disposition coming upon itself; and feels afterwards the effects of hoary old age, defacing its lotus-like face, as the sleets of snow, shatter and shrivel the lotus leaflets.

41. At last it undergoes the pains of disease and death, and feels the same insensibility of Euthanasia as before, and finds again as in a dream its taking of a new form.

42. It again believes itself to be carried to the region of Pluto, and subjected to the former kinds of revolution; and thus it continues to conceive its transmigration, in endless births and various forms.

43. Thus the aerial spirit goes on thinking, for ever in its own etherial sphere, all its ceaseless metempsychosis, until its final liberation from this changeful state.

44. Lílá said:—Tell me kindly, O good goddess! for the enlightenment of my understanding, how this misconception of its changeableness, first came upon the soul in the beginning.

45. The goddess replied:—It is the gross view of the abstract, that causes us to assume the discrete spirit, in the concrete forms of the earth and sky and rocks and trees (all of which subsist in the spirit, and are unsubstantial in themselves).

46. As the divine intellect manifests itself, as the soul and model of all forms; so we see these manifestations, in the transcendental sphere of its pure intelligence.

47. In the beginning, God conceived himself as the lord of creation (Brahmá); and then as it were in a dream, he saw in himself, all the forms as they continue to this time.

48. These forms were manifested in the divine spirit, at first as his will; and then exhibited in the phenomenal world, as reflexions of the same, in all their present forms.

49. Among these some are called living beings, which have the motions of their bodies and limbs; and live by means of the air which they breathe, and which circulate in their bodies through the lungs and arteries.

50. Such also is the state of the vegetable creation from the first, that they having their inward sensitiveness, are notwithstanding devoid of outward motion, and receive their sustenance by the roots; wherefore they are called Pádapas or pedobibers.

51. The hollow sphere of the divine intellect, beaming with intelligence, sends forth its particles of percipience, which form the consciousness of some beings, and sensitiveness in others.

52. But man uses his eyes to view the outer and the reflected world (in disregard of his consciousness of the real); although the eyes do not form his living soul, nor did they exist at his creation and before his birth. (When his view was concentrated within himself as in his sleeping visions).

53. It is according to one’s estimation of himself, that he has his proper and peculiar desires, and the particular form of his body also. Such is the case of the elementary bodies likewise, from their inward conception of their peculiar natures.

Gloss:—So the ideas of vacuity, fluidity and solidity forming the bodies of air, water and earth; and the form of every thing agreeing with its inherent nature.

54. Thus all moving and unmoving things, have their movable and immovable bodies, according to their intrinsic disposition or idiosyncrasy as such and such.

55. Hence all self-moving beings have their movable bodies, conforming with the conception of their natures as so and so; and in this state of their belief, they continue to this time, with their same inborn or congenital bodies.

56. The vegetable world still continues in the same state of fixedness, from its sense of immobility; and so the rocks and minerals continue in their inert state, from the inborn sense of their inertness.

57. There is no distinction whatever between inertness and intelligence, nor any difference betwixt production, continuance and extinction of things; all which occur in one common essence of the supreme.

58. The varying idiocrasy subsisting in vegetables and minerals, makes them feel themselves as such, and causes their various natures and forms, as they have to this time.

59. The inward constitution of all immovable objects, makes them remain in their stationary states; and so of all other substances, according to their different names and natures.

60. Thus the inward crasis or quality of worms and insects, makes them conceive themselves according to their different kinds, and gives them their particular natures for ever.

61. So the people under the north pole know nothing about those in the south, except that they have the knowledge of themselves only (as ever subject to the intense cold of the frigid zone).

62. So also all kinds of moving and unmoving beings, are prepossessed with their own notions of things, and regard all others according to the peculiar nature of themselves. (Átmá vat &c.).

63. Again as the inhabitants of caves, know nothing of their outsiders; and as the frogs of dirty pools are unacquainted with pure water of streams; so is one sort of being ignorant of the nature of another.

64. But the inane intellect, residing in the form of the all pervasive mind, and all sustaining air; knows the natures of all things in all places.

65. The vital air that enters all bodies through the pores of their bodies, is the moving principle, that gives life and motion to all living beings.

66. Verily the mind is situated in all things, whether they are moving or immovable; and so is the air, which causes the motion in some, and quiescence in others.

67. Thus are all things but rays of the conscious soul, in this world of illusion, and continue in the same state as they have been from the beginning.

68. I have told you all about the nature of things in the world, and how un-realities come to appear as real unto us.

69. Lo here this king Vidúratha is about to breathe his last, and the garlands of flowers heaped on the corpse of thy husband Padma, are now being hung upon the breast of Vidúratha.

70. Lílá said:—Tell me goddess! by what way he entered the tomb of Padma, and how we may also go there to see what he has been doing in that place.

71. The goddess said:—Man goes to all places by the way of his desires, and thinks also he goes to the distant future, in the spiritual form of pure intellect.

72. We shall go by the same way (aerial or spiritual), as you will like to take; because the bond of our friendship will make no difference in our choice and desires.

73. Vasishtha said:—The princess Lílá being relieved of her pain, by the recital of this agreeable narration; and her intellectual sight being brightened, by the blazing sun of spiritual light; beheld the insensible and unmoving Vidúratha, breathe out his last expiring breath.

CHAPTER LVI.
State of the soul after death.

Argument. The desire of the king, and his departure to the realm of death, followed by Lílá and the goddess; and their arrival to his former city.

Vasishtha continued:—In the meantime the eye-balls of the king became convoluted, and his lips and cheeks grew pale and dry, with his whole countenance; and there remained only the slender breath of life in him.

2. His body became as lean as a dry leaf, and his face turned as ghastly as the figure of death; his throat gurgled as the hoarsest beetles, and his lungs breathed with a bated breath.

3. His sight was darkened upon the insensibility of death, and his hopes were buried in the pit of despair; and the sensations of his external organs, were hid within the cavity of his heart.

4. His figure was as senseless as a picture in painting, and all his limbs were as motionless, as those of a statue carved upon a block of marble.

5. What need is there of a lengthy description, when it may be said in short; that his life quitted his body, as a bird flies off afar from a falling tree.

6. The two ladies with their divine eye-sight, beheld his animal spirit, flying upwards in the sky in its aerial form; and his consciousness disappearing, like the odour of a flower wafted by the wind.

7. His living soul being joined with its spiritual body, began to fly higher and higher in the air; as it was led by its inward desire or expectation of ascending to heaven.

8. The two ladies kept going after that conscious soul, like a couple of female bees, pursuing a particle of perfume borne afar in the air on the wings of the wind.

9. Then in a moment after the fainting fit of death was over; the conscious soul was roused from its insensibility, like some fragrance expanding itself with the breeze.

10. It saw the porters of death, carrying away the souls of the dead, that have resumed their grosser forms, by means of the mess offerings of their kinsmen to their manes.

11. After a long year’s journey on the way, it reached at the distant abode of Yama, with the hope of reaping the reward of its acts; but found the gate fast beset by beasts of prey. (Like the Cerberus at the hellgate of Pluto).

12. Yama, on beholding the departed spirit of every body brought before him, ordered to find out its foul acts all along its life time.

13. On finding the prince’s spirit spotless, and ever inclined to virtuous acts and to have been nourished by the grace of the goddess of wisdom:—

14. He ordered it to be released, and re-entered into its former dead body, which lay buried under the flowers in the tomb.

15. It was then let to fly in the etherial path, with the swiftness of a stone flung from a sling; and was followed by the living Lílá and the goddess in the air.

16. The living soul of the king thus sailing through the sky, did not observe the forms of the two ladies that followed it, though they saw it all along its course. (Because heavenly forms are invisible to mortal eyes and souls).

17. They traversed through many worlds, and soon passed the bounds of the extra-mundane systems; till they arrived at the solar world, whence they descended on this orb of the earth.

18. The two self-willed forms (of Lílá and the goddess), in company with the living soul of the king; arrived at the royal city of Padma, and entered the apartment of Lílá.

19. They entered in a trice and of their own free will, into the inside of the palace; as the air passes in flowers, and the sunbeams penetrate in the water, and the odors mix with the air.

20. Ráma asked:—How was it Sir, that they entered into the abode adjoining to the tomb, and how could they find out the way to it, the one having been dead a long time, and all three being but bodiless vacuity?

21. Vasishtha replied:—The tomb of the dead body of the prince, being impressed in his soul, and the object of its desire, led his spirit insensibly to it, as if it were by its inborn instinct.

22. Who does not know, that the endless desires which are sown in the human breast, like the countless seeds of a fig fruit, come of their own nature, to grow up to big trees in their time?

23. Just as the living body bears its seed—the subtile or linga deha in the heart, which germinates and grows to a tree at last; so every particle of the intellect, bears the mundane seed in itself. (The cosmos is contained in every individual soul).

24. As a man placed in one country, sees within himself his house, which is situated in a far distant land, so the soul sees the objects of his distant desires, ever present before it.

25. The living soul, ever longs after the best object of its desire; though it may undergo a hundred births, and become subject to the errors and delusions of his senses, and of this illusive world. (For whatever is born in the root, must come out in the seed; and that which is bred in the bones, must appear in the flesh).

26. Ráma rejoined:—There are many persons, that are free from their desire of receiving the funeral cake: now tell me, sir, what becomes of those souls, who get no cake offering at their Srádh.

27. Vasishtha replied:—The man having the desire of receiving the mess settled in his heart, and thinking it to be offered to him; is surely benefitted by its offering. (The funeral cake like every other food, is said to nourish the spirit, and cause its resuscitation in a new life and body).

28. Whatever is in the heart and mind, the same notions form the nature of living beings; and whether these are in their corporeal or incorporeal states, they think themselves as such beings and no other. (The sense of personal identity accompanies the soul everywhere).

29. The thought of having received the pinda cake, makes a man sapinda, though it is not actually offered to him; so on the other hand the thought of not being served with the cake, makes a sapinda become a nispinda (or one served with it becomes as one without it).

30. It is verily the desire of all living beings to be such and such as they have in their hearts, and that is the cause of their becoming so in reality. (Gloss. The ordinance of the necessity of cake offering, fosters its desire in the hearts of men. Or, which is the same thing, the desire of receiving the funeral cake, is fostered in the hearts of men, by the ordinance of Srádh).

31. It is the thought of a man, that makes the poison savour as nectar to his taste; and it is his very thought that makes an untruth seem as truth to him. (Gloss. The thought of a snake-catcher that he is the snake eating Garuda, makes him swallow the bitter poison as sweet honey; and the thought of snake-bite from the pricking of a thorn, mortifies a man by his false fear or imagination only).

32. Know this for certain, that no thought ever rises in any one without some cause or other; hence the desire or thought which is inherent in the spirit, is the sole cause of its regeneration on earth.

33. Nobody has ever seen or heard of any event, occurring without its proper cause; except the being of the Supreme Being, which is the causeless cause of all beings, from their state of not-being into being.

34. The desire is inherent in the intellect, like a dream in the soul; and the same appears in the form of acts, as the Will of God is manifested in his works of creation.

35. Ráma said:—How can the spirit that is conscious of its demerit, foster any desire of its future good; and how can it profit by the pious works of others for its salvation? (as the Srádh made by the relatives of the deceased).

36. Tell me too whether the pious acts of others, which are offered to the manes go for nothing; and whether the absence of future prospects of the unmeritorious ghost, or the benevolent wishes of others (for its future good) are to take effect.

37. Vasishtha said:—A desire is naturally raised in one at its proper time and place, and by application of appropriate acts and means; and the rising of the desire necessarily overcomes its absence. Gloss. So a Srádh done in proper season and manner, serves to the benefit of the desertless spirit.

38. The pious gifts made on behalf of the departed souls, accrue to them as their own acts; and the sense which they thus acquire of their worthiness, fills them with better hopes and desires of their future state. (Hence rises the hope of redemption by means of the redeeming son of man).

39. And as the stronger man gains the better of his adversary, so the later acts of piety drive away the former impiety from the spirit. Therefore the constant practice of pious acts is strictly enjoined in the Sástras.

40. Ráma said:—If the desire is raised at its proper time and place, how then could it rise in the beginning when there was no time nor place: (i.e., when all was void and yet Brahma had his desire and will).

41. You say that there are accessory causes, which give rise to the desires, but how could the will rise at first without any accessory cause whatever?

42. Vasishtha replied:—It is true, O long-armed Ráma, that there was neither time nor place in the beginning, when the Spirit of God was without its will.

43. And there being no accessory cause, there was not even the idea of the visible world, nor was it created or brought into existence; and it is so even now.

44. The phenomenal world has no existence, and all that is visible, is the manifestation of the Divine Intellect, which is ever lasting and imperishable.

45. This will I explain to you afterwards in a hundred different ways, and it is my main purpose to do so; but hear me now tell you what appertains to the matter under consideration.

46. They having got in that house, saw its inside beautifully decorated with chaplets of flowers as fresh as those of the spring season.

47. The inmates of the palace were quietly employed in their duties, and the corpse of the king was placed upon a bed of mandara and kunda flowers.

48. The sheet over the dead body, was also strewn over with wreaths of the same flowers; and there were the auspicious pots of water placed by the bed side.

49. The doors of the room were closed, and the windows were shut fast with their latchets; the lamps cast a dim light on the white washed walls around, and the corpse was lying as a man in sleep, with the suppressed breathing of his mouth and nostrils.

50. There was the full bright moon, shining with her delightsome lustre, and the beauty of the palace, put to blush the paradise of Indra; it was as charming as the pericarp of the lotus of Brahmá’s birthplace, and it was as silent as dumbness or a dummy itself, and as beautiful as the fair moon in her fulness.

CHAPTER LVII.
Phenomena of Dreaming.

Argument. Unsubstantiality of the aerial body of Lílá and the Spiritual bodies of Yogis.

Vasishtha continued:—They beheld there the younger Lílá of Vidúratha, who had arrived there after her demise, and before the death of that king.

2. She was in her former habit and mode with the same body, and the same tone and tenor of her mind; she was also as beautiful in all her features, as in her former graceful form and figure when living.

3. She was the same in every part of her body, and wore the same apparel as before. She had the very ornaments on her person, with the difference that it was sitting quietly in the same place, and not moving about as before.

4. She kept flapping her pretty fan (chouri), over the corpse of the king; and was gracing the ground below, like the rising moon brightening the skies above.

5. She sat quiet, reclining her moonlike face on the palm of her left hand; and decorated with shining gems, she appeared as a bed of flowers, with new-blown blossoms on it.

6. With the glances of her beautiful eyes, she shed showers of flowers on all sides; and the brightness of her person, beamed with the beams of the etherial moon.

7. She seemed to have approached to the lord of men, like the goddess Lakshmí, appearing before the god Vishnu; and with the heaps of flowers before her, she seemed as Flora or the vernal season in person.

8. Her eyes were fixed on the countenance of her husband, as if she was pondering his future well-being; and there was a melancholy like that of the waning moon, spread over her face, to think of his present woeful state.

9. They beheld the damsel, who however had no sight of them; because their trust was in truth, and saw everything clearly; while her views being otherwise, she could not discern their spiritual forms.

10. Ráma said:—You have said Sir, that the former Lílá had repaired there in her reverie and spiritual form, by the favour of the goddess of wisdom.

11. How do you now describe her as having a body, which I want to know how and whence it came to her.

12. Vasishtha replied:—What is this body of Lílá, Ráma! It is no more true than a false imagination of her gross spirit, like that of water in the mirage. (It is the conception of one’s self as so and so, that impresses him with that belief also).

13. It is the spirit alone that fills the world, and all bodies are creations of the fancy. This spirit is the Intellect of God, and full of felicity in itself.

14. The same understanding which Lílá had of herself to her end, accompanied her to her future state; and the same notion of her body followed her there, though it was reduced to dust, as the ice is dissolved into water.

15. The spiritual bodies also, are sometimes liable to fall into error, and think themselves as corporeal bodies, as we mistake a rope for the serpent.

16. The belief in the materiality of any body, as composed of the earth and other elements, is as false as it is to believe the hares to have horns on their heads.

17. Whoso thinks himself to have become a stag in his dream, has no need of seeking another stag for comparing himself with it. (i.e. Men are actuated by their own opinion of themselves).

18. An untruth appears as truth at one time, and disappears at another; as the error of a snake in a rope, vanishes upon the knowledge of its falsehood.

19. So the knowledge of the reality of all things, in the minds of the un-enlightened; is dispersed upon conviction of their un-reality in the minds of the enlightened.

20. But the ignorant, that have a belief in the reality of this world of dreams, believe also in the transmigration of the animal soul, like the revolution of the globe on its own axis.

21. Ráma asked:—If the bodies of Yogis be of a spiritual nature, how is it that they are seen to walk about in the sights of men?

22. Vasishtha replied:—The Yogi may take upon himself various forms, without the destruction of his former body; as the human soul may deem itself transformed to a stag or any other being in a dream, without undergoing any change in its spiritual essence. (The identity of the self is not lost under any form of the body. Locke).

23. His spiritual body is invisible to all, though it may appear as visible to their sight. It is like the particles of frost seen in sun-beams, and as the appearance of a white spot in autumnal sky (when there is no frost nor cloud in it).

24. No body can easily discern the features of a Yogi’s body, nor are they discernible by other Yogis. They are as imperceptible as the features of a bird flying in the air.

25. It is from the error of judgment, that men think some Yogis to be dead and others to be living; but their spiritual bodies are never subject to death or common sight.

26. The embodied soul is subject to errors, from which the souls of Yogis are free; because their knowledge of truth has purged the mistake of a snake in the rope, from their souls.

27. What is this body and whence it is, and what of its existence or destruction? What is lasting remains forever and is freed from the ignorance it had before (and it is the soul which is ever lasting and free from error).

28. Ráma said:—Whether the embodied soul takes the spiritual form, or is it something other than this. Tell me this and remove my doubt.

29. Vasishtha said:—I have told this repeatedly to you, my good Ráma! and how is it that you do not understand it yet, that there exists only the spiritual body, and the material form is nothing?

30. It is by habit of constant meditation, that you must know your spiritual state, and subdue your sense of corporeality; and as you abstain from the latter, so you attain to the former state.

31. Then there will be an end of your sense of the gravity and solidity of objects, like the disappearance of the visions of a dreaming man, when he comes to wake.

32. The body of a Yogi becomes as light and subtile, as the evanescent appearances in a dream: (the fleeting objects of vision).

33. And as a dreaming man feels the lightness of his body, in his dreaming rambles; so the Yogi finds his solid body, as volatile as air in all places.

34. The expectation of the longlife of a master-head in his material body, is realized in the spiritual one, after the corpse has been burnt away. (Longevity consists in the longlife of the spirit and not of the body).

35. Every body must have to assume his spiritual frame afterwards; but the Yogi finds it in his life-time, by the enlightenment of his intellect.

36. As a man upon his waking from sleep, remembers his having an intellectual form in his dreaming state; so the Yogi is conscious of his spiritual body in his own intellect.

37. The notion of the corporeal body is a mere fallacy, like that of the snake in a rope; hence nothing is lost by the loss of this body, nor is anything gained by its production and regeneration.

38. Ráma said:—Now tell me Sir, what the inmates of the house thought this Lílá to be; whether they viewed her as an embodied being or a bodiless apparition appearing before them.

39. Vasishtha answered:—They took the sorrowful queen to be some friend of the king, and to have come from some place they knew not what and where.

40. They did not like to examine the matter, because it is the nature of the ignorant like that of brutes, to believe what they see, without investigation or consideration of its nature.

41. As a stone flung at random flies off from its mark, so the brutish and ignorant folks go astray, from hitting at the true mark of a thing placed before them.

42. As we know not what becomes of the objects of our dream, and whither they are fled upon our waking; such is the case with our material bodies, which are as false and fleeting as our delusive dreams.

43. Ráma said:—Tell me Sir, where the hill we dream of, is hid upon our waking; kindly remove my doubt, as the wind disperses the autumnal clouds.

44. Vasishtha said:—All things appearing in our dream or residing in our desire as the hill, &c., are absorbed in our consciousness whence they sprang; just as the motion of bodies subsides in the air which gives the vibration.

45. As the motion of the air mixes with the fixed ether, so the dreams and desires which we are conscious of, set in the unchanging soul whence they have their rise.

46. Our dreams like our knowledge of all other things, are made known to us by our consciousness, the nature of which is unknown to us as that of the inward soul. (Consciousness and the soul are represented as two different predicaments, and the one is not predicated of the other, as we say—the conscious soul).

47. We do not find our dreams and desires as distinct from our consciousness of them; they appertain to it in the same manner, as fluidity to water and motion to the air.

48. Whatever difference may appear to exist between them, is the effect of sheer ignorance; and this gross ignorance is the feature of this world, known as the phantom of fancy.

49. As it is impossible to conceive two co-eternal and co-existent causes together (as an efficient and a material cause); so it is wrong to suppose the dream as a distinct existence or otherwise, than an act of our consciousness.

50. There is no difference whatever between the dreaming and waking states; in dream we see a false city appearing to view, so in waking you behold the unreal world, standing as a reality before you.

51. Nothing can be truly existent that appears as true in a dream; this being always true of the visions in a dream, it is likewise so of the external phenomena, appearing to the sight in our day dreams.

52. As the hill in a dream, immediately disappears into airy nothing, so the material world sooner or later disappears into naught by thinking on its nihility.

53. A Yogi is seen by some to mount in the air, and by others as a dead body lying on the ground; and this is according to one’s belief in his spiritual or material body, that every one sees him in his own way.

54. The view of the phenomenal world as distinct from the Unity, is as false as a sight in delusion or magical show; or a dream or delirium of the great Illusion—máyá.

55. Others who are blinded by similar errors, entertain as in a dream, the notion of their reproduction after being awakened from the insensibility of their death like sleep; but the spiritual body of the Yogi shines and soars upward, after passing over the mirage of the false appearances of the world.

CHAPTER LVIII.
Revival of Padma.

Argument. Extinction of the Spiritual life of Lílá, and Restoration of Padma’s Life.

Vasishtha continued:—It was in the meantime that the goddess of wisdom, stopped the course of Vidúratha’s life, as we stop the flight of our minds at will.

2. Lílá said:—Tell me, goddess, what length of time has expired, since the corpse of the king was laid in this tomb, and I was absorbed in my deep meditation.

3. The goddess replied:—A month has passed since these maid servants of thine have been waiting here for watching thy body, which they thought lay asleep in the room.

4. Hear excellent lady! what has become of thy body, after it was rotten in a fortnight and evaporated in the air.

5. Seeing thy lifeless corpse lying as cold as frost on the ground, and turning as dry as a log of wood, or rather as a withered leaf on the floor;—

6. The royal ministers thought thee to be dead of thyself (a suicide), and removed thy putrid carcase out of the room.

7. And what more shall I say, than they laid thy corpse on a heap of sandal wood, and having set fire to the pile with the sprinkling of ghee, they reduced it to ashes in a short while.

8. Then the family raised a loud cry that their queen was dead, and wept bitterly for sometime, after which they performed thy funeral ceremonies.

9. Now when they will behold thee coming here in thy same body, they must be astonished to think thee as returned from the next world of the dead.

10. Now my daughter, when thou shalt appear before them in this thy purer and spiritual form, they must look upon thee with astonishment.

11. For thou hast not thy former form at present, but it is changed to a purer one, agreeably to the tenor and temperament of thy mind. (Lit. according to the desire in thy heart).

12. For every body beholds every thing without him, according to his inward feelings; as for example the sight of shadowy ghosts is frequent to children, that have a fear of devils at heart.

13. Now, O beauteous lady! Thou art an adept in spiritualism, and hast a spiritual body on thee, and hast forgotten and forsaken thy former body, with all the desires connate with it.

14. The view of material bodies, is lost to the sight of spiritualists; and the intelligent view them in the light of autumnal clouds, which are void of substance. (i.e. The flimsy clouds which are without rain-water in them).

15. On attainment of the spiritual state, the material body becomes as an empty cloud, and as a flower without its odor.

16. When a man of pure desire, is conscious of his attaining the spiritual state; he loses the remembrance of his material body, as a youth forgets his embryonic state.

17. It is now the thirty first day that we have arrived at this place; and I have caused the maid servants here, to fall into a fast sleep this morning.

18. Now Lílá! let us advance before the wilful Lílá, and then discover to her at our will, the form of the truthful Lílá, and her manner and conduct to thee.

19. Vasishtha said:—So saying, they wished themselves to be perceived by the wilful Lílá, and stood manifest to her sight in their etherial forms of the goddess and her inspired dame.

20. At this instant the Lílá of Vidúratha, looked upon them with her staring eyes; and found the room lighted up by the full lustre of their bodies.

21. The apartment seemed to be lighted by the bright orb of the moon, and its wall washed over with liquid gold; the ground floor shone as paved with ice, and all was full of splendour.

22. After seeing the brightness of the bed chamber, Lílá looked up at the goddess and the other Lílá, and rising respectfully before them, she fell at their feet.

23. Be victorious, O ye goddesses! she said, that have blessed me with your visit, and know that know all, that I have come here first as a preparer of your way. (Lit. as the sweeper of your path).

24. As she was speaking in this manner, they received her with good grace, and then all the three sat together on a bedding in their youthful bloom, like luxuriant creepers on the snow capt top of Meru.

25. The goddess said:—Tell us daughter, how you came here before ourselves, how you have been, and what you have seen on your way hither.

26. The younger Lílá answered:—As I lay insensible on that spot (upon the shock of my death), I was enveloped in darkness like the new moon, and felt myself burnt away by the flame of a conflagration (i.e., funeral fire).

27. I had no sense nor thought of anything good or bad, but remained with my eyes closed under my eye-lids.

28. Then I found myself, O great goddess! after I had recovered from my anaesthesia of death, to assume (by mistake a new body agreeably to my former impression), and to be translated at once into the midst of the sky.

29. I mounted on the vehicle of winds, and was borne like fragrance to this mansion through the etherial space.

30. I found this house guarded by its warders, and lighted with lamps, and having a costly bedstead placed in the midst of it.

31. I am looking here upon this corpse, as my husband Vidúratha, who has been sleeping here with his body covered under the flowers, like the vernal god in a flower garden.

32. I thought he was taking his rest, after the fatigue of the warfare, and did not like to disturb his repose in this place.

33. I have now related to you, my gracious goddesses! all that I have seen and thought of, since I have been restored to my new life.

34. The goddess spake:—Now I tell thee Lílá, that hast such beautiful eyes, and movest like a swan, that I will raise the corpse of the king to life from his bed in this bier.

35. Saying so, she breathed the breath of life as the lotus lets off its fragrance; and it fled into the nostrils of the carcase, like a creeping plant crawls into a hole.

36. It entered into the heart through the vital sheath, as the wind penetrates into the hole of a bamboo; and the breath of life was fraught with desires, as the waves of the sea sparkle with pearls.

37. The infusion of life, added to the colour of the face and body of king Padma; as the rain-water refreshes the fading lotus in a drought.

38. By degrees the members of the body became renovated, like a garden with its returning flowering season; and as the sides of a hill become virescent, with fresh grown bushes and creepers.

39. The person of the king shone as the queen of the stars, with all her digits of the full moon, when she enlightens the whole world, with the beams of her radiant face.

40. All his limbs became as tender and roscid, as the branches of trees in spring; and they regained their bright and golden hue, like the flowers of the vernal season.

41. He oped his eyes which were as clear as the sky, with their two pupils rolling as the two orbs of light; and enlightening the world, with their charming and auspicious beams.

42. He raised his body, as the Vindhyá mountain uplifts its head, and cried, “who waits there” with a grave and hoarse voice.

43. The two Lílás responded to him saying:—“your commands;” when he beheld the two Lílás in attendance upon him, and lowly bending themselves at his feet.

44. Both of them were of the same form and features, and of the like demeanour and deportment towards him. They were alike to one another in their voice and action, as in their joy and gladness at his rising.

45. Then looking upon them he asked, “what art thou and who is she”? At this the elder Lílá responded to him saying—“deign to hear what I have to say”.

46. I am Lílá thy former consort, and was joined as twain in one with thee, as sounds and their senses are combined together.

47. The other Lílá is but a reflexion of myself, and cast by my free will for your service.

48. The lady sitting here beside the bed, is the goddess of wisdom—the blessed Sarasvatí, and mother of the three worlds; set her on the golden seat before you.

49. It is by virtue of our great merit, that she has presented herself to our sight, and brought us back from other worlds to your presence in this place.

50. Hearing this, the lotus-eyed king, rose from his seat, and with pendant wreaths of flowers and a strap of cloth hung about his neck, prostrated himself at her feet.

51. He exclaimed:—I hail thee, O divine Sarasvatí! that dost confer all blessings on mankind. Deign to confer on me the blessings of understanding and riches with a long life.

52. As he was saying so, the goddess touched him with her hand and said, “be thou my son, possessed of thy desired blessings, and gain thy blessed abode in future.

53. “Let all evils and evil thoughts be far from thee, and all thy discomforts be dispersed from this place; let an everlasting joy alight in thine hearts, and a thick population fill thy happy realm. May all prosperity attend on thee for ever.”

CHAPTER LIX.
Extinction of Padma’s Life.

Argument. Great joy on the King’s return to Life. His Government of the kingdom and his final Liberation.

Vasishtha said:—“Be it so,” said Sarasvatí and disappeared in the air; and the people rose in the morning with their revivified king.

2. He embraced the renascent Lílá, who embraced him in her turn, and they were exceeding glad in their coming to life again.

3. The palace was filled with loud acclamations of joy as those of giddy revelry: and the citizens were full of mirth and merry, song and music.

4. The shouts of victory, and sounds of huzzas and heydays, resounded in the air, and the people elated with joy, thronged at the royal courtyard to see their king.

5. The genii of the Siddhas and Vidyádharas, dropped down handfuls of flowers from above; and the sound of drums and kettles, and trumpets and conches, resounded on all sides.

6. The elephants roared aloud on the outside, with their uplifted trunks; and crowds of females filled the inner court-yard, with their loud rejoicings.

7. Men bearing presents to the king, fell upon one another at their mutual clashing; and others wearing the flowery chaplets on their heads and hairs, moved gracefully all about.

8. The red turbans of joy on the heads of the chiefs and host of citizens, and the waving of the reddish palms of dancing girls, filled the sky with a bed of red lotuses.

9. The ground also was strewn over with rosy flowers, by foot-falls of dancers with their reddish soles; and the pendant earrings of ballet girls, which flourished with the oscillation of their heads and shoulders, waved in the air like flowers of gold.

10. The silken veils which like autumnal clouds, covered the faces of fairy damsels in their dancing, glittered as so many moons shining in the court-yard.

11. The people then retired to their respective abodes, with loud applause of the queen’s return with her husband from the other world.

12. The king Padma heard of his adventures from the hearsay of his subjects, and made his purificatory ablution, with the waters of the four seas of the earth.

13. Then the royal ministers and ministerial Bráhmans, joined together in the act of his installation, like the synod of immortals, meeting at the inauguration of Indra.

14. The two Lílás continued in company with the king, to relate with delight their respective adventures, and the wisdom they had gathered thereby.

15. It was thus by grace of the genius of wisdom and their own experience, that this king Padma and his two queens, obtained their prosperity equal to that of the three worlds.

16. The king, who was fraught with the wisdom imparted to him by the goddess; continued to rule over his kingdom for thousands of years, in company with his consorts.

17. They reigned on earth, in their state of living liberation for myriads of years; and then receiving the perfect knowledge of the holy Siddhas, they became wholly liberated after their deaths.

18. The happy pair having reigned jointly, over their delightful realm of ever increasing population, and which was graced by learned men and righteous people, knowing their own rights and duties of doing good to all mankind, became freed from the burden of their state affairs for ever.

CHAPTER LX.
On Duration and Time and Thoughts of the Mind.

Argument. The reason of introducing the two Lílás in the tale. The one as the counterpart of the other.

Vasishtha said:—I have related to you this tale, prince! for removing your error of the phenomenal world. Mind this tale of Lílá, and renounce your misconception of the gross material world.

2. The substantiality of phenomena is a nil by itself, and requires no pains to invalidate it. It is hard to disprove a reality; but there is no difficulty in effacing a falsehood from the mind.

3. True knowledge consists in viewing the visibles as void, and knowing the one vacuum as the sole unity and real entity; one loses himself at last in this infinite vacuity. (Vasishtha was a súnya vádi or vacuist, which Sankaráchárya was at the pains to refute in his Dig-vijaya).

4. When the self-born Brahmá created the world from nothing, and without the aid of any material or elementary body; it is plain that there was an eternal void, and all these are but manifestations of the vacuous soul. (The Teom and Beom of Genesis, corresponding with Tama and Vyom of the Veda, were the origin of creation).

5. The same creative soul, has spread the seeds of its consciousness in the stream of creation, and these produce the images as they incessantly appear to us, unless we take the pains to repress them.

6. The appearance of the world, is but a perspective of the sphere of divine intellect; and contained in the small space of human intellect within the soul; as in a transparent particle of sand.

7. Such being the case, say what is the essence of this erroneous conception, and what may be our desires of reliance in it, and what can be the meaning either of destiny or necessity? (The predestination and chance, to which the Fatalists ascribe the origination of the universe).

8. This entire whole which is visible to the eye, is but a false appearance as that of magic; and there is no truth nor substance in a magic show.

9. Ráma said:—Oh! the wondrous exposition of the world, that you have now explained to me. It refreshes my soul, as the moon-beams revive the blades of grass, that have been burnt down by a conflagration.

10. It is after so long, that I have come to know the truly knowable; such as what and how it is, and the manner whereby, whence and when it is to be known.

11. I have my peace and rest in pondering on this wonderful theory, and your elucidation of the doctrines of the Sruti Sástras.

12. But tell me this one thing to remove my doubt, as my ears are never satiate, with drinking the nectarious juice of your sweet speech.

13. Tell me the time, which transpired during the three births of Lílá’s husband. Was it the duration of a day and night in one case, and of a month in another, and the period of a whole year in the case of Vidúratha?

14. Or did any one of them live for many years, and whether they were of short or longer durations, according to the measure of men, gods or Brahmá. (Because a human year is a day and night of the polar gods, and a moment of the cycle of Brahmá. And revolution of the whole planetary system to the same point makes a day of Brahmá).

15. Please sir, kindly tell me this, because little hearing is not sufficient to me, as a drop of water is not enough to moisten the dry soil or the parched ground of summer heat.

16. Vasishtha said:—Know sinless Ráma! that whosoever thinks of anything in any manner at any place or time, he comes to feel the same in the same manner, and in the same place and time.

17. Take for instance the destructive poison, which becomes as ambrosia to venomous insects, that take it for their dainty nourishment; and so is an enemy turning to a friend by your friendly behaviour unto him. (In both cases the evil turns to good by our taking it as such).

18. And the manner in which all beings consider themselves, and all others for a length of time; the same they seem to be by their mode and habit of thinking, as if it were by an act of destiny. (i.e. They consider their thoughts of things as their destined nature, which is not so in reality; for fair is foul and foul is fair; according as our judgments declare).

19. The manner in which the active intellect represents a thing in the soul, the same is imprinted in the consciousness of its own nature. (Here the Chit is said to be the intellectus agens and consciousness—Samvid—the intellectus patiens. The motion of the mind gives us the impressions of the swiftness and slowness of time).

20. When our consciousness represents a twinkling of the eye as a Kalpa, we are led to believe a single moment an age of long duration. (As a short nap appears an age in dreaming), and (a long age as a moment as in the case of the seven sleepers of Kehef).

21. And when we are conscious of or think a Kalpa age as a twinkling, the Kalpa age is thought to pass as a moment; and so a long night in our unconscious sleep, appears as a moment upon waking.

22. The night appears a longsome age, to the long suffering sick, while it seems as a moment, in the nightly revels of the merry; so a moment appears as an age in the dream, and an age passes off as a moment in the state of insensibility. (The length and shortness of duration, depending on our consciousness and insensibility of the succession of our ideas. (See Locke and Kant on our idea of time)).

23. The notions of the resurrection of the dead, and of one’s metempsychosis, and being re-born in a new body; of his being a boy, youth or old man; and of his migrations to different places at the distance of hundreds of leagues, are all but the phenomena of sleep, and retrospective views in a dream.

24. King Haris Chandra is said, to have thought a single night as a dozen of years; and the prince Lavana to have passed his long life of a hundred years as the space of a single night. (So the seven sleepers of Kehef passed a long period as one night, and so of others).[^[1]]

25. What was a moment to Brahmá, was the whole age of the life-time of Manu (Noah); and what is a day to Vishnu, constitutes the long period of the life-time of Brahmá. (This alluded to the comparative differences in the cycles of planetary bodies presided by the different deities; such as Jupiter’s cycle of 60 years round the sun, is but one year to the presiding god of that planet).

26. The whole life-time of Vishnu, is but one day of the sedate Siva; for one whose mind is motionless in his fixed meditation, is unconscious of the change of days and nights and of seasons and years. (Since the meditative mind is insensible of the fluctuation of its ideas, or that there is an utter quietus of them in the quietism of the Yogi’s mind).

27. There is no substance nor the substantive world, in the mind of the meditative Yogi (who views them in their abstract light); and to whom the sweet pleasures of the world, appear as bitter, as they are thought to be the bane of his true felicity.

28. The bitter seems to be sweet, by being thought to be so; and what is unfavorable, becomes favorable as that which is friendly comes to be unfriendly by being taken in their contrary senses. (The mind can make a heaven of hell and a hell of a heaven. Milton).

29. Thus Ráma! it is by habitual meditation, that we gain the abstract knowledge of things; as on the other hand we forget what we learnt, by want of their recapitulation. (Habit is second nature, and practice is the parent of productions).

30. These by their habitude of thinking, find every thing in a state of positive rest; while the unthinking fall into the errors of the revolutionary world, as a boat-passenger thinks the land and objects on the shore, to be receding from and revolving around him.

31. Thus the unthinking part of mankind, and those wandering in their error, think the world to be moving about them; but the thinking mind, sees the whole as an empty void, and full of phantoms, as one sees in his dream.

32. It is the thought (erroneous conception), that shows the white as black and blue; and it is the mistake of judgment, that makes one rejoice or sorrow at the events of life.

33. The unthinking are led to imagine a house where there is none; and the ignorant are infatuated to the belief of ghosts, as they are the killers of their lives.

34. It is reminiscence or memory, which raises the dream as her consort; and which represents things as they are presented to it, by the thoughts of the waking state.

35. The dream is as unreal as the empty vacuity, abiding in the hollow receptacle of the intellectual soul; it overspreads the mind like the shadow of a cloud, and fills it with images like those of a puppet-show under the magic lantern.

36. Know the phenomena of the revolving worlds, to be no more in reality, than mere resultants of the vibrations of the mind, in the empty space of the soul; and as the motions and gestures of the fancied hobgoblins, to the sight of children.

37. All this is but a magical illusion, without any substance or basis of itself; and all these imposing scenes of vision, are but the empty and aerial sights of dreams.

38. Just as the waking man, beholds the wondrous world before him, so also does sleeping man see the same; and both of them resemble the insensible pillar, which finds the images of statues engraved upon it (because the soul is ever awake in every state of all living bodies).

39. The great monument of the Divine Spirit, has the figure of the created world, carved in itself in the same manner, as I see a troop of soldiers passing before me in my dream. (All these appear to be in action, in their true state of nullity and inaction).

40. So is this waking world asleep in the soul of Brahma, and rises in his mind as the vegetable world springs from the sap lying hid in the earth, which gives it its growth and vernal bloom.

41. So likewise does the creation lie hid in, and spring from the Supreme Spirit; as the brightness of gold ornaments is contained in, and comes out of the material metal. (The Divine Spirit is both the material and efficient cause of creation—ex quo & a quo.)

42. Every atom of creation, is settled in the plenum of Divine spirit; as all the members of the body, are set in the person of their possessor.

43. The visible world has the same relation, to the bodiless and undivided spirit of God; as one fighting in a dream bears to his antagonist (both believing in their reality, while both of them are unreal in their bodies).

44. Thus the real and unreal, the spirit and the world, all dwindled into vacuum, at the great Kalpánta annihilation of creation, except the intellect of God which comprises the world in itself.

45. The causality of the one (i.e. the spirit of God), and the unreality of the world cannot be true (since nothing unreal can come out of the real). Except Brahm—the all (to pan), there is no other cause, as a Brahmá or any other; the Divine Intelligence is the only cause and constituent of its productions.

46. Ráma asked:—But what cause was it that represented the citizens, counsellors and ministers of Vidúratha’s royal house also to Lílá’s vision, in the same manner as her lord the king, (who was alone the object of her thought)?

47. Vasishtha said:—All other thoughts are associated with the principal one in the intellect, in the same manner as the high winds are accompaniments of the storm.

48. The association of thoughts, follows one another in a long and perpetual train; and caused the succession of the sights of the ministers, citizens and subjects of the king, in Lílá’s vision one after the other.

49. In this way the thought that the king was born of such and such a family, naturally introduced the thoughts of his palace and city, and of those that dwelt in them.

50. It is in vain to enquire into the cause and manner, of the intellect’s being combined with its thoughts at all times; since it is called the gem of thoughts (Chintámani), and must be always accompanied with its radiating thoughts, like a brilliant gem with its rays. (i.e. Thinking is the inseparable attribute of the mind).

51. Padma thought to become a king like Vidúratha, in the proper discharge of the duties of his royal family; and this constant thought of himself as such, cast the mould of the mind and manner of Vidúratha upon him (i.e. he looked himself in the light of that king).

52. All animate beings of every kind, are but models of their own thoughts, like looking-glasses showing their inward reflexions to the sight. (The innate man appearing in his outward figure, is a verity in physiognomy).

53. The mind which is fixed in the meditation of God, and remains unshaken amidst the turmoils of the world; is fraught with perfect rest, and preserves the composure of the soul, until its final liberation from the bondage of the body.

54. But the thoughts of the fluctuating enjoyments of this world, alternately represented in the mirror of the mind, like the shadows of passing scenes upon a looking glass.

55. It requires therefore a great force of the mind, to overcome its worldly thoughts, and turn them to the channel of truth; as the greater force of the main current of a river, leads its tributaries to the ocean.

56. But the mind is greatly disturbed, when the worldly and spiritual thoughts, press it with equal force to both ways; and it is then, that the greater force leads it onward in either way. (There is no midway like that of the Mádhyamikas between this world and the next).

Gloss. The worldly and spiritual thoughts being equally forcible, they naturally struggle in the mind, and that which is of greater force overcomes the other.

57. Such is the case with all the myriads of beings, whether are living, dead or to come to life; and the same accidents take place in the particles of all human minds (like the concussions of atomic forces).

58. All this is the empty sphere of the Intellect, all quiet and without any basis or substratum. It is neither peopled nor filled by any thing except its own native thoughts.

59. All these appear as dreams, even in our unsleeping states, and have no form or figure in the sight of the wise. The perception of their positive existence, is but a misconception of their negative inexistence.

60. There really exists but one omnipotent and all pervasive Spirit, which shows itself in diverse forms like the flowers, fruits and leaves of trees, all appearing from the self-same woody trunk (which like the great Brahma is the origin of all its off-shoots.)

61. He who knows the increate Brahma to be the measurer, measure and the thing measured, (i.e. the creator, created and the creation), to be all one and himself, can never forget this certain truth of unity, nor ever fall into the error of dualism of the cause and effect.

62. There is but one Being (SAT), who is Holy and without beginning; and who, though he appears to be of the forms of light and darkness, and of space and time, doth never rise nor set anywhere. He is without beginning, middle or end; and remains as a vast expanse of water, exhibiting itself in its waves and currents.

63. The notion of myself, thyself and the objective world, are but effusions of our perverted understandings; and it is ignorance only that shows the One as many within the Sheath of the mind, according as it imagines it to be.

CHAPTER LXI.
On the Nature of the World.

Argument. Proofs of the unreality of the world, leading to the Quietism of the Spirit.

Ráma said:—Please sir, explain to me whence arises this error of our knowledge of the objective world, without a cause of this error. (The True God cannot lead us to the knowledge of untruth).

2. Vasishtha said:—Because we have the knowledge of all things (i.e. the objective), to be contained alike in our consciousness (as of the subjective self); it is plain that this eternal and increate self (or soul), is the cause and container of them all at all times.

3. That which has an insight or intuitive knowledge of all things, which are expressed by words and their meanings, is Brahma—the soul and no other; and nothing that is meant by any significant term, has a different form of its own. (It is the doctrine of nominalism that the notions conveyed by words have no realities corresponding with them in the mind, and have no existence but as mere names).

4. As the quality of a bracelet is not different from its substance of gold, nor that of a wave from the water; so the expansion of the world, is not distinct from the spirit of God. (The spirit inflated and produced the world out of itself. Sruti).

5. It is Brahma that is manifest in the form of the world, and not the world that appears as God; and so doth gold display itself in the form of a bracelet, and not the bracelet that takes the nature of gold.

6. As the whole is displayed in all its various parts, so the entire intellect shows itself in all the various operations of the mind composing the world. (The intellect displaying the mind, and this the world).

7. It is ignorance of the infinite and eternal Spirit of God, that exhibits itself as myself, thyself and the world itself in the mind. (i.e. The knowledge both of the subjective and objective results from ignorance of the only One—tanmátram).

8. As the shades of different colours in gems, are not apart from the gems; so the notions of one’s self and the world are the shades inherent in the self-same intellect.

9. Like waves appearing on the surface of the undulated waters of the deep; this so-called and meaningless creation, is but a phasis in the Divine Intellect.

10. Neither does the Spirit of God reside in the creation, nor does the creation subsist in the Divine Spirit (like waves in the waters); nor is there such relation as of a part with the whole between them. (These are not parts of one undivided whole).

11. One should meditate on his intellect as the form of the Divine Intellect, in his own consciousness of it; and he will feel the Divinity stirring within himself, as it were stirred by the breath of a breeze. (There is a divinity stirring within us, Addition).

12. The minute particle of the vacuous intellect, will then appear in its wondrous form of a void, within the empty space of his conscious mind. (The primary hypostasis of the vacuous soul being but a void, its attributes of the intellect and mind, are of the same form).

13. He then finds this vacuous form stirring in himself as the airy spirit, with its property of feeling, as it is felt in the flatus venti or breath of air. (This is the Spirit of God).

14. The God then assumes a luminous form as the state of his own substantiality; and this is posited in the sheath of the intellect as a spark of fire. (This is the holy light of the God of glory or glorious God).

15. The light then melts into water as the self-same substance of itself; and this fluid substance contains in it the property of taste. (This is the liquid state of the floating spirit before creation).

16. The same is condensed in the form of a solid substance, which is the same with the Divine Mind. This becomes the earth bearing in its bosom the property of smell. (The earth being produced from the scum of water, is dissolved again into its watery form).

17. Again God represents himself to our intellect, as one infinite and uniform duration; and its measures in twinklings and other divisions, are but manifestations of the succession of our thoughts. (Prakachanamvidah parampará—is the very doctrine of Locke and others).

18. The other states in which God presents himself to our intellects are that, He is Holy, infinitely glorious, seen within us,[^[2]] and without beginning, middle and end; that, He has no rising nor setting, and subsists of Himself without a substratum and as the substratum of all.

19. This knowledge of God is bliss itself, and his creation is identic with himself. Ignorance of God leads to the knowledge of the objective world, and its extinction is the way to know the eternity of His existence.

20. Brahma is conceived in the same manner in our souls, as He is represented to us by our intellects; just as we know all other things according to our ideas of them, in our all comprehensive minds.

21. Of these, those things only are true, the notions of which we derive from the dictates of our well-directed understandings; as all those are untrue, which the mind paints to us from the impressions of the senses and the meanings of words; which are incapable of expressing the nature of the undefinable and indescribable God (whom no words can express—Yato vácho nivastante. (Sruti))

22. Know the unreal world which appears as real, and the reality of God which appears as unreality, to be of the manner of the air in motion and at rest. The visible world like the current air, appears true to them, that have no knowledge of the invisible God, who is as calm as the still air underlying the etherial air and its fluctuations.

23. A thing may appear different from another, and yet be the same with it; as the light in the fire is the selfsame fire. So the visible world arising from the invisible Brahma, appears as another reality; though it is same with the reality of God.

24. All things whether in being or not being, subsist in God as their invisible and unknown source and cause; as the unscooped earth is the cause of the would-be doll, the unhewn tree of a future statue, and the soot of the ink not in esse. (So all future statues are contained in the unhewn marbles, according to Aristotle).

25. One thing is exhibited as another in the great desert of the Divine Mind, which shows the phenomena of the world as figures in the mirage.

26. The wise soul thinks this world as one with its source—the Divine Intellect, as he considers the tree no way different from its parent seed.

27. As the sweetness of milk, the pungency of pepper, the fluidity of water, and the motion of winds, are the inseparable properties of their substances:—

28. So this creation is inseparable from the spirit of Brahma, and is a mere form of the one Supreme soul, beside which there is nothing in reality. (Whose body nature is, and God the soul).

29. This world is the manifestation of the lustre of the gem of Divine mind, and has no other cause except the essence of Brahma, which is no other than its material cause—the Supreme soul itself.

30. The will, the mind, the living soul, and its consciousness, are all the offspring of Divine intellection; because there is nothing that can be produced by exertion of any power without direction of the Intellect.

31. There is nothing that rises or sets anywhere, nor appears or disappears at any time; but everything is unborn at all times, and lies quiet in the Divine Intellect, which is as solid as a massive rock.

32. To attribute the formation of these multitudes of the combination of atoms, and to suppose every particle to be composed of minutest infinitesimals; are but vagaries of imagination, as none of them could combine of themselves except by direction of the eternal mind. (Matter having no force nor design in itself).

33. All force resides in some living principle, as the waking, sleeping and dreaming states appertain to the living soul; and as the undulation of waves subsists in the water; (or) as the current of the stream lies hidden in it.

34. When the living soul feels its inappetency towards worldly enjoyments, it is then said to have reached to his highest perfection by the Sruti (such as:—nishkáma or abandonment of the desire of fruition, is the highest state of human felicity).

35. As the mind is freed from its choice and dislike of things, so is the soul liberated by avoiding its egoism and personality, and then it has no more to be conscious of the pain, attending upon a future birth and transmigration.

36. Whoso comes to know in his understanding, this state of supreme and inexpressible felicity; he is sure to overcome all his worldly appetites, that bind him fast to this earth.

37. But whoso labours in his mind under his affections to this world, he has to rove continually in it as in the whirlpool of a stream, and destroys the supreme felicity of his soul in his continuous turmoil.

38. It was the lotus-born Brahmá, that was conscious of his egoism at first, and who has by the will of his mind, spread out this universe. (He is eternally acting, and has not retired after his act of creation).

CHAPTER LXII.
Interpretation of Destiny.

Argument. The erroneous conception of creation and of Destiny both as active and inactive.

Vasishtha continued:—These myriads of worlds and the millenniums of kalpa ages, are no more real in themselves than our false computation of the millionth part of an atom or the twinkling of an eye.

2. It is our error that represents them as true to us, though they are as false as our calculation of those infinitesimals.

3. These creations whether past or future, follow one another in endless succession, like the overflowing currents of water, with all the waves, eddies and whirlpools in them.

4. The prospect of these created worlds is as false, as the delusive mirage, which presents a stream of water, flowing with strings of flowers, fallen from the plants on the shore.

5. The conceptional creation is as baseless as a city in a dream or magic show; or as mountain in fiction, or an imaginary castle in air.

(It is a flatus venti, and not based on any thing real; but has a mere psychological existence, depending on fancy and imagination).

6. Ráma said:—Sir, the drift of your reasoning, leads to the establishment of the identity of the conceptional creation with the creator; and that this unity of both is the belief of the learned and wise. (So says Hegel: “creation is the reality of God; it is God passing into activity” Lewe’s Hist. Ph. II p. 626).

7. Now tell me, what you have to say with regard to the material bodies, which these existence bear on earth; and what is the cause that the body is subject to the casualties unknown to the inward spirits. (i.e. The body is subject to material laws, but not so the immaterial spirit which has no change).

8. Vasishtha replied:—There is a supernatural and active energy of the Divine Intellect, called the predominant Decree, Fate or Destiny, which must come to pass, and bear its command over all our actions and desires. (Destiny is irresistible, being the decree of Providence, governing all events and our free wills also. Fate is the personification of the female agency of god. Here Vasishtha is a fatalist also; but his fate is the Divine decree).

9. She is invested from the beginning with irresistible and multifarious powers; and destines the manner in which every thing is to take place and continue for ever. (The philosophical destiny is the sum of the laws of universe, of matter and mind).

10. She is the essential cause of all essence, and the chief mover of the intellect; she is styled as the great power of powers, and remains as the great viewer of all things.

11. She is called the great agency and the great producer of all events; She is known as the chief mover of occurrences, and she is the soul and source of all accidents. (The mythological Destiny is superior to gods and men, and rules over the great Jove himself).

12. She whirls the worlds as straws, and bears her sway over the deities and demons; she commands the Nága dragons and the mountain monsters to the end of time.

13. She is sometimes thought to be an attribute of Divine essence, and to remain pictured in her ever varying colours in the hollow vacuity of the Divine Mind. (The theological destiny is the Almighty Will of God and his foreknowledge also; before which the fates float about, as if they are drawn up in variegated pictures).

14. The learned have explained Brahmá the Demiurge, to be identic with the Spirit of Brahma, for the understanding of those that are ignorant in spiritual knowledge; and by destiny they mean his creation. (i.e. Creation is destination of the preordaining and irrevocable will of God).

15. The immovable spirit of Brahmá, appears to be full of moving creatures and the infinity of Divine existence, seems to teem with the finite creation in the midst of it, like a grove of trees growing under the concavity of the hollow sky.

16. The unwaking spirit of God reflected various images in itself (as in a dream), likening to the reflection of a dense forest in the lens of a crystal stone: and these were understood by the demiurgus Brahmá, as the prototype of the destined creation, in the hollow sphere of the Divine mind.

17. The Intellect naturally exhibits a variety of forms in itself, as the body of an embodied person, shows its various members to view; and these were taken by the lotus-born Brahmá, as the several parts in the great body of the cosmos. (The Intellect is the phantasmagoria of the world, and the Demiurge is the formal framer of it).

18. This foreknowledge of events imprinted in the Intellect of God, is called Destiny, which extends over all things at all times. (This is Fatum christianum, that every thing is regulated by foreknowledge and Providence).

19. The meaning of Destiny, comprises the knowledge of the causes, which move, support and sustain all things in their proper order; and that such and such causes, must produce such and such effects for ever. (This is the Stoic Fate of Jewish Essences; or a concatenation of causes whence all things necessarily result).

20. This destiny is the force or mobile power, that moves all men and animals, and vegetable and inanimate creations; it is the beginning (or primary source) of the time and motion of all beings. (It is fatum from fari—the word or decree of Providence, that was the beginning of all existence.)

21. It is combined with Divine power, as the power divine is combined with it; and this combination of them into one, is the cause of the production and existence of the world.

22. It is the union or conformity of human exertion, with the course of destiny or decree of God, that is productive of certain ends, which are respectively called their destiny and destined effects. (Here Destiny is defined as the combination of human and superhuman powers; and that the co-operation of natural and supernatural agencies, are necessary to the production of effects).

23. What more have you to ask me, Ráma! with regard to destiny and self-exertion; when I tell you that it is destined to all beings to betake themselves to their proper actions, in the destined or prescribed manner, in order to bring about the desired result? (Their destiny is equal to Vidhi or fixed laws, which were combined in Brahmá).

24. When a predestinarian sits idle and quiet, under the belief of being fed by his fixed lot; he is then said to depend on his destiny alone (as a fatalist).

25. By sitting idle in the manner of a waiter on Providence, for the whole of his lifetime, he gains nothing; but comes to lose his good sense and energy in a short time, and finally dies away in famine by his sole reliance on destiny. (Hence fate = fat and faut (in Arabic), is synonymous with death).

26. It is quite certain that whatever is destined, must surely come to pass of its own accord; and that it is impossible to prevent it by the foresight of gods and men.

27. Yet the intelligent ought not cease to exert their activity, by relying in their fates only; for they must know that it is our exertion that brings destiny into action. (Because it is, destined, that destiny requires to be enforced by human exertion, in order to bring on its effect. It is operation which enforces the law, which is otherwise dormant and a dead letter).

28. Destiny is inactive and abortive, without an active power to enforce it to action; it is human activity, that is productive of any effect or production in nature by the help of destiny.

29. Depend on destiny, and remain both deaf and dumb as a doll; be inactive, and become dull and torpid as a block. Say, what is the good of this vital breath, unless it has its vitality and activity? (Destiny has destined man to exertion in order to produce the destined end; and has so ordained all animated nature, in order to be productive).

30. It is good to sit quiet; by restraining even the vital breath in Yoga meditation; whereby one can obtain his liberation: otherwise the inactive man is not to be called a Yogi, but an idler and a lazzarone.

31. Both activity and inactivity are good for our liberation from pain; but the high minded esteem that as better, which saves them from the greater pain of regeneration, (i.e. the hybernation of Yoga meditation).[^[3]]

32. This inactive destiny is a type of the latent Brahmá; and who so leans to it by laying aside his busy course, is verily installed in the supremely holy state of highest felicity (as in ecstasis and hypnotism).

33. The inert destiny resides every where in the manner of Brahma—the latent soul in all bodies, and evolves itself in various shapes, by means of activity in all its productions.

CHAPTER LXIII.
Immutability of the Divine Mind.

Argument. Expansion of the Divine Spirit, and its apparent variations in Nature.

Vasishtha continued:—The essence of Brahma is all in all, and ever remains in every manner in every thing in all places. It is omnipotence, omniform and the lord God of all.

(This is the to pan of Pantheism, that, God is All and All is God; that God and nature are one substance, and all its various modifications. (This is the doctrine of Vedánta, Plato and Plotinus, and lately of Sufism and German philosophy)).

2. This Essence is the Spirit or Soul, whose omnipotence developes itself sometimes in the form of intellectual activity, and sometimes in the tranquility of soul. Sometimes it shows itself in the momentum of bodies, and at others in the force of the passions and emotions of the soul. Sometimes as something in the form of creation, and at another as nothing in the annihilation of the world. (This is the to on onton—the All of all; the eternal source of all existence; the Subjective as well as Objective both together).

3. Whenever it realises itself any where in any form or state, it is then viewed in the same manner at the same place and time. (The spirit realises itself in one form or other of its own free Will).

4. The absolute Omnipotence manifests itself as it likes and appears to us; and all its powers are exhibited in one form or other to our view and understandings.

5. These powers are of many kinds, and are primarily concentrated in the Divine Soul or Spirit. The potentialities (or potes esse) are the Active and Passive powers, also the Rational and Irrational and all others.

6. These varieties of powers are the inventions of the learned for their own purpose and understanding; but there is no distinction of them in the Divine Spirit. (All diversities are one and the same to the unity of God (omne ens—to en—est unum. And again, Qua ens est indivisum in se, divisum ab omnialio)).

7. There is no duality in reality, the difference consists in shape and not in substantiality. Thus the waves in the waters of the sea, the bracelets and wristlets formed of gold, are no more than modifications of the same substances.

(All formal differences terminate in the material, and this again in the immaterial Spirit of God).

8. The form of a thing is said to be so and so, from its appearance only and not in its reality. The snake is affirmed of a rope, but we have neither the outward perception nor inward thought of a snake in it. Hence all appearances are delusions of sense.

9. It is the universal soul that shows itself in some form or other, to our deluded senses and understandings, and this also according to our different apprehensions of the same thing (as what appears as gold to one, seems as brass to another).

10. It is the ignorant only that understand the Omniform God, to be all forms of things; while the learned know the forms to be modifications of the various powers of the Almighty, and not the figures themselves.

11. Now whether the forms (of material things) be real or unreal, it is to be known that they appear to men according to their different apprehensions of those beings, which Brahma is pleased to exhibit in any particular form to their minds and senses. (i.e. Some taking an abstract and others a concrete view of them, agreeably to their internal conceptions or external perceptions, of their various properties and qualities).

CHAPTER LXIV.
The Germinating Seed.

Vasishtha resumed:—The supreme Deity is the all-pervading spirit and the great God and Lord of all. He is without beginning and end, and is self-same with the infinite bliss of his translucent self-cogitation.

2. It is this supreme felicity and purely intellectual substance, whence the living soul and mind have their rise, prior to their production of the Universe. (i.e. The eternal and inert bliss called Brahma, became the living soul—anima, of and the active mind—mens, which created the world).

3. Ráma asked:—How could the self-cogitation of Brahma, as the infinite spirit and one without a second, conceive in it a finite living soul other than itself, and which was not in Being.

(The inactive and active souls, are not the one and the same thing, nor can the immutable and infinite be changed to one of a finite and changeful nature; nor was there a secondary being co-existent with the unity of the self-existent God).

4. Vasishtha replied:—The immense and transparent Spirit of Brahma, remained in a state of asat—non-existence, a state of ineffable bliss as seen by the adept Yogi; but of formidable vastness as conceived by the uninitiated novice. (i.e. The meditation of the Infinite is a delight to the spiritualist, but it is a horror to the gross idolator, whose mind knows nothing beyond matter and material forms).

5. This state of supreme bliss, which is ever tranquil, and full with the pure essence of God, is altogether undefinable, and incomprehensible, even by the most proficient in divine knowledge. (God is unknowable, is the motto of the wise Athenians and modern Agnostics).

6. Thence sprang a power (an hypostasis) like the germ of a seed, and possessed of consciousness and energy, that is called the living and conscious soul, and which must last until its final liberation. (This is the Demiurge, an emanation from God, and the source and soul of the world).

7. The clear mirror of the mind of this being, reflected in its vast vacuous sphere, the images of innumerable worlds set above one another, like statues engraved upon it.

8. Know Ráma! the living soul to be an inflation of Divine Spirit, like the swelling of the sea and the burning of a candle, when its flame is unshaken by the wind.

(The psyche or anima is the energy of the universal soul, or the finite rising from the Infinite).

9. The living soul is possessed of a finite cognoscence as distinguished from the clear and calm consciousness of the Divine Spirit. Its vitality is a flash of the vacuous intellect of Brahma and appertaining to the nature of the living God. Divina particula aurae. The Lord says: ‘Aham asmi—I am that I am’; but the living soul knows itself to be ‘Soham asmi’—I am He or of Him.

10. Vitality is the essential property of the soul, resembling the inseparable properties of motion in the wind, warmth in the fire and coldness in the ice. (Animation is the natural faculty and necessary property of the soul).

11. Our ignorance of the nature of the Divine Intellect and Spirit, throws us to the knowledge of ourselves by our self-consciousness, and this it is, which is called the living soul.

(Beyond our conscious or subjective knowledge of ourselves, we know nothing of the subjectivity of God, nor are we certain of any objective reality).

12. It is by means of this positive consciousness, that we know our egoism or self-existence; it strikes us more glaringly than a spark of fire, and enlightens us to the knowledge of ourselves more than any other light.

(Our self-consciousness is the clearest of all knowledge, and the basis of all truth according to Descartes).

13. As in looking up to heaven, its blue vault is presented to the sight, beyond which our eyes have not the power to pierce; so in our inquiry into the nature of soul, we see no more than the consciousness of ourselves, and nothing besides. (i.e. The subjective soul only is knowable, and naught beyond it).

14. Our knowledge of the soul presents to us in the form of Ego known by its thoughts, like the vacuous sky appearing as a blue sphere by cause of the clouds. (The Ego is the subject of thoughts and self-cogitation).

15. Egoism differentiates the soul from our ideas of space and time, and stirs within it like the breath of winds, by reason of its subjectivity of thoughts. (Differentiation of the subjective Ego from the Objective space and time, is as the difference of Ego and Non-Ego, I and Not I, Le moi et non moi, Das Ich und nicht ich, Aham and twam &c.).

16. That which is the subject of thoughts, is known as the Ego, and is variously styled as the intellect, the soul, the mind, the máyá or delusion and Prakriti or nature. (The Ego personified is Rudra, the personification of chitta-cogitation is Vishnu, of Jíva or the soul is Brahmá, and of the manas or mind is the máyá or Illusion).

17. The mind (chetas) which is the subject of thoughts, contemplates on the nature of elementary matter, and thus becomes of itself the quintessence of the five elements.

(The mind is opposed to matter, but being the principle of volition produces matter at its will).

18. The quintessential mind next becomes as a spark of fire (of itself), and remains as a dim star—a nebula, in the midst of the vacuity of the yet unborn universe.

(The nebulae are the primary formations of heavenly bodies, called Brahmándas or mundane eggs).

19. The mind takes the form of a spark of fire by thinking on its essence, which gradually developes itself like the germ of a seed, in the form of the mundane egg by its internal force.

(The doctrine of evolution from fire, the arche of all things according to Heraclitus. Lewe’s Hist. Ph. I 72).

20. The same fiery spark figuratively called the Brahmánda or mundane egg, became as a snowball amidst the water, and conceived the great Brahmá within its hollow womb.

(The Spirit of God, dove-like, sat brooding over the hollow deep. Milton).

21. Then as sensuous spirits assume some bodily forms at pleasure, although they dissolve as a magic city in empty air; so this Brahmá appeared in an embodied form to view. (Spirits are at liberty to take upon them any form they like).

22. Some of them appear in the form of immovable, and others in those of moving beings; while others assume the shapes of aerials, as they are fond of choosing for themselves. (Hence the transmigration of souls in different bodies, depends on their own choice; and not on necessity or result of prior acts).

23. Thus the first born living being had a form, for himself as he liked in the beginning of creation, and afterwards created the world in his form of Brahma or Virinchi (Vir-incipiens). (The Demiurge, maker, creator or architect of the visible world, had necessarily a personality of his own).

24. Whatever the self-born and self-willed soul, wishes to produce, the same appears immediately to view as produced of its own accord. (Everything appeared of itself at the Fiat of God).

25. Brahmá, originating in the Divine Intellect, was by his nature the primary cause of all, without any cause of his own; though he appointed the acts of men; to be the cause of their transition from one state to another, in the course of the world.

(All the future states of beings depend on their acts of past and present lives, except that of the Great creator who is uncreated and unchangeable).

26. The thoughts naturally rise in the mind, like the foaming water, to subside in itself; but the acts done thereby, bind us, as the passing froth and flying birds are caught by ropes and snares.

(The thoughts are spontaneous in their growth as grass, and they entail no guilt on us. Shakespeare).

27. Thoughts are the seeds of action, and action is the soul of life. Past acts are productive of future consequence, but inaction is attended with no result. (Our lives are reckoned by our acts, and there is no vitality without activity).

28. The living soul bears its vitality as the seed bears the germ in its bosom; and this sprouts forth in future acts, in the manner of the various forms of leaves, fruits and flowers of trees.

(Thus the living soul of Brahmá was the seed of all animate and inanimate beings).

29. All other living souls that appeared in the various forms of their bodies, had such forms given to them by Brahmá, according to their acts and desires in premundane creations in former Kalpas. (Hence the belief in the endless succession of creations).

30. So the personal acts of people are the causes of their repeated births and deaths in this or other worlds; and they ascend higher or sink lower by virtue of their good or bad deeds, which proceed from their hearts and the nature of their souls.

31. Our actions are the efforts of our minds, and shape our good or bad destinies according to the merit or demerit of the acts. The fates and chances of all in the existing world, are the fruits and flowers of their past acts, and even of those done in prior Kalpas; and this is called their destiny. (Sástra: No act goes for naught even in a thousand Kalpas. Má bhuktan kshiyate Karma, kalpa koti satai rapi).

CHAPTER LXV.
Nature of the Living Soul.

Argument. The mind and its operations, the subjective and objective, and lastly the Divine Intellect.

Vasishtha continued:—The Mind sprang at first from the supreme cause of all; this mind is the active soul which resides in the supreme soul (the Ens entium).

2. The mind hangs in doubt between what is and what is not, and what is right and what is wrong. It forgets the past like the scent of a fleeting odor by its wilful negligence. (Unmindfulness is the cause of forgetfulness).

3. Yet there is no difference between these seeming contraries; because the dualities of Brahma and the soul, the mind and máyá, the agent and act, and the phenomenal and noumenal worlds, all blend together in the unity of God. (All seeming differences converge in unvarying Mind).

4. There is but one Universal soul displaying its Intellect as a vast ocean, and extending its consciousness as a sea of unlimited extent. (These extend to all beings in the universe).

5. What is true and real shines forth amidst all that is untrue and unreal; so does the subjective essence of the mind subsist amidst all its airy and fleeting dreams in sleep. And thus the world is both true and untrue as regards its subsistence in God and its external phenomena. (The substance is real but the appearance is false).

6. The erroneous conception either of the reality or unreality of the outer world, does not spring in the mind, which is conscious of its operations only, and of no outward phenomena. This conception is like the deception of a magic show, and is concomitant with all sensuous minds.

7. It is the long habit of thinking the unreal world as real, that makes it appear as such, to the unthinking, as a protracted sleep makes its visionary scenes appear as true to the dreaming soul. It is the want of reflection, that causes us to mistake a man in a block of wood.

8. Want of spiritual light misleads the mind from its rationality, and makes it take its false imaginations for true; as children are impressed with a belief of ghosts in shadows, through their fear and want of true knowledge.

9. The mind is inclined of its own tendency, to assign a living soul (and also a body) to the Divine Spirit; which is devoid of appellation, form or figure, and is beyond our comprehension; (and is styled the Incomprehensible).

10. Knowledge of the living state (personality), leads to that of Egoism which is the cause of intellection. This again introduces the sensations and finally the sensible body. (Ego is the subject of thoughts).

11. This bondage of the soul in body, necessitates a heaven and hell for want of its liberation and then the acts of the body, become the seeds of our endless transmigrations in this world.

12. As there is no difference between the soul, intellect and life, so there is no duality in the living soul and intellect, nor in the body and its acts, which are inseparable from each other.

13. Acts are the causes of bodies, and the body is not the mind; the mind is one with egoism, and the ego is the living soul. The living soul is one with the Divine Intellect and this soul is all and the lord God of all.

CHAPTER LXVI.
Meditation of the Subjective and Objective.

Argument. Origin and Nature of Duality and the Manner of its Extinction.

Thus Ráma! there is one true essence, which appears many by our mistake; and this variety is caused by the production of one from the other, as one lamp is lighted from another.

2. By knowing one’s self as nothing as it was before its coming to being, and by considering the falsity of his notions (of his reality), no one can have any cause of grief (at its loss). (The Sruti:—The knower of the true-self, is above all grief and sorrow).

3. Man is but a being of his own conception, and by getting rid of this concept, he is freed from his idea of the duality of the world (as a distinct existence); just as one with his shoes on, perceives the whole earth he treads upon, to be covered over with skin.

4. As the plantain tree has no pith except its manifold coats, so there is no substantiality of the world beside our false conceptions of it.

5. Our births are followed by childhood, youth, old age and death one after the other, and then opens the prospect of a heaven or hell to our view, like passing phantoms before the flighty mind.

6. As the clear eye sees bubbles of light in the empty sky, so the thoughtless mind views the firmament full of luminous bodies (which are but phantoms of the brain).

7. As the one moon appears as two to the dimsighted eye, so the intellect, vitiated by influence of the senses, sees a duality in the unity of the supreme spirit.

8. As the giddiness of wine presents the pictures of trees before the drunken eye, so does the inebriation of sensation, present the phantoms of the world before the excited intellect.

9. Know the revolution of the visible world, to resemble the revolving wheel of a potter’s mill; which they turn about in play as the rotatory ball of a terrestrial globe.

10. When the intellect thinks of another thing (as matter) beside itself, it then falls into the error of dualism; but when it concentrates its thoughts in itself, it then loses the sense of the objective duality.

11. There is nothing beside the Intellect except the thoughts on which it dwells; and its sensations are all at rest, as it comes to know the nihility of objects.

12. When the weak intellect is quiet by its union with the Supreme, and by suppression of its functions, it is then called sansánta—or quiescent or insouciant.

13. It is the weak intellect that thinks of the thinkables, but the sound understanding ceases from all thoughts; as it is a slight intoxication that makes one rave and revel about, while deep drinking is dead to all excitements.

14. When the sound and consummate understanding, runs in one course towards its main reservoir of the supreme; it becomes divested of its knowledge of the knowables, and of its self-consciousness also in the presence of the one and no other.

15. The perfected understanding finds the errors, to which it is exposed by its sensation of the sensibles; and comes to know, that birth and life and all the acts and sights of the living state, are as false as dreams.

16. The mind being repressed from its natural flight, can have no thought of any thing; and is lost in itself; as the natural heat of fire and motion of the wind being extinct, they are annihilated of themselves.

17. Without the suppression of mental operations, the mind must continue in its misconceptions, as that of mistaking a rope for a snake through ignorance.

18. It is not difficult to repress the action of the mind and rouse our consciousness; in order to heal our souls of the malady of their mistaken notion of the world.

19. If you can succeed to suppress the desires of your restless mind at any time, you are sure to obtain your liberation even at the very moment and without fail.

20. If you will but turn to the side of your subjective consciousness only, you will get rid of the objective world, in the same manner as one is freed from his fear of snake in a rope, by his examination of the thing.

21. If it is possible to get rid of the restless mind, which is the source of all our desires; it is no way impossible to attain to the chief end of liberation to any.

22. When highminded men are seen to give up their lives as straws (in an honorable cause), there is no reason why they should be reluctant to abandon their desires for the sake of their chief good of liberation.

23. Remain unfettered by forsaking the desires of your greedy mind; for what is the good of getting sensible objects, which we are sure to lose (some time or other).

24. The liberated are already in the sight of the immortality of their souls and of God, as one who has got a fruit in his hand, or sees a mountain palpable before him.

25. It is the Spirit of God alone, that abides in everything in these phenomenal worlds, which rise to view like the waves of the waters of the great deluge. It is his knowledge that is attended with the summum bonum of liberation, and it is ignorance of that supreme Being, that binds the mind to the interminable bondage of the world.

CHAPTER LXVII.
Lecture on Truth.

Argument. Nature of the Active and Living Soul (Jíva) and its Sensations.

Ráma said:—Leaving the mind please tell me more about the nature of the living soul; what relation it bears to the Supreme soul, how it sprang from the same and what is its essence.

2. Vasishtha replied:—Know Brahma is omnipresent, and the Lord of all at all times; He manifests himself in whatever attribute he assumes to himself at his free will. Ex arbitrio suo.

3. The attribute which the universal soul assumes to itself in the form of perception (chétana), is known by the term living soul, which possesses the power of volition in itself.

4. There are two causal principles combined with the living soul, namely: its predestination resulting from its prior acts and volitions; and its later free will which branch forth severally into the various causes of birth, death and subsistence of beings.

5. Ráma said:—Such being the case, tell me, O thou greatest of sages, what this predestination means and what are these acts, and how they become the causal agents of subsequent events.

6. Vasishtha replied:—The intellect (chit) is possest of its own nature of the properties of oscillation and rest, like the vacillation and stillness of the winds in the air. Its agitation is the cause of its action, otherwise it is calm and quiet as a dead lock—quietus itself.

7. Its oscillation appears in the fluctuation of the mind, and its calmness in the want of mental activity and exertions; as in the nonchalance of Yoga quietism.

8. The vibrations of the intellect lead to its continual transmigrations; and its quietness settles it in the state of the immovable Brahma. The oscillation of the intellect is known to be the cause of the living state and all its actions.

(The moving force of the mind is the animism of Stahl, and its rest is the quietus of Plato).

9. This vibrative intellect is the thinking Soul, and is known as the living agent of actions; and the primary seed of the universe. (This is the anima mundi or moving force of the world,—the doctrine of Stahl).

10. This secondary soul then assumes a luminous form according to the light of its intellect, and afterwards becomes multifarious at its will, and by means of the pulsations of the primary intellect all over the creation. (This luminous form is represented by the red body of Brahma and the red clay of which Adam was formed. (It was the All—to pan of Pantheism, and the Principium hylarchicum or first principle of Henry Moore)).

11. The pulsative intellect or soul, having passed through many transformations (or transmigrations), is at last freed from its motion and migration. And there are some souls which pass into a thousand births and forms, while there are others which obtain their liberation in a single birth (by means of their Yoga meditation or unification with God, which is the final aim of Platonism and of the Chinese Laosin).

12. So also the human soul being of its own nature prone to assume its dualism of the motive intellect, becomes by itself the cause of its transmigration and sufferings, as also of its transient bliss or misery in heaven or hell. (There is no rest for the restless soul, until it rests in the bosom of the all-tranquil and Universal soul).

13. As the same gold is changed to the forms of bracelets and other things, and as the same gross matter appears in the different forms of wood and stone; so the uniform soul of God appears as multiform according to his various modes and attributes. (The soul modifies itself into many forms of activity and passivity).

14. It is the fallacy of the human mind, that views the forms as realities, and causes one to think his soul which is freed from birth and form, to be born, living and dead, as a man sees a city to rise and fall in his delirium. (The appearances and forms of things are objective and false fabrications of the intellect).

15. The varying intellect erroneously conceives its unreal egoism and meitatem as realities, from its ignorance of its unity with the unchangeable reality of God, and also from its felicity of enjoyments peculiar to its varied state. (The भोगाशा or desire of fruition is the cause of the revolution of the soul in endless states of beings).

16. As Lavana the King of Mathura, falsely deemed himself as a Chandála, so the intellect thinks on its own different states of existence and that of the world (from its desire of enjoying its pleasures which are deeply rooted in itself).

17. All this world is the phantom of an erroneous imagination, O Ráma! it is no more than the swelling of the waters of the deep. (The world is the expansion of the self-same soul and its evolution is the volition of Brahma).

18. The intellect is ever busied with the intellection of its own intelligences, and the innate principles of its action; in the same manner as the sea is seen to swell with its waters moving in waves of themselves. (The continuation of the intellect in the association of its preconceived ideas, is carried on by law of continuity).

19. The intellect is as the water in the wide expanse of Brahma; its inflation raises the waving thoughts in the mind, resembling the bubbles of water, and produces the revolutions of living souls like eddies in the sea of this world.

20. Know thy soul, O gentle Ráma! as a phenomenon of the all pervading Brahma, who is both the subject and object of his consciousness, and who has posited in thee a particle of himself, like the breath of a mighty lion.

21. The intellect with its consciousness, constitutes the living soul, and that with the will forms the mind; its knowing power is the understanding, and its retentiveness is called its memory: its subjectivity of selfishness is styled egoism, and its error is called máyá or delusion. (Consciousness is perception qua mens de presenti suo statu admonitur. The living soul is psyche or animus. The intellect is the mover of the will. The intellectus est prior voluntate, non enimést voluntas &c. The understanding has the power to acquire knowledge, and memory has the power of retention &c.).

22. The mind by its imagination stretches out this world, which is as false as the phantom of Utopia—Gandharva-nagaram or an air drawn city.

23. The objective knowledge of the world in the mind, is as false as the appearance of chains of pearls in the sky, and as the visionary scenes in a dream. (The objective is the feigned fabrication of the mind, and therefore unreal).

24. The soul which is ever pure and self sufficient in its nature, and remains in its own state of tranquility; is not perceived by the perverted mind dwelling on its delusive dreams.

25. The objective world is referred to waking—Jágrat, because it is perceived in the waking state of the soul; and the subjective mind is allied to sleep—swapna, because the mind is active during the sleeping and dreaming states. The ego is related to deep sleep—sushupta, when we are unconscious of ourselves, and the fourth or pure Intellect—turíya or turya, is the trance or hybernation of the soul.

26. That which is above these four conditions, is the state of ultimate bliss, ecstasis; and it is by reliance on that supremely pure essence of God, that one is exempted from all his causes of grief and sorrow (in his ecstatic delight).

27. Everything is displayed in Him and all things are absorbed in Him also; this world is neither a reality here or there; it presents only the false appearance of strings of pearls in the sky. (Sensible forms are empty appearances, and are only believed as real by materialists).

28. And yet God is said to be the cause and substratum, of all these unobstructed phantoms rising to the view, as the empty air is said to be the receptacle of the rising trees. Thus the uncausal God is said to be the cause of this uncaused world, which only exists in our illusive conceptions, and presents itself to our delusive sensations of it.

29. As a polished piece of iron gets the reflexion of a grosser piece, so do our finer or inner sensations take the representations of the gross forms of their particular objects (though the senses and sensible objects are both untrue, as mere delusive and delusions).

30. These sensations are conveyed to the mind, and thence again to the living soul and intellect, in the same manner as the roots supply the sap to the stem, and thence to the branches, and lastly to the fruits of trees. (i.e. The Divine Intellect is the last receptacle of the impressions of the senses).

31. As the seed produces the fruit, and the same contains the seed in itself; so the intellect producing the mind and its thoughts can not get rid of them; but is contained in, and reproduced by them in successive transmigrations.

32. There is some difference however in the simile of the insensible seed and tree; with the sensible intellect and mind (which are freed from reproduction by their attainment of liberation); but the thoughts of the creator and creation like the seed and tree, are reproductive of one another without end. (Because the thought of the creator accompanies that of the creation, and so the viceversa; owing to the unbroken chain and interminable concatenation of the ideas of causality and its effect).

33. But there is this difference between the insensible seed and sensible intellect, that the former is continually productive of one another, while the latter ceases in its process upon its attainment of liberation; yet the ideas of the creator and creation are reproductive of each other adinfinitum.

34. Yet our understanding shows it as clearly—as the sun light sets forth the forms and colours of objects to view; that there is one eternal God of truth, who is of the form of intellectual light, which shows the forms of all things, that proceed from Him (as the colours of objects originate from the solar light, and are shown again by the same to our optical vision).

35. As the ground which is dug presents a hollow, so the reasoning of every system of sound philosophy establishes the existence of the transcendental void as the cause of all. (An unknown first cause without any attribute, is the unanimous conclusion, arrived at every rational system of Philosophy. See Kusumánjali. Here Vasishtha establishes his vacuous rather than a personal cause).

36. As a prismatic crystal represents various colours in its prisms, without being tinged by the same; so the transparent essence of Brahma shows the groups of worlds in its hollow bosom without its connection with them. (This variety of vision is caused by our optical deception).

37. The universal soul is the source, and not the substance of all these vast masses of worlds; just as the seed is the embryo, and not the matter of the trees and plants and their fruits and flowers that grow from the same. (The to on is the only principle called God, all other objects are but phenomenal modifications of his essence).

38. Ráma said:—Oh how wonderful is this world, which presents its unreality as a reality in all its endless forms unto us; and though situated in the Divine self, appears to be quite apart from it. O how it makes its minuteness seem so very immense to us. (What are these worlds but as particles subsisting in the divine essence, when they are compared with the immensity of the Divine spirit and mind—the finite with the Infinite).

39. I see how this shadowy scene of the world appearing in the Divine soul, and becoming as an orb, by virtue of the ideal tanmátras or particles of the divine essence in it. I find it as a snow ball or icicle made of frozen frost.

40. Now tell me Sir, how the spiritual particles increase in bulk, and in what manner the body of the self born Brahmá was produced from Brahma. Say also in what manner do these objects in nature come to existence in their material forms.

(Brahmá the Demiurgus was an emanation of God according to Gnostics; and Vaishwánara was the same as the soul of the world according to Plotinus).

41. Vasishtha replied:—Too incredible is this form and without a parallel, which sprang of itself from its own essence. It is altogether inconceivable how some thing is produced of its own conception.

42. Just fancy, O Ráma! how the unexpanded phantom of a Vetála or ghost, swells in bigness to the sight of fearful children; and conceive in the same manner the appearance of the living spirit from the entity of Brahma. (Evolution of the Living God from the inert Brahma, is as the springing of the moving spirit from the dormant soul).

43. This living spirit was a development of Brahma—the universal soul; it was holy and a commensurable and finite being, and having a personality of its own; it remained as an impersonal unreality in the essence of the selfexistent God. Being separated afterwards from its source, it had a different appellation given to it. (This is the Holy spirit or ghost in one sense, as also the Divine Logos in another, and in whom there was life).

44. As Brahma the all extended and infinite soul, became the definite living soul at will; so the living spirit, became the mind by its volition afterwards. (There is a trinity or triple division of the soul into soma or the universal soul, the pneuma or anima or the living spirit, and the nous or mens or mind).

45. The mind which was the principle of intellection, took a form of its own; and so likewise the life assumed an airy form in the midst of vacuity. (The mind is the state of the impersonal soul with a sense of its personality, and life is animation or the vital principle in the form of the vital breath).

46. The wakeful living god (who had no twinkling of his eyes), whereby we measure time was yet conscious of its course by means of his thoughts; and had the notion of a brilliant icicle of the form of the future mundane egg in his mind. See Manu’s Genesis of the World. I.

47. Then the living soul felt in itself the sense of its consciousness, and by thinking ‘what am I,’ was conscious of its egoism. (Why is the non-ego of the objective world put before the ego? The objective orb of the world should follow the subjective consciousness).

48. This god next found in his understanding the knowledge of the word taste, and got the notion of its becoming the object of a particular organ of sense, to be hereafter called “the tongue.” (Rasaná or the instrument of the perception of rasa or flavour. Rasa abiding in water is reckoned first of the elements on account the Spirit of God resting on it before creation, wherefore God is himself called rasa in the Sruti—rasa vaitat).

49. The living soul then found out in his mind the meaning of the word ‘light,’ which was afterwards to sparkle in the eye—the particular organ of sight.

(The Bible says, lux fiat et lux fit—Light to be the first work of creation; though the Vedas give Priority to water as in the passages “apa eva sasarjádau”, Manu. Yasrishtih Srasturádyá. Sakuntala).

50. Next the god came to know in his mind the property of smell, and the organ of smelling; as also the substance of earth to which it appertains as its inseparable property. (The Nyaya says: prithví gandhavatí—the earth is smelling. It followed the creation of light).

51. In this manner the living soul, came to be acquainted at once with the other sensations, and the organs to which they appertain as their inseparable properties and objects. (The word bhavitá means the spontaneous growth of these faculties in the soul or mind, and kákatálíya signifies the simultaneous occurrence of the senses, and sensible objects, and their sensations in the mind).

52. The unsubstantial living spirit which derives its being from the essence of the substantial Brahma, comes next to acquire the knowledge of sound, the object of the organ of hearing, and the property of air. (So Nyáya:—“ákásh sabdádharah”; and “yá Sruti visaya gunáh”—Sakuntala).

53. It then comes to understand the meaning of the word touch (twak) as the medium of feeling, as also to know the tongue as the only organ of taste. (According to schoolmen, taste is the object of the palate and not of the tongue).

53. It finds the property of colour to be the peculiar object of the eye—the organ of sight; and that of smell to be an object peculiar to the nose—the organ of the sense of smelling (ghránendriya).

54. The living soul is thus the common receptacle of the sensations, and source of the senses, which it developes afterwards in the organs of sense in the body. It perceives the sensation of sensible objects through the perceptive holes, that convey their perceptions into the sensorium of the mind. (The common sensory is variously placed in Western philosophy, such as the heart, brain, pineal gland, the ventrialis &c.).

55. Such, O Ráma! as it was with the first animated being, is still so with all living animals; and all these sensations are represented in the Soul of the world—anima mundi, in its spiritual form—átiváhika, known as the súkshma or lingadeha—the subtle body. (The spiritual body has 17 organs of sense viz, 5 Internal, 5 External, the mind and Intellect and others (called the saptadasha lingátmaka linga saríra)).

56. The nature of this abstruse essence, is as undefinable as that of the spirit; it appears to be in motion, when it is really at rest, as in our idea of the soul. (Spiritual bodies are said to move and fly about, because the spirit is the motive, and life the animating principle as the soul is that of consciousness).

57. As measure and dimensions are foreign, to our notion of Brahma—the all conscious soul, so are they quite apart from that of the spirit also, which is no more than the motive power of the soul. (Magnitude, figure, motion, rest, number, place, distance, position, &c. are all objects of the senses).

58. As the notion of the spiritual, is distinct from that of all others which are material and corporeal; so the notion of Brahma is quite apart from every thing, except that of his self-consciousness.

(God says in the Scripture, “I am that I am,” which proves his consciousness of himself to constitute his essence).

59. Ráma said:—If consciousness is self-same with Brahma, and our consciousness of ourselves as Brahma, make us identic with Brahma Himself; then what is the use of devising a duality of the soul (as the divine and human souls), or of talking of the liberation and final absorption of the one in the other? (If what the Sruti says, Brahmásmi—I am Brahma; as the scripture declares—“In Him we live and move,” then what means our redemption or return to Him?).

60. Vasishtha replied:—Ráma, your question is irrelevant at this time, when I was going to prove another thing. Nothing can be appropriate out of its proper time and place, as the untimely offering of flowers to gods is not acceptable to them. (A question beside the mark is apropos de bottes, and brought in by the head and shoulders).

61. A word full of meaning, becomes meaningless out of its proper place; like the offering of flowers to gods and guests, out of their proper season. (So all intempestivous acts, go mal a propos, unless they are done in proper time).

62. There is a time for the introducing of a subject, and another to hold silence over it; so every thing becomes fruitful in its proper season. (Tempus coronat opus).

63. But to resume our subject; the living soul afterwards appeared from Him, as the human soul appears in dreaming; and thought in himself that he was the great father of created beings in time to come. (i.e. He would become the Maker of the world).

64. He uttered the syllable Om (on or ens), and was conscious of the verification of its meaning in his mind, which soon displayed all forms of beings to his mental vision. (i.e. The All One became many, which displayed themselves in the mind of the living God as visions in a dream).

65. All these were unrealities, that were displayed in the empty sphere of the divine mind; and the shadowy world seemed as a huge mountain, floating before him in the air.

66. It was neither born of itself, nor was made by Brahmá; nor is it destroyed at any time by any other power. It was Brahma himself, appearing as the phantom of an aerial city.

67. As the living Brahmá and other spiritual beings, are unreal in their nature; so also are the essences of other beings, from the big giant to the little emmet, but mere unrealities in their substance.

68. It is our erroneous understanding, that represents these unrealities as real ones unto us; but the clear understanding will find all things, from the great Brahmá down to the minutest insect, to vanish entirely from its sight. (Errors of the mind breed errors in the brain; and these lead to errors of vision again).

69. The same cause that produces Brahmá, produces the insects also; and it is the greater depravity of the mind, that causes its transmigration, into the contemptible forms of worms.

70. The living being that is possest of a rational soul, and is devoted to the cultivation of the mind, attains to the state of man; and then acts righteously for attaining a better state in after life. (These are the states of gods and angels in heaven).

71. It is wrong to suppose one’s elevation, to be owing to the merit of his acts, and his degradation to the condition of worms, to result from his former acts of demerit; because there is the same particle of intellect in both of them, and this being known, will destroy the mistaken difference between the great and small.

72. The notions of the measurer, measure and measurable, are not separate from the intellect (or mind); therefore the controversy of unity and duality, is as futile as the horns of a hare or a lake of lotuses in the air. (This means the ideas of the producer, production and product, are always one in the Absolute subjective. Schelling).

73. It is our misconception of the blissful Brahma, that produces the wrong notion of solid substances in us; and this imagination of our own making, binds us as fast as the silk-worms are fast bound in the cocoons; formed by their own serum (or ichor or serosity).

74. It is the case of the knower, to perceive everything in his mind, as it is revealed in it by Brahma; and also to meet with every thing as it is allotted by God to his share. (God is the revealer and giver of all things. Or—Man meets his fate, as it is meted to him by his Maker).

75. It is the immutable law of nature, that nothing can be otherwise than what it is ordained to be; and there is nothing in nature, which can change its nature for a minute in a whole kalpa-age. (Nature derives her power from the will of her Maker, and her course is, according to the immutable order, fixed by the ordainer of all).

76. And yet this creation is a false phantom, and so is the growth and dissolution of all created beings, as also our enjoyment of them. (All visible Nature is the working of the invisible Spirit).

77. Brahma is pure, all pervading, infinite and absolute. It is for our misery only, that we take him for the impure matter and unreal substance; and as the definite and limited pluralities.

78. It is the vitiated imagination of boys, that fancies the water and its waves as different things; and makes a false distinction between them which are really the same things. (Hence whatever differences there appear in objects, they are all as the fallacy of a snake in the rope with the unknowing. There is no difference of antagonistic powers felt in the spirit of Brahma, who is equal in all, and to whom all things are equal; though there seems a constant opposition in the natures of things).

79. It is His undivided self which expanded itself in visible nature, and which appears as a duality, like that of the waves and the sea, and the bracelets and gold. Thus He of himself appears as other than himself. (i.e. The difference appearing in the visibles, disappears in the indifference of the Divine Mind).

80. We are led to imagine the visible and mutable world, to have sprung from the invisible and immutable spirit, which manifested itself in the form of the mind that produced the Ego. Thus we have the visible from the invisible, and the mind and the ego from the same source. (The absolute Brahma manifesting itself in two forms, the mind or ego and nature or non-ego. The Ego of the mind is infinite, which produced the finite ego or human soul, personified as the first male (Adimapurusha or Adam)).

81. The mind joined with the ego, produced the notions of elementary principles or elemental particles; which the living soul combined with its intellect, derived from the main source of Brahma, and of which it formed the phenomenal world. (These notions were the intentive concepts of the formal and reflexive world, existing primordially in the essence of Brahma, as its material cause or (upádánam). So says the Vedánta:—Yato viswamvá imámi bhutani &c.).

82. Thus the mind being realised from Brahma, sees before it whatever it imagines; and whatever the intellect thinks upon, whether it is a reality or unreality, the same comes to take place. The reflexion verily passes into reality. (The imagination is the faculty representative of the phenomena of internal and external worlds. It is both productive and reproductive. Sir Wm. Hamilton. Here intellect means the Supreme Intellect, the wisdom of God and his design in the works of creation. All beings and things are manifestations of one Eternal and original mind God).

CHAPTER LXVIII.
Description of a Rákshasí (or female fiend).[^[4]]

Argument. Story of Karkatí the female fiend, and her austerities for extirpation of Human Kind.

Vasishtha said:—Hear me relate to you, Ráma! an old anecdote bearing upon this subject, and relating to a difficult proposition adduced by the Rákshashí for solution.

2. There lived on the north of Himálaya a heinous Rákshashí, by name of Karkatí—a crooked crab; who was as dark as ink and stalwart as a rock, with limbs as strong as could split the sturdy oak.

3. She was also known by the title of Visúchí or cholic pain, by which she was ever afflicted, and which had reduced her frame like that of the Vindhyá hill, which was cowered down (by the curse of Agastya).

4. Her eye-balls were as blazing as fires; and her stature reaching half way to the sky, was girt by a blue garment, like the shade of night wrapping the atmosphere.

5. A white mantle formed the covering of her head, like the fragment of a cloud; and the long erect hairs of her head, stood like a sable cloud on her crest.

6. Her eyes flashed as lightnings, and her sharp hooked nails glistened as sapphires; her legs were as long as tamála trees, and her loud laughter was as a burst of frost.

7. A string of dried bones decorated her body, like a wreath of flowers; and the relics of dead bodies, adorned every part of her body.

8. She frolicked in the company of Vetálas, with human skulls hanging down her ears as ear-rings; and stretched out her arms aloft, as if she was going to pluck the sun from his sphere.

9. Her huge body being in want of its necessary aliment, caused her culinary fire to blaze like the submarine flame, which the waters of the deep are unable to quench. (The latent heat in water).

10. Nothing could ever satiate the insatiable hunger, of this big bellied monster; nor satisfy her lickerish tongue, which was always stretched out like a flame of fire.

11. She thought in herself saying:—Oh! if I could but once go to the Jambudwípa—the land of Asia, I would devour all its men in one swoop, and feast on them continually, like the submarine fire upon the waters.

12. As the clouds cool the burning sands by their rain, so will I allay the burning fire of my hunger there. It is settled as the best plan to support my life, at this critical moment.

13. All men are well guarded by means of their mantras, medicines, austerities, devotions and charities, from all evils of the world; whence it is impossible for any body to destroy the indestructible devotee. (My all destructive devotion will destroy all; but render me indestructible).

14. I will perform the most rigorous austerities, with an unflinching heart and mind; because it is by intensity of painstaking, that we may gain what is otherwise hard to be had. (Industria vincit omnia.—Labour conquers all).

15. Having thought so, she repaired to an inaccessible mountain, for the purpose of destroying all animal beings. (The Rákshasa cannibals are devourers of all flesh; and are of the omnivorous kind).

16. She climbed to the top of the mountain, by scrambling over it with her hands and feet; and stood on it with her body resembling a cloud, and her eye-balls flashing as lightnings. (i.e. Her body and eyesight, were similar to the cloud and lightning on the mountain top).

17. Having got to the summit, she made her ablution and then sat at her devotion; with her steadfast eyeballs resembling the two orbs of the sun and moon, and fixed on one object.

18. She passed there many a day and month, and saw the course of many a season and year. She exposed her huge body to the rigor of heat and cold, like the hill itself (on which she sat).

19. She with her huge black body, remained unmoved as a thick sable cloud, on the mountain top; and her jet black hairs stood up as if to touch the sky.

20. Seeing her body beaten by the blasts, and covered with nothing but her ragged skin; and her hairs standing up to their end, to be tossed to and fro by the raging winds; while the twinklings of her eyelids, shed a whitish glare on her sable frame, the god Brahmá made his appearance before her.

CHAPTER LXIX.
Story of Visúchiká—(continued).[^[5]]

Argument. Brahmá’s boon to Visúchí, and the mantra against her Power.

Vasishtha resumed:—After the lapse of a thousand years, Brahmá appeared to her, in order to put an end to the ardour of her austerities, and crown her with success or the reward of her devotion. (Ardent devotion has the power of displacing even the gods from their heavenly seats).

2. She saluted him internally in her mind, and remained fixed in her position; thinking about the boon she should beg of him, for allaying her keen appetite.

3. She soon recollected a certain request, which she should prefer to her complying god; and it was to transform her soft and flexible form to the shape of an inflexible iron-nail, wherewith she could torment all living beings. (i.e. To make her fleshy form as stiff as a poker, so as to be able to pierce all others without being pierced herself).

4. At Brahmá’s bidding, she bethought in herself: “I will become as thin as a minute pin, in order to enter imperceptibly into the hearts of animals, as the odor of flowers enters the nostrils.”

5. “By this means will I suck the heart-blood of beings, to my heart’s satisfaction; in this way will my hunger be satiated, and the gratification of my appetite, will give the greatest delight to my soul.”

6. As she was thinking in this manner, the God discovered her sinister motives, contrary to the character of a yogi; and accosted her in a voice resembling the roaring of clouds.

7. Brahmá said:—Daughter Karkatí, of the Rákshasa race, that sittest here like a cloud on the inaccessible top of this mountain; know that I am pleased with thy devotion, and bid thee now to raise thyself, and receive the boon that thou desirest of me.

8. Karkatí answered:—“O Lord of the past and future! If thou art inclined to grant my request, then please to confer on me the boon, of transforming my unironlike body to the form of an iron needle.”

9. Vasishtha said:—The God pronounced “Be it so,” and joined, “thou wilt be as a pin, and shalt be called the cholic pain, for thy giving pain to all bodies.”

10. “Thou shalt be the cruel cause of acute pain and pang to all living being; and particularly to the intemperate and hard-working fools, and loose libertines, who are destined to be thy devoted victims.”

11. “Moreover shalt thou molest the dwellers of unhealthy districts, and the practicers of malpractices; by entering their hearts with thy infectious breath, and by disturbing their sleep, and deranging the liver and other intestinal parts of the body.”

12. “Thou shalt be of the form of wind (in the bowels), and cause bile and flatulence under the different names of colic diseases, and attack the intemperate both among the wise and unwise.”

13. “The wise when attacked by thee, will be healed by repeating this runic mantra, which I will here propound for their benefit.”

14. The mantra runs thus:—“There lives Karkatí, the Rákshasí, in the north of the snowy mountain; her name is Visúchiká, and it is for repelling her power that I repeat this mantra; “Om, I bow to hring, hrang and ring, rang—the powers of Vishnu, and invoke the Vaishnavi powers to remove, destroy, root out, drive away this colic pain, far beyond the Himálayas, and afar to the orb of the moon. Om, (amen) and swáhá (soho), be it so.” Let these lines be held on the left arm as an amulet.

15. “Then rub the painful part with the palm of that hand, and think the colic Karkatí to be crushed under the mallet of this amulet, and driven back beyond the hills with loud wailing.”

16. “Let the patient think the medicinal moon to be seated in his heart, and believe himself to be freed from death and disease; and his faith will save his life and heal his pain.”

17. “The attentive adept, who having purified himself with sprinkling the water in his mouth, repeats this formula, he succeeds in a short time to remove the colic pain altogether.”

18. The lord of the three worlds then disappeared in the air, after delivering this efficacious amulet to the Siddhas attending upon him. He went to his splendid seat in heaven, where he was received by the god Indra, who advanced to hail him with his hosannas.

CHAPTER LXX.
Conduct of Visúchí, or the Adventures of the Needle.

Argument. The gradual leanness of Súchí, and her entrance in Human bodies.

Vasishtha continued:—Now this Súchí who had been as tall as a mountain-peak, and a Rákshasí of the blackest kind, resembling a thick and dark cloud of the rainy season; began gradually to fade away, and grow leaner and leaner day by day.

2. Her gigantic cloud-like form, was soon reduced to the shape of the branch of a tree, which afterwards became of the figure of a man, and then of the measure of a cubit only.

3. It next became of the length of a span in its heighth, and then of a finger’s length in all. Growing by degrees thinner and thinner like a corn or grain, it became at last as lean as a needle or pin.

4. She was thus reduced to the thinness of a needle, fit only to sew a silken robe; and became as lean as the filament of the lotus flower by her own desire; which can change a hill to a grain of sand. (This passage bears reference to the microcosm of human soul).

5. The unmetallic Súchí, was thus transformed to the form of a black and slender iron needle; which containing all her limbs and organs of her body in it, conducted her in the air and everywhere as she liked. (Thus the gross human body being reduced to its subtle átiváhika or spiritual form, it is possible for the Yogi to traverse through the air, as we perceive in the course of our minds).

6. She viewed her person as an iron pin, and having neither any substance nor length or breadth of her body. (The false idea of length and breadth of the soul is a fallacy of our understanding; because the soul like a geometrical line, has no dimension nor substance whatever in it).

7. Her mind with its power of thought, appeared as bright as a golden needle (pointing to the point); and as a streak of the sapphire impregnated by solar ray.

8. Her rolling eye-balls, were as dark as the spots of black clouds, moved to and fro by the winds; and her sparkling pupils were gazing at the bright glory (of God); piercing through their tenuous pores. (It is explained also as fixing the eye-sight to some chink (as that of a wall or other), through which the light of God enters the sensory of sight, and then penetrates into the soul as in Yoga meditation).

9. She had observed the vow of her taciturnity (mauna-vrata), for reducing the plumpness of her person, and was gladdened in her face, to become as lean as the filament of a feather. (The vow of keeping silence is said to be of great good, by increasing the power of thought; for he who speaks little thinks much, and who so talks much, must talk in vain. It is the practice of munis or saints to remain silent, whence the vow has its name).

10. She beheld a light alighting on her, from the air at a distance; and she was glad in her face to find her inward spirit, to be sublimated as air. (The internal light and lightness of the body are results of yoga practice).

11. With her contracted eye brows, she beheld the rays of light extending to her from afar; which caused the hairs on her body, to stand up like those of babies at bathing.

12. Her grand artery called Brahmanádí or susumna, was raised about its cavity in the head called the Brahma-randhra; in order to greet the holy light, as the filaments of the lotus, rise to receive the solar light and heat.

13. Having subdued the organs of her senses and their powers, she remained as one without her organic frame, and identified with her living soul; and resembled the intelligent principle of the Bauddhas and Tárkikas, which is unseen by others. (i.e. In her spiritual form only).

14. Her minuteness seemed to have produced the minutiae of minute philosophers, called the siddhárthas; and her silence was like that of the wind confined in a cave. Her slender form of the puny pin, resembled the breath of animal life, which is imperceptible to the eye.

15. The little that remained of her person, was as thin as the last hope of man (which sustains his life). It was as the pencil of the extinguished flame of a lamp; that has its heat without the light.

16. But alas! how pitiable was her folly, that she could not understand at first, that she was wrong to choose for herself the form of a slender pin, in order to gratify her insatiable appetite.

(This is a ridicule to Yogis and students, that emaciate themselves with intense study and Yoga, only with a desire to pamper their bodies afterwards, with luxuries and carnal enjoyments).

17. Her object was to have her food, and not the contemptible form of the pin; her heart desired one thing, and she found herself in another form, that was of no use to her purpose.

18. It was her silliness, that led her make the injudicious choice of needleship for herself; and so it is with the short witted, that they lack the sense of judging beforehand, about their future good.

19. An arduous attempt to accomplish the desired object, is often attended by a different result; and even success on one hand, becomes a failure on another; just as the mirror is soiled by the breath, while it shows the face to the looker. (Disappointment lurks in many a shape, and often stings us with success).

20. How be it, the Rákshasí soon learnt to be content with her needleship, after she had relinquished her gigantic form; although she viewed her transformation as worse, than her dissolution itself. (Utter annihilation is more desirable to the Yogi than his metamorphosis to meaner forms).

21. Lo! the contrariety in the desires of the infatuated, who distaste in a trice, what they fondly wished at one time; as this fiend was disgusted at her pinship in lieu of her monstrous figure. (And so they wilfully shun the object of their former fondness, as the suicides and dying people quit their fond bodies without remorse).

22. As one dish of food is easily replaced by another, suiting the taste of the voluptuary; so this fiend did not hesitate to shun her gigantic body, which she took to taste the heart blood of animals in her pinnate form.

23. Even death is delectable to the giddy headed, when they are overfond of some thing else; as the minim of a meagre needle was desirable to the monstrous fiend for the gratification of her fiendish desire.

24. Now this needle took the rarefied form of air, and moved about as the colic wind (colica flatulenta), after all living beings, in quest of her suction of animal gore.

25. Its body was that of fiery heat, and its life the vital breath of animals; its seat was in the sensitive heart, and it was as swift as the particles of solar and lunar beams.

26. It was as destructive as the blade of the deadly sword, and as fleet as the effluvia flying in air. It penetrated into the body in the form of the minutiae of odor.

27. It was ever bent to do evil, like an evil spirit, as she was now known by that name; and her sole object was to kill the lives of others at her pleasure.

28. Her body was afterwards divided into two halves; one of which was as fine as a silken thread, and the other as soft as a thread of cotton.

29. Súchí ranged all about the ten sides of the world, in these two forms of hers; and pierced and penetrated into the hearts of living beings, with all her excruciating pains.

30. It was for the accomplishment of all these purposes of hers, whether they be great or little; that Karkatí forsook her former big body, and took the form of the acute and small needle. (Because humbleness and acuteness are the means of success in every project).

31. To men of little understanding, a slight business becomes an arduous task; as the foolish fiend had recourse to her austerities, in order to do the mean work of the needle.

32. Again men however good and great, can hardly get rid of their natural disposition; and it was for this reason that the great Rákshasí, performed her austere devotion, in order to become a vile pin for molesting mankind.

33. Now as Súchí was roving about in the sky, her aerial form which was big with her heinous ambition, disappeared in air like vapour, or as a thick cloud in autumn.

34. Then entering in the body of some sensualist or weak or too fat a person, this inward colic flatulence of Súchí, assumed the shape of Visúchiká or cholera.

35. Sometimes she enters in the body of some lean person, as also in those of healthy and wise people; and appearing at first as a colic pain, becomes a real cholera at last.

36. She is often delighted, to take her seat in the hearts of the ignorant; but is driven back afterwards by the good acts and prayers, and mantras and medicines of the wise.

37. In this manner she continued many years in her rambles; her bipartite body kept sometimes flying up in the air, and oftentimes creeping low on the ground.

38. She lies concealed in the dust of the ground, and under the fisted fingers of hands; she hides herself in the sun-beams, in air and in the threads of cloths. (All this refers to the pestilential air).

39. She is hid in the intestines, entrails and genitals, and resides in the bodies of pale and ash coloured persons; she abides in the pores, lines and lineaments of the body; as also in dry grass and in the dried beds of rivers (All these are abodes of malaria).

40. She has her seat among the indigent, and in the naked and uncovered bodies of men; as also in those which are subject to hard breathings. She dwells in places infested by flies and of obstructed ventilation, as also in green verdures excepting only of the mango and woodapple (bel) trees.

41. She lurks in places scattered with bones and joints of animal bodies, and such as are disturbed by violent winds, and gusts of air, she lies in dirty places, and in cold and icy grounds and likewise in polluted cloths and places polluted by them.

42. She sits in holes and hollow places, withered trees, and spots infested by crows, flies and peacocks. Also in places of dry, humid and high winds, and in benumbed fingers and toes.

43. As also in cloudy regions, in cavernous districts of the form of rotten bodies; in regions of melting and driving snows, and in marshy grounds abounding in ant hills and hills of málúra trees. (Málúra is Kapitha or kath-bel, which is deemed unwholesome).

44. She exhibits herself in the mirage of desert sand, and in wildernesses abounding with ravenous beasts and snakes. Sometimes she is seen in lands infested by venomous reptiles, and disgusting leeches and worms.

45. She frequents the stagnate pools, soiled by dry leaves and those chewed by the Pisáchas; and haunts the hovels beside the cross ways, where passengers halt and take shelter from cold.

46. She rambles in all places, ever where the leeches suck the blood of men, and vile people tear them with their nails and hold them in their fists for feeding upon them. (Here is a relation between the blood sucking Súchí or Needle and the leeches).

47. In this manner she passes in all places, that we view in the landscape of cities in drawings; until she is tired with her long journey through them.

48. She then stops in her course like a tired bullock, whose body is heated by travelling through towns, with loads of cotton and utensils on their backs.

49. She afterwards lays her down to rest in some hidden place, like a needle tired with continued sewing; and there drops down like it, from its bridling thread in the hand of the sewer.

50. The hard needle held in the hand of the sewer, never hurts his finger; because a servant however sharp he may be, is never faithless or is injurious to his master.

51. The iron needle growing old in its business of stitching, was at last lost by itself; like the rotten plank of a boat, bearing the burthensome ballast of stones in it.

52. It wandered about on all sides of its own accord, and was driven to and fro like chaff by the driving winds, according to the course of nature (with all things).

53. Being taken up by some one, it is fed with the fag end of a thread put into its mouth, as the malady of cholera is caught by those human parasites, who glut themselves with food supplied by the sap of another.

54. The malady of colic, like the needle, is ever fond of feeding on the pith of others with its open mouth; and continually finds the thread-like heartstring of some body put into its hole.

55. Thus the strong bodies of greedy and heinous beings, are nourished by the sap of the weak and innocent, as the colic disease preys on the lean bodies of the poor; and the sharp needle is supported by the thin thread of the needy (who cannot afford to buy new suits).

56. Though the heart of Súchí like the hole of the needle, was to receive the thread-like sap of the patient’s heart; yet her power to pierce it, was like that of the sewing needle, which is as potent as the piercing sun-beams, to penetrate into the toughest substances.

57. At last Súchí came to find on a sudden, the fault of her wrong choice of the puny body (of the needle); which was to be filled with her scanty fare of a bit of thread, and then she began to repent for her folly.

58. She continued however with all her might, to trudge on in her wonted course, of pricking and piercing the bodies of others; and notwithstanding her great regret, she could not avoid the cruelty of her nature.

59. The sewing man cuts and sews the cloth; agreeably to his own liking; but the weaver of destiny weaves the long loom of lengthened desires in all bodies, and hides their reason under the garb of her own making.

60. The colic Súchí went on like the sewing needle, in her business of piercing the hearts of people by hiding her head; as it is the practice of robbers to carry on their rogueries, by covering their faces. (All the three are sly boots, and carry on their trades under the seal of secrecy).

61. She like the needle with the sewing thread behind it, raises her head to make and look at the loop-hole, that she should penetrate in the manner of burglars, making and marking the holes in the wall for their entry.

62. She entered alike in the bodies of the weak and strong, like the needle stitching cloths of all textures (whether silken, linen or fibrous); as it is the custom of the wicked to spare neither the just nor unjust (from their calumny and villainy).

63. The colic pain like the piercing needle, being pressed under the fingers, lets off its griping, like the thread of the needle in its act of sewing. (So the wicked when caught in the act, let out and give up their wickedness).

64. The acute and unfeeling colic, being as ignorant as the stiff and heartless needle, of the softness or dryness of the object; pierces the hardiest breast, without deriving any sweetness from it. (So the unfeeling ruffians molest the moneyless, to no benefit to themselves).

65. The needle is compared with a rich widow, being both equally stern and full of remorse; both equally veiled and speechless, and with their eye of the needle, are empty in their joyless hearts.

66. The needle hurts no body (but rather does good in clothing mankind, by mending their tattered habits); and yet she is dragged by the thread, which is no other than the thread of her fate (woven by the fatal sisters for her drudgery).

67. Slipt from the finger of her master, the needle sleeps in peace after her trudging, in company with her fellows of dirt and dregs; for who is there that does not deem himself blest, in the company of his equals, when he is out of employ?

68. The herd of common people, is ever fond of mixing with the ignorant rabble in their modes of life; because there is no body that can avoid the company of his equals. (Kind flies with its own kind; or, Birds of one feather fly together).

69. The lost needle when found by a blacksmith and heated in the hearth, flies to heaven by the breath of the bellows, after which it disappears in the air. (So the society of the good elevates one to heaven, which leads at last to his final liberation).

70. In this manner the current of vital airs, conducts the breath of life in to the heart; which becomes the living spirit, by force of the acts of its prior states of existence.

71. The vital airs being vitiated, in the body, cause the colic pains known by different names; such as flatulence, bile and the like.

72. The colic caused by vitiation of the Vyána air, produces many diseases, and affects all the members of the body with a watery fluid. When it comes by breathing of the lungs, it causes the Váya súla or pulmonary colic of lungs, and is attended by disfigurement of the body, and insanity or hysteria known as the hysteric colic.

73. Sometimes it comes from the hands of sheepkeepers, and by the smell of the sheep’s wool in blankets; and at others it seizes the fingers of children, and causes them to tear their bed cloths therewith.

74. When it enters the body by the foot, it continues in sucking the blood; and with all its voracity, becomes satisfied with very little food.

75. It lies in the glandular vessel of the faeces, with its mouth placed downward; and takes at pleasure any form, it likes to assume as its prerogative.

76. It is the nature of the malicious, to show the pervertedness of their hearts by doing injury to others; as it is characteristic of the base people to raise a row for their pleasure, and not for any gain or good to themselves.

77. The miserly think much of their gain of even a single cowry: so deeprooted is the avaricious selfishness of human nature. (All little gain is no gain, compared with the wants of men).

78. It was but for a particle of blood, or as much as could be picked out by the point of a pin, that the colic Súchí was bent on the destruction of men: so the wise are fools in their own interests (and so do cut-throats kill others for a single groat).

79. How great is my master-stroke, says the needle, that from stitching the shreds of cloth, have come to the pitch of piercing the hearts of men; so be it and I am happy at my success.

80. As the rust of the lazy needle passes off in sewing, without being rubbed with dust; so must it take the rust, unless it is put in the action of piercing the patient and passive shreds. (The rolling stone gathers no moss).

81. The unseen and airy darts of fate, are as fatal as the acts of the cruel Vísúchi; though both of them have their respite at short intervals of their massacres.

82. The needle is at rest after its act of sewing is done; but the wicked are not satisfied, even after their acts of slaughter are over.

83. It dives in the dirt and rises in the air, it flies with the wind and lies down wherever it falls; it sleeps in the dust and hides itself at home and in the inside, and under the cloths and leaves. It dwells in the hand and ear-holes, in lotuses and heaps of woolen stuffs. It is lost in the holes of houses, in clefts of wood and underneath the ground. (Compare the adventures of a pin in Gay’s Fables).

84. Válmíki added:—As the sage was speaking in this manner, the sun went down in the west, and the day departed to its evening service. The assembly broke after mutual salutations, to perform their sacred ablution; and joined again on the next morning, with the rising beams of the sun to the royal palace.

CHAPTER LXXI.
Remorse of Súchí.

Argument. Remorse of Karkatí at her transformation to a Needle from her former gigantic form.

Vasishtha continued:—After the carnivorous fiend—Karkatí, had feasted for a long period on the flesh and blood of human kind; she found her insatiable voracity to know no bounds, and never to be satisfied with anything.

2. She used to be satisfied erewhile, with a drop of blood in her form of the needle; and she now became sorry, at the loss of the insatiable thirst and appetite of her former state.

3. She thought in herself, O pity it is! that I came to be a vile needle; with so weak and slender a body, that I can take nothing for my food.

4. How foolish I have been to forego my former gigantic form, and change my dark cloudy figure for something as the dry leaf of a forest tree.

5. O wretch that I am, to have foregone my dainty food of flesh flavoured with fat. (The Ráskshasa cannibals are raw flesh-eaters and feeders on the fat of animals).

6. I am doomed to dive in dirt, and drop down on the ground; to be trodden and trampled over under the feet of people, and soiled and sullied in the filth.

7. O me miserable, helpless and hopeless thing, and without any support or status of mine; from one woe I fall to another, and one danger is succeeded by another unto me!

8. I have no mistress nor maidservant, nor my father nor mother; I have got no son nor brother, nor any one to serve or befriend me.

9. I have no body nor abode, nor any refuge nor asylum anywhere; nor have I a fixed dwelling in any spot, but am driven about, like the fallen leaves of forest trees by the driving winds.

10. I am subject to all accidents, and exposed to every kind of calamity; I wish for my extinction, but it wishes not to approach unto me. (Death flies from the destitute).

11. What else have I done to have given away my own big body, in the foolishness of my heart; than parted like a madman, with a precious jewel for a paltry piece of glass.

12. One calamity is enough to turn the brain out of order; but what will be my case when it is followed by other calamities in endless succession.

13. I am hung up (with the cloth) to be suffocated by the smoke, and dropped down in the streets to be trodden under foot; I am cast away with the dirt, and hid under the grass to my great distress.

14. I serve at another’s will, and am guided by my guide; I am stark naked while I sew for others, and am ever a dependant on another’s guidance.

15. Long do I drudge and trudge for a paltry gain, and stitching alone is all the work that I have to perform for life. O unlucky that I am, that my ill luck even is so very luckless.

16. I see the demon of despair rising before me, upon my penitence of this day; and threatening to make an end of this body, of which I have made an offering to him.

17. What better fate can await on me, after my loss of so big and bulky a body by my foolishness; than to be annihilated into nothing, rather than be a thing which is good for nothing.

18. What man will pick me up, who am as lean as a mollusk (or thread worm); from the heap of ashes, under which I lie buried by the wayside.

19. No keensighted man will take into his consideration a wretched and a forlorn being; as nobody living on a high hill, ever stoops to take notice of the grass growing on the ground below.

20. I cannot expect to raise myself higher, while I am lying in the sea of ignorance; what blind man can perceive the glorious sun-light, who is guided by the flash of fireflies?

21. I know not therefore how long I shall have to labour under my difficulties, when I find myself already drowned in a sea of misery.

22. When shall I be restored again to the form of the daughter of Anjanágiri mountain; and will stand as a pillar over the ruins of the nether and upper worlds?

23. When shall I have my arms reaching to the clouds, and my eyes flashing as lightning; my garb becoming as white as snow, and my hairs touching the sky.

24. My big belly resembling a huge cloud, and my long breasts hanging below as pillows; shaking with the motion of my body, in its dancing like the pinions of a peacock.

25. The ash-white light emitted by my laughter, cast the light of the sun into the shade; and my former high stature, threatened to devour the terrible god of death.

26. My hollow sockets deep as the holes of mortars, flashed erewhile with living fire; like the rays of the sun; and my large legs moved as two monumental pillars in my rambling.

27. When shall I have my big belly, with its large cavity like a pot-belly; and when shall I have again my soft black nails, resembling the dark and humid clouds of autumn.

28. When will those tender smiles return to me, whereby I moved the great Rákshasas to my favour; and when shall I dance in my giddy circles, at the music of the tabor amidst the forests.

29. When will that big belly of mine, be filled with potfuls of fattened liquor; and be fed with heaps of the flesh and bones of dead bodies.

30. When shall I get me drunk, with drinking the blood of human gores; and become merry and giddy, until I fall fast asleep.

31. It was I who destroyed my former brilliant body, by my bad choice of austerities, and accepted this petty needlish form, like one taking the sulphate of gold, instead of that precious metal.

32. Ah! where is that huge body which filled all sides, and shone as the sable hill of Anjanágiri; and what is this puny and pinny form of the shape of a spider’s leg, and as thin and lean as a tender blade of grass.

33. The ignorant are found to throw away a golden jewel, as useless on the ground as a piece of glass; and so have I cast aside my shining body, for a bit of this blackest needle.

34. O great Vindhyá with thy hollow and snow covered caves! why dost thou not destroy thy dull elephants by thy native lions? It is I that am as silly as an elephant—gaja múrkha.

35. O my arms! which used to break down mountain peaks, why do ye fail to pluck the butter-like moon with thy moony nails?

36. O my breast! which was as fair as the side of the snowy mountain, even without my glassy ornaments; why dost thou not show thy hairs, which were as large as leeches that feed on lion’s flesh?

37. O my eyes! that used to dispel the darkness of the darkest night, and kindle the dry fuel with your glaring fire; why do ye cease to lighten the air with your effulgence?

38. O my shoulder blades! are ye broken down and levelled with the earth? or are ye crushed and smashed or mouldered and worn out by age?

39. O my moonbright face! why dost thou not shine over me with thy bright beams; resembling the everlasting light of the orb of the moon, now at an end for ever?

40. O my hands! where is your strength fled today? See ye not, how I am transformed to an ignoble needle, that is moved about by the touch of the foot of a fly?

41. Alas! the cavity of my navel, which was as deep as a well, and beset by hairs resembling rows of beautiful plants about it; and my protuberant posteriors, which likened to the bottom of the Vindhyá hills.

42. Where is that towering stature reaching to the sky, and what is this new earned contemptible form of the needle; where is that mouth, hollow as the vault of the sky, and what is this hole of the needle? Where is that heap of my flesh meat, and what is this drop of watery food? Ah! how lean have I grown, but who is to be blamed for an act of my own doing?

CHAPTER LXXII.
Fervour of Súchí’s Devotion.

Argument. Ardour of Súchí’s austerities and Indra’s Inquiry of it.

Vasishtha continued:—Afterwards Súchí became silent and motionless, and thought of resuming her austerities for the sake of regaining her long lost body.

2. With this intention she returned to the Himálayas; and there abstaining from her desire of human gore, she sat reiterating her castigations.

3. She saw in her mind her form of the needle, entering into her heart with her breathings.

4. Thus meditating on her mental form of the needle, she was wafted by her vital breath to the top of the hill, and alighted on it like a vulture from high.

5. There she remained alone and apart from all living beings, and sat amidst burning fires, with her form of an ash-coloured stone (i.e. besmeared by ashes like a yogi).

6. She sat there as a sprout of grass, springing in that dry and grassless spot; but soon faded away, to a blade of withered hay in the sandy desert.

7. She remained standing on tip-toe of her only one foot, and continued in the castigation of her own self. (Standing of the one legged needle, represented the posture of devotees standing on one leg).

8. She lightly touched the ground with her tiptoe stature, and avoiding all sidelong looks, gazed on the upper sky with her upraised face and uplifted eyes.

9. The acute point of the black iron needle, firmly preserved its standing posture by penetrating the ground; while it fed itself upon the air, which it inhaled by its uplifted mouth.

10. The scarcity of food in the forest, made it look up as in quest of some prey coming from a distance; while its lower part shaking with the wind, enticed the unwary to approach towards it.

11. The ray of light issuing as a pencil from the needle hole, became like its attendant guard on the hinder part.

12. As men are kindly disposed towards the mean, that are favourites to them; so was the needle attached to the pencil of ray, that became its constant attendant.

13. The needle had another constant companion, of its devotion in its own shadow; but the blackness of its person, made it always to remain behind the back. (The shadow of a thing ever remains behind it).

14. Thus the shadowy needle and pencil of ray, having firmly adhered themselves to the iron needle; these three have always become intimate friends, like all good people mutually assisting one another.

15. The trees and plants of the mountain forest, felt compassion for Súchí on seeing her in this plight; for who is there, that bears no sympathy for the pious devotee, or her penances and austerities?

16. The needle that was thus stuck fast to the ground by its foot, and had sprung up like some faculty of the mind; was fed with the fragrance of the fruitage, blown and borne by the breeze to its uplifted mouth.

17. The woodland gods and demigods, continued to fill its mouth with the dust; of blown and unblown flowers in the woods.

18. But it did not swallow the powdered dust of meat; which the god Indra had caused to be thrown into its mouth, for the purpose of frustrating the efficacy of its devotion.

19. Its fixity of purpose, did not permit it to swallow the delicious powder; because a person however mean he may be, is sure of success by his firmness of mind.

20. The god of winds, with his power of uprooting the mountains; was astonished to find the needle, averse to swallow the food, ministered to it in the form of the pollen of <flowers>.

21. The resolute devotee is never to be shaken from his purpose, though he is plunged in the mud or drowned in water, or scattered by the winds and thrown into the burning fire.

22. Or when he is shattered by showers of hailstones, or struck by the lightning or battered by rain drops, and intimidated by thunder claps.

23. The resolute mind is not changed in a thousand years, and the feet of the firm, like those of the drowsy and dead drunk, never move from their place.

24. The holy hermit who is devoted to his purpose, loses in time the motion of his external organs; but obtains by the exercise of his reason, the light of true knowledge in his soul.

25. Thus did Súchí gain the light of knowledge, and become a seer of the past and future. She became cleansed of the dross of her sins, and her Visúchí or impurity was turned to Súchí or purity.

26. She came to know the truly knowable, in her own understanding; and she felt true bliss in her soul, after the removal of her sins by devotion.

27. She continued for many thousand years in her austere devotion, to the great astonishment of seven times seven worlds, that got affrighted at her austerities. (The cause of their fright was, lest she should take possession of their happy states, by the merit of her devotion).

28. The great mountain was set in a blaze, by the fervour of her devotion; and that flame spread to all the worlds, like the blaze of a portentous meteor.

29. This made Indra the god of heaven, to ask Nárada respecting the cause of this intense devotion; saying “Who is it that engrosses to her the fruition of worlds, by her austere devotion”? To whom Nárada thus replied:

30. “It is Súchí, who by her continued devotion of thousands of years, has attained her highest state of enlightenment; and it is that light that now enflames all the worlds.”

31. It is Súchí’s devotion, O lord of gods, that makes the Nágás to sigh and the hills to tremble. It causes the celestials to fall down, and the sea to overflow on earth. It dries up all things, and casts to shade the bright orb of the sun itself.

CHAPTER LXXIII.
Nárada’s Relation of Súchí’s Devotion.

Argument. Description of Súchí’s austerities, and Indra’s Inquiry about them.

Vasishtha related:—Indra having learnt about the austere devotion of Karkatí, had the curiosity to know more of her through Nárada, whom he asked about the matter.

2. Indra said:—I know Súchí to have acquired her fiendish practice (of blood sucking), by means of her devotion; but who is this apish Karkatí that is so greedy of her gain (of flesh and bones).

3. Nárada replied:—It is Karkatí the malevolent fiend, that became Jíva Súchí or colic pain of the living, and assumed the shape of an iron needle as its support or fulcrum.

4. Having afterwards forsaken that prop, it entered into the human body as its landing place; and then it flew up to the heart on the vehicle of vital breath, and is seated in the car of the current air in atmosphere. (The resting place locus standi, point d’appui or powsto of the diseases of life).

5. This colic of life—Jíva Súchí, having entered into the bodies of vicious lives, passes through the canals of their entrails and the pores of their flesh, fat and blood, and then nestles as a bird in the interior part.

6. It enters the intestines with the breath of the air, and there settles in the form of flatulent colic; afterwards being seated at the end of the nyagrodha artery, it forms the plethoric colic with fulness of blood and inflammation.

7. It also enters the body through other parts and organs, and receives different names according to its situation; and then feeds itself upon their flesh and marrow (as the best food for living beings).

8. Fastened to the knots of wreathed flowers and stuck to the leafy garlands, decorating the breasts and cheeks of fond damsels, she steeps enraptured with them, on the bosoms of their loving spouses. (i.e. The menial needle is blessed in the company of her mistress).

9. She flies to the bodies of birds in wood-land retreats, which are free from worldly sorrow and strife; and flutters on the tops of flowers of the Kalpa arbours of Paradise, or rolls on beds of lotuses in the lakes.

10. She flies over the high hills of the gods, in the forms of fluttering bees; and sips the honey drops, perfumed with the fragrance of the pollen of mandara flowers.

11. She devours in the form of vultures, the entrails of the dead bodies of warriors, through the notches made in them, by blades of swords in warfare.

12. She flies up and down in the pellucid and glassy paths of the firmament, and pierces through all the pores and arteries or inlets into the human body; as the inflated winds pass in every creek and corner on all sides.

13. As the universal vital air (prána-váyu), runs in the heart of every living being, in the form of the pulsation of air; so does Súchí oscillate in every body, as it were her own habitation.

14. As the intellectual powers are lodged in every person, in the manner of blazing lamps in them; so does she reside and blaze as the mistress of every body; answering her dwelling house.

15. She sparkles as the vital spark in the particles of blood, and flows as fluidity in liquid bodies; she rolls and trolls in the bowels of living beings, as whirl pools whirl about in the bosom of the sea.

16. She rests in the milk white mass of flesh, as Vishnu reclines on his bed of the serpent Vásuki; she tastes the flavour of the blood of all hearts, as the goddess (Kálí) drinks the liquor of her goblet of wine.

17. She sucks the circulating red hot blood of hearts, as the winds absorb the internal and vivifying juice, from the hearts of plants and trees.

18. Now this living Súchí, intending to become a devotee, remains as motionless as an immovable substance, and as fixed and steady in her mind.

19. The iron-hearted needle, being now rarefied as the invisible air, is traversing to all sides, on the swift wings of winds resembling its riding horses.

20. It goes on feeding on the flesh and drinking the blood of all living beings; and carrying on its various acts of giving and receiving, and dancing and singing all along.

21. Though the incorporeal Súchí has become aeriform and invisible as vacuum, yet there is nothing which she is unable to accomplish by the powers of her mind, outstripping the swiftness of the winds.

22. But though she runs mad with her meat, and turns about giddy with her drink; yet she is curbed by fate, like an elephant in chains from running at random.

23. The living body like a running stream, moves apace with billows in its course; and the painful and destructive diseases under which it labours, are as greedy sharks lying hid underneath.

24. This frail body like the formless Súchí, being disabled by infirmity to gorge its fleshy food, begins to lament its fate, like old and sickly rich folks, for their want of hunger and appetite.

25. The body with its members, moves about like the beasts of the forest (for their prey); and it plays its parts like an actress on the stage, with goodly apparel and ornaments on her person.

26. The body is moved to and fro by its internal and external winds, and its natural weakness (immobility), is always in need of being moved by the vital airs, as the immovable fragrance requires to be wafted by the breeze.

27. Men in vain rely in mantras and medicines, in austerities and charities, and in the adoration of idols for relief; while their bodies are subject to diseases like the sea to its surges.

28. The unseen force of mobility, is soon lost in the solid body, as the light of the lamp is lost in darkness. So the living Súchí came to be lost in the iron needle, in which she had her rest. (i.e. The living body is lost and transformed to a spirit, wherein it finds its rest after death).

29. Every one aspires to a state according to his natural propensity; as the inclination of the Rákshasi led her to choose the needleship upon herself.

30. A man being tired by travelling far and wide, returns at last to take his rest at home; so the big and living Súchí turned to the form of the thin iron Súchí to execute her repose; but like ignorant people, who prefer the grosser pleasure of the body to the nicer delights of the soul; she still panted for her grosser enjoyments, that were now lost to her.

31. With the intention of satisfying her thirst, she travelled to all parts and quarters (in her form of the poor needle); but derived more of the mental pleasure of experience, than the satisfaction of her corporeal appetites.

32. When the container is in existence, it is possible to fill it with its contents and not otherwise; so one having his body, can seek and get every pleasurable object to give it delight.

33. Remembering now the past enjoyments of her former body, she became sorrowful in her mind, that was so highly pleased and satisfied with filling its belly before.

34. She was then resolved to betake herself to austere devotion, for the purpose of recovering her former body; and with this object in view, she chose for herself the proper situation for her castigations.

35. The living soul of Súchí, thought of entering into the heart of a young vulture flying in the air; and thus soared to it and rested herself in the air like that bird, by the help of her vital breath. (i.e. The greedy spirit was turned to the form of a hungry vulture to shriek and seek for carrion).

36. The vulture being thus filled with the malevolent spirit of the colic Súchí in itself, began to think of executing the purposes that Súchí had in her mind.

37. Thus the vulture bearing the insatiate Súchí within its body, flew to its intended spot on the mountain. It was driven there like a cloud by the wind, and it was in this place that Súchí was to be released from her needleship.

38. It sat there on a spot of the solitary forest in its state of asceticism, seeming to be freed from all desires of the world.

39. It stood there on one of its legs, supported on the tip of its toe and appeared as the statue of some deity, consecrated on the top of the mountain by some one in the form of Garuda.

40. There standing on one leg, supported on an atom of dust; she remained as the mountain peacock, that stands on one leg with the head raised to the sky.

41. The bird seeing the living Súchí coming out of his body, and standing on the mountain as a statue, fled away and disappeared from that place.

42. Súchí issued from the body of the bird, in the manner of the spirit coming out of it, and the intellect aspiring to higher regions; and as the particles of fragrance fly upon the wings of winds, in order to meet the breath of the nostrils to be borne into the nose.

43. The vulture fled to his own place after leaving Súchí at that place, like a porter disburthening himself of his load; and found himself relieved of his lickerish diseases on his return.

44. Now the iron Súchí, being seated in her devotion, in the form of the living Súchí; appeared as graceful as a right man engaged in the performance of his proper duty.

45. And as the formless spirit is unable to do anything, without a formal support or instrument; so the living Súchí supported herself on the tip of her toe, for performance of her devotion.

46. The living Súchí has sheathed the iron needle (in her heart), as an evil spirit (Písáchí) enwraps a Sinsapá tree; and as the winds enfold the particles of odor, which they bear away in their bosom.

47. Thenceforwards, O Indra! has she betaken herself to her protracted devotion, and passed many years in the solitary wilderness in her steady position and posture of body.

48. It now behoves you, O Indra! that art skilled in stratagems, to devise some plan, in order to delude her from her object, or else her devotion will destroy the people, you have so long preserved.

49. Vasishtha said:—Indra having heard these words of Nárada, sent Maruta (Eolus) the god of winds to her search, in all quarters of the globe.

50. The god Maruta then proceeded in quest of her, in his spiritual form of intelligence; and having traversed the etherial regions, alighted upon the nether world. The winds and all other elemental and physical powers, are believed to be endued with intelligence also; and not as mere brute forces, on account of the regular discharge of their proper functions, which they could never do without intelligence.

(Hence the imagination and adoration of the Marutgana in the elemental worship of the Veda).

51. He beheld everything instantly at a glance of his intelligence; which perceived all things at one view; as the sight of the Supreme Spirit sees through all bodies without exception or hindrance. (i.e. The sight of the spirit like its breath, sees through and supports all things).

52. His sight stretched to the Lokáloka mountain in the polar circle, far beyond the seven seas of the earth, where there is a large tract of land abounding with gems. (It is doubtful whether the polar mountain or sea abounds with gems).

53. He viewed the circle of the Pushkara continent, surrounded by a sea of sweet water; and containing mountains with their dales and valleys.

54. He next saw the Gomeda islands, surrounded by the sea of liquor with its marine animals; and the land abounding with cities and towns.

55. He beheld also the fertile and peaceful continent of Kraunchadwípa, bounded by the sweet Saccharine sea, and beset by a range of mountains.

56. Further on was the Swetadvípa (Albion island), with its subsidiary isles surrounded by the Milky (Atlantic) ocean, and having the temple of Vishnu in the midst of it (meaning perhaps the ancient Kelts to be colony of the Hindus).

57. After that appeared the sea of butter, surrounding the Kushadwípa island; and having chains of mountains and cities with buildings in them. (Butter milk &c., are fictitious names and not this really).

58. Then came the Sákadwípa in view amidst the ocean of curds, containing many countries and many large and populous cities in them. (The sákadwípa is said to be Scythia or the land of the saccae or sakas).

59. Last appeared the Jambudwípa girt by the sea of salt, having the Meru and other boundary mountains, and many countries in it. (This is Asia stretching to the polar mountains on the north and south).

60. Thus the intelligence of air (Marut), having alighted on earth upon the wings of winds, spread himself afterwards to its utmost ends with rapidity (or spread himself rapidly to its utmost limits afterwards).

61. The god of air then directed his course to Jambudwípa (Asia), and having arrived there, he made his way to the summit of the snowy mountain. (Himálaya, where Súchí was performing her devotion).

62. He saw a great desert on the highest top of the summit, which was as extensive as the expanse of the sky, and devoid both of living creatures and the vestiges of animal bodies. (i.e. There were neither any living being not fossil remains to be found on the mountain peak).

63. It was unproductive of greens or grass owing to its nighness to the sun; and was covered over with dust, like that composing this earth.

64. There spread a wide ocean of the mirage to excite the thirst, like the lucid waters of a river; and allure the longings of men by its various hues, resembling the variegated colours of rain-bow.

65. Its wide expanse reaching almost to infinity, was unmeasurable even by the regents of the quarters of heaven, and the gusts of wind, blowing upon it, served only to cover it with a canopy of dust.

66. It resembled a wanton woman, besmeared with red powder as the sunbeams, and sandal paste like the moonbeams; and attentive to the whistlings of the breeze. (Thinking them to be hissings of men).

67. The god of the winds having travelled all over the seven continents and their seas, and being tired with his long journey on the surface of the earth; rested his gigantic body which fills the infinite space in all directions, on the top of that mountain; like a butterfly resting on the twig of a tree, after its wearied flight in the air.

CHAPTER LXXIV.
Consummation of Súchí’s Devotion.

Argument. Return of the god of winds to the Indra, and his narration of the Devotion of Súchí and her desired Boon.

The god of the winds beheld Súchí standing erect, like a crest on the summit of the mountain, amidst that vast tract of the desert all around.

2. She stood upon one leg fixed in her meditation and roasted by the burning sun over her head; she was dried up to a skeleton by her continued fasting, and her belly was contracted to the shrunken skin. (i.e. She was threadbare as skin in all her body and belly).

3. Now and then, she inhaled the hot air with her open mouth, and then breathed it out, as her heart could not contain the repeated influx of air. (Respiration of air is practised by Yogis, to sustain their lives therewith for want of solid food).

4. She was withered under the scorching sunbeams, and battered in her frame by the hotter winds of the desert; yet she moved not from her stand-point, as she was relieved every night by the cold bath of moonbeams.

5. She was content with covering her head under the particles of dust, and did not like to change her state for a better fortune. (i.e. She preferred her poverty to high dignity).

6. She gave up the possession of her forest to other living beings, and lived apart from all in the form of a crest of hair. Her breathings being withdrawn to the cranium, appeared out of it as a tuft of hairs or bushes clapped on her head. (Air confined in the cranium, is said to keep the body alive for ages).

7. The god of air was astonished to see Súchí in this state; he bowed down to her and was struck with terror as he beheld her more earnestly. (The countenance of the holy is awful to the sight of the unholy).

8. He was so overawed by the blaze of her person, that he durst not ask her anything, such as:—“O saintly Súchí! why dost thou undertake thyself to these austerities”?

9. He only exclaimed, O holy Súchí, how wondrous is this sight of thy devotion! Impressed with veneration for her holiness, the god made his departure to heaven whence he came.

10. He passed the region of the clouds, and reached the sphere of the still air (sthíra váyu); and then leaving the realm of the Siddhas behind him, he arrived to the path of the sun—the ecliptic.

11. Then rising higher in his airy car, he got into the city of Indra, where he was cordially embraced by the lord of gods, for the merit of his sight of Súchí. (Visit to sacred persons and holy shrines, is believed to impart a share of holiness to the visitant).

12. Being asked what he saw, he related all that he had seen, before the assembled gods in the synod of Sakra or Indra.

13. Pavana said:—There is the King of mountains the high Himalaya, situate in the midst of Jambudwípa (in Asia); who has the lord Siva, that bears the crescent of the moon on his forehead, for his son-in-law.

14. On the north of it, is a great peak with a plain land above it, where the holy Súchí holds her hermitage, and performs her rigorous devotion.

15. What more shall I relate of her, than that she has abstained herself even of her sustenance of air, and has made a mess of her entrails coiled up together.

16. She has contracted the opening of her mouth to a needle hole, and stopped even that with a particle of dust, in order to restrain it even from the reception of a cold dewdrop for its food.

17. The fervour of her devotion, has made the snowy mountain to forsake its coldness; and assume an igneous form which it is difficult to approach. (The blaze of holiness is said to set mountains on fire, as the presence of the Holy spirit set the sacred mount of Sinai on flame).

18. Therefore let all of us rise and repair soon to the great father of creatures for redress; or know this fervent devotion of hers must prove to our disadvantage in its result.

19. Hearing these words pronounced by Pavana, the lord Indra in company with the other gods, proceeded to the abode of Brahmá, and prayed unto him for their safety.

20. Brahmá answered:—“I am going even now to the summit of the snowy Himalaya, to confer to Súchí her desired boon.” Upon this assurance of Brahmá, the gods all returned to their celestial abodes.

21. During this time Súchí became perfect in her holiness, and began to glow with the fervour of her devotion on the mountain of the immortals.

22. Súchí perceived very clearly the revolution of the time (of her castigation), by fixing her open eyes on the sun, and by counting the days by the rays of solar light penetrating the opening of her mouth:—the needle hole.

23. Súchí though flexible as a bit of thread, had yet attained the firmness of the mountain Meru, by her erect posture.

24. She beheld by the ray of sun light, which penetrated the eye of the needle, that the shadowy attendant upon her erect posture, was the only witness of her upright devotion.

25. The shadow of Súchí which was the only attendant on her devotion, hid herself under her feet for fear of the midday heat, so do people in difficulty find their best friends forsake their company in times of adversity.

26. The union of the three persons of the iron, the ascetic and shadowy Súchí, like the meeting of the three rivers (Asi, Varaná and Gangá from three sides), described a triangle in the form of the sacred city of Benares (or a delta of Gangá or the triune divinity).

27. This union of the three, like the confluence of three rivers of a Trivení (as Ganga, Yamuna and Sarasvatí), purifies the sins of men by the three different hues of their waters, viz. the blue, black and white.

28. A person becomes acquainted with the unknown cause of all, only by suchana or reasoning in his own mind; and by means of his selfconsciousness (of the truth or untruth of a thing). It is the cogitation of one’s own mind that is best guide in all things or else, O Ráma! there is no other better preceptor for men.

CHAPTER LXXV.
Súchí’s regaining her former frame.

Argument. Brahmá’s appearance, admonition and blessing to Súchí and her resuscitation to life.

Vasishtha continued:—After the lapse of a thousand years of long and painful devotion, the great father of creation (Brahmá), appeared to her under his pavilion of the sky, and bade her accept the preferred boon.

2. Súchí who was absorbed in her devotion, and her vital principle of life, remaining dormant in her, wanted the external organs of sense (to give utterance to her prayer), and remained only to cogitate upon the choice she should make.

3. She said to herself: “I am now a perfect being, and am delivered from my doubts; what blessing therefore is it, that I have need of asking (either for myself or others), beyond this state of beatitude; which I already possess in my peace and tranquility, and the bliss of contentment and self-resignation.”

4. I have got the knowledge of all that is to be known, and am set free from the web of errors; my rationality is developed, and what more is requisite to a perfect and rational being?

5. Let me remain seated as I am in my present state, I am in the light of truth; and quite removed from the darkness of untruth; what else is there for me to ask or accept?

6. I have passed a long period in my unreasonableness, and was carried away like a child, by the demon of the evil genius of earthly desires. (As a child wants to have everything he sees, not knowing whether it is good or bad for him to have it).

7. This desire is now brought under subjection by my power of ratiocination, and of what avail are all the objects of my desire to my soul? (There is nothing of any good to the soul, for nothing temporal is of any spiritual good).

8. The lord of creatures kept looking on Súchí sitting with her mind fixed in her silent meditation, and resigned to her destiny; and quite abstracted from all external sensations, and the use of her bodily organs.

9. Brahmá with the kindness of his heart, again accosted the apathetic dame, and said unto her: “Receive thy desired blessing, and live to enjoy for sometime longer on earth”.

10. Then having enjoyed the joys of life, thou shalt attain the blissful state from which thou shalt have no more to return here, and this is the fixed decree destined for all living beings on earth.

11. Be thy desire crowned with success, by merit of this devotion of thine, O best of the womankind! Resume thy former corpulence, and remain as a Rákshasí in this mountain forest.

12. Regain thy cloud-like shape whereof thou art deprived at present, and revive as a sprout from thy pinnate root, to become like a big tree growing out of its small root and little seed.

13. Thou shalt get an inward supply of serum from thy pinnate tendon, as a plant gets its sap from the seeded grain; and the circulation of that juice will cause thy growth like that of a germ from the ingrained seed.

14. Thy knowledge of truth has no fear of following into the difficulties of the world; while on the contrary, the righteousness of thy soul will lead thee like a huge cloud, that is heavy, with its pure water high in the heaven, notwithstanding the blasting gusts of wind. (i.e. The pure and contrite spirit goes on its wonted course, in spite of the tribulations of the world).

15. If by thy constant practice of Yoga meditation, thou hast accustomed thyself to a state of habitation (death like Samádhi), for thy intellectual delight, and hast there by become assimilated to the anaesthesia of thy meditation (to the state of a stock and stone).

16. But thy meditativeness must be compatible with thy worldly affairs, and the body like the breeze, is nourished best by its constant agitation. (i.e. Meditation must be joined with utility, and the body with its activity).

17. Therefore my daughter! thou dost act contrary to nature, by withstanding the action which thy nature requires; nor can there be any objection to thy slaughter of animal life under proper bounds. (Because the carnivorous are made to live upon flesh, as the omnivorous man upon all kinds of food).

18. Act therefore within the bounds of justice, and refrain from all acts of injustice in the world; and stick steadfastly to reason, if thou shouldst like to live liberated in this life. (Justice is the source of liberty, but injustice leads to bondage).

19. Saying so far, the god disappeared from below to his heavenly sphere, when Súchí said to him “be it so and I have nothing to oppose to this”. Then thinking in her mind, that she had no cause to be dissatisfied with the decree of the lotus-born Brahmá, found herself immediately in possession of her former body.

20. She came to be of the measure of a span at first, and then of a cubit; and next a full fathom in length; and increasing fastly in her height, she grew up as a tree; till at last she was of the form of a cloud. She had all the members of the body added to her instantly, in the manner of the growth of the arbour of human desire. (Our growing desires and their increase, are compared with the growth and ramifications and fructification of trees).

21. From the fibrous form of Súchí (the needle), which was without form or feature, body, blood, bones, flesh or strength, there grew up all the parts and limbs at once. Just so the fancied garden of our desire, springs up on a sudden with all its verdant foliage and fruits and flowers from their hidden state.

CHAPTER LXXVI.
Refraining from Unlawful Food.

Argument. Advice of the god of winds to Karkatí; and her resort to the Abode of Kiráta—flesh eaters.

Vasishtha continued:—Súchí the needle now became the fiend Karkatí again; and her leanness turned to bulkiness, in the manner of a flimsy cloud; assuming a gigantic form in the rainy season.

2. Now returning to her natal air and element, she felt some joy in herself; but renounced her fiendish nature by the knowledge she had gained; as a snake throws off its old slough. (She was regenerated to a new life in the very same body).

3. There seated in her lotiform posture, she continued to reflect on her future course; and relying on the purity of her new life and faith, she remained fixed as a mountain peak. (Unmoved by the stormy temptations of the world).

4. After six months of her continued meditation, she got the knowledge of what she sought; as the roaring of clouds rouses the peacock, to the sense of an approaching rain.

5. Being roused to her sense, she felt the pains of her thirst and hunger; because the nature of the body never forsakes its appetites as long as it lasts in the same state. (There cannot be a thorough change of innate nature in the same person).

6. She was sorrowful at last, not to find out what food she should take to herself; because she thought the killing of animal life for food, was unlawful and repugnant to her nature.

7. The food forbidden by the respectable and got by unjust means, must be rejected even at the expense of one’s valuable life. (Respectable men abhor the flesh of unclean animals and forbidden meat).

8. If my body, said she, should perish for want of lawful food, I do not transgress the law in that; but the guilt lies in my taking of unlawful food; for the sustenance of my life. (Hence no man is guilty of his legal gain and lawful food).

9. Whatever is not obtained according to the customary rules of society, is not worth taking; and if I should die without my proper food, or live upon improper fare, it amounts to the same thing whether I live or die (because unrighteous living is moral death).

10. I was only the mind before, to which the body is added as a base appendage. It vanishes upon the knowledge of self; hence its care and neglect are both alike. (The soul forming our true essence, must be preserved pure in expense of the impure body).

11. Vasishtha resumed:—As she was uttering these words, in silence to herself, she heard a voice in the air, coming from the god of winds, who was pleased at the renunciation of her fiendish disposition.

12. “Arise Karkatí”, it said, “and go to the ignorant and enlighten them with the knowledge thou hast gained; for it is the nature of the good and great, to deliver the ignorant from their error.

13. “Whosoever will not receive this knowledge (of lawful food), when it is imparted to him by thee, make him verily the object of thy derision, and take him as being a right meat and proper food for thee.”

14. On hearing these words she responded, “I am much favoured by thee, kind god!”; and so saying, she got up and descended slowly from the height of the craggy mountain.

15. Having passed the heights, she came to the valley at the foot of the mountain; and thence proceeded to the habitation of the Kiráta people, who inhabit the skirts at the bottom of the hills.

16. She saw those places abounding in provisions of all sorts; such as human kind and their cattle with their fodder and grass. There were vegetable as well as animal food, with various kinds of roots and plants. There were eatables and drinkables also, with the flesh of deer and fowls, and even of reptiles and insects.

17. The nocturnal fiend then walked her way, under the shade of the deep darkness of night, towards the habitation at the foot of Himálaya, in her form of the sable mount of Anjanágiri (unperceived by the inhabitants).

CHAPTER LXXVII.
Deliberation of Karkatí.

Argument. Description of the dark night. The Rákshasi’s meeting a rája and his minister. Her trial of and argumentation with them.

Vasishtha resumed:—It was a deep dark night, black as ink and as thick as tangible pitch; hiding the habitation of the Kirátas under its nigrescent umbrage. (Kirátas are the present Kirántis of the Himalayas, and the ancient Kerrhoides of Ptolemy).

2. The sky was moonless, and overcast by a veil of sable clouds; the woodlands were obscured by tamála trees, and thick masses of black clouds were flying about in the air.

3. The thick furze and bushes besetting the hilly villages, obstructed the passages by their impervious darkness, and the flitting light of fireflies gave the homesteads an appearance of the bridal night.

4. The thick darkness spreading over the compounds of houses, shut out the passage of the light of lamps, which made their way of or from the chinks of the dwelling in which they were burning.

5. Karkatí beheld a band of Pisáchis, dancing about her as her companions; but she became motionless as a block of wood, on seeing the giddy Vetálas, moving about with human skeletons in their hands.

6. She saw the sleeping antelopes by her, and the ground matted over by the thick snow falls; while the drizzling drops of dew and frost, were gently shaken by the breeze on the leaves of trees.

7. She heard the frogs croaking in the bogs, and the night ravens cawing from the hollows of trees; while the mingled noise of jocund men and women, were issuing from the inside of the houses.

8. She saw the ignis fatuus burning in the swamps, with the lustre of portentous meteors; and found the banks and bournes, thick with thorns and thistles, growing by their sides, and washed by the waters gliding below them.

9. She looked above and saw the groups of stars shining in the firmament, and beheld the forest about her shaking their fruit and flowers by the breeze.

10. She heard the alternate and incessant cries of owls and crows in the hollows of trees; and listened also the shouts of robbers in the skirts, and the wailings of the villagers at a distance.

11. The foresters were silent in their native woods, and the citizens were fast asleep in the cities; the winds were howling in the forests, and the birds were at rest in their sylvan nests.

12. Furious lions lay in their dens; and the deer were lying in their caves also. The sky was full of hoarfrost, and the woodlands were all still and quiet.

13. The lightnings flashing from amidst the dark inky clouds, resembled the reflexions of ray from the bosom of a crystal mountain. The clouds were as thick as solid clay, and the darkness was as stiff as it required to be severed by a sword.

14. Blown by the storm, the dark cloud fled like the sable Anjaná mountain in the air, and it deluged a flood of pitchy rain, like a water-fall from the bosom of a mountain.

15. The night was as dark as the pit of a coal-mine, and as jet black as the wing of the black bee—bhramara; and the whole landscape lulled to sleep, appeared as the world lying submerged under ignorance. (Sleep and ignorance are twin brothers, and a reversion of the comparison of ignorance with sleep. Such reversed similes are not uncommon in oriental poetry, as that of the moon with the beauteous face &c.).

16. In this dreadful dead of night, she saw in the district inhabited by Kirátas, a prince and his minister, wandering together in the forest.

17. The prince was named Vikrama, and was as brave and valorous as his name and conduct implied him to be. He came out undaunted from within the city, after the citizens had fallen fast-asleep.

18. Karkatí beheld them roving in the forest with the weapons of their valour and fortitude, and searching the Vetálas infesting the neighbourhood.

19. Seeing them, she was glad to think that she had at last got her proper food; but wanted to know beforehand, whether they were ignorant folks or had any knowledge of their souls, or whether their weariness under the burthen of their bodies, had exposed them to the dangers of the darksome night.

20. The lives of the unlearned (said she), are verily for their perdition in this world and the next; it is therefore meet to put an end to these, rather than leave them to live to their peril in both worlds. (The earlier the ignorant die, the sooner do they rid themselves of their miseries and responsibilities).

21. The life of the untutored is death, without spiritual knowledge, and physical death is preferable; in as much as it saves the dying soul from its accumulation of sin. (Living in the sinful world is sin, unless it is averted by spiritual knowledge).

22. It is the primeval law ordained by our prime father—the lotus-born Brahmá, that ignorant souls and those without knowledge of their selves, should become the food of the heinous. (i.e. Of voracious and envious animals, which devour the body and not the soul).

23. Therefore there is no harm in my feeding upon these two persons, who have offered themselves for my food; because it is silliness to let slip, a ready prize or proffered gift from the hand. (A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Or a self-given gift is not to be lost).

24. But lest they should prove to be men of parts and good and great souls, I cannot in that case feel disposed of my own nature, to put an end to their valuable lives.

25. I must therefore make a trial of them, and see if they are possessed of such parts; that I may decline from making my mess of them, because I feel averse to molest the intelligent.

26. For those that expect to have true glory and real happiness, with the length of their lives on earth; must always honour the learned with honorariums, adequate to their parts and desires.

27. I should rather suffer my body to perish with hunger, than destroy the intelligent for its supportance; because the soul derives more satisfaction from the counsels of the wise, than bare life without knowledge, can possibly afford.

28. The learned are to be supported even at the expense of one’s own life; because the society of the wise affords a physic to the soul (psyches iatrion), though death should deprive us of our bodies (for it ameliorates even the pangs of death).

29. Seeing me a man-eater Rákshasí, so favorably disposed to the preservation of the wise; what reasonable man is there, that must not make a breast-plate of the wise for himself. (i.e. The wise are ornaments to human beings however inhumane they may be to others of their fellow creatures. Hence the most cruel tyrants were the greatest supporters of learning).

30. Of all embodied beings, that move about on the surface of the earth, it is the man of profound understanding only, who sheds his benign influence like cooling moon-beams all around him. (The light of knowledge is compared with the gentle moonbeams).

31. To be despised by the wise is death, and to be honoured by the learned is true life; because it is the society of the sapient only, that makes the life bring forth its fruits of heavenly bliss and final beatitude.

32. I will now put a few questions for their examination, and know whether they are men of parts, or gilded on the surface with sapient looks, like copper by a chemical process.

33. Upon examination and ascertainment of the qualifications if they prove to be wiser than the examiner; in that case one should avail of their instruction, or otherwise there is no harm to make an end of them as they best deserve.