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.