Chapter XX: The Moral of the Tale of Lílá

The goddess said:—That Bráhman whom I said before, had become a monarch on earth, is the same with thy husband, and his wife Arundhati, is no other than thyself—the best of women.

2. You two are the same pair now reigning over this realm, and resembling a pair of doves in your nuptial love, and the deities Siva and Párvati in your might.

3. I have thus related to you the state of your past lives, that you may know the living soul to be but air, and the knowledge of its reality is but an error.

4. The erroneous knowledge (derived from sense), casts its reflection in the intellect, and causes its error also (errors in the senses breed errors in the mind); and this makes you doubtful of the truth and untruth of the two states (of the sensible and intellectual worlds).

5. Therefore the question, ‘which is true and which is untrue,’ has no better solution than that all creations (whether visible or invisible, mental or ideal), are equally false and unsubstantial.

6. Vasishtha said:—Hearing these words of the goddess, Lílá was confused in her mind, and with her eyes staring with wonder, she addressed her softly.

7. Lílá said:—How is it, O goddess! that your words are so incoherent with truth, you make us the same, with the Brahmanic pair, who are in their own house, and we are sitting here in our palace.

8. And how is it possible that the small space of the room in which my husband’s body is lying, could contain those spacious lands and hills and the ten sides of the sky: (as I already saw in my trance—_Samádhi_).

9. It is as impossible as to confine an elephant in a mustard seed, and as the fighting of a gnat with a body of lions in a nut-shell.

10. It is as incredible as to believe a lotus seed containing a hill in it, and to be devoured by a little bee; or that the peacocks are dancing on hearing the roaring of clouds in a dream.

11. It is equally inconsistent to say, O great goddess of gods! that this earth with all its mountains and other things, are contained within the small space of a sleeping room.

12. Deign therefore, O goddess to explain this mystery clearly unto me; because it is by thy favour only that the learned are cleared of their doubts.

13. The goddess said:—Hear me fair lady! I do not tell thee a lie; because transgression of the law is a thing unknown to us. (The law is _nánritam vadeta_—never tell an untruth).

14. It is I that establish the law when others are about to break it; if then I should slight the same, who else is there who would observe it.

15. The living soul of the village Bráhman, saw within itself and in the very house, the image of this great kingdom, as his departed spirit now views the same in its empty vacuity. (Therefore both these states are equally ideal).

16. But you have lost the remembrance of the states of your former lives after death, as they lose the recollection of waking events in the dreaming state.

17. As the appearance of the three worlds in dream, and their formation in the imagination; or as the description of a warfare in an epic poem and water in the mirage of a _maru_ or sandy desert (are all false):

18. So were the hills and habitations which were seen in the empty space of the Bráhman’s house, which was no other than the capacity of his own mind to form the images of its fancy, and receive the external impressions like a reflecting mirror (all mere ideal).

19. All these though unreal, yet they appear as real substances on account of the reality of the intellect, which is seated in the cavity of the inmost sheath of the body and reflects the images.

20. But these images, which are derived from the remembrance of unreal objects of the world, are as unreal as those objects which cast their reflexions in the intellect; just as the waves rising in the river of a mirage, are as unreal as the mirage itself.

21. Know this seat (sadana) of yours, which is set in this closet (_kosha_) of the house, as well as myself and thyself and all things about us, to be but the reflections of our intellect only, without which nothing would be perceptible, as to one who is devoid of his intellect.

22. Our dreams and fallacies, our desires and fancies, as also our notions and ideas, serve as the best evidences, that afford us their light for the understanding of this truth: (that nothing is true beside the subjective mind, which creates and forms, produces and presents all objects to our view).

23. The spirit of the Bráhman resided in the vacuity of his house (the body), with the seas and forests and the earth (_i.e._ their impressions) within itself, as the bee abides in the lotus.

24. Thus the habitable globe with every thing it contains, is situated in a small cell in one corner of the intellect, as a spot of flimsy cloud in the firmament.

25. The House of the Bráhman was situated in the same locality of the intellect, which contains all the worlds in one of its atomic particles.

26. The intelligent soul contains in every atom of it, unnumbered worlds within worlds, enough to remove your doubt; of the Bráhman’s viewing a whole realm within the space of his intellect.

27. Lílá asked:—How can the Bráhmanic pair be ourselves, when they are dead only eight days before, and we have been reigning here for so many years?

28. The goddess replied:—There is neither any limit of space or duration, nor any distance of place or length of time in reality: hear me now tell you the reason of it.

29. As the universe is the reflexion of the divine mind, so are infinity and eternity but representations of himself.

30. Attend to what I tell you about the manner in which we form the idea of time, and its distinct parts of a moment and an age, in the same way as we make the distinction of individualities in me, thee and this or that person (which are essentially the same undivided spirit and duration).[14]