The
goddess replied:—Know O king that after the fit of unconsciousness attending
your death was over, your soul continued to remain in the emptiness of the same
place where you still reside. This royal pavilion, where you think yourself
living, is situated in the empty space within the house of the brahmin in that
hilly district.
It
is a false notion of your mind, which you have gained by your habitual mode of thinking,that
you are born in your present state of the race of Ikshvaku. Mere imagination
has made you suppose yourself to be named so and so, and that such and such
persons were your ancestors; that you had been a boy of ten years; that
your father became an ascetic in the woods and left you governing the realm;
that you have subjugated many countries under your dominion and are now
reigning as the lord paramount over them; and that you are ruling on earth
with these ministers and officers of yours, observing sacrificial rites and
justly ruling your subjects.
You
think that you have passed seventy years of your life and that you are now
beset by very formidable enemies, and that having waged a furious battle, you
have returned to this tent of yours where you are now seated and intend to
adore the goddesses who have become your guests here. You are thinking that
these goddesses will bless you with your desired object, because one of them
has given you the power of recollecting the events of your former births; that
these goddesses have opened your understanding like the blossom of a lotus, and
that you have the prospect of getting rid of all questions; that you are now at
peace and rest, and enjoy the solace of your solitude; and that your long
continued error (of this world) is now removed forever.
You
remember the many acts and pleasures of your past life in the body of King
Padma before you were snatched away by the hand of death. You now perceive in your
mind that your present life is only a shadow of the former, as it is the same
wave that by its rise and fall carries one onward. The constant current of the
mind flows like a river and leads a man, like a weed, from one whirlpool to
another. The course of life now runs alone as in dreaming, and then accompanied
by the body as in the waking state, both of which leave their traces in the
mind at the hour of death.
The
sun of consciousness being hidden under the mist of ignorance, there arises a
network of a false world which makes a moment appear like a hundred years. Our
lives and deaths are mere phantoms of imagination, just like we imagine houses
and towers in aerial castles and icebergs. The world is an illusion, like the
delusion of moving banks and trees to a passenger in a vessel on water, or a
rapid vehicle on land, or like the trembling of a mountain or quaking of the
earth to one affected by a convulsive disease. As one sees extraordinary
things in his dream, such as the decapitation of his own head, so he views the
illusions of the world that can hardly be true.
Continued….
Love.
