The Hundred Rudras: A Hundred Worlds of One Mind

A Dream Within a Dream

Vasistha had been speaking of dreams. “A dream makes something out of nothing,” he said, “and what it makes is nowhere in the world; only ignorance makes it seem to be there. In the three worlds we see wonders of this kind, fire burning in water like the fire under the sea, cities standing in the void as birds and stars stand in the sky, a lotus in a stone, a tree with no earth under it. In a dream a great many things are made and unmade within a minute, and they are as unreal as one’s own death in a dream. A heavy stone flies through the air when the winged mountain does. The dream is unreal although it looks real, because what is real exists and what is unreal does not, and yet every being in the world looks on this dreaming creation as real, exactly as the dreamer takes his dream for reality. As a stray deer falls into the pit again and again for the green grass growing in it, so the ignorant man falls again and again into the pit of this world.”

“Hear me, Rama, tell the story of a mendicant who fostered one desire in his mind and wandered through many migrations of his soul because of it. There was once a great mendicant who gave his life to holy devotion and spent his days keeping the rules of his order, owning nothing and living on what was given. In the intensity of his samadhi his mind was purged of all its desires, and it took the shape of the thing it meditated on, as sea water takes the shape of its waves.”

“One day he was sitting on his seat after his meditation had ended, intent on some sacred duty of his order, when a thought happened to pass over his clear mind, the way the shadow of a cloud crosses the midday sky. He looked into the thought that had risen of itself: that he might reflect, for his pleasure, on the various conditions of common people and the different ways they live. With that his mind passed from the contemplation of himself and his God to the contemplation of another person, and he lost the calm composure of his mind, as a quiet sea is thrown into confusion by a whirlpool or a sudden wind.”

“Then he thought of becoming an imagined man of his own choosing, and in an instant he was that man. He thought, ‘I am Jivata.’”

“Jivata, the imagined man, now roamed like a dreamer through the streets of the imaginary city he had raised for himself, as a sleeping man builds his houses in the air of his dream. He drank his fill whenever he pleased, as a giddy bee sips honey from the cups of lotuses; he grew plump and hearty on his sports, and he slept soundly, having nothing to care about.”

A Life Dreams the Next

“In his sleep Jivata saw himself as a Brahmin, a man content with his studies and the performance of his religious duties, and as he saw himself so he was transformed into that very state, as a man is carried from one place to another at a thought. The good Brahmin kept his daily ritual, and one day he fell into a deep trance and dreamed that he was doing the duties of the day, as a seed hidden in its shell goes on inwardly with its act of growing. In that dream the Brahmin saw himself changed into a chieftain, and the chief ate and drank and slept like any other man.”

“The chief, in his turn, dreamed himself a king who ruled the earth as far as the horizon, hung about with every kind of enjoyment as a creeper is studded with flowers. He was overfond of his courtesans, and once, when this prince felt himself at ease and fell into a sound sleep free of every care, he saw the consequences that his actions would bear, as the effect is tied to its cause and the flowers are what the tree is coming to. He saw his own soul take the form of a heavenly maid, the nymph he had prized above everything in his heart, as the pith of a plant puts itself forth in flowers and fruit. The heavenly maid, lulled to sleep by her weariness, prized the trembling eyes of the timid deer above her own heavenly form and station, and she saw herself turn into a deer, as a calm ocean finds itself stirred into eddies and waves.”

“The timorous fawn with her restless eyes fell into a sound sleep one day and saw herself transformed into a creeping plant, the very one she loved to browse on in her pasture. The crooked beasts of the field and the creepers of the forest have their own sleep and their own dreams, made of what they saw and heard and felt while awake. The creeper came in time to be beautiful with fruit and flower and leaf, and formed a bower for the seat of the goddess of the woods. It hid in its heart the wishes that grew in it, as a seed hides in its embryo the tree that is to come, and at last it saw in its own inward consciousness how full it was of frailty and failing. It had rested a long time in its sleep, and growing disgusted with its drowsy dullness, it thought of being the flitting bee that was its constant guest, the one it had fed on its pollen, and found itself at once changed into a fluttering bee.”

“The bee roved at pleasure over the tender and blossoming creepers of the forest and settled on the petals of blooming lotuses, as a fond lover courts his mistresses. It went about the blossoms, which gleamed like pearls in the air, and drank the sweet juice from the cups of the flowers as a lover sips from the ruby lips of the beloved. He fell in love with the lotus of the lake and sat silent on its thorny stalk above the water, for such is the fondness of fools even for what hurts them. Elephants often came to that lake and tore up and trampled the beds of lotuses, because it pleases the malignant to lay waste the fair works of God. The fond bee met the fate of the lotus it doted on and was crushed under the tusk of an elephant, as rice is ground under the teeth. And the little bee, seeing the big body and the might of the mighty elephant, took a fancy to be such a creature, and by imagining himself one he was instantly converted into one of the kind.”

“In the end the elephant fell into a hollow pit, deep and dry as the dried bed of a gulf, as a man falls into the deep and empty ocean of this world with its darkness closed over him. That elephant was the favorite of a prince, for he defeated the forces of his enemies, charging about at random with his giddy might like the lawless Daitya robbers who wander by night. Then he fell under the swords of the enemy, pierced all over his body by their deadly darts, as the haughty egoism of the living body drops down in the soul under the wound of right reason. The dying elephant had been used to seeing swarms of bees fluttering over the trunks of elephants and sipping the ichor that ran from them, and he had long cherished the desire of being a bee. Now he came to be one.”

“The bee rambled at large among the flowering creepers of the forest and went back again to the bed of lotuses in the lake, because it is hard for fools to be rid of a fond desire, even one that is hedged about with danger. In the end the sporting bee was trampled and crushed under the feet of an elephant, and it became a goose, through its long association with a goose that lived in that lake.”

“The goose passed through many lives, until it was a gander at last and sported with the geese in the lake. So every birth followed the desire that was held at the end of the one before it: the Brahmin out of Jivata’s dream, the chief out of the Brahmin’s, the king out of the chief’s, the nymph out of the king’s fondness, the deer out of the nymph’s, the creeper out of the deer’s, the bee out of the creeper’s, the elephant out of the bee’s envy, the bee again out of the elephant’s long habit, and the goose out of the bee’s companion. Not one of them remembered the one before.”

Brahma’s Swan

“Among the geese of that lake it came to hear the name of the gander that serves as the vehicle of Brahma, and from then on it fostered the idea of being that bird, as the yolk of an egg fosters the feathered fowl inside it. While it nursed this strong desire it grew old and wasted with disease, as a piece of wood is eaten up by the worms bred in it, and it died with the consciousness of being the bird of Brahma. In its next birth it was born as the great hansa of that god.”

“The hansa lived there in the company of the wise, and from watching the ways of worldly beings it became enlightened. It continued for ages in its liberation, and cared for nothing to come.”

“This bird, which sported beside the stalk of the lotus that is Brahma’s seat, once went to the city of Rudra with his god on his back, and there it saw the god Rudra face to face. Seeing Rudra it thought itself to be Rudra, and the figure of the god was impressed on its mind at once, like the reflection of an object in a mirror. Full of Rudra, it quit the body of the bird as the fragrance of a flower forsakes the calyx, mixes with the breeze and flies off into the open air. He passed his time happily in that place, in the company of the attendants and the various orders of divinities who wait on Rudra.”

“This Rudra, full now of the best knowledge of divinity and spirit, looked back in his understanding into the accounts of his earlier lives, which were almost past counting. Gifted with clear sight, he was astonished at the naked truths that appeared to him like sights in a dream, and he recounted them to himself. ‘How wonderful is this illusion spread all about us, which fascinates the world with its magic wand. It shows plain untruth as positive truth, as the dreary desert shows clear water in the sunbeams spread over its sterile sands. I remember well my first state as pure intellect, and its conversion into mind, and how it was changed from supremacy and omniscience to the bondage of a limited body. By its own desire the living soul took on a material body formed and fashioned to its fancy, like a picture drawn in paint, and in one of its earlier births it became a mendicant in my person, when it was unattached to the objects spread out around it. That mendicant sat in his devotion, holding every limb of his body in check, and began to reflect on outward things with great pleasure in his mind. He buried all his former thoughts in oblivion and thought only of the thing he had set himself to reflect on, and the thought so engrossed and worked on his mind that no other thought could rise in it. Whatever appears in the mind offers itself alone to the view and supplants the traces of the past, as the brown of fading autumn supersedes the green of spring, as a man come to maturity forgets the helpless state of his boyhood and gives no thought to his approaching decline. So the mendicant became the Brahmin Jivata by his fallible and fickle desire, which led him to wander from one body to another, as little ants go into the holes of houses and things. Fond of Brahminhood and reverent toward Brahmins in his mind, he became the person he wished for in his own body, because reality and unreality have the power of displacing each other, and the stronger of the two prevails. The Brahmin next obtained the chieftainship, from his strong leaning toward it, just as a tree bears fruit by continually drawing up the moisture of the earth. Wanting to dispense justice and settle all legal affairs, the general wished for royalty and had his wish fulfilled by becoming a prince; and the prince, overfond of his courtesans, was transformed into the heavenly nymph he prized above everything in his heart. The celestial dame prized the trembling eyes of the timid deer above her heavenly form and station, so she was soon changed into an antelope in the woods, doomed to graze as a miserable beast for her foolish choice. The fawn, fond of browsing on tender blades and leaves, became at last the very creeping plant that had crept into the crevice of her greedy mind. The creeper, long used to doting on the bee that kept it company, found in its consciousness that it was that insect, once its vegetable form was destroyed. And though it knew well enough that it had been crushed under the elephant together with the lotus it lived in, it was fool enough to take the form of the bee again, for the pleasure of roving about the world.’”

“‘Led in this way through a hundred different forms,’ he said, ‘I have at last become this self-same Rudra, and it is all because of the capriciousness of my erratic mind in this changing world. So I have wandered the many-colored paths of life in this wilderness of the world, and I have roamed through many regions of air as if I trod on solid and substantial ground. In one of my several births I went by the name of Jivata, in another I was a great and respected Brahmin, then quite another person again, and then I found myself a ruler and lord of the earth. I had been a drake in the lotus bush, and an elephant in the valleys of the Vindhya; I had been a stag in the form of my body and the fleetness of my limbs. After I first fell away from my godly state I was still settled in the state of a devotee, devoted to divine knowledge and practicing the rites that belonged to my position, and in that state I passed very many years and ages; many a day and night and season and century glided unnoticed over me. But I fell away again and again from my accustomed course, and as often I was subjected to new births and new forms, until at last I was changed into the hansa that is Brahma’s vehicle, and that was by virtue of my former good conduct and good company. The settled habit of a living being has to come out, and nothing can hinder it; it may be held back through many intermediate births, even for a thousand years, yet it has to come and lay hold of the person some time or other. It is only by accident that one has the blessing of good company in life, and then the inborn want may be restrained for a time, yet it is sure to break out violently in the end, in defiance of every check and rule. But he who gives himself to good society only, and strives always to be built up in what is good and great, is able to destroy the evil propensities bred in him, because the desire to be good is what actually makes one so. Whatever a man is used to doing or thinking about constantly, in this life or in the next state of his being, appears as a reality to him in the waking dream of his day, as the unreal appears real in the sleeping dream of his night. The thoughts that occupy our minds set our bodies to do the works they wish for, and since these works bring some passing good and also evil with them, it is better to restrain and repress the rise of such tumultuous thoughts than to cherish them for our pleasure or our pain. It is only the thought in our minds that makes us take our bodies for ourselves, and that stretches wide this world of unrealities, as the encased seed sprouts and spreads itself into a bush. The world is thought made visible, a seen form of the thought that sees it, and nothing more in reality besides this phantasm and this illusion of our sight. The illusive appearance of the world presents itself to our eyes like the many colors of the sky; it is by ignoring it that we are able to wipe those tints from our minds. It is an unreal appearance displayed by the supreme Essence as a real existence, at his pleasure only, and so it can do no harm to anyone. I rise now and then to look into all these varieties in nature for my own pleasure and curiosity, and I have the true light of reason in me, by which I discern the one unity quite apart from all the varieties.’”

Returning to the Mendicant’s Body

“When he had gone over all of it, the incarnate Rudra came back to his former state and turned his thought to the condition of the mendicant, whose body was lying like a dead corpse on the barren ground where he had sat down to meditate.”

“He woke the mendicant and raised his prostrate body by pouring his own intelligence into it, and the revived Bhikshu came to understand that all his wanderings had been hallucinations of his mind. Finding himself the same as the Rudra standing in front of him, and the same as all the bygone ones he now recollected, he was astonished to think how he could be one and so many, though it is no wonder to the intelligent, who know very well that one man acts many parts in a life.”

“Then Rudra and the mendicant rose from their seats and set out for the dwelling of Jivata, which lay in a corner of the sphere of the intellect, this whole world of ours lying inside the divine mind. They passed over many continents and islands, provinces and districts, until they arrived at the dwelling of Jivata and found him lying there with a sword in his hand, asleep and as insensible as a dead body. Rudra laid aside his bright celestial form in order to enter that earthly house of the dead. They brought him back to life and intelligence by imparting to him a portion of their own spirit and intellect, and so this one soul was displayed in the triple forms of Rudra, Jivata and the mendicant. With all their intelligence they remained ignorant of one another, and they marveled to look at each other in mute astonishment, as if they were figures in a painting.”

“Then the three went together on their aerial course to the air-built house of the Brahmin, who had raised his baseless fabric in empty air, and which resounded with empty sounds all around it. They passed through many regions of air, barren tracts and populous ones, until at last they found the heavenly residence of the Brahmin. They saw him sleeping in his house, the members of his family around him, and his Brahmani with her arms folded about his neck, as if unwilling to part with her dead husband. They woke his drowsy intelligence by means of their own, as a waking man rouses a sleeping one by his own wakefulness. From there they went on their pleasant journey to the realms of the chief and the prince, which lay in the bright regions of their intellectual sphere, lit by the radiance of the intellect. They came to that region and to the very spot, and they saw the haughty chief lying on his bed soft as a lotus. He lay with his gold-colored body beside the partner of his bed, who was golden too, as a honey-sucking bee lies in the cell of a lotus folded in the embrace of his mate. His mistresses hung about him like the tender stalks and tufts of flowers that hang from a tree, and a belt of lighted lamps encircled him, as a golden plate is studded round with brilliant gems. They woke him quickly by infusing their own spirit and intelligence into his body and mind, and then they sat together, marveling at each other as the self-same man in so many forms. Next they went to the palace of the prince, and when they had woken him with their intelligence they all roamed about the different parts of the world.”

“They came at last to the hansa of Brahma, and all of them being transformed into that form in their minds, they all became the one Rudra Personality in a hundred persons. So the one intellect is represented in different forms and shapes according to the various inclinations of minds, like so many figures in a painting; such is the unity of the deity represented as different personalities by the various tendencies of minds. Those hundred Rudras are the forms of the uncovered intellect, unclouded by the mists of error, and they are acquainted with the truths of all things in the world and with the secrets of all hearts. There are a hundred and some hundreds of Rudras who are known as very great beings in the world, and among them there are eleven only who are set over as many worlds.”

“All living beings who have not woken to reason are ignorant of the identity of one another, Rama; they see each other in different lights and never in the same one, and they are not far-sighted enough to see any world except the one nearest to them. Wise men see the minds of others, and all things, rise in their own minds like waves rising in the sea, while unenlightened minds lie dormant in themselves like inert stones and blocks. As waves mix with one another by the fluidity of their waters, so the minds of the wise unite by the solubility of their understandings. In all the multitudes of living beings presented to our sight in this world, we find the one unvarying element of the intellect diffused through all of them, making the unreal appear real to the view. This real but invisible entity of the Divine intellect remains forever, after all the unreal but visible appearances have vanished into nothing, as an empty space remains after a thing is removed from its place, and a hollow after the ground is dug. As you can well conceive the existence of the five elemental principles in nature, so you can comprehend the omnipresence of the Divine intellect, which is the ground those elements stand on. As you see statues and images carved in stone and wood and set in the hollows of rocks and trees, so you should see all these figures in the hollow space of the universe as set in the self-same intellect of the omnipresent Deity. The knowledge of the phenomenal world is the bondage of the soul, and the ignoring of it conduces to its liberation; do as you like, toward the one or the other. It is by your indifference to both that you avoid them both. What is lost by its disappearance, like our friends and our property, is worth neither seeking nor sorrowing for when it is gone; what is gained of itself, in our calm and quiet, without anxiety or effort on our part, is truly reckoned our best gain. As the wave is the agitation of the water, so this creation is an oscillation of the divine intellect, and the only difference between them is that the one is produced among the elements of nature and the other by the divine will; the waves rise in conjunction with existing elements at certain spots and times, and the world was produced wholly without the joining of elemental bodies, which did not exist at its creation. The shining worlds shine with the light of the divine intellect, in which they sit as thoughts sit in consciousness; it is beyond the power of speech to define what it is, and yet the Veda expresses it in the words, It is the supreme soul and perfect felicity. So the world is the form of its consciousness in the divine intellect, and the two are no more different from one another than words from their meanings; the world is called the undulation of the Divine spirit, and only the ignorant object, saying that the wave and the water are two different things.”

Why They Were Called a Hundred

Rama wanted the rest of it. “Tell me what became of the many forms the mendicant saw in his dream. Did Jivata, the Brahmin, the gander and the others return to themselves, or did they remain Rudras for ever after?” “They all remained with Rudra,” Vasistha said, “as parts and compositions of himself, and being enlightened by him they wandered all about the world and rested content in themselves. They watched with Rudra the magic scenes that were displayed before them, until at last he dismissed them from his company to return to their own states and places.”

“‘Go now to your own places,’ Rudra told them, ‘and there enjoy your fill with your families, and come back to me after some time, when you have completed the course of your enjoyments and sufferings in the world. Then you will become parts of myself and remain as my attendants, to grace my residence, until at last we return to the supreme at the end of time and are absorbed in the last of all.’ So saying, the lord Rudra vanished from their sight and mixed into the midst of the Rudras, who view all the worlds in their enlightened intellects.”

“Then Jivata and the others went back to their own residences, where each has his share of domestic happiness to take in the company of his family, for his allotted time. When they have worn out and thrown off their mortal frames at the end of their limited periods, they will be raised to the rank of Rudras in heaven, and they will appear as luminous stars in the sky.” Rama stopped him there. “All those forms of Jivata and the others were creations of the empty imagination of the mendicant. I cannot understand how they could be beings at all, when there is no substance in imaginary things.”

“The truth of an imagination lies partly in our consciousness and partly in our representation of the image,” Vasistha said. “The imagery, the giving of a false shape to anything, is as untrue as any nothing in nature; and yet what we are conscious of must be true, because our consciousness comprehends everything in it. So whatever is seen in a dream, or presented to us by imagination, is impressed on our consciousness at all times and forever. A man who is carried from one country to another, and from there to some other place again, has no knowledge of the distance of his journey unless he is conscious of its length and its duration in space and time; in the same way we are ignorant of how long our dream lasts, and of our passing from one dream into another, because we are not conscious of it in our sleep. It is our consciousness, then, that contains all the things the intellect presents to it, and it is from our intellect that we have knowledge of anything, because the intellect is full of knowledge and pervades everywhere. Imagination, desire and dream are one and the same thing, each producing the next, and all of them lodged in the cell of the intellect; their objects are obtained by our intense application to them. Nothing is had without practice and meditation on it, and men of enlightened mind gain their objects by their Yoga alone. Such adepts see the objects of their pursuit in every place, as the god Shiva does and the other Siddha yogis. That was my own aim and attempt as well, and it was not crowned with success. I failed for want of fixed resolve; I attended to both sides, and so I failed in both. It is only the firm resolution of one mind upon one point that gives success in any undertaking. A man walking south cannot arrive at his house in the north, and so it is with those who pursue their aims, which they know well enough cannot be reached without firm determination. Whoever is resolved to gain his desired object must fix his view on the object before him; the mind fixed on the object in view brings the desire into effect. So the mendicant, having the demigod Rudra as the sole object in his view, was assimilated into the very form of his wish, because whoever is intent on one object removes all duality from before him. The other imaginary forms of the mendicant were all different persons in their different spheres, and they had obtained their several forms according to their respective desires, from one state to the next. They neither knew nor looked on one another; all of them had their thoughts and their sight fixed on Rudra alone, because those who are awakened to spiritual knowledge keep their sight on their final liberation, while unenlightened mortals are subjected to repeated births by the repetition of their wishes. It was by the will of Rudra that he took this one form upon himself and many others, just as he wills to become a Vidyadhara in one place and a pandit in another.”

“This instance of Rudra serves as an example of the efficacy of intense thought and practice for all men, who may become one thing or another, or many more, learned or ignorant, according to their thought and conduct. A man has his manhood and his godhead too, by his manly and his godlike actions at different times and places, and to be both at one and the same time demands far greater ability and energy of mind and body. The living soul, being one with the Divine, has all the powers of the Divine implanted in it, the infinite grafted into the finite; it is of the same nature by its very nature. The living soul expands and contracts in its life and death as the Divine soul evolves and withdraws in creation and dissolution; but the Divine soul destroys no soul, because it is the soul of souls and the sum of all souls, and so anyone who would be godly must refrain from slaughter. So the yogis and yoginis go on discharging their sacred rites as law and usage enjoin, and they remain in this world or rove about in others at their own free will. A yogi is seen in several forms at once, in this world and in the next, according to his desert and the merit of his actions. The great yogi and warrior Kartavirya Arjuna was the terror of the world, as though he were everywhere at once, while he stayed quietly at home. The god Vishnu appears in human forms on earth while he sleeps at ease on the milky ocean, and the yoginis of heaven hover over the animal sacrifices on earth while they live in their groups in the ethereal sphere. Indra appears on earth to receive the oblations of men while he sits on his heavenly seat on high, and Narayana takes the forms of a thousand Ramas upon himself in his conflict with the myriads of Rakshasa legions. So did one Krishna become a hundred, to receive the obeisance of his reverent princes, and he appears as a thousand in the company of many thousand monarchs in the Kuru assembly. So the god became incarnate in many forms, with parts and particles of his own spirit, for the preservation of the world, and the one lord became many in a moment in the company of his mistresses.”

“In this manner the forms of Jivata and the others, the creatures of the mendicant’s imagination, retired at Rudra’s command to the particular dwellings of their own desires. There they enjoyed all their delights for a long time, until they entered the abode of Rudra, where they became the attendants of the demigod and remained in his train for a great length of time. They stayed in the company of Rudra, dwelling in the groves of the evergreen and ever-blossoming kalpa creepers of paradise, blooming with clusters of jeweled florets, roving at pleasure to different worlds and to the celestial city of Shiva on the Kailasa mountain, sporting in the company of heavenly nymphs, and wearing the crowns of immortality on their heads.”

Vasistha Searches Through the Night

Vasistha drew the lesson out of it. “As the mendicant saw this passing scene of error in his mind, so it is with all living beings: they look on their past lives and actions as things apart from themselves, as the lives of other men. The past lives, actions and deaths of all reflective souls are imprinted in them as fast as any thought is preserved in the retentive mind and the empty intellect. Distant and separate things are mingled together in the present sphere of one’s soul, and all the persons appear as distinct figures in the dream. The human soul, though it is a form of the divine, is enclosed in its frail and mortal body and doomed to misery until its final liberation from birth and body. So I have told you the fate of all living souls in the tale of the mendicant Bhikshu. Know, Rama, that the souls of all of us, like the mendicant’s, are set vibrating and moved by the impulse of the supreme spirit, and are fallible in their nature even so, falling from error to error every moment, as we find in our dreams. As a stone falling from a rock drops lower and lower to the ground beneath, so the living soul, once fallen from its height in the supreme spirit, descends lower and lower to the lowest pit. Now it sees one dream, and then it passes from that into another, and rolling forever in its dreaming sleep it never finds anything substantial at all. Sometimes the soul obscured under this illusion of errors comes to the light of truth, either by the guidance of some good instructor or by the light of its own intuition, and then it is released from the wrong notion of its personality in the body and comes to the true knowledge of itself.” Rama broke in. “What an impenetrable gloom of error spreads over the human soul and makes it rest in the mist of its errors, as a sleeping man enjoys the scenery of his dreams. It is shrouded in the thick darkness of the night of false knowledge, and it falls into the pit of illusion that lies across the whole world. What a monstrous error, to take a thing for our own which in reality belongs to no one except the lord and master of all. Explain to me where this error takes its rise, and how the mendicant, with his share of good and right understanding, could fall into the error of wishing himself to be another, who was as frail and mortal as himself. And tell me also, you who know everything, whether he is still living or not.”

“I will explore the regions of the three worlds in my samadhi tonight,” Vasistha said, “and tell you tomorrow morning whether the mendicant is living or not, and where he is at present.” As the sage said this, the royal garrison tolled the trumpet of the departing day with a beat of drums, and the sound filled the sky like the roar of the clouds at the end of the world. The princes and the citizens assembled in the court threw handfuls of flowers at his feet, as trees let fall their flowers on the ground when the scented breeze shakes them. They honored the great sages too, and rose from their seats, and the assembly broke up with salutations on every side. Then all the residents of earth and air went to their own homes with the setting sun and discharged the duties of the day’s end, as the sastras ordain, each performing the service his own liturgy prescribes and in which he places his faith. All the mortals and celestials who had made up Vasistha’s audience began to reflect on what he had said, and the night passed as short as a moment for some and as long as an age for others. When morning rose with the returning duties of men, and set every being of heaven and earth to the morning services, the court reopened to receive the audience, who gathered with greetings to one another and salutations to their superiors.

When Vasistha and Vishvamitra had taken their seats in the court hall, the groups of celestials and the siddhas of the air met there, with the monarch of the earth and the chiefs of men. Then Rama and Lakshmana came in with their companions, and the court shone like a clear lake of lotus beds unshaken by the gentle breeze and brightened by moonbeams glistening across it. The sire of sages opened his mouth unasked, without waiting for anyone to request it, because the wise are kind-hearted and ready to give out their knowledge of their own accord. “Rama, last night I went to see the mendicant, with the all-seeing eye of my inner vision, after a long time. I turned it over in my mind and wandered wide and far to find out where that man was, and so I traversed all the continents and the islands and passed over every hill and mountain on earth. My whole mind ran on the search, and I could meet nowhere with a mendicant of that description, because it is impossible to find in the outer world the fictions of our castle built in the air.”

“Then, in the last watch of the night, I ran in my mind over the regions of the north, as the fleet winds fly over the waves of the ocean. There I saw the vast and populous country of Jina, lying beyond the farthest boundaries of Valmika, and in it a beautiful city that its inhabitants call Vihara. There lives a mendicant named Dirghadrik, the far-sighted, whose head is silvered over with age, and who keeps up his close meditation shut inside his homely, lovely cottage. He is used to sitting there in his meditative mood for three weeks together at a time, and he keeps the door of his cell fast shut, for fear of being disturbed in his silent devotion by the intrusion of outsiders; his dependants are kept out of doors all the while he is absorbed. So he has passed his three weeks of deep meditation in seclusion, and it is now a thousand years that he has been sitting in this manner, in communion with his own mind alone. In olden times there was a mendicant of his kind, as I have already related to you; this one is the living instance of that sort, and we do not know where or when a third like him may be found to exist.”

“I was long in quest, like a bee in search of flowers, to find such another in the womb of this lotus of an earth, with every possible inquiry on my part. I passed beyond the limit of the present world and pierced through the mist of the creations to come, and there I met with what I sought, a likeness of the present one. As I looked into the world that lies in the womb of the future, deposited in the intellectual sphere of Brahma, I met with a third one, resembling Brahma in his conduct. And passing through many worlds one after another, I saw many things in the futures that are not in being in the present world. There I saw the sages who are now sitting in this assembly, and many more Brahmins too, some of the nature of these present and some different from them. There will be this Narada with his present course of life, and also differing from it, and so there will be many others, with their various modes of life. So there will appear this Vyasa and this Shuka, and these, Shaunaka, Pulaha and Kratu, will reappear in creations to come with their very same natures and characters. The same Agastya and Pulastya, the self-same Bhrigu and Angiras, all of them and all the others, will come again to existence with their very forms and traits. They will be born and reborn, sooner and later, as long as they are under the subjection of this delusion of being born again and living again, and they will keep their similar births and modes of life, like all the others who are to be reborn in this world or the next. So the souls of men revolve in the world again and again, like waves rolling forever in the waters of the sea; some of them keep their very same forms, and others come back very nearly so. Some are slightly altered in their figures, and others, varying entirely in their forms, never regain their original likeness; so this prevailing error of regeneration deludes even the wise into repeated births. And what is the long meditation of twenty-one days and nights of the mendicant, when a moment’s thought of ours, and the results of our bodily actions, breed endless births and transformations? Where is the reality of these forms, which are mere conceptions of the mind, ideas and reflections growing ripe with their repetition until they appear to the sight as full-blown flowers, like the water lily at morning beset by the busy murmur of humming bees? The gross form is produced from pure thought, as a pile of flaming fire is kindled from a minute spark or a single ray of sunlight; such is the formation of the whole fabric of the world. All things are manifest as particles of the divine reflection, and each particle shows a variety of parts within it, and neither these nor those are nothing at all: they all exist in the universal, which is the cause of all causes and the source of all sources.”

Dasharatha had heard enough to want the man in front of him. “Let these attendants of mine go at once to the cell of the mendicant,” the king said, “rouse him from his trance, and bring him here into my presence.” Vasistha answered him. “The body of that mendicant is lying lifeless on the ground now. It is pale and cold and daubed with dirt, and there is no jot of vitality left in it. His life has fled from his body like the scent from the lotus of the lake; he is liberated from the bond of this life, and he is subject no more to the cares of this world. It is now a whole month since his servants opened the latch of his door, and they stand at a distance looking at his emaciated frame. They will take the body out and immerse it in water, and then, having anointed it, they will set it up for their adoration, as they do an idol of a god. Freed from his body in this way, the mendicant cannot be brought back to his senses, which have entirely quit their functions in his mortal frame.”

“It is hard to escape the enchanting delusion of the world as long as one labors under the darkness of his ignorance, and it is easily avoided by one’s knowledge of the truth at all times. The fabrication of the world is as untrue as the making of ornaments out of gold; it is the error of taking the form for the substance that appears as the cause of creation. This delusion of the world sits in the supreme soul as the rows of waves are seen to roll on the surface of the calm waters of the sea, and so it is said in the very words of the Vedas, that the moving worlds are the fluctuation of the Divine Soul. The intelligent soul, taking the form of the living soul, sees the phenomenal world as one sees one dream after another, and all of it vanishes when he wakes to sense and right reason. As every man of understanding sees the original in its image, so the man of reason sees the archetype of the soul in its representation, which is this creation; and the ignorant man, who sees the world as a thorny bush or a tangled jungle, can have no idea of the designer who framed the whole frame of the universe.”