26. She became a dead body like her husband, and her spirit by shuffling off its mortal coil, resumed its subtile and immortal form, in which it met the departed ghost of her husband. 27. She advanced to her lord, as rapidly as a river runs to meet the sea below its level; and became as cheerful to join him, as a cluster of flowers to inhale the vernal air. 28. The houses, lands and all the immovable properties and movable riches of this Bráhman, are still existent in that rocky village, and it is only eight days past, that the souls of this loving pair, are reunited in the hollow vault of their house. 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.