37. The stork lived there in the company of the wise, he became enlightened from the views of worldly beings; he continued for ages in his disembodied liberation, and cared for nothing in future. (The soul that rests in the spirit of God, has nothing better to desire). CHAPTER LXIII. DREAM OF JÍVÁTA. Arguments:--All living souls are occupied with the thought of their present state, forgetful of the past, and altogether heedless of the future. Vasishtha continued:--This bird that sported beside the stalk of the lotus seat of Brahmá, once went to the city of Rudra with his god on his back, and there beheld the God Rudra face to face. (The inferior Gods waited upon the superior deities). 2. Seeing the God Rudra he thought himself to be so, and the figure of the God was immediately imprest upon his mind, like the reflexion of an outward object in the mirror. 3. Being full of Rudra in himself, he quitted his body of the bird, as the fragrance of a flower forsakes the calyx, as it mixes with the breeze and flies in the open air. 4. He passed his time happily at that place, in the company with the attendants and different classes of the dependant divinities of Rudra. 5. This Rudra being then full of the best knowledge of divinity and spirituality; looked back in his understanding into the passed accounts of his prior lives, that were almost incalculable. 6. Being then gifted with clear sightedness and clairvoyance, he was astonished at the view of naked truths, that appeared to him as sights in a dream, which he recounted to him as follows. 7. O! how wonderful is this over spreading illusion, which is stretched all about us, and fascinates the world by its magic _wand_; it exhibits the palpable untruth as positive truth, as the dreary desert presents the appearance of limpid waters, in the sun beams spreading over its sterile sands. 8. I well remember my primary state of the pure intellect, and its conversion to the state of the mind; and how it was changed from its supremacy and omniscience, to the bondage of the limited body. 9. It was by its own desire that the living soul assumed to itself a material body, formed and fashioned agreeably to its fancy, like a picture drawn in a painting; and became a mendicant in my person in one of its prior births, when it was unattached to the objects exposed to view all around. 10. The same mendicant sat in his devotion, by controlling the actions of the members of his body, and began to reflect on outward objects, with great pleasure in his mind. 11. He buried all his former thoughts in oblivion, and thought only of the object that he was employed to reflect upon; and this thought so engrossed and worked upon his mind, that it prevented the rise of any other thought in it.