Healing and Hypnotherapy Volume 1 Issue 6, (I December2016) | Page 12

once.
Seeing all the members of the royal court, Lila was puzzled: she thought, “This is
strange, for these people seem to exist in two places at the same time – in that region
which I saw in my meditation and here in front of me. Just as a mountain is seen both
inside the mirror and outside it, this creation is seen both within consciousness and
outside it. But, which of these is real and which the reflection? I must find out from
Sarasvati.” She adored Sarasvati and saw her seated in front of her.
LILA asked: Be gracious, O Goddess, and tell me this. That on which this world is
reflected is extremely pure and undivided, and it is not the object of knowledge. This
world exists both within it as its reflection and outside as solid matter: which is real and
which the reflection?
SARASVATI asked: Tell me first: what do you consider real and what unreal?
LILA answered: That I am here and you are in front of me – this I consider real. That
region in which my husband is now – that I consider unreal.
SARASVATI said: How can the unreal be the effect of the real? The effect is the
cause, there is no essential difference. Even in the case of a pot which is able to
hold water whereas its cause (clay) cannot, this difference is due to the cooperative
causes.
What was the material cause of your husband’s birth? For only material effects are
produced by material causes. Hence when you find no immediate cause for an effect,
then surely the cause existed in the past – memory. Memory is like space, empty. All
creation here is the effect of that emptiness – and hence the creation is empty, too. Even
as the birth of your husband is an illusory product of memory, I see all this as the
illusory and unreal effect of imagination.
I shall narrate to you a story which illustrates the dream-like nature of this creation. In
pure consciousness, in a corner of the mind of the Creator, there was a dilapidated
shrine covered with a blue dome. It had the fourteen worlds for rooms. The three
divisions of space were holes in it. The sun was the light. In it there were little ant hills
(the cities), little piles of earth (mountains) and little pools of water (The Oceans). This
is creation, the Universe. In a very small corner of it there lived a holy man with his
wife and children. He was healthy and free from fear. He performed his religious and
social duties well.
That holy man was known as Vasistha and his wife was Arundhati. One day he saw a
colorful procession with a king riding a stately elephant, followed by an army and other
royal paraphernalia. Looking at this a wish arose in his heart: “When will I ride a royal
elephant like that and be followed by an army like this?”