THE WORLD-ILLUSION AND THE REAL SELF 65

practice and the perfect realisation of Advaita, non-separate-
ness, noM-attachment to one single body, the not-feeling of an
unbreakable identity with the body of Lila. Thou hast now
become such a Satya-Sankalpa and if thou goest now to that
world of thy husband thou mayest be able to hold converse
with him."

Lila : "What great wonder is this ! In the space enclosed
by these house-walls lived my husband, the brahmana. In this
same space are situate the domains of Padma, and he lived
and died in this. And in this same space, too, is he again a
greater king with wider sovereignty."

Sarasvati :, "Yes, 0 daughter ! And yet at the same
time are the three worlds distinct and separated by thousands
of millions of yojanas ! Thus are there vast worlds all placed
away within the hollows of each atom (1), multifarious as the
motes in sunbeams. Which husband wilt thou go to now ?"

(1) [Here we have an allusion to one of those occult truths that are
what the French call insazsissables to -the ordinary mind. The atomic
sub-planes—I am obliged here to use the exact terminology of
Theosophy— taken together make up one cosmio plane, that of Prakrti,
and interpenetrate each other as do ethers, gases, liquids, and solids,
here on our physical plane. A man able to rise to the state of
consciousness (Satya-Sankalpa) in -which a cosmic body is used, would
not need to "move** in order to be conscious of any point in the prakptic
cosmic plane. Images of all the compounds into which they enter are
thrown up in each atom, and he can study in the atom the existences o£
the plane to which the atoms belong. But if he goes out in a manasio
Mayavl Bupa he may traverse the fields of space wherein are rolling
worlds composed of the materials of the sub-planes of our planes, and so
pass through thousands of millions of miles. Sarasvati and Lila have
been thus travelling, but Lila now discovers that she can by the Satya-
Sankalpa vision, see the realms of Pa^ma in the house of Vasishtha. An
illusory sense of travelling may be felt in the karana sharira ('causal
body*) even without moving; for the mind seizes perceptions with incredible
rapidity when freed from the heavy vehicles it uses in the lower worlds;