Sarasvati addressed the king- again : "Rajan !, king:!, call
back to mind thy previous births," and laid her hand softly
upon his head* And at the touch, the darkness that enwrapped
his heart gave way, and luminous memory rose up within him.
Reeling" and swaying- with the wonder of that memory, as on
the surging- surface of the ocean, the king exclaimed : <(! see
the overpowering' Maya of Samsara ! What is this, 0 D^vis ?
It is not quite one day since I forsook in death my Padma-
body, and yet I here have passed through seventy years of
infancy and youth. I can remember my grandfather, and
when I was but ten years old my father went away into the
woods as a Pari-vrat(1), installing" me as king", and many are
the acts I have passed through. I see now that this present
world of mine lies enclosed within the world of Padma, and
that again within the world of Vasishtha; and also that the
Kalpas of one world are fractions of the Kshanas of another(2),
And all is the play of Consciousness.?*

"Yes, it is so," SarasvatT said to the king, and added :

^We would go now as we came. I came to thee at the
request of L7la«"

Here Rama asked a question of Vasishtha ; "From all
this it would seem that the dream-world seen during sleep
persists even after the sleeper has awakened p? And Vasishtha
answered him ; ^Yes, it should be so ; for wherein is the
difference between the waking world and the dream world ?
The mutual relations of the seer and the seen, and also of the
seer and the other men and women, are the same in both.
And this is what Sarasvati said to the king. And Viduratha
begged of her that her compassion should not leave him
profitless and that he too might go with them together with
his young and childless wife and the minister,"

(1) A wandering asoetio*

(2) The ages of one are the moiaeiits of anotlier.