66        ^l      MYSTIC EXPERIENCES
Llla : ^My memory comes back to me ! Eight hundred
births have I passed through, I see, since my descent from
Brahma, I was the wife of a Vidya"dhara(^1) in the distant
past. And, step by step, by growing crossness of desire, I fell
into vegetable and animal forms. I call to mind that I was
once a creeper in a Muni's 5shrama(^2). And by that holy
influence I rose again. And once I was a king, and then I fell
again because of sins. Aho ! the marvels of these many
births I I have slumbered sweetly as a bee on the soft petal
of a lotus, and feasted to satiety on its pollen and its honey.
As a bird I have struggled hard against and broken through
the net of the horrible fowler, even as a weak cnan may break
with difficulty through an evil addiction. From rock to rock
have I leapt as a deer with beautiful eyes in the mind-stealing
scenes of wooded hills, till I was shot down by the cruel arrow
of a Kirata (^3). I have also floated on the ocean billow as a
huge turtle, and again as a giant fish.   I have been a
Pulindi (^4) on the banks of the CharmanvatI (^5), singing and
drinking the fresh juice of the cocoanut. I have known the
deepest loves of youth on the golden jewelled table-lands of
Meru, and have also lain on costly couches shivering with
sickness like a moon-beam on unsteady water."
Conversing thus the two passed out of the house of the
brahmana, and Llla recognized the things of that past life of
when it opens up new avenues of perception objects flash along them,
to which the mind successively responds and this gives a sense of
motion. Compare the illusory motion experienced by a person in a
stationary train when a moving train pas'ses. Consciousness may change
without change of. locality, and we are where we perceive, space being as
illusory as time. A. B.]
(1) An aerial being; 'holder, possessor, of occult sciences.'
(2) An ascetic's woodland abode.    (8) A man of a hill tribe.
(4) A woman of another hill tribe.
(5) A rives in India now called the Oliambair