THE WORLD-ILLUSION AND THE REAL SELF 53

SarasvatT had pity on her plight, and came and said;

^Take thy husband's body, child !, and lay it on a heap of
flowers. The flowers shall not fade,, nor shall the body.
His Jiva shall not pass out of this palace, and he shall rise
again to give thee joy.1 v

That rain of tender words revived the dying- LTia, as
the first showers revive the dying shapharl(1) in lakes
dried by the summer sun. She hastened to obey these orders,
and at the middle of night, sitting beside the body, she
sought again with her whole soul the feet of the bright
Goddess. Sarasvafci appeared, and Ula asked her : "Where
is my husband, Mother ? What is he doing ? Take me to
him. I cannot live without him.^

The Goddess said; ^My child !, there are three spaces

—the Common one, the Chitt-akasha, and the Chid"akasha(2),
The last is subtler than the other two. That which thou
seekest, being composed of sheaths of Chid-akasha only, can

(1) A kind of small fish.

(i2) The common *outer' space is that which we seem to see with
the physical eyes ; Ohitt-akasha is the ^nner' space 'within the mind',
or in which intelligence works; and by Ohid-akasha seems to be
meant what may be described as 'the principle of space*, 'root-space',
or 'seed-space', the principle of the possibility of the co-existwcQ of
the Many, of countless things, within Universal Consciousness.

[The three spaces are the three worlds, physical, astral, and mental;

all are formed of mind-stuff; but the third is subtler than the others,
and, in its nature, more akin to that in which the creative consciousness
works than are the other two. Padma had passed on to the mental
plane, and was ensheathed in the matter of that plane. If liila would
4md him, she must free herself from the denser matter in which she
was herself ensheathed, and then she would become conscious of,
because responsive to, his world, and would again be in his presence.
She, accordingly, we find in the next chapter, entered into meditation,

•iand left her astral and mental bodies ; clothed, then. in the Karana