With feet as soft as the tenderest flower buds and fresh leaves, untouched by the earth and lovely as garlands of blooming lotus petals, she walked once more, her steps graceful and light. The nectar of her gaze revived the world around her, causing young shoots to spring forth even among the groves of withered palm and tamala trees whose moonlike luster had faded. Her presence seemed to restore life wherever she looked. Having paid homage to the forest goddesses with the words, “Salutations to the forest goddesses,” and offering a handful of flowers, Jyeshtha Sharma then departed together with his household. He placed the flowers at the feet of the goddesses, as if laying a shower of icy dew upon the lotuses of a pond. “May the forest goddesses be victorious,” he prayed, “for they have come to remove our suffering. The noble act mostly for the protection of others.” The goddesses, in turn, became affectionate toward the Brahmin couple—pillars of their lineage, hosts to all guests, and the foundation of the twice-born community. Yet, sorrow lingered. “Today, our parents have left the house,” they lamented, “taking with them sons, cattle, and kin, and have gone to heaven. For us, the three worlds feel empty.” Even the birds, perched on the trees, scattered and called out every moment; in the empty house, grieving for the departed, they sang their laments in sweet voices. The mountain itself seemed to wail, overwhelmed by the echoing confusion from its caves and by the thick streams of tears flowing down its sides like rivers. The waterfalls, their garments loosened and their breasts exposed, cried out as they collapsed, their hot sighs scattering them, wandering in utter emaciation in all directions. The village, battered and wounded in every limb, filled with pitiful cries and devoted to fasting, stood miserable and intent on death. Each day, drops of dew-like tears, hot from the heat, fell from the clustered eyes of the trees. The streets, deserted by peaceful people, were whitened with salt; widowed, joyless, and emptied of heart, they had become desolate. The vines, their bodies struck by the burning wind and battered by rain and tears, chattered with the cries of cuckoos and bees, striking themselves with leafy hands. The waterfalls, scorched by the heat, fell from the great crevices onto the rocky ground, as if to shatter themselves into a hundred pieces. The houses, deprived of conversation and fortune, mute and scattered in intention, filled with blind darkness, had become dense and impenetrable. From the flower clusters in the garden, as the bees cried out in lament, a foul odor arose, the former sweet fragrance now called by another name. The vines, companions to the mango trees, lost their savor day by day; the slender creepers with shrinking bud-like eyes faded away. The streams, restless to cast themselves into the ocean, moved longingly across the earth, their waters murmuring as they flowed. The ponds, by contrast, remained unmoved, delighting in their stillness and counting even the slightest tremor from a falling gnat as excessive restlessness. “Surely today the sky is filled with the songs of kinnaras, gandharvas, vidyadharas, and celestial maidens, adorned by the arrival of our father,” they reflected. “Therefore, let these goddesses now bring us relief from our sorrow; for the sight of the great is never without fruit.” Thus speaking to her son, she touched his head gently with her hand, as a lotus bends to touch its root-knot with a tender leaf. By her touch, he cast off the distress and misfortune that bound him, just as a mountain sheds the heat of summer when the monsoon clouds gather. Then, upon seeing those two goddesses, all the people of the house became prosperous and free from sorrow, as if they had tasted the nectar of immortality. Yet, by her playful act, the mother did not grant a meeting or even mention of her son, Jyeshthasharma. Why was this not given? One who is awakened by knowledge of earth and the other elements, and thus perceives the aggregate of earth and so on, assumes individuality from that mass, just as space appears as something else. O dear one, the unreal appears as real due to awareness of earth and the rest, just as a child does not see a ghost because he is unaware of it. Just as the state of being earth and so on appears, but earth and the rest may vanish in an instant—so too, in a dream, due to dream-knowledge, and clearly even while awake. When awakened by the element of space, one experiences only space; likewise, when the elements are agitated, even a wall seems to have the activity of space. In a dream, a city or land may be perceived as empty or hollow; and even a dream-woman, though unreal, performs meaningful actions for men. Space, when known as earth and the rest, becomes earth and so on for a moment; through delusion, even the other world is directly experienced. A child sees the sky as a goblin, a dying man sees the sky as a forest, one sees hair as a ball, another sees the sky as something else, and yet another sees a pearl in the sky. Those who are frightened, those who are half-asleep, and those who are on a boat always see and even experience trees and other things in the sky, like goblins. The forms of these objects are shaped by habitual imagination; what is produced by repeated impression appears, but in reality, not a single thing truly exists. But for one who knows the truth, earth and the rest do not exist as they appear; only space, arising from consciousness, is spoken of as existing. For the sage who knows the one expanse of consciousness as Brahman and Self, how, what, when, or where can there be sons, friends, or wives? The act of placing the hand on the head in play by Jyeshthasharman is the result of the mind’s awareness of the beginning and continuity of the flow. Awareness appears exactly as it conceives; it is subtle, more so than space, and thus pure. Everywhere, O Raghava, this very network of objects is experienced, just as in imagined cities in dreams. On that mountain slope, in that village, within that pavilion, those two women, remaining there, attained disappearance.