In the royal palace, the women of the court appeared in great disarray. Their garlands and garments were tangled, their ornaments and cosmetics askew, and their faces were marked by agitation and jealousy. Their curling locks trembled, as if stirred by a storm of longing; they seemed to have emerged from the very ocean of desire, churned by the unrestrained rod of delightful beauty. Amidst this turmoil, the queen herself entered the palace, radiant and intoxicated by the vigor of youth. She moved with the grace of Lakshmi entering the heart of a lotus—her presence both auspicious and mesmerizing. Yet her appearance was disordered: her garlands and robes were awry, her necklace of delicate creepers broken and twisted. Surrounded by her companions and maidservants, she was visibly shaken, overcome with fear. Her face shone like the moon, her limbs were without blemish, and her anxious breath made her breasts rise and fall. Her teeth sparkled like stars, and she stood there, a vision of celestial beauty, as if the sky itself had taken form before them. At that moment, one of her companions rushed to inform the king, much like an apsara might hasten to Indra with news of the battle against Vritra. "O lord," she cried, "the queen has come to us, fleeing the inner chambers and seeking your protection—like a tender creeper blown by the wind, seeking refuge with a sturdy tree. The royal women have been seized by powerful, well-armed thieves, as if delicate creepers on the ocean shore were caught in the net of surging waves. All the chiefs of the inner apartments have been overwhelmed by bold and sudden enemies, like forest trees struck down by unexpected storms. Our city has been seized by outsiders who descended upon us like torrents of floodwaters overflowing in the darkness of a rainy night. Enemy warriors, fierce and numerous, have overrun our city; their blazing fires roar with smoky armor, and their licking flames brandish sharp tips. The noble ladies of our households, their hair disheveled, have been seized and carried away, wailing, by the enemy—like cranes snatched by fishermen. Such is the calamity that has spread its branches over us; only the power of the deity can save us now." Hearing and seeing this, the king addressed the goddess, "I go forth to battle, O goddess; forgive me. For this wife of mine is as dear as a bee at your lotus feet." Having spoken thus, his mind agitated with anger, the king strode out, like a lion emerging from his cave after the forest has been ravaged by a mad elephant. It was then that Lila beheld a vision most wondrous: she saw herself—Lila—standing before her, identical in every feature, as if her own reflection had stepped forth from a mirror. Astonished, she cried, "Tell me, goddess, what is this? Why do I stand here as this one? How is it that I, who once existed elsewhere, am now present here as this?" She looked around at the ministers, citizens, warriors, and their armies with their vehicles. "All these," she said, "are exactly the same as those established in that other place. How is it, O goddess, that they are present here as well? Are they conscious, both outwardly and inwardly, like images reflected in a mirror?" The goddess replied, "Just as awareness arises within, so it is experienced in an instant; consciousness assumes the form of the object it perceives, just as the mind takes the shape of its own content. Whatever type of imagination arises within, that very awareness extends memory; in that instant, a world of corresponding objects appears in that same place. There is no real extension of space or time outside, nor any diversity from objects; what seems external is actually within—dream objects serve as an illustration. Whatever is constructed within, like a city imagined in a dream by consciousness, that very thing stands out here, merely by the force of habit, under the name 'external.' "The state in which your husband died in that city is the very state that has come to that same object right here. These servants are indeed different from those, even if they appear similar; they are only forms of your imagination, like armies conjured in dreams. That which is experienced as unfailing and of the nature of all things—tell me, how can there be unreality in it, or what sort of unreality could there be? Or else, in a later moment, due to its perishability, it is not a true substance; thus, all of this is like that—what place is there for denial in this matter? "A dream is unreal in waking, and waking is unreal in a dream; death is unreal in birth, and birth is unreal in death. Because of the subtlety of inquiry and the nature of experience, O beautiful one, this neither exists nor does not exist—it merely appears as delusion. Even at the end of a great aeon, or today, or in another age, that which never perishes is Brahman alone; that is the world. In the midst of that, these delusions called creation seem to move, like hairs or balls in space, but in truth they do not move at all. Just as waves arise and dissolve in the ocean, so these creations arise and dissolve in the Supreme, like dust in a great wind. "Therefore, in the appearance made of delusion, the sense of self is false; what reliance can there be on mirage-water, or the ashes of creation? There are no other delusions there; those very things are the supreme state. In dense darkness, there may appear forms like yakṣas, but truly, there is only darkness—not the yakṣas themselves. Therefore, birth, death, delusion, space, 'I', 'you', and all this—whatever remains at the end of the great cycle—is all that there is. "Thus, what is seen is not truly real, nor is it ever truly unreal; it is both, or else, it is Brahman alone appearing as such. Within the subtlest particle of space, or even in the atom of matter, the individual soul perceives this world as its own form. Just as fire knows its own heat, arising from its inherent nature, so too does pure consciousness perceive this world as its own self. Just as motes of dust move about in a house illuminated by sunlight, so too do these universes, like specks, exist in the supreme space. Just as vibration abides in air, fragrance in wind, and coolness in the sky, so too does the universe exist in the Supreme, free from the grasp of forms. "Existence and non-existence, grasping and releasing, gross and subtle, moving and unmoving—all these states, though they appear as attributes, truly belong to Brahman, which is free from all parts." Thus, in the midst of calamity and bewilderment, the deepest truths of reality and illusion were revealed, shining forth with the clarity of the highest wisdom.