The enemy forces swept through the land, and in their wake, the noble women of the households—hair unbound and disheveled—were seized and carried away. Their cries echoed through the air, mournful and piercing, as if a flock of cranes had been suddenly snatched by fishermen. Such was the calamity that had befallen them, spreading its misery far and wide, reaching into every corner of their lives. In this moment of utter despair, it seemed that only the power of the Divine could offer hope of rescue from such disaster. Witnessing this devastation, the king’s heart was wracked with pain and anger. He turned to the goddess and said, “O Mother, hearing and seeing all that has happened, I must go forth to battle. Forgive me, for my wife is as a bee at your lotus feet—innocent and devoted.” With these words, the king, his mind aflame with righteous anger, strode out like a lion emerging from his cave after the forest has been ravaged by a frenzied elephant. Meanwhile, Lila experienced a vision both wondrous and perplexing. She beheld before her another Lila—identical in every feature and movement, as if her own reflection had stepped out from a mirror to stand beside her. Astonished, she addressed the goddess, “Tell me, O Divine One, what is this? Why do I stand here as this other? How is it that I, who once lived elsewhere, am now present here as well?” The goddess replied with gentle clarity, “All that you see—ministers, citizens, warriors with their armies and vehicles—these are the same ones who existed in that other place. Here too, they are present. Are they conscious, both outwardly and inwardly, like images reflected in a mirror?” She continued, “Awareness arises within and is experienced in a moment. Consciousness takes the shape of whatever it perceives, just as the mind assumes the form of its own content. Whatever imagination arises within, that very awareness extends memory, and, in that instant, a world of corresponding objects appears in that very place. There is no true external expansion of space or time, nor any diversity arising from objects themselves; what seems to be outside is actually within—dream objects serve as an apt illustration.” The goddess explained further, “Whatever is constructed in the mind, like a city imagined in a dream, stands out clearly here, merely by repeated habit, and is called ‘external.’ Whatever was the state of your husband at his death in that city, that very state has come to that same object right here. These servants, though they appear similar, are different from those you once knew; they are only forms of this one’s imagination, like armies conjured in a dream.” She posed a question, “That which is experienced as unfailing and of the nature of all things—how can there be unreality in it, or what kind of unreality could there be? Or else, in the next moment, due to its perishability, it is not a true substance; thus, all of this is just like that—what place is there for denial in this matter?” She explained the nature of reality: “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 age, or today, or in another era, 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 too do these creations arise and dissolve in the Supreme, like dust in a great wind.” She cautioned, “Therefore, in the appearance made of delusion, the sense of self is false; what reliance is there on mirage-water or on the ashes of creation? There are no other delusions there; those very things are the supreme state. In dense darkness, there are 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.” The goddess summarized, “Thus, this that is seen is not truly real, nor is it ever truly unreal; it is both, or else, it is Brahman alone that appears as such. Within the subtlest particle of space, or even in the smallest atom, 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.” She continued, “Existence and non-existence, grasping and releasing, gross and subtle, moving and unmoving—all these states, though appearing as attributes, truly belong to Brahman, which is free from all parts. Just as the parts of a tree exist for the sake of its form, so too, for the sake of understanding, you should now regard all these as non-different from your own self. This universe, as it stands, arises from the sequence of one’s own nature; it is empty, and the meanings of the word ‘universe’ are nothing other than Brahman, in which it abides. It is neither true nor untrue, like the illusion of a snake in a rope; what is experienced as false is considered true or untrue only upon examination.” The goddess concluded, “Knowing the supreme cause, one knows existence as if it were life; thus, by experiencing only that, one distinctly attains the sense of living. Whether true or untrue, this world appearing in space colors the living atom with experiences arising from itself. These experiences, some are from previous experiences, some are unprecedented, and some are equal while others are unequal. Sometimes, somewhere, those same experiences are equal, and sometimes they are not; in the space of the living being, experiences move as untrue or as true. Those families, those customs, those births, those intentions—those very ones become your counselors and citizens in the realm of intelligence. And they, being established in the Self, are fully content, unaffected by actions bound to place and time, remaining in the radiance of the all-pervading nature of consciousness. Just as an image appears in the royal mirror of the sky, composed of pure being, so too does the reflection of truth arise in the radiance of consciousness.” Thus, the goddess revealed the profound mystery: all that is seen and experienced, whether joy or sorrow, loss or gain, is but the play of consciousness, the reflection of the one Supreme Reality—Brahman—appearing as many, yet ever remaining One.