The Story of Lila from Yoga Vasistha!

The story of Lila from Yoga Vasistha

 

యోగ వాశిష్ట - ఉత్పత్తి ప్రకరణము - లీలోపాఖ్యానము - సప్త దశ సర్గము -

శ్రీ దేవ్యువాచ

చిత్తాకాశం చిదాకాశ మాకాశంచ తృతీయకమ్
త్వాభ్యాం శూన్యతరం విద్ధి చిదాకాశం వరాననే

వరాననా ! చిత్తాకాశము చిదాకాశము ఆకాశము లను త్రివిధాకాశములలో చిదాకాశమే శూన్యతరమని గ్రహింపుము

 

This is one of the most interesting stories of Yoga Vasistha.
This story is in Utpatti Prakarana as Lilopakhyana.

It is given to illustrate the ultimate ideality of
the universe, the philosophy of death-
and after-death experience,
the relativity of time and space, the existence
of worlds within worlds, the power of desires and
thoughts, and the equality of man and woman in the
acquirement of supernatural powers.

Lila is the wife of a king, Padma. She is intensely
devoted to her husband. Once she asks the priests of
her court, whether there is any method by which her
husband could be made immortal and learns from them
that it is impossible.

She then propitiates Sarasvati,
and gets a boon through her, that if her husband
should ever die, his soul would never go out of her
own room.

Very much pleased with her devotion the
goddess promises to manifest herself, whenever and
wherever she would require her.

The king Padma dies in course
of time and leaves Lila in intense mourning. A voice
from the Void, however, assures her, that the soul of
the king is within the room where he died, and
advises her to preserve the corpse, until the departed
soul again vivifies it after some time.


Lila is very
much surprised and remembers the goddess, who instantaneously
appears before her. Lila implores the
goddess to show her the present experiences of the
king in his new world.


For the purpose of enabling
her to see the other worlds, the goddess teaches her
the existence of various planes penetrating one another
and existing quite unperceived by the inhabitants of
other planes.

She teaches her also the method of
seeing and visiting the various worlds interpenetrating
our world and takes her to the present world of her
husband’s experience, where he is seen as a young
king of sixteen years ruling over a mighty kingdom.
Lila becomes wonderstruck. But Sarasvati makes her
more so by telling her the story of her and her
husband’s previous existence thus :—


In a small hut in
a different world there lived a Brahmana named
Vasistha, with his wife Arundhati, who got also a
similar boon to keep the soul of her husband confined
in her apartment after his death.


One day after having
witnessed the pompous procession of a king and
wishing to be born a king, the poor Brahmana died.
His wife, unable to bear the pangs of separation from
her husband, burnt herself with the body of her husband.
Sarasvati, then tells her that all this happened
only a week before and that the Brahmana pair was
born as the king Padma and his wife Lila, in this
world, where Padma died after having lived a long
life, leaving Lila alone.


Lila does not believe this
story. This goddess, then, takes her to that world, and
makes her verify the story from a son of the deceased
pair.


Through her meditation, she remembers all her
previous births since her origin from the Creator.

Both Lila and Sarasvati then return to the present world
of the king, who is now named Viduratha, and find
him in his 70th year.


His present wife is also named Lila.


They manifest themselves before the king in his
private apartment and mysteriously remind him of his
previous existence as Padma.


He expresses a desire to be Padma again.
His present wife propitiates Sarasvati
to confer a boon upon her to be the wife of her
husband even in his future world.


After a short time
there arises a war in which the king Viduratha is
killed.


His soul, which was present throughout in the
room where the Padma-corpse was lying, now re-enters
the dead body and lo ! it rises again as king Padma,
and finds standing before him his two wives, namely,
Lila I and Lila II, with whom he lives happily for a
long time again in this world.




Taken from B.L.Athreya's Book
"The Philosophy of Yoga Vasistha"