Chapter XXIV: The Aerial Journey

Vasishtha continued:—

Thus ascending higher and higher and reaching by degrees the highest station, they went on viewing the heavens, with their hands clasped in each other’s.

2. They saw a vast expanse as that of the wide extended universal ocean, deep and translucent within; but soft with etherial mildness, and a cooling breeze infusing heavenly delight.

3. All delightsome and pleasant was the vast Ocean of vacuity, into which they dived, and which afforded them a delight far greater in its purity, than what is derived from the company of the virtuous.

4. They wandered about all sides of heaven, under the beams of the full moon shining above them; and now halted under the clear vault of the clouds, covering the mountain tops of _Meru_, as if under the dome of a huge white washed edifice.

5. And now they roved by the regions of Siddhas and Gandharvas, breathing the charming fragrance of _Mandára_ chaplets; and now passing the lunar sphere, they inhaled the sweet scent exhaled by the breeze from that nectarious orb (_Sudhákara_).

6. Now tired and perspiring profusely, they bathed in the lakes of showering clouds, fraught with the blushing lotuses of lurid lightnings flashing within them.

7. They promenaded at random of their free will on all sides, and now alighted like fluttering bees on the tops of high mountains, appearing as filaments of the lotus-like earth below.

8. They roved also under the vaults of some fragments of clouds, which were scattered by the winds, and raining like the cascade of Ganges, thinking them as shower-bath-houses in the air.

9. Then failing in their strength, they halted in many places, with their slow and slackened steps, and beheld the vacuum full of great and wondrous works.