September 3, 2026
bahu dṛṣṭaṁ mayā dṛśyaṁ bahu bhrāntamakhedinā
bahveva bahudhā nūnamanubhūtaṁ smarāmyahaṁ (30)
BHĀSA said:
I saw many things and I wandered a lot without experiencing fatigue. I experienced many things in many different ways. All this I remember. I experienced many pleasures and much sorrow in many bodies over a long period of time and in distant places in this limitless space. I attained various bodies on account of boons and curses, and in those embodiments I saw countless objects and scenes. I was also determined to see and experience everything. This was the original boon that I obtained from the fire-god. Therefore, even though I had different bodies on different planes, I still pursued the original intention of gaining a thorough knowledge of this world.
For a thousand years I lived as a tree. I had to endure many sufferings during that period. My mind was totally centred within myself, and without mental activity I produced flowers and fruits. For a hundred years I was a deer on the mount Meru. I had a golden colour. I lived on grass and I loved music. I was very small and therefore non-violent. For fifty years I was a śarabha (an eight-footed animal more powerful than the lion). After that I became a vidyādhara-celestial. Then I became the son of the swan which is the vehicle of the creator Brahmā. I lived as a swan for fifteen hundred years. For a hundred years I listened to the divine music of the celestial attendants of lord Nārāyaṇa (Viṣṇu). Then I became a jackal and lived in a forest. A huge elephant ravaged the bush in which I lived. While I was dying on account of this, I saw that elephant killed by a lion. After this, I became a nymph in another world and lived alone for half an epoch, on account of the curse of a sage. After this, I lived for a hundred years as a valmīka-bird. When our nest was destroyed along with the tree on which we lived, I lost my partner and then lived the rest of my life alone in a far-off place. Then I became an ascetic, having gained a certain amount of dispassion.
I saw many amazing things. I saw a world which was made entirely of water. Elsewhere I saw a woman in whose body the three worlds were reflected as in a mirror. When I asked her who she was, she replied: “I am pure consciousness and all the worlds are my limbs. Even as I create such bewilderment in you, even so are all things. Till you see everything with the same bewilderment and wonder, you cannot know their real nature. All the worlds are one’s own limbs. I hear them all as one hears sounds and expressions during one’s dream.“ I saw countless beings emerge in her and then dissolve in her, too. Elsewhere I saw an unusual form of cloud which produced a dreadful sound of clashing missiles and which rained weapons on the earth. I saw another wonder: the whole earth was covered in darkness and whole villages were flying away to a distant world. I saw your village in another world. Elsewhere I saw all beings were of the same nature. Elsewhere I saw a world without a sun, moon and stars, and there was no darkness: all its inhabitants were radiant and illumined…. There is no world I have not seen, nothing I have not experienced.