CHAPTER  V.                                 53

have we lived together, when I knew the times of our life
and death, whilst they were concealed from you ! When
I desire to appear in order to do some good, I array
myself in a body, since one cannot be with man except
in a human shape."

People tell a tale of a king, whose name I have
forgotten, who ordered his people after his death to
bury his body on a spot where never before had a dead
person been buried. Now they sought for such a spot,
but could not find it; finally, on finding a rock pro¬
jecting out of the ocean, they thought they had found
what they wanted. But then Vasudeva spoke unto
them, " This king has been burned on this identical
rock already many times. But now do as you like ; for
the king only wanted to give you a lesson, and this
aim of his has now been attained."

Vasudeva says : " He who hopes for salvation and
strives to free himself from the world, but whose heart
is not obedient to his wish, will be rewarded for his
action in the worlds of those who receive a good re¬
ward ; but he does not attain his last object on account
of his deficiency, therefore he will return to this world,
and will be found worthy of entering a new shape of a
kind of beings whose special occupation is devotion.
Divine inspiration helps him to raise himself in this
new shape by degrees to that which he already wished
for in the first shape. His heart begins to comply with
his wish ; he is more and more j^urified in the different
shapes, until he at last obtains salvation in an uninter¬
rupted series of new births."

Further, Vasudeva says: "If the soul is free from
matter, it is knowing ; but as long as it is clad in matter,
the soul is not-knowing, on account of the turbid nature
of matter. It thinks that it is an agent, and that the
actions of the world are prepared for its sake. There¬
fore it clings to them, and it is stamped with the im¬
pressions of the senses.    When, then, the soul leaves