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PHILOSOPHY OF SOUL
129
should be immediately lifted up. Thereupon the thief was lifted up. He was indeed much perplexed to be helped as such. It was all darkness as the lovers do not prefer light for their encounter. Both could not identify each other in darkness. The thief was presumed to be Rupsena.
The maid-servants brought him over to Sunanda's couch. She, having taken him as Rupsena embraced him with intense feelings of love. The touch of Sunanda roused sexual feelings in the thief who enjoyed sexual pleasures with her unobstructed. In the meanwhile some maidens were found approaching with the lighted lamp. She silently dismissed the thief who was prudent enough to elope with the ornaments shattered during the amorous dalliance.
Now let us see the fate of Rupsena. He started from his house
he appointed hour but on way was crushed under the wall which fell from a highly worn out building. Mental cravings of soul at the time of death determine its future course. So Rupsena
ered the foetus of Sunanda through the thief's semen. Sunanda advanced in pregnancy, but was highly afraid of social blasphemy. Therefore she got herself aborted. Rupsena's soul underwent poignant tortures in the foetus, and was reborn as a serpent.
Sunanda was married to some king and was passing her days in worldly pleasures at her sweet will. One day that very serpent born in Sunanda's palace-garden, on seeing Sunanda began to wave its head out of its extreme attachment for her contracted in the
revious life. Shortly it proceeded towards Sunanda out of deep feelings of love for her. Naturally through fear, she screamed loudly and the serpent was done to death by the attendants present on the spot.
In the next birth he was born as a crow, who once upon a time disturbed the royal couple in the musical concern with its constant crowing. The soldiers were ordered to stop the nuisance. They shot him with an arrow.
In the fifth existence he was born as a swan who very often
up and sat on Sunanda's shoulders. She was much annoyed and at her instructions he was shot dead by the servants.
We study how sexual passions bring about the roaming of soul from birth to birth with tragic ends.
