70. Nothing visible is real, and there is neither any spectator nor spectacle here. There is nothing as vacuity or solidity in nature, but all this is but a piece of extended Intelligence.
71. Ráma rejoined:—The adages relating the grinding of stones by the son of a barren woman, the horns of a hare, and the dancing of a hill with its extended arms;
72. And the oozing of oil from sand, the reading (of books) by dolls of marble, and the roaring of clouds in a painting, and such others are applicable to your words (of the reality of an unreal essence of God).
73. I see this world to be full of diseases, deaths and troubles, mountains, vacuities and other things, and how is it sir, that you tell me of their non-existence?
74. Tell me Sir, how you call this world to be unsubstantial, unproduced and inexistent, that I may be certain of this truth.
75. Vasishtha replied:—Know Ráma, that I am no inconsistent speaker, and hear me explain to you how the unreality appears as real, as the son of a barren woman has come to rumour.
76. All this was unproduced before, and did not exist in the beginning of creation. It comes to appearance from the mind like that of a city in a dream. (i.e. They are all but creations of the mind and fancy).
77. The mind also was not produced in the beginning of creation and was an unreality itself. Hear me tell you therefore, how we come to a notion of it.
78. This unreal mind spreads by itself the false and changing scenes of the visible world, just as we dream of changeful unrealities as true in a state of dreaming. (Here the dreaming philosopher sees dreams in his dream).
79. It then exerts its volition in the fabrication of the body and spreads far and wide the magic scene of the phenomenal world.