64. Tell me goddess, what things are spiritually true and false, and how are we to distinguish the one from the other.
65. Sarasvatí answered:—Know prince that, those who have known the only knowable one, and are assimilated to the nature of pure understanding, view nothing as real in the world, except the vacuous intellect within themselves.
66. The misconception of the serpent in a rope being removed, the fallacy of the rope is removed also; so the unreality of the world being known, the error of its existence, also ceases to exist.
67. Knowing the falsity of water in the mirage, no one thirsts after it any more, so knowing the falsehood of dreams, no one thinks himself dead as he had dreamt. The fear of dreaming death may overtake the dying, but it can never assail the living in his dream.
68. He whose soul is enlightened with the clear light of the autumnal moon of his pure intellect, is never misled to believe his own existence or that of others, by the false application of the terms I, thou, this &c.
69. As the sage was sermonizing in this manner, the day departed to its evening service with the setting sun. The assembly broke with mutual greetings to perform their ablutions, and it met again with the rising sun, after dispersion of the gloom of night.
CHAPTER XLII.
Philosophy of Dreaming. Swapnam or Somnum.
The man who is devoid of understanding, ignorant and unacquainted with the All-pervading principle, thinks the unreal world as real, and as compact as adamant.
2. As a child is not freed from his fear of ghosts until his death; so the ignorant man never gets rid of his fallacy of the reality of the unreal world, as long as he lives.
3. As the solar heat causes the error of water in the mirage to the deer and unwary people, so the unreal world appears as real to the ignorant part of mankind.