24. The objects of our desire are often had without our seeking; but they are as frail as the fire of heaven; they appear to vanish like the twinkling lightnings, and being held carefully in the hand, they burn it like the electric fire. (This passage shows the science of electricity and the catching of electric fire, to have been known to the ancients).
25. Many things come to us unasked, and though appearing delightsome at first, they prove troublesome to us at last. Hopes delayed, are as flowers growing out of season, which, neither bear their fruits, nor answer our purposes. (Unseasonal flowers are held as ominous and useless).
26. Every accident tends to our misery, as unpleasant dreams infest our sleep and disturb our rest.
27. It is our delusion (avidyá), that presents these many and big worlds before us; as our dreams produce, sustain and destroy all the appearances of vision in one minute.
28. It was delusion which made one minute, appear as many years to king Lavana; and the space of one night, seem as the long period of a dozen of years to Haris chandra.
29. Such also is the case with separated lovers among rich people, that a single night seems as a live long year to them, in the absence of their beloved.
30. It is this delusive avidyá, that shortens the flight of time to the rich and happy; and prolongs its course, with the poor and miserable: all of whom are subject to the power of delusion vipary’ása.
31. The power of this delusion is essentially spread over all the works of creation, as the light of a lamp, is spread over things in its effulgence and not in substance.
32. As a female form represented in a picture is no woman, and has not the power of doing any thing; so this avidyá which presents us the shapes of our desired objects in the picture of the mind, can produce nothing in reality.
33. The delusion consists in the building of aerial castles in the mind, without their substance; and though these appear in hundreds and thousands of shapes, they have no substantiality in them.