14. Or did any one of them live for many years, and whether they were of short or longer durations, according to the measure of men, gods or Brahmá. (Because a human year is a day and night of the polar gods, and a moment of the cycle of Brahmá. And revolution of the whole planetary system to the same point makes a day of Brahmá).
15. Please sir, kindly tell me this, because little hearing is not sufficient to me, as a drop of water is not enough to moisten the dry soil or the parched ground of summer heat.
16. Vasishtha said:—Know sinless Ráma! that whosoever thinks of anything in any manner at any place or time, he comes to feel the same in the same manner, and in the same place and time.
17. Take for instance the destructive poison, which becomes as ambrosia to venomous insects, that take it for their dainty nourishment; and so is an enemy turning to a friend by your friendly behaviour unto him. (In both cases the evil turns to good by our taking it as such).
18. And the manner in which all beings consider themselves, and all others for a length of time; the same they seem to be by their mode and habit of thinking, as if it were by an act of destiny. (i.e. They consider their thoughts of things as their destined nature, which is not so in reality; for fair is foul and foul is fair; according as our judgments declare).
19. The manner in which the active intellect represents a thing in the soul, the same is imprinted in the consciousness of its own nature. (Here the Chit is said to be the intellectus agens and consciousness—Samvid—the intellectus patiens. The motion of the mind gives us the impressions of the swiftness and slowness of time).
20. When our consciousness represents a twinkling of the eye as a Kalpa, we are led to believe a single moment an age of long duration. (As a short nap appears an age in dreaming), and (a long age as a moment as in the case of the seven sleepers of Kehef).
21. And when we are conscious of or think a Kalpa age as a twinkling, the Kalpa age is thought to pass as a moment; and so a long night in our unconscious sleep, appears as a moment upon waking.
22. The night appears a longsome age, to the long suffering sick, while it seems as a moment, in the nightly revels of the merry; so a moment appears as an age in the dream, and an age passes off as a moment in the state of insensibility. (The length and shortness of duration, depending on our consciousness and insensibility of the succession of our ideas. (See Locke and Kant on our idea of time)).
23. The notions of the resurrection of the dead, and of one’s metempsychosis, and being re-born in a new body; of his being a boy, youth or old man; and of his migrations to different places at the distance of hundreds of leagues, are all but the phenomena of sleep, and retrospective views in a dream.