12. Vasishtha replied:—So it is, O strong armed Ráma! that nothing can ever be something, or anything can ever be nothing. But it is possible for a little thing to be great, as for a great one to be reduced to minuteness. (As it is the case in the evolution and involutions of beings).
13. Say what nonentity has come to being, or what entity has been lasting for ever. All these I will explain to you by their best proofs and examples.
14. Ráma answered:—Why sir, all that is existent is ever present before us as our own bodies, and all things beside ourselves; but you are speaking of Dáma and the demons, as mere nullities and yet to be in existence.
15. Yes Ráma, it was in the same way, that the non-existent and unreal Dáma and others seemed to be in existence by mere illusion, as the mirage appears to us to be full of water by our optical delusion (or deception of vision).
16. It is in like manner that ourselves, these gods and demigods, and all things besides, are unrealities in fact, and yet we seem to turn about and speak and act as real persons.
17. My existence is as unreal as thine, and yet it appears as real as we dream our death in sleep. (So we dream of our existence while we are awake).
18. As the sight of a dead friend in a dream is not a reality, so the notion of the reality of the world, ceases upon the conviction of its unreality, as that of the demise of the person seen in a dream.
19. But such assertions of our nihility are not acceptable to them, who are deluded to the belief of the reality of sensible objects. It is the habit of thinking its reality, that will not listen to its contradiction.
20. This mistaken impression of the reality of the world, is never to be effaced without the knowledge of its unreality, derived from the sástras, and the assuetude of thinking it so.
21. He who preaches the unreality of the world and the reality of Brahma, is derided by the ignorant as a mad man; (for his negation of the seeming reality, and assertion of the unseen God).