14. It is a distinguished place of gods, men and savages, who make their commerce here, with commodities (of virtue and vice), leading either to heaven above or to the hell below.
15. The self-willed King (the mind), has employed here many persons (as dramatis personae), to act their several parts before him for his pleasure.
16. Some are placed high above this stage to act as gods and deities, and others are set in lower pits of this earth and infernal regions, to act their miserable parts—as men and Nágas. (The Nágas are snakes and snake worshippers, living in subterraneous cells like the serpentine race of Satan. The Bara and Chhotá Naghores, and the Naga hill people of Assam are remnants of this tribe).
17. Their bodies are made of clay, and their frame work is of white bones; and their plastering is the flesh under the skin as a pneumatic machine.
18. Some of these bodies have to act their parts for a long while, while others make their exits in a short time. They are covered with caps of black hairs, and others with those of white and grey on their heads.
19. All these bodies are furnished with nine crevices, consisting of the two earholes, two sockets of the eyes, and two nostrils with the opening of the mouth, which are continually employed in inhaling and exhaling cold and hot air by their breathings. (These airs are the oxygen and nitrogen gases).
20. The earholes, nostrils and the palate, serve as windows to the abode of the body; the hands and feet are the gate ways, and the five inner organs are as lights of these abodes.
21. The mind then creates of its own will the delusion of egoism, which like a yaksha demon takes possession of the whole body, but flies before the light of knowledge.
22. The mind accompanied by this delusive demon, takes great pleasure in diverting itself with unrealities (until it comes to perceive their vanity by the light of reason).
23. Egoism resides in the body like a rat in the barn-house, and as a snake in the hollow ground. It falls down as a dew drop from the blade of a reed, upon advance of the sunlight of reason.