31. The living soul appears to assume to itself, the different forms of childhood, youth, and age at different times; as a cloud in the sky appears as an exhalation, a watery cloud and the sap of the earth and all its plants, at the different times of the hot and rainy seasons of the year.
32. The living soul perceives all these changes, as they are exhibited before it by the supreme soul in which they are all present; and there is no being in the world, that is able to alter this order of nature.
33. Even the sky which is as clear as the looking glass, and is spread all about and within every body, is not able to represent unto us, all the various forms which are presented to the soul by the great soul of souls (in which they appear to be imprinted). Here Vasishtha is no more an ákása-vádi—vacuist, in as much as he finds a difference in the nature and capacity of the one from those of the other or the supreme soul.
34. The soul which is situated in the universal soul of Brahmá, shines as the living soul (Jíva) of living beings; but it amounts to a duality, to impute even an incorporeal idea of Avidyá or Ignorance to it; because the nature of God is pure Intelligence, and cannot admit an ignorant spirit in it (as the good spirit of God cannot admit the evil spirit of a demon in itself).
35. Whatever thing is ordained to manifest itself in any manner, the same is its nature and stamp (swabháva and neyati); and though such appearance is no reality, yet you can never undo what is ordained from the beginning.
36. As a golden ornament presents to you the joint features of its reality and unreality at the same time (in that it is gold and jewellery, the one being real and the other changeable and therefore unreal); so are all things but combinations of the real and unreal, in their substantial essence and outward appearance. But both of these dissolve at last to the Divine spirit, as the gold ornament is melted down to liquid gold in the crucible.
37. The Divine Intellect being all-pervasive by reason of its intellectuality, it diffuses also over the human mind; as the gold of the jewel settles and remains dull in the crucible.
38. The heart having the passive nature of dull intellectuality, receives the fleeting impressions of the active mind, and takes upon it the form that it feels strongly impressed upon it at any time. (The heart is the passive receptacle of the impression of the active mind and reverberates to the tone of its thoughts).
39. The soul also assumes many shapes to itself at different times, according to the ever changing prospects, which various desires always present before it.