8. Having then wasted and shuffled off their mortal coil, at the end of their limited periods, they will be promoted to the rank of Rudras in heaven, and will appear as luminous stars in the firmament.
9. Ráma rejoined:—All those forms of Jiváta and others, being but creations of the empty imagination of the mendicant; I cannot understand, how they could be beings, as there is no substantiality in imaginary things.
10. Vasishtha replied:—The truth of the imagination lies partly in our consciousness, and partly in our representation of the image; though the imagery or giving a false shape to anything, is as untrue as any nihility in nature. But what we are conscious of must be true, because our consciousness comprehends everything in it.
11. Thus what is seen in the dream, and represented to us by imagination, are all impressed in our consciousness at all times and for ever. (Therefore neither is our consciousness nor the images we are conscious of are untrue, though the imagery and the work of imagination are utterly false).
12. As a man when going or carried from one country to another, and there again to some other place, has no knowledge of the distance of his journey, unless he is conscious of its length and duration in space and time; so we are ignorant of the duration of our dream, and our passing from one dream to another, without our consciousness of it in our sleeping state.
13. Therefore it is our consciousness that contains all things, that are represented to it by the intellect; and it is from our intellection that we have the knowledge of everything, because the intellect is full of knowledge and pervades everywhere.
14. Imagination, desire and dream, are the one and same thing, the one producing the other and all lodged in the cell of the intellect. Their objects are obtained by our intense application to them. Desire produces imagination which is the cause of dream; they are the phenomena of mind, and their objects are the results of deep meditation.
15. Nothing is to be had without its practice and meditation of it, and men of enlightened minds gain the objects by their Yoga or meditation of them alone. (These are the Yoga siddhas or adepts in Yoga as Siva &c).
16. These adepts view the objects of their pursuit in all places, such as the god Siva and others of the Siddha Yogis, such was my aim and attempt also, but it was not attended with success.
17. I was unsuccessful in want of my fixed resolvedness, but failed in both for my attending to both sides. It is only the firm resolution of one in one point, that gives him success in any undertaking.