6. As a stone falling from a rock, falls lower and lower to the nether ground; so the living soul once fallen from its height of supreme spirit, descends lower and lower to the lowest pit.
7. Now it sees one dream, and then passes from it to another; and thus rolling for ever in its dreaming sleep, it never finds any substantiality whatsoever.
8. The soul thus obscured under the illusion of errors, happens some times to come to the light of truth, either by the guidance of some good instructor, or by the light of its own intuition; and then it is released from the wrong notion of its personality in the body, and comes to the true knowledge of itself.
9. Ráma said:—O! the impervious gloom of error that ever spreads on the human soul, causes it to rely in the mist of its errors, as a sleeping man enjoys the scenery of his dreams.
10. It is shrouded by the thick darkness of the night of erroneous knowledge, and falls into the pit of illusion which over spreads the world (máyá or error is the fruit of the forbidden tree whose mortal taste brought death into the world, while knowledge is the fruit of the tree of immortality, which liberates the soul from the bonds of birth and death).
11. O the egregious error of taking a thing for our own, which in reality belongs to no body but the lord and master of all.
12. It behoves you, sir, to explain to me, whence this error takes its rise, and how the mendicant with his share of good and right understanding, could fall into the error (of wishing himself to become another, that was as frail and mortal as himself). Tell me also that knowest all, whether he is still living or not.
13. Vasishtha replied:—I will explore into the regions of the three worlds in my samádhi meditation this night, and tell you tomorrow morning, whether the mendicant is living or not, and where he may be at present.
14. Válmíki said:—As the sage was saying in this manner, the royal garrison tolled the trumpet of the departing day with beat of drum; which filled the sky with the loud roar of diluvian clouds.
15. The princes and the citizens assembled in the court, threw handfuls of flowers at his feet, as the trees drop down their flowers in the ground, wafted by the odoriferous breeze.