75. But the clear and cold light which is the soul of the body, bears the name of the serene moon; and because it is the product of the other fire of the body, thence called the sumágni or the residence of the moon and fire (its two presiding divinities).
76. All hotter lights in the world are known by the names of suns (as the planetary and cometary bodies); and all colder lights are designated as moons (as the stars and satellites) and as these two lights cherish the world, it is named as the suryágni and somágni also.
77. Know after all the world to be a manifestation of the combination of intelligence and ignorance (i.e. of the intellect and soul matter), as also of an admixture of reality and unreality among who has made it as such in himself manifest in this form.
78. The learned call the light of intelligence, by the terms knowledge, sun and fire, and designate the unrealities of ignorance, by the names of dullness and darkness, ignorance and the coldness of the moon. (i.e. There are antithetical words expressive of Intelligence and ignorance; the former designated as the light of knowledge and reason, the daylight and the light of lamp &c., and the latter as the darkness of night, and the coldness of frost &c.).
79. Ráma said:—I well understand that the product of the air of breath &c. (by their friction as said before); and that the air proceeds from the moon, but tell me sir, whence comes the moon into existence?
80. Vasishtha replied:—The fire and moon are the mutual causes and effects of one another, as they are mutually productive as well as destructive of each other by turns.
81. Their production is by alternation as that of the seed and its sprout (of which no body knows is the cause or effect of the other). Their reiteration is as the return of day and night, (of which we know not which precedes the other). They last awhile and are lost instantly like the succession of light and shade (the one producing as also destroying the other).
82. When these opposites come to take place at the one and same time, you see them stand side by side as in the case of the light and shade occurring into the daytime, but when they occur at different times, you then see the one only at a time without any trace of the other, as in the occurrence of the daylight and nocturnal gloom by turns. (These two are instances of the simultaneous and separate occurrence of the opposites. Gloss).