Ráma said:—Tell me sir, what is the cause of mere waking for nothing, and how does a living being proceed from the formless Brahma, which is tantamount to the growth of a tree in empty air.
2. Vasishtha replied:—O highly intelligent Ráma, there is no work to be found any where which is without its cause, therefore it is altogether impossible for any body to exist here, that is merely awake for nothing.
3. Like this, it is equally impossible also for all other kinds of living beings, to exist without a cause.
4. There is nothing that is produced here, nor anything which is destroyed also; it is only for the instruction and comprehension of pupils, that such words are coined and made use of.
5. Ráma asked:—Who then is it that forms these bodies, together with their minds, understandings and senses; and who is it that deludes all beings into the snares of passions and affections, and into the net of ignorance.
6. Vasishtha replied:—There is no body that forms these bodies at any time, nor is there any one who deludes the living beings in a manner at all.
7. There is alone the self-shining soul, residing in his conscious self; which evolves in various shapes, as the water glides on in the shapes of billows and waves. (Here water is expressed by the monosyllabic word ka—aqua, as it is done else where by udac undan and udra—hydra as also by ap—ab Persian).
8. There is nothing as an external phenomenon, it is the intellect which shows itself as the phenomenal; it rises from the mind (as perception does from the heart), like a large tree growing out of its seed.
9. It is in this faculty of the understanding, O thou support of Raghu’s race, that this universe is situated, just as the images are carved in a stone.
10. There is but one spiritual soul, which spreads both internally as well as externally, throughout the whole extent of time and space; and know this world as the effluvia of the divine intellect scattered on all sides.