Ráma rejoined:—Tell me, O most sapient sage, how it is possible for the demon of ego to take hold of you, that are extinct in the deity, and dissipate my doubts there.
2. Vasishtha replied:—It is impossible, O Ráma, for any being whether knowing or unknown to live here without the sense of his egoism; as it is not possible for the contained to subsist without its container.
3. But there is a difference of this which you must know, that the demoniac egoism of the quiet minded man, is capable of control by means of his knowledge of and attention to the srutis.
4. It is the infantine ignorance which raises up this idol of egoism, though it is found to exist no where; just as little children make dolls and images of gods and men, that have no existence at all.
5. This ignorance also (which is the cause of egoism), is nothing positive of itself; since it is dispelled by knowledge and reason, as darkness is driven away by the light of a lamp. (Ignorance and darkness are but negative terms).
6. Ignorance is a demon that dances about in the dark, and a fiend that flies afar before the light of reason. (Hence the disappearance of ignorance causes our egoism to disappear also).
7. Granting the existence of ignorance, in absence of the advance of knowledge and reason; yet it is at best but a fiend of delusion, and is as shapeless as the darkest night (When nothing is to be seen).
8. Granting the existence of creation, we have no trace of ignorance any where in it (since creation is the production of omniscience, there is no nescience in any part of) the existence of two moons in the sky.
9. Creation having no other cause (but God himself), we know not how could ignorance find a place in it; just so it is impossible for a tree to grow in the air (which God hath made void, barren, and bare). (God hath planted the tree of knowledge in the garden of Eden, but no tree of ignorance did He set any where).
10. When creation began and was begotten in the beginning, in its pure and subtile form in the womb of absolute vacuum (or the mind of God); how is it possible for the material bodies of earth and water to proceed (from the immaterial spirit) without a material cause?