Argument:—Want of Divine knowledge, produces the knowledge of the reality of the unreal world; but the knowledge of God, proves the nothingness of the World at all times.
Vasishtha continued:—It is from the face of the firmament of Divine Intellect, that the atmosphere of our understandings, catch the reflexion of this universe; just as the waters of the deep, receive the images of the clouds in the upper sky. It is this Intellect which gives us life, and guides our minds.
2. These living souls and minds of ours, are of the form of the clear sky; and these countless worlds, are productions of empty vacuity.
3. Ráma rejoined:—Tell me sir, that after all kinds of beings were entirely liberated, from the bonds of their bodies and their souls also, at the universal annihilation of things; what is it that comes to be created again, and whence it gets it undone also.
4. Vasishtha replied:—Hear me tell you, how at the great destruction or deluge, all things together with the earth, water, air, fire and the sky, and the spheres of heaven vanish away, and are liberated from their respective forms; and how this universe comes to appear again to our imagination.
5. There remains alone the undefinable spirit of God after this, which is styled the great Brahma and Supreme Intellect by the sages; and this world remains in the heart of that being, from which it altogether inseparable and indifferent.
6. He is the Lord, and all this is contained in the nature of this heart, which passeth under the name of the world, it is by his pleasure that he exhibits to us the notion that we have of the world, which is not his real form.
7. Considering this well, we find nothing either as created or destroyed by him; but as we know the supreme cause of all to be imperishable by his nature, so do we know his heart to be indestructible also; and the great kalpa ages are only parts of Himself (as the divisions of time are only parts of eternity).
8. It is only our circumscribed knowledge, that shows us the differences and dualities of things; but these upon examination are not to be found and vanish into nothing.
9. Therefore there is nothing of anything, that is ever destroyed to nothing, nor is there anything which is ever produced from Brahma; who is unborn and invisible, and rests always in his tranquility.