55. Ráma rejoined:—Tell me sir, how do the parts of the world subsist together; in what manner they are joined with one another, and how are they disjoined from one another, and destroyed at last.
56. Vasishtha replied:—Whether the world is supported by some one or not, and whether it remains fixed (by attraction) or falls off (by its gravity); it is in reality an unsubstantial form, like that of a city in a dream.
57. What is it falls away or remains fixed on some support, it is viewed in the same manner, as our consciousness represents it unto us.
58. The world is contained in and represented by the intellect, in the same manner, as the wind is contained in and let out of air; and as the sky presents the blueness of the firmament, and other airy appearances.
59. These habitable worlds forming the universe, are but imaginary cities and creations of the Intellect; they are but airy representations of the airy mind, as the formless sky is represented in empty vacuity, and appearing in various forms unto us.
60. As it is the nature of our Intellect, to give many things to our consciousness, so it is its nature also, to make us unconscious of their disappearance by day and night.
61. An innumerable train of thoughts, are incessantly employing our minds when we are sitting and at rest; and so they are flying off and returning to us by day and night.
62. All things appear to approach to their dissolution, to one who knows their destructibility and their ultimate extinction at the end of a kalpa period or millennium; and they seem as ever growing to one, who is conversant with their growth only in the vacuity of the mind.
63. All our thoughts appear in the vacuum of our minds, as the vaporous chains of pearls are seen in the autumn sky; they are both as erroneous and fleeting as the other, and yet they press so very thick and quick on our sight and minds, that there is no reckoning of them.