18. Therefore the furious form of Rudra, which is assumed by the god Siva at the end of a kalpa; which is said to dance about at that time, is to be known as vibration of the divine intellect.
19. Ráma rejoined:—This world being nothing in reality, in the sight of the right observer; and anything that there remains of it in any sense whatever, the same is also destroyed at the end of the kalpa.
20. How then does it happen at the end of the kalpa, when everything is lost in the formless void of vacuity, that this consolidated form of intellect, known as Siva remains and thinks in itself.
21. Vasishtha replied:—O Ráma! if you entertain such doubt, then hear me tell you, how you can get over the great ocean of your doubts, respecting the unity and duality of the deity:—that all things being extinct at the end, there remains the thinking and subjective intellect alone, without anything objective to think upon.
22. The subjective soul then thinks of nothing, but remains quite tranquil in itself; as the unmoving and mute stone, and resting in the solid vacuity of its omniscience.
23. If it reflects at all on anything, it is only on itself; because it is the nature of the intellect to dwell calmly in itself.
24. As the intellect appears itself, like the inward city it sees within itself in a dream; so there is nothing in real existence any where, except the knowledge thereof, which is inherent in the intellect. (So it is with the divine intellect, whose omniscience comprehends the knowledge of every thing in itself).
25. The divine soul knowing everything in itself, and in its vacuous intellect, sees the manifestation of the universe at the time of creation, by simple development of itself.
26. The intellect developes itself of its own nature, within its vacuous cell at first; and then in a moment envelopes this erroneous universe in itself, and at his will at the time of its destruction.
27. The intellect expands itself, in itself in its natural state of vacuum; and devolves itself likewise into its conceptions of I and thou and all others (which are but false ideas and creatures of its imagination).