57. This Brahma then displayed himself (under the name of Virát), in the form of a material body, consisting of the quintuple elements of earth, water &c., as the five solid and liquid parts of his person. (This is the Hindu Trinity, composed of the soul, mind and material frame, as Pope the poet has expressed it in the words: “Whose body nature is, and God the souls”).
58. As this triple nature of the Deity, is no more than the variation of his will, so it represented itself as the one or other, in its thought only, and not in reality (the substance being but a conception of the mind).
59. Brahmá himself is vacuous intellect, and his will consists in the vacuity of the same; therefore the production and destruction of the world, resemble the rise and fall of figures in the dreaming state of the human mind.
60. As the divine mind of Brahmá is a reality, so its parts or contents are real also; and its acts or productions of the sun, moon and stars, as well as their rays—the Marichis are real also.
61. Thus the existence of the world and all its contents, is called the dominion of the mind; which is only an unsupported vacuum, like the vacuity of the supportless sky on high.
62. As a city seen in dream is inane, and a hill formed in imagination a mere void; so both Brahma and his world are as the transparent firmament, and having no shape or substance of them.
63. So the world is, but a reflexion of the divine intellect; it is ever existent and undecaying, and the belief of the beginning, middle and end of creation, is as false, as the sight of the ends and midspot of skies.
64. Say Ráma, whether you find any gross substance, to grow in the inane space of the mind of yours or mine or any other person; and if you find no such thing there, how can you suppose it to exist in the inanity of the Divine Intellect, and in the vacuity of the universe?
65. Then tell me why and whence the feelings and passions, such as anger and affection, hate and fear, take their rise; all which are of no good to any body, but rather pernicious to many.
66. In truth I tell thee that these are not created things, and yet they seem to rise and fall of themselves, like our wrong notions of the production and destruction of the world. These are but eternal ideas, and coeternal with the eternal mind of God.