25. Hast thou sir, drunk the ambrosial draught of the gods, that gave thee thy Divine knowledge? and art infused with the spirit of the sovran Virát, that is quite apart from the plenum it fills, and is quite full with its entire voidness (stretches through all, and unmixed with any).
26. I see thy soul to be as void and yet as full as his, and as still and yet as moving as the Divine spirit; it is all and not all what exists, and something yet nothing itself.
27. It is quiet and comely, shining and yet unseen; it is inert and yet full of force and energy, it is inactive with all its activity and action; and such soul is thine. (These antithetic attributes of the Divine soul, are applied objectively to that of Vasishtha in the second person, as they are subjectively put to one’s ownself in the first person in many other places. Thus in the Bhagavad Gítá where Krishna assumes to himself the title of Brahma and says “Resort to Me alone” so says the Sufi Mansur “I am the true one” so says Hastamulaka in his celebrated rhapsody. “I am that eternal that is conceived by every one.”)
28. Though now journeying on earth, you seem to range far above the skies; you are supportless, though supported on a sound basis (of the body or Brahma). (i.e. The spirit and mind range freely every where, though they appear to be confined within the limits of the body, or to proceed from and rest in the eternal essence of Brahma).
29. Thou art not stretched over the objects, and yet no object subsists without thee; thy pure mind like the beauteous orb of the moon, is full of the nectarous beams of immortality. (The moon is called the lord of medicinal plants, having the virtues of conferring life and health to the body).
30. Thou shinest as the full-moon, without any of her digits or blackish spots in thee; thou art cooling as the moon-beams, and full of ambrosial juice as the disk of that watery planet.
31. I see the existence and non-existence of the world, depend upon thy will, and thy intellect contains in it the revolving world, as the germ of a tree contains within it the would be fruit.
32. Know me sir, as a Bráhmana sprung from the sage Sandilya’s race; my name is Manki, and am bent on visiting places of pilgrimage.
33. I have made very long journeys, and seen many holy places in my peregrinations all about; and have now after long bent my course to revisit my native home. (The toils being over, the traveller returns home, and there to die. Goldsmith).
34. But my mind is so sick of and averse to the world, that I hesitate to return to my home, after having seen the lives of men passing away as flashes of lightening from this world.