13. Then it becomes confined in that body, by its belief of the unreality as a sober reality; and then it thinks of many things within itself, and goes on seeking and running after them all. (But the steady soul is sedate, and has all within itself, without seeking them elsewhere without).

14. This God then makes many symbolical sounds and forms (invents) words for names and actions; and at last upon his utterance of the mystic syllable Om or (on) the Vedas rang out and sang in currents of verbiage.

15. Then through the medium of those sacred words, the god ordained the ordinances for the conduct of all mankind; and everything turned to be, as he wished and thought it to be in his own mind. (Hence Brahmá is said the creative mind of God).[4]

16. Whatever exists in any manner, the same is the self same Brahmá itself; and yet no body perceives it as such, owing to the predominant error of all, of believing the unreal world as a real existence.

17. All the things from the great Brahmá down to all, are but false appearances as those of dreams and magical show; and yet the spiritual reality is utterly lost to sight, under the garb of material unreality (i.e. The unreal matter is taken for real spirit).

18. There is nothing as materiality anywhere and at any time; it is the spiritual only which by our habitual mode of thinking and naming, is said to be substantial, elemental and material.

19. This our fallacy of materiality, has come to us from our very source in Brahmá—the creator; who entertained the false idea of the material world, and transmitted this error even into the minds of the wise and very great souls.

20. How is it possible, O Ráma, for the intelligent soul, to be thus confined in a clod of earth, all this must either be an illusory scene, or a representation of Brahma himself.

21. There can be no other cause of this world, except the eternal causality of Brahma; who is self-existent, only without any action or causation of himself; thus the Supreme soul being wholly devoid of the attributes of cause and effect, what can this world be, but an extension of the Divine essence?

CHAPTER CLXXXX.
Ecstasis or Inertness of Ráma.