10. Ráma rejoined:—Tell me, O sage, how can you deny the existence of those objects, which are evident to the senses of mine, thine and all others alike; and which are ever present in their thoughts in the minds of sensible beings.
11. Vasishtha replied:—It was at the time of the first creation of the world, that the self manifested God Virát, exhibited the outline of the cosmos in a corner of his all-comprehensive mind; but as nothing was produced in reality, there is no possibility of our knowing any as a knowable or real entity.
12. Ráma rejoined:—How can our common sight, of the present, past and future prospects of this world; and our daily perception of things, which are felt by all in general, be regarded as nothing by your teaching. (Common sense can not be controverted by abstruse philosophy).
13. Vasishtha replied:—Just as the dreamer’s vision in sleep, the deer’s mistake of water in the mirage in sand, the illusory sight of a moon in the sky, and the prospects of our delusive fancies, do all disappear on right observation; so the false perceptions of worldly things, and the mistaken conceptions of our own entities, are as erroneous as the sights of the false lights in the empty air. (These dissolve as dreams upon waking, and the testimony of one waking man, is enough to disperse the deceptive sights of all dreamers and sleepers).
14. Ráma rejoined:—If our knowledge of I and thou and of this and that, is as false as that of all other things in the womb of the world; why then were these brought into existence, not left to remain in their ideas in the mind of their creator, as they had existed before his creation of them?
15. Vasishtha replied:—It is certain that everything springs from its cause, and not otherwise; what then could there be the (material) cause, for the creation of the world therefrom, after the dissolution of everything at the universal destruction?
16. Ráma replied:—Why sir, cannot that being be the cause of recreation, which remains undestroyed and indestructible, after destruction of the prior creation?
17. Vasishtha replied:—Whatever substance there abides in the cause, the same is evolved in effect also; hence the essence of Brahma being composed of his intellect only, it could not give rise to the material world from itself; as the substance of a pot, cannot produce that of a picture or cloth.
18. Ráma replied:—Why sir, the world existed in its subtile (or ideal) state, in the person (mind) of Brahma (God); from which it issued forth anew and again, after dissolution of the former creation.
19. Vasishtha said:—Tell me, O intelligence Ráma, how could the Lord God (whose nature is composed of pure intelligence), conceive the entity or quintessence of the world in himself, and which like the productive seed, sprang out in the form of the future creation. Say what sort of entity was it.