16. What sorts of beings settle the etherial sphere, and what are they that live in the midst of rocks and stones; what are they that dwell in the vessels and basins of water, and what be they that people the air like the aerial fowls of air.
17. Tell me, O thou greatest of philosophers, how this mundane egg of ours is situated among them. (These are questions of cosmogony, and bear no relation to theology).
18. Vasishtha replied:—These wondrous unknown, unseen and unheard of worlds, are mentioned and described in the sástras with their exemplifications also; and they have been received and believed as true by their students.
19. Ráma, the cosmology of the world, has been described—given by gods and sages, in hundreds of their sástras called the Ágamas; all of which you are well acquainted with.
20. Now as you are well acquainted with the descriptions, that are given of them in the sástras; it is not necessary to relate them again in this place. (The cosmology of the world has been given before in the narrative of Lílá).
21. Ráma rejoined:—Tell me yet, O Venerable sir, how the great void of the intellect came to be produced from divine spirit; tell moreover its extent and duration in time and space.
22. Vasishtha replied:—The great God Brahma, is without beginning and ever existent and without decay; there is no beginning, midst nor end of him, nor are there any shapes of figures in his transcendent vacuum.
23. The vacuum of Brahma is without its beginning and end, and is spread unspent and unbounded to all eternity; it is this which makes the universe, which is ever without its beginning and end.
24. The reflexion of the intellectual vacuum in its own vacuity, is called the universe by itself to no purpose (by itself or the human mind, which views the world in the wrong light of creation, and not as the Divine Mind itself. Gloss).
25. As a man sees a fair city in his dream by night, so is the sight of this world to him, in his dream by day light. (The Sanskrit word Bhano in the text meaning reflexion, corresponds with the Greek Phano to see, and hence phantom or false sights).