17. And I mean that to be unreal, as the state in which I beheld my husband in the etherial region erewhile; because vacuity has no limit of time or place in it. 18. The goddess rejoined:—The real creation cannot produce an unreal figure, nor a similar cause produce a dissimilar effect. 19. Lílá replied:—But we often see, O goddess! dissimilar effects to be produced from similar causes: thus, the earth and earthen pot though similar in their substance, yet the one is seen to melt in water, and the other to carry water in it. 20. The goddess said:—Yes, when an act is done by the aid of auxiliary means, there the effect is found to be somewhat different from the primary cause. (Thus the earthen pot being produced by the auxiliary appliances of fire, the potter’s wheel and the like, differs in its quality from the original clay). 21. Say O beauteous lady! what were the causes of thy husband’s being born in this earth? The same led to his birth in the other world also (_i.e._ the merit of the acts and desires of men, are the causes of their transmigrations in both worlds). 22. When the soul has fled from here, how can the earth follow him there any more, and what auxiliary causes can there be in connection with this cause? 23. Wherever there arises a coaction with its apparent causality, it is usually attributed by every one to some unknown antecedent cause or motive. 24. Lílá said:—Methinks goddess, that it was the expansion of my husband’s memory that was the cause of his regenerations; because it is certain that reminiscence is the cause of the reproduction of objects before us. 25. The goddess replied that, memory is an aerial substance, and its productions are as unsubstantial as itself. 26. Lílá said:—Yes I find reminiscence to be an airy thing, and its reproduction of my husband and all other things within me to be but empty shadows in the mind. 27. The goddess replied:—So verily was this reproduction of thy husband and all those things which appeared to thy sight in thy reverie; and so, my daughter, is the appearance of all things I see in this world. 28. Lílá said:—Tell me goddess for the removal of my conception of the reality of the world, how the false appearance of my formless lord, was produced before me by the unreal world, (since nothing unsubstantial can cast a shadow). 29. The goddess replied:—As this illusive world appeared a reality to thee before thy reminiscence of it, so must thou know all this to be unreal from what I am going to relate to thee. 30. There is in some part of the sphere of the Intellect the great fabric of the world, with the glassy vault of the firmament for its roof on all sides. 31. The Meru (the polar axle or mountain) is its pillar, beset around by the regents of the ten sides, as statues carved upon it. The fourteen regions are as so many apartments of it, and the hollow concavity containing the three worlds, is lighted by the lamp of the luminous sun.