14. Let this error therefore vanish, as it has come from nothing to nothing; and as all causeless falsities fail of themselves. You will know more of this, Ráma! when you are awakened to divine knowledge. In the meantime, do away with error of viewing a duality, which is different from the only existent Unity. (Duality being driven out, all will appear one and the same. So Sádi the sophist: _duirácho badar kardam ekebinam ekedámam_). 15. After the knot of your error is cut asunder, by your attending to my lectures, you will come to know by yourself, the signification and substance (object) of what is called the true knowledge, which is taken in different senses by the various schools; but that which comes of itself in the mind, is the intuitive knowledge of divine truth. 16. You have a mind like that of the common people (itara), which is full of mistakes and blunders (anarthas); all which will doubtlessly subside in your mind, by your attending to my lectures (because the words of the wise remove all errors). 17. You will be awakened by my sermons to know this certain truth, that all things proceed from Brahma into whom they ultimately return. (Brahma is the producer, sustainer, and recipient or the first and last of all. He is alpha and omega). 18. Ráma rejoined:—Sir, your affirmation of the first cause in the ablative case, “that all things proceed from Brahma,” is opposed to the negative passage in the Sruti in the same case, that “nothing is distinct from Him”; and is inconsistent in itself (in as much as, there cannot be all things, and again nothing but Brahma; and to say “the same thing comes from the same,” would be a palpable absurdity). 19. Vasishtha answered:—Words or significant terms are used in the Sástras for instruction of others; and where there appears any ambiguity in them, they are explained in their definitions. (Hence the ablative form “from Brahma” is not faulty, for what is in the receptacle, the same comes out of it; or as they say, “what is in the bottom, the same comes upon the surface”; and the one is not distinct from the other, as the wave differs not from the water whence it rises. This is downright pantheism). 20. Hence it is the use though not in honest truth, to make a difference of the visibles from the invisible Brahma (for the purpose of instruction); as it is usual to speak of ghosts appearing to children, though there be no such things in reality. (It is imagination that gives a name to airy nothing, and it is the devise of language to use words for negative ideas, as the word world to denote a duality and darkness for want of light, and not anything in itself).