17. The mind is the cause of all its feelings, as water is the cause of the sea, and the heat of fire. Hence the mind is the source of all things, and intimately connected with whatever is existent in the world. 18. The thoughts that we have of the agent, effect and instrument of things, as also of the viewer, view and the instrumentality of sight, all belong to the mind. 19. The mind alone is perceived to be in existence in the world; and its representations of the forests and all other things are but variations of itself! So the thinking man sees the substance of gold only, in all its various formations of bangles and bracelets, which are taken for naught. (All objectivity is dependant on the subjective mind, as there is no perception of an object independent of the mind. See identity of the subjective and objective in the Pantheistic Idealism of Spinoza). CHAPTER CIV. STORY OF A MAGIC SCENE. Argument. Story of king Lavana and his court, and the Advent of a Sorcerer there. Vasishtha said:—Hear me relate to you Ráma a very pretty narrative, representing the world as an enchanted city, stretched out by magic of the magician Mind. 2. There lies on the surface of this earth a large and populous tract of land by name of Northern Pándava, a country full of forests of various kinds. (We know the Northern Kuru the Uttara Kuru or Otterokoros of Ptolemy, to be the Trans-Himalayan Tartary, which is here termed the North-Pándava, from the King Pandu’s rambles and the wanderings of the Pándava princes in it in their exile). 3. The forests were deep and dense, and there dwell in the fastness of these woods a number of holy hermits; while the Vidyádhara damsels had wrought there many a bower of swinging creepers (for their amusement). 4. Heaps of rubicund farina, wafted by the breeze from full blown lotuses, rose as high as crimson hills on the ground; which was decorated with wreaths and garlands by the loads of flowers, which had fallen thereon from the surrounding trees. 5. Groves of Karanja plants were decorated with bundles of blossoms, to the utmost boundaries of the jungle; and the firmament resounded with the rustling noise, emitted by the leafy date trees in the villages around. 6. There was a range of tawny rocks on one side, and fields brown with ripened corn on another; while the warbling of cerulean doves re-echoed in the resonant groves about. 7. The shrill cry of the stork resounded in the forest, and the branches of tamala and pátali flowers, hang down like ear-rings of the hills. 8. Flocks of various birds, were making a chorus with their vocal music; and the blooming crimson blossoms of páribhadra arbors, were hanging over the banks, all along the length of the running streams.