53. No sooner you get rid of your error of the substantiality of the world, than you shall come to the consciousness of its being a vacuum, resting in the spirit of God (which is the receptacle of infinite space, and whatever there appears in it). 54. As it is the nature of a lighted lamp to spread its lustre all around, so it is the nature of mental philosophy, to enlighten us with the real state of the soul. 55. The essence of the supreme soul gave rise to the mind (will) at first, which spread out the universe with its net work of endless varieties. It was as the sky issuing out of the infinite vacuity, and assuming the shape of the blue atmosphere which is also a nullity. 56. Privation of desires melts down the mind, and dissolves the mist of ignorance from the face of the intellect. Then appears the bright light of the one infinite and increate God, like the clear firmament of autumn after the dispersion of clouds. 57. The mind sprouts out at first from the supreme soul with all its activities, and takes upon it the nature of the lotus-born Brahmá by its desire of creation. It stretches out a variety of worlds by its creative will, which are also as the fancied apparitions, appearing before the imaginations of deluded boys. 58. Non-entity appears as an entity before us, it dies away at death, and reappears with our new birth. The mind itself takes its rise from the divine intellect, and displays itself in the substance of the Divine Soul, as the waves play about on the surface of the waters of the deep. FOOTNOTES: Footnote 1: The reader is referred to the following passage in the story of Rip Van Winkle in Irving’s Sketch-Book. “To him the whole twenty years, had been but as one night”. The strange events that had taken place during his torpor were, that there had been a revolutionary war, when his country had thrown off the yoke of old England, and that instead of being a subject of George the third, he was now a free citizen of the United States, pp. 32-33. Footnote 2: The intuition of his existence, is the best proof of the same. Sruti. So says the mystic sufi:—I sought him everywhere but found him nowhere; I then looked within myself, and saw him there—as his seat was there. Footnote 3: Activity is attended with the pleasure of enjoyment, with the pain of bondage; and inactivity with the pleasure of freedom, and the pain of poverty. The insensible are fond of fruition at the expense of their freedom; but the wise prefer their liberty with poverty, as it is said in the _Upanishad_:— श्रयोहि पुंसामाधकं बृणोते । प्रयोमन्दीयोग क्षेमादधिकं बृणोते । Footnote 4: The black Rákshasas were believed to have been a colony of African Negroes in southern India and Ceylon. The Rakhs is Rax, as Sycorax of Shakespeare.