Ráma asked:—I understand now how the particles of the Divine Spirit, take the forms of the living souls; but I cannot conceive how it assumes the corporeal body composed of bones and ribs. 2. Vasishtha replied:—Why don’t you know it Ráma, when I have explained it to you before? Where have you lost your deductive reasoning of arriving to the conclusion from those premises. 3. All these corporeal bodies in the world, and all these moving and unmoving persons and things, are but false representations, rising before us as the visions in our dreams. 4. The phenomenal world differs only in its being but a longer and more delusive dream; it is as the sight of the double moon by optical deception, and of a mountain in the delusion of darkness. 5. The enlightened mind which is cleared of its drowsiness of ignorance, and is freed from the fetters of its desire, views the world to be no more than a dream. 6. The world is a creation of the imagination, by the nature of all living souls, and it remains therefore impressed in the soul, until it attains its final liberation. 7. The fleeting essence of the soul, is like the eddy of waters; or like the germ of the seed, or more like the leaflet of a sprout. 8. And as the flower is contained in the branch, and the fruit within its flowers; so this creation of the imagination, is contained in the receptacle of the mind. 9. As the ever-changing form of the chameleon, exhibits but a particular hue at a time; so the ever-varying mind shows only the figure, which is prominent in its thought for the time being (and this inward figure is reflected by the visual organs). 10. The same thought assumes a visible form, as the clay takes the form of a pot; and the good thoughts and actions of the prior state of life, serve to give the soul a goodly form in its next birth on earth. 11. We see the mighty lotus-born Brahmá situated in the cell of that flower, and find it to be the effect of the good thoughts he had in his mind. 12. This unlimited creation is the false fabrication of imagination; whereupon the living soul in conjunction with the mind, obtained the state of Virinchí the Brahmá (vir inchoatious or _incipiens_ the primary man, otherwise called _ádima-purusha_—Adam or the first male). 13. Ráma said:—I require, Sir, to be fully informed, whether all other beings sprang from the same cause as Brahmá—the lotus-born. 14. Vasishtha answered:—Hear me tell you, O long-armed Ráma, the manner of Brahmá’s having the body; and from his instance, you will learn about the existence of the world. 15. The Supreme soul, which is unlimited by time or space, takes of his own will, and by the power of his Omnipotence, the limited forms of time and space upon himself. 16. The same becomes the living soul, and is fraught with various desires in itself, of becoming many:—_aham bahu syáma_.