Vasishtha continued:—You are not born with the birth of your body, nor are you dead with its death. You are the immaculate spirit in your soul, and your body is nobody to you. 2. The analogy of the plum on a plate, and of vacuum in the pot, which is adduced to prove the loss of the one upon loss of the other, is a false paralogy; since neither the plum nor the vacuum is lost, by the breaking of the plate or pot. (So the soul is not lost at the dissolution of its containing body). 3. Whoever having a body, thinks that he will perish with his perishable frame, and is sorry for it; is verily blinded in his mind, and is to be pitied for his mental blindness. (So said the Grecian philosopher, “it is no wonder that the mortal should die, and the fragile would be broken”). 4. As there is no sympathy between the reins of a horse, and the riding chariot; so there is no relation between the organs of the body and the intellect. (This is in refutation of the argument, that the motion of a part affects the whole, as the shaking of the leaves and branches of a tree shaketh the trunk also; whereas the motion of body, makes no effect on the intellect). 5. As there is no mutual relationship, between the mud and clear water of a tank; so O Rághava! there is no correlation between the members of the body and the soul. 6. As the traveller retains no love nor sorrow for the path he has passed over, and the journey he has made already; so the soul bears no affection nor disaffection, towards the body with which it sojourned and which it has left behind. (Though some departed ghosts, are said to hover over their dead bodies). 7. As the imaginary ghost and fairy, strike fear and love in some persons; so the ideal world inspires pleasure and pain, in the mind of the idealist. 8. It is the assemblage of the five elementary bodies, that has framed all these different forms of beings in the world; as it is the same wood, whereof various images are carved and made. 9. As you see nothing but the woody substance in all timbers, so you find nothing except the assemblage of the five elements in all tangible bodies (all of which are subject to change and dissolution.) 10. Why therefore, O Ráma! should you rejoice or regret at anything, seeing that the quintuple elements are wont to have their own course, in joining and disjoining themselves, in the formation and dissolution of bodies? 11. Why should one be so fond of female forms, and the forms of all other beautiful things on earth? seeing that men run after them like flies, and then falling in fire only to consume themselves. (_i.e._ All goodly forms in the world, being for the delusion of men, we should avoid to look upon them). 12. Good features and goodly shapes and figures, are delightsome to the ignorant; but to the wise they present their real figures of the combination of the five elements and no more.