DESCRIPTION OF THE NET WORK OF THE WORLD. Argument:—Vasishtha’s hearing a faint sound after his hybernation and his coming to the sight of endless worlds afterwards. Ráma rejoined:—Relate to me, O sage, of your acts of a whole century, after you had risen from your trance, in the cell of your aerial abode. 2. Vasishtha replied:—After I had awakened from my trance, I heard a soft and sweet sound, which <was> slow but distinctly audible, and was clearly intelligible both in sound and sense. 3. It was as soft and sweet, as if it proceeded from female voice; and musical to the ear; and as it was neither loud nor harsh owing to its effeminacy, I kept to watch whence the words were heard. 4. It was as sweet as the humming of the bees, and as pleasing as the tune of wired instruments; it was neither the chime of crying nor the rumble of reading, but as the buzzing of black bees, known to men as the _visa-koshi_ strain in vocal music. 5. Hearing this strain for a long time, and seeking in vain whence it came, I thought within myself: “It is a wonder that I hear the sound, without knowing its author, and from which of the ten sides of heaven it proceeds.” 6. This part of the heavens, said I, is the path of the siddhas (or spirits of sanctified saints), and on the other side I see an endless vacuity; I passed over millions of miles that way, and then I sat there awhile and pondered in my mind. 7. How could such feminine voice, proceed from such a remote and solitary quarter; where I see no vocalist with all my diligent search. 8. I see the infinite space of the clear and inane sky lying before me, where I find no visible being appearing to my sight notwithstanding all my diligent search. 9. As I was thinking in this manner, and looking repeatedly on all sides, without seeing the maker of the sonant sound; I thought on a plan in the following manner. 10. That I must transform myself to air, and be one with the inane vacuum; and then make some sound in the empty air, which is the receptacle of sound. (The air is said to be the vehicle and medium of sound, which is called the property of air). 11. I thought on leaving my body in its posture of meditation, as I was sitting before; and with the vacuous body of my intellect, mix with the inane vacuum, as a drop of water mixes with water. 12. Thinking so, I was about to forsake my material frame, by sitting in my posture of _Padmásana_, and betaking myself to my _samádhi_ or intense meditation, and shut my eyes closely against all external sights. 13. Having then given up my sensations of all external objects of sense, I became as void as my intellectual vacuum, preserving only the feeling of my consciousness in myself. 14. By degrees I lost my consciousness also, I became a thinking principle only; and then I remained in my intellectual sphere as a mirror of the world (_i.e._ to reflect the reflexions of all worldly things in their abstracted light).