40. Habitual inquiry into spiritual truth, serves as the sunlight to enlighten the nature of the soul (unto us); or it lies hid in our very body as any part of it in the darkness of the sunless night. (The inward soul is invisible to exoteric view). 41. All animal beings are in need of certain provisions, for the supportance of their lives; and all these they have to obtain by their continued search, and never without it. Therefore the force of habit prevails in all places as the powerful sunshine. 42. All the fourteen kinds of living beings, have to live by the habit of their respective activities; and it is impossible for any one to get its desired object, without its unfeigned activity. 43. It is the repetition of same action, which takes the name of habit, and which is called one’s personal effort or exertion; and it is not possible for any body to do anything without any effort. 44. Constant habit of action, joined with bodily and mental energy, is the only means of accomplishing anything and not otherwise. 45. There is nothing which is impossible to the power of habit, which is as powerful as the strong sun-beams which give growth to everything on earth. It is habitual energy only that gives prosperity and undauntedness to the brave, on earth and water and mountains, and in forests and deserts. CHAPTER LXVIII. THE FALLACY OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE WORLD. Argument:—Exposition of the Erroneous conception of the Material World. The Nymph continued:—Now as it is the habit of long practice, combined with the understanding and cogitation of a subject, that makes one proficient in it; so these being applied to the meditation of the spiritual and pure soul, will cause the material world to vanish in the stone (we have been talking of). 2. Vasishtha said:—After the celestial nymph had spoken in this manner, I retired to the cavern of a rock, where I sat in my posture of _Padmásana_ (or legs folded upon one another); and became engaged in my samádhi-devotion (or abstract and abstruse meditation). 3. Having given up all thoughts of corporeal bodies, and continued to think only of the intellectual soul, according to the holy dictate of the nymph as said before. 4. I then had the sight of an intellectual void in me, which present a clear and fair prospect before me, resembling the clearness of the vacuous vault of heaven in autumnal season. 5. It was at last by my intense application, to the meditation of the true One (or the God in spirit), that my erroneous view of the phenomenals, entirely subsided within me (or disappeared from my mind). 6. The intellectual sphere of my mind, was filled by a transcendent light; which knew no rising or setting, but was always shining with an uniform radiance. 7. As I was looking into and through the light, that shone in me, I could find neither the sky nor that great stone, which I sought to find.