37. Being then exhausted as the extinguished lamp, I became as dark as collyrium; and slept silently in my own cell, like a tortoise with its contracted limbs. 38. Being tired with my travel throughout the universe, at the kalpánta end of the world; I remained fixed amidst the dark clouds of heaven, as the elephant of Rudra abides there in company with (his lightning). 39. At the end when the worlds were dissolved, and the waters were absorbed by the submarine fires; I kept myself dancing in the etherial space, which devoid of its waters. 40. Sometimes I was borne on high by the burning fire, with its teeth of the sparks and its flaming arms, and its flying fumes resembling the dishevelled hairs on its head. 41. The conflagration burnt down the straw-built houses before it, and fed upon the animal bodies on its way; and consumed the eight kinds of wood, that are ordained in sacrificial rites. 42. I saw the sparks of fire, emitted by the strokes of hammer, from the red hot iron of blacksmiths, were rising and flying about like golden brickbats, to hit the hammerer. 43. In another place I saw the whole universe, lying invisible for ages in the womb of stony mundane egg. 44. Ráma said:—Tell me sir, how you felt yourself in that state of confinement in the stone; and whether it was a state of pleasure or pain, to you and the rest of beings. 45. Vasishtha replied:—As when a man falls into sleep with the dulness of his senses, and has yet his airy intellect fully awake in him; so was that outward insensibility filled with intellectual sensibility. (So a man assimilating himself to Brahma, is full of his internal light and felicity). 46. The great Brahma awakens the soul, when the body lies as insensible as the dull earth; so the sleeping man remaining in his torpid state, has his internal soul full with the divine spirit (which fills it with true intellectual delight _sachchidánanda_). 47. Because the earthly or corporeal body of man, is verily a falsity and has no reality in it; it appears as visual phantom to the sight of the spectator, but in reality it is one with unchanged spirit of God. 48. Knowing this certain truth, whoso views these all as an undivided whole; sees the quintessence as one essence, and the subjective and the objective as the same (Lit.:—He does not fall into the blunder of the viewer and the view). 49. I then having assimilated myself to the pure spirit of Brahma, viewed all things in and as Brahma, because there is none beside Brahma, that is or can be or do anything from naught. 50. When I viewed all these visibles as manifestation of the self-same Brahma, then I left myself also situated in the state of divinity of Brahma himself. 51. When on the other hand, I reflected myself as combined with the pentuple material elements; I found myself reduced to my dull nature, and was incapable of my intellectual operation of excogitation, and the conception of my higher nature.