23. Here I saw once a body of troopers coming to a hunting excursion; and being then affrighted at the sight, I betook myself to flight. 24. They then laid hold of me, and took me to their place; where they kept me for some days for their pleasure, and at last brought me hither before Ráma. 25. I have thus related to you all the incidents of my life; and the magical scenes of the world, too full of marvelous events. 26. It is the production of our ignorance, which pervades over all things, and branches out into innumerable forms in everything that presents itself to our view; and there is nothing whatever to dispel this darkness, except by the light of spiritual knowledge. 27. Válmíki relates:--Then as Vipaschit had held his silence after speaking in this manner; he was accosted by the well minded Ráma with the following words. 28. Ráma said:--Tell me sir, how a person without any desire of his own, sees the object of another’s desire in himself; and could the deer thought of by yourself, come to the sight of others in Indra’s Paradise? 29. Vipaschit replied:--Let me tell you that the earth where upon the huge carcass had fallen, was once before trodden upon by Indra, with the pride of his performance of a hundred sacrifices. 30. There strutting along in his haughty strides, he met the anchorite Durvásas sitting still in his meditative mood; and believing him to be a dead body lying on his way, he knocked it down with his feet. 31. At this the angry anchorite threatened the proud god with saying:--O Indra! as you have dashed me with your feet by thinking me a lifeless corpse, so will a huge carcass shortly fall upon this ground and slash it to pieces and reduce it to dust. 32. And as you have spurned me as a dead body, so art thou accursed to be crushed under the falling carcass on earth. 33. He transformed into a deer, as he was king of kings before, and remained in his appearance according to his ideas. 34. In truth neither is the actual world a reality, nor the imaginary one an unreality; it is in fact the one and same thing, whether we conceive it as the one or other (_i.e._ either as the real or unreal). 35. Listen now, O Ráma, to another reason, which appertains to this subject, and clearly settles the point in question. (That God being Almighty and all in all, it makes no difference whatever, whether the world is viewed as his creation or as a pantheon). 36. He in whom all things reside, and from whom everything proceeds; who is all in all; and who is every where in all must be the One that you may call all, and beside whom there <is> none at all. 37. It is equally possible to him, to bring forth whatever he wills to produce; as also not to produce, whatever he does not wish to bring to existence. 38. Whatever is desired in earnest by any body, must eventually come to pass to him in reality (as the desired doership of Vipaschit); and this is as true as the instance of light, being ever accompanied by its shade.