Having resolved within myself, “I shall imagine this creation,” I turned my awareness to the vastness of the sky, my mind purified and made subtle. As my consciousness expanded into that boundless expanse, I beheld immense creations, each existing distinctly, enduring without interruption, and separate from one another. Within these vast realms, though unseen by one another, were Brahma, Vishnu, and Indra, accompanied by gods and asuras, gandharvas, kinnaras, serpents, and humans. There stood the great mountains—Meru, Mandara, Kailasa, Mahendra, Malaya, and many others—together with continents, islands, rivers, and radiant regions, numbering ten, all shining brilliantly. In those realms, like reflections, I saw the ten lotus-born beings, each dwelling upon a lotus stalk, mounted upon swan-chariots, established firmly in their own places. From each of these ten, separate and distinct, arose rows of beings, luminous and long, blazing with flames, their radiance illuminating the worlds. Great rivers flowed there, oceans resounded, the sun’s hot rays shone forth, and winds surged through the sky. In the heavens, the gods delighted in play; on earth, humans rejoiced; and in the netherworlds, asuras and serpents dwelled happily. All the seasons, adorned with auspicious qualities, were woven into the wheel of time; as their appointed moments arrived, they beautified the earth with abundant fruits. The established ways of auspicious and inauspicious conduct matured across the horizons, bringing everywhere the fruits of hell and heaven as they came due. All living beings, yearning for the fruits of enjoyment or liberation, strove according to their wishes and in due order, at their proper times. The seven worlds, with their continents, oceans, and mountains, echoed with mighty reverberations as the end of the cycle approached. In some places, night had arrived; elsewhere, it persisted steadfastly. In the mountain valleys, darkness stood, moving swiftly like a flash of light. Within the blue lotus of the sky, the honeybee of the wandering cloud roamed; the network of stars shone forth, filling it like a cluster of stamens. Dense mist at the end of the cycle rested upon the peaks of Meru; pure cotton lay in the hollows of silk-cotton trees, as if nestled in bone cavities. The girdle of the Lokāloka mountain, roaring with the tumult of battle-oceans, was adorned with fragments of darkness and sapphire, shining with its own jewels. The earth, humming with the low cries of creatures, stood amidst the expanse of worlds like a woman within the inner chambers of a palace. The splendors of the seasons, adorned by rows of white days and streaks of night in between, appeared like garlands of lotuses and water-lilies. The many realms of earth, each with their own divisions and inhabitants, shone with a reddish glow, like clusters of pomegranates in a grove. The triple-flowing, triple-path rivers, moving upward and downward, shimmered as purely as the crescent moon, resembling the sacred thread of the universe. Here and there, they decayed and arose again—like lightning-flowers on the creepers of the directions, or cloud-shoots at the end of the wind. The paths of ocean, earth, and sky were adorned with rows of celestial cities, gardens, and flying palaces, all shining brilliantly. In other worlds, gods, demons, humans, and serpents gathered in crowds, humming like gnats on fig trees. Time, marked by ages, aeons, moments, instants, and fractions, flowed on unnoticed, ever awaiting the dissolution of all. Witnessing all this with my own pure and supreme radiance, I was filled with astonishment, wondering, “What is this? How can this be?” How is it that with these fleshly eyes I see nothing at all, yet in the sky of the mind I perceive this incomparable web of illusion? After long contemplation with my mind from that sky, I summoned the sun from that net of worlds and questioned him. “Come, Lord of gods, O radiant Sun, of great brilliance! Welcome to you,” I said, and addressed him further: “Who are you? How did this world or these many worlds come into being? If you know, O Blessed One, please tell me this, O faultless one.” Thus addressed, the Sun recognized me. Bowing, he replied with words beyond reproach: “Though you have always attained the cause of this visible phantom, why do you not know? Why do you ask me, O Lord? But if, in your play, O all-knowing one, you wish to hear from me, then listen—I shall tell you. “The mind of the great soul, radiant here as the Self of the Lord, is extended by the divisions of time as existence and non-existence, and by intricate constructions that bestow confusion through the burden and fragmentation of illusion. “O Mahadeva, on the day named ‘imagination,’ at the base of Mount Kailasa, in a single corner of Jambudvipa, there was a realm called Suvarnajata, established by your sons and their offspring—splendid, exceedingly pleasant, and beautiful. “In that place lived a supremely righteous Brahmin, foremost in knowledge of Brahman, named Indu, of exceedingly peaceful nature, born in the lineage of Kashyapa. While he lived there among his own people, he had no child, like a blade of grass in a desert. “His wife, upright, fair, and pure, did not shine, being fruitless in flowering, like an empty creeper. Then, the two spouses, distressed for the sake of a child, ascended the shoulder of Mount Kailasa for austerity, like two trees grown upon a forest slope. “In that secluded grove of Kailasa, unoccupied by beings and empty, the two performed severe austerity, subsisting on water and standing by a tree.