At the end of all things, even after the most auspicious and fortunate existences, what remains is a residue of impurity and suffering, much like the soot that lingers after a flame has burned out. The actions of the mind and the six senses are fleeting and impermanent; they arise and disappear, and just as a slender creeper cannot support the weight of a great serpent, so too can these faculties not uphold the path of truth. Consider how, out of affection, one may call a mass of blood and flesh “my beloved daughter,” yet what sense is there in clinging to a mere pile of bones and calling it “my own body”? O Rama, the world appears real and stable only to satisfy the ignorant; for the wise, it is unstable, unreal, and incapable of bringing lasting satisfaction. Even without being consumed by it, this world intoxicates like poison, dulling the mind. Therefore, renounce your attachment to it and seek the knowledge of the oneness of the Self. When the mind, mistaking the non-self for the self, comes to rest in that false identification, the entire web of the world—woven from unreality—arises. By the force of latent impressions, the mind of Brahman imagines a body; just as a wall coated with gold appears golden, so does the Self seem to take on the qualities of these imaginings. O wise Brahman, having attained the state of the Creator, how does the mind gradually bring about the apparent solidity of this world? From the womb-bed, the first child was born from the lotus and uttered the word “Brahma”; thus, he is known as Brahmā. For the mind—whose nature is a web of imagination and whose form is conceived—he established an abode for the fortune of imagination in another realm. Then, Brahmā first imagined a radiant light of great splendor, shining like a circle of blazing fire, turning all directions golden. This light was filled with clusters of harsh fire-sparks, woven like constellations, with a sky tinged pale at the edges and adorned with golden forests. Its mass was a tangle of golden flames and blazing fire, adorned with wildly spreading, shining golden earrings. Within that brilliant light, the mind, embodying itself in that form, imagined the sun, shaped like the self. From that light, the sun arose, dwelling in the midst of a circle of flames, wearing blazing golden earrings. He bore a mass of flame-locks, exhaling and expanding fire, his limbs playing with flames, filling the entire sphere of the sky. Then Brahmā, possessed of great intellect, in a flash of insight, fashioned the other particles of light into beautiful aerial vehicles. Instantly, he conceived them and saw them just as he had imagined; the wise one perceived the arising of these conceptions as one perceives groups of sounds. This, O mighty-armed one, is the process by which the self-born creates anew; each day and for each world, the gods and demons are conjured by his thought. He imagined time and its divisions, the stars and planets, rivers, oceans, islands, directions, mountains, and the earth itself. Brahmā imagined gods, demons, humans, serpents, gandharvas, yakshas, and rakshasas—just as the ocean produces waves. He also devised their regions, mountains, splendid aerial vehicles, and assigned their various actions; the lotus-born one arranged all these. Those beings, having attained perfection through thought and possessing all powers, instantly beheld before them whatever they had conceived. Then they imagined many other groups of beings; those beings in turn imagined others, and those others yet more, of various kinds. Recalling the Vedas, along with the qualities of the sacrificial rituals, Brahmā established the boundaries for the world, as one would set boundaries for a housewife. Assuming a divine form, the mind-created vast body produces this creation, teeming with the succession of beings. He made worlds adorned with oceans, mountains, and trees, with realms stretching between worlds, and regions marked by the peaks of Meru, the earth’s seat, directions, forests, and tangled masses. This creation is pierced by pleasure and pain, old age, birth, death, and disease; it is afflicted by passion, aversion, and fear, and its very essence is composed of the three qualities. Whatever was imagined by those minds, arisen from Brahmā in the past—so it was seen in its entirety, and even now it is perceived through illusion. Thus, in all creations, the unborn one, in some cases or perhaps in all, imagines the cycle of existence and perceives it as stable. This delusion, though false, attains the appearance of reality in waking life; it is continually fashioned by the mind’s imagination. All actions in the world unfold according to imagination; by the power of imagination, the goddess of destiny remains firmly established. When the creation, planted by the Lord of beings, had arisen, Brahmā, born from the lotus and seated upon the lotus-seat, contemplates thus. By the mere vibration of the mind, a wondrous array arises—creation, full of enjoyment, ever-changing through the play of manifold activities. It is crowded with Indras, Upendras, and mighty kings, filled with mountains and oceans, and riddled with the narrow passages of netherworlds, heavens, and quarters. All this web of imagination has been spread by me, he reflects; now I shall cease from this process of manifesting the play of thought. Thus resolving, he withdraws from the distress of fanciful constructions, and remembers his own Self—the beginningless, supreme Brahman—by his own Self. Attaining that state, with the mind dissolved in that radiance, he abides in happiness, his heart at peace, like a weary traveler resting on a bed. Free from possessiveness and ego, having reached supreme peace, he abides in the Self within himself, like the ocean undisturbed. Sometimes, by meditation, the blessed Lord himself ceases, by the power of consciousness, just as the ocean becomes still by the cessation of waves.