After travelling for a while a deep dark night fell suddenly and spread around them; a cool breeze blew upon them. The cold continued to increase the further they travelled, and eventually Mani felt as if her bones were freezing.
Her hands became all stiff, the rudder almost slipped from her fingers; she thought frost itself took abode within her. At the same time the boat seemed to plunge into unfathomable ravines.

When anxiously asked by Mani, her brother explained that it was the great plain of cold which they were just speeding through, that they had to cross this gap to reach the island, and that she should confidently continue steering.

So Mani continued, but she also asked her brother where this terrible cold was actually coming from.
“It comes from those people who devote all their thought and action to the knowledge and administration of the material sphere of life; it comes from their breath which blows through the world consciousness as streams of the inhuman.

“It is the cold of feelings that flows from the frozen hearts of those without conscience and who grope in the dark. But do continue to steer without worry; these cold winds are called here from all parts of the world by the disciples of the wise man, and in the process of the collective, free and independent development of conscience they are enlivened with the warming power of the all-creative feeling lest the world might freeze.”

Mani was hit by a gust of most gruesome cold so icy that she was thoroughly frightened; and if not for the comforting presence of her brother she certainly would have dropped the rudder and given herself up to this immense lethal cold. However, the cheerful confident voice of her brother gave her courage and, as if by secret spell, also the energy to continue steering.

In some distance Mani heard a chanting, and she asked her brother for its meaning.
“These are the songs by which the disciples of the mighty sage call the cold waves of the forces of reason from all parts of the world and instill life into them.”

Suddenly big icefloes drifted in their way, piling up into giant mountains of frost. All at once an impenetrable wall of icy masses blocked the passage of the little boat through the icy cold.
Mani held her breath; she was sure that their journey had come to an end.

Her brother, however, comforted her with a smile: ”These are the rocks of run-aground opinions, against which innumerable people hit in the icy cold of their reason.
But the pupils of the mighty sage practise the capabilities of their hearts when they melt together this obdurate world of thoughts.

“Can you hear them singing in the distance, and can you feel the pleasant winds that spread so warm and mild over the ice fields?”
And indeed, Mani felt how with the subtle choirs, brought to them by the icy winds, a very light breeze of mild warmth shimmered through the air; this gave her hope.

Now her brother very quietly began to sing a serene song of perfect beauty of heart against the towering masses of ice, and as if governed by a magic hand the rocks melted away in streams, gushing down in roaring waterfalls at both sides of the boat.