7. The prime Lord of creatures is said to be self-born at first, and he is known as the increate (Brahmá), for want of his prior acts to cause his birth. (He is coeternal with the eternal Brahma, and is therefore not subject to birth and death).
8. The primeval patriarchs, who obtain their ultimate liberation at the final dissolution of the world, have no antecedent cause to be reborn as unliberated mortals. (So the emancipate souls of the living and dead, are freed from the doom of regeneration.)
9. Brahma, who is the reflector of all souls, is himself invisible in the inward mirror of other souls: (i.e. he reflects all images in himself, but never casts his own reflexion upon any). He is neither the view nor the viewer, and neither the creation nor the creator himself. (These being the functions of the creative and representative powers of Brahmá and Viráj).
10. Though thus negated of all predicates, yet is Brahma the soul of all predicables, that may be affirmed or denied of him (since he is all in all). He is the source of these chains of living beings, as light is the cause of a line of lighted lamps in illuminations.
11. The will of the gods (Brahmá and Viráj), proceeding from the volition of Brahma, is of that spiritual nature as the other; just as one dream rising in another, is equally unsubstantial as the first: (i.e. the products of spiritual causes, are also spiritual, by the rule of the homogeneity of the cause and effect).
12. Hence all living souls, which are evolved from the breathing of the Supreme Spirit, are of the same nature as their origin for want of an auxiliary causality. (God made man in his own image, and as perfect as himself: and this man is manas the Brahmá, or as he is named Adam, corresponding with Adima or Adyam purusham—the first male or Protogonus).
13. Want of a secondary agency, produces the equality of effects with their cause (as the fruits and flowers of trees, are of the same kind with the parent tree, unless there rises a difference in them by cause of engraftments). Hence the uniformity of created things, proves the conception of their creation by a secondary cause, to be wholly erroneous.
14. Brahma himself is the prime soul of Viráj and self-same with him, and Viráj is the soul of creation and identical with it. He is the vacuous vitality of all; and it is from him that the unreal earth and other things have their rise. (Viráj is the spirit of God diffused in nature).
15. Ráma said:—Tell me, whether the living soul, is a limited thing or an unlimited mass of life; or does the unbounded spirit of God, exist in the shape of a mountainous heap of living souls: (i.e. whether it is to be taken in a collective or integral sense, and whether it forms a totality—samashti existent in the Divinity, of which all individual souls are either as parts vyashti or separate existences).
16. Are these living souls like showers of rain-water falling from above, or as the drizzling drops of waves in the vast ocean of creation, or as the sparks of fire struck out of a red-hot iron, and from whence they flow, and by whom they are emitted.