7. Now tell me, what you have to say with regard to the material bodies, which these existence bear on earth; and what is the cause that the body is subject to the casualties unknown to the inward spirits. (i.e. The body is subject to material laws, but not so the immaterial spirit which has no change).
8. Vasishtha replied:—There is a supernatural and active energy of the Divine Intellect, called the predominant Decree, Fate or Destiny, which must come to pass, and bear its command over all our actions and desires. (Destiny is irresistible, being the decree of Providence, governing all events and our free wills also. Fate is the personification of the female agency of god. Here Vasishtha is a fatalist also; but his fate is the Divine decree).
9. She is invested from the beginning with irresistible and multifarious powers; and destines the manner in which every thing is to take place and continue for ever. (The philosophical destiny is the sum of the laws of universe, of matter and mind).
10. She is the essential cause of all essence, and the chief mover of the intellect; she is styled as the great power of powers, and remains as the great viewer of all things.
11. She is called the great agency and the great producer of all events; She is known as the chief mover of occurrences, and she is the soul and source of all accidents. (The mythological Destiny is superior to gods and men, and rules over the great Jove himself).
12. She whirls the worlds as straws, and bears her sway over the deities and demons; she commands the Nága dragons and the mountain monsters to the end of time.
13. She is sometimes thought to be an attribute of Divine essence, and to remain pictured in her ever varying colours in the hollow vacuity of the Divine Mind. (The theological destiny is the Almighty Will of God and his foreknowledge also; before which the fates float about, as if they are drawn up in variegated pictures).
14. The learned have explained Brahmá the Demiurge, to be identic with the Spirit of Brahma, for the understanding of those that are ignorant in spiritual knowledge; and by destiny they mean his creation. (i.e. Creation is destination of the preordaining and irrevocable will of God).
15. The immovable spirit of Brahmá, appears to be full of moving creatures and the infinity of Divine existence, seems to teem with the finite creation in the midst of it, like a grove of trees growing under the concavity of the hollow sky.
16. The unwaking spirit of God reflected various images in itself (as in a dream), likening to the reflection of a dense forest in the lens of a crystal stone: and these were understood by the demiurgus Brahmá, as the prototype of the destined creation, in the hollow sphere of the Divine mind.