10. It is the ignorant only that understand the Omniform God, to be all forms of things; while the learned know the forms to be modifications of the various powers of the Almighty, and not the figures themselves.
11. Now whether the forms (of material things) be real or unreal, it is to be known that they appear to men according to their different apprehensions of those beings, which Brahma is pleased to exhibit in any particular form to their minds and senses. (i.e. Some taking an abstract and others a concrete view of them, agreeably to their internal conceptions or external perceptions, of their various properties and qualities).
CHAPTER LXIV.
The Germinating Seed.
Vasishtha resumed:—The supreme Deity is the all-pervading spirit and the great God and Lord of all. He is without beginning and end, and is self-same with the infinite bliss of his translucent self-cogitation.
2. It is this supreme felicity and purely intellectual substance, whence the living soul and mind have their rise, prior to their production of the Universe. (i.e. The eternal and inert bliss called Brahma, became the living soul—anima, of and the active mind—mens, which created the world).
3. Ráma asked:—How could the self-cogitation of Brahma, as the infinite spirit and one without a second, conceive in it a finite living soul other than itself, and which was not in Being.
(The inactive and active souls, are not the one and the same thing, nor can the immutable and infinite be changed to one of a finite and changeful nature; nor was there a secondary being co-existent with the unity of the self-existent God).
4. Vasishtha replied:—The immense and transparent Spirit of Brahma, remained in a state of asat—non-existence, a state of ineffable bliss as seen by the adept Yogi; but of formidable vastness as conceived by the uninitiated novice. (i.e. The meditation of the Infinite is a delight to the spiritualist, but it is a horror to the gross idolator, whose mind knows nothing beyond matter and material forms).
5. This state of supreme bliss, which is ever tranquil, and full with the pure essence of God, is altogether undefinable, and incomprehensible, even by the most proficient in divine knowledge. (God is unknowable, is the motto of the wise Athenians and modern Agnostics).
6. Thence sprang a power (an hypostasis) like the germ of a seed, and possessed of consciousness and energy, that is called the living and conscious soul, and which must last until its final liberation. (This is the Demiurge, an emanation from God, and the source and soul of the world).