(Brahmá the Demiurgus was an emanation of God according to Gnostics; and Vaishwánara was the same as the soul of the world according to Plotinus).
41. Vasishtha replied:—Too incredible is this form and without a parallel, which sprang of itself from its own essence. It is altogether inconceivable how some thing is produced of its own conception.
42. Just fancy, O Ráma! how the unexpanded phantom of a Vetála or ghost, swells in bigness to the sight of fearful children; and conceive in the same manner the appearance of the living spirit from the entity of Brahma. (Evolution of the Living God from the inert Brahma, is as the springing of the moving spirit from the dormant soul).
43. This living spirit was a development of Brahma—the universal soul; it was holy and a commensurable and finite being, and having a personality of its own; it remained as an impersonal unreality in the essence of the selfexistent God. Being separated afterwards from its source, it had a different appellation given to it. (This is the Holy spirit or ghost in one sense, as also the Divine Logos in another, and in whom there was life).
44. As Brahma the all extended and infinite soul, became the definite living soul at will; so the living spirit, became the mind by its volition afterwards. (There is a trinity or triple division of the soul into soma or the universal soul, the pneuma or anima or the living spirit, and the nous or mens or mind).
45. The mind which was the principle of intellection, took a form of its own; and so likewise the life assumed an airy form in the midst of vacuity. (The mind is the state of the impersonal soul with a sense of its personality, and life is animation or the vital principle in the form of the vital breath).
46. The wakeful living god (who had no twinkling of his eyes), whereby we measure time was yet conscious of its course by means of his thoughts; and had the notion of a brilliant icicle of the form of the future mundane egg in his mind. See Manu’s Genesis of the World. I.
47. Then the living soul felt in itself the sense of its consciousness, and by thinking ‘what am I,’ was conscious of its egoism. (Why is the non-ego of the objective world put before the ego? The objective orb of the world should follow the subjective consciousness).
48. This god next found in his understanding the knowledge of the word taste, and got the notion of its becoming the object of a particular organ of sense, to be hereafter called “the tongue.” (Rasaná or the instrument of the perception of rasa or flavour. Rasa abiding in water is reckoned first of the elements on account the Spirit of God resting on it before creation, wherefore God is himself called rasa in the Sruti—rasa vaitat).
49. The living soul then found out in his mind the meaning of the word ‘light,’ which was afterwards to sparkle in the eye—the particular organ of sight.