Now let me take one example from one of the greatest names, one who knew the truth he spoke, but also, like every teacher, had to remember that while he was man, those to whom he spoke were children that could not grasp truth with virile understanding. That great teacher, founder of one of the three schools of the Vedânta, Shrî Râmânujâchârya, in his commentary on the _Bhagavad-Gîtâ_--a priceless work which men of every school might read and profit by--dealing with the phrase in which Shrî Kṛiṣhṇa declares that He has had बहूनिजन्मानि [Sanskrit: bahUnijanmAni] "many births," points out how vast the variety of those births had been. Then, confining himself to His manifestations as I´shvara--that is after He had attained to the Supreme--he says quite truly that He was born by His own will; not by karma that compelled Him, not by any force outside Him that coerced Him, but by His own will He came forth as I'shvara and incarnated in one form or another. But there is nothing said there of the innumerable steps traversed by the mighty One ere yet He merged Himself in the Supreme. Those are left on one side, unmentioned, unnoticed, because what the writer had in his view was to present to the hearts of men a great Object for adoration, who might gradually lift them upwards and upwards until the Self should blossom in them in turn. No word is said of the previous kalpas, of the universes stretching backward into the illimitable past. He speaks of His birth as Deva, as Nâga, as Gandharva, as those many shapes that He has taken by His own will. As you know, or as you may learn if you turn to _Shrîmad-Bhâgavata_, there is a much longer list of manifestations than the ten usually called Avatâras. There are given one after another the forms which seem strange to the superficial reader when connected in modern thought with the Supreme. But we find light thrown on the question by some other words of the great Lord; and we also find in one famous book, full of occult hints--though not with much explanation of the hints given--the _Yoga Vâsiṣhṭha_, a clear definite statement that the deities, as Mahâdeva, Viṣhṇu and Brahmâ, have all climbed upward to the mighty posts They hold.[2] And that may well be so, if you think of it; there is nothing derogatory to Them in the thought; for there is but one Existence, the eternal fount of all that comes forth as separated, whether separated in the universe as I´shvara, or separated in the copy of the universe in man; there is but One without a second; there is no life but His, no independence but His, no self-existence but His, and from Him Gods and men and all take their root and exist for ever in and by His one eternal life. Different stages of manifestation, but the One Self in all the different stages, the One living in all; and if it be true, as true it is, that the Self in man is प्रजो नित्यः शस्वतोऽयंपुराणो [Sanskrit: prajo nityaH SasvatoayaMpurANo]