In Brahmanaspati the priests found a special god for their order and vocation; they were also at the same time carried beyond the circle of the ancient gods, whose forms had sprung up on a basis of natural powers; they had arrived at a transcendental deity emanating from the mysterious secret of their worship. It was a step further on the same path to resolve Brahmanaspati into Brahman, the Sacred Being. Nevertheless, even in the latest poems of the Veda, Brahman still coincides with Brahmanaspati, with the power of meditation and prayer.[163] But by degrees, in the eager desire to detach the unity of the divine power from the plurality of divine shapes, and find the one in the other, Brahman is elevated far above this signification; it becomes the ideal union of all that is sacred and divine, and is elevated into the highest divine power. If the Holy nourishes, leads, and constrains the gods, it is mightier than the gods, the mightiest deity, and therefore the most divine. If the Holy constrains the gods, and at the same time gives them power, in it alone the special power of the gods can rest, in so far as it is in them: the greater the portion they have in it, the mightier are they. The self-concentrated Holy is the mightiest power, the essence of all gods, the deity itself. Thus the oneness of nature in the gods, their unity and the connection between them, was discovered. Yet, this Holy, or Brahman, was not in heaven only, but also existed on earth; it lived in the holy acts and in those who performed them; in the ritual and prayer, in meditation and heaven-ward elevation of spirit, in the priests. Thus there stood upon the earth a holy and an unholy world in opposition to each other; the world of the priests and of the laity, the holy order of the priests and the unholy orders of the Kshatriyas, Vaiçyas, and Çudras.