16. It shines forth in the form of the sun, and preserves the world in the manner of Vishnu. It creates the world in the shape of the lotus-born Brahmá, and destroys all as Rudra or Siva. 17. It takes the form of the sky supported on the shoulders of air, which supports all living beings, the gods, sages and demigods in the three worlds. It takes the form of boundary mountains and separates the different regions (of the earth and skies). 18. It becomes the earth and supports these numerous sets of beings, it takes the forms of trees, plants and grass, and yields fruits and grains for supportance (of all living creatures). 19. It takes the forms of fire and water and burns and melts in them by itself. It sheds ambrosia in the form of the moon, and causes death in the shape of poison. 20. It becomes light wherewith it fills the space of the firmament, and spreads darkness in the form of Erebus (_tama or Teom_). It becomes vacuum (_vyom or beom_) to leave empty space for all, while in the form of hills it obstructs their free passage on earth. 21. In the form of the fleet mind, it moves the self-moving animals, and in that of dull matter it settles the unmoving immovables. It girds the earth by its form of the ocean, as a bracelet encircles the arm. 22. The bodiless spirit takes upon it the great body of the sun, and illumes all the worlds with their minute particles, while it remains quiet in itself. 23. Whatever is shining in this universe or ever was or is to be so, in any of the three—past, present and future times, know them all O Ráma! as forms of the Divine Spirit (which is free to take any shape it likes). 24. Ráma said:—Tell me, O Bráhman! why this view of liberation, appears so very difficult to me, as to make me believe it altogether incomprehensible to and unattainable by any body. 25. Vasishtha replied:—This (disembodied) liberation is called _nirvána_ or total extinction of self-consciousness, and is styled Brahma also (in whom the human soul is finally absorbed). Attend now to the means of its attainment. 26. All such visible objects known as I, thou, this &c., being unproduced (_anutpanna_) from the eternal _sat_ or entity of God, it is impossible to have any conception of them in our minds.[3] 27. Ráma said:—Methinks, O best of them that know the knowable! that the bodiless souls of the liberated, when they pass through the bounds of the three worlds, have again to be born according to the course of nature. 28. Vasishtha replied:—Those that retain the reminiscence of the three worlds have to move about in them, but such as have lost the idea of their existence, are absorbed in infinity. 29. For how can one derive the knowledge of the unity of God from his belief in the duality of the separate existence of the world? Therefore the figurative sense of cosmos as God (_Viswa_) can not give the spiritual and infinite idea of Brahma.