50. Then being conscious of its afflation, it becomes the wind in motion; and this is the aeriform body of Virát. 51. Then it becomes the vital breath, from the consciousness of its inspiration and expiration in the open air. 52. It then imagines of an igneous particle in its mind, as children fancy a ghost where there is none; and this assumes the forms of luminous bodies (of the sun, moon, and stars) in the sky. 53. The vital breath of respiration, are carried by turns through the respiratory organs into the heart; whence it is borne on the wings of air to sustain the world, which is the very heart of Virát. 54. This Virát is the first rudiment of all individual bodies in the world, and in their various capacities forever. 55. It is from this universal soul, that all individual bodies have their rise, and according to their sundry desires; and as these differ from one another in their outward shapes, so they are different also in their inward natures and inclinations. 56. As the seed of Virát sprang forth at first, in the nature and constitution of every individual being; it continues to do so in the same manner in the heart of every living, agreeably to the will of the same causal principle. 57. The sun, moon and the winds, are as the bile, phlegm in the body of Brahmá; and the planets and stars, are as the circulating breath and drops of the spittle of phlegm of that deity. 58. The mountains are his bones, and the clouds his flesh; but we can never see his head and feet, nor his body and skin. 59. Know, O Ráma, this world to be the body of Virát, and an imaginary form by his imagination only. Hence the earth and heaven and all the contents, are but the shadow of his Intellectual vacuity. CHAPTER LXXIV. DESCRIPTION OF THE COSMICAL BODY OF VIRÁT (CONTINUED). Argument:—Description of the several parts and Members of the body of Virát. Vasishtha continued:—Hear now more about the body of Virát, which he assumed to himself of his own will in that _Kalpa_ epoch, together with the variety of its order and division, and its various customs and usages. 2. It is the transcendent vacuous sphere of the intellect, which makes the very body of Virát; it has no beginning, middle or end, and is as light as an aerial or imaginary form. 3. Brahmá who is without desire, beheld the imaginary mundane-egg appearing about him, in its aerial form (of a chimera). 4. Then Brahmá divided this imaginary world of his in twain. It was of a luminous form, from which he came out as a luminary, like a bird matured in its egg. (This is hence called Brahmánda or egg of Brahmá). 5. He beheld one half (or the upper hemisphere) of this egg, rising high in the upper sky; and saw the other half to constitute the lower world, and both of which he considered as parts of himself.