39. The first and best and supremely blest Virát—the male Deity, resides in this manner of our conception of him, and indistinct in his essence from the state of transcendent divinity; with his huge body extending beyond the limits of space and time. (This Virát or Brahmá is the Demiurgus of platonic philosophy). CHAPTER XX. LECTURE ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE LIVING SOUL. Argument:—Extinction of individual souls in the universal, by their abandonment of desires. Vasishtha continued:—This primary Purusha or the Male agent—Virát, is a volitive principle; and whatever he wills to do at anytime, the same appears instantly before him in its material form of the five elements. 2. It is this will, O Ráma! that the sages say to have become the world; because by its being intent upon producing the same, it became expanded in the same form. (The will of the Deity is the deed itself). 3. Virát is the cause of all things in the world, which came to be produced in the same form as their material cause. (Because the product is alike its producing cause, being a fac-simile of the same). 4 As the great Virát is collectively the aggregate of all souls, so is he distributed likewise into the individual soul of every body. (Hence every soul knowing itself to be a particle of the Divine, cannot think itself as otherwise). 5. The same Virát is manifest in the meanest insect as also in the highest Rudra, in a small atom as in the huge hill, and expands itself as the seed vessel to a very large tree (all which are mistaken as parts of the illusive world). 6. The great Virát is himself the soul of every individual, from the creeping insect to the mighty Rudra of air; and his infinite soul extends even to atoms, that are sensible and not insensible of themselves. 7. In proportion as Virát expands and extends his soul to infinity, so he fills the bodies of even the atomic animalcules with particles of his own essence. 8. There is nothing as great or small in reality in the world, but everything appears to be in proportion as it is filled and expanded by the Divine spirit. 9. The mind is derived from the moon, again the moon has sprung from the mind; so doth life spring from life and the fluid water flows from the congealed snow and ice and _vice versa_. (So there is nothing as greater or less or as the source and its outlet). 10. Life is but a drop of the seminal fluid, distilled as a particle by the amorous union of parents. (This life being transmitted from generation to generation, there is no one greater or less than another). 11. This life then reflects in itself, and derives the properties of the soul, and likens it in the fulness of its perfections. (Hence the soul and life are identified to one and the same principle by many).