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 Naga, 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
_Shrimad-Bhagavata_, there is a much longer list of manifestations than
the ten usually called Avataras. 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 Vasishtha_, a clear definite statement that
the deities, as Mahadeva, Vishnu and Brahma, 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

[Sanskrit: prajo nityaH SasvatoayaMpurANo]

"unborn, constant, eternal, ancient," it is because the Self in man is
one with the One Self-existent, and I'shvara Himself is only the
mightiest manifestation of that One who knows no second near Himself.
Says an English poet:

Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.

[Footnote 2: Part II., Chapter ii., Shlokas 14, 15, 16.]

The Self is in you and in me, as much as the Self is in I'shvara, that
One, eternal, unchanging, undecaying, whereof every manifested existence
is but one ray of glory. Thus it is true, that which is taught in the
_Yoga Vasishtha_; true it is that even the greatest, before whom
we bow in worship, has climbed in ages past all human reckoning to be
one with the Supreme, and, ever there, to manifest Himself as God to the
world.

But now we come to a