And Kamanita and Vasitthi entered again into existence in the kingdom of the hundred-thousandfold Brahma as the gods of a double star.
The luminous astral substance to which Kamanita's spiritual essence was united symmetrically enveloped the heavenly body which was animated by his strength and guided by his will. By the exercise of his will-power the star in the first place revolved on its own axis; and this motion was his own individual life, his self-love.
Further, Kamanita was reflected in Vasitthi's lustre, and in turn reflected hers. Exchanging rays, they circled around one common point, where their rays accumulated. This point was their mutual love; the circling was therefore their love-life. And that, in its course, they reflected one another—that was the joy of their love.
Gifted with sight on every side, each was able to look, at one and the same moment, towards every point of unending space. And everywhere they saw countless star-gods like themselves, the flashing of whose rays they caught and returned. Of these, there was, first, a number who formed with them a separate group; next, other groups which, with their own, formed a whole world-system; further, other systems which formed themselves into a chain of systems; and beyond these yet other chains, and rings of chains, and spheres of chain-rings. And Kamanita and Vasitthi now guided their binary-star in harmonious flight among the other stars and double stars of their group, as in a well-arranged roundelay, neither coming too near to their neighbours nor yet removing to too great a distance, while all the time, by a certain unspoken sympathy, informing one another of the exact direction and the just degree of motion. But at the same time, as it were, a common will was formed, which guided their whole group into the motion of the groups of their system, that then again, in turn, joined in the motion of other similar groups.
And this sympathy with the vast swaying rhythmic motion of the world-bodies, this universal and unceasing, this manifold interchange of movement—this was their relation to the universe, their outer life, their all-embracing and all-permeating charity.
That, however, which was here harmony of movement appeared to the gods of the air, who had their places beneath the star-gods, to be harmony of sound. By participation in its enjoyment, the heavenly genii, in the fields of Paradise, imitate these harmonies in their joyous melodies; and because a weak and far-off echo of these sometimes pierces to our earth—so weak that it can only be caught by the spiritual ears of the Enlightened—the seers talk mysteriously of the harmony of the spheres, and the great masters of music reproduce what they, in their ecstasy, have overheard—and this is the greatest delight of the children of men. But as the reality is to its ever dimmer-growing reflection, so is, to the rapture of human beings over notes and chords and melodies, the joy in existence of the gods of the stars. For just this is their joy of life, their joy in existence.
All these movements, however, these vast roundelays of the world-systems, had for their centre a single object—the hundred-thousandfold Brahman throned in the midst of the universe; he whose immeasurable brightness permeated all the gods of the stars, and to whom they in turn flashed back that radiance, like so many mirrors of his splendour; he whose exhaustless strength, like a never-failing spring, imparted motion to all of them, and in whom, in turn, all their motion became centred.
And this was their being, filled with all the fullness of the Brahma, their community with the highest god, their blessedness, their prayerfulness, their bliss.
But if they had in Brahma the central point about which everything else was collected, yet this Brahma-world was also, though boundless, nevertheless, in a sense, limited. As the prescient eye of man, even in far-distant ages, discovered a "zodiac" in the dome of heaven, so the gods of the stars here saw untold zodiacs described in and about one another, weaving throughout the spheres pictures in which the most distant groups of stars resolved themselves into luminous figures. Now intertwined so that one star shone as an inherent part of several pictures, again flashing in lonely exclusiveness, objects appeared there, astral forms of all the beings that live and move on the worlds, or between these, abiding pictures of the original forms of all that, wrapping itself in the great elements, ceaselessly comes into being and passes away in the changeful river of life.
And this beholding of the original forms was their knowledge of the worlds.
But because, being all-seeing, they were able without having to look away from this in order to see that, and, without even the flutter of an eyelid, to behold at one glance the unity of God and the multiplicity of the world-beings—the knowledge of God and the knowledge of the worlds became for them one and the same thing. If, however, a human being turns his gaze upon the divine unity, then the many forms of the changing universe would escape him; and, on the other hand, were he to look upon these, he could no longer hold in view the unity of God. They, however, saw, at one and the same moment, centre and circle; and, for that reason, their knowledge was unified knowledge, never unstable, and a prey to no doubt.
Throughout this whole luminous Brahma-world, time now flowed on silently and imperceptibly. As in a perfectly clear stream, which glides quietly and smoothly along, and whose waters are neither obstructed nor broken by any resistance, there is not the least movement to be perceived, so here, the passage of time was just as imperceptible, because it experienced no resistance from the rise or fall of thought and feeling.
This imperceptible passage of time was their eternity. And this eternity was a delusion. So also was all that it embraced—their knowledge, their godliness, their joy in existence, their world-life, their love-life, and their own individual life—all was steeped in delusion—was overlaid with the colour of delusion.