49: The Trinity.  "Maha-Vishnu presides over the summation and totality of all this.  In every Brahmanda the activity is fourfold, and the chief functionaries are Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva.  Subdivisions of their functions give rise to the names and offices of Narayana, etc.
"Among these functions, that of making or creating goes with action and belongs to Brahma.  Again, "that which has been made is maintained by knowledge;" this maintenance or preservation is the work of Vishnu.  Further, because it is necessary that what has appeared should disappear, therefore is there a destroyer, and he is Shiva, connected with desire, which first affirms and next denies, acts and reacts, now attracts and then repels, begins with craving for, and, after satiety, revolts from its object and casts it off.  It precedes action, or Brahma, as longing for manifestation; and it succeeds knowledge or Vishnu, after maintenance or enjoyment of that manifestation, as a sense of fatigue, a growth of inertness, a need for rest by winding up the manifestation."—From Pranava-Vada, pp. 82-84, 311.