4. In the beginning this world appeared, as the aerial castle of a dream in the vacuum of the Intellect; it was a mere reflexion of the Divine Mind, and though it was of the form of a false shadow, remained as substantive to the supreme spirit.
5. The knowing theosophist well knows this mystery, which is mysterious to the unknowing ignorant; because the word creation bears the sense of both the reality as well as unreality in it.
6. The knowing spiritualist as well as the unknowing agnostic, both acknowledge the reality of creation; but they can neither understand how it exists, nor communicate to one another their right conception of it.
7. They both know the meaning, of the word creation in their minds; the one having the sense of its sedateness ever wakeful in their minds (from their spiritual view of it); and the other having the sense of its unsteadiness always waking in them (from their sight of the changeful scenes of the outer world); so they resemble the sober and drunken men, that view the world in its steady and shaking states.
8. As the liquid waters in a river, rise incessantly in restless waves; so the rolling worlds, push forward into being, in the vast expanse of the Divine Mind.
9. These creations which are not of the nature of the intellect, have yet their sites in the Intellect, like the thoughts that rise and fall in it; and these though they are invisible in their nature, appear as visible things, like the fair objects and fairy cities in our dream.
10. It is spreading shadow of the divine Intellect, which pass under the name of the world; and this formless in itself, appears as having a form, like the shadow of anything else.
11. It is a gross error, to take the unsubstantial shadow for a substantial body; as it is a gross error to suppose the empty shadow of a ghost as an embodied being.
12. The world is as unreal as an imaginary city, and as false as a string of rain drops; why then do you rely in an unreality, which is palpable from the testimonies of both the ignorant and knowing men.
13. The words then that are used to express this thing and that, are mere empty sounds, as those emitted by a splitting block of wood or a bamboo; or those heard in the dashing of waves or blowing of winds; it is the current air which conveys the empty sound into the open vacuum of the sky, but they are all unreal and meaningless, and bear but a conventional sense, with which it has no connection whatsoever.