49. That which is conceived as the serene Brahma, is considered as the bright Brahmá or Demiurgus also; just as what is known as the calm and clear firmament, the very same is said <to be> the empty void likewise.
50. As the nebulae which seem to bedim the face of the sky, are something in appearance and nothing in substance; just <so> do our mental faculties appear to flutter in and obscure the clear atmosphere of the Intellect, and seem to be as dualities or otherwise than the serene intellectual principle.
51. But the mental, bodily and all other perceptive and active powers of living beings, are the common properties of the intellectual soul; just as the very many gaps and hollows in various bodies, are in common with the vacuity of the one universal vacuum only. (i.e. All these are the aerial powers of psychic principle).
52. As the quiet soul passing from its sleeping to the dreaming state, retains its identity and invariableness; so the divine soul passing into creation after its quiescence, remains the very unchanged unity as ever.
53. Thus the supreme spirit reflects the shadow of its great Intellect, in the forms of creation and dream; hence neither is this creation nor the vision in dreaming, any thing in its substance than a mere shadow (of the picture in the Divine Mind).
54. It is the bright picture of the Divine Mind, that exhibits its form in the vacuity of the Great Intellect; and so the ideal appearance as the visible creation, like the fairy land in dream (and the airy castle of imagination). (The word cháya—shadow means both the glory of God, as also the darkness of illusion. Gloss).
55. From the impossibility of the appearance of the world, by any means as it is conjectured by different schools, and from its want of a prior cause; it must be that the intellect saw itself thus exhibited in its own vacuity.
56. In the beginning of creation, the formless void of the Intellect, showed itself in this visible and intangible form; and represented itself as a picture of its mind or dream or its imagination.
57. Like the dream it was a blank and without any attribute; it is changeable but not frangible, and although it was the substance of intellectual voidness, yet it was vitiated with the stain of our misapprehension of it, called avidyá. (The world is purely of an intellectual form, and it is our ignorance which imputes a gross form to it).
58. Like the dream, it seems to possess some properties in its appearance; but is wholly devoid of any in its substance; it is never different from the spiritual nature of the Lord, though it appears otherwise to our misconception of it.