15. But the intellect is capable to return to its sensibility, from its state of vegetable torpidity in time; as the dormant soul turns to see its dreams in sleep, and then to behold the vivid outer world after its wakening.
16. Until the living soul is liberated from its charm of self delusion, it is subjected to view its guileful reveries of elemental bodies, appearing as a chain of airy dreams, before the mind’s eye in sleep.
17. The mind gathers the dross of dullness about it, as the soul draws the sheath of sleep upon itself; this dullness or dimness of apprehension is not intrinsic in the mind, but an extraneous schesis contracted by it from without.
18. The intellect moulds the form of one, who is conversant with material and insensible things, into a motionless and torpid body; and it is the same intellect, which shapes the forms of others, that are conscious of their intellectual natures, into the bodies of rational and moving being. (The dull soul is degraded to the state of immovable things and rooted trees, but intelligent souls, are elevated to the rank of moving men and other locomotive animals).
19. But all these moving and unmoving beings, are but different modifications and aspects of the same intellect; as the nails and other parts of the human body, are but the multifarious modalities of the same person.
20. The order and nature of things has invariably continued the same, as they have been ordained by the Divine will ever since its first formation of the world; and because the creation is a transcript of its original mould in the Divine mind; it is as ideal as any working of imagination or a vision in dreaming, both in its states of being and not being.
21. But the intangible and quiescent Brahma, is ever calm and quiet in his nature; he is never permeated with the nature of things, nor is he assimilated with the order of nature.
22. He appears as the beginning and end of creation, or as the cause of its production and dissolution; but these are the mere dreams of the Divine intellect, which is always in its state of profound sleep and rest.
23. The world is ever existent in his spiritual nature, and without any beginning or end of himself; the beginning and end of creation, bear no relation with his self-existent and eternal nature.
24. There is no reality in the nature of the visible creation, or in its existence or dissolution; all these are no other than representations shown in the spirit of God, like figures described in a picture.