2. In the beginning of creation, O Ráma, there was nothing except a shadow dream in the Intellect. And neither was there this creation nor the next world in visible existence. 3. The world appeared only in the form, of an unsubstantial notion of it; and the vacuous intellect remained as quiet with its ideal world, as the mind rests quietly with the nightmare in its dream. 4. Such is the essence of the Intellect, which is translucent and without its beginning and end; and though it is a clear void in itself, yet it bears the ideal model of the world in its mirror. 5. So long as this is unknown, the world appears as a gross substance; but being known as contained in the Divine spirit, it becomes a spiritual substance also; because how is it possible for any gross matter, to attach itself to the transcendent vacuum, of which there is no beginning and end? 6. This pure and abstract knowledge of the world, is as that of a city in dreaming; and such being the state of the world ere its creation, how can any earthly or other matter, be ever joined with the same? 7. The light of the Divine soul, shining amidst the vacuity of the Intellect, is termed cosmos or the universe; consisting as it is supposed, of matter, mind and faculties. 8. It is want of understanding only, which makes us suppose a thing, which is turning round like a whirlpool, and having the force of the wind in it as the stable earth, although it has no basis or stability of it. 9. Afterwards the same Divine spirit (jíva), wishing to display its own glory (thought in its personality of Brahmá), of the ideal forms of the earth and other things (in its imagination). 10. Then the great minds of (Brahmá), shone with a purer light of itself; and this is called his creation which is of an aerial form and no other. (Light being the first work of creation). 11. That pure light, was nothing substantial of itself; but the brightness of the Intellect only, shining with the effulgence of the Divine spirit. (This was the psychic light of the soul in itself). 12. This light is the body of the spirit, which shone as intellectual light in the void of the Intellect; and it presented the appearance of the world in it, in the manner of dreams floating before the empty mind. 13. There being no other inference to be derived, nor any other cause to be possibly assigned (to the production of the world), or of its being produced of itself; it is certain that the divine spirit, sees itself in the form of creation, within the vacuum of its Intellect in the beginning. (As anything cannot come by itself or from nothing; the world must therefore be either a nothing or a form of something that is ever existent of itself). 14. This body of the world (corpus mundi), having no property of a tangible body, is never fragile in its nature; but it is as void as the emptiness of the Intellect, and as inane as the empty air.