Before our universe came into being, there was endless emptiness and naught else. This emptiness was akin to an infinite, blissful peace permeated by conscious Intelligence. That supreme Intelligence then began to muse: "For innumerable eons have I remained thus; alone, very peaceful and absorbed in My own eternal and ever-fresh bliss. But now, purely for the sake of expressing My joy, I shall dream a cosmos again."
Then this divine Intelligence, which is Spirit, began to create, consciously willing Its ideas into being as dream manifestations.
It divided Its consciousness, differentiating Its energy from Its absolute nature. Its consciousness thus became separated into Its unmanifest nature as vibrationless Spirit and Its manifest nature as cosmic energy, consisting of an infinite number of different vibratory perceptions or processes of Its thought.
It is known how thought basically operates. When one thinks of a horse, one does not see the object of his or her thought; but when one dreams about a horse, he or she beholds its image, because his or her thought becomes more condensed. And when we see a horse with our physical eyes, our thought is still more condensed, attuned to the grossest vibrations of the thought of Spirit, those which manifest in forms tangible to the senses of our physical bodies.
As soon as Spirit started to dream Its conscious dream, It divided Its intelligence, Its power of thought, into many things. As a result of this process of differentiation, Maya, the cosmic illusion of duality, came into being. By the manifestation of duality, the consciousness of Spirit separated Itself from Itself. A portion of that consciousness was released from Spirit and made Its descension into our cosmos as an active and intelligent force which would cause ceaseless change. The remaining portion of that consciousness did not and will not ever part with Spirit, instead staying as a static and eternally unchangeable force completely absorbed in Its own bliss.
The active, intelligent force of Spirit was restless to express Its power, just as a maple seed placed in fertile soil grows until it assumes the form of a mighty tree. So when the seed of the consciousness of Spirit was planted in the soil of activity by Its will, It sprouted into an unfathomably vast cosmos.
The One and Only is dreaming it all; this cosmic creation is nothing more than a dream condensation of Its thoughts. The first differentiation of Spirit was the manifestation of pure thought. Then, projected out of the thought-seed of Its consciousness, came light, cosmic light. Consciousness and light are one and the same, except that light has density. The thought of light is finer than the dream of light, in the same way that a thought of fire is purely a mental concept, whereas a dream of fire is a perceptible image.
After Spirit had willed light into dream existence, It contemplated what It had created. "I have only spread light all over cosmic space. There will now be something more tangible." So It empowered that dream cosmic light to become definite forms.
The dream light of Spirit then began to play over the spatial territory of our universe. This light is the tissue of all creation, which Spirit began to think or will into a specific system: the finer light of life force, called prana, and a condensation of prana into the grosser atomic light of protons and electrons. Spirit gave these protons and electrons further strength by which they arranged themselves into atoms and molecules. With a still stronger thought, It caused the atoms and molecules to condense into gases, heat, liquids and finally solids - all manifestations of Its thought. The subtlest states of matter arose into being first and then gradually matter became more and more dense. Therefore, the gases were manifested first. Then It began to dream into those gases a very potent force and It willed: "Let these gases be condensed to produce heat, liquids and solids." And according to Its dream idea, it was so. Spirit had formulated a process of Maya or cosmic illusion by which air, fire, water and earth would be perceived differently, though no difference truly existed between any of those elements except in the thoughts of Its dreaming consciousness. Then It declared: "I shall release a certain number of individual souls, eternal sparks of My infinite consciousness, into My cosmic manifestation. They will perform their roles as they are destined to do, whether aware of it or not, and each one will undergo a process of spiritual evolution through which they will gradually progress into bodies increasingly capable of greater self-expression. When a soul has reached the very pinnacle of its self-expression, its journey shall end in joyous and triumphant completion. Then it shall return to Me, its Mother and Father, and never again descend into this abode of inevitable suffering."