(32) But what do you think there was before the Times of the World, out of which the Earth and Stones proceeded, as also the Stars and Elements? That out of which these proceeded was the Root. But what is the Root of these Things? Look, what do you find in these Things? Nothing else but Fire, Bitterness, and Harshness, [or astringent Sourness,] and these three are but one Thing, and hence all Things are generated. Now this was but a Spirit before the Times of the World, and yet you cannot find God in these three Forms. The pure Deity is a Light which is incomprehensible, and unperceivable, also almighty and all-powerful, where is it then that Men may find God?

(2) All things descend from Heaven to Earth, to Water and to Air. ’Tis Fire alone, in that it is borne upwards, giveth life; that which [is carried] downwards [is] subservient to Fire. Further, whatever doth descend from the above, begetteth; what floweth upwards, nourisheth. ’Tis Earth alone, in that it resteth on itself, that is Receiver of all things, and [also] the Restorer of all genera that it receives. This Whole, therefore, as thou rememberest, in that it is of all,—in other words, all things, embraced by nature under “Soul” and “World,” are in [perpetual] flux, so varied by the multiform equality of all their forms, that countless kinds of well-distinguished qualities may be discerned, yet with this bond of union, that all should seem as One, and from “One” “All.” III

(6) Verily, of created things here earth is the essence; of earth, water; of water, plants; of plants, flowers; of flowers, fruits; of fruits, man (purusa); of man, semen.

(26) And thirdly, you find in all Things a glorious Power and Virtue, which is the Life, Growing and Springing of every Thing, and you find that therein lies its Beauty and pleasant Welfare, from whence it stirs. Now look upon an Herb or Plant, and consider it, what is its Life which makes it grow? And you shall find in the Original, Harshness, Bitterness, Fire, and Water, and if you should separate these four Things one from another, and put them together again, yet you shall neither see nor find any Growing; but if it were severed from its own Mother that generated it at the Beginning, then it remains dead; much less can you bring the pleasant Smell, or Colours into it.

(6) Speech said: ' Verily, wherein I am the most excellent, therein are you the most excellent/ ' Verily, wherein I am a firm basis therein are you a firm basis/ said the eye. c Verily, wherein I am attainment, therein are you attain- ment,' said the ear. said the mind. ( Verily, wherein I am procreation, therein are you procrea- tion/ said the semen. f If such I anij what is my food? what is my dwelling? ' flying insects — that is your food. Water is your dwelling/ Verily, what is not food is not eaten; what is not food is not taken by him who thus knows that [i.e. water] as the food (anna) of breath (ana). Those who know this, who are versed in sacred learning (srotriya), when they are about to eat, take a sip; after they have eaten, they take a sip. So, indeed, they think they make that breath (ana) not naked (anagna).

(1) In the beginning nothing whatsoever was here. This [world] was covered over with death, with hunger — for hunger is death. Then he made up his mind (manas): ' Would that I had a self!' So he went on (acarat) praising (arcau). From him, while he was praising, water was produced. 'Verily, while I was praising, I had pleasure (ka) \ ' thought he, This, indeed, is the tfTv&tf-nature of what pertains to brightness (arkya). Verily, there is pleasure for him who knows thus that ar/ca-naturc of what pertains to brightness. 2* The water, verily, was brightness. That which was the froth of the water became solidified. That became the earth. On it he [i.e. Death] tortured himself ( Vsram}. When he had tortured himself and practised austerity, his heat (tejas) and essence (rasa) turned into fire.

(19) And now if we meditate and consider of the Original of the four Elements, we shall clearly find, see, and feel the Original in ourselves, if we be Men and not Beasts, full of Malice and Gainsaying against God and the Matrix of this World. For the Original is as well known in Man, as in the Deep of this World; although it seems wonderful to the unenlightened Man, that any should [be able] to speak of the Original of the Air, Fire, Water, and Earth, as also of the starry Heaven; he supposes this impossible to be known; thus he swims in his own Mother, and desires not to know it, neither was it good for Man to know it; but since the Fall of Adam has cast us headlong into it, it is highly necessary for us to know it, that we may fly from the bestial Man, and learn to know the true Man.

(25) For you see, feel, and find, that all these must yet have a higher Root from whence they proceed, which is not visible, but hidden; especially if you look upon the starry Heaven which endures thus unchangeably; therefore you ought to consider from whence it is proceeded, and how it subsists thus, and is not corrupted, nor rises up above, nor falls down beneath, though indeed there is neither above nor beneath there. Now if you consider what preserves all thus, and whence it is, then you find the eternal Birth that has no Beginning, and you find the Original of the eternal Principle, viz. the eternal indissoluble Band: And then, secondly, you see the Separation, in that the material World, with the Stars and Elements, are out of the first Principle, which contains the outward and third Principle in it; for you find in the elementary Kingdom or Dominion, a Cause in every Thing, wherefore it is, generates, and moves as it does: But you find not the first Cause, from whence it is so: There are therefore stwo several Principles; for you find in the visible Things a Corruptibility, and perceive that they must have a Beginning, because they have an End.

(54) You issue from God's attributes at first; Return again back to those attributes with all speed! You come from the clouds and sunshine and sky, You come in the form of rain and sunshine, You begin as a part of the sun, clouds, and stars, You rise to be breath, act, word, and thought! True is the saying, 'Kill me, O faithful ones!' True it is that 'In our death is life.' Acts, words, and faith are the food of the King, Thus, as potherbs become the food of men,

(27) Thus you see that there is an eternal Root which affords this; and if you could bring the Colours and Vegetation or Growing into it, yet you could not bring the Smell and Virtue into it; and thus you will find in the Original of the Smell and of the Taste there must be another Principle, which the Stock itself is not, for that Principle has its Original from the Light of Nature.

(11) The very heavens, patently multiple, cannot be thought to disdain any form of life since this universe holds everything. Now how do these things come to be here? Does the higher realm contain all of the lower?

All that has been shaped by Reason-Principle and conforms to Idea.

But, having fire and water, it will certainly have vegetation; how does vegetation exist There? Earth, too? either these are alive or they are There as dead things and then not everything There has life. How in sum can the things of this realm be also There?

Vegetal life we can well admit, for the plant is a Reason-Principle established in life. If in the plant the Reason-Principle, entering Matter and constituting the plant, is a certain form of life, a definite soul, then, since every Reason-Principle is a unity, then either this of plant-life is the primal or before it there is a primal plant, source of its being: that first plant would be a unity; those here, being multiple, must derive from a unity. This being so, that primal must have much the truer life and be the veritable plant, the plants here deriving from it in the secondary and tertiary degree and living by a vestige of its life.

But earth; how is there earth There: what is the being of earth and how are we to represent to ourselves the living earth of that realm?

First, what is it, what the mode of its being?

Earth, here and There alike, must possess shape and a Reason-Principle. Now in the case of the vegetal, the Reason-Principle of the plant here was found to be living in that higher realm: is there such a Reason-Principle in our earth?

Take the most earthy of things found shaped in earth and they exhibit, even they, the indwelling earth-principle. The growing and shaping of stones, the internal moulding of mountains as they rise, reveal the working of an ensouled Reason-Principle fashioning them from within and bringing them to that shape: this, we must take it, is the creative earth-principle corresponding to what we call the specific principle of a tree; what we know as earth is like the wood of the tree; to cut out a stone is like lopping a twig from a tree, except of course that there is no hurt done, the stone remaining a member of the earth as the twig, uncut, of the tree.

Realizing thus that the creative force inherent in our earth is life within a Reason-Principle, we are easily convinced that the earth There is much more primally alive, that it is a reasoned Earth-Livingness, the earth of Real-Being, earth primally, the source of ours.

Fire, similarly, with other such things, must be a Reason-Principle established in Matter: fire certainly does not originate in the friction to which it may be traced; the friction merely brings out a fire already existent in the scheme and contained in the materials rubbed together. Matter does not in its own character possess this fire-power: the true cause is something informing the Matter, that is to say, a Reason-Principle, obviously therefore a soul having the power of bringing fire into being; that is, a life and a Reason-Principle in one.

It is with this in mind that Plato says there is soul in everything of this sphere. That soul is the cause of the fire of the sense-world; the cause of fire here is a certain Life of fiery character, the more authentic fire. That transcendent fire being more truly fire will be more veritably alive; the fire absolute possesses life. And the same principles apply to the other elements, water and air.

Why, then, are water and air not ensouled as earth is?

Now, it is quite certain that these are equally within the living total, parts of the living all; life does not appear visibly in them; but neither does it in the case of the earth where its presence is inferred by what earth produces: but there are living things in fire and still more manifestly in water and there are systems of life in the air. The particular fire, rising only to be quenched, eludes the soul animating the universe; it slips away from the magnitude which would manifest the soul within it; so with air and water. If these Kinds could somehow be fastened down to magnitude they would exhibit the soul within them, now concealed by the fact that their function requires them to be loose or flowing. It is much as in the case of the fluids within ourselves; the flesh and all that is formed out of the blood into flesh show the soul within, but the blood itself, not bringing us any sensation, seems not to have soul; yet it must; the blood is not subject to blind force; its nature obliges it to abstain from the soul which nonetheless is indwelling in it. This must be the case with the three elements; it is the fact that the living beings formed from the close conglomeration of air are not susceptible to suffering. But just as air, so long as it remains itself, eludes the light which is and remains unyielding, so too, by the effect of its circular movement, it eludes soul- and, in another sense, does not. And so with fire and water.

(2) All the creatures are made and descended from these qualities, and live therein as in their mother; and the earth and stones descend or proceed from thence also; and all that grows out of the earth liveth and springeth forth out of the virtue of these qualities; no rational man can deny it.

(80) But if thou sayest it has but one kind of birth or geniture, thou speakest again also like one that is blind; for the herbs and wood which grow out of it are not earth, neither is the fruit, which grows upon a tree, wood; so also the power and virtue of the fruit is not God either; but God is in the centre, in the innermost birth in all the three natural births or genitures, hiddenly, but is not known, except in the spirit of man alone; also the outermost birth in the fruit does not comprehend, conceive or contain him, but he containeth the outermost birth of the fruit, and formeth it. Another Question is: Why then is the earth so mountainous, hilly, rocky, stony and uneven? Answer.

(53) All qualities take their beginning-original [finite or transitory origin] in their middle or centre: Therefore observe where the fire is generated; for there riseth up the flash of the life of all the qualities, and it is caught in the water, so that it remaineth shining; and it is dried in the astringency, so that it remaineth corporeal, and becometh shining, bright and clear. Observe here:

(1) 'When the Father produced by intellect and austerity seven kinds of food' — truly by intellect and austerity the Father did produce them. ' One of his [foods] was common to all.' That of his which is common to all is the food that is eaten here. He who worships that, is not turned from evil, for it is mixed [i.e. common, not selected]. 'Of two he let the gods partake/ They arc the tmta (fire-sacrifice) and thtfra/mta (offering). For this reason one sacrifices and offers to the gods. People also say that these two are the new-moon and the full-moon sacrifices. Therefore one should not offer sacrifice [merely] to secure a wish first both men and animals live upon milk. Therefore they either make a new-bom babe lick butter or put it to the breast. Likewise they call a new-born calf 'one that does not eat grass ' what does not ' — for upon milk everything depends, both what breathes and what does not. This that people say, cBy offering with milk for a year one escapes the second death ' — one should know that this is not so, since on the very day that he makes the offering he who knows escapes the second death, for he offers all his food to the gods. eaten all the time?' Verily, the Person is imperishableness, for he produces this food again and again. ' He who knows this imperishableness ' — verily, a person is imperishableness, for by continuous meditation he produces this food as his work. Should he not do this, all the food would perish. ( He eats food with his mouth (pratlkd)' The prattka is the mouth. So he eats food with his mouth.

(3) Of all these genera, those [species] which are animal have [many] roots, which stretch from the above below, whereas those which are stationary —these from [one] living root send forth a wood of branching greenery up from below into the upper parts. Moreover, some of them are nourished with a two-fold form of food, while others with a single form. Twain are the forms of food—for soul and body, of which [all] animals consist. Their soul is nourished by the ever-restless motion of the World ; their bodies have their growth from foods [drawn] from the water and the earth of the inferior world. Spirit, with which they all are filled, being interblended with the rest, doth make them live; sense being added, and also reason in the case of man—which hath been given to man alone as a fifth part out of the æther. Of all the living things [God] doth adorn, extend, exalt, the sense of man alone unto the understanding of the Reason of Divinity. But since I am impressed to speak concerning Sense, I will a little further on set forth for you the sermon on this [point]; for that it is most holy, and [most] mighty, not less than in the Reason of Divinity itself. VII

(5) The way to the Elixir of Life recognizes as supreme magic, seed-water, spirit-fire, and thought-earth: these three. What is seed-water? It is the true, one power (eros) of former Heaven. Spirit- ire is the Light (logos).

(83) The body taketh its food from the seed of the seven spirits of God in the body of the great deep, which [body] is fire, air, water and earth.

(6) This world, verily, is a sacrificial fire, 0 Gautama. The earth, in truth, is its fuel; fire, the smoke; night, the flame; the moon, the coals; the stars, the sparks. In this fire the gods offer rain. From this oblation food arises.

(1) When the Father produced by intellect And austenty seven kinds of food, One of his [foods] was common to all, Of two he let the gods partake, Three he made for himself, One he bestowed upon the animals On this [food] everything depends, Both what breathes and what does not. How is it that these do not peiish When they are being eaten all the time He who knows this imperishableness— He eats food with his mouth (pratika), He goes to the gods, He lives on strength. Thus the verses.