(9) Now these two Gates are in one another; the nethermost goes into the Abyss, and the uppermost goes into Paradise; and a third Gate comes to these two, out of the Element with its four Productions, and presses in together with the Fire, Air, Water, and Earth; and their Kingdom is the Sun and Stars, which qualify with the first Will; and their Desire is to be filled, to swell, and to be great. These draw into them, and fill the Chamber of the Deep, [viz.] the free and naked Will in the Mind; they bring the Glimpse [or Glance] of the Stars into the Gate of the Mind, and qualify with the Sharpness of the Glimpse [or Flash;] they fill the broken Gates of the Darkness with Flesh, and wrestle continually with the first Will (from whence they are gone forth) for the Kingdom [or Dominion,] and yield themselves up to the first Will, as to their Father, which willingly receives their Region [or Dominion.] For he is obscure and dark, and they are rough and sour, also bitter and cold; and their Life is a seething Source of Fire, wherewith they govern in the Mind, in the Gall, Heart, Lungs, and Liver, and in all Members [or Parts] of the whole Body, and Man is their own; the Spirit which stands in the Flash brings the Constellation into the Tincture of its Property, and infects the Thoughts, according to the Dominion of the Stars; they take the Body and tame it, and bring their bitter Roughness into it.

(108) As the qualifying or fountain spirits of God have each of them the natural seat or possession of its birth or geniture, and retaineth its natural place to itself, and yet is, together with the other spirits, the one only God; so that if the other were not, that would not be either, and thus also they rise up one in the other:

[For this reason] he said, “I have come to make [the lower] like the [upper and the] outer like the [inner, and to unite] them in that place.” [He spoke] here in symbols [and images]. Those who say [there is a heavenly person and] one that is higher are wrong, for they call the visible heavenly person “lower” and the one to whom the hidden realm belongs “higher.” It would be better for them to speak of the inner, the outer, and the outermost. For the master called corruption “the outermost darkness,” and there is nothing outside it. He said, “My father who is in secret.” He said, “Go into your room, shut the door behind you, and pray to your father who is in secret”—that is, the one who is innermost. What is innermost is the fullness, and there is nothing further within. And this is what they call uppermost.

(1) Of the extremes, therefore, one is supreme, transcendent, and perfect; but the other is last in dignity, deficient, and more imperfect. And the former, indeed, is capable of accomplishing all things at once, uniformly in an instant; but the latter is neither able to effect all things, nor at once, nor suddenly, nor impartibly. The former also generates and governs all things, without being inclined towards them; but the latter is naturally disposed to verge, and be converted to the things which it generates and governs. And the former, indeed, as primordial and cause, precedes all things in power; but the latter, being suspended from the will of the Gods, as from a cause, is from eternity consubsistent with it. The former, likewise, according to one vigorous acme, comprehends the ends of all energies and essences; but the latter passes from some things to others, and proceeds from the imperfect to the perfect.

(22) Therefore it happens often, that the Spirit of a deceased Man is seen walking, also many Times it is seen riding in the perfect Form of Fire; also many Times in [some] other Manner of Disquietude; all according as the Clothing of the Soul has been in the Time of the Body, just so has its Source [or Condition] been; and such a Form, according to its Source, it has (after the Departing of the Body) in its Figure, and so rides (in such Form) in the Source [or Working] of the Stars, till that Source also be consumed; and then it is wholly naked, and is never seen more by any Man. But the deep Abyss without End and Number is its eternal Dwelling-House, and its Works which it has here wrought, stand in the Figure, in its Tincture, and follow after it.

(1) EVERY Spirit sees no further than into its Mother, out of which it has its Original, and wherein it stands; for it is impossible for any Spirit in its own natural Power to look into another Principle, and behold it, except it be regenerated therein. But the natural Man, who in his Fall was captivated by the Matrix of this World, whose natural Spirit moves between two Principles, viz. between the divine and the hellish, and he stands in both the Gates, into which Principle he falls, there he comes to be regenerated, whether it be as to the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of Hell; and yet he is not able in this [life] Time to see either of them both.

(33) That is, the outermost birth or geniture of this world cannot comprehend the outermost birth or geniture of heaven aloft above this world, for they are one to the other as the life and the death, or as a man and a stone are one to the other.

(46) For the Door of the Deep to the Light of God appears to thee no more; for thou art now a perfect Creature in the first Principle. And now though thou dost elevate thyself, and wouldst break open the Door of the Deep, yet that cannot be [done;] for thou art a whole Spirit, and not merely in the Will only, wherein the Door of the Deep can be broke open; but thou fliest out aloft over the Kingdom of God, and canst not enter in; and the higher thou fliest, the deeper thou art in the Abyss, and thou seest not God yet, who is so near thee.

(4) "The light of the infinite spirit came down to feeble nature for a short time until all the impurity of nature became void, and in order that the darkness of nature might be exposed. I put on my garment, which is the garment of the light of the majesty—which I am. I came in the appearance of the spirit to consider the whole light, which was in the depths of the darkness, according to the will of the majesty, in order that the spirit by means of the word might be filled with his light independently of the power of the infinite light. And at my wish the spirit arose by his own power. His greatness was granted to him that he might be filled with his whole light and depart from the whole burden of the darkness. For what was behind was a dark fire that blew and pressed on the spirit. And the spirit rejoiced because he was protected from the frightful water. But his light was not equal to the majesty. What he was granted by the infinite light was given so that in all his members he might appear as a single image of light. And when the spirit arose above the water, his dark likeness became apparent. And the spirit honored the exalted light: 'Surely you alone are the infinite one, because you are above every unconceived thing, for you have protected me from the darkness. And at your wish I arose above the power of darkness.'

(3) He who, dwelling in the darkness, yet is other than the darkness, whom the darkness does not know, whose body the darkness is, who controls the darkness from within — He is your Soul, the Inner Controller, the Immortal. whom the light does not know, whose body the light is, who controls the light from within — He is your Soul, the Inner Controller, the Immortal. — Thus far with reference to the divinities. Now with refer- ence to material existence (adhi-bhuta). —

(4) In that realm it has also vision, through the Intellectual-Principle, of The Good which does not so hold to itself as not to reach the soul; what intervenes between them is not body and therefore is no hindrance- and, indeed, where bodily forms do intervene there is still access in many ways from the primal to the tertiaries.

If, on the contrary, the soul gives itself to the inferior, the same principle of penetration comes into play, and it possesses itself, by memory and imagination, of the thing it desired: and hence the memory, even dealing with the highest, is not the highest. Memory, of course, must be understood not merely of what might be called the sense of remembrance, but so as to include a condition induced by the past experience or vision. There is such a thing as possessing more powerfully without consciousness than in full knowledge; with full awareness the possession is of something quite distinct from the self; unconscious possession runs very close to identity, and any such approach to identification with the lower means the deeper fall of the soul.

If the soul, on abandoning its place in the Supreme, revives its memories of the lower, it must have in some form possessed them even there though the activity of the beings in that realm kept them in abeyance: they could not be in the nature of impressions permanently adopted- a notion which would entail absurdities- but were no more than a potentiality realized after return. When that energy of the Intellectual world ceases to tell upon the soul, it sees what it saw in the earlier state before it revisited the Supreme.

(34) Therefore there is a strong firmament or enclosure between the outermost birth or geniture of the upper heaven, and that of this world; for the firmament between them is death, which ruleth and reigneth everywhere in the outermost birth in this world, and this world is so bolted up therewith that the outermost birth of the upper heaven cannot come into the outermost birth of this world; there is a great cleft or gulf between them. Therefore in our outermost birth or geniture we cannot see the angels, neither can the angels dwell with us in the outermost birth of this world; but in the innermost they dwell with us.

(27) To such beings, separated from the Infinite Unmanifest— the Eternal Parent—but by the most tenuous and subtle substance serving as the veil, the whole process of the Universe must appear merely as a great moving picture show of shadow forms, magnificent phantasmagoria having apparent substance and form but having no actual reality when viewed from the aspect of the Eternal. Such beings are, indeed, Gods as compared with the rest of living creatures. Close up to the very heart of the Eternal, these exalted beings are conscious of the very heartthrobs of the Eternal Parent.

(1) "When the darkness stirred, the light of the spirit appeared to him. When he saw it he was astonished. He did not know that another power was above him. And when he saw that his likeness was dark compared with the spirit, he felt hurt. And in his pain he lifted up, above the height of the members of darkness, his mind, which was the eye of the bitterness of evil. He caused his mind to take shape in a member of the portions of the spirit, thinking that, by staring down at his evil, he would be able to equal the spirit. But he was not able, for he wanted to do an impossible thing, and it did not take place. But in order that the mind of darkness, which is the eye of the bitterness of evil, might not be destroyed, since he was made partially similar, he arose and shone with a fiery light upon all of Hades, that the equality of the faultless light might become apparent. For the spirit benefited from every form of darkness because he appeared in his majesty.

(8) For as the Soul of Man moves and swims between the Virtue of the Stars and Elements, so the created Heaven also moves between Paradise and the Kingdom of Hell, and it swims in the eternal Matrix; its Limit reaches as far as the Ethera [Skies or Receptacle] has yielded itself up to the Creation, so far as the Kingdom of Lucifer did reach, where yet no End is to be found: For the Virtue or Power of God is without End, but our Sense reaches only to the fiery Heaven of the Stars, which are a Propagation in the fifth Form of the eternal Mother, (or third Principle, (or in the Beginning of this World,) the Virtue or Power of the Matrix was separated, where now the Separation is thus moved: And then every Essence in the Propagation, in the manifold Centers of the Stars, have a longing Desire one after the other, and a continual Will to infect, [impregnate, or mix Influences;] and the one Essence, or Virtue, is the oMeat and Drink, as also the Chest [Case, or Receptacle] of the other. Or Outbirth, or Offspring.

(79) The first is the astringent spirit, and that contracteth or draweth together in the astral birth of the seven qualifying or fountain spirits a mass or lump in the earth, through the kindling of the superior birth or geniture above the earth, and drieth up that with its sharp coldness; just as it contracteth or draweth the water together and makes ice thereof, so also it contracteth or draweth together the water in the earth, and makes thereof a dry mass or lump.

(14) But, admitting this one soul at every point, how is there a particular soul of the individual and how the good soul and the bad?

The one soul reaches to the individual but nonetheless contains all souls and all intelligences; this, because it is at once a unity and an infinity; it holds all its content as one yet with each item distinct, though not to the point of separation. Except by thus holding all its content as one-life entire, soul entire, all intelligence- it could not be infinite; since the individualities are not fenced off from each other, it remains still one thing. It was to hold life not single but infinite and yet one life, one in the sense not of an aggregate built up but of the retention of the unity in which all rose. Strictly, of course, it is a matter not of the rising of the individuals but of their being eternally what they are; in that order, as there is no beginning, so there is no apportioning except as an interpretation by the recipient. What is of that realm is the ancient and primal; the relation to it of the thing of process must be that of approach and apparent merging with always dependence.

But we ourselves, what are We?

Are we that higher or the participant newcomer, the thing of beginnings in time?

Before we had our becoming Here we existed There, men other than now, some of us gods: we were pure souls, Intelligence inbound with the entire of reality, members of the Intellectual, not fenced off, not cut away, integral to that All. Even now, it is true, we are not put apart; but upon that primal Man there has intruded another, a man seeking to come into being and finding us there, for we were not outside of the universe. This other has wound himself about us, foisting himself upon the Man that each of us was at first. Then it was as if one voice sounded, one word was uttered, and from every side an ear attended and received and there was an effective hearing, possessed through and through of what was present and active upon it: now we have lost that first simplicity; we are become the dual thing, sometimes indeed no more than that later foisting, with the primal nature dormant and in a sense no longer present.

(7) And since the higher exists, there must be the lower as well. The Universe is a thing of variety, and how could there be an inferior without a superior or a superior without an inferior? We cannot complain about the lower in the higher; rather, we must be grateful to the higher for giving something of itself to the lower.

In a word, those that would like evil driven out from the All would drive out Providence itself.

What would Providence have to provide for? Certainly not for itself or for the Good: when we speak of a Providence above, we mean an act upon something below.

That which resumes all under a unity is a Principle in which all things exist together and the single thing is All. From this Principle, which remains internally unmoved, particular things push forth as from a single root which never itself emerges. They are a branching into part, into multiplicity, each single outgrowth bearing its trace of the common source. Thus, phase by phase, there in finally the production into this world; some things close still to the root, others widely separate in the continuous progression until we have, in our metaphor, bough and crest, foliage and fruit. At the one side all is one point of unbroken rest, on the other is the ceaseless process, leaf and fruit, all the things of process carrying ever within themselves the Reason-Principles of the Upper Sphere, and striving to become trees in their own minor order and producing, if at all, only what is in strict gradation from themselves.

As for the abandoned spaces in what corresponds to the branches these two draw upon the root, from which, despite all their variance, they also derive; and the branches again operate upon their own furthest extremities: operation is to be traced only from point to next point, but, in the fact, there has been both inflow and outgo at the very root which, itself again, has its priors.

The things that act upon each other are branchings from a far-off beginning and so stand distinct; but they derive initially from the one source: all interaction is like that of brothers, resemblant as drawing life from the same parents.

(25) Now these are the spirits wherein all things stand, both in heaven and in this world, and from these the third and outermost spirit is generated, wherein corruptibility stands.

(3) "Very well," replied the Spirit of the River, "am I then to regard the universe as great and the tip of a hair as small?" "Not at all," said the Spirit of the Ocean. "Dimensions are limitless; time is endless. Conditions are not invariable; terms are not final. Thus, the wise man looks into space, and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too much; for he knows that there is no limit to dimension. He looks back into the past, and does not grieve over what is far off, nor rejoice over what is near; for he knows that time is without end. He investigates fulness and decay, and does not rejoice if he succeeds, nor lament if he fails; for he knows that conditions are not invariable. He who clearly apprehends the scheme of existence, does not rejoice over life, nor repine at death; for he knows that terms are not final. "What man knows is not to be compared with what he does not know. The span of his existence is not to be compared with the span of his non-existence. With the small to strive to exhaust the great, necessarily lands him in confusion, and he does not attain his object. How then should one be able to say that the tip of a hair is the ne plus ultra of smallness, or that the universe is the ne plus ultra of greatness?"