His wisdom contemplates the word, his teaching expresses it, his knowledge has revealed it, his honor is a crown upon it, his joy agrees with it, his glory has exalted it, his image has revealed it, his rest has received it, his love has embodied it, his trust has embraced it. For where there is envy and strife, there is an incompleteness; but where there is unity, there is completeness. Since this incompleteness came about because they did not know the father, from the moment when they know the father, incompleteness will cease to exist. As one’s ignorance disappears when one gains knowledge, and as darkness disappears when light appears, so also incompleteness is eliminated by completeness. Certainly, from that moment on, form is no longer manifest but will be dissolved in fusion with unity. Now their works lie scattered. In time unity will make the spaces complete. By means of unity each one will understand himself. By means of knowledge one will purify himself from multiplicity into unity, devouring matter within himself like fire and darkness by light, death by life.

(29) The glorification of this my knowledge I desire, and no other; for I know that when this my spirit in my new body, which I shall get at the day of my resurrection, out of this my now corrupted body, shall arise, that it will appear like the Deity, as also like the holy angels.

(14) ... he having [...] as he again [...], fighting against thoughts of the archons and the powers and the demons, not giving them a place in which to rest. But he struggled against their passions [...], he condemned their error. He cleansed his soul from the transgressions which he had committed with an alien hand. He stood up, being upright within himself, because he exists in everyone, and because he has death and life within himself, and he exists in the midst of both of them. And when he had received the power, he turned towards the parts of the right, and he entered into the truth, having forsaken all things pertaining to the left, having been filled with wisdom, with counsel, with understanding, and with insight and an eternal power. And he broke open his bonds. Those who had formed the whole place, he condemned. But they did not find [...] hidden within him.

(4) But there is yet another way to this knowledge:

Admiring the world of sense as we look out upon its vastness and beauty and the order of its eternal march, thinking of the gods within it, seen and hidden, and the celestial spirits and all the life of animal and plant, let us mount to its archetype, to the yet more authentic sphere: there we are to contemplate all things as members of the Intellectual- eternal in their own right, vested with a self-springing consciousness and life- and, presiding over all these, the unsoiled Intelligence and the unapproachable wisdom.

That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, who is the Intellectual-Principle as being the offspring or exuberance of God. For here is contained all that is immortal: nothing here but is Divine Mind; all is God; this is the place of every soul. Here is rest unbroken: for how can that seek change, in which all is well; what need that reach to, which holds all within itself; what increase can that desire, which stands utterly achieved? All its content, thus, is perfect, that itself may be perfect throughout, as holding nothing that is less than the divine, nothing that is less than intellective. Its knowing is not by search but by possession, its blessedness inherent, not acquired; for all belongs to it eternally and it holds the authentic Eternity imitated by Time which, circling round the Soul, makes towards the new thing and passes by the old. Soul deals with thing after thing- now Socrates; now a horse: always some one entity from among beings- but the Intellectual-Principle is all and therefore its entire content is simultaneously present in that identity: this is pure being in eternal actuality; nowhere is there any future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for nothing there has ever ceased to be; everything has taken its stand for ever, an identity well pleased, we might say, to be as it is; and everything, in that entire content, is Intellectual-Principle and Authentic Existence; and the total of all is Intellectual-Principle entire and Being entire. Intellectual-Principle by its intellective act establishes Being, which in turn, as the object of intellection, becomes the cause of intellection and of existence to the Intellectual-Principle- though, of course, there is another cause of intellection which is also a cause to Being, both rising in a source distinct from either.

Now while these two are coalescents, having their existence in common, and are never apart, still the unity they form is two-sided; there is Intellectual-Principle as against Being, the intellectual agent as against the object of intellection; we consider the intellective act and we have the Intellectual-Principle; we think of the object of that act and we have Being.

Such difference there must be if there is to be any intellection; but similarly there must also be identity

Thus the Primals are seen to be: Intellectual-Principle; Existence; Difference; Identity: we must include also Motion and Rest: Motion provides for the intellectual act, Rest preserves identity as Difference gives at once a Knower and a Known, for, failing this, all is one, and silent.

So too the objects of intellection - identical in virtue of the self-concentration of the principle which is their common ground- must still be distinct each from another; this distinction constitutes Difference.

The Intellectual Kosmos thus a manifold, Number and Quantity arise: Quality is the specific character of each of these ideas which stand as the principles from which all else derives.

(5) Come towards thy offspring, thy form, Osiris N. Bring him towards the gate of eternity, grant him to rest in the Tuat; that his flesh may be entire in the Netherworld; that his soul may be powerful, that his body may be complete, that he may be free from the society of the wicked one, that he may never be fettered

(25) For him who discerns between the Mind and the Spiritual Man, there comes perfect fruition of the longing after the real being of the Self.

(10) Thou knowest [now], my son, the manner of Rebirth. And when the Ten is come, my son, that driveth out the Twelve, the Birth in understanding is complete, and by this birth we are made into Gods. Who then doth by His mercy gain this Birth in God, abandoning the body's senses, knows himself [to be of Light and Life] and that he doth consist of these, and [thus] is filled with bliss.

(12) The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus as it were, have entered into that realm in a leap downward from the Supreme: yet even they are not cut off from their origin, from the divine Intellect; it is not that they have come bringing the Intellectual Principle down in their fall; it is that though they have descended even to earth, yet their higher part holds for ever above the heavens.

Their initial descent is deepened since that mid-part of theirs is compelled to labour in care of the care-needing thing into which they have entered. But Zeus, the father, takes pity on their toils and makes the bonds in which they labour soluble by death and gives respite in due time, freeing them from the body, that they too may come to dwell there where the Universal Soul, unconcerned with earthly needs, has ever dwelt.

For the container of the total of things must be a self-sufficing entity and remain so: in its periods it is wrought out to purpose under its Reason-Principles which are perdurably valid; by these periods it reverts unfailingly, in the measured stages of defined life-duration, to its established character; it is leading the things of this realm to be of one voice and plan with the Supreme. And thus the kosmic content is carried forward to its purpose, everything in its co-ordinate place, under one only Reason-Principle operating alike in the descent and return of souls and to every purpose of the system.

We may know this also by the concordance of the Souls with the ordered scheme of the kosmos; they are not independent, but, by their descent, they have put themselves in contact, and they stand henceforth in harmonious association with kosmic circuit- to the extent that their fortunes, their life experiences, their choosing and refusing, are announced by the patterns of the stars- and out of this concordance rises as it were one musical utterance: the music, the harmony, by which all is described is the best witness to this truth.

Such a consonance can have been procured in one only way:

The All must, in every detail of act and experience, be an expression of the Supreme, which must dominate alike its periods and its stable ordering and the life-careers varying with the movement of the souls as they are sometimes absorbed in that highest, sometimes in the heavens, sometimes turned to the things and places of our earth. All that is Divine Intellect will rest eternally above, and could never fall from its sphere but, poised entire in its own high place, will communicate to things here through the channel of Soul. Soul in virtue of neighbourhood is more closely modelled upon the Idea uttered by the Divine Intellect, and thus is able to produce order in the movement of the lower realm, one phase maintaining the unvarying march the other adopting itself to times and season.

The depth of the descent, also, will differ- sometimes lower, sometimes less low- and this even in its entry into any given Kind: all that is fixed is that each several soul descends to a recipient indicated by affinity of condition; it moves towards the thing which it There resembled, and enters, accordingly, into the body of man or animal.

(374) As soon as he has considered the origin and destruction of the elements (khandha) of the body, he finds happiness and joy which belong to those who know the immortal (Nirvâna).

(6) And this takes place, whenever one hangs on the Lord by faith, by knowledge, by love, and ascends along with Him to where the God and guard of our faith and love is. Whence at last (on account of the necessity for very great preparation and previous training in order both to hear what is said, and for the composure of life, and for advancing intelligently to a point beyond the righteousness of the law) it is that knowledge is committed to those fit and selected for it. It leads us to the endless and perfect end, teaching us beforehand the future life that we shall lead, according to God, and with gods; after we are freed from all punishment and penalty which we undergo, in consequence of our sins, for salutary discipline. After which redemption the reward and the honours are assigned to those who have become perfect; when they have got done with purification, and ceased from all service, though it be holy service, and among saints. Then become pure in heart, and near to the Lord, there awaits them restoration to everlasting contemplation; and they are called by the appellation of gods, being destined to sit on thrones with the other gods that have been first put in their places by the Saviour.

(2) Also in the Phaedrus he says, "That only when in a separate state can the soul become partaker of the wisdom which is true, and surpasses human power; and when, having reached the end of hope by philosophic love, desire shall waft it to heaven, then," says he, "does it receive the commencement of another, an immortal life." And in the Symposium he says, "That there is instilled into all the natural love of generating what is like, and in men of generating men alone, and in the good man of the generation of the counterpart of himself. But it is impossible for the good man to do this without possessing the perfect virtues, in which he will train the youth who have recourse to him." And as he says in the Theaetetus, "He will beget and finish men. For some procreate by the body, others by the soul;" since also with the barbarian philosophers to teach and enlighten is called to regenerate; and "I have begotten you in Jesus Christ," says the good apostle somewhere.

(8) His self-exaltation and his expectation of comprehending the incomprehensible became firm for him and was in him. But the sicknesses followed him when he went beyond himself, having come into being from self-doubt, namely from the fact that he did not the glories of the Father, the one whose exalted status is among things unlimited. This one did not attain him, for he did not receive him.

(9) The living charm is behind him, behind this god, whose ka is glorious, the king of the Tuat, the prince of the Amenta, who takes hold of the sky, triumphantly, on whom the atef crown is established, who shines with the white diadem, who has seized the hook and the flail; mighty is his soul, the great one of the urer crown; who has united all the gods, the love of him penetrates their bodies, Unneferu who lasts for ever and eternally

(37) If then this chapter be known the person is made triumphant upon earth [and in the Netherworld] and he performeth all things which are done by the living

(81) He will extract from the earth the kernel, and the best or the good spirit, and will regenerate it anew, to his honour and glory.

(2) For I have passed through the place of purification in the middle of the Meskat; the inviolate god has given me his glorious attributes on the day when the two Earths were united in the presence of the Master of (all) things

(8) When he has finished these things, he elevates himself from his progression to things secondary, to the contemplation of things first, as one, who, at no time or manner, turns himself to any other thing whatever than those which are peculiarly his own, but from things Divine to Divine,--is persistently and always ranging himself under the banner of the supremely Divine Spirit. III. Contemplation.

(4) If in perfection tempered were the wax, And were the heaven in its supremest virtue, The brilliance of the seal would all appear; But nature gives it evermore deficient, In the like manner working as the artist, Who has the skill of art and hand that trembles. If then the fervent Love, the Vision clear, Of primal Virtue do dispose and seal, Perfection absolute is there acquired. Thus was of old the earth created worthy Of all and every animal perfection; And thus the Virgin was impregnate made; So that thine own opinion I commend, That human nature never yet has been, Nor will be, what it was in those two persons. Now if no farther forth I should proceed, 'Then in what way was he without a peer?' Would be the first beginning of thy words. But, that may well appear what now appears not, Think who he was, and what occasion moved him To make request, when it was told him, 'Ask.' I've not so spoken that thou canst not see Clearly he was a king who asked for wisdom, That he might be sufficiently a king;

(6) Thus do these organs of the world proceed, As thou perceivest now, from grade to grade; Since from above they take, and act beneath. Observe me well, how through this place I come Unto the truth thou wishest, that hereafter Thou mayst alone know how to keep the ford The power and motion of the holy spheres, As from the artisan the hammer's craft, Forth from the blessed motors must proceed. The heaven, which lights so manifold make fair, From the Intelligence profound, which turns it, The image takes, and makes of it a seal. And even as the soul within your dust Through members different and accommodated To faculties diverse expands itself,

(5) When they have reached him (the Self), the sages become satisfied through knowledge, they are conscious of their Self, their passions have passed away, and they are tranquil. The wise, having reached Him who is omnipresent everywhere, devoted to the Self, enter into him wholly.