(29) Now as man in his outward being is corrupted, and as to his fleshly birth or geniture is in the wrath of God, and is moreover also an enemy of God, and yet is but one man, and not two; and on the other hand, in his spiritual birth or geniture he is a child and heir of God, who ruleth and liveth with God, and qualifieth, mixeth or uniteth with the innermost birth or geniture of God; thus also is the place of this world come to be.

(4) "O manhood mine, why dost thou vanish so?" I said within myself; for I perceived The vigour of my legs was put in truce. We at the point were where no more ascends The stairway upward, and were motionless, Even as a ship, which at the shore arrives; And I gave heed a little, if I might hear Aught whatsoever in the circle new; Then to my Master turned me round and said: "Say, my sweet Father, what delinquency Is purged here in the circle where we are? Although our feet may pause, pause not thy speech." And he to me: "The love of good, remiss In what it should have done, is here restored; Here plied again the ill-belated oar; But still more openly to understand, Turn unto me thy mind, and thou shalt gather Some profitable fruit from our delay. Neither Creator nor a creature ever, Son," he began, "was destitute of love Natural or spiritual; and thou knowest it. The natural was ever without error; But err the other may by evil object, Or by too much, or by too little vigour.

(13) Yet it is not possible to hold, conjointly, qualities thoroughly opposed, nor that a man who has had a certain fellowship with the One should have divided lives, if he clings to the firm participation in the One; but he must be resistless and resolute, as regards all separations from the uniform. This it is which the teaching of the symbols reverently and enigmatically intimates, by stripping the proselyte, as it were, of his former life, and discarding to the very utmost the habits within that life, makes him stand naked and barefoot, looking away towards the west, whilst he spurns, by the aversion of his hands, the participations in the gloomy baseness, and breathes out, as it were, the habit of dissimilarity which he had acquired, and professes the entire renunciation of everything contrary to the Divine likeness. When the man has thus become invincible and separate from evil, it turns him towards the east, declaring clearly that his position and recovery will be purely in the Divine Light, in the complete separation from baseness; and receiving his sacred promises of entire consort with the One, since he has become uniform through love of the truth. Yet it is pretty evident, as I think, to those versed in Hierarchical matters, that things intellectual acquire the unchangeableness of the Godlike habit, by continuous and persistent struggles towards one, and by the entire destruction and annihilation of things contrary. For it is necessary that a man should not only depart from every kind of baseness, but he must be also bravely obdurate and ever fearless against the baneful submission to it. Nor must he, at any time, become remiss in his sacred love of the truth, but with all his power persistently and perpetually be elevated towards it, always religiously pursuing his upward course, to the more perfect mysteries of the Godhead.

(46) For if, with its sharp birth, nature had fully changed itself into love, according to the heavenly right, law or manner, then were the devils again in the seat of God.

(11) We will now explain, in detail, to the best of our ability, certain works of God, of which we spoke. For I am not competent to sing all, much less to know accurately, and to reveal their mysteries to others. Now whatever things have been sung and ministered by the inspired Hierarchs, agreeably to the Oracles, these we will declare, as far as attainable to us, invoking the Hierarchical inspiration to our aid. When, in the beginning, our human nature had thoughtlessly fallen from the good things of God, it received, by inheritance, the life subject to many passions, and the goal of the destructive death. For, as a natural consequence, the pernicious falling away from genuine goodness and the transgression of the sacred Law in Paradise delivered the man fretted with the life-giving yoke, to his own downward inclinations and the enticing and hostile wiles of the adversary--the contraries of the divine goods; thence it pitiably exchanged for the eternal, the mortal, and, having had its own origin in deadly generations, the goal naturally corresponded with the beginning; but having willingly fallen from the Divine and elevating life, it was carried to the contrary extremity,--the variableness of many passions, and lead astray, and turned aside from the strait way leading to the true God,--and subjected to destructive and evil-working multitudes--naturally forgot that it was worshipping, not gods, or friends, but enemies. Now when these had treated it harshly, according to their own cruelty, it fell pitiably into danger of annihilation and destruction; but the boundless Loving-kindness of the supremely Divine goodness towards man did not, in Its benevolence, withdraw from us Its spontaneous forethought, but having truly participated sinlessly in all things belonging to us, and having been made one with our lowliness in connection with the unconfused and flawless possession of Its own properties in full perfection, It bequeathed to us, as henceforth members of the same family, the communion with Itself, and proclaimed us partakers of Its own beautiful things; having, as the secret teaching holds, loosed the power of the rebellious multiplicity, which was against us; not by force, as having the upper hand, but, according to the Logion, mystically transmitted to us, "in judgment and righteousness." The things within us, then, It benevolently changed to the entire contrary. For the lightless within Our mind It filled with blessed and most Divine Light, and adorned the formless with Godlike beauties; the tabernacle of our soul It liberated from most damnable passions and destructive stains by a perfected deliverance of our being which was all but prostrate, by shewing to us a supermundane elevation, and an inspired polity in our religious assimilation to Itself, as far as is possible.

(2) So, then, although it may do good to few alone, ’tis proper to develope and explain this thesis:—wherefore Divinity hath deigned to share His science and intelligence with men alone. Give ear, accordingly! When God, [our] Sire and Lord, made man, after the Gods, out of an equal mixture of a less pure cosmic part and a divine,—it [naturally] came to pass the imperfections of the cosmic part remained commingled with [our] frames, and other ones [as well], by reason of the food and sustenance we have out of necessity in common with all lives ; by reason of which things it needs must be that the desires, and passions, and other vices, of the mind should occupy the souls of human kind.

(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.

(75) But it is not therefore so totally extinguished that it could not be generated in man; for man is out of or from God, and liveth in God, be it either in love or in wrath.

(127) But thou must know that the kernel of love also sticketh in all in the hidden centre, unless it be altogether too evil; and so evil a thing man has no liking for at all. ["God possesseth all, only as to nature, he is not the essence, he possesseth himself."] Or dost thou think thou dost well, if thou bathest or soakest thyself in God's wrath? Take heed, that it does not kindle thy body and soul, and so thou wilt burn therein eternally, as befell Lucifer.

(21) Thus it goeth also with the bestial body, when it has once tasted of the sweetness of God, then it continually hungereth and thirsteth after this sweetness: But the devil in the power of God's wrath opposeth exceedingly, and so a man in such a course must continually stand in an anxious birth or geniture; and so there is nothing but fighting and warring in his births or genitures.

(50) But if thou fightest and strivest with the devil, and keepest the gate of love in thy astral birth, and so departest from hence as to the body, then thy soul remaineth in the word quite hidden from the devil, and reigneth with God, even unto the day of the restitution of that which was lost.

(51) Whatsoever thou dost but look upon, there, is God, but in this world the comprehensibility stands in the wrath, which the devil has kindled; and in the hidden kernel, in the midst or centre of the wrath, the light or heart of God is generated, incomprehensibly as to the wrath; and so each of them remaineth in its seat.

(5) In the lower part of active life a man is without himself and beneath himself. In the higher part of active life and the lower part of contemplative life, a man is within himself and even with himself. But in the higher part of contemplative life, a man is above himself and under his God. Above himself he is: for why, he purposeth him to win thither by grace, whither he may not come by nature. That is to say, to be knit to God in spirit, and in onehead of love and accordance of will. And right as it is impossible, to man’s understanding, for a man to come to the higher part of active life, but if he cease for a time of the lower part; so it is that a man shall not come to the higher part of contemplative life, but if he cease for a time of the lower part. And as unlawful a thing as it is, and as much as it would let a man that sat in his meditations, to have regard then to his outward bodily works, the which he had done, or else should do, although they were never so holy works in themselves: surely as unlikely a thing it is, and as much would it let a man that should work in this darkness and in this cloud of unknowing with an affectuous stirring of love to God for Himself, for to let any thought or any meditation of God’s wonderful gifts, kindness, and works in any of His creatures bodily or ghostly, rise upon him to press betwixt him and his God; although they be never so holy thoughts, nor so profound, nor so comfortable.

(2) Therefore we must affirm no more than these three Primals: we are not to introduce superfluous distinctions which their nature rejects. We are to proclaim one Intellectual-Principle unchangeably the same, in no way subject to decline, acting in imitation, as true as its nature allows, of the Father.

And as to our own Soul we are to hold that it stands, in part, always in the presence of The Divine Beings, while in part it is concerned with the things of this sphere and in part occupies a middle ground. It is one nature in graded powers; and sometimes the Soul in its entirety is borne along by the loftiest in itself and in the Authentic Existent; sometimes, the less noble part is dragged down and drags the mid-soul with it, though the law is that the Soul may never succumb entire.

The Soul's disaster falls upon it when it ceases to dwell in the perfect Beauty- the appropriate dwelling-place of that Soul which is no part and of which we too are no part- thence to pour forth into the frame of the All whatsoever the All can hold of good and beauty. There that Soul rests, free from all solicitude, not ruling by plan or policy, not redressing, but establishing order by the marvellous efficacy of its contemplation of the things above it.

For the measure of its absorption in that vision is the measure of its grace and power, and what it draws from this contemplation it communicates to the lower sphere, illuminated and illuminating always.

(93) But, that afterwards the astringent and bitter qualities awaken behind, and coimage afterwards to the framing of the word, signifieth that indeed all is as it were one body, but the heaven and the Holy Spirit, together with the heart of God, has its proper seat to itself; and the devil, together with the wrath of God, can comprehend neither the Holy Spirit nor the heaven; but the devil, together with the wrath, hangeth in the outward birth in the word, and the wrath helpeth to image all in the outermost birth in this world, all whatsoever that stands in the comprehensibility or palpability; just as the astringent and bitter qualities afterwards rouse themselves behind to the framing of the word, and qualify, operate or unite therewith.

(50) But now in man's body, in the government or dominion of the birth or geniture, there are three several things, each of them being distinct, and yet they are not divided asunder one from another; but all three together are one only man, after the kind and manner of the Ternary or Trinity in the divine being [or essence].

(10) But how comes the soul not to keep that ground?

Because it has not yet escaped wholly: but there will be the time of vision unbroken, the self hindered no longer by any hindrance of body. Not that those hindrances beset that in us which has veritably seen; it is the other phase of the soul that suffers and that only when we withdraw from vision and take to knowing by proof, by evidence, by the reasoning processes of the mental habit. Such logic is not to be confounded with that act of ours in the vision; it is not our reason that has seen; it is something greater than reason, reason's Prior, as far above reason as the very object of that thought must be.

In our self-seeing There, the self is seen as belonging to that order, or rather we are merged into that self in us which has the quality of that order. It is a knowing of the self restored to its purity. No doubt we should not speak of seeing; but we cannot help talking in dualities, seen and seer, instead of, boldly, the achievement of unity. In this seeing, we neither hold an object nor trace distinction; there is no two. The man is changed, no longer himself nor self-belonging; he is merged with the Supreme, sunken into it, one with it: centre coincides with centre, for on this higher plane things that touch at all are one; only in separation is there duality; by our holding away, the Supreme is set outside. This is why the vision baffles telling; we cannot detach the Supreme to state it; if we have seen something thus detached we have failed of the Supreme which is to be known only as one with ourselves.

(31) And out of this expressing and revealing of Himself unto Himself, ariseth the distinction of Persons. But when God as God is made man, or where God dwelleth in a godly man, or one who is “made a partaker of the divine nature,” in such a man somewhat appertaineth unto God which is His own, and belongeth to Him only and not to the creature. And without the creature, this would lie in His own Self as a Substance or well-spring, but would not be manifested or wrought out into deeds. Now God will have it to be exercised and clothed in a form, for it is there only to be wrought out and executed. What else is it for? Shall it lie idle? What then would it profit? As good were it that it had never been; nay better, for what is of no use existeth in vain, and that is abhorred by God and Nature. However God will have it wrought out, and this cannot come to pass (which it ought to do) without the creature. Nay, if there ought not to be, and were not this and that—works, and a world full of real things, and the like, —what were God Himself, and what had He to do, and whose God would He be? Here we must turn and stop, or we might follow this matter and grope along until we knew not where we were, nor how we should find our way out again.

(4) If man were all of one piece- I mean, if he were nothing more than a made thing, acting and acted upon according to a fixed nature- he could be no more subject to reproach and punishment than the mere animals. But as the scheme holds, man is singled out for condemnation when he does evil; and this with justice. For he is no mere thing made to rigid plan; his nature contains a Principle apart and free.

This does not, however, stand outside of Providence or of the Reason of the All; the Over-World cannot be dependent upon the World of Sense. The higher shines down upon the lower, and this illumination is Providence in its highest aspect: The Reason-Principle has two phases, one which creates the things of process and another which links them with the higher beings: these higher beings constitute the over-providence on which depends that lower providence which is the secondary Reason-Principle inseparably united with its primal: the two- the Major and Minor Providence- acting together produce the universal woof, the one all-comprehensive Providence.

Men possess, then, a distinctive Principle: but not all men turn to account all that is in their Nature; there are men that live by one Principle and men that live by another or, rather, by several others, the least noble. For all these Principles are present even when not acting upon the man- though we cannot think of them as lying idle; everything performs its function.

"But," it will be said, "what reason can there be for their not acting upon the man once they are present; inaction must mean absence?"

We maintain their presence always, nothing void of them.

But surely not where they exercise no action? If they necessarily reside in all men, surely they must be operative in all- this Principle of free action, especially.

First of all, this free Principle is not an absolute possession of the animal Kinds and is not even an absolute possession to all men.

So this Principle is not the only effective force in all men?

There is no reason why it should not be. There are men in whom it alone acts, giving its character to the life while all else is but Necessity .

For whether it is that the constitution of the man is such as to drive him down the troubled paths or whether the desires have gained control, we are compelled to attribute the guilt to the substratum . We would be naturally inclined to say that this substratum must be Matter and not, as our argument implies, the Reason-Principle; it would appear that not the Reason-Principle but Matter were the dominant, crude Matter at the extreme and then Matter as shaped in the realized man: but we must remember that to this free Principle in man the Substratum is the Reason-Principle itself with whatever that produces and moulds to its own form, so that neither crude Matter nor Matter organized in our human total is sovereign within us.

The quality now manifested may be probably referred to the conduct of a former life; we may suppose that previous actions have made the Reason-Principle now governing within us inferior in radiance to that which ruled before; the Soul which later will shine out again is for the present at a feebler power.

And any Reason-Principle may be said to include within itself the Reason-Principle of Matter which therefore it is able to elaborate to its own purposes, either finding it consonant with itself or bestowing upon it the quality which makes it so. The Reason-Principle of an ox does not occur except in connection with the Matter appropriate to the ox-Kind. It must be by such a process that the transmigration, of which we read takes place; the Soul must lose its nature, the Reason-Principle be transformed; thus there comes the ox-soul which once was Man.

The degradation, then, is just.

Still, how did the inferior Principle ever come into being, and how does the higher fall to it?

Once more- not all things are Firsts; there are Secondaries and Tertiaries, of a nature inferior to that of their Priors; and a slight tilt is enough to determine the departure from the straight course. Further, the linking of any one being with any other amounts to a blending such as to produce a distinct entity, a compound of the two; it is not that the greater and prior suffers any diminution of its own nature; the lesser and secondary is such from its very beginning; it is in its own nature the lesser thing it becomes, and if it suffers the consequences, such suffering is merited: all our reasonings on these questions must take account of previous living as the source from which the present takes its rise.

(43) Further mark ye; that when the True Love and True Light are in a man, the Perfect Good is known and loved for itself and as itself; and yet not so that it loveth itself of itself and as itself, but the one True and Perfect Good can and will love nothing else, in so far as it is in itself, save the one, true Goodness. Now if this is itself, it must love itself, yet not as itself nor as of itself, but in this wise: that the One true Good loveth the One Perfect Goodness, and the One Perfect Goodness is loved of the One, true and Perfect Good. And in this sense that saying is true, that “God loveth not Himself as Himself.” For if there were ought better than God, God would love that, and not Himself. For in this True Light and True Love there neither is nor can remain any I, Me, Mine, Thou, Thine, and the like, but that Light perceiveth and knoweth that there is a Good which is all Good and above all Good, and that all good things are of one substance in the One Good, and that without that One, there is no good thing. And therefore, where this Light is, the man’s end and aim is not this or that, Me or Thee, or the like, but only the One, who is neither I nor Thou, this nor that, but is above all I and Thou, this and that; and in Him all Goodness is loved as One Good, according to that saying: “All in One as One, and One in All as All, and One and all Good, is loved through the One in One, and for the sake of the One, for the love that man hath to the One.” Behold, in such a man must all thought of Self, all self-seeking, self-will, and what cometh thereof, be utterly lost and surrendered and given over to God, except in so far as they are necessary to make up a person. And whatever cometh to pass in a man who is truly Godlike, whether he do or suffer, all is done in this Light and this Love, and from the same, through the same, unto the same again. And in his heart there is a content and a quietness, so that he doth not desire to know more or less, to have, to live, to die, to be, or not to be, or anything of the kind; these become all one and alike to him, and he complaineth of nothing but of sin only. And what sin is, we have said already, namely, to desire or will anything otherwise than the One Perfect Good and the One Eternal Will, and apart from and contrary to them, or to wish to have a will of one’s own.