(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.

(28) But him, who from this has trained himself to the summit of knowledge and the elevated height of the perfect man, all things relating to time and place help on, now that he has made it his choice to live infallibly, and subjects himself to training in order to the attainment of the stability of knowledge on each side. But in the case of those in whom there is still a heavy corner, leaning downwards, even that part which has been elevated by faith is dragged down. In him, then, who by gnostic training has acquired virtue which cannot be lost, habit becomes nature. And just as weight in a stone, so the knowledge of such an one is incapable of being lost. Not without, but through the exercise of will, and by the force of reason, and knowledge, and Providence, is it brought to become incapable of being lost. Through care it becomes incapable of being lost.

(11) The disciple's shadow is from that bough. When the shadows in the disciples cease, For, O fortunate one, how can the shadow move, Unless the tree that casts the shadow move as well? Again, the great Creator, as you know, Thus man passed from one order of nature to another, Of his first souls he has now no remembrance, In order to escape from his present soul full of lusts Though man fell asleep and forgot his previous states, Yet God will not leave him in this self-forgetfulness;

(2) I grant that many fall and have fallen of them that have in likeness forsaken the world. And where they should have become God’s servants and His contemplatives, because that they would not rule them by true ghostly counsel they have become the devil’s servants and his contemplatives; and turned either to hypocrites or to heretics, or fallen into frenzies and many other mischiefs, in slander of Holy Church. Of the which I leave to speak at this time, for troubling of our matter. But nevertheless here after when God vouchsafeth and if need be, men may see some of the conditions and the cause of their failings. And therefore no more of them at this time; but forth of our matter.

(7) Therefore we must ascend again towards the Good, the desired of every Soul. Anyone that has seen This, knows what I intend when I say that it is beautiful. Even the desire of it is to be desired as a Good. To attain it is for those that will take the upward path, who will set all their forces towards it, who will divest themselves of all that we have put on in our descent:- so, to those that approach the Holy Celebrations of the Mysteries, there are appointed purifications and the laying aside of the garments worn before, and the entry in nakedness- until, passing, on the upward way, all that is other than the God, each in the solitude of himself shall behold that solitary-dwelling Existence, the Apart, the Unmingled, the Pure, that from Which all things depend, for Which all look and live and act and know, the Source of Life and of Intellection and of Being.

And one that shall know this vision- with what passion of love shall he not be seized, with what pang of desire, what longing to be molten into one with This, what wondering delight! If he that has never seen this Being must hunger for It as for all his welfare, he that has known must love and reverence It as the very Beauty; he will be flooded with awe and gladness, stricken by a salutary terror; he loves with a veritable love, with sharp desire; all other loves than this he must despise, and disdain all that once seemed fair.

This, indeed, is the mood even of those who, having witnessed the manifestation of Gods or Supernals, can never again feel the old delight in the comeliness of material forms: what then are we to think of one that contemplates Absolute Beauty in Its essential integrity, no accumulation of flesh and matter, no dweller on earth or in the heavens- so perfect Its purity- far above all such things in that they are non-essential, composite, not primal but descending from This?

Beholding this Being- the Choragos of all Existence, the Self-Intent that ever gives forth and never takes- resting, rapt, in the vision and possession of so lofty a loveliness, growing to Its likeness, what Beauty can the soul yet lack? For This, the Beauty supreme, the absolute, and the primal, fashions Its lovers to Beauty and makes them also worthy of love.

And for This, the sternest and the uttermost combat is set before the Souls; all our labour is for This, lest we be left without part in this noblest vision, which to attain is to be blessed in the blissful sight, which to fail of is to fail utterly.

For not he that has failed of the joy that is in colour or in visible forms, not he that has failed of power or of honours or of kingdom has failed, but only he that has failed of only This, for Whose winning he should renounce kingdoms and command over earth and ocean and sky, if only, spurning the world of sense from beneath his feet, and straining to This, he may see.

(4) Verily, while he does not there see [with the eyes], he is verily seeing, though he does not see (what is [usually] to be seen) l; for there is no cessation of the seeing of a seer, because of his imperishability [as a seer]. It is not, however, a second thing, other than himself and separate, that he may see.

(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.

(1) 'These true desires, however, are hidden by what is false; though the desires be true, they have a covering which is false. Thus, whoever belonging to us has departed this life, him we cannot gain back, so that we should see him with our eyes.

(3) But it leaves that conjunction; it cannot suffer that unity; it falls in love with its own powers and possessions, and desires to stand apart; it leans outward so to speak: then, it appears to acquire a memory of itself.

In this self-memory a distinction is to be made; the memory dealing with the Intellectual Realm upbears the soul, not to fall; the memory of things here bears it downwards to this universe; the intermediate memory dealing with the heavenly sphere holds it there too; and, in all its memory, the thing it has in mind it is and grows to; for this bearing-in-mind must be either intuition or representation by image: and the imaging in the case of the is not a taking in of something but is vision and condition- so much so, that, in its very sense- sight, it is the lower in the degree in which it penetrates the object. Since its possession of the total of things is not primal but secondary, it does not become all things perfectly ; it is of the boundary order, situated between two regions, and has tendency to both.

(4) The main part of the difficulty is that awareness of this Principle comes neither by knowing nor by the Intellection that discovers the Intellectual Beings but by a presence overpassing all knowledge. In knowing, soul or mind abandons its unity; it cannot remain a simplex: knowing is taking account of things; that accounting is multiple; the mind, thus plunging into number and multiplicity, departs from unity.

Our way then takes us beyond knowing; there may be no wandering from unity; knowing and knowable must all be left aside; every object of thought, even the highest, we must pass by, for all that is good is later than This and derives from This as from the sun all the light of the day.

"Not to be told; not to be written": in our writing and telling we are but urging towards it: out of discussion we call to vision: to those desiring to see, we point the path; our teaching is of the road and the travelling; the seeing must be the very act of one that has made this choice.

There are those that have not attained to see. The soul has not come to know the splendour There; it has not felt and clutched to itself that love-passion of vision known to lover come to rest where he loves. Or struck perhaps by that authentic light, all the soul lit by the nearness gained, we have gone weighted from beneath; the vision is frustrate; we should go without burden and we go carrying that which can but keep us back; we are not yet made over into unity.

From none is that Principle absent and yet from all: present, it remains absent save to those fit to receive, disciplined into some accordance, able to touch it closely by their likeness and by that kindred power within themselves through which, remaining as it was when it came to them from the Supreme, they are enabled to see in so far as God may at all be seen.

Failure to attain may be due to such impediment or to lack of the guiding thought that establishes trust; impediment we must charge against ourselves and strive by entire renunciation to become emancipate; where there is distrust for lack of convincing reason, further considerations may be applied:

(6) For neither can he who perceiveth It, perceive aught else; nor he who gazeth on It, gaze on aught else; nor hear aught else, nor stir his body any way. Staying his body's every sense and every motion he stayeth still. And shining then all round his mond, It shines through his whole soul, and draws it out of body, transforming all of him to essence. For it is possible, my son, that a man's soul should be made like to God, e'en while it still is in a body, if it doth contemplate the Beauty of the Good.

(3) Now ope thine eyes to what I answer thee, And thou shalt see thy creed and my discourse Fit in the truth as centre in a circle. That which can die, and that which dieth not, Are nothing but the splendour of the idea Which by his love our Lord brings into being; Because that living Light, which from its fount Effulgent flows, so that it disunites not From Him nor from the Love in them intrined, Through its own goodness reunites its rays In nine subsistences, as in a mirror, Itself eternally remaining One. Thence it descends to the last potencies, Downward from act to act becoming such That only brief contingencies it makes; And these contingencies I hold to be Things generated, which the heaven produces By its own motion, with seed and without. Neither their wax, nor that which tempers it, Remains immutable, and hence beneath The ideal signet more and less shines through; Therefore it happens, that the selfsame tree After its kind bears worse and better fruit, And ye are born with characters diverse.

People cannot see anything that really is without becoming like it. It is not so with people in the world, who see the sun without becoming the sun and see the sky and earth and everything else without becoming them. Rather, in the realm of truth, you have seen things there and have become those things, you have seen the spirit and have become spirit, you have seen Christ and have become Christ, you have seen the [father] and will become father. [Here] in the world you see everything but do not [see] yourself, but there in that realm you see yourself, and you will [become] what you see.

(5) But this power which determines memory is it also the principle by which the Supreme becomes effective in us?

At any time when we have not been in direct vision of that sphere, memory is the source of its activity within us; when we have possessed that vision, its presence is due to the principle by which we enjoyed it: this principle awakens where it wakens; and it alone has vision in that order; for this is no matter to be brought to us by way of analogy, or by the syllogistic reasoning whose grounds lie elsewhere; the power which, even here, we possess of discoursing upon the Intellectual Beings is vested, as we show, in that principle which alone is capable of their contemplation. That, we must awaken, so to speak, and thus attain the vision of the Supreme, as one, standing on some lofty height and lifting his eyes, sees what to those that have not mounted with him is invisible.

Memory, by this account, commences after the soul has left the higher spheres; it is first known in the celestial period.

A soul that has descended from the Intellectual region to the celestial and there comes to rest, may very well be understood to recognize many other souls known in its former state supposing that, as we have said, it retains recollection of much that it knew here. This recognition would be natural if the bodies with which those souls are vested in the celestial must reproduce the former appearance; supposing the spherical form means a change of appearance, recognition would go by character, by the distinctive quality of personality: this is not fantastic; conditions changing need not mean a change of character. If the souls have mutual conversation, this too would mean recognition.

But those whose descent from the Intellectual is complete, how is it with them?

They will recall their memories, of the same things, but with less force than those still in the celestial, since they have had other experiences to remember, and the lapse of time will have utterly obliterated much of what was formerly present to them.

But what way of remembering the Supreme is left if the souls have turned to the sense-known kosmos, and are to fall into this sphere of process?

They need not fall to the ultimate depth: their downward movement may be checked at some one moment of the way; and as long as they have not touched the lowest of the region of process there is nothing to prevent them rising once more.

(5) My mind in this wise wholly in suspense, Steadfast, immovable, attentive gazed, And evermore with gazing grew enkindled. In presence of that light one such becomes, That to withdraw therefrom for other prospect It is impossible he e'er consent; Because the good, which object is of will, Is gathered all in this, and out of it That is defective which is perfect there. Shorter henceforward will my language fall Of what I yet remember, than an infant's Who still his tongue doth moisten at the breast. Not because more than one unmingled semblance Was in the living light on which I looked, For it is always what it was before; But through the sight, that fortified itself In me by looking, one appearance only To me was ever changing as I changed. Within the deep and luminous subsistence Of the High Light appeared to me three circles, Of threefold colour and of one dimension,

(3) Yes, but if the well-being has lasted a long time, if that present spectacle has been a longer time before the eyes?

If in the greater length of time the man has seen more deeply, time has certainly done something for him, but if all the process has brought him no further vision, then one glance would give all he has had.

(7) If the mind reels before something thus alien to all we know, we must take our stand on the things of this realm and strive thence to see. But, in the looking, beware of throwing outward; this Principle does not lie away somewhere leaving the rest void; to those of power to reach, it is present; to the inapt, absent. In our daily affairs we cannot hold an object in mind if we have given ourselves elsewhere, occupied upon some other matter; that very thing must be before us to be truly the object of observation. So here also; preoccupied by the impress of something else, we are withheld under that pressure from becoming aware of The Unity; a mind gripped and fastened by some definite thing cannot take the print of the very contrary. As Matter, it is agreed, must be void of quality in order to accept the types of the universe, so and much more must the soul be kept formless if there is to be no infixed impediment to prevent it being brimmed and lit by the Primal Principle.

In sum, we must withdraw from all the extern, pointed wholly inwards; no leaning to the outer; the total of things ignored, first in their relation to us and later in the very idea; the self put out of mind in the contemplation of the Supreme; all the commerce so closely There that, if report were possible, one might become to others reporter of that communion.

Such converse, we may suppose, was that of Minos, thence known as the Familiar of Zeus; and in that memory he established the laws which report it, enlarged to that task by his vision There. Some, on the other hand, there will be to disdain such citizen service, choosing to remain in the higher: these will be those that have seen much.

God- we read- is outside of none, present unperceived to all; we break away from Him, or rather from ourselves; what we turn from we cannot reach; astray ourselves, we cannot go in search of another; a child distraught will not recognise its father; to find ourselves is to know our source.

(15) The deluded do not perceive him when he departs from the body or dwells in it, when he experiences objects or is united with the gunas; but they who have the eye of wisdom perceive him.

(12) We have told how this vision is to be procured, whether by the mode of separation or in identity: now, seen in either way, what does it give to report?

The vision has been of God in travail of a beautiful offspring, God engendering a universe within himself in a painless labour and- rejoiced in what he has brought into being, proud of his children- keeping all closely by Him, for pleasure He has in his radiance and in theirs.

Of this offspring- all beautiful, but most beautiful those that have remained within- only one has become manifest without; from him the youngest born, we may gather, as from some image, the greatness of the Father and of the Brothers that remain within the Father's house.

Still the manifested God cannot think that he has come forth in vain from the father; for through him another universe has arisen, beautiful as the image of beauty, and it could not be' lawful that Beauty and Being should fail of a beautiful image.

This second Kosmos at every point copies the archetype: it has life and being in copy, and has beauty as springing from that diviner world. In its character of image it holds, too, that divine perpetuity without which it would only at times be truly representative and sometimes fail like a construction of art; for every image whose existence lies in the nature of things must stand during the entire existence of the archetype.

Hence it is false to put an end to the visible sphere as long as the Intellectual endures, or to found it upon a decision taken by its maker at some given moment.

That teaching shirks the penetration of such a making as is here involved: it fails to see that as long as the Supreme is radiant there can be no failing of its sequel but, that existing, all exists. And- since the necessity of conveying our meaning compels such terms- the Supreme has existed for ever and for ever will exist.

(1) Whenever by delight or else by pain, That seizes any faculty of ours, Wholly to that the soul collects itself, It seemeth that no other power it heeds; And this against that error is which thinks One soul above another kindles in us. And hence, whenever aught is heard or seen Which keeps the soul intently bent upon it, Time passes on, and we perceive it not, Because one faculty is that which listens, And other that which the soul keeps entire; This is as if in bonds, and that is free. Of this I had experience positive In hearing and in gazing at that spirit; For fifty full degrees uprisen was The sun, and I had not perceived it, when We came to where those souls with one accord Cried out unto us: "Here is what you ask." A greater opening ofttimes hedges up With but a little forkful of his thorns The villager, what time the grape imbrowns, Than was the passage-way through which ascended Only my Leader and myself behind him, After that company departed from us.