(30) And they say, Yes, we will take thee in, for thou art a Member of our Spirit; thou shalt dwell in us, and strengthen the Essences of our Spirit, that it may not faint; yet we must also have the Children of the Earth (for they have our Quality also in them) that we may rejoice. And the Spirit of the Lungs says; Then I will live in you wholly, and rejoice myself with you. The Gate of the Syderial, or Starry Spirit. 3 1. Thus now when the Light of the Sun, which had discovered and imprinted itself in the Fire-flash of the Essences of the Spirit, and was shining in the Fire-flash (as in a strange Virtue, and not in the Sun's own Virtue,) [when he] sees that he has gotten the Region, and that the Essences of the Soul (which are the Worm or the Spirit) as also the Elements will rejoice in his Virtue and Splendor, and that the Elements have made their four Regions [or Dominions] and Habitations, for an everlasting Possession, and that he should be a King, and that they should serve at Court (in the Spirit of the Essences) in the Heart, and so exceedingly love him, and rejoice in their Service, and have besides brought the Children of the Earth, that the Spirit might present them (where then they will first be frolick and potent, and eat and drink of the Essences of the Children of the Earth) then i he thinks with himself, it is good to dwell here, thou art a King, thou wilt bring kthy Kindred [Offspring, or Generation] hither, and raise them up above the Elements, and make thyself Gate where the Children of this World are wiser than the Children of Light. O Man! consider thyself! And he draws the Constellations to him, and brings them into the Essences, and sets them over the Elements, with their wonderful and unsearchable various Essences, (whose Number is infinite,) and makes himself

(18) Although such Revelations have been hidden [or concealed] from the Beginning of the World, yet because it must now go into its Ether, and into the Breaking-through, therefore all stands naked, whatsoever has been hidden in Nature; and there shall very great Things (which have been hidden) be revealed [or manifested;] and this Mystery is the Break of Day. Therefore it is Time to awake, for the Awakening of the Dead is near at Hand.

(4) And Nature, asked why it brings forth its works, might answer if it cared to listen and to speak:

"It would have been more becoming to put no question but to learn in silence just as I myself am silent and make no habit of talking. And what is your lesson? This; that whatsoever comes into being is my is my vision, seen in my silence, the vision that belongs to my character who, sprung from vision, am vision-loving and create vision by the vision-seeing faculty within me. The mathematicians from their vision draw their figures: but I draw nothing: I gaze and the figures of the material world take being as if they fell from my contemplation. As with my Mother (the All-Soul] and the Beings that begot me so it is with me: they are born of a Contemplation and my birth is from them, not by their Act but by their Being; they are the loftier Reason-Principles, they contemplate themselves and I am born."

Now what does this tell us?

It tells: that what we know as Nature is a Soul, offspring of a yet earlier Soul of more powerful life; that it possesses, therefore, in its repose, a vision within itself; that it has no tendency upward nor even downward but is at peace, steadfast, in its own Essence; that, in this immutability accompanied by what may be called Self-Consciousness, it possesses- within the measure of its possibility- a knowledge of the realm of subsequent things perceived in virtue of that understanding and consciousness; and, achieving thus a resplendent and delicious spectacle, has no further aim.

Of course, while it may be convenient to speak of "understanding" or "perception" in the Nature-Principle, this is not in the full sense applicable to other beings; we are applying to sleep a word borrowed from the wake.

For the Vision on which Nature broods, inactive, is a self-intuition, a spectacle laid before it by virtue of its unaccompanied self-concentration and by the fact that in itself it belongs to the order of intuition. It is a Vision silent but somewhat blurred, for there exists another a clearer of which Nature is the image: hence all that Nature produces is weak; the weaker act of intuition produces the weaker object.

In the same way, human beings, when weak on the side of contemplation, find in action their trace of vision and of reason: their spiritual feebleness unfits them for contemplation; they are left with a void, because they cannot adequately seize the vision; yet they long for it; they are hurried into action as their way to the vision which they cannot attain by intellection. They act from the desire of seeing their action, and of making it visible and sensible to others when the result shall prove fairly well equal to the plan. Everywhere, doing and making will be found to be either an attenuation or a complement of vision-attenuation if the doer was aiming only at the thing done; complement if he is to possess something nobler to gaze upon than the mere work produced.

Given the power to contemplate the Authentic, who would run, of choice, after its image?

The relation of action to contemplation is indicated in the way duller children, inapt to study and speculation, take to crafts and manual labour.

(1) HERE I must encounter with the proud and seeming conceited Wise, who does but grope in the Dark, and knows or understands nothing of the Spirit of God, and must comfort both him, and also the desirous longing Reader who loves God, and must show them a little Door to the heavenly Essence; and show them in what Manner they should understand these Writings, before I come to the Chapter itself.

(45) With veils drawn over their faces, and asleep; But when the morn shall burst forth and the sun arise Every creature will raise its head from its couch; To the unconscious God will restore consciousness; They will stand in rings as slaves with rings in ears; Dancing and clapping hands with songs of praise, Singing with joy, "Our Lord hath restored us to life!" Shedding their old skins and bones, All pressing on from Not-being to Being, On the last day, as well the thankful as the unthankful.