(19) "Knowledge of the great One, of the great Negative, of the great Nomenclature, of the great Uniformity, of the great Space, of the great Truth, of the great Law,—this is perfection. "The great One is omnipresent. The great Negative is omnipotent. The great Nomenclature is all-inclusive. The great Uniformity is all-assimilative. The great Space is all-receptive. The great Truth is all-exacting. The great Law is all-binding. "The ultimate end is God. He is manifested in the laws of nature. He is the hidden spring. At the beginning, he was. This, however, is inexplicable. It is unknowable. But from the unknowable we reach the known. "Investigation must not be limited, nor must it be unlimited. In this vague undefinedness there is an actuality. Time does not change it. It cannot suffer diminution. May we not then call it our great Guide? "Why not bring our doubting hearts to investigation thereof? And then, using certainty to dispel doubt, revert to a state without doubt, in which doubt is doubly dead?"

(3) That, then, which so transcends, which is not subject unto sense, [which is] beyond all bounds, [and which] cannot be grasped,—That transcends all appraisement; That cannot be supported, nor borne up, nor can it be tracked out. For where, and when, and whence, and how, and what, He is,—is known to none. For He’s borne up by [His] supreme stability, and His stability is in Himself [alone],—whether [this mystery] be God, or the Eternity, or both, or one in other, or both in either.

(5) And said: "Already did I rest content From great amazement; but am now amazed In what way I transcend these bodies light." Whereupon she, after a pitying sigh, Her eyes directed tow'rds me with that look A mother casts on a delirious child; And she began: "All things whate'er they be Have order among themselves, and this is form, That makes the universe resemble God. Here do the higher creatures see the footprints Of the Eternal Power, which is the end Whereto is made the law already mentioned. In the order that I speak of are inclined All natures, by their destinies diverse, More or less near unto their origin; Hence they move onward unto ports diverse O'er the great sea of being; and each one With instinct given it which bears it on. This bears away the fire towards the moon; This is in mortal hearts the motive power This binds together and unites the earth. Nor only the created things that are Without intelligence this bow shoots forth, But those that have both intellect and love.

(11) This is the purport of that rule of our Mysteries: Nothing Divulged to the Uninitiate: the Supreme is not to be made a common story, the holy things may not be uncovered to the stranger, to any that has not himself attained to see. There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man formed by this mingling with the Supreme must- if he only remember- carry its image impressed upon him: he is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no passion, no outlooking desire, once this ascent is achieved; reasoning is in abeyance and all Intellection and even, to dare the word, the very self; caught away, filled with God, he has in perfect stillness attained isolation; all the being calmed, he turns neither to this side nor to that, not even inwards to himself; utterly resting he has become very rest. He belongs no longer to the order of the beautiful; he has risen beyond beauty; he has overpassed even the choir of the virtues; he is like one who, having penetrated the inner sanctuary, leaves the temple images behind him- though these become once more first objects of regard when he leaves the holies; for There his converse was not with image, not with trace, but with the very Truth in the view of which all the rest is but of secondary concern.

There, indeed, it was scarcely vision, unless of a mode unknown; it was a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a renunciation, a reach towards contact and at the same time a repose, a meditation towards adjustment. This is the only seeing of what lies within the holies: to look otherwise is to fail.

Things here are signs; they show therefore to the wiser teachers how the supreme God is known; the instructed priest reading the sign may enter the holy place and make real the vision of the inaccessible.

Even those that have never found entry must admit the existence of that invisible; they will know their source and Principle since by principle they see principle and are linked with it, by like they have contact with like and so they grasp all of the divine that lies within the scope of mind. Until the seeing comes they are still craving something, that which only the vision can give; this Term, attained only by those that have overpassed all, is the All-Transcending.

It is not in the soul's nature to touch utter nothingness; the lowest descent is into evil and, so far, into non-being: but to utter nothing, never. When the soul begins again to mount, it comes not to something alien but to its very self; thus detached, it is not in nothingness but in itself; self-gathered it is no longer in the order of being; it is in the Supreme.

There is thus a converse in virtue of which the essential man outgrows Being, becomes identical with the Transcendent of Being. The self thus lifted, we are in the likeness of the Supreme: if from that heightened self we pass still higher- image to archetype- we have won the Term of all our journeying. Fallen back again, we awaken the virtue within until we know ourselves all order once more; once more we are lightened of the burden and move by virtue towards Intellectual-Principle and through the Wisdom in That to the Supreme.

This is the life of gods and of the godlike and blessed among men, liberation from the alien that besets us here, a life taking no pleasure in the things of earth, the passing of solitary to solitary.

(6) Therefore though we speak of the Creation of the World, as if we had been by as present, and had seen it, none ought to marvel at it, nor hold it for impossible. For the Spirit that is in us, which one Man inherits from the other, that was breathed out of the Eternity into Adam, that same Spirit has seen it all, and in the Light of God it sees it still; and there is nothing that is far off, or unsearchable: For the eternal Birth, which stands hidden in the Center of Man, that does nothing [that is] new, it knows, works and does even the same that ever it did from Eternity; it labours for the Light and for the Darkness, and works in great Anguish; but when the Light shines therein, then there is mere Joy and Knowledge in its Working.

(3) Especially must this be known, that according to the pre-conceived species of each one, things united are said to be made one, and the one is elemental of all; and if you should take away the one, there will be neither totality nor part, nor any other single existing thing. For the one, uniformly, pre-held and comprehended all things in itself. For this reason, then, the Word of God celebrates the whole Godhead, as Cause of all, by the epithet of the One, both one God the Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ, and one and the same Spirit, by reason of the surpassing indivisibility of the whole Divine Oneness, in which all things are uniquely collected, and are super-unified, and are with It Superessentially. Wherefore also, all things are justly referred and attributed to It, by Which and from Which, and through Which, and in Which, and to Which, all things are, and are co-ordinated, and abide, and are held together, and are filled, and are turned towards It. And you would not find any existing thing, which is not what it is, and perfected and preserved, by the One, after which the whole Deity is superessentially named. And it is necessary also, that we being turned from the many to the One, by the power of the Divine Oneness, should celebrate as One the whole and one Deity--the one Cause of all--which is before every one and multitude, and part and whole, and limit and illimitability, and term and infinity, which bounds all things that be, even the Being Itself, and is uniquely Cause of all, individually and collectively, and at the same time before all, and above all, and above the One existing Itself, and bounding the One existing Itself; since the One existing--that in things being--is numbered, and number participates in essence; but the superessential One bounds both the One existing, and every number, and Itself is, of both one and number, and every being, Source and Cause, and Number and. Order. Wherefore also, whilst celebrated as Unit and Triad, the Deity above all is neither Unit nor Triad, as understood by us or by any other sort of being, but, in order that we may celebrate truly. Its super-oneness, and Divine generation, by the threefold and single name of God, we name the Deity, Which is inexpressible to things that be, the Superessential. But no Unit nor Triad, nor number nor unity, nor productiveness, nor any other existing thing, or thing known to any existing thing, brings forth the hiddenness, above every expression and every mind, of the Super-Deity Which is above all superessentially. Nor has It a Name, or expression, but is elevated above in the inaccessible. And neither do we apply the very Name of Goodness, as making it adequate to It, but through a desire of understanding and saying something concerning that inexpressible nature, we consecrate the most august of Names to It, in the first degree, and although we should be in accord in this matter with the theologians, yet we shall fall short of the truth of the facts. Wherefore, even they have given the preference to the ascent through negations, as lifting the soul out of things kindred to itself, and conducting it through all the Divine conceptions, above which towers that which is above every name, and every expression and knowledge, and at the furthest extremity attaching it to Him, as far indeed as is possible for us to be attached to that Being.

(3) What, then, can this be, this something in virtue of which we declare the entire divine Realm to be Eternal, everlasting? We must come to some understanding of this perpetuity with which Eternity is either identical or in conformity.

It must at once, be at once something in the nature of unity and yet a notion compact of diversity, or a Kind, a Nature, that waits upon the Existents of that Other World, either associated with them or known in and upon them, they collectively being this Nature which, with all its unity, is yet diverse in power and essence. Considering this multifarious power, we declare it to be Essence in its relation to this sphere which is substratum or underlie to it; where we see life we think of it as Movement; where all is unvaried self-identity we call it Repose; and we know it as, at once, Difference and Identity when we recognize that all is unity with variety.

Then we reconstruct; we sum all into a collected unity once more, a sole Life in the Supreme; we concentrate Diversity and all the endless production of act: thus we know Identity, a concept or, rather, a Life never varying, not becoming what previously it was not, the thing immutably itself, broken by no interval; and knowing this, we know Eternity.

We know it as a Life changelessly motionless and ever holding the Universal content in actual presence; not this now and now that other, but always all; not existing now in one mode and now in another, but a consummation without part or interval. All its content is in immediate concentration as at one point; nothing in it ever knows development: all remains identical within itself, knowing nothing of change, for ever in a Now since nothing of it has passed away or will come into being, but what it is now, that it is ever.

Eternity, therefore- while not the Substratum - may be considered as the radiation of this Substratum: it exists as the announcement of the Identity in the Divine, of that state- of being thus and not otherwise- which characterizes what has no futurity but eternally is.

What future, in fact, could bring to that Being anything which it now does not possess; and could it come to be anything which it is not once for all?

There exists no source or ground from which anything could make its way into that standing present; any imagined entrant will prove to be not alien but already integral. And as it can never come to be anything at present outside it, so, necessarily, it cannot include any past; what can there be that once was in it and now is gone? Futurity, similarly, is banned; nothing could be yet to come to it. Thus no ground is left for its existence but that it be what it is.

That which neither has been nor will be, but simply possesses being; that which enjoys stable existence as neither in process of change nor having ever changed- that is Eternity. Thus we come to the definition: the Life- instantaneously entire, complete, at no point broken into period or part- which belongs to the Authentic Existent by its very existence, this is the thing we were probing for- this is Eternity.

(54) Although here the Tongue of Man cannot utter, declare, express, nor fathom this great Depth, where there is neither Number nor End, yet we have Power to speak thereof as Children talk of their Father. But to dive into the whole Depth, that troubles us, and disturbs our Souls; for God himself knows neither Beginning nor End in himself.

(7) To Real Being we go back, all that we have and are; to that we return as from that we came. Of what is There we have direct knowledge, not images or even impressions; and to know without image is to be; by our part in true knowledge we are those Beings; we do not need to bring them down into ourselves, for we are There among them. Since not only ourselves but all other things also are those Beings, we all are they; we are they while we are also one with all: therefore we and all things are one.

When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore our unity; looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is the one head. If man could but be turned about by his own motion or by the happy pull of Athene- he would see at once God and himself and the All. At first no doubt all will not be seen as one whole, but when we find no stop at which to declare a limit to our being we cease to rule ourselves out from the total of reality; we reach to the All as a unity- and this not by any stepping forward, but by the fact of being and abiding there where the All has its being.

(2) This, then, is truer than all truth, and plainer than what the mind [’s eye] perceives;—that from that Universal God of Universal Nature all other things for evermore have found, and had bestowed on them, the mystery of bringing forth; in which there is innate the sweetest Charity, [and] Joy, [and] Merriment, Longing, and Love Divine. We might have had to tell the mighty power and the compulsion of this mystery, if it had not been able to be known by every one from personal experience, by observation of himself.

(8) And as is mentioned before, these seven Forms divide themselves again every one in itself into an Infinity of Forms, according to the Discovery of the Spirit, and therein stands the Essence of all Essences, and it is all a great Wonder; and our whole Teaching does but aim at this, that we Men might enter into the light holy Wonders; for at the End of this Time all shall be manifested, and every Thing shall stand in that wherein it is grown; and then when that Substance (which at present it possesses and brings forth) perishes, then it is all an Eternity.

(30) Therefore I seriously exhort the Reader, and would have him faithfully warned, as it were with a Preface to this great Mystery, that if he do not understand it, and yet longeth and would fain have the meaning or understanding thereof, that he would pray to God for his Holy Spirit, and that he would enlighten him with the same.

(2) Side by side exist the Authentic All and its counterpart, the visible universe. The Authentic is contained in nothing, since nothing existed before it; of necessity anything coming after it must, as a first condition of existence, be contained by this All, especially since it depends upon the Authentic and without that could have neither stability nor movement.

We may be reminded that the universe cannot be contained in the Authentic as in a place, where place would mean the boundaries of some surrounding extension considered as an envelope, or some space formerly a part of the Void and still remaining unoccupied even after the emergence of the universe, that it can only support itself, as it were, upon the Authentic and rest in the embrace of its omnipresence; but this objection is merely verbal and will disappear if our meaning is grasped; we mention it for another purpose; it goes to enforce our real assertion that the Authentic All, at once primal and veritable, needs no place and is in no way contained. The All, as being an integral, cannot fall short of itself; it must ever have fulfilled its own totality, ever reached to its own equivalence; as far as the sum of entities extends, there this is; for this is the All.

Inevitably, also, anything other than this All that may be stationed therein must have part in the All, merge into it, and hold by its strength; it is not that the thing detaches a portion of the All but that within itself it finds the All which has entered into it while still unbrokenly self-abiding, since Being cannot lodge in non-Being, but, if anything, non-Being within Being.

Being, then, is present to all Being; an identity cannot tear itself asunder; the omnipresence asserted of it must be presence within the realm of Being; that is, it must be a self-presence. And it is in no way strange that the omnipresence should be at once self-abiding and universal; this is merely saying omnipresence within a unity.

It is our way to limit Being to the sense-known and therefore to think of omnipresence in terms of the concrete; in our overestimate of the sensible, we question how that other Nature can reach over such vastness; but our great is small, and this, small to us, is great; it reaches integrally to every point of our universe- or, better, our universe, moving from every side and in all its members towards this, meets it everywhere as the omnipresent All ever stretching beyond.

The universe in all its reach can attain nothing further- that would mean overpassing the total of Being- and therefore is content to circle about it; not able to encompass or even to fill the All, it is content to accept place and subordination, for thus it preserves itself in neighbouring the higher present to it- present and yet absent; self-holding, whatever may seek its presence.

Wherever the body of the universe may touch, there it finds this All; it strives for no further advance, willing to revolve in that one circle, since to it that is the All and in that movement its every part embraces the All.

If that higher were itself in place there would be the need of seeking that precise place by a certain right path; part of seeker must touch part of sought, and there would be far and near. But since there is no far and near there must be, if presence at all, presence entire. And presence there indubitably is; this highest is present to every being of those that, free of far and near, are of power to receive.

(3) If the Universe exists at all, or seems to exist, it must proceed in some way from THE ALL--it must be a creation of THE ALL. But as something can never come from nothing, from what could THE ALL have created it. Some philosophers have answered this question by saying that THE ALL created the Universe from ITSELF--that is, from the being and substance of THE ALL. But this will not do, for THE ALL cannot be subtracted from, nor divided, as we have seen, and then again if this be so, would not each particle in the Universe be aware of its being THE ALL--THE ALL could not lose its knowledge of itself, nor actually BECOME an atom, or blind force, or lowly living thing. Some men, indeed, realizing that THE ALL is indeed ALL, and also recognizing that they, the men, existed, have jumped to the conclusion that they and THE ALL were identical, and they have filled the air with shouts of "I AM GOD," to the amusement of the multitude and the sorrow of sages. The claim of the corpuscle that: "I am Man!" would be modest in comparison.

(9) But, if the Philosopher Clemens thinks good, that the higher amongst beings should be called exemplars in relation to something, his statement advances, not through correct and perfect and simple names. But, when we have conceded even this, to be correctly said, we must call to mind the Word of God, which says, "I have not shewn thee these things for the purpose of going after them, but that through the proportionate knowledge of these we may be led up to the Cause of all, as we are capable." We must attribute, then, all existing things to It, as beseems One Union pre-eminent above all, since by starting from Being, the essentiating Progression and Goodness, both penetrating all, and filling all things with Its own being, and rejoicing over all things being, pre-holds all things in Itself, rejecting all duplicity by an one superfluity of simplicity. But It grasps all things in the same way, as beseems its super-simplified Infinity, and is participated in by all uniquely, even as a voice, whilst being one and the same, is participated in by many ears as one.

(23) And though there be such Seeking in the Mystery by the Instigation and Driving of the Spirit of God, yet every one seeks in his own Manner) in his Field wherein he stands, and there he also finds, and so brings his Invention to Light, that it may appear, and this is the Purpose of the Great God, that he may so be manifested in his Wonders. And it is not all from the Devil, as the World in Babel (in its great Folly) teaches; where they cast all down to the Ground, and will make a Bon-fire of it, and set Epicurism in its Place.

(9) But while the essential nature of THE ALL is Unknowable, there are certain truths connected with its existence which the human mind finds itself compelled to accept. And an examination of these reports form a proper subject of inquiry, particularly as they agree with the reports of the Illumined on higher planes. And to this inquiry we now invite you. "THAT which is the Fundamental Truth--the Substantial Reality--is beyond true naming, but the Wise Men call it THE ALL." --The Kybalion. "In its Essence, THE ALL is UNKNOWABLE." --The Kybalion. "But, the report of Reason must be hospitably received, and treated with respect." --The Kybalion.

(9) Let us, then, make a mental picture of our universe: each member shall remain what it is, distinctly apart; yet all is to form, as far as possible, a complete unity so that whatever comes into view shall show as if it were the surface of the orb over all, bringing immediately with it the vision, on the one plane, of the sun and of all the stars with earth and sea and all living things as if exhibited upon a transparent globe.

Bring this vision actually before your sight, so that there shall be in your mind the gleaming representation of a sphere, a picture holding sprung, themselves, of that universe and repose or some at rest, some in motion. Keep this sphere before you, and from it imagine another, a sphere stripped of magnitude and of spatial differences; cast out your inborn sense of Matter, taking care not merely to attenuate it: call on God, maker of the sphere whose image you now hold, and pray Him to enter. And may He come bringing His own Universe with all the Gods that dwell in it- He who is the one God and all the gods, where each is all, blending into a unity, distinct in powers but all one god in virtue of that one divine power of many facets.

More truly, this is the one God who is all the gods; for, in the coming to be of all those, this, the one, has suffered no diminishing. He and all have one existence while each again is distinct. It is distinction by state without interval: there is no outward form to set one here and another there and to prevent any from being an entire identity; yet there is no sharing of parts from one to another. Nor is each of those divine wholes a power in fragment, a power totalling to the sum of the measurable segments: the divine is one all-power, reaching out to infinity, powerful to infinity; and so great is God that his very members are infinites. What place can be named to which He does not reach?

Great, too, is this firmament of ours and all the powers constellated within it, but it would be greater still, unspeakably, but that there is inbound in it something of the petty power of body; no doubt the powers of fire and other bodily substances might themselves be thought very great, but in fact, it is through their failure in the true power that we see them burning, destroying, wearing things away, and slaving towards the production of life; they destroy because they are themselves in process of destruction, and they produce because they belong to the realm of the produced.

The power in that other world has merely Being and Beauty of Being. Beauty without Being could not be, nor Being voided of Beauty: abandoned of Beauty, Being loses something of its essence. Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty; and Beauty is loved because it is Being. How then can we debate which is the cause of the other, where the nature is one? The very figment of Being needs some imposed image of Beauty to make it passable and even to ensure its existence; it exists to the degree in which it has taken some share in the beauty of Idea; and the more deeply it has drawn on this, the less imperfect it is, precisely because the nature which is essentially the beautiful has entered into it the more intimately.

(8) This being so, O Tat, what comes from God hath been and will be ours; but that which is dependent on ourselves, let this press onward and have no delay, for 'tis not God, 'tis we who are the cause of evil things, preferring them to good. Thou see'st, son, how many are the bodies through which we have to pass, how many are the choirs of daimones, how vast the system of the star-courses [through which our Path doth lie], to hasten to the One and Only God. For to the Good there is no other shore; It hath no bounds; It is without an end; and for Itself It is without beginning, too, though unto us it seemeth to have one - the Gnosis.

(24) "And after everything, all that was revealed appeared from his power. And from what was created, all that was fashioned appeared; from what was fashioned appeared what was formed; from what was formed, what was named. Thus came the difference among the unbegotten ones from beginning to end."