(4) And now if we look round about us every where, upon Heaven and Earth, the Stars and Elements, yet we can see and know no Way [or Passage] where we may go to our Rest; we see no other than the Way of the Entrance in of our Life, and then of the End of our Life, where our Body goes into the Earth, and all our Labour (also our Arts and Glory) is inherited by another, who also vexes himself therewith for a While, and then follows after us; and that continues so from the Beginning of the World to its End.

(38) But that there is a firmament between the waters, which firmament is called heaven, has this understanding or meaning:

(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.

(58) And there shall be a light that never endeth, And to a limit (lit. 'number') of days they shall not come, For the darkness shall first have been destroyed, [And the light established before the Lord of Spirits] And the light of uprightness established for ever before the Lord of Spirits.

(51) The speaker throughout identifies himself with the divinity whose manifestation is the Sun; he is not the Sun of this or that moment but of Yesterday, To-day and of all eternity, the “One proceeding from the One.”

(8) So that we are left wondering whence it came, from within or without; and when it has gone, we say, "It was here. Yet no; it was beyond!" But we ought not to question whence; there is no whence, no coming or going in place; now it is seen and now not seen. We must not run after it, but fit ourselves for the vision and then wait tranquilly for its appearance, as the eye waits on the rising of the sun, which in its own time appears above the horizon- out of the ocean, as the poets say- and gives itself to our sight.

This Principle, of which the sun is an image, where has it its dawning, what horizon does it surmount to appear?

It stands immediately above the contemplating Intellect which has held itself at rest towards the vision, looking to nothing else than the good and beautiful, setting its entire being to that in a perfect surrender, and now tranquilly filled with power and taking a new beauty to itself, gleaming in the light of that presence.

This advent, still, is not by expectation: it is a coming without approach; the vision is not of something that must enter but of something present before all else, before the Intellect itself made any movement. Yet it is the Intellect that must move, to come and to go- going because it has not known where it should stay and where that presence stays, the nowhere contained.

And if the Intellect, too, could hold itself in that nowhere- not that it is ever in place; it too is uncontained, utterly unplaced- it would remain for ever in the vision of its prior, or, indeed, not in vision but in identity, all duality annulled. But it is Intellect and, when it is to see, it must see by that in it which is not Intellect .

No doubt it is wonderful that The First should thus be present without any coming, and that, while it is nowhere, nowhere is it not; but wonderful though this be in itself, the contrary would be more wonderful to those who know. Of course neither this contrary nor the wonder at it can be entertained. But we must explain:

(2) "And from this hour onwards no one will be able to enter into the Light and no one be able to go forth. For at the completion of the time of the number of the perfect souls, before I have set fire to the world, in order that it may purify the æons and the veils and the firmaments and the whole earth and also all the matters which are on it, mankind will be still existing.

(81) And also the place of the created world, even unto heaven, as also the deep where now the earth is, all that was a pure and holy Salitter, wherein the seven spirits of God were complete and pleasant, as now [they are] in heaven, although they are still complete and full in this world. But observe the circumstances rightly.

(17) Therefore we must know, that God, as he is all in all, so where he is not (in the Love) in the Light, there he is (in the Darkness) in the Fierceness, and Source [or Torment;] for before the Time of the Creation there was nothing but the Source, and over it the Deity, which continues in Eternity. There is no other Ground, you [can] find nothing more, therefore give over your deep Searching, for it is the End of Nature.

(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.

(99) No more does the sun go away or depart from its seat, but retains and keeps its own place to itself, as a heart; and shineth forth as a light, or as a spirit of the whole body of this world, in all powers of the body.

(8) "And if I lead you into the region of those who have received the inheritances and have received the mysteries of the Light, and ye see the glory of the Light in which they are, then the Light-land will count for you as the light of the sun which is in the world of men. And if ye look upon the Light-land, then will it count for you as a speck of dust because of the great distance the Light-land is distant from it, and because of the greatness [by which] it is considerably greater than the former."

(41) Yet whether God will create any Thing more after this [World's] Time, that my Spirit does not know; for it apprehends no further than [what is] in its Center wherein it lives, in which the Paradise and the Kingdom of Heaven stands; as you may read [afterwards] about the Creation of Man.

(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.

(13) And that (when the Soul is departed from the Body) it might no more possibly be tempted by the Devil and the Spirit of this World; there is a quiet Rest for the Soul included in its Center in its own Tincture, which stands in Paradise, betwixt the Kingdom of this World and the Kingdom of Hell, to continue until God shall put this World into its Ether, when the Number of Men, and Figures (according to the Depth of the eternal Mind of God) shall be finished.

(67) Moreover, thou art to know also, that the regimen or dominion of the seven spirits of God in the house of this world is not on that account exsiccated or dried up in death, that all must needs receive its life and beginning from the planets and stars.

(1) WHEN man beholdeth the deep above the earth he seeth nothing but stars, and clouds of water, and then he thinketh, Sure there must be another place, where the Deity presenteth or sheweth forth itself, together with the heavenly and angelical government: man will needs have the deep, together with its regimen or dominion, severed from the Deity; for there he seeth nothing but stars; and the regimen or dominion between, is fire, air, and water.

(3) After the same manner, therefore, the whole world being partible, is divided about the one and impartible light of the Gods. But this light is every where one and the same whole, and is impartibly present with all things that are able to participate of it; through an all perfect power fills all things, and by a certain causal comprehension, incloses and terminates the whole of things in itself, and is every where united to itself, and conjoins ends to beginnings. This too, all heaven and the world imitating, revolve with a circular motion, are united to themselves, and lead the elements which are carried round in a circle. Hence the world causes all things to be in each other, and to tend to each other, makes the end of one thing to coalesce with the beginning of another, as, for instance, earth with heaven, and produces one connexion and concord of wholes with wholes.

(30) But we must not so conceive as if God were not at all in the corpus or body of the stars, and in this world: For when we say, ALL, or from eternity to eternity, or All in All, then we understand the entire GOD.

(29) But that the place of this world is not called heaven, and that there is a firmament or fast enclosure between the upper heaven above us, has this understanding or meaning, as followeth.