(8) There then the poor Soul in the first Principle moves in the Door of the Deep, being clothed with the Virtue [or Power of the Dominion or] Region of the Stars, appearing in that [Shape or] Form of the Body, which it had here; and many of them desire this or that, which was their last Will, in Hope thereby to attain Abstinence, and [Quietness or] Rest; also many by Night (according to the syderial Spirit) show themselves very disquiet with Tumbling and Tossing of the Body; which our learned Men from the School of this World ascribe to the Devil, but they have no Knowledge [or Understanding] in it.

(4) Circulation of the Light is not only a circulation of the seed-blossom of the one body, but it is, in the irst place, a circulation of the ' true, creative, formative powers. It has to do, not with a momentary fantasy, but with the exhaustion of the circular course (soul-wanderings) of all the aeons. Therefore a breath-pause means a yearaccording to human reckoning-and a hundred years measured by the long night of the Nine Paths (of reincarnation), After a man has the one tone of individuation (9) behind him, he will be bom outward according to the circumstances, and not until he is old will he turn a single time to the backward- lowing way, vThe force of the Light exhausts itself and trickles away. That brings the nine-fold darkness (of rebirths) into the world. In the book Ling Yen (10) it is said: By concentrating the thoughts, one can fly; by concentrating the desires, one falls. When a pupil takes little care of his thoughts and much care of his desires, he gets into the path of depravity. Only through contemplation and quietness does true intuition arise: for that, the backward- lowing method is necessary.

(6) Now if thou trainest thy mind's eye along From light to light pursuant of my praise, With thirst already of the eighth thou waitest. By seeing every good therein exults The sainted soul, which the fallacious world Makes manifest to him who listeneth well; The body whence 'twas hunted forth is lying Down in Cieldauro, and from martyrdom And banishment it came unto this peace. See farther onward flame the burning breath Of Isidore, of Beda, and of Richard Who was in contemplation more than man. This, whence to me returneth thy regard, The light is of a spirit unto whom In his grave meditations death seemed slow.

(28) But the gross Body cannot see into it, because it belongs not to [Paradise,] it belongs to the Earth, and must putrify, or rot, and rise in a new Virtue [or Power,] (which is like Paradise) in Christ, at the End of Days; and then it also may dwell in Paradise, and not before: It must lay off the third Principle; [viz.] this Skin, [Fleece or Covering,] which Father Adam and Mother Eve are got into, in which they supposed they should be wise when they should wear all the three Principles manifested in them; if they had rather worn two hidden in them, and had stayed in the cone, it had been good for us, of which further about the Fall.

(21) But if thou lockest up thy soul within thy body, and dost debase it, saying: I nothing know; I nothing can; I fear the sea; I cannot scale the sky; I know not who I was, who I shall be - what is there [then] between [thy] God and thee? For thou canst know naught of things beautiful and good so long as thou dost love thy body and art bad. The greatest bad there is, is not to know God's Good; but to be able to know [Good], and will, and hope, is a Straight Way, the Good's own [Path], both leading there and easy. If thou but settest thy foot thereon, 'twill meet thee everywhere, 'twill everywhere be seen, both where and when thou dost expect it not - waking, sleeping, sailing, journeying, by night, by day, speaking, [and] saying naught. For there is naught that is not image of the Good.

(2) When they became aware I gave no place For passage of the sunshine through my body, They changed their song into a long, hoarse "Oh!" And two of them, in form of messengers, Ran forth to meet us, and demanded of us, "Of your condition make us cognisant." And said my Master: "Ye can go your way And carry back again to those who sent you, That this one's body is of very flesh. If they stood still because they saw his shadow, As I suppose, enough is answered them; Him let them honour, it may profit them." Vapours enkindled saw I ne'er so swiftly At early nightfall cleave the air serene, Nor, at the set of sun, the clouds of August, But upward they returned in briefer time, And, on arriving, with the others wheeled Tow'rds us, like troops that run without a rein. "This folk that presses unto us is great, And cometh to implore thee," said the Poet; "So still go onward, and in going listen." "O soul that goest to beatitude With the same members wherewith thou wast born," Shouting they came, "a little stay thy steps,

(8) The meaning of this section (18) is to call attention to the wrong paths of meditation so that one can enter the place of power instead of the cave of fantasy. This is the world of demons. This, for example, is the case if one sits down to meditate, and sees light lames or bright colours appear, or if one sees Bodhisatvas and gods approach, or any other similar fantasies. Or, if one is not * successful in uniting power and breathing, if the water of the kidneys cannot rise, but presses downward, the primordial power becomes cpld and the breathing heavy. Then the gentle light powers of the great Earth are too few, and the empty fantasyworld is entered. Or, when one has sat a long time, ideas rise up in crowds and one tries to stop them, but it cannot be done; one submits to being driven by them and feels easier. When this happens, one must under no circumstances go on with meditation but must get up and walk around a little while until heart and power are again in unison; only then can one return to meditation. In meditating, a man must have a sort of conscious intuition, so that he feels power and breathing unite in the field of the Elixir; he must feel that a warm release belonging to the true Light begins to stir dimly. Then he has found the right place. When this right place has been found, one is released from the danger of getting into the world of illusory desire or dark demons.

(41) And my body learnt from the soul its mode of journeying, Now my body has renounced the bodily mode of journeying; It journeys secretly and without form, though under a form." He added, "One day I was thus filled with longing To behold in human form the splendours of 'The Friend,' To witness the Ocean gathered up into a drop, The Sun compressed into a single atom; And when I drew near to the shore of the sea The day was drawing to a close." In the adorations and benedictions of righteous men

(1) When, [then,] the soul’s departure from the body shall take place,—then shall the judgment and the weighing of its merit pass into its highest daimon’s power. And when he sees it pious is and just,—he suffers it to rest in spots appropriate to it. But if he find it soiled with stains of evil deeds, and fouled with vice,—he drives it from Above into the Depths, and hands it o’er to warring hurricanes and vortices of Air, of Fire, and Water.

(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.

(22) Therefore it happens often, that the Spirit of a deceased Man is seen walking, also many Times it is seen riding in the perfect Form of Fire; also many Times in [some] other Manner of Disquietude; all according as the Clothing of the Soul has been in the Time of the Body, just so has its Source [or Condition] been; and such a Form, according to its Source, it has (after the Departing of the Body) in its Figure, and so rides (in such Form) in the Source [or Working] of the Stars, till that Source also be consumed; and then it is wholly naked, and is never seen more by any Man. But the deep Abyss without End and Number is its eternal Dwelling-House, and its Works which it has here wrought, stand in the Figure, in its Tincture, and follow after it.

(1) But Indra, before he had returned to the Devas, saw this difficulty. As this self (the shadow in the water) is well adorned, when the body is well adorned, well dressed, when the body is well dressed, well cleaned, if the body is well cleaned, that self will also be blind, if the body is blind, lame, if the body is lame , crippled, if the body is crippled, and will perish in fact as soon as the body perishes. Therefore I see no good in this (doctrine).

(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.

(1) Abreast, like oxen going in a yoke, I with that heavy-laden soul went on, As long as the sweet pedagogue permitted; But when he said, "Leave him, and onward pass, For here 'tis good that with the sail and oars, As much as may be, each push on his barque;" Upright, as walking wills it, I redressed My person, notwithstanding that my thoughts Remained within me downcast and abashed. I had moved on, and followed willingly The footsteps of my Master, and we both Already showed how light of foot we were, When unto me he said: "Cast down thine eyes; 'Twere well for thee, to alleviate the way, To look upon the bed beneath thy feet." As, that some memory may exist of them, Above the buried dead their tombs in earth Bear sculptured on them what they were before; Whence often there we weep for them afresh, From pricking of remembrance, which alone To the compassionate doth set its spur; So saw I there, but of a better semblance In point of artifice, with figures covered Whate'er as pathway from the mount projects.

(138) But that the mouth shutteth, when the spirit conceiveth itself upon the heart, and that the astringent quality grunteth against and with or in it, signifieth that the whole court, extent or place of this world was very dark in the astral, and also in the outermost birth or geniture, and by the strong going forth of the spirit became light.

(1) "Blessings on those who guard themselves against the heritage of death, which is the burdensome water of darkness. For it will not be possible to conquer them in a few moments, since they hasten to come forth from the error of the world. And if they are conquered, they will be kept back from them and be tormented in the darkness until the time of the consummation. When the consummation has come and nature has been destroyed, then their thoughts will separate from the darkness. Nature has burdened them for a short time. And they will be in the ineffable light of the unconceived spirit without a form. And thus is the mind, as I have said from the first.

(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:

(3) And so following, when a man seeth in a bodily or ghostly mirror, or wots by other men’s teaching, whereabouts the foul spot is on his visage, either bodily or ghostly; then at first, and not before, he runneth to the well to wash him. If this spot be any special sin, then is this well Holy Church, and this water confession, with the circumstances. If it be but a blind root and a stirring of sin, then is this well merciful God, and this water prayer, with the circumstances. And thus mayest thou see that no thinking may goodly be gotten in beginners and profiters, without reading or hearing coming before: nor praying without thinking.

(2) While man is in this world, two things are necessary for him: first, the protection and nurture of his soul; secondly, the care and nurture of his body. The proper nourishment of the soul, as above shown, is the knowledge and love of God, and to be absorbed in the love of anything but God is the ruin of the soul. The body, so to speak, is simply the riding animal of the soul and perishes while the soul endures. The soul should take care of the body, just as a pilgrim on his way to Mecca takes care of his camel; but if the pilgrim spends his whole time in feeding and adorning his camel, the caravan will leave him behind; and he will perish in the desert.

(1) "And many who wear erring flesh will go down to the harmful waters through the winds and the demons. And they are bound by the water. And the water will heal with a futile remedy. It will lead astray, and it will bind the world. And those who do the will of nature . . . two times in the day of the water and the forms of nature. And it will not be granted them, when faith disturbs them to take to herself the righteous one.