(27) O nobly-born, the special art of these teachings is especially important at this moment: whichever light shineth upon thee now, meditate upon it as being the Compassionate One; from whatever place the light cometh, consider that [place] to be [or to exist in] the Compassionate One. This is an exceedingly profound art; it will prevent birth. Or whosoever thy tutelary deity may be, meditate upon the form for much time — as being apparent yet non-existent in reality, like a form produced by a magician. That is called the pure illusory form. Then let the [visualization of the] tutelary deity melt away from the extremities, till nothing at all remaineth visible of it; and put thyself in the state of the Clearness and the Voidness — which thou canst not conceive as something — and abide in that state for a little while. Again meditate upon the tutelary deity; again meditate upon the Clear Light: do this alternately. Afterwards, allow thine own intellect also to melt away gradually, [beginning] from the extremities.

(3) Thus we have here one identical Principle, the Intellect, which is the universe of authentic beings, the Truth: as such it is a great god or, better, not a god among gods but the Godhead entire. It is a god, a secondary god manifesting before there is any vision of that other, the Supreme which rests over all, enthroned in transcendence upon that splendid pediment, the Nature following close upon it.

The Supreme in its progress could never be borne forward upon some soulless vehicle nor even directly upon the soul: it will be heralded by some ineffable beauty: before the great King in his progress there comes first the minor train, then rank by rank the greater and more exalted, closer to the King the kinglier; next his own honoured company until, last among all these grandeurs, suddenly appears the Supreme Monarch himself, and all- unless indeed for those who have contented themselves with the spectacle before his coming and gone away- prostrate themselves and hail him.

In that royal progress the King is of another order from those that go before him, but the King in the Supreme is no ruler over externs; he holds that most just of governances, rooted in nature, the veritable kingship, for he is King of Truth, holding sway by all reason over a dense offspring his own, a host that shares his divinity, King over a king and over kings and even more justly called father of Gods.

(2) 'But when his speech is merged in his mind, his mind in breath, breath in heat (fire), heat in the Highest Being, then he knows them not. 'That which is the subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it.' 'Please, Sir, inform me still more,' said the son.' 'Be it so, my child,' the father replied.

(9) 'His form is not to be seen, no one beholds him with the eye. He is imagined by the heart, by wisdom, by the mind. Those who know this, are immortal.'

(2) Thou seest N. uttering words to the Glorified, for he is the great form who will not rule (?) over them if thou art not among them. Thou seest the head of N. as a ba (ram); his horns are like those of a sacrificed victim, those of a black ram, born of the ewe who bare him, and suckled by four sheep

(97) I. For behold! thou canst not deny that the life in a creature existeth in the heat of the heart; and in that life also stands the light of the animated or soulish birth or geniture.

(8) Who, at the time of leaving the body, by the power of yogic practice, fixes the vital breath in the centre of the brows, and thinks continuously of the Omniscient, the Ancient, the controller of all the worlds, subtler than atom, supporter of all, of inconceivable form, self illumined like the sun, beyond darkness – he attains the self-illumined Paramatma.

(1) 'But in reality he is an ativâdin who declares the Highest Being to be the True (Satya, τὸ ὄντως ὄν).' 'Sir, may I become an ativâdin by the True?' 'But we must desire to know the True.' 'Sir, I desire to know the True.'

(20) N. is in the following of Nefertmu, he is the lotus at the nostrils of Rā ... he is pure, in the presence of the gods; he sees Rā eternally

(102) Thou know st Him not. Now He appears as fire, Dread force; as water now; and now as gloom; And in the beasts is dimly shadowed forth, In wind, and cloud, in lightning, thunder, rain; And minister to Him the seas and rocks, Each fountain and the water's floods and streams.

(27) To such beings, separated from the Infinite Unmanifest— the Eternal Parent—but by the most tenuous and subtle substance serving as the veil, the whole process of the Universe must appear merely as a great moving picture show of shadow forms, magnificent phantasmagoria having apparent substance and form but having no actual reality when viewed from the aspect of the Eternal. Such beings are, indeed, Gods as compared with the rest of living creatures. Close up to the very heart of the Eternal, these exalted beings are conscious of the very heartthrobs of the Eternal Parent.

(33) The highest authorities inform us that the characteristic element of this highest form of all consciousness is the conscious realization of the individual that he IS identical with the Infinite, and is only apparently separated therefrom by the most tenuous and subtle veil of illusion.

(103) First there is the ground, or the corporeal being, although in the Deity, or in the creatures, it [the heat] has no peculiar or several body, for all the qualities are one in another as one, however the operation of every quality is perceived in particular and severally.

(33) 'Indeed, all these are like dreams, like hallucinations, like echoes, like the cities of the Odour-eaters, like mirage, like mirrored forms, like phantasmagoria, like the moon seen in water — not real even for a moment. In truth, they are unreal; they are false.'

(1) "Who is this one that goes about our mountain, Or ever Death has given him power of flight, And opes his eyes and shuts them at his will?" "I know not who, but know he's not alone; Ask him thyself, for thou art nearer to him, And gently, so that he may speak, accost him." Thus did two spirits, leaning tow'rds each other, Discourse about me there on the right hand; Then held supine their faces to address me. And said the one: "O soul, that, fastened still Within the body, tow'rds the heaven art going, For charity console us, and declare Whence comest and who art thou; for thou mak'st us As much to marvel at this grace of thine As must a thing that never yet has been." And I: "Through midst of Tuscany there wanders A streamlet that is born in Falterona, And not a hundred miles of course suffice it; From thereupon do I this body bring. To tell you who I am were speech in vain, Because my name as yet makes no great noise." "If well thy meaning I can penetrate With intellect of mine," then answered me He who first spake, "thou speakest of the Arno."

(53) In these three species or qualities stands the corporeal being, or the creatural being of all creatures in heaven and in this world, whether it be angel or man, beast or fowl or vegetable, of a heavenly or of an earthly form, quality and kind, as also all colours and forms.

(11) Thou art great, a mighty Chu, whose name is not known, the soul which opens the Amenta. It is mighty this soul of N. , for he is beloved of Rā and well pleasing to his circle, he joins (?) the ways, he guards the men, and guides the lion to the place where his ka is propitiated. N. ... the lord of mankind causes thee to live and that thy soul be sound, that thy body may be enduring and great, that thou mayest see the light and breathe the wind, that thy face may be revealed in the house of right, that thou mayest be stationed in the meadow, and not see any storm, that thou mayest follow the lord of the two earths, that thou mayest refresh thyself under the merit tree by the side of the goddess, the great magician

(3) But if any one should blame the descriptions as being incongruous, by saying that it is shameful to attribute shapes so repugnant to the Godlike and most holy Orders, it is enough to reply that the method of Divine revelation is twofold; one, indeed, as is natural, proceeding through likenesses that are similar, and of a sacred character, but the other, through dissimilar forms, fashioning them into entire unlikeness and incongruity. No doubt, the mystical traditions of the revealing Oracles sometimes extol the august Blessedness of the super-essential Godhead, as Word, and Mind, and Essence, manifesting its God-becoming expression and wisdom, both as really being Origin, and true Cause of the origin of things being, and they describe It as light, and call it life. While such sacred descriptions are more reverent, and seem in a certain way to be superior to the material images, they yet, even thus, in reality fall short of the supremely Divine similitude. For It is above every essence and life. No light, indeed, expresses its character, and every description and mind incomparably fall short of Its similitude. But at other times its praises are supermundanely sung, by the Oracles themselves, through dissimilar revelations, when they affirm that it is invisible, and infinite, and incomprehensible; and when there is signified, not what it is, but what it is not. For this, as I think, is more appropriate to It, since, as the secret and sacerdotal tradition taught, we rightly describe its non-relationship to things created, but we do not know its superessential, and inconceivable, and unutterable indefinability. If, then, the negations respecting things Divine are true, but the affirmations are inharmonious, the revelation as regards things invisible, through dissimilar representations, is more appropriate to the hiddenness of things unutterable. Thus the sacred descriptions of the Oracles honour, and do not expose to shame, the Heavenly Orders, when they make them known by dissimilar pictorial forms, and demonstrate through these their supermundane superiority over all. material things. And I do not suppose that any sensible man will gainsay that the incongruous elevate our mind more than the similitudes; for there is a likelihood, with regard to the more sublime representations of heavenly things, that we should be led astray, so as to think that the Heavenly Beings are certain creatures with the appearance of gold, and certain men with the appearance of light, and glittering like lightning, handsome, clothed in bright shining raiment, shedding forth innocuous flame, and so with regard to all the other shapes and appropriate forms, with which the Word of God has depicted the Heavenly Minds. In order that men might not suffer from this, by thinking they are nothing more exalted than their beau tiful appearance, the elevating wisdom of the pious theologians reverently conducts to the incongruous dissimilarities, not permitting our earthly part to rest fixed in the base images, but urging the upward tendency of the soul, and goading it by the unseemliness of the phrases (to see) that it belongs neither to lawful nor seeming truth, even for the most earthly conceptions, that the most heavenly and Divine visions are actually like things so base. Further also this must particularly be borne in mind, that not even one of the things existing is altogether deprived of participation in the beautiful, since, as is evident and the truth of the Oracles affirms, all things are very beautiful.

(3) Like that of all else is the creation of mankind as well. The spiritual Logos moved him invisibly, as he perfected him through the Demiurge and his angelic servants, who shared in the act of fashioning in multitudes, when he took counsel with his archons. Like a shadow is earthly man, so that he might be like those who are cut off from the Totalities. Also he is something prepared by all of them, those of the right and those of the left, since each one in the orders gives a form to the [...] in which it exists.

(279) 'All forms are unreal,' he who knows and sees this becomes passive in pain; this is the way that leads to purity.