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Conceiving nothing is impossible unto thyself, think thyself deathless and able to know all - all arts, all
sciences, the way of every life.
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Become more lofty than all height, and lower than all depth. Collect into thyself all senses of [all] creatures -
of fire, [and] water, dry and moist. Think that thou art at the same time in every place - in earth, in sea, in
sky; not yet begotten, in the womb, young, old, [and] dead, in after-death conditions.
And if thou knowest all these things at once - times, places, doings, qualities, and quantities; thou canst know
God.
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.
22. Hermes: Is God unseen?
Mind: Hush! Who is more manifest than He? For this one reason hath He made all things, that through them
all thou mayest see Him.
This is the Good of God, this [is] His Virtue - that He may be manifest through all.
For naught's unseen, even of things that are without a body. Mind sees itself in thinking, God in making.
So far these things have been made manifest to thee, Thrice-greatest one! Reflect on all the rest in the same
way with thyself, and thou shalt not be led astray.
XII. About The Common Mind
1. Hermes: The Mind, O Tat, is of God's very essence - (if such a thing as essence of God there be) - and
what that is, it and it only knows precisely.
The Mind, then, is not separated off from God's essentiality, but is united to it, as light to sun.
This Mind in men is God, and for this cause some of mankind are gods, and their humanity is nigh unto
divinity.
For the Good Daimon said: "Gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods."
2. But in irrational lives Mind is their nature. For where is Soul, there too is Mind; just as where Life, there is
there also Soul.
But in irrational lives their soul is life devoid of mind; for Mind is the in-worker of the souls of men for good
- He works on them for their own good.
In lives irrational He doth co-operate with each one's nature; but in the souls of men He counteracteth them.
For every soul, when it becomes embodied, is instantly depraved by pleasure and by pain.
For in a compound body, just like juices, pain and pleasure seethe, and into them the soul, on entering in, is
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plunged.
3. O'er whatsoever souls the Mind doth, then, preside, to these it showeth its own light, by acting counter to
their prepossessions, just as a good physician doth upon the body prepossessed by sickness, pain inflict,
burning or lancing it for sake of health.
In just the selfsame way the Mind inflicteth pain on the soul, to rescue it from pleasure, whence comes its
every ill.
The great ill of the soul is godlessness; then followeth fancy for all evil things and nothing good.
So, then, Mind counteracting it doth work good on the soul, as the physician health upon the body.
4. But whatsoever human souls have not the Mind as pilot, they share in the same fate as souls of lives
irrational.
For [Mind] becomes co-worker with them, giving full play to the desires toward which [such souls] are
borne - [desires] that from the rush of lust strain after the irrational; [so that such human souls,] just like
irrational animals, cease not irrationally to rage and lust, nor are they ever satiate of ills.
For passions and irrational desires are ills exceeding great; and over these God hath set up the Mind to play
the part of judge and executioner.
5. Tat: In that case, father mine, the teaching (logos) as to Fate, which previously thou didst explain to me,
risks to be overset.
For that if it be absolutely fated for a man to fornicate, or commit sacrilege, or do some other evil deed, why
is he punished - when he hath done the deed from Fate's necessity?
Hermes: All works, my son, are Fate's; and without Fate naught of things corporal - or good, or ill - can
come to pass.
But it is fated, too, that he who doeth ill, shall suffer. And for this cause he doth it - that he may suffer what
he suffereth, because he did it.
6. But for the moment, [Tat,] let be the teaching as to vice and Fate, for we have spoken of these things in
other [of our sermons]; but now our teaching (logos) is about the Mind: - what Mind can do, and how it is
[so] different - in men being such and such, and in irrational lives [so] changed; and [then] again that in
irrational lives it is not of a beneficial nature, while that in men it quencheth out the wrathful and the lustful
elements.
Of men, again, we must class some as led by reason, and others as unreasoning.
7. But all men are subject to Fate, and genesis and change, for these are the beginning and the end of Fate.
And though all men do suffer fated things, those led by reason (those whom we said Mind doth guide) do not
endure like suffering with the rest; but, since they've freed themselves from viciousness, not being bad, they
do not suffer bad.
Tat: How meanest thou again, my father? Is not the fornicator bad; the murderer bad; and [so with] all the
rest?
Hermes: [I meant not that;] but that the Mind-led man, my son, though not a fornicator, will suffer just as
though he had committed fornication, and though he be no murderer, as though he had committed murder.
The quality of change he can no more escape than that of genesis.
But it is possible for one who hath the Mind, to free himself from vice.
8. Wherefore I've ever heard, my son, Good Daimon also say - (and had He set it down in written words, He
would have greatly helped the race of men; for He alone, my son, doth truly, as the Firstborn God, gazing on
all things, give voice to words (logoi) divine) - yea, once I heard Him say:
"All things are one, and most of all the bodies which the mind alone perceives. Our life is owing to [God's]
Energy and Power and Aeon. His Mind is good, so is His Soul as well. And this being so, intelligible things
know naught of separation. So, then, Mind, being Ruler of all things, and being Soul of God, can do whate'er
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it wills."
9. So do thou understand, and carry back this word (logos) unto the question thou didst ask before - I mean
about Mind's Fate.
For if thou dost with accuracy, son, eliminate [all] captious arguments (logoi), thou wilt discover that of very
truth the Mind, the Soul of God, doth rule o'er all - o'er Fate, and Law, and all things else; and nothing is
impossible to it - neither o'er Fate to set a human soul, nor under Fate to set [a soul] neglectful of what comes
to pass. Let this so far suffice from the Good Daimon's most good [words]. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]