As one wishing to contemplate the Intellectual Nature will lay aside all the representations of sense and so may see what transcends the sense-realm, in the same way one wishing to contemplate what transcends the Intellectual attains by putting away all that is of the intellect, taught by the intellect, no doubt, that the Transcendent exists but never seeking to define it.
Its definition, in fact, could be only "the indefinable": what is not a thing is not some definite thing.We are in agony for a true expression; we are talking of the untellable; we name, only to indicate for our own use as best we may.And this name, The One, contains really no more than the negation of plurality: under the same pressure the Pythagoreans found their indication in the symbol "Apollo" [a= not; pollon= of many] with its repudiation of the multiple.If we are led to think positively of The One, name and thing, there would be more truth in silence: the designation, a mere aid to enquiry, was never intended for more than a preliminary affirmation of absolute simplicity to be followed by the rejection of even that statement: it was the best that offered, but remains inadequate to express the Nature indicated.For this is a principle not to be conveyed by any sound; it cannot be known on any hearing but, if at all, by vision; and to hope in that vision to see a form is to fail of even that.
7.Consider the act of ocular vision:
There are two elements here; there is the form perceptible to the sense and there is the medium by which the eye sees that form.
This medium is itself perceptible to the eye, distinct from the form to be seen, but the cause of the seeing; it is perceived at the one stroke in that form and on it and, hence, is not distinguished from it, the eye being held entirely by the illuminated object.When on the contrary this medium presents itself alone it is seen directly- though even then actual sight demands some solid base; there must be something besides the medium which, unless embracing some object, eludes perception; thus the light inherent to the sun would not be perceived but for the solidity of the mass.If it is objected that the sun is light entire, this would only be a proof of our assertion: no other visible form will contain light which must, then, have no other property than that of visibility, and in fact all other visible objects are something more than light alone.
So it is with the act of vision in the Intellectual Principle.
This vision sees, by another light, the objects illuminated by the First Principle: setting itself among them, it sees veritably;declining towards the lower Nature, that upon which the light from above rests, it has less of that vision.Passing over the visible and looking to the medium by which it sees, then it holds the Light and the source of Light.
But since the Intellectual-Principle is not to see this light as something external we return to our analogy; the eye is not wholly dependent upon an outside and alien light; there is an earlier light within itself, a more brilliant, which it sees sometimes in a momentary flash.At night in the darkness a gleam leaps from within the eye: or again we make no effort to see anything; the eyelids close; yet a light flashes before us; or we rub the eye and it sees the light it contains.This is sight without the act, but it is the truest seeing, for it sees light whereas its other objects were the lit not the light.
It is certainly thus that the Intellectual-Principle, hiding itself from all the outer, withdrawing to the inmost, seeing nothing, must have its vision- not of some other light in some other thing but of the light within itself, unmingled, pure, suddenly gleaming before it;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 [having a sphere of its own] and, when it is to see, it must see by that in it which is not Intellect [by its divinest power].
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:
