Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. II (the Corpus Hermeticum) — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

"No darkness of the air obstructs the penetration
of his mind. No density of earth impedes his work.
No depth of water blunts his sight.

" Though still the same, yet is he all, and everywhere is he the same."

It is indeed a marvellous "yoga" system that is sketched for us in our treatise. There is no question here of abstraction or negation, but a courageous identification or At-one-ment of oneself with all that lives and breathes. This is the Path of the Gnosis, the Way to Know God.

In other words, man is to copy his prototype, the Mind, and just as the Mind or Man, in the "Poamandres" treatise, "had a mind to break right through the Boundary of the spheres" (§ 13), so is our philosopher bidden to " soar up to the Last Body of them all " (§ 19), that Last Body being the One Element of Cosmos itself.

"And shouldst thou will to break through this as well, and contemplate what is beyond — if there be aught beyond the Cosmos; it is permitted thee."

That the hard and fast distinctions which modern commentators would draw between words, in considering these mystical treatises, would have been laughed at by the writers of them, is amply manifested when the writer with enthusiastic fervour bursts forth :

" Then in this way know God, as having in Himself as thoughts the whole Cosmos itself.

" If, then, thou dost not make thyself like unto God,1 thou canst not know Him.2 For like is knowable to like [alone]. Make, then, thyself to grow to the same stature as the Greatness which transcends all measure; leap forth from every body; transcend all time; become Eternity; and thus shalt thou know God."

Every body or space must be transcended, even the Body of Cosmos itself ; for the man must grow into the " stature of the Greatness that transcends all measure," that is, the intelligible superspatial Pleroma, the Mon as the Logos and Paradigm of Cosmos. And every time and all Time must also be transcended; for the man must become Eternity — that is, the Mon as the Paradigm of Time.

THE GOOD'S OWN PATH

In no scripture that I know is this Path more admirably set forth — the Good's own Path. All things, all spaces, and all times have to be realized as being within oneself simultaneously ; if this is realized or known, not only imagined, then a man becomes a true Knower of God, a Gnostic.

1 Sc. as Cosmos. 2 Sc. as Father of this Only Son.

Nor has ever a truer sentence been written than the wonderful words concerning this Path to the Supreme :

"If thou but sett'st 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."

CONCERNING INDIA

In conclusion, I would only point out that if for the hopeless reading in the first sentence of § 19 we were to take Patrizzi's emendation, which has been adopted by Parthey, we should have the interesting sentence :

" And, thus, think from thyself, and bid thy soul go unto India."

If this should be the original reading, it is remarkable that India should have been selected of all places. We know, however, from a study of what is known of the life of Apollonius of Tyana, that this "Gnostic" philosopher made an enormous propaganda of Indian ideas among the philosophic and mystic communities and schools of the first century. Apollonius must have known something, perhaps a great deal, concerning the siddhis acquired by ?/0#a-practices. At any rate, we find his biographer Philostratus making him write the following letter to his Eastern hosts on his return from India :

" I came to you by land and ye have given me the sea ; nay, rather, by sharing with me your wisdom ye have given me power to travel through heaven. These things will I bring back to the mind of the Greeks, and I will hold converse with you as though ye were present, if it be that I have not drunk of the Cup of Tantalus in vain." l

That an intensely great interest was taken in Indian ideas at Alexandria is shown by the fact that we find Plotinus himself in 242 starting off with the expedition of Gordian to the East in the hope of coming in contact with the Indian Wisdom.