Chapter 13, Section 1e

But be these matters as God wills 513 513 This anthropomorphic phrase is not inconsistent with the conceptions D. has been expounding; because he regards the limits of individual human capacities, etc., as timelessly existent in the Super-Essence. By a natural, though inadequate, metaphor, the limits of the resulting activities are spoken of as due to God’s Will. that we should do or speak. And be this now the end of our treatise concerning the Intelligible Names of God. Now will I proceed, God helping me, to the Symbolical Divinity. 494 Religion, in its highest forms, and Philosophy and Natural Science postulate and seek some Unity behind the world. Hence Unity is regarded as the ultimate attribute. Thus Plotinus calls the Absolute “The One.” God possesses all Attributes not separately but indivisibly, as pure light contains all colours. 495 Though the Godhead is the Super-Essence of the creatures, yet on the other hand It is distinct from them because It transcends them. (See next note.) This aspect of distinctness is manifested in the fact that the Emanation of Absolute Life, etc., is distinct from the Persons of the Trinity, the aspect of identity is manifested in the fact that They possess Absolute Life antecedently to the act of Emanation. 496 The Godhead is Perfect: (1) absolutely, and not by participation in some other essence; (2) transcendently, and not in such a manner as to he differentiated froth other essences (for on the super-essential plane of the Undifferentiated Godhead there is no other essence than It). The Emanation of Absolute Life, etc., is perfect absolutely, because, being a direct overflow from the Godhead, it does not participate in any other Essence; but not transcendently, because it is differentiated from the particular things which share it. That is why it does not contain Exemplars. The creatures. possess their true and undifferentiated being not in the Emanation but in the ultimate Godhead. The Emanation is, we may say, transcendental, or timeless, but not transcencient, or undifferentiated. D., by saying that “in Its transcendence . . . It penetrates to all things at once and beyond them,” teaches incidentally that the Godhead’s Transcendence and Immanence are ultimately the same fact. They are two ways of looking at the one truth of Its Undifferentiation. Since It is undifferentiated the Godhead is beyond our individual being; but since It is undifferentiated It is not ultimately other than ourselves. It is beyond our essence and is our Super-Essence. The theory of mere Transcendence is Deism, that of mere Immanence is Pantheism. True religion demands both in one fact and as one fact. So God is both near and far (see the Bible passim). He is far because He is nearer to us than our own souls are. “Thou wast within, I was outside” (St. Augustine). Hence true Introversion is an act of self-transcendence. We must lose ourselves to find ourselves. 497 Identical because timeless. 498 “Perfect,” a term taken from the Mysteries expressing the final state of the initiated. 499 See p. 184, n. 3. 500 Cf. X., 2. 501 The Godhead is not one individual, or essence, among others, but is the Super-Essence of them all. The numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. = 1 x 1, 1 x 2, 1 x 3, 1 x 4, etc.