Corpus Hermeticum 10: The Sermon on the Mount · 2 of 6 · tr. G.R.S. Mead
Section 1b
For It doth will to be, and It is both Itself and most of all by reason of Itself.
Indeed, all other things beside are just bacause of It; for the distinctive feature of the Good is "that it should be known".
Such is the Good, O Tat.
Tat: Thou hast, O father, filled us so full of this so good and fairest sight, that thereby my mind's eye hath now become for me almost a thing to worship.
For that the vision of the Good doth not, like the sun's beam, firelike blaze on the eyes and make them close; nay, on the contrary, it shineth forth and maketh to increase the seeing of the eye, as far as e'er a man hath the capacity to hold the inflow of the radiance that the mind alone can see.
Not only does it come more swiftly down to us, but it does us no harm, and is instinct with all immortal life.
5.
They who are able to drink in a somewhat more than others of this Sight, ofttimes from out the body fall asleep in this fairest Spectacle, as was the case with Uranus and Cronus, our forebears.
may this be out lot too, O father mine!
Hermes: Yea, may it be, my son!
But as it is, we are not yet strung to the Vision, and not as yet have we the power our mind's eye to unfold and gaze upon the Beauty of the Good - Beauty that naught can e'er corrupt or any comprehend.
For only then wilt thou upon It gaze when thou canst say no word concerning It.
For Gnosis of the Good is holy silence and a giving holiday to every sense.
6.
For neither can he who perceiveth It, perceive aught else; nor he who gazeth on It, gaze on aught else; nor hear aught else, nor stir his body any way.
Staying his body's every sense and every motion he stayeth still.
And shining then all round his mond, It shines through his whole soul, and draws it out of body, transforming all of him to essence.
For it is possible, my son, that a man's soul should be made like to God, e'en while it still is in a body, if it doth contemplate the Beauty of the Good.
7.
Tat: Made like to God?
What dost thou, father, mean?
Hermes: Of every soul apart are transformations, son.
Tat: What meanest thou?
Apart?
Hermes: Didst thou not, in the General Sermons, hear that from one Soul - the All-soul - come all these souls which are made to revovlve in all the cosmos, as though divided off?
Of these souls, then, it is that there are many changes, some to a happier lot and some to [just] the contrary of this.
Thus some that were creeping things change into things that in the water dwell, the souls of water things change to earth-dwellers, those that live on earth change to things with wings, and souls that live in air change to men, while human souls reach the first step of deathlessness changed into daimones.
And so they circle to the choir of the Inerrant Gods; for of the Gods there are two choirs, the one Inerrant, and the other Errant.
And this is the most perfect glory of the soul.
8.
But if a soul on entering the body of a man persisteth in its vice, it neither tasteth deathlessness nor shareth in the Good; but speeding back again it turns into the path that leads to creeping things.
This is the sentence of the vicious soul.
And the soul's vice is ignorance.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
The soul undergoes a transformation into essence, akin to the spiritual alchemy of purifying the inner self.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
The state of Gnosis requires 'giving holiday to every sense' and staying the body's motion.
Ecstatic, non-rational receptivity to the divine figured as drunkenness — Plato's symposium wine, Rumi's sukr, Eckhart's 'sober drunkenness'; the passive/receptive metaphor for divine encounter, distinct from divine_madness's active possessing rapture.
The experience is described metaphorically as being able to 'drink in' the Sight.
Ecstatic irrational rapture — Plato's mania, Bruno's furore — by which the soul transcends ordinary reason and attains direct contact with divine reality; madness reframed as higher knowledge.
Those who drink deeply of the Sight 'fall asleep in this fairest Spectacle', suggesting an ecstatic state beyond ordinary consciousness.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
[auto] A distinction is drawn between the lower defective maker and the higher God and Father.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
The maker is described as 'defective' in quality and quantity, implying deficiency rather than positive evil.
Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.
The vision draws the soul out of the body, 'transforming all of him to essence', implying a dissolution of individual form.
Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.
The ascent through forms toward the Beauty of the Good implies a staged progression.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
The practice involves unfolding the mind's eye to gaze upon the Beauty of the Good.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The human soul is capable of being made like God and reflecting the divine Beauty while contained within a body.
[auto] The text details a specific cycle of soul transformations from creeping things to water dwellers, earth dwellers, winged things, men, daimones, and finally Gods.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
[auto] The text explicitly states it is possible for a man's soul to be 'made like to God' while still in the body through contemplating the Beauty of the Good.