Select Works, Section 328 (part 2)

Platonic recollection: knowledge as the soul's recovery of what it knew before birth, with learning as remembering rather than acquisition.

[auto] The passage explicitly contrasts continuous divine vision with human reminiscence, defining memory as a recovery for those who have lost the original sight.

Describing the divine only by negation—God transcends all positive categories and concepts; the via negativa.

[auto] The divine state is defined by negation, noting they neither seek nor doubt and lack nothing.

The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.

The passage's central image of stars as lyre strings resonating in a natural scale, and the sidereal system moving as one with each part in its own way to the same purpose, is a direct expression of the doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities.

Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.

The text describes how higher beings administer human affairs and order the universe through a 'right ordering' distinct from human method.

The doctrine that God has no parts, divisions, or composite attributes; pure undivided being.

Higher souls are described as 'unchanged' and 'immune from all lack,' reflecting a simple, non-composite nature.

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] The passage distinguishes between descending souls and unchanged celestial beings like stars and the soul of the All.

Salvation through direct experiential knowledge of the divine nature, not through faith, ritual, or moral works alone.

[auto] It describes higher beings possessing eternal knowledge without learning or memory, having seen God directly.

The divine reason, word, or ordering principle through which the universe was created; mediates between the transcendent God and the material world.

The passage mentions the right ordering given by these beings as a gift to the universe.

The merging of the individual soul or self with the divine, transcending personal identity.

[auto] The phrase they have seen God implies a direct, unmediated encounter characteristic of union in this tradition.

Using apparent contradiction, reversal, or riddle to destabilise ordinary understanding and induce insight.

[auto] The text uses a rhetorical question about seeing God without remembering to clarify the nature of divine vision.

The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.

It states that reminiscence is necessary only for souls that have 'lost' the vision of God, implying a state of exile or separation.

The transmigration of the soul across lives.

It references souls that descend, implying movement from a higher state into change or matter.

The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.

Reference to the 'soul of the All' suggests a unified cosmic principle encompassing all existence.