Select Works, Section 503

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

The text explicitly references 'reminiscence' and the dictum 'I sought myself' as recovering one's nature among the Beings.

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.

The text references the concept of a 'necessary prior' and defines the Intellectual-Principle's place relative to potentiality, implying a hierarchical structure.

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.

It characterizes things that arise and fall away as 'not of the real,' implying a lack of true being.

The claim that the divine realm is present inside the individual, accessible without external mediation.

The text suggests the divine Beings are found within the self ('I sought myself... as one of the Beings').

The divine conceived as active, present, and dynamic—not an abstract principle but a personal responsive reality.

The description of the principle as 'intelligence in actuality' and having a 'characteristic Act' implies a dynamic, living divine reality.

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

The text discusses 'Reason-Principles' as eternal entities existing within the Intellectual-Principle that suffice for the subsistence of the All.

The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.

The Intellectual-Principle is described as a singular principle earlier than all contingent existence.

The soul's journey back to its divine origin, reversing the fall into matter through stages of purification or illumination.

The mention of reminiscence and seeking oneself implies a journey back to the Authentic Beings.

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 describes sense-known things as 'exiled' images that borrow being from the Authentic Beings.

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

[auto] The passage centrally argues that the Intellectual-Principle's essence is inseparable from its intellection, rejecting any composition or division within the divine.

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

[auto] The text defines the Intellectual-Principle as intelligence in actuality where wisdom is not borrowed, describing the state of direct divine knowledge.

The dissolution of binary oppositions (male/female, inner/outer, above/below) as a mark of spiritual completion.

[auto] The passage explicitly states that the distinction between thinker and thought, common in human conditions, is transcended in this principle.

The recognition of one's own true divine nature as the primary path to liberation; 'know thyself' as soteriology.

[auto] The passage describes the principle deriving its intellection from itself and holding its content only from itself, indicating perfect self-knowledge.

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

[auto] The text asserts that in the Intellectual-Principle, the knower and the known are identical, expressing a non-dual unity of existence within the divine realm.