Select Works, Section 660

A form of meditation that uses imagery, imagination, or symbolic thought rather than purely empty stillness.

The Intellectual-Principle is described as an active movement and Intellectual Act rather than static stillness.

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

The text defines the Intellectual-Principle by negation, stating what it is not rather than what it is.

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 Intellectual-Principle holds and covers the universe it has made, ordering all different things.

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

The text refers to 'authentic Intellect' knowing the Meadow of Truth directly.

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

It characterizes the principle as having movement, life, and force rather than static absence of power.

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

The Intellectual-Principle wanders within itself and is always itself, implying a state of unified being.

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

Identity and Difference are united to produce a third unity, transcending the binary.

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

[auto] The passage centrally debates the nature of simplicity within the Intellectual-Principle and its activities.

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] It describes a chain where the soul proceeds from the Intellectual-Principle which itself has a source.

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

[auto] The reference to a source and the discussion of principles implies the absolutely simple first principle.

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

[auto] It presents the paradox that the Intellectual-Principle is not simple yet possesses variety within its simplicity.

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

[auto] It contrasts the universal unity of the Intellectual-Principle with the infinite division of partial things.