XII. About The Common Mind

1. Hermes: The Mind, O Tat, is of God’s very essence - (if such a thing as essence of God there can be) - and what that is, it and it only knows precisely.
The Mind, then, is not separated off from God’s essentiality, but is united to it, as light to sun.
This Mind in men is God, and for this cause some of mankind are gods, and their humanity is nigh unto divinity.
For the Good Daimon said: “Gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods.”

God’s Mind is impossible to comprehend in our terms. But it is clear that God “is” Mind – and that which we call “Mind” that is inside each of us, is God. We are therefore all Gods – though mortal.

2. But in irrational lives Mind is their nature. For where there is Soul, there too is Mind; just as where there is Life, there is also Soul.
But in irrational lives their soul is life devoid of mind; for Mind is the in-worker of the souls of men for good - He works on them for their own good.
In lives irrational He does co-operate with each one’s nature; but in the souls of men He counteracts them.
For every soul, when it becomes embodied, is instantly depraved by pleasure and by pain.
For in a compound body, just like juices, pain and pleasure seed, and into them the soul, on entering in, is plunged.

There are three components from which man is made: Mind, Soul and Life. But in “irrational lives” (animals – and “the unawakened people”), “Mind” is not “active”; it needs to be activated in the unawoken. This awakening is like a “distillation”, for we are a compound structure, in which all of the ingredients (Mind, Soul and Life) have mixed; Mind needs to be extracted from the other ingredients.

3. Over whatever souls the Mind does preside, to these it shows its own light, by acting counter to their prepossessions, just as a good physician does upon the body prepossessed by sickness, pain inflict, burning or lancing it for sake of health.
In just the selfsame way the Mind inflicts pain on the soul, to rescue it from pleasure, whence comes its every ill.
The great ill of the soul is godlessness; then follows fancy for all evil things and nothing good.
So, Mind counteracting it, does work good on the soul, as the physician health upon the body.

4. But whatsoever human souls have not the Mind as pilot, they share in the same fate as souls of lives irrational.
For [Mind] becomes co-worker with them, giving full play to the desires toward which [such souls] are borne - [desires] that from the rush of lust strain after the irrational; [so that such human souls,] just like irrational animals, cease not irrationally to rage and lust, nor are they ever satiate of ills.
For passions and irrational desires are ills exceeding great; and over these God has set up the Mind to play the part of judge and executioner.

5. Tat: In that case, father mine, the teaching (logos) as to Fate, which previously you did explain to me, risks to be overset.
For that if it is absolutely fated for a man to fornicate, or commit sacrilege, or do some other evil deed, why is he punished - when he has done the deed from Fate’s necessity?
Hermes: All works, my son, are Fate’s; and without Fate none of corporal things - or <i.e., either> good, or ill - can come to pass.
But it is fated, too, that he who does ill, shall suffer. And for this cause he does it - that he may suffer what he suffers, because he did it.

6. But for the moment, [Tat,] let be the teaching as to vice and Fate, for we have spoken of these things in other [of our sermons]; but now our teaching (logos) is about the Mind: - what Mind can do, and how it is [so] different - in men being such and such, and in irrational lives [so] changed; and [then] again that in irrational lives it is not of a beneficial nature, while that in men it quenches out the wrathful and the lustful elements.
Of men, again, we must class some as led by reason, and others as unreasoning.

7. But all men are subject to Fate, and genesis and change, for these are the beginning and the end of Fate.
And though all men do suffer fated things, those led by reason (those whom we said Mind does guide) do not endure it suffering with the rest; but, since they’ve freed themselves from viciousness, not being bad, they do not suffer bad.
Tat: How do you mean, my father? Is not the fornicator bad; the murderer bad; and [so with] all the rest?
Hermes: [I meant not that;] but that the Mind-led man, my son, though not a fornicator, will suffer just as though he had committed fornication, and though he be no murderer, as though he had committed murder.
The quality of change he can no more escape than that of genesis.
But it is possible for one who has the Mind, to free himself from vice.

8. Wherefore I’ve ever heard, my son, Good Daimon also say - (and had He set it down in written words, He would have greatly helped the race of men; for He alone, my son, does truly, as the Firstborn God, gazing on all things, give voice to words (logoi) divine) - yes, once I heard Him say:
“All things are one, and most of all the bodies which the mind alone perceives. Our life is owing to [God’s] Energy and Power and Aeon. His Mind is good, so is His Soul as well. And this being so, intelligible things know nothing of separation. So, then, Mind, being Ruler of all things, and being Soul of God, can do whatever it wills.”

9. So do you understand, and carry back this word (logos) unto the question you asked before - I mean about Mind’s Fate.
For if you do with accuracy, son, eliminate [all] captious arguments (logoi), you will discover that of very truth the Mind, the Soul of God, does rule over all - over Fate, and Law, and all things else; and nothing is impossible to it - neither over Fate to set a human soul, nor under Fate to set [a soul] neglectful of what comes to pass. Let this so far suffice from the Good Daimon’s most good [words].
Tat: Yea, [words] divinely spoken, father mine, truly and helpfully. But further still explain me this.

10. You said that Mind in lives irrational worked in them as [their] nature, co-working with their impulses.
But impulses of lives irrational, as I do think, are passions.
Now if the Mind co-works with [these] impulses, and if the impulses of [lives] irrational be passions, then is Mind also passion, taking its colour from the passions.
Hermes: Well put, my son! You question right nobly, and it is just that I as well should answer [nobly].

11. All things incorporeal when in a body are subject unto passion, and in the proper sense they are [themselves] all passions.
For every thing that moves itself is incorporeal; while every thing that’s moved is body.
Incorporeals are further moved by Mind, and movement is passion.
Both, then, are subject unto passion - both mover and the moved, the former being ruler and the latter ruled.
But when a man has freed himself from body, then is he also freed from passion.
But, more precisely, son, nothing is impassible, but all are passible.
Yet passion differs from passibility; for that the one is active, while the other’s passive.
Incorporeals moreover act upon themselves, for either they are motionless or they are moved; but whichsoever it be, it is passion.
But bodies are invaribly acted on, and therefore they are passible.
Do not, then, let terms trouble you; action and passion are both the same thing. To use the fairer sounding term, however, does no harm.

12. Tat: Most clearly have you, my father, set forth the teaching (logos).
Hermes: Consider this as well, my son; that these two things God has bestowed on man beyond all mortal lives - both mind and speech (logos) equal to immortality. He has the mind for knowing God and uttered speech (logos) for eulogy of Him.
And if one uses these for what he ought, he’ll differ not a whit from the immortals. Nay, rather, on departing from the body, he will be guided by the twain unto the Choir of Gods and Blessed Ones.

13. Tat: Why, father mine! - do not the other lives make use of speech (logos)?
Hermes: Nay, son; but <i.e., only> use of voice; speech is far different from voice. For speech is general among all men, while voice does differ in each class of living thing.
Tat: But with men also, father mine, according to each race, speech differs.
Hermes: Yes, son, but man is one; so also speech is one and is interpreted, and it is found the same in Egypt, and in Persia, and in Greece.
You seem, son, to be in ignorance of Reason’s (Logos) worth and greatness. For that the Blessed God, Good Daimon, has declared:
“Soul is in Body, Mind in Soul; but Reason (Logos) is in Mind, and Mind in God; and God is Father of [all] these.”

14. The Reason, then, is the Mind’s image, and Mind God’s [image]; while Body is [the image] of the Form; and Form [the image] of the Soul.
The subtlest part of Matter is, then, Air <or vital spirit>; of Air, Soul; of Soul, Mind; and of Mind, God.
And God surrounds all and permeats all; while Mind Surrounds Soul, Soul Air, Air Matter.
Necessity and Providence and Nature are instruments of Cosmos and of Matter’s ordering; while of intelligible things each is Essence, and Sameness is their Essence.
But of the bodies of the Cosmos each is many; for through possessing Sameness, [these] composed bodies, though they do change from one into another of themselves, do nonetheless keep the incorruption of their Sameness.

15. Whereas in all the rest of composed bodies, of each there is a certain number; for without number structure cannot be, or composition, or decomposition.
Now it is units that give birth to number and increase it, and, being decomposed, are taken back again into themselves.
Matter is one; and this whole Cosmos - the mighty God and image of the mightier One, both with Him unified, and the conserver of the Will and Order of the Father - is filled full of Life.
Nothing is there in it throughout the whole of Aeon, the Father’s [everlasting] Re-establishment - nor of the whole, nor of the parts - which does not live.
For not a single thing that’s dead, has been, or is, or shall be in [this] Cosmos.
For that the Father willed it should have Life as long as it should be. Wherefore it needs must be a God.

16. How then, O son, could there be in the God, the image of the Father, in the plenitude of Life - dead things?
For that death is corruption, and corruption destruction.
How then could any part of that which knows no corruption be corrupted, or any whit of him the God destroyed?
Tat: Do they not, then, my father, die - the lives in it, that are its parts?
Hermes: Hush, son! - led into error by the term in use for what takes place.
They do not die, my son, but are dissolved as compound bodies.
Now dissolution is not death, but dissolution of a compound; it is dissolved not so that it may be destroyed, but that it may become renewed.
For what is the activity of life? Is it not motion? What then in Cosmos is there that has no motion? Nothing is there, son!

17. Tat: Does not Earth even, father, seem to thee to have no motion?
Hermes: No, son; but rather that she is the only thing which, though in very rapid motion, is also stable.
For how would it not be a thing to laugh at, that the Nurse of all should have no motion, when she engenders and brings forth all things?
For ‘tis impossible that without motion one who does engender, should do so.
That you should ask if the fourth part <or element> is not inert, is most ridiculous; for the body which does have no motion, gives sign of nothing but inertia.

18. Know, therefore, generally, my son, that all that is in Cosmos is being moved for increase or for decrease.
Now that which is kept moving, also lives; but there is no necessity that that which lives, should be all same.
For being simultaneous, the Cosmos, as a whole, is not subject to change, my son, but all its parts are subject unto it; yet nothing [of it] is subject to corruption, or destroyed.
It is the terms employed that confuse men. For ‘it is not genesis that constitutes life, but it is sensation; it is not change that constitutes death, but it is forgetfulness.
Since, then, these things are so, they are immortal all - Matter, [and] Life, [and] Spirit, Mind [and] Soul, of which whatever lives, is composed.

19. Whatever then does live, owes its immortality unto the Mind, and most of all does man, he who is both recipient of God, and co-essential with Him.
For with this life alone does God consort; by visions in the night, by tokens in the day, and by all things does He foretell the future unto him - by birds, by inward parts, by wind, by tree.
Wherefore does man lay claim to know things past, things present and to come.

20. Observe this too, my son; that each one of the other lives inhabits one portion of the Cosmos - aquatic creatures water, terrene earth, and airy creatures air; while man does use all these - earth, water air [and] fire; he sees Heaven, too, and does contact it with [his] sense.
But God surrounds all, and permeates all, for He is energy and power; and it is nothing difficult, my son, to conceive God.

21. But if you would Him also contemplate, behold the ordering of the Cosmos, and [see] the orderly behaviour of its ordering <this is a play on the word “cosmos”, which means “order, arrangement”>; you behold the Necessity of things made manifest, and [see] the Providence of things become and things becoming; behold how Matter is all-full of Life; [behold] this so great God in movement, with all the good and noble [ones] - gods, daimones and men!
Tat: But these are purely energies, O father mine!
Hermes: If, then, they’re purely energies, my son - by whom, then, are they energized except by God?
Or are you ignorant, that just as Heaven, Earth, Water, Air, are parts of Cosmos, in just the same way God’s parts are Life and Immortality, [and] Energy, and Spirit, and Necessity, and Providence, and Nature, Soul, and Mind, and the Duration <that is, Aeon or Eternity> of all these that is called Good?
And there are no things that have become, or are becoming, in which God is not.

22. Tat: Is He in Matter, father, then?
Hermes: Matter, my son, is separate from God, in order that you may attribute to it the quality of space. But what thing else than mass thinks you it is, if it’s not energized? Whereas if it be energized, by whom is it made so? For energies, we said, are parts of God.
By whom are, then, all lives enlivened? By whom are things immortal made immortal? By whom changed things made changeable?
And whether you do speak of Matter, of Body, or of Essence, know that these too are energies of God; and that materiality is Matter’s energy, that corporeality is Bodies’ energy, and that essentiality does constitutes the energy of Essence; and this is God - the All.

23. And in the All there is nothing that is not God. Therefore, neither size, nor space, nor quality, nor form, nor time, surrounds God; for He is All, and All surrounds all, and permeates all.
Son, pay unto this Reason (Logos), your adoration and your worship. There is one way alone to worship God; [it is] not to be bad.