7. Our nature and we ourselves all depend on (cosmic) being; we aspire
to it, we use it as principle, from the very beginning. We think
the intelligible (entities contained in essence) without having
either images or impressions thereof. Consequently, when we think
the intelligible (entities), the truth is that we are these very
intelligible entities themselves. Since we thus participate in the
genuine knowledge, we are the intelligible entities, not because we
receive them in us, but because we are in them. However, as beings
other than we constitute intelligible entities, as well as we, we are
all the intelligibles. We are intelligible entities so far as they
subsist simultaneously with all essences; consequently, all of us
together form but a single unity. When we turn our gaze outside of Him
from whom we depend, we no longer recognize that we are an unity; we
then resemble a multitude of faces which (being disposed in a circle)
would, as seen from the exterior, form a plurality, but which in the
interior would form but a single head. If one of these faces could
turn around, either spontaneously, or by the aid of Minerva, it would
see that itself is the divinity, that it is the universal Essence. No
doubt, it would not at first see itself as universal, but later, not
being able to find any landmarks by which to determine its own limits,
and to determine the distance to which it extends, it would have to
give up the attempt to distinguish itself from the universal (Essence),
and it would become the universal (Essence) without ever changing
location, and by remaining in the very foundation of the universal
(Essence).